Wall Murals

    I like wall murals. They are like a theme with many details. So you have a painting that covers a vast amount of space or time. All of it is connected together. 

   Now I did a series on sculpture in my city. I like what we have in this city as far as sculpture is concerned.

   Unfortunately when it comes to murals we are lacking in number and quality. With the sculpture there must have been very careful guidelines. The murals seem to lack anything that stands out and jumps at you.

   I found three murals and I know there is a fourth. That's not many murals. I found the fourth mural the other day but I didn't get a photo.

This mural is about 50 ft. long and is ceramic.  This one really moves. It's on the north side of the swimming pool and I did not choose a good time to photograph it.

This is about 8 x 12 and was done on separate material and attached to a wall.

This one's kind of funky and put directly on to the brick wall.

This one is about 12 x 24 and also put on separate material and attached to a wall.

Frustration of Losing One Piece of the Puzzle

    I'm like many people in that, I took hundreds of slides through the 60' and 70's. That was the super technology at the time. So guess what? When I married, that meant two of us with slides. The 35 mm cameras took excellent photos.

    For some time now I have been thinking about changing my slides to digital. Many times I've done a post and had a great photo that could have been used but it was not changed to digital. I've been hoping to find someone who's finished with their  scanner and would sell it to me or maybe, even better, just let me use it. I have not been beating the bushes to find a scanner. I have looked on Kijiji. 

    One day my wife was talking with Melanie and they happened to get on the topic of slides and changing them to digital. Melanie said, "I have a scanner and you can try it."  But she said, "I bought the scanner and I have a Mac but the scanner is for a PC." But she said, "I can't find the disk that goes along with the scanner."  She thought that she had given the scanner to a friend and somewhere the disk had disappeared.

   So I offered to try and find a driver for her scanner on line. I searched and  searched. I could find drivers but I did not trust the sites. I asked my son to search. I asked my friend for hints. None of it worked. I was stumped. It was frustrating to miss an opportunity because one piece of the puzzle was missing. The only thing I achieved was to find a manual for Melanie's scanner. 

   Today Melanie said, "Guess what I found?" So she found the disk in the bag that the scanner came in. Now she said, "When I found the disk I had to quickly go back to the Thrift Store and get my scanner back!"

    So here I am six months later and I will try to scan my slides. So it was frustrating for Melanie and me that one piece of the scanner held up the whole process. 

   Now for using Melanie's scanner I have offered to scan her slides. I hope she doesn't have thousands of slides!

Naming Schools

    Since I spent 37 years as a public school teacher , I have more than a passing interest in school names. This blog is named after the school I went to from gr. 1 to 9. 

    Each school district has it's own policy about naming new schools that are being built. Sometimes the name is based on the local area and sometimes it's based on a person of note. Many schools were simply named after the town in which they were located. 

    Schools in my city have been named after the area they were built in or some prominent person. The school I taught in was called Eastview after the subdivision in which it was located . My kid's elementary school was G.W. Smith who was the first teacher in Red Deer . Most of the people who gave their names to schools had passed on before a school was named after them

    Many schools are named after famous national people. How many Winston Churchill schools are there? We have a few John Diefenbaker and Lester Pearson schools. These two people were Prime Ministers. How many Jefferson or Lincoln schools are there?

   Why am I writing about this topic? We just picked a name for our next new school and it's after a friend of mine and he's not dead yet! So the next school in Red Deer will be the Barrie H. Wilson School. All the more cool, I worked with Barrie for many years. Barrie and I both came to Red Deer the same year and taught in the same school. Barrie was energetic,enthusiastic and well liked. Later he became an  administrator. I had the good fortune to have Barrie for my Principal for ten or more years. I grew professionally and personally under his watch.    Certainly some of my happiest years were when I was working with Barrie. Barrie was always tough and demanding. However, Barrie would always walk the talk.               

    So I'm happy that Barrie has a school named after him and it is a well deserved honor.

Oral Comments

    Most of you probably have local people who fare non bloggers and they follow your blog . Sometimes they will comment when they see you. It's a different kind of comment that can get very interesting.

    Buddy is one of my most faithful readers. He is a critical reader so he makes judgments and connections as he he reads. As a result some of his comments enlighten me if that is at all possible. Usually he will make a comment that is quite distant from my post and will wait to see if I catch on. Usually I don't catch on and it's a big joke. We were both teachers and teachers rib each other continuously. We also support each other like family. I hope I'm not giving away too many trade secrets.

