Born in 1942, I was the first of seven children born to an Irish father and French mother. We lived on a 100 acre farm near Ivanhoe, Ontario.
In my 'good old days', we earned our living with farming, subsistence activities and off-farm work. Pigs and chickens were always underfoot. Cows kept our fields trimmed until excused from such duties and the indignity of old age.
Children kept turning up.The family next door had nine girls and one boy.
Until puberty fostered interest in other delicacies, we fished, swam and picked strawberries and raspberries along fence rows. We cut firewood, milked cows and cleaned barns.
I did not start school until I was seven. With my mother's help and lack of entertainment options, I could read by this time.This accomplishment was occasionally brandished by our beleaguered teacher hoping to motivate students who already had important things on their minds.
The result was that I spent lunch-hours further sharpening reading skills and keeping out of harm's way.
I read hundreds of science fiction novels, Tarzan novels and every Zane Grey book in existence. I read Henry Thoreau, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Immanuel Kant and a Protestant Bible kept in a secret place in our Catholic barn. (The only thing worse would have been a copy of the Koran, which I did not know existed).
Much later, I tackled A. N. Whitehead's 'Process and Reality', and confess that it remains a 'work in process.
Mr. Whitehead provides a wonderfully illuminating way of thinking about what is going on. My project involves seeing what light this formidable vantage point sheds upon economic and political problems.
Along the way, I develop notions about subjectivity and consciousness that I do not think Mr. Whitehead had in mind.
