Beginning 2013 With a Lack of Social Justice.

      The beginning of 2013 finds Canadians in the midst of a couple of issues which are a result of a lack of social justice. Both of these issues began in December of 2012 but their origins are from hundreds of years ago. One , Chief Teresa Spence's hunger strike, has more recent origins but is more critical. The second, "Idle No more" has origins further back in time but is not in need of immediate attention.

     Chief Teresa Spence had a serious housing problem on her reserve less that a year ago. Prime minister Steven Harper did very little about the situation. A few emergency measures were taken. The band's finances were taken over and chief Spence fought against it as it was not the problem.

     Since then, Steven Harper's spin doctors have taken over. Steven Harper would like us to believe that the Attawapiskat community has had 90 million dollars for housing in the last year. Of course, the spin doctors, with innocent caring eyes, want to know why houses haven't been built. So here's what happened. the 90 million dollars was for the last five years so that's about 16 or so million a year. Now out of that 16 million came education, health and welfare. This left about 4 to 5 million for houses. Now out of the 4 to 5 million house maintenance was taken. So were left with little for housing and in fact nothing as they decided to use all the money on maintenance rather than let the houses fall into disrepair. Now these folks just can't go down to the local Canadian Tire or Rona and get materials to fix their own houses. These stores are not in their community. As a result these houses fall apart quickly.

    Now back to Chief Spence.  For the past year she has been patiently and persistently lobbying the government to expand and improve housing. Nothing was done. Now we are to the winter season again and drastic action is needed. This is where Chief Spence found herself on  hunger strike. 

    So this is a case where social justice is completely lacking. Also lacking is the basic humanity of a Prime Minister who apparently has no concern for certain groups of people. The Prime Minister sees himself as an economist although he has very few economy classes. He's done some reading of material from  the Chicago School of economics. Apparently economists don't have to worry or care about people. They only care about the "economy."

     So it's a very sad start to 2013 where we have a person who is near death because she's fighting for housing for her people and a group of people who have very poor housing for the winter.

    Please support Chief Teresa Spence.

The New Year's Eve that Changed My Life

      In my family the New Year's tradition was fairly standard. There was no celebration of New Year's Eve. On New Year's day there was a traditional family day. Mom's cousin and her family would come over and a big turkey dinner was eaten at noon. All afternoon we visited, played games and nibbled. Since we were farmers the men would leave to "do the chores" around five PM. In other words they went to tend their livestock. Then about 6:00 PM we had a rather lavish cold plate. More of the same until midnight when we had more lunch and the day ended. It was a complete day of feasting.

     Once I left the family so that I wasn't able to be home for festivities, I had to try something different. So I was introduced to the New Year's Eve party with dining and dancing and drinking lots of "pop."

    Now the New Year's Eve that changed my life happened rather innocently. There was nothing earth shattering. There was no epiphany. There were no great resolutions. I needed somebody to take to the New Year's Eve party. I tried to phone a certain nurse but I guess she was on shift and I couldn't reach her. My friend was in the same boat. We were moaning about this to a public health nurse who lived in our building. She said, "I'll see what I can do for you guys". Now Merle had a wicked sense of humor. she would set these up as blind dates. We didn't know who we were going to end up with. If it was somebody we really didn't want we were ready to run out the door. We you guessed it. Merle got the girl I had been trying to phone.

    Now the rest of the story is that the nurse I took to the party became my wife! So New Year's Eve 1964 was the first date I had with my wife. That certainly changed my life forever..

Marking Milestones with Celebration.

       In just a few hours a very well celebrated milestone of the year is about to be recognized and celebrated. We emphasize New Years by celebrating the Eve and also the first day of the year. Some bloggers have already written a post on New Year's Eve or New Years Day. Most people are very aware of the new year even if they don't celebrate.

      For many it is a time to stop and take stock of their life. In the past year what are their achievements? What are their losses? What are they going to do in the New Year? Do they want to improve themselves in the New Year?  How will they change in the next year? There is much agonizing of resolutions to be made for the next year.

     There are other milestones that we like to recognize. Who would forget Thanksgiving? There are different dates for Thanksgiving and each culture has their own spin on what Thanksgiving means.

     We put tremendous importance on birthdays, anniversaries and deaths. The first two we like to celebrate.      New Years has a special significance to me as that's the first date I had with my wife. So Dec 31 of 1963 bis an important date for me. It is difficult to put our losses out of our mind when loved ones birthdays or day of death come around. These are all times when we have reason to stop and look at our present stage in life. Who hasn't made the birthday wish?

    We seem to need to recognize important dates to help us think back to what has happened in our life. We celebrate and mark our achievements. We also take stock and look to the future and how we can survive and prosper.

     So I am a few hours early for New Year's Eve, and I'm listening to classical music which is celebrating the new year. I had never thought that  there would be two hours of classical music.

      So celebrate the passing of 2012 and welcome the coming of 2013.

      Happy New Year to everybody and I wish everybody a prosperous 2013.

What in the World?

     Did you ever get the gift where you said,"What in the world is this thing?" I got such a gift this year and the puzzling thing was that came from  someone who is and excellent gift giver.

    So the box said, "Stereo speaker and something about ipod."  Now I like my ipod and the ear buds with it. I get to hear music the way I like it. It's clear and I can hear all parts of the music. Why would I want a speaker for my ipod?