    Yesterday Buddy phoned me and wanted to know if I was all right. He was worried about my condition. He was concerned that on my previous post all the names were messed up. Buddy knew all the people involved in my last post but the names didn't match. Was I all right? This is just the typical Buddy comment. Also one of the names had a period after it and it wasn't supposed to! So I get some fun oral comments.

    Yes I do change the names when I write about local people. I feel that if I write about people without their permission and knowledge I should change the names so that they would not be in danger of having their identities used. I don't show pictures of children anymore as I don't want to see a picture taken and used for some other purpose.

     Now this situation got me thinking about another topic...evaluation of student work. I insisted that I had to develop a criterion that gave the student credit for what they did on an assignment rather than taking marks off for something that is missing or wrong. I know some of this is semantics but I wanted my students to know that they would be rewarded for using the concepts that they understood. My emphasis was on giving positive feed back so that a student would feel that they were rewarded.

     So Buddy keeps me thinking that it is well worth while to blog.

      Thanks Buddy, for reading and caring enough to comment.

...in Three

     There's a saying about bad things come in threes or some variation if this. Now I'm not at all superstitious but this was my Monday.

     My week has had a set of three challenges. On Monday I went to a memorial for a man I had never met. His mother is a friend of mine so I went to support Jan. Cam, her son, died at age 52. Cam became a paraplegic at age 20 as the result of a motor cycle accident. Cam was a moto cross racer fanatic. The remainder of his life is a tremendous example of courage and cheerfulness under a huge burden. Cam was full of life and very energetic. He was able to be independent for a few years. He finished and English degree and traveled widely. He had great friends who stuck by him. One adventure was his visit to his favorite race track in Las Vegas. He and a friend went up to the gate and people waved at them so they proceeded. They went by the ambulance and the EMTs waved so they kept on going.. They went further and passed the mechanics and they waved so Cam and his friend went further. Then they  found themselves at a gate...the starting gate. They looked around and nobody was there so Cam said let's hit er. So there was Cam in his hand equipped van tearing around a famous race track until the ambulance ended their fun. He lived a good life even if it was short. He influenced family and friends greatly and he will be truly missed.

    While I was at Cam's memorial, my neighbor who works at the funeral home, came and told me that Teresa had died this morning. Teresa had been my neighbor for 30 years. She had many health problems over the years and again faced all of it with strength.

    In the evening my friend Mitch phoned to tell me that he had been diagnosed with colon cancer.

    So that was my Monday. Mitch will survive as his cancer is operable. For the other two , I can only work at supporting them through a rough time.

Reflecting on Ghosts

   The response to the ghost series of post I have done was both surprising and knowledgeable.  I had never done a series of posts before. I'm pretty loosey goosey when it comes to blog topics.

   I got the idea for the posts when I admired some of the statues in photos I had seen on various blogs. I was envious of the art shown on some posts and thought we didn't have much art here so I began to look.  When I looked I found much more than than I expected. For the statues , I've driven by them many times . Once I walked and took photos the Ghost statues became much more meaningful. The ten statues were done by six artists. Two artists were local people and the other four were from Alberta. The statues were funded publicly by groups . The city agreed to place  the statues at chosen locations and then look after them.

    Many of you were interested who the sculptors were. So here they are.

Reaching Out - Elden Neufeld

Waiting for Gordon- Brian McArthur

Choices - Barbara Paterson

Reverend Leonard Gaetz - Robert K. Spaith

Let the Music Play - Patricia Galbraith

Francis the Pig - Dan Mozdzendski

Hazel Braithwaite - Alan Hendersen

Francis Wright Galbraith - Dan Mozdzendski

Sound the Alarm - Robert K. Spaith

    Now when I took photos of the statues I ended at the library. Our librarian is retiring so I thought I would ,as a joke, take his picture with the ghosts. He wasn't in so spoiled my plan. I talked to him later and he didn't miss a beat and had ideas for more ghosts .He said , "How about the first paid librarian we had?" The first librarian was 17 years old and a real flapper. Her father was the library board chairman. Then he referred to Sound the Alarm which is right outside the library. He wanted to know if the two horses ever had names. If they don't have names he wants to run a contest for kids to name the horses.

    Ideas for ghosts are endless. We are only limited by the amount of money we have.

Ghost #9

     The Rotary Club sponsored this ghost to celebrate the successful fight against polio. The rotary club had been involved in supporting the fight against polio.

    The statue is called Reaching Out and shows one child helping another child climb up a huge rock. If you check the one child you will see that she's wearing a large leg brace. 

    The statue is placed in front of the Recreation Center Pool. 

A large leg brace

A long reach

A ceramic on the side of the Recreation Center