OOPS! SORRY

      My math yesterday was terrible. It was 40 years ago Elvis died not 50.

       So no wonder some of you felt very old.

      Two sharp eyed bloggers caught my error. The first was Steve at Shadows and light and the second was Bill at Somewhere in Ireland.

      Thanks to the two sharp eyed bloggers and thanks to readers for putting up with me.

ELVIS PRESLEY'S BIRTHDAY TOMORROW

        Tomorrow would have been Elvis's 83rd birthday! It's hard to believe that he died in 1977 ...50 years ago.

      There are certain events which happen and you remember the exact place and time you heard the news. I remember hearing about Elvis. I had a recreation property that I was developing the hard way...by hand. As I was working cutting brush and trees , I always listened to my favorite talk radio.  The two hosts announced Elvis's death. I always remember my 8 year old son being shocked by Elvis's death. It was some unbelievable news. Of course, Elvis dominated the rest of the day's news.

      Elvis was at the peak of his game from the mid 50's to mid 60's. There aren't many people left who remember Elvis when he was king.

     I was a fan of Elvis but not outrageously so. I liked his music. We didn't have TV so I didn't see him. I didn't even see the Ed Sullivan show with Elvis.

    Elvis's career ended long before his death.

    So tonight I'm going to listen to a little Elvis Presley music to remember the King.

WHY SO MUCH BLACK ON APPLIANCES?

      I don't know about you, but I have difficulty reading the faces of black appliances. 

      It came to a head recently when I bought a new computer. The tower is below the top of my desk so the vision is difficult to start with. On the front of the tower is a tray to load DVDs,  2 USB ports, Two sound jacks and another port that have no idea of what it is. However, the problem is to see any of this stuff. At times in the daytime it's visible At all other times in the day I cannot see these connections. I have my trusty flash light on my desk to see the computer face.

     When I started to think about this situation , I realized I had another color option for the computer but never gave it a thought at the time.

    Then I started to look around in the room and all appliances are black. I have a black stereo, a black boom box, black radio and black phone. Oh yes the interior of my car is black.

    What's going on with all the black?

Even my flashlight is black!

A RECOMMENDED BLOG

       I would like to recommend that you go over and have a look Yorkshire Pudding

       This is a well done blog and is written everyday. There's a good balance in different posts which makes things interesting.

      Excellent photos of Northern England. Some of his photos are chosen to be published in a magazine.

     Some great poetry...not enough though.

    Some strongly worded and well reasoned opinions.

    Some wicked humor.

    Each year Mr Pudding, as he calls himself, sets up an elaborate awards program. The awards are called "Laughing Horse."  Weeks before the awards show there is chatter that gets you thinking. Then there's an announcement about the location of the awards and all followers are invited. Then the big event occurs and bloggers who follow Uncle pudding are described as they enter the awards program. Now he's really whipped up the excitement. We can barely remain seated. Announcements are made.

    It's a fun series of blogs.

    Look on the top right hand corner of my blog.

    Be sure to drop over and visit Mr Pudding.

SERIOUS FAMILY HISTORY

     The morning after my last post the son-in-law phoned to wish ma a happy new year.

      It didn't take long for us to get on the family history topic. Some how or other I let it out that I had a biography in the back of my head.  Now he was on a roll and the next thing you know he had got me enthusiastic about my biography.

     Now much of what's on this blog could be easily used in a biography.  Previously I've written about my Arctic experience,  in particular,  getting there. I did not go into the actual teaching experience.

     Now I'm the first to admit that I'm a random chaotic sort of soul. I know what I want to tell in the first few chapters , but here I am writing about things the happened at  the start of my professional career. I'm also an optimist to a fault so some how or other later on, I should be able to put all the bits and pieces together.

    Sound like a plan? 

    So my first year teaching?  

    I had finished my one year teacher training. Had I applied for a job? No.

    Now many people in my class had applied for jobs and been hired long before we finished the course.  I had to wait until I got my marks and new for sure that I had passed the course. Now it was getting late and about three weeks before school started.

    Fortunately jobs were a dime a dozen so I was hired to teach in a one room country school. Many things were set up. the community just said I would be boarding at Enn's because they needed the money from boarding the teacher

     The school was named Louisville and was 11 miles from one small village and nine mils from another village. There was post office and country store about three miles away.

