Break your cycle of summer trouble now

DEAR MISS LONELYHEARTS: I recently heard the love of my life, who got sent off to her aunt’s place in B.C. after she got pregnant, came back to Winnipeg. She lost the pregnancy early on, but her parents wanted to keep us far apart, so she had to stay on with her aunt and uncle and wasn’t allowed phone calls from guys.

Now that she’s finally back in Winnipeg again, I got her new cell number and I called her right away. She said, “You never called me after I was sent away, and I waited for your call every day. How dare you call me now?”

I said, “I didn’t have your new number, and I was scared to call your family here, for it.” She said, “You could have gotten my new number from my sister or any one of my friends if you tried! They kept asking me if you’d called yet. They said it showed you didn’t really care.”

I didn’t know what to say. I was too chicken to stand up to her family. Don’t you think she should stop being cruel to me? What can I say to her?

On the same morning, the Free Press carried two pieces written from opposite vantage points, arriving at the same locked door.

Charles Bernstein, writing as a gastroenterologist, described a nurse-practitioner program at Health Sciences Centre that gave patients with inflammatory bowel disease somewhere to turn before their illness forced them to an emergency room. It was then not funded to continue, and it ended. A service that had been approved, put in place, and shown to work was allowed to lapse.

Tom Brodbeck, writing as a columnist, described Shared Health, an organization created eight years ago as a fourth layer of administration added to the three the system already had — Manitoba Health, the regional authorities, and hospital administrations. He asked what this layer has done for patient care that those three could not, found no one able to answer, and concluded that the province should either make the case or let the structure go.

One writer watched something that worked disappear. The other watched something no one can justify persist. Their accounts are two symptoms of one disease.

Don’t settle for being ‘reasonable facsimile’

DEAR MISS LONELYHEARTS: I always fall in love when the leaves start turning to fall colours. But, this year I have a big problem that could get me in terrible trouble. My heart is burning for a guy I can’t have — because he used to be married to my older sister. My sister is “possessive for life” and would divorce me as a family member if I took up with him.

Still, he’s been calling me at night to talk about her and I have been giving him advice during the long calls. You know what that means — a lot of things are being said in conversation after midnight, especially when both of us have been drinking wine!

The trouble is I know deep down I’m only a substitute for my older sister. I even look like her! He was crazy about her, but he wasn’t true to her, and she can’t forgive him for that!

Winnipeg police officers are in a standoff that began Thursday morning in Westwood.

Police were called to Byrd Avenue shortly before 9:30 a.m. after a man was seen walking with what appeared to be a firearm, said Winnipeg Police Service spokesman Const. Claude Chancy.

Officers have identified a home connected to the investigation, he said. Police have taken one man into custody and seized several weapons, including a firearm, said Chancy. He was not sure if the man arrested was the individual spotted walking with the firearm.

A section of Byrd Avenue and Davis Crescent has been closed to traffic.