The mysterious box

    So today I got around to opening the box and going through the material with the stereo speaker. The directions were clear except that you need more than trifocals to see the print. They must really want to conserve forests these days when they make the print so small. 

    I did well until I was to connect the ipod to the device . I took my cord to hook the ipod to the computer to plug into the stereo. Something's wrong here. These don't match! They're two female ends. So I thought oops somebody has sent me something that I don't have all the parts for. I checked a little further and then said, "Oh Ya. I plug the ipod into this device not a cord." After that everything worked and it was simple.

The gizmo beside the box

     It wasn't until I turned the device on and listened for a few minutes that it hit me what the purpose of the stereo speaker was for. So it allows you to listen to your music without being attached to the ear plug! I like to sit at the computer and listen to music but when I want to get up and go to another place in the house it's a small inconvenience to take off the ear phones.

     So my, "What in the world is this thing?" turned out to make sense after all.

The Hush of Christmas Eve

     All my life I have sensed a certain hush, quietness and peace as Christmas Eve approaches and takes place.

      As a child we were busy before Christmas preparing for school  and Sunday school concerts. At home there were furious preparations in the baking department. Gifts were on display and our little attentions were drawn many times in great expectation. So the time leading up to Christmas was busy and terribly exciting for a little boy. It was magic.

     In that era and the location we lived in, life was much simpler. We had one small country store that didn't have electricity. No bright lights there. Our transportation was via two ancient farm horses. They may have attained the blinding speed of four or five miles per hour. There wasn't a traffic jamb or great amount of traffic noise.. only the harness squeaking and slapping and the horses hooves crunching in the snow. No clip clop of horse shoes or fancy rig... just a farm type bob sleigh and box. This form of transportation was slow and quiet. 

     Even though our life was very quiet there was still the hush and quietness of Christmas Eve. It was noticeable even for a little boy.

     After high school I've spent most of my life in an urban area. Yes, roads had been improved so that cars could be used for transportation although there wasn't a lot of traffic. Much brighter lighting came with the supply of electricity. Christmas was more commercialized. I would make my way home to the farm and sense the hush of Christmas Eve. 

    Later I had my own children and experienced their concerts and excitement of Christmas. I relived the same experiences of excited children. I became involved in preparing for Christmas. Stores were still not open in the evenings. Evenings were still quiet. We received our son by adoption three days before Christmas. We were not planning to go home for Christmas and my wife was booked for shifts over the holidays. We decided to surprise Mom and Dad and go home for Christmas with their new grandson. About three hours from our destination we ran out of milk. We thought there'd be no problem to pick up milk as we went through the city. Wrong. Everything was closed for Christmas Eve.. We finally got some milk in a restaurant that was open.

    Since I was a teacher the school time up to Christmas holidays was hectic concerts, exams excited kids. Christmas Eve really did seem peaceful.

    Now the stores are open evenings seven days a week. We seem to have to have many cars and drive them constantly. There's a constant roar from traffic. Brilliant lights are everywhere.

    I still sense the hush of Christmas Eve. 

   So this Christmas Eve I hope that everyone senses the hush and peace no matter how or if they celebrate Christmas. It would be my hope that we find peace in ourselves , person to person and with all other people on this earth.

Winter Solstice

   Winter solstice is a magical day of the year. It's the day of the year when we have the least number of sunlight hours. For an outdoors person like me it's a notable day. For me the sun rose at 8:43 and set at 4:35. It will be a few days before the day light starts to increase. We had a clear sunny day with the temperature around minus 18 C(0 F).

    Many ancient cultures recognized the shortest day of the year and had it identified fairly accurately. There were numerous types of celebration depending on the culture. They recognized that the days were going to get longer and they celebrated even though in northern areas they knew that the worst of the winter season was ahead of them.

     So today I have some reason for a quiet celebration. Sadly we do not have any formal recognition of this day. 

Birds and a Birder

     I have been a birder for most of my life. I have done the Christmas bird count for about 35 out of the last 43 years. I've also done many May species count quite often.

    Last Sunday was our bird count. I got 12 species and about 150 birds. They also had a potluck supper in the evening.

We did have a rich potluck supper.

We also had a contest with prizes.

     What I was thinking about as I counted were the changes that have taken place in the area I count in. The area is a deep heavily wooded ravine with some open spots. It ranges in width from 1 km (5/8 mi) t0 .5 km (5/16 mi). When I first went through this area it was extremely quiet and secluded. The city has grown from 25000 at that time to 100000 today. There are still very few people in the ravine but traffic noise has increased about 100 times.

     I find my birds first by listening so with all the traffic noise it's hard to hear birds.  Next I use motion. Since many of the  spruce are 25 M (80 ft. ) high it's hard to see in the tops of the trees. I'm sure that the other day there were kinglets and crossbills in the tree tops but I couldn't catch sight of them. I'm sure that there are black backed woodpeckers in the area because I see evidence of sawdust at the bottom of the trees which indicates black backs have been feeding.The overall number of birds has been decreasing. I still get a similar number of species each year.

     Then I suddenly thought , "What about the counter? Has the counter changed?" Then I had to admit that my hearing is about half what it was when I first counted in the area. Then I had to admit that my eyesight is maybe only 60% of what it was.

     So if I put all these things together I would suggest that they get another bird counter! However, I like birding and if I didn't count this area it wouldn't get counted. Besides that it keeps me young!