CLOUDY SKIES

       Robin , from The New Dharma Bums wrote this morning about a shape her brother had seen in the clouds. Kind of cool that he saw a robin shape in the clouds for his twin Robin.

       Well, this reminded me about an incident where children were looking for shapes in the clouds.

      I was hitch hiking back to my school in mid November of my first teaching year. I was picked up about 2:00 PM  by a young family that was on a long road trip. I was in the back seat with two young kids around five years old. They were super little kids. One thing their parents did to keep the kids amused was to look for shapes made by clouds. They were occupied with this activity for an hour until it became completely overcast and they couldn't see cloud shapes. Then they looked at books they had. 

     I was with these people for about 100 miles when I had to take a different road. By now it was around 4:00 PM . I had to walk for about 45 min before I could start hitch hiking again. A couple of famers picked me up in their truck and gave me a ride of 20 miles before they turned off in the country They had taken a load of pigs to town. By now it was completely dark. It might have been a highway but it was rural and very little traffic after dark. One car passed me and that was it. I could see a village about 5 miles away so I started walking.

     The village was quiet. No one was on the streets. The businesses were all closed . But wait there was one place with dim lights on. The Chinese Cafe was open. This cafe did not even have electricity but it did have a phone booth. I phoned one of the farmers in my school district to  come and get me. About an hour later he showed up and I got to my land lady's house about 11:00 PM. 

     It was an afternoon that I'll never forget. 

   

HANDIMAN

      I have pictured myself, incorrectly, as a handyman. I've written about it on a few posts.  I've done simple plumbing and electrical. Rough carpentry, like fences. Fixed appliances. I get some satisfaction from doing these jobs but a couple of years ago I wrote that I would quit. 

     Well, I didn't quit. 

     I've still repaired some things but it's difficult to see with trifocals. It's also difficult to bend to get in the right position. Fingers don't work like they used to. 

   Well I was dumb enough to try "a very simple" procedure the other day. 

   Our house is old enough to have a storm door. The space between the two doors is now not enough for the lock sets they sell today. 

    So I didn't have a lock on my storm  door. I wanted to be able to leave the main door open at night so that in hot weather a breeze could blow through the screen in the door and cool the house over night. So a simple fix would be to put a small dead bolt on my storm door with the screen. Now I've put many of these bolts on . They're the kind you use to put on gates and shed doors.

    Well, this one was to be a little different. I was modifying it's use. So needless to say it was difficult to measure and get things to line up. I couldn't close the door to measure. I had to keep the door open and "eye ball it. " The first time it didn't work so drill all those holes a little further back.

   So one of those little jobs that should have taken 45 min. took me all afternoon.

    When will I ever learn?

YELLING !

     On any given day, we can usually hear some yelling. Sometimes there are good excuses for yelling and other times yelling shows a lack if personal control.  If someone is going to accidentally encounter risk someone may yell to get the person's attention and evade the danger. Other times we can see someone yelling uncontrollably about an issue that is not of much importance. 

    I was a teacher. Some teachers used a very loud voice to control the situation. Some teachers just yelled. The yellers showed that they had lost control of themselves. 

    Now the other day I saw someone yelling. I probably would have yelled too. 

    There are computer generated voice responses on phones. I've ranted enough about call centers. The computer generated voices respond to a limited number of responses. If you don't happen to use responses the computer understands the computer usually puts you through to a real person. 

    Yesterday I found one of these critters that did not pass you on to a real person. It just kept going around and around. If you didn't give the correct response it kept going over the same routine. We wanted something different and that's where the problem was.

    Now for the yelling!

    The Micro manager does not understand technology very well and has little patience with it. So she thinks the more you say that the machine will better understand what you want. Well the poor machine was more confused. Then she thought (well . I don't know if she thought) that if she talked louder the machine would understand what she wanted. Well, that didn't help either so then she was really ticked and yelling.  

    It was funny watching this, but I would have been upset as well as you were not given an option. You went around in circles and there was not option to get out.

