I'm Finally Allowed to Wash Windows!

     This is the first house we ever owned. Soon after we moved in we noticed that the windows were pretty messy. I never remember seeing my mother wash windows although I'm sure she did. I think my wife suffered the same window washing mentor ship.

     So one fine day my wife asked me to take the garden hose and swish off the windows. Of course all of you know what happens. You get a terrible mess. So my wife thought she could do a better job and she tried the garden hose. No better results.

     So my wife did some research and found that there were products available for window washing. Over the years she developed a rigid routine for window washing. We have the cleanest windows in town. First, she would take a dry cloth and wipe off the windows first and then the wood around the window. Second, she would wash the window with clear water and then the wood around the window. Last she would use windex with a wash and polish.

    Now the last couple of years I have been allowed to wash the higher windows as she said , "I'm getting too short to reach the top." I had a little difficulty with the rigid routine. I almost had to write it down to remember to do things in the correct order. 

The final polish.  Notice the reflections in this super clean window.

     This year my wife said, "I'm seventy five and I'm not getting on step ladders anymore."

Ah finished!  Again the vivid reflections.

     So after 42 years I am finally allowed to wash windows! What an awesome thrill!

Sometimes Adventure Gives You a Surprise

       I was 23 years old in 1963 and at loose ends in my life. I had taught four years and had decided to leave the position I had. If I was going to stay teaching I had to get back to University and finish a degree. I wasn't ready for that. I was half heartedly looking for another position. I really didn't know what I wanted to do.

     Then I saw an ad in the paper "Teach in Canada's North land." I thought , "This sounds interesting." I applied . I got an interview and a week later they offered me a position. I thought, "What do I have to lose?" The position was 1650 km (1000miles) further north of what I had been thinking. 

     I thought this would be great adventure hunting, fishing, airplanes, boats and new people. Off I went. I found even more than what I imagined. Bonus! There were lots of girls who were unattached. They were adventure seekers too. What fun! One of them latched on to me for some reason and she wouldn't let go. 

    After three years I was ready to go back and finish my degree.

    I wasn't finished with adventure and neither was my wife. We found a position in a small isolated settlement. Again lots of the outdoor stuff. There were 180 Inuit and 12 others. Our transportation was by small bush plane only. There was a six week break in service in spring and fall for changing from skis to floats or floats to skis. So six weeks with out mail.

    Things went well until one Sunday morning when there was a knock on the door. My wife was the nurse and we were used to calls at any hour of the day or night. One of the elders was there and in his very limited English asked my wife to come. Pita said, " Alisi's baby not good." My wife asked him , "Was the baby sick?". He just said ,"Not good."

    My wife went down and found that the toddler was dead. From my wife's nursing back ground she had some experience with people dieing but she wasn't prepared for what she saw. The toddler had been murdered in a brutal way. 

     My wife came back to the house and then we conferenced with the provincial administrator. We called the police 450km (300 miles) away on a short wave radio with very poor transmission. The police told us the airplanes had gone south five days ago but he would try to find an airplane to get to our settlement. He also told us what to do. We were to pick up the body and put it in a cardboard box and keep it in the storage shed. We were to write up a description of the injuries and write a statement as  to what we found at the site.Fortunately it was early Oct. and cool.

    This was one thing that I hadn't thought about when I was seeking adventure. It was a sobering experience.

     The police came in five days later and took the body and the mother. It was a very stressful ten days in my adventure.

And Ice Skating Started Yesterday

      I never miss posting about ice skating. I have posted many times and also referred to ice skating in other blogs.

Off to the rink for another year.

      So yesterday our season started and will go to the last Tuesday in April. We skate for an hour and then off for coffee. Both the skating and coffee are fun social times. I know that I am with very supportive people who care very much about each other. People who have stopped skating are still remembered and supported. We have a Christmas reception where all former skaters are invited back for coffee and goodies.

    This year our skating group has a major first. One of our skaters turned ninety this summer so yesterday's skate was the first time Howard had skated at age ninety. Howard is still a strong steady skater and when he turns on the jets I can't keep up to him. Howard also likes to couple skate as he likes to skate with the music. Howard has had a passion for skating all his life and is the major promoter of senior skating in our town. So here's to Howard and many more years of smooth skating.

Cruising down the ice.

      I have gotten to know many of the skaters extremely well. We share experiences from family, career, good time and bad times. We find we have much in common.

     And of course, when you know people so well there is always a good amount of joshing back and forth and some of it can be pretty tricky.

    So I enjoy the exercise from skating and the association with really neat people. Both of these help to keep a senior in good physical and mental health.I wish you could come and join me for a skate.

Brenda Schultz: The Challenge and the Progress

      I have posted about Brenda before.  Her accident occurred a year ago today. she has written a very powerful post telling about all aspects of the past year.
 
