GIFTS THAT KEEP GIVING

        Many of  my 2116 posts begin with "I was a teacher". Many times I am surprised to meet a former student after many years. It is a great gift to be able to meet someone that I taught many years ago and have a good visit. 

       A surprising and thrilling meeting took place Thur. evening when I was at a naturalists meeting. The meeting was over and I was ready to leave when a woman came up and introduced herself. 

     She was a former student and had become a teacher and gone into school administration. She had come back to the school district she grew up in and taught with some of her former teachers. And she just retired recently!

     I knew that she was an administrator in the district but I never bumped into her.

     We had a great visit reminiscing about our lives and school experiences. By the time we were finished there were very few people left in the hall. 

    The bonus was that her Dad was the curriculum supervisor in my area. So I caught up with what her Dad had been doing. I had not seen her Dad since 1997 as far as I can remember.

     Meeting up with former students is a treat. Meeting up with former students is a gift that keeps on giving. You never know who you're going to meet next. 

COMPLAINING

       The beginning of this week was great for complaining about politics. So I was looking for something interesting to complain about. Well, why not complain about the weather!

      I don't do much complaining about weather because I've been outside for a good part of my life.

     However , we did have a storm blow through here last night and it dropped about 5 cm of snow. There was a very high wind and snow drifted. We rarely see any snow drifts here so it was different. Today was sunny and a high of minus 2 or 3.

    What I am looking at is how much longer the days are getting. 

    Dec. 20 the sun rose at 8:42 AM and set at 4:24 Pm for daylight of 7: 41.

    Jan 20 the sun rose at 8:31AM and set at 5:01Pm for daylight of 8:29. So the day has increased by 48 minutes.

    Who is it that's waiting for spring and counting the minutes?  

MAGA

     MAGA is a great slogan and Trump got a lot of mileage out of it. Three words are very specific and one word is vague enough to cover anything. 

    Great is a word that can mean many different things to various people. Now that's why the slogan works so well. It can slither around to any position that's needed at the time. 

    So the word great in this slogan. What can it mean?

    A great nation can be many positive things. A great nation is peaceful and gets along with neighbors and supports them. A great nation has good laws, respects them and obeys them. 

    Great nations are respected by other nations. 

    A great nation seeks to have equality for it's citizens. Citizens have equal opportunity and what they do with the equal opportunity is up to them. 

    Groups of people are not marginalized. Room in society has to be made for all groups. 

    Is it difficult to be a great nation? Of course. The effort to have a great nation is well worth the effort. We are much stronger and happier if we work together. Picking fights is a waste of effort. 

    One could go on with many more characteristics of a good nation. I've given enough suggestions to illustrate my point. 

    I have not mentioned wealth. Certainly wealth is important. A nation creates it's own wealth. It doesn't depend on others to get a free ride. In the past many nations have used slaves for a free ride. Wealth is important but it should not overshadow other characteristics. 

   Well, this may sound self righteous. However, we have to look at things as they are to have a great nation. 

GRANDPA CLIMATE

     The other day the radio was on in the house and I heard, "Grandpa Climate." I thought for a minute about this and then it hit me. They're talking about me!

     I'm a Grandpa and I'm 85 years old. So what was the climate back at the beginning of my time.

    Then I thought of my Dad who was born in 1912? Oh , there's my Grandpa who was born in 1864 ? And then I thought back to my Great Grandpa who was born in 1840. 

    What was the climate like when these men were living? 180 years ago the common folks probably didn't have a thermometer. Information on climate was anecdotal. There would be some information about climate but it wouldn't be scientific. Both my grandparents could read. They used the Russian Cyrillic script. I'm not sure how much they could write. So information on climate at that time would be limited. I don't know if there is any of Grandpa or Grandma's writing left. 

    I have often told you about my time as a child and the great outdoors. It was very, very different than today. About 50% of the land was not developed. When I was a kid in the late 40's Canada's population was less than 10 000 000 .  This meant that much less carbon was produced. Global warming was probably not taking place. It seemed as if when winter came it stayed winter until spring. I remember getting what we called mild spells, but I don't remember snow thawing in the winter time like it does now. . 

