SIDE BENEFITS

     All my spring cleaning has brought about some surprises. In moving furniture and cleaning drawers I've found some things that I had forgotten about.

     When I retired from teaching, 25 years ago, brought home some treasures that I thought I might look at and throw away. I did look at them but didn't throw any of it away and then promptly forgot about them. My classroom was full of "stuff" that I used. Since I made up my mind to retire a year before I retired, I had lots of time to get rid of things. I had free garage sales where I laid things out and people could take what they wanted.

     I taught language arts to middle school kids. I had many prompts to get kids writing. For example , I would say make a list of ten relatives. Then we would go through the ten names and pick the one you wanted to write about.

   I always did the assignments that I gave the kids. Sometimes I wrote my piece of writing on the chalk board and got them to discuss it with me. Usually they wrote a rough copy and brought it to me and we talked about a few things and then they wrote a finished copy. I would prompt them for more detail. Maybe change the order. Check the words they chose to see if they could find something better.

    Well, all these pieces of writing came home. The other day I got to look at them again. 

   I wrote about one of my brothers and since it was his birthday a few days ago , I said I would send him a birthday present. When I went to scan the piece of writing the scanner wouldn't work but that's another story. 

   So here's a piece I wrote about my daughter. Of course, all of you know her. 

    I hope you can make this darker so you can read it. 

      It was about this age that I first met the determined streak . She's seven months old here. 

SO MANY QUESTIONS

           which part of your life surprises you the most, and why ?

          I suppose what surprised me most is that I actually took the plunge and went north. I thought I was just on a fun adventure but it turned out to have some very substantial influences on the remainder of my life.  I suppose part of the change involved maturing. I was 23 when I went north. 

        Now, at that time   in my life I had another option. If I hadn't gone north, there was a good chance that I would have blundered back to the farm. That would have been a poor choice.

• if you could change one thing about your life, what would it be, and why would you want to change it

           Well, come on. You want to limit me to one thing? I don't think so.  

        I don't think there's really anything that I would like to change. You always look at what might have been. You say well, I was interested in forest or wildlife work but that was unrealistic. 

        I would really like to have travelled much more after I retired. We did okay for a couple of years after retirement but then that was it.  Travelling opens up the whole world. The things you learn while travelling fit in with your life experiences and make them more meaningful.

       I would like to have stayed with education after retirement and supervised student teachers. I had the opportunity but I wanted to get away from education and be with other people. That was the right decision. 

• when was the happiest time in your life, and what made it so great?

      My happiest time is when I had little kids. Little kids are extremely unpredictable and love you with all your faults. Kids made Christmas and trips  happy events. Remember the trip to Disneyland? Remember good times at the lake. Those times wouldn't have been nearly as happy if kids weren't involved. There are many family stories that wouldn't be there without kids. And yes, I've said it before , I was sad to see you guys leave!

• when was the saddest or worst time in your life, and what made it so?

              The saddest time in my life is when I left home and went to teachers' college, I was intensely homesick. I was not ready in any sense to leave home. I had not been given an opportunity to be independent and make my own decisions. I wanted to go back home every minute of the day. I could not study and didn't know the ropes on how to study.. I had gone to a one teacher high school with less than 25 kids. In teachers' College there were 400 students in a very large building. I found it difficult to get to know people  I persevered and kept at it and gradually   things got better. 

      So "endeth" the questions on my life. I'm sure there are more. The questions made me reflect on various events in my life. Many memories were brought back. I was surprised by the comments from readers and how interested you were with the interaction between father and daughter. 

SCRUMBLY FALL DAYS

     Fall here has been somewhat disorganized. We've had nice days and then miserable days. On tree has leaves that have turned color and the tree beside it is still green. 

     So here are a few photos to show you my scrumbly fall. 

SOMETIMES YOU GET LUCKY

      I spend a lot of time outdoors wandering through parks and natural areas. It gets me outdoors. It gives me some exercise and it certainly does wonders to overall good well being. I lead a bird watching group once a week and sometimes you have to work pretty hard to pursue the little birdie to make an identification.
    Now most days you are going to meet someone to visit with. You meet all kinds of different people. Since I carry binoculars , most people can guess what I'm doing.


    From time to time you find things. These days the woods are filled with junk from homeless people. Sometimes I report the junk and the city picks it up and if it's small I clean it up myself.


    Sometimes you find other things...wallets. Usually there's nothing left. Twice I found wallets and the only thing missing was cash. Then I turn them in to the police.


    Yesterday I found something different. I saw a bit of black cord sticking out of the snow. I thought it might be keys so I kicked the snow away. Surprisingly it turned out to be a flashlight. I wanted to see if it worked and if not it would go in the garbage. One of the birders told me how to turn it on and yes it worked.


    Now the flash light likely belonged to a homeless person as they use the flashlights to navigate through the bush and also as a bicycle light. They also use them for lights in their tent.


     Now when I got home I googled to see what I had. I found out that it was a $50.00 flashlight. I've never found anything of value that I could keep. The light is LED and the beam shines up to 751 feet!




    Sometimes you get lucky!