I have been listening to a CBC radio series on The Current about Vietnamese people who escaped Vietnam after the war was over. We all saw the miserable little overloaded boats that carried people to other countries where they were held in camps. Slowly the world organized and these people were taken by countries around the world. Countries were uneasy about taking the boat people as they thought they would be an expense. They turned out to be anything but an expense and contributed to the local economies. Many communities have very active Vietnamese communities.
Today I was reminded that the Vietnamese war ended 40 years ago today. I will never forget the chaos shown on TV of the last Americans leaving Saigon as fighting continued all around them. I looked on with horror as I saw people try to escape by hanging onto the helicopter as it lifted off.
The country was left in ruins and with it's own civil war.
I also thought back to what a very terrible war this was in so many ways. Many troops and civilians were lost. Many troops came back and suffered horribly for the rest of their lives.
The war ended and Vietnam was left with many problems and a very harsh ruling government. The two sides were still very angry with each other. After Ho Chi Minh died things slowly began to change.
When I think back I have a hard time to think about the cause of the war. It's difficult to remember why the Americans entered the war.
Since I was a little news junkie nerd, I remember the French in Vietnam. Vietnam was a French colony. The French were booted out of Vietnam in the 50's. That was also a long drawn out and brutal conflict.
One can only look back with sadness at the horror that took place in Vietnam. Have we learned any lessons from Vietnam?
There was a time when some of our coins were gold. These coins were used as regular daily currency. Now there were a few enterprising types who could skillfully cut off part of the coin or sand it and collect some gold and then still use the coin. Some gold coins were found to have lost value! So the smart money stopped making gold coins.
To leap far ahead of gold coins, we've recently quit using the penny in Canada. The penny cost more than a penny to make. As the price of copper went up, other metals were mixed in with the copper to make the penny. At the end of the penny's life massive numbers of pennies were sold as scrap copper.
In the 70's the price of silver rose. Silver in dimes and quarters was mixed with lower cost metals. For few years in the 70's massive amounts of dimes and quarters were worth more for scrap than their face value. Coin collectors watched in dismay as some valuable coins were destroyed.
The nickel has fought the same battle. I don't know if there's any nickel in the five cent coin today.
So I've started to wonder where we're going with our coins. Are we going to have a system of plastic coins with chips in them? Will we eliminate coins and paper money altogether? How will we ever flip a coin? How will we ever have a dime a dozen? How can we have a penny for your thoughts? What about plugged nickels? What will happen to "two bits?"
It's surprising how much of our common sayings are derived from money.
So what kind of coins do you see for the future?
A week or so go , a blogger I follow, found her marriage certificate in a place that was surprising. It reminded me of my marriage license.
I met my wife in Inuvik NWT. We dated, courted , became engaged and got married there. We were in our late 20's so to go back home to be married was not an answer as most of our friends were gone. My wife had only lived in this country for about ten years and she did not have parents here. We decided to have a small wedding in the north with our friends. Some of our relatives were a little upset. It just seemed too much of a challenge to plan a wedding at a distance of 2000 miles. All went well. We had a great time.
One little incident that we've never forgotten is getting the marriage license. We were able to make plans and set things up as we went along. Of course , getting the marriage license was one of the little details that had to be taken care of. We decided to visit the minister and tell him of our plans and ask him to marry us. Marriage licenses were a dollar.. Ministers and others issued marriage licenses. We asked Ted for a license. Ted couldn't find the book with the licenses. Ted also said that the fee would be $2.00 as the last couple didn't pay for their license. He couldn't remember if the book had been used up, but he promised us he would find a license for us.
We've always wondered who the next couple was to get their marriage license from Ted and if they paid $2.00, $1.00 or nothing.
The micro manager just had to get this issue looked after. The hostel administrator was a minister and he had licenses. He also issued them like he was supposed to...for $1.00!
We never did find out if Ted got more licenses.
We've been getting rid of some of our treasures. By coincidence the wedding veil and a few other treasures were sold yesterday. Somebody was renewing vows and wanted some of the paraphernalia.
After 49 years it's time to dispose of some great treasures.
So the little story of our marriage license is one that we have a chuckle about from time to time.
I would think anybody who gets married has a story that's enjoyed.
Yes, it snowed last night! I looked out at 12:30 AM and there was heavy snow falling. It was my favorite kind of snow. The air was full of large snowflakes . I should have put my pants on and gone outside to take photos!
The sun rose this morning at 6:17 and sets tonight at 20:48 for a total of 14 hours and 31 minutes of sunlight.
Don't ya just hate it when you can't hear people on the phone? I'll admit right away that I have a hearing problem , but it's not that severe. I do have the volume turned up on my phone.
So what are the problems I have. People talk too quickly. I would like people to talk slower and then they have more precise diction. I get upset when somebody answers the phone with rapid fire speech and I'm not too sure if I even have the right number. I have to ask the person to repeat. You can ask some people to slow down and they get it and keep their speech at a slower rate. Some just can't adjust the rate of speech. Some people are probably a little nervous on the phone and become tense and the rate keeps up.
