I MISSED A 'DAY' YESTERDAY!

     I intended to post yesterday but I was just too busy. I had a good topic for the "day."  I'll write it and post it today.

     Now I've been known to post about "days." Many times I post about these "days '

because the are just plain silly so a little amusing. Days like national hamburger day is just silly. Mother's day and thanksgiving have more significance and have status and some are statutory holidays.

     Yesterday was one of those days that I consider important. It was International  Day of the Girl. this has been celebrated for five years now.

     Now I have more than just a little interest in this topic.

    I was a middle school teacher for my whole 37 year career. I worked with female colleagues from start to finish. I won't say that I soon learned their equal status because I didn't. It took a few years before I appreciated and understood that equality of opportunity was necessary. Over the years I worked on teams, had female team leaders, and had a female vice principal. There were many female principals in the system but they were in the elementary system.

     Where am I going with this? It's been difficult and challenging for women to not only compete but to be accepted on an equal basis as men as far as professional competence is concerned.

    When I look back on my career, I came up short in advocating for young girls. I found no difficulty to advocate for my female colleagues.

    So yesterday I was happy to see a special day with all kinds of information and support that would help young girls and women be able to be accepted with equality.

    I have a daughter who has challenged the system and done well. She applied for a position and they really wanted a male. She made a complaint to the teachers' organization.

   I'm disappointed that most of the girls that I've been able to follow have landed in positions for women...office work. So some day I hope that women and girls are looked at in the same way as far as work placement and power  is concerned.

Myrna and an award

THANKFULNESS

    Since it's Thanksgiving say there is a tradition to take some time and list what you've been thankful for over the last year.    I sometimes try to think back and remember what I said last year that I was thankful about.

    Now usually we name things that are large in our life. Such as , Mom and Dad. Mom had to put up with me for 34 years and Dad 68 years! My parents gave themselves very little credit for raising and providing for me. I'm sure I've expressed thanks for the Micro Manager in my life. Most of the time the Micro Manager is just that...someone who looks after the important details. I'm thankful for my son and daughter and granddaughters.

    However, this year, I can't help but think about all the little things that go into a year. The chat with someone. The joke shared, The warm smile. The help holding a door. The good books I read. The dogs that are walked by each day and who visit me. The birds that visit my yard. A cloudy day. All of these things are small. So I am thankful for all the small things that make up daily life.

    Daily life is what it's all about. We move through life one day at a time. There are no big gulps. Just small sips. Little things make up our life and that's what I'm thankful for.

    So Canadian friends, I hope you had a happy Thanksgiving.

IT HAD TO HAPPEN SOONER OR LATER !

    Yesterday we got snow...3 or 4 cm (1-2 in) of snow. and as we say when something happens like this, "It had to happen sooner or later." It's snowing again this evening and we're supposed to get more snow tomorrow.
  
    Now it's not unusual for us to get snow in October. The snow will melt and disappear. Even if we get snow at the end of October , it will likely melt. It's also not unusual to get snow in September.

    Now it's a bit of a downer when we get snow like this. We've had some very nice weather to this point. 

     So I will hunker down for a few days and when the snow has melted I'll be back out in the yard. I still have lots of yard work to do.

     So to all my Canadian buddies, have a happy Thanksgiving. To my American buddies, I won't forget you when you celebrate Thanksgiving.
    

BIZARRE EVENT

     Sometimes things happen that are very hard to believe. Such an event happened to us this week.

     10:00 AM Tues. morning I answered a call from a furniture store.  Call display said name unavailable. They said they had something at the store for us. I said just a minute you can talk to my wife. I wondered if she might have asked about something in the store.

     Well, it turned out that they had a table waiting for us to pick up!!!  We hadn't been to the store for years. They were insistent that we bought a table 3 days ago.  No we didn't. They asked if maybe we had forgotten! My wife told them that she remembered that she definitely had not been in the store.They had all our information and that we had used a debit card. Now this story was really starting to stink. They were pushy and insisted we pick up the table. We were confused. We thought maybe someone was pranking us like sending  a pizza order to the house.These people were aggressive. They told us to check our account and see if anything had been taken out of it. One person said the table had been paid for and the other one said the table had not been paid for. Neither one of them backed down and said there might be a mistake. The call ended with my wife saying she would contact the police. They did not hesitate. 

    Now we knew some things were wrong. We don't have a debit card? That really raised our level of suspicion and anxiety.

    My wife did call the police and talked to a very helpful officer. She suggested contacting the manager before going further. We had been reluctant to call the manager for if he had been in on the scam.

    We did contact the manager and he said he would check it and get back to us. Several hours later he called back . He had solved the problem. A telephone number is used to call up all your information like address, names and more. The table was paid for. So what the manager found was that the phone number the sales man entered had one incorrect digit which of course, made it our phone number. The manager was much better than his staff. He explained the problem and apologized and we were much relieved. Then he had to trace down the people who had bought and paid for the table.

    If the first clowns had taken a deep breath and thought for one second that they might be wrong they may have prevented the situation from escalating. They really made us suspicious. We didn't know if it was a scam. 

