CHANGE

                   Things do not change; we change.

                                                                  Henry David Thoreau

THE CHANGE GENE

    My retirement organization  has a first class quarterly magazine. It keeps us up to date on what's new for us. It also contains interesting articles on senior topics:travel, health, arts, writing, hobbies and many more topics. It's one of those magazines that grew because it had an excellent editor. 

    The last issue had an article about "the Change Gene" One of our retirees wrote an article about how she helped her 91 year old mother with her computer. Her Mom was ok with email but not much more. Daughter was trying to get Mom familiar with other areas of her computer.

    Then daughter stopped and started to think about changes people go through. Particularly the comparison of changes that mother and daughter had gone through and why each had a different experience with computers.

    In our lives we go through many changes as we age .Well maybe that's not right. Many changes come along that we experience. What we do with these changes is a result of our experience and how we have taken advantage of previous changes. 

    It was hard for daughter to teach mother about computers as mother had very little experience with computers. Daughter started to wonder how she would adapt to changes coming up.

    When I started flying all we needed was a piece of paper (ticket) in our hand and we got on the airplane. Now I need help to check myself in on the computer.

    The first car I ever owned was a 1929 model A Ford. Today I own a Honda CRV. With the old model A we just bounced down the road. I call the CRV an glorified sensor. That's just the change in cars. I wasn't really ready for the CRV.

   So the writer of the article started to wonder if we had a change gene or needed a change gene. We need something to help us get by all the changes we meet in life.

Past The Point of No Return

     My title doesn't make much sense for this post.

     In Central Alberta we've had a fall with long, pleasant, dry weather. I was able to share many colorful fall scenes.  However, fall weather slowly and quietly cools until plant life has either died or become dormant so that it can survive the winter.

    Animals have slowly made changes. We still have bears wandering around looking for food as the berry crop was poor this year. We have many gulls, ducks and geese sitting around. However many ducks and geese are gone and song birds disappeared as much as ten weeks ago. And my favorite, the jack rabbit, has pretty well got it's white winter coat.

     Yesterday the sun rose at 7:40 and set at 16:56 so we had 9 hours and 16 minutes of sunlight. Changing to daylight savings time seems to have shortened our afternoons in a hurry and of course, that's exactly what changing back to standard time does.

     Yesterday the low was minus 8 C (eh) (18 F). The high was about 3 C. Small ponds are covered with ice. Larger ponds are half frozen. Of course, the lakes and rivers are still ice free.

     I, for one, enjoy the seasons of the year. It's one of the things that keeps us vigorous as we have to challenge the changes.

    In 45 days we will be at the winter solstice. We are 45 days from the fall equinox.

    Now the point of no return is meaningless here as the season comes no matter what. That's life.