   The school was old and maintenance and upkeep had been lacking for years.

    I got to the school a few days before school opening and rooted around the place to find things. I found text books and school supplies. I stored these in convenient locations. 

    On school opening day ten little beaners showed up. Yes, ten students. I had three gr. ones,  two grade twos and one each in gr three, four, five, seven and nine.

     Since I had attended such a school I knew how things worked. I made up a time table so that I could conveniently move from grade to grade.These kids had to do most of heir work independently and they were good at it.

    Now I had no music ability at all so these poor kids didn't get any music. 

    So I kept the fire going so we kept warm and we all worked together. 

    Now these kids taught me a great deal. The community was very supportive and gave me much encouragement.  . I felt good about that year and so decided that I would continue in education. I resigned after that one year so that I could go to university.

PASSING ON FAMILY HISTORY

     My son-in-law' mother died this fall. Her illness and deteriorating health was a nightmare. Along with this was an added disaster of finding that business affairs were not looked after or up to date.

    The critical things have been looked after and now the hard work begins to clean out and dispose of a life time of memories contained in a house.

    My son-in-law is an only child so all responsibility is on his shoulders. Going through a house sorting out things can make your head hurt. He had asked his mother to write on photos. Very little was done and you can't look over your Mother's shoulder to see that she does what you ask.

    So I received an email this morning suggesting that I write on my photos and anything else of family significance. My photos have all been written on.

    Now what my son-in-law was actually talking about is family history and how it is passed on or not passed on. He was reacting to his own loss of family history. I could have written the same thing when my father passed away. I wasn't prepared to ask him much as I hadn't been thinking about it. By the time I started asking questions it was too late. He couldn't recall what I wanted to know.



    Now that I'm elderly, what am I doing about passing on family history? Not much! First, I assume that my kids know much more than they do. Second: I think that there are many things that are of no interest to them. Third: I'm busy and so are my kids. Fourth: I'm not encouraging my kids to ask about family history. Fifth: I think I have many more things that I'm interested in.

    So our family history is very poorly passed on to  the next generations. We've had some degree of literacy for hundreds of years. Now we have wall to wall literacy with the Internet and yet we are doing a poor job of passing on family history. But we have also become spread across the globe. My ancestors came from England and the Ukraine at the beginning of the last century. Today we are global and not only spread across the globe but more mobile than ever.

    There are cultures with only oral history and they seem to have stories from hundreds or thousands of year ago. They live together in large extended families and tell the stories. They know what to tell and repeat it many times. 

    So to my son-in-law, I will go to work and label things and try and leave some information about the things I have.

    I have written many things on this blog about my family history. Is anybody going to go through it to get some understanding and picture of the life I've lived? 
    
   So to my son-in-law, I will go to work and label things and try and leave some information about the things I have.

I'M PHONE HEARING CHALLENGED

    At the risk of being called a grumpy old man, I'm going to comment on phone issues again. 

     I'll start a bit back on my post. In my seniors pension and benefit magazine, there was an article informing us that we had to set up a Members Health Care Account. In the future no mailed statements would be sent out. Well, that does sound a bit Darconian as I'm sure many of the elderly are not on computers or the Internet. I did not have an Internet account with them but I did go immediately to set up and account. I did all the right things. In fact, I did all the right things a couple of times. I kept getting the same response that they were unable to recognize my info. 

     They very kindly gave a phone number if we needed help. So I phoned. I got someone who I could not hear very well and they had an accent that only complicated the situation. At times I didn't know if the person was speaking English. I asked the person if they were on a head set. I asked them to speak much louder, I asked them to speak slower. None of this made any difference. I could understand less than 50% of what was said.

    Finally , I got that she would email a password reset. 

     Fine . I can handle that.. 

    Now for most password resets, by the time you open your email, the message is there. So I did not find a message in my email. I waited. No message. I waited an hour and there was no email. So I looked around and found my email in the "other" section of my email account.

    So for something that should be simple task  I got into an unnecessary runaround. 

   Now I know that my hearing is not the best. When I speak directly to people I can easily get what they say. When I skate, we have music and I can still carry on a conversation. What's with the people on the phones?

   Sometimes I think that some of our phone people have no Idea how they project over the phone. I also think that some of them don't care if they accommodate phone callers.