Snow Visits Me Again.

     
    Last night I knew the forecast was for snow. The wind blew from the east all night. I was up a couple of times but it wasn't snowing. When I got up this morning there was heavy snow falling. There was a strong north east wind and visibility was limited. It was one of those storms where you say, "I hope this doesn't last long!"  By about 11:30 AM the snow had stopped but it left lots for me to shovel. 

    We are approaching spring equinox. Days are lengthening. The sun rose at 7:16 this morning and set at 6:17 tonight so it's giving us about 11 hours of sunlight. Some of you have had your last snow of the winter. I will get lots more snows. Our snow should melt by April 1 but there will be snow fall after that.

Shoveling this kept me out of trouble for a while!

I took a quick peak around the neighborhood.

Perspectives Gained by Searching

    Sometimes I start an aimless Internet search when I'm feeling curious. I was born about 5 miles from the village of Esk,  Sask. In it's hay day Esk had a peak population of 50. Now it's population is probably zero. I Googled this village last night because I knew there were several websites about it. None of these sites had much information because no one has contributed to them.

    My search did lead to a link on cemeteries. There were two cemeteries for the village. Think about it ? Two cemeteries for a village of 50 people. First , I went though the list  in the Baptist cemetery. It's a walk threw history. There were people who were elderly when I was a child and those who have  died since I left the area. One thing I noticed was that an Aunt and uncle were not buried there so now I will have to look for them.

    The Lutheran cemetery is larger and that's where my relatives are buried. My Great Grandpa donated the plot of land for the cemetery. Again, I was just going through the names and not concentrating.   All of a sudden a name popped out at me and it was my Mom. Why did the name pop out? I haven't heard my Mom referred to by her name for a very long time as we always talk about "Mom" and her friends who would use her first name are not here anymore. By this time I was awake and I knew what name would be coming next...my sister who passed away when she was eleven yeas old. 

   So coming across these two names got me thinking. Mom died in 1973, My sister died in 1953. So this year there are two anniversaries. My Mom passed away 40 years ago and my sister passed away 60 years ago. I started to wonder how these family members will be remembered. There aren't very many people who are living who knew my sister. Her memory is carried by very few people. My Mom is in a similar situation. If my Mom was living, next year she would have been 100. Very few of her acquaintances are left. Very few people are left who knew her. 

   So time rolls on and generations spend their time here and pass away. Grave markers will remind people of who was here. Slowly over time the markers will also disintegrate and we will be forgotten. 

Communication With Children on Health Issues.

     So my previous post on communication with children was setting the stage for talking to children about their health conditions. Most of the time we do a good job of communicating with our children. Sometimes we could do better. When it comes to health issues it is crucial that we get it right.

     My story is this.   It happened a long time ago...in the late forties. The world was a different place. When I was seven or eight years old I began having "spells" as my mother called them. I was taken in to the old country doctor and he diagnosed my condition as epilepsy. I'm not sure if he explained to my mother what the condition was . I'm not sure if my mother understood what was going on. I certainly didn't understand and had many misconceptions that frightened me. I thought I had something that I would die from! My mother was warned to watch that I didn't swallow my tongue. I thought the condition I had related to my heart and even little kids knew that heart attacks kill people. I also sensed that there was a great stigma related to this condition. People had strange ideas about it and thought those who had epilepsy were somewhat deranged. This adds to a kid's anxiety.

    I was given medication. I was given responsibility for taking the medication. Often I didn't take the medication so had more seizures. 

    So my example illustrates what I have to say. It is extremely important that we explain to children what medical condition they have. Children understand much more than we give them credit for. Sometimes the child's anxiety and loneliness is worse than the condition itself. Yet, people still do not take the time to fully explain conditions to children.

    Fortunately I had what is known as juvenile epilepsy and when I hit puberty the epilepsy stopped. 

   Now three years ago I was diagnosed with seizures again! Of course, I thought the diagnosis was wrong because after all I had experience with seizures and these seizures were not remotely the same as what I had as a child. So I came home and immediately went on the Internet and found that my specialist was right. 

    It's now known that in many situations a seniors forgetfulness and confusion is caused by senior epilepsy.

   So maybe communication has to be carefully done with older people too or at least with this elderly person.

   I am doing well. I do not have any seizures. I take my medication but the medication has side effects. It bothers my balance.

Communication with Children

    Since all the years of my career were spent with children , communication with children is extremely important. There's no one right or wrong way to talk to children...there are many ways. Each child is different as each adult is unique and so there will automatically be variations. 

    Basically all we have to do is focus attention on the child and make sure that we are speaking to the individual. We are talking to a human being so just because the person happens to be a child doesn't mean we have to change from our normal pattern of speech. Sometimes we see people using exaggerated baby talk to communicate with little kids . It may be cute and fun but the kid doesn't learn much when things are dumbed down.

    One of my favorite short stories was about a boy who went to the store with his Dad to buy a pair of shoes. The clerk talked to the Dad and the Dad relayed the clerk's message to the kid. When the kid answered he spoke to his Dad and his Dad relayed the message to the clerk. It's a well told story and is a good illustration of what not to do. If anybody knows this story , tell me the author and a title as I can not remember them. 

