Snow: Embrace It or Fight It

       My last post was on the snow fall that we had the previous day. Some of the comments made me think about things again. I know that I have some valued southern followers. One comment went something like this..."I rarely see snow and never have enough for a shovel."


       The shovel got me off on a tangent(Whatever they are.) We have many things designed to fight snow starting with the shovel that I use to move snow out of places I don't want it. I have snow boots, snow tires, warm jacket and tuque. All of these things and more I use to fight snow. Our culture despises snow. We spend millions on snow removal. So there we are fighting snow.


      We should embrace snow...love it! Ski, snowshoe, walk ...just get outdoors in the snow. We should discover ways to use snow. Snow is great stuff for sculptures. Snow is easy to move and carve. Snow was used to lean against the outside of a house for wind protection and insulation. My parents melted snow for water to do all washing .Instead of moving snow out of the way do some research on how to make a safe road surface with snow.

My private ski trail

Neighbor Alf and his snowmen

Red and his wonderful skis

Skating at Bower Ponds

Sliding at Bower Ponds

     The Inuit for thousands of years have embraced show. They use snow to aid their survival. Snow is so important to them that they have many different words for snow...drifting snow, slushy snow, powdery snow, snow banks, snow drifts, snow suitable for building houses...the list goes on. As an aside there is some debate over the whether there are actually many different words for snow in Inuit languages. For igloos they looked around the area for some very hard snow that was fairly deep. They used a hand saw to cut blocks and a large knife to shape the blocks so that they had the correct bevel. Small chunks of snow were used to plug cracks or where the blocks didn't quite fit. In twenty minutes they had a nice snow house. The snow house completely stopped the wind and has insulation value as they would have the temperature just above freezing. Now they slept with no clothes on...just lots of skins above and below. Clothing was hung up to dry over night. I've been in snow houses and they were light and comfortable. Now that's embracing snow that I can admire.


      Now I know I could change snow for heat. I'm sure that in desert  or tropical areas people have learned to embrace the heat and use it to advantage for their life.


     For my choice I'll stick with the snow. I use a combination of fighting and embracing. I enjoy snow enough to to put up with the not so fun stuff.

Into Every Life a Little Snow Must Fall.

      We received about 8 cm (3 in.) of snow yesterday. It  was beautiful snow as it came down heavily in the evening so in the street lights made it look  as if the sky was full of snow. The snow was light and dry. I shoveled about 9 :00 PM in case we got more later on. 

Paper birch

Mountain ash and red berries

Another mountain ash 

The green ash

      This morning the trees were laden with snow. Now if I'd been out half an hour earlier there would have been more snow on the trees. I also found out that I have to play with the camera so that the snow on the tree branches would show up better. I thought the brilliant sunshine would give me brilliant snow pictures. Not that easy!

     I hope you enjoy the snow in my life.

Male and Female Brains

    There was an excellent post on   Far Side of Fifty recently. Far Side described male brains as boxes and female brains as boxes. She explained how these brains worked and gave concrete examples of her husband and herself.


     The post caught my eye because I have had a long interest in the topic. As a teacher I was aware of the different  characteristics between girls and boys as far progress was concerned. I tried to include situations in my classroom that would accommodate both boys and girls. It wasn't a one size fits all. Before I retired in 1997 there was some pretty interesting research on brains. There were looking at the various brain areas and how those areas performed.


      A very long time ago I read a book called "Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus."  The author had done some major research into the differences in communication between men and women. This book offered some very practical strategies when it came to improving communication.

     Now Far Side's post helped to explain something for me that has bothered me for a long time. Home Farm Girl insists on carrying a clothe bag almost every place she goes. This bag has a supply of plastic bags for those grocery stores which do not supply bags. She also keeps lists, gloves, coupons and large variety of other items. There is much rummaging through the bag when something is wanted. She wants the gloves. Oops she can't find the gloves in the bag. We're in the car and she's turning the bag inside out and freaking. By the time I say should we stop the car and go back, she finds the gloves! I can see taking this bag to the grocery store but I fail to see why it has to go every place. So the bag goes to doctor appointments and I'm left "holding the bag" in the waiting room and receiving the puzzled stares from other patients. 