     Please follow the link and read her post.

More Bureaucracy and Age

     I have mentioned in several posts that I spent five years in the Arctic as a teacher. At one very isolated settlement I was teacher, principal and Local Administrator. To say the least, I was a very busy boy. I had a mechanic and caretaker to supervise as they ran a little diesel power plant. I looked after everything that pertained to government business in that settlement. It was very interesting but very much work. 

    Two of the problems I spent time on dealt with age. The Dept. in Ottawa, that looked after family allowance, kept asking me if I knew were one certain child was. I would go to the family and ask them, "Where is this child? " They would get a very puzzled look on their faces and say they didn't know what I was talking about.    Three months later I would get another letter and ask the family again. This went on for about a year. One time I had their eldest son as an interpreter. Lukasi was a very good interpreter. They began talking among themselves and finally Lukasi told me that it was a baby that died out on one of the islands when they were  hunting. Somehow the death had not been reported in the community by one of my predecessors. The person may not have ever known of such a child as there were changes in staff. However, someone in the upper bureaucracy knew that the child was missing and pursued it until they got an answer. The family were a little disappointed as the money they had been paid for the deceased child would have to be taken back.

    So my point is that some bureaucrat did his/her job in spite of the difficulties of distance and language.

    The other problem was much simpler and resulted in getting money. A local lady had applied for old age pension. She had been born in the days when very little government operations were present so she didn't have a birth certificate. How was she going to prove her age? It was simple. Her daughter was getting old age pension! End of story. She got her old age pension. 

    These were two of the situations that I had to solve while I was there. It was interesting but I didn't have an awful lot of time to work on it.

Bureaucrats Get a Bad Rap

       I got some rather interesting comments on the post I did about my Dad and his birth not being recorded. He did not feel any displeasure with bureaucrats. In fact, he thought it was  pretty funny. He particularly liked the line , "Mr Kline we have never heard of you."  In my post I was not upset with bureaucrats as this happened a long time ago when all records were kept by hand. Most readers and commenters could see that the best was done at that time. 

      Some of the comments seemed to hint at bureaucrats being the cause of such a problem and they were. However, one bad apple does not mean that all the others are bad apples. Most govt. workers work hard and do what they are supposed to. 

     I have had some direct experience with this issue as when I taught in the north I was a civil servant. I had to take an oath of some kind which all Govt. employees had to take. Now some employees were a waste of time but not very many. It was easy to pick out who pulled their weight and who didn't. Many went above and beyond what they had to do to get the job done. In my experience I found that information was lacking due to people filling in information incorrectly or incomplete.

     I also know that many private companies have their dead wood employees too and in a way they are protected by company bureaucrats. My daughter worked for a large oil company and was amazed at how politics were played out. 

     So my main point is that we should not judge all bureaucrats by just one who messes up on the job. It's like racism where we label a whole group by what we see one or a few doing and so label all the others as having that fault. We have to put the responsibility where it belongs and that only belongs to the one with those negative characteristics and behavior. 

    I suppose I have a fault that I root for the underdog and don't like to see people unfairly treated. I would also hope that I respond in a clear fair manner when I comment on ideas presented in my blog comments. To me comments are always interesting and make me think about my post.

Tomorrow Dad Would Be 100 Years Old

      My Dad was born August 31,1912 and died Feb. 8, 2008. So he was a little over 95 when he died. He was a large strong healthy man but Parkinson's took its toll towards the end of his life.

Dad with some of his grandchildren and great grandchildren. Parkinson's had taken away all facial expression.

     A couple of funny things happened with Dad's age throughout his life. I have to work backwards on this one.

      When Dad turned 65 he very proudly applied for his old age pension. The government department wrote him back and said , "Mr. Kline, we have never heard of you." This really shocked my Dad. His birth had been registered . He'd gotten married and he paid income tax from the time he started earning money. 

     So you don't argue with  the government. He found the necessary documents to prove how old he was. He found an old school register which had his date of birth. He found his baptismal certificate and something else that proved he was born in Canada on Aug. 31,1912. In due time he received his pension.

     Now Dad thought that his Dad had forgotten to register him at the local office. He thought his Dad was busy with harvesting and just forgot.

     In 1939 when WWW II started most young men in Canada received a form letter inviting them to join the armed forces. Dad never got  a letter and when the pension issue occurred he just thought that since the govt. didn't know he existed they didn't send him a letter inviting him to join the armed forces.

     When Dad told me his story I came across some information on the registration of births , deaths and marriages in Saskatchewan in 1912. Apparently all marriages and deaths were recorded accurately. Some how the births were not recorded for two years. So this is why the Govt. did not know that Mr Kline  existed. It was the government's fault. It wasn't because Grandpa forgot to register him.