In early Sept. I noticed that a zucchini was becoming a very different shape. It was becoming a 90 degree angle. Apparently the front of the zucchini got stuck on the ground but the zucchini kept on growing. Fruits and vegetables quite often have weird shapes.
Then sometimes the zucchini owners can get bent out of shape. So this particular zucchini owner thought the zucchini would make some kind of collar!
I should have posted these photos when I took them on Sept. 10 when I took them. I wanted to show how fall and fall colors are progressing. But this is what it looked like on Sept. 10. It seems early for leaves to be changing color.
I wasn't paying much attention when I shot from the dark to the bright light.
I don't know how many posts I've started with "I was a teacher." Then comes another teacher story.
During my career I had about 20 student teachers. They came from the University of Alberta and did a 6 week practicum. Sometimes this was split with another teacher. I enjoyed having student teachers as I could keep my eye on what methods were coming up. For most students, you knew they were ready to go. I would check the lesson plan and leave the classroom. They needed space to develop confidence.
One of the students I had was Maggie who got her degree at age 40. Maggie had many hardships. Some she bought on herself and others hit her. However, Maggie had turned her life around and finished an education degree with very high marks. And she came out to do her practicum with me. Maggie struggled with her practicum. She just wasn't confident enough to mix it up with the kids. However, she passed the practicum. Our school hired Maggie on a contract. The principal had confidence that with experience Maggie could teach.
Maggie made the decision on her own not to continue teaching. She found something that was very suitable for her. She was hired as marker for the local college and loved this position as she was much more suited to the college level. The remainder of her career was spent at the college.
Maggie struggled with some health conditions. She had fiber myalgia and several other conditions that influenced her quality of life.
Even though Maggie lived in town, I didn't see her very often. When we met it was mutual pleasure to have a good visit.
Last week Maggie passed away . She knew some terrible struggles in life and also some major achievements.
On Aug . 28 I wrote about the evacuation of Yellowknife because of wildfires.
Today I can tell you that the evacuation order has been lifted and people are able to return to their homes.
A combination of things happened to make the area safe. They had some heavy rainfall. The winds blew in the right direction and the firefighters did and amazing job People have been in Yellowknife for the last few days getting things organized. They have to make sure that water and sewage are working. Some of the hospital is ready for patients. Electricity is running properly. Businesses like grocery stores have to have stock so that people can buy groceries when they get back.
The road back will be less chaotic. To go out they were mostly going at once. Now some people say they will wait a few days so that traffic isn't as heavy. Maybe things will be better organized if they wait.
All people can breath a sigh of relief that there wasn't any damage.
Yes , I spent my whole career teaching. I loved it most of the time!
So , today kids here started back to school. When I first retired this tie of year held a lot of emotion and I thought I should be there doing something to get ready for school. It took a long time before the feeling left me.
Now I'm aware of what time of year it is but it doesn't get me thinking about preparation.
When I was teaching I would spend time at school in August getting books and material ready. When I was department head I had the responsibility to help teachers find materials. It was a time of year that I enjoyed even if the Micro Manager didn't enjoy it.
So today I thought about how long I've been retired. I've been retired for 26 years. I'm approaching retirement time that is equal to teaching time. I taught for a little more than 37 years.
So today I gave a quick thought to school starting, looked out the window to see kids walking by on the street. Then it was back to retirement.
My son in law teaches French and Spanish in a large high school. He is very good at teaching languages and learning them.
When I talked to him this morning , he had just finished his German lesson. So every Sunday morning he has an hour of conversation in German. He is very fluent in German.
Then he told me that he had an hour learning Czech. This is a new one to me but I wasn't surprised. So I asked him a naive question. Does knowing German help in learning Czech? Oh no he said. Czech has nothing to do with German. Czech is an Indo European language
Then I started going through all the European languages to see the relationships. I had thought that all European languages were related. So there are Germanic languages such as Austria, Germany. There are a number if Indo European languages. There are the romance languages that come from Latin which would be France, Spain, Portugal, England. . There are Norse languages in northern Europe. I was surprised that Dutch is the closest language to English. And then I thought oh what about Hungarian. Hungarian is a northern language closer related to Northern languages. This one really surprised me.
What he told me makes perfect sense but I had just never bumped into the idea before.
I had to take French as a first year class. I tried to become fluent in French but I never got there. Today , I remember very little French.
So I wonder what he's going to teach me the next time I talk to him.
Many times I write a post and then see that I missed some information. In my last post I didn't miss something. Some added information would make things clearer.
I live in Red Deer, Alberta Canada. My province is 1200 km(751miles ) from north to south. It is 610 Km ( 410 miles east to west. )
It's the 6th largest province in Canada.
Travelling to Inuvik we always stopped for fuel in Yellowknife. I also attended 2 conferences there. In the early 1960's it was very much a frontier town. It was established as a gold mining town. Oh yes, I got a tour of one of the gold mines.
I hope that this helps to make sense of the distances involved in the evacuation.