    Now I have an explanation for the bag. Since female brains work like a ball, all the strings from the ball are connected to all the various items in the bag. There ! The problem has been explained. That'll do me!

A Discovery Far Back in My Genealogy

       Two areas of interest to me are local history and my family tree. I read a tremendous amount of local and western Canadian history. I have done little genealogy research but others have and I find their discoveries fascinating.


     The relatives on my father's side were German  Lutherans who went to the Ukraine and Russia at the end of the 1700's. They were invited by Catherine the Great to come and farm so that more food could be produced in the area to feed the people. They were also used to teach the Russian and Ukrainian people agricultural methods that would be more productive. The Germans were promised  three  things: keep  the German language, practice their Lutheran faith and not serve in the army. These people were very devout and so their religious faith was most important to them. Language is what helps a  culture to survive. These Lutherans were pacifists and did not want to participate in any war. 


     Over the years gradual changes took place. Finally, it was required that the Germans would have to join  the Russian army. My Grandfather was in the Russian army. In the late 1800's many of the German people began looking for some other place to live. Land was available in the United States and free land was available in the Canadian west. My family, the Kleins, sent some of the men over to investigate the opportunities. They liked what they saw and sent back information for the this large family to come to Canada. From about 1898  to 1910 my family came to Canada. My Great Grandfather brought all seven of his adult children and their families. 


     I was never able to find anybody beyond my Great Grandfather. I wanted to know if he had brothers or sisters. I wanted to know who his parents were. All records were kept by the Lutheran church. 


     The other day I stumbled upon a website that had what I was looking for and more. One section of my family had done the research and got back as far as my Great, great, great,great Grandfather! How about that? Was I excited to find this information. George who as the greatest was born and died in the 1700s and no dates were found for his birth or death. Gotlieb  was my Great, Great, Great Grandfather and was born in 1791 and died in 1856. To me this was amazing information.


     Now a friend read this and wanted to know what they did. Were they rich, horse thieves, swindlers or drunks? I had to tell him that I really didn't know but my suspicion was that they were hard working peasants.  So I didn't find any surprising things in the closet but it was super just to find their names. 

It Doesn't Take Much to Keep an Old Guy Busy

      The other day when I was having coffee with my skating group one of them asked me if, "I was keeping busy?" My reply was,"It doesn't take much to keep an old guy busy." Then I launched into my story to prove my point. 


     The other day when I was having breakfast the top part of a screw dropped out the  chair. The chair didn't collapse immediately so I continued with my breakfast. When I got up to get my toast and coffee I checked the bottom of the chair and all the screws were there. I checked the back of the chair and found where the missing screw had come from. So I finished my breakfast , read the paper and did my crossword puzzles. Fixing the chair would be the first job after lunch.

     I thought about the solution for the chair all morning. Plan A was to get my trusty vice grips and latch onto the  part of the screw poking out of the wood. When I got the chair back off I discovered the screw had broken off below the wood surface. Okay plan B...drill the screw out. Plan B wasn't successful either. The drill bit would slip off the screw into the wood. Now Home Farm Girl is my manager and director. Home Farm Girl suggested that we glue the screw together. I politely told her that I didn't think glue would work. At that time I still didn't have a plan C so the glue solution stayed on the table. We both were stuck for a plan C. After coffee Home Farm Girl came up with a super idea. She suggested that we angle drill a hole beside the old screw. Right away I could see that this was the ticket. So I carefully drilled a hole so that the screw would not come out through the leather covering. 


     Now the next bridge to cross was to find a suitable screw. Of we went to the Canadian Everything Store. We thought we needed a # 10 screw 1 3/4  in long and it had to be brass. There were lots of # 10 screws but none 1 3/4 in long. Off to store number two. Nothing there. Store number three had a sizer for screws so I checked and the screw I had was  # 8. There were lots of 1 3/4  #8 screws. 


      So we started for home. By this time it was close to 5 PM so Home Farm Girl said I don't feel like going home to make supper. Let's go to Five Guys for Fries and to A&W for a burger. Well it sounds like winner but I said, "Nothing doing." I'm not going in to just order french fries. I really hated to be so mean but I couldn't accept her suggestion. Well the solution for supper ended without a war and we went home and had hot dogs.