    So I hope the term Grandpa climate makes people think about how much our climate has changed and that people will start to contribute to not letting the earth's temperature increase. 

   If you're a grandma or grandpa, what do you remember about climate?

PEASANT DAYS

      In my Jan. 10 post I happened to mention my grandparents without electricity or water. Some people  made comments to indicate that they had no experience with out services. 

     My paternal grandparents and great grand parents came from Russia in the early 1900's. They had lived in Russia for about 100 years. They were peasants. They made use of available materials for housing and food. So in Russia, they had clay houses. The roof was probably thatched. Here they could afford to get lumber for the roof of a clay house.

     My Dad was born in 1912 in a clay house with a dirt floor.  People liked their clay houses. They said they were cool in the summer and warm in the winter. 

    So many of the German people who came here to homestead had a clay house. Other people built sod houses which were equally functional. 

   Of course, there were other things that had to be developed to live with such a lack of conveniences.

   To keep warm in the winter they had layers of clothing long before outdoor enthusiasts came up with the idea. We had felt boots. These were boots that were made of felt. I can tell you that they were warm. There was an overshoe that kept your boot dry. We had combination fleece lined under wear. We had two layers of pants. They were warm. 

     Sometimes the houses were banked up with snow or straw. The floors in the wood houses were cold. They was no heat in the cellar. Since the heat source was coal and wood the pipes wood sometimes catch on fire. Most people let the fires go out before they went to bed for safety reasons. .

   So houses without electricity worked just fine. 

   People became accustomed to those conditions and thrived. 

   I am old enough to have lived with out electricity and no central heating. Our first house was a dilapidated board structure . I know that there is a photo of this old house but I'm not sure who has it. I remember Dad getting up in the morning and lighting the fire. We would bring our clothes into the main room and get dressed in front of the heater.

    I do not look back at these days as a hardship. We were prepared and were comfortable and enjoyed life with no electricity. . 

I MADE A MISTAKE

      I made a deduction on my last post and it was wrong. I assumed that the population of Esk was zero  as when I visited Esk in 2001 there were only two houses occupied. 

      My sister in law lives about three miles from Esk and she pointed out that I was wrong. She thinks that 2 people live in Esk and maybe more. My niece also pointed out that I was wrong. 

      Where would I be if I didn't have a good sister in law and niece. Thanks for  correcting me. 

CURIOUS AND CURIOSITY

          Mr. Pudding, from Yorkshire Pudding, likes to take a look at things that are very different like, my home village. He finds these odd places and lets his imagine run. 

         My home village is Esk, Saskatchewan. Well it was my home village. Today it is a ghost town with a population of 0.

       At it's largest it had a population of about 50.

     My grandparents retired to Esk in the late 40's. They had no electricity and water. They had a wood cook stove and wood heater for winter heat which was not great. Grandma had some chickens. 

    They bought flour, sugar, salt ,  coffee and a few more items at the local store. . They bought the few clothes in the next town which had a dry goods store. 

    Now there is an abandoned church which interests Mr Pudding. Did I go to Sunday school in that church etc. You can watch a 6 minute video to see what an abandoned village is like. The abandoned church is featured. 

    Our family did not attend that church but my brother was married in it in 1967 and it was closed shortly after that and the building was sold. Somebody bought it with the view of developing it as a house. It never happened. It would have made a very good house. The guy lived in a house trailer in the church yard and later moved away . The video is probably from 20 years ago and I'm not sure if the church is still there. 

    As children we were brought to the church and were given inoculations.(Not on Sundays)The late  1940's saw the immunization for communicable diseases.  You got a series of shots for each disease so we attended the church often for health reasons. 

    Now at one time this village of 50 people had 3 churches. All were Christian denominations. Why they had to be 3 separate denominations I'll never know? There was Lutheran, Baptist and United Evangelical Brethern. They did get along in the community. 

    I realize that it may be very difficult for people from almost any part of the world to understand what I have described. There are many differences in this world and this little village had it's differences.