What Should We Ask Our Elders?

     On my last post I confidently stated that we should make a list of questions to ask our parents and grand parents. After I published the post I thought, " What would I write down?" I had to stop and think about it. Maybe it's not so easy to make up a list of questions. We have the nagging thought in the back of our head that we would like to know more of our parents and grandparents. But what do we really want to know?

   So the first thing I considered was the age of the son or daughter and parents and grandparents. Questions kids would ask would be different than what adults would ask.  Answers would be different depending on the ages. These days some grandchildren are not that familiar with grandparents.

   I would make up a list of general areas I would interest me. Then I would  say tell me something about the games you played as a kid. This can be a conversation where one answer leads to another question.  ...games at home, school or with friends.

    School would be a big one. My Dad lived less than half a mile from the country school he went to. For some time he lit the fire so the school would be somewhat warm when the other kids got there. I heard this story many times. I didn't hear about his teachers or what they learned. He spent one year in high school where he boarded in town. He wasted his time in the pool room. He did not return to high school. He had regrets about wasting this opportunity.

    He talked about the food they ate and how good it was. What was the food?

   My Dad road freight trains. What was it like?

   I knew small pieces of Mom and Dad's life but not much detail. Our best hope is to fill in some of the detail.

   I have children in their 40's and grandchildren in their teens. What would I want them to know? Remember, I'm going to have to prompt them to ask questions. Funny situations have come up. My Mom kept all my report cards . My daughter was looking at the report cards and said,"Dad, you had poor marks!" I think we have to be ready to tell some things we are not proud of. 

   Other areas I would pencil in for ideas would be: happy times, sad times, work as a child, travel, disappointments, favorite people in their lives, challenges, friends, siblings, grand parents. I like to hear about daily life. My kids should hear about how I milked cows or road horses. They should hear about harvest and cutting hay. They should know about my shenanigans. I was a rascal. 

   This is by no means a complete list. It should grow.

   What questions would you put in your list?

I Should Have Asked Questions

     A few days ago I did a post on my great grandfather who could heal horses by looking at them. My great grandfather died ten years before I was born. The only way I knew of the story is that for a while four generations lived in one house. One of his great grand daughters recorded the story.

    I started to think that there are many things I do not know about my ancestors simply because I didn't ask.  I can think of things I would ask Mom or Dad now if they were living. Why didn't I ask when they were living? There are many things I should have asked my grand parents but did not.

   Part of the problem is that for most of us , by the time we think of things we are older and guess what? Our parents or grand parents have passed on.

   I was in my sixties when my Dad was still living. I asked him about some things. They were things that I knew about. He was very fuzzy on the answers and some of the things he could not recall at all. I was too late. I found  that he may not have answered the question I asked , but it would remind him of something else. One day out of the blue he told me how he and my mother began seeing one another. Dad was working in an area where he knew many young people. The young people got together at people's houses. Since none of them had cars, they walked home in a group. They were in the country and it was pitch dark. Somebody took his hand in the dark. It was our Mom. I was fascinated with the story and it would have been something I would never have dreamed about asking. Dad was shy when it came to the opposite sex. Guess What ? That gene was passed on to his four sons. The four daughter-in-laws sometimes have a good laugh about us when they get together!

    My grandparents came from Europe. It was a gigantic move. They were peasants and had never traveled very far. Many of the sea voyages were close to tragedy. I should have  asked and found out how brave they were. What was their trip like? What did they see that impressed them? They made the trip without English so it must have been terrifying.

   My Mom died at age 59. Females are better at relating family stories ( My opinion only). I'm sure I would have been told many things without asking. Maybe I would have got the other side of the romance.

    So I would urge all those younger than I am to make a list of questions and be prepared to ask parents and grand parents questions. For every answer you get there will be another question.

    I'm emailing my kids to give them a heads up about asking questions.

   Am I the only one who didn't ask questions and regrets it.

Canadian Forces Left Afganistan Today

     After 12 long painful and difficult years Canadian forces have left Afghanistan. We lost more than 150 service personnel. Hundreds were dreadfully wounded physically Others were horribly wounded mentally.

     The original aims of an Afghan war were to catch some bad guys and help the country so that the people could stay away from the bad guys. And yes, we wanted to establish a democracy with all the institutions we have. We also hoped to leave some infrastructure for the citizens to use. Has this happened? Our form of democracy and institutions were completely foreign to the Afghans. Their culture and history did not contain any experiences which would allow them to practice democracy.

    As time went on we could see that the opposition to western forces was much bigger than had been estimated. It became a matter of hanging on and not getting beat up badly. Some of our allies pulled out much earlier in the war. This created a greater challenge for those who were left.

    Canada paid a huge price for participating in the Afghanistan war. It was something we could not afford. Many of our other projects were put on hold and will probably never be built.

    The war was entered into with more bravado than good sense. The enemy proved to be much tougher than was thought. The PR job with the locals was poorly done or not done at all so we upset people rather than get them on our side.

    I did not want to see us get involved in the Afghan war. We would be interfering in a country more than anything else. Yes, the Taliban were evil to their own people. It will only be a short time before the Taliban are back.