      So you see one little screw kept me busy all afternoon! Some days are like that when you're a do it your selfer.

My Limited Essay Ability

      One of my followers jokingly asked me the other day if I would like to write some essays for her. That question brought back my sad essay writing history.


      As I wrote before I went to a one teacher high school. We had one room with grades ten , eleven and twelve. The teacher taught all subjects to all three grades. If it was math period he taught a lesson to each grade and gave assignments. When I think back these teachers had to be awesome. These teachers were not highly qualified. They were just dedicated and hard workers. The two teachers I had did not have degrees. They were both majoring in math so their strong area of teaching was in math. They worked hard in the other subject areas but they could not do as well as the math. As a result my best marks were in math. When it came to English I barely scraped by. I do not remember writing an essay of any kind. We did the odd descriptive paragraph.


     When I entered university the challenge was monstrous and the learning curve steep. We were assigned essays of opinion and many other papers that required first class writing skills. Needless to say my first attempts at essay writing were pathetic ...so pathetic that I failed first year English. Because I'm an eternal optimist I repeated first year English and had an instructor who gave me assistance to improve my writing skills. I also realized that I had to put more effort into the class and also visited the prof to get help with my papers. 


     So when someone asked me if I would like to write some essays, it triggered the memory of a very stressful experience.


    So in high school I did well and math so I majored in math when I went to  university. After I had been teaching awhile, I asked the Principal if he would give me an English class. When I got my timetable I had three English and one math so I was somewhat alarmed. I talked to the English dept head and he was quite pleased that I had been given the assignment and encouraged me to take the assignment instead of going to the principal and asking for a change. From that time on I taught English. I also became the English dept. head for about seven years!! I have to say that teaching English was my most satisfying teaching assignment.


     So if I'd have had a high school teacher who was an English expert I would have had my best marks in English and wouldn't have had a challenge with essay writing.


    And to my follower who wanted me to write essays for her...the answer is still no.

Using Internet for Research

        A few days ago one of the comments I received had, "You did your research!" in it. Now I took it as a complement. Then I began thinking about what I had done on the Internet and what it was like before the Internet. 


       Today you can type in a few key words and come up with many sites which may have the information you are looking for. You have to  look at the source and decide whether it is reliable. What's really cool is that with each site there are usually links which take you to related sites. In other words the search engine does the leg work for you. Much of the information is easily downloaded. You can link your material to a site and your reader just clicks and they are at the site you used. On my previous post I was looking up dandelions. I found far more information that I had ever imagined so I linked my post to the site and if anyone wanted to check the site they could.


      Now I think back to when I was a child in a one room country school. There were probably 50 books in the bookcase. Most of them were fiction. By the time I was in Gr. 5 I had read "Planes for Bob and Andy" twenty-five times and wanted to be a pilot when I grew up. I didn't get into a proper library until I went to Teachers' College. We were told about the Dewey decimal system and how to find a book and sign it out. That's okay, but we had no  idea in our head about what we wanted to discover unless an instructor had given us an assignment. 


      Today schools have various forms of computers and make use of the Internet in many very practical ways.    When I last taught I used the computer for creative writing. The Internet was for the use of a dictionary. The Internet has come along way since then. Now there's room for kids to fool around on the Internet. Soon after I retired I went back to the school to use a computer. A teacher had his class in the computer room working on a social studies assignment. The two kids beside me looked for jokes the whole period. They even had the nerve to print off jokes. Their teacher checked them several times and they assured him they didn't have any problems!


     Now we have large public libraries with huge collections. One can browse through an area and find books that may be interesting. You still only guess if the book has what you're looking for. It's slow ponderous work. You do not get clues that spur you on to other ideas. Now the entire library catalog is on the net. I can browse in the library without leaving home. I have access to any book in a public library in Alberta. All I have to do is go down to the library and pick it up when it comes to my local library.


      Today with the Internet you can sit at home and discover new topics and add knowledge to things you already know without having to leave your house. Convenience? You can search the net in any twenty-four hours of the day. You don't have to wait until the library opens.

      So a simple comment the other day made me think how fortunate we have become to be able to use the Internet for research at any level... and even find some good humor from time to time!