   So yes, there was some yelling yesterday. 

MARCH STORM

       The March storm or storms is quite well known here. Today we had a March storm but it wasn't too severe. By this time of year the air has warmed up and holds more moisture. When a cold system comes in ,we can get lots of precipitation...SNOW. We usually get most of our snow fall in March. 

       Today we had a spring storm. It probably started just before 6:00 AM. At 7:00 AM there wasn't very much snow on the ground but it was snowing heavily and very windy. By noon it had stopped snowing and by 5:00 PM the sun was shining. 

     So I hope my series of photos gives you a bit of an idea what a spring storm is like here. 

     The first four photos were taken shortly after 7:00 AM

      The driveway photo was taken about 5:00 PM

   

   This photo was taken about 7:00 PM

The sun sets today at 7:48 PM

WHO DO YOU TRUST?

     I come from and age when communication was of high quality, reliable and trusted. For most of my life, I've been able to read things and accept them as fact. 

    When I was brought up, we had no TV, not an awful lot of radio and only a couple of weekly newspapers. We did know what was going on in the world. In fact, we knew a lot about the world. 

    I remember hearing Hitler speak. He was scary and as a little boy , I recognized that. I remember a broadcast describing troops loading on ships to come back to Canada after the war.

   Most of all , as an adult, I've appreciated well written news items. Items that were in clear writing and had been well researched. We could rely on the news we were getting.

    Over the years, the news industry has cut staff so there are fewer good writers and they do not have time to do thorough research on a topic. Things have become very sloppy. Errors were easy to spot. 

    With the news business becoming weak as in not good quality, an opportunity was set up so that unscrupulous groups found out that they could produce news features that could be twisted so that their extremist ideas could be  widely publicized.

    Large and profitable news organizations have been formed to pass off slanted material as truth. They are making fortunes. Unfortunately many people are believing and influenced by the garbage they put out. 

    The the war in Ukraine, I realized that both sides are peddling their own views of the war. I pick the Ukraine as the good guys. That's easy. But I have recognized that the Ukrainians are spinning the story the way they want the world and Russians to see it. 

    So recently , I've had to ask myself , "Who do I trust?"

    So for those whose eyes aren't glazed shut, who have we got that we can trust? 

THE AGE OF CONFUSION

     About once a week the micro manager visits with our daughter on messenger. And do they visit. From one to two hours of gossip. The usual time is 7:00 AM when suits them both. 

     Today the Micro manager was wondering if Janey was going to call so she was up about 6:30 AM to get ready on Facebook. 7:00 AM came and went and there was no call so I got up to check and see if the micro manager had things right. 

    I moved to where a call would come in and it said calling so I thought great. they'll have  visit after all. 

     Well out of the  gloom of an unlit room appeared a gray face! It was Willis, my friend from high School. Willis was confused. He wondered what the time was. Well, you know most of the world jumped one hour ahead this morning. However , where Willis lives the time doesn't change. Most things on the internet change times automatically. So Willis's alarm went off an hour early. I was wondering why I was talking to Willis instead of my daughter. I had not called anybody . Then I had to get my hearing aid so that I could hear Willis.

     Willis was happy that I had called. I was wondering why Willis called me!

     Well, we finally got ourselves sorted out  and quit laughing at our own jokes. We exchanged news and had a good chat. 

     Willis and I were in high school together and have kept in touch . We finished in June of 1957. 

    Well, here we are in gr. 10 . Willis is four from the left in the back row. I'm standing right behind the teacher. 

     This is when I'm 82 and  a half!

     I wonder how many other people were a little confused this morning because of the time change?

MORE FROM THE ARCHIVES

        A few posts ago I posted a piece about my daughter that I had written when teaching middle school writing. I wanted to show the students that I could do their assignments. 

      The other day as I was cleaning up once again I found a piece that I had written about my son.

      The five notes at the bottom were things my students asked. They were making suggestions as to how to improve my writing.