LEARNING

       In my last post I was talking about free range kids to the extreme. We not only visited vacant houses but explored every aspect of the land. If it was there, we investigated and played. We explored.

       In the 1950's where I was raised, the whole area was surveyed by seismic . As with many things in that age there were no regulations. The holes were drilled and piped. When the shot was fired the crew left things as they were.

     I remember as little boys watching the seismic crew from the school yard and just waiting to go over to the well and drop pebbles down the well. We liked to hear the pebbles drop off the pipe walls as the pebble went down the well.

   I've often used this sound as one of the descriptions for learning.

  When we learn something new it influences most other things we have learned. Coloring takes place. Things are added to what we already know.  The more we know, the more we gain from new material.

    I had the  privilege to teach a boy who was  to become the top pediatrician in Canada. After most things were said, Bruce would giggle. Things were going around in his head as he soaked up new material and it influenced material he already knew.

    The giggle was a little annoying at the time but over the years when I understood the learning process better, the giggle made sense.

      So I guess I learned something by dropping pebbles down the well.

GUILT

       I listen to CBC quite often and try to catch the morning show from 8:30 to 10. They have interesting topics and people to interview.

      A couple of mornings ago the subject was guilt and in about one minute many things made sense in my life. We have to confront our guilt and solve issues that bother us.

     Since I was  teacher there is always one situation that amuses me. Every once in a while  I meet  a former student. The odd one goes on about apologizing for bad behavior. I look at them and I am puzzled. I did not consider that they were poorly behaved. They have felt guilty about their performance and had to make an apology. One guy working on a road crew on my street got out of his truck and marched up to me with an apology and concluded it with, "And I apologise for my friends too." I still get a chuckle out of that one.

    A dozen or so posts ago I wrote about breaking the back window in a neighbor's car. I have felt guilt ever since. The man died shortly after and I had no one to apologise to. My friends who stood and watched me get no end of fun by teasing me about this incident.

    In the rural area we lived  in, houses were rarely locked. Our house was never locked. So when my brother and  I were little we would sometimes wander  through some of the unlocked houses. Yes, I feel guilty about doing such a thing.

    I think most of us have done things that we regret. We feel guilty about it. Sometimes it just has to lie there.

0PP0RTUNITIES

       Sometimes there are very few opportunities for photos.  Sometimes thee are opportunities but your too slow to take advantage of the,.

     Well, photos fell into my lap this week.

     Usually I have jack rabbit photos. These critters were a little bigger than jack rabbits.

     I was going for a walk a few days ago. I got around the bend from my house and laying down a few  feet from the road was a cow moose. She  was about 150 m from my house and about 40 m from me. I had a good look at her and talked to her a bit. She was not going to get up and go anywhere. I walked a little further and here twins were there.

    I continued on my walk. I got back to the house and suddenly thought. What am I doing? Why aren't  I taking photos? I hurried, got the camera and got out where I saw the moose. Two photos  and my camera batteries were dead. So hurry back to the house and put in new batteries. I went back out and the moose were still there. It was very bright so really difficult to get photos. You just had to point and shoot.

   While taking photos four white tailed deer came along. So I also have photos of deer.

  So yesterday you saw the first digital phots I took and today you see the last digital phots I took.

IT WORKS

       I have been slowly working on transferring my photos from my old computer.

       First, I had to find out that I would need a memory stick. 

       Then I had to figure out how to download to the memory stick. Funny things happened. First, I loaded about a dozen files and then zip it decided to load about 4000 photos on it's own.

      Well, I didn't know if anything loaded or not so I thought I'd check. Things looked wonderful until I discovered that I was on the old computer and not the memory stick. That was a blow to my confidence. So okay, the photos were on my memory stick..

      Well then it took a while for me to try using a photo from the memory stick. I finally got up courage and then had to look around and find out how to open a file on blogger. After about an hour it worked.

      So for today's blog, I will show you the second photo I every took on a digital camera. Here I am in 2008 watching birds about a km from my house.  

     

I FOUND MY CAMERA

      Well, I didn't lose my camera. I didn't use it when I should have. One of my commenters reminded me that I hadn't taken a photo when I should have.

     I should have taken a photo  of the rabbit and it's changing color. So here is the jack rabbit  starting to look a little ragged.

     This was taken out of the back window of my house.

SENIOR RELATIONSHIPS

       My 81 year old brother found a girlfriend a while ago or maybe some older lady found a boyfriend. I'm not sure which. It's a happy time for both of them. They got permission or a thumbs up from their kids. So they're jumping through the proper hoops.

       One thing my brother said to me is, "Why do they make it so hard for old guys to get married?" The statement took me by surprise. 

     He went on to tell me what some of the difficult issues are. If you get married, benefits from your previous spouse are cancelled. So CPP(Canada pension plan,, OAS(Old Age Security) are cancelled from the deceased spouse's account. Many seniors depend on these benefits to some extent. The  benefits are also cancelled if you live common law and they find you.

     I suppose in some cases it would be a sizable loss depending on the previous spouses status.

     So  this was  something that was a big surprise to me.

CHANGE OF RABBIT COLOR

        Since the rabbits hang around my yard quite a bit , I get to make interesting observations and then curiosity makes me look things up. This last while one animal has made my yard his/her location for the day. They are not very active in the day as they rest  and groom.

       So two weeks ago I started noticing small changes in color of the rabbit's coat. All winter the jack rabbits have had a very thick white coat. The white coat is great as it provides warmth and camouflage in the winter snow.

      So I got thinking about what makes the process happen. It's primarily a molting process. The photo period provides the start  of the molting process. So changing light causes hormones to do their work. Biology  continues the process.

      So now the big white coat is falling off. I find large tufts of white fur around my yard. A new summer coat is growing in which will be a brown/gray which provides camouflage in a summer environment. It is also much cooler and prevents the  animal from overheating.

     The change in molt is slow but is never the less  happening.