    After two days it was a relief to have things solved.

    

UPRIGHT PIANOS

      Several months ago I met my neighbor on the street and we had our usual visit. She told me that she had been trying to sell her piano. Now, she had one of the newer pianos which was not as high as the older ones.  She gave up trying to sell the piano as no one was interested. She couldn't even get an offer on a ridiculously low price. Then she decided to give it away as she just wanted it out of her house. She had one person express interest but the person never came back. What's her only option? Pay to have it taken to the dump.

     Now I thought this was a rather sad situation that a perfectly good instrument would be thrown in the garbage.

     I was thinking that I sold my piano 20 years ago and how lucky I was to sell it.

     Now yesterday I was listening to a documentary on pianos. Yes the older pianos cannot be traded anymore. They were interviewing a piano technician. Many people come to him for help to sell their piano. They want to leave the piano with him. He has to refuse their pianos as he knows he won't find a buyer and he's left with the expense of disposal. He explained that many pianos are about 100 years old and they are at the end of their life. The wood in them has lost it's strength and warped. The cost of repair would be enormous and then you still have an old piano.

    Now I thought of the last 150 years when people had pianos and enjoyed music in their homes. I thought of all the children who took piano lessons and learned to play. I also thought about all those kids who took lessons and didn't learn anything. The reason I bought my piano was so that my kids could take piano lessons. One of them learned to play well and played after lessons were over. The other one did not touch the piano after the last lesson. So one learned to play piano and one learned nothing.

     In my family home we had a piano and my parents had the idea to give us piano lessons. I wasn't given piano lessons as we could seldom get to town in the winter. The other two were given lessons and learned very little.

     So it's the end of a long music tradition.

     Kids today take band and learn band instruments.

      How about you? Did you take piano lessons? Did you learn anything.

Many of the old pianos were very ornate as this one that I found on the internet.

Aurora Borealis

      Wednesday and Thursday nights the forecast was for a good show of aurora brawls. There were  solar winds and it indicated a great show in my area - Central Alberta.

      Well it wasn't to be. there was heavy clouds both nights. Living in a city, there's too much light pollution to get a good view of northern lights but we do see them once in awhile.

     Northern lights have been part of my life since I was very young. Since I was brought up on an isolated farm, we didn't have much to do except play with things and each other. We had very few toys, so many evenings we played outside. Yes, that's when I first remember northern lights. We played by the hour outside in the dark farmyard. We did not have electricity so no yard lights. Skies were clear and northern lights were bright.

      For my first year of teaching I was hired for a one room country school. I boarded half a mile from the school and often went back after supper to prepare for the next day. Many evenings were clear and you guessed it...there were brilliant northern lights. Th road I walked on was not snow plowed and vehicles did not drive on it. I walked over brilliant white snow banks. When it was moonlight it was almost as bright as day.

     I realize that many parts of the world do not see northern lights. I enjoy the colors and the constant movement and changes in shape.

     Yellowknife NWT is a great place for Northern lights. Tourist come to Yellowknife to see northern lights. The five days I was in Yellowknife I did not see northern lights. I then spent 3 years in Inuvik NWT . There were northern lights but they weren't as spectacular as in northern Saskatchewan.

     So this week was a bit of a disappointment for aurora borealis. Maybe next time!

     So you see why I like aurora borealis. I took this from a file of photos on a net site.

GARDENING IS OVER!

     When I talk about gardening it's vegetables. We do talk about a flower garden but that's only a small part of the complete yard.

     Yes my gardening is finished except for the big fall job of cleanup. I still have carrots and parsnips to take out yet. I like to leave them as long as possible...end of October. Carrots don't keep that long. At least I haven't found a way to keep them over 6 weeks. I process the parsnips for the freezer by cutting them in French fry size. I like to fry my parsnips and they have a rich nutty flavor. I took the last 6 cobs of corn in to store in my refrigerator.

     So once all vegetables have been harvested it's time to look after the soil.

     My vegetable garden is quite small. I started it in 1970 when I as a much younger man. Now you know where I'm going with this. I dug the garden by hand both fall and spring. It was a piece of cake. The soil was the best loam they could find.

     Now from 1970 to 2016 , two things have been happening. I've been getting old!!! The soil has changed with some help. In 1997 I had to replace my sewer line. Of course, the dumb thing had to run right under my garden! And when the trench was filled in lots of clay got mixed in with my awesome loam garden soil. This has turned the nice loam into a heavy clay. It still grows a great garden but it is a challenge to dig the soil.

    Weather conditions this summer made things worse. We had more than average rainfall. Rain packs down the soil. with all the rain I couldn't keep the soil loose between the rows. The soil comes out in large chunks and it sticks together. So I'm not satisfied to have soil with lumps larger than two bricks.

    So I will be getting some physical conditioning. From digging the whole plot in an afternoon when  I was young., I will be digging the plot over 5 or 6 days depending on the weather

    In spite of the challenges , I would not miss growing a vegetable garden.