Some people will not talk into the receiver so they are not loud enough to be heard. Their volume goes up and down.
Some people use a speakerphone and you get too much echo for consistent sound. My daughter tends to use the speakerphone when she calls so they can both get in on the conversation.
Many call centers use headsets and they are very poor as the mike gets too far away from their mouth.
Sometimes there's too much background noise to hear the caller very well. I had a friend who lived very close to a railway track. Sometimes the train was going by when I would try to speak to Lloyd. It was impossible.
Some of the little cell phones are extremely cheap so the voice reproduction is poor. Last night I had a call from somebody who sounded as if they were at the bottom of a well.
Sometimes there's too much noise in my house. That's one I can handle myself. SHUT UP! I sometimes say give me a second to turn the radio off.
Sometimes you find a very long recording of options to choose from. By the time I get to the end I forget the number I should have chosen. Large stores are bad for this one. Home Depot or Walmart are bad. In fact, Walmart's phone system is just all bad.
The recording that bugs me the most is to my doctor's office. There's a long recording. Half of it I cannot hear. The voice is weak and I'm sure gum is being chewed as she's making the recording. Why do they always choose the poorest voice to make the tape.
So there's my rant. I hope that some call system might see my rant and have a session with their employees. Fat chance though! Call centers are just happy to find people to answer phones.
How about you? Do you find it difficult to follow things on the phone?
I've lived in the same small city since 1969...46 years. The population was 24000 when I moved here. Over the 46 years the population grew to around 100 000.
I lived here long enough to have met many people. I've participated in the community and have come to know many people. I taught about 3000 students from 1968 to 1987.
As a result, I look at the obituaries on a daily basis. It is not uncommon to find that some have passed away. Just recently a former student passed away. He used a power wheelchair in his last years.was passed . His family passed his wheelchair on to a 76 year old friend who had a serious spinal cord injury.
Now recently in staring at the photos of the deceased, I've started to notice that the ones who are my age are starting to look very elderly! Many of them have been in nursing homes. Some of them have had the dread dementia. This started me thinking about myself and my age.
Now in my head I see myself as fairly active. I think young. I still think I'm young. So I decided I better take a look and see if I'm in this elderly group. So off to the mirror. Sure enough. There's an elderly man staring back at me! Who can this be? Well, I had to admit that it's me. I am truly in the elderly group.
Now I'm very aware of my age and the process of becoming elderly. Somehow , we can put this in the back of our mind. We seem to think that we are always much younger than we are. However, the obituary photos have reminded me of reality.
How do you see yourself? Do you see yourself as your actual age or younger?
Our poor little deluded Prime Minister, Steven Harper, has just led us into some more war activity . Harper has volunteered 200 of our Service men and women to go in and train Ukrainian forces in a number of areas. Of course, there naturally will be people in the area who see this as a provocation , namely Putin, whether it is or not. My point is that Canada is taking sides in a dispute which is way out of our control.
Canada was in the Korean War. We were respected Peacekeepers from then until we became involved in the Afghan War. We have changed from being a peacekeeper and peace advocate to a very second rate aggressive force. We have a total force of about 70 000 men and women. Our equipment is limited and ancient. We should be the last country to enter a war. We could contribute much more to peace in other ways.
We foolishly joined in the Afghan War. Afghanistan has a long history of disagreement between various tribes and factions. England colonized Afghanistan. The Afghanis didn't like the colonizers and finally England left , but not on their own terms. The balance between tribes and tribal areas was upset and the groups wanted to even scores and get back tribal territories they had. My history is a little foggy here but the Russians went in to separate the fighting factions. After ten years they left and again it was not on their own terms. The U.S. decided to take a round out of Afghanistan as they thought this would end or control terrorism. Now most of the forces in Afghanistan have left and again not on their own terms.
Now guess what? We have many more bad guys than we had before. We have really made the former bad guys angry and got many new people angry with us. The bad guys have become much worse. The bad guys have now spread over a much larger area. A lesson we haven't learned is that we can't go into an area and beat the crap out of some people and think that we solved anything. We've just made more people very angry.
Last year we sent 6 jets and 90 ground support for advising Iraqi and Kurdish forces. Isis is a very nasty group. Much of it has an Afghan origin. We went in for 6 months and now after 6 months we have expanded our mission.
Many of the disputes in the Middle East are a direct result of Imperialism. The colonisers left and left the area with major problems as they tried to establish borders which artificially put together very different groups.
So here we are 150 or so years later trying to bring peace to groups that we disrupted. These disputes have been going on and now with better weapons and people on both sides supplying weapons, disputes can get very large. Our own country is an example as two different groups were put together and now every once in a while we have serious talk of separation.
From my point of view Canada would be much more effective if we stayed away from aggressive action and participated in promoting peace and providing assistance for displaced people. . There have got to be other solutions than the gun for settling disputes. There have to be better heads than we have now.
Guns don't solve anything. People just keep getting more guns and find other people to shoot at who will shoot back.