    We don't have to over simplify our speech. Speak to the kid's level. Kids know when we're dumbing things down and we lose some credibility 

     Sometimes we have to catch a kid's attention. Most people yell and they do get the kid's attention but the yelling raises the stress level so, you have the kid's attention but have increased the stress. A stressed conversation usually doesn't go well. Patience helps. Take a deep breath. Lower your voice an octave. It usually catches their attention and doesn't cause any side effects. 

    Talking to kids is sometimes a challenge that increases our stress and things can get complicated in a hurry. I know. I've been there. I just know that if you can discipline yourself the conversation can be beneficial and fun. I like talking to kids on our street. It's always a pleasant part of my day and I usually learn something in a very interesting way.

My Last Request

    A few days ago I attended a small memorial for Joseph. I first met Joseph more than thirty years ago when his children attended the school I taught in. When I retired and started volunteering at the Nature Center Joseph was working there in maintenance so I got to know him quite well.

     The memorial was a simple family run affair. A eulogy was given and prayers read. Prayers ran seamlessly from Christian to aboriginal. I'm cool with that as I've experienced it many times before. Many people told of their experiences with Joseph and you learned much more about him from his family and friends. Many times they referred to Joseph being in heaven to reunite with his parents and some siblings.

     Listening to this I began thinking about the place and journey my spirit might take when my life is over. I began to wonder about things. I wondered if my spirit could go to several different places. Could part of my spirit go to heaven and I could be reunited with my parents and little sister? Could part of my spirit be released in the Great Sand Hills where many other spirits roam. Since I like being in the peaks of the Rockies could part of my spirit forever roam among to lofty peaks?  That would be my last request. 

    I'm not sure if I make this request to those who send me on journey or wait until I get to some other more appropriate place.

    Now I don't know what I've achieved with this post. Have I established a new genre of fiction? Have I succeeded in embarrassing myself again?  Have I ostracized myself from my relatives again? How many rigid religious rules have I broken?

    Well, am I worried? Of course not! If my readers have not already closed their eyes and put their hands over their ears and gone off to another blog, I will get interpretations guidance and opinions from my followers.  After all, I have to trust my blog  followers.
     

Bring Me Back a Present

     When I taught middle school I had a newspaper unit for one of the grades. We looked at all the parts of a daily paper starting with the header and ending with classified ads. We looked at headlines, first sentence of a story, editorials ..absolutely everything. The assignment was to make a scrapbook with about 10 different examples from the paper. The assignment was easy but it made the kids look through a newspaper. I killed a few birds with this stone. It got the kids reading and had them look at writing for a purpose. We did the crossword as a class and generally rooted through the whole paper. For a fine finale we took a field trip through a daily paper and saw how the paper was produced from start to finish.

I think I might need some new glasses

   I hope that some people found newspapers. I know the odd one is working for a newspaper but not likely from my newspaper unit.

   When  someone would tell me they were being taken out of school for a trip, I would look them in the eye and say, "You have to bring a present back for me!" A nervous distraught look would come over their face which said, "Is this guy for real?" I would give them a few seconds to be uncomfortable. The odd one would say ,"No way." Others might say, "Well , what do you want." Usually I got them off the hook and said , "Bring me back a newspaper." A look of relief  flooded across  their face and they enthusiastically said , "Oh sure!" I told them they didn't have to actually buy a newspaper. Their would be newspapers that they could pick up.

    So when they came back with their newspaper , I would make a big deal over the paper and we would briefly go through the paper and pass it around. Later on when they were going away they would ask me if I wanted a paper. Then they would come and say , "My Dad's going to Russia. Do you want a paper?" Some time later they would proudly come in with a paper. 

   I made a lot of mileage out of this gag. Quite a pile of newspapers built up over the years. Sadly there wasn't a lot of storage space so I had to clean out the closet from time to time. When I retired I disposed of all the newspapers that were left. Many memories went with the newspapers I collected. 

    "Bring me back a present" was a lot of fun.

Star Gazers

    The other night when I went out for my walk I found my 12 year old neighbor, Kenny, standing on the sidewalk with her dog. She was supposed to be walking her dog. Instead she was standing two doors from her house and looking up in the sky. I asked her what she was doing. (Dumb question.) She was obviously looking at the stars and she told me she liked stars.

   It was one of the clearest evenings we've had for a long time. She told me, "That's Orion over there." I said, "No way! Orion is in the southeast." Kenny bought her ipad out of her pocket and started fiddling around. Then she said, I have an app to show me Orion. Kenny pointed her ipad skyward and all the stars, constellations and planets were named as she pointed at them. I was completely blown away. I am familiar with star maps and charts ,but never imagined these things would be refined into a computer map. Papers used to have star charts once a week and maybe some papers still do.

    So we forgot the dog. I forgot my walk and we looked at stars. It was clear so we'd point and say, "I wonder what that one is?"  In a second or two the app would give us a name. Jupiter is now very bright almost above us and to the south. Take out your field glasses and have look.

   So half an hour goes by in a hurry when you're star gazing. I think the app is called Star Rover and it's free.      

   Kenny is one of he best twelve year old neighbors you could have. She's a "yakker" and she knows how to talk to adults, even old ones. So had a few pluses in a short time...star gazing, visiting and being outdoors.