For being the land of ice and snow, we have very few ice sculptures. As far as I know we have a garden center that has ice sculptures each Christmas. The come up with theme and then find businesses that are willing to do a sculpture related to the theme.
This year for us the theme was very simple...Canada winter games. I'm disappointed that only half the display was actual sculpturing.
Now I got out too late to see these sculptures as we've had some days above freezing so some of the finishing and details are not clear anymore.
But for what they are worth, here they are.
Now the last two photos are for Linda at Linda's Letters. She often shows magnificent plant nurseries. Here's one of our local nurseries. It gets sad in the winter.
I have a small face book account of a little over 100 friends. When I opened my face book account I thought it was an excellent place to keep up with relatives.
When you're on face book other people find you. So now I not only have family but former students, colleagues and other people I know.
I found that the family contact more or less dried up. Many other people are lurkers. I don't know if they follow me at all.
I do use face book to publicize my blog. I do click on things I like. For example a former student was our city archivist and he posts all kinds of photos. I have another friend who is a photographer. David takes many good photos and I tell him I like them. I wish people happy birthday, but I rarely post anything.
All of this is very harmless.
However, there are a couple of friends who find themselves deep into right wing politics so there are times I get many despicable messages. They get these messages from some site and then pass them on over their face book page. They haven't checked these messages for any validity at all. I don't like getting racist messages. I don't like messages that criticize politicians in a personal way. Debate the issues but leave the mudslinging out of it. It's difficult enough for a politician to serve as well as get abuse. I get messages on the economy that have no basis whatsoever. Whoever wrote the message did not do any research whatsoever. They listened to somebody spout off. They will not look at government statistics as they have the mistaken idea that these statistics come directly from the political party. These statistics are generated by the people who do the actual work of running the country.
For two of my friends , I think I'm going to have to find out how to unfriend somebody.
What do you do when you get unwanted face book messages?
Yesterday I saw a twitter quote that advocated liars be given special penalties and if you were a politician the penalty should be more. This caught my eye and I said , "Yes."
At this time our politicians have no qualms about saying anything even if it's untrue. The can embellish the lie. They can twist the lie. They can repeat the lie.
Why should politicians be able to lie to us with impunity?
I was a teacher. Would I be allowed to tell lies. How about your doctor or dentist telling lies. What about a nurse telling lies. For these people it's a matter of your life and death. Used car salesmen who tell lies can get into serious trouble.
Why do we let politicians of all stripes lie to us?
Recently my Face Book page has been filled with revolting untruths and threats of harm to other politicians. In this age of easy graphics there are all kinds of disgusting pictures.
It seems that we have nothing we can use to put a stop to the liars.
One thing that would help is if we did not vote for liars. First of all, we would need a very reliable party that didn't deal in lies.
The Internet and Face book have made it easy to lie and be invisible. There are too many false identities which politicians can use to spread their lies.
I think that we are at a time where serious penalties have to be applied to lying politicians.
What kinds of penalties do you think would work and what should those penalties be?
Well, okay, I admit that I remember nothing of my first Christmas and for that matter not my second , third or fourth Christmas. However, I think I can piece a few things together that would give the conditions of my first Christmas.
How did I get on this topic. When I got up on Christmas morning I said , "This is my 79th Christmas." Then I suddenly thought, "What was my first Christmas like?" The more I thought about the idea, the more I wanted to talk about it.
I was born in late October so I was only 2 months old at Christmas. I was the first child in the family. I've written before about the house being small, uninsulated and cold. The first thing my parents did when they got up in the morning was to light the fires and put a kettle on. They didn't go back to bed. They just got dressed and started the daily routine.
Having a new baby meant some changes in habit. We didn't have a Christmas tree. My paternal Grandma and aunt would have given me presents but that's it. The presents would have been baby clothes.
That noon my parents would have taken their horses and sleigh and gone to a neighbors for a big Christmas dinner which was at noon. They stayed all afternoon until an evening meal which was left overs from the big noon meal. They stayed all evening until around midnight when they had a cold lunch coffee or tea. They spent time visiting and playing games. .
The trip home was about one mile but it would have been cold. The fires in the house had gone out long ago so the place was cold. Fires were lit. It must have been pretty cold when that new baby had diapers changed.
Things were simple but rough. People survived well and were happy.
Here I am sometime before my first Christmas.
I have a few more nativity scenes for you.
This one is very small
This was a very traditional ceramic piece.
This one is kind of goofy but they tried.
I like the simplicity in this one.
Another very traditional piece.
Another traditional piece
This was the Micro Manager's favorite piece.
Now as always there's a piece I would steal. That means I like it very much. There was an Eskimo print on the wall. It was so awesome I didn't want to take a photo as I couldn't do it any justice. In looking over my photos I saw the print in the back ground so here it is.
The print is on the left.
One of our local LDS (Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints) (Mormon) churches puts on an awesome display of creches each Christmas. Families take their creches to the church for three days and let people, like me, view them. About 300 families contribute a creche.
What an amazing variety. I divide them into two categories...commercial and handcraft. After that you can keep on dividing them. Some of these are junk and some are terribly tacky. Most are ceramics . Many have whimsical figures such as penguins , moose ...There are creches from many different countries.
Last year I took my camera and the batteries died after two photos. This year I got as many photos as I wanted.
These nicely carved figures were from Bangladesh but the light in the place was very poor.
Tough for me to make a photograph with this much light.
Interesting how the carving was done on the top of wood columns.
Hand knitted...well done.
the standard scene with sheep, shepherds etc.
Another standard scene.
I like wood cut outs.
From Peru a kind of weave for the clothing...beautiful.
More wooden figures that have been beautifully painted.
A well carved traditional creche.
The reason for my title should become clear as I set this post up.
I live in Alberta,Canada. I've lived here since 1969. It's been a great place to live, work and raise a family.
We are a major oil producing region but we have difficulty selling our oil to world markets as we do not have pipeline capacity to ocean ports. Naturally some people are upset about this situation. Some people want to blame someone and of course who better than to blame but politicians.
Now blame and truth take off from here to fictional regions.
We have a couple of small right wing Nazi groups who are very active. They manage to look like they are supported by the opposition party. In fact , there are only hundreds of these characters and as for support, who knows.
These small groups urge that Alberta separate from Canada. As one commentator put it these groups are "ill informed, incoherent, random protesters jumping on a band wagon."
This weekend they organized yellow jacket demonstrations. This comes from the demonstrations in France. However, the groups in France are left leaning. The protesters here are very, very right wing. As you can see the Alberta demonstrators will use something that isn't related to them trying to link to a group that has had some success.
It's surprising to see so called sane people advocating for separation. They have been persuaded to believe some very twisted logic.
Here's the old divide up the people.
So here I am again on one of my favorite topics. Why can't politicians and organizations deal with the truth? Why can't people look at information and do some basic analysis and make a judgment about it.
Alberta would have nothing to gain if it separated from Canada. In fact, there would be major losses. Would we need our own army? Customs offices don't come cheap. We are landlocked. We would be the perfect victim for blackmail.
Now we've had separatist movements before. I'm sure this movement will end up like the others.
Meanwhile , I'm a proud Canadian and a proud Albertan.