    So it is with mixed feelings that I see our troops come home. Our troops were brave and suffered extreme hardship and they should be honored and remembered for their efforts. I'm appalled at our government's treatment of the veterans. Steven Harper's government has cut a number of extremely important veteran services. It's cowardly on the part of our government to expect troops to serve and when they are finished neglect them.

    I hope that this situation will never happen again. We should have learned that certain operations are completely useless. 

What's Happened to our food?

     I'm reading Michael Moss's Salt Sugar and Fat. This is a Pulizter prize winning book and I and see why it won the prize.

    Last night I read the chapter on convenience foods. Moss covers the history of convenience foods and how the big companies used it to sell more food. After the war more women began working out of the home. They needed some help in preparing meals. The food companies were all too ready to oblige. Television was established and for the family to watch an evening of television, food preparation had to be more convenient.

   This got me thinking about food when I was a kid. I was raised on a small farm. I was born just before the war started. At that time most of our food was produced on the farm. Very few things were bought from a store. Mom bought, flour, tea, coffee, sugar, salt, pepper, yeast, baking powder, rolled oats and probably a few more items at odd times. All of our food was prepared on the farm. Mom canned hundreds of quarts of food...beans,corn,carrots, peas, fruit, chicken, beef and probably many more. One more that's special would be sauerkraut. Several large crocks of sauerkraut were made and lasted all winter. Mom baked bread, pies, cakes and cookies. We made our own butter and I can remember crying about having to turn the churn. Then I would fight with my brother as we both wanted to be turning the churn when the butter formed. Mom and Dad grew a large garden which more than supplied them with enough food. Potatoes, turnips, beets and onions wee stored in cold storage. 

    So in one way you can see why women looked for convenience foods. This was a tremendous amount of work for my Mom. We also had much better food than the convenient foods that are full of sugar, fat ,salt and a multitude of strange chemicals.

   I know that when I look back nostalgia sets in. Was the food really that good. I think we would be much better off with food that had a lot less fat, sugar , salt and weird chemicals..

And It Went Viral...

    We quite often hear the term "it went viral." I don't watch TV and I don't watch videos so I miss most of the stuff that goes viral. 

   So here's the back ground to my story. Western Canada had a bumper crop in 2013. In fact, it was a record crop. Farmers thought they were off to the races. What happened next is unbelievable. Railroads hauled very little western grain to ports. There were complaints . As time went on complaints grew louder. Finally the Steven Harper government became aware of the problem and made a meaningless pompous statement.

    I was listening to an interview of a farmer. He explained how he had not sold any grain and he knew why. The railways were hauling oil instead of grain. This farmer was 76 years old and had been through tough times but never anything like this. At the end of the interview he was asked what he thought should happen. his reply was, "Harper (prime minister) should get off his ass and put his big boy pants on and make the railways haul grain."  Today I heard that the comment went viral!

   So there it was. A hardworking old farmer had something to say that went viral.

    So that's about  as close to anything going viral as I'll ever get.

    It makes one wonder what it takes to have something go viral.

No Green Grass for me yet!

     Some of the blogs I follow keep up  a running account of spring and how flowers are blooming and grass it turning green. Similar posts got me thinking about "March comes in like a lion and goes out like a lamb."

The only thing green is the spruce trees and they are mostly black

    So here there's not one tiny piece of green grass. I'm still living in a white world.

    
     It was a dull overcast day so the photos are rather dull.

   Today out temperature got up to plus 8 C (48 F). It hasn't been above 0 C for about 6 weeks. Some of those weeks were brutally cold. We had many over night temperatures below minus 30 C (minus 22 F).

    The sun rose at 7:05 this morning and set at 6:27 tonight. And I'll be setting my clock ahead before I go to bed.

    So I even though I might  envy those with green grass I hope you enjoy it. Our time for green grass is coming very quickly.

The Horse Healer

     I wanted to post another folklore post but Putin got in the way. I had to make a statement on Putin.

     I was recently sent for some physiotherapy and I began thinking about physiotherapists being healers. 

     I was reminded of a horse healer.

     My great grandfather was known as a horse healer. He would look into the sick horse's face and eyes and the horse quite often was healed. Sick horses were brought to him all the time. Two days before he died they brought a sick horse to the house steps. Great Grandpa came out and took a look at the horse. The horse got better but Great Grandpa died two days later.

    Now this healing ability was hereditary. It would skip a generation and show up in the opposite sex. So one of Great Grandpa's grand daughters would have had healing power on horses. Now I don't know if any of these women every realized they had this power or used it.

    My great Grandpa was a very influential man. He was a leader. He brought all of his adult children and their families to home stead in Canada in 1905. Also many of his children's in-laws came. Since the Lutheran church was not organized and they had no pastors , he was the lay reader. 

   I believe this must have been an old German folk lore belief. I've tried to find information on this belief but came up blank. 

   Does anybody else know about healing horses by looking at them and then passing  their ability to heal horses to a family member in the next generation?  Are there any other folk lore situations where the power is hereditary?