The area I live in has very few earthquakes and they are all small.
Well this morning when I checked Face book some of my friends were talking about an earthquake! In fact, my friend Cynthia, was quite shook up about it. The earth quake occurred around 6:00 AM. Not many people were up at that time but many of them were well aware of what was going on. No damage was done but people get a little shook up when the ground moved and things rattled.
The earthquake we had was 4.6 and was originally thought to be caused by fracking in the area. Later it was shown that it was caused by fracing.
So I was still pleasantly asleep at six AM and heard and felt nothing. Many days I am awake around 6 AM but not today when something exciting was going on.
The other day I listened to a documentary about violence toward teachers in classrooms. I was dismayed to hear that young children are hitting, kicking, threatening, spitting at teachers and more.
The micro manager and I were talking about this situation over dinner. One wonders what has happened for this situation to develop.
Many changes have occurred in society and the education system. So there's endless speculation. One of the things we talked about was the inclusion of all students in a regular classroom. Students who never would have been in a classroom a few years ago.
This got me thinking about a situation I encountered in my first year of teaching in 1958.
My nine little munchkins in 1958 with their cool teacher!
One family in the district had two boys with Down's syndrome. These two children were kept at home. Most Down's syndrome kids were kept at home or institutionalized. They were not in the public school system.
This couple decided that they wanted to send these two boys to school with me. They didn't talk to me. They conferred with the trustees. The trustees were wise and referred the matter to the superintendent. The superintendent came out to see me and we had a long discussion. The superintendent discussed all pros and cons. Then he said that I had to make the decision as to whether these kids entered the school system. I said , "No." He had very skillfully slanted his comments to me so that he got the answer he wanted.
This topic was discussed in the community and they were against the boys entering the school system.
I've never forgotten this issue. These parents were a bit ahead of their time. When I said no they didn't pursue the matter any further. I often wonder what happened to the two boys and the family. There was no support for families at that time.
So inclusion of all students was beginning a long time before it happened
I recently wrote a post telling of my early Father's Day gift. My son in law got excited about a project and no little issue like it's not Father's Day would stop him.
Well, the stopping issues started with me. My computer skills are not great. So here it comes. Ancestry sends an email. The email asks you for your information to sign into the program. My first problem was that it would not accept my postal code. It insisted on a zip code. We are used to those problems. So phone for help. It turned out that the helper and help requester were both at about the same level of expertise. She asked me to do all kinds of things that even I knew had nothing to do with the problem.
The problem was that I was looking at an email that she knew nothing about. She would ask if I could see something? Well, no I wasn't on that page. She apparently was not aware that ancestry sends out an email first.
Finally she was able to look at my account and tell me that I was in business as she could see everything in my account. But I say how do I get into the program? With that she left me as she had been with me for an hour. So I thought things over and said ah ha I know what to do. I did know what to do but my pass word had been mangled. There was no way I could reset my pass word from their system. One more call. I got the nicest guy in the whole telemarketing world. I did complement him highly.
So off I went to look at ancestry.
My maternal grandfather was a rather dour little Englishman. I never heard him talk about relatives . So very quickly I found him with his three sisters and his parents. So the first thing I found in minutes was my great grandfather on my mother's side.
My Grandpa is on the left. It's the only photo I can find of him.
My biggest disappointment? I couldn't find myself! Isn't that vain?
Maybe the next program I get, I will be able to register without a problem.
Again , this is a location we looked at many times as we drove down the David Thompson high way. This area is called Windy Point. So one Saturday, out we went to see if this would be a good place to take students.
You start this climb as soon as you cross the highway ditch. Did I say it was steep? It's steep so there is some scrambling like use of hands . Again we were looking at a point or a peak that we wanted to get to. We had to take a trail at the bottom of the cliff to the back of it and then more.
This is the last time I tried going up a chimney.
We got to the top of the cliff at the back and then had to walk to the cliff face. It was a great view and a good place for some stunt photos.
It was not a good place to take kids. One time we took kids on this for about 45 minutes before you get to the dangerous stuff.
About half way up I'm crossing a saddle.
I can be seen in this photo on the bottom right.
You can see the highway down below on the right.
Mugging it up for the camera.
Scrambling about half way up.
Looking toward the dam.
Mike posing for a dramatic shot. One step back and he was in space and free fall.
Yesterday I received my Father's day gift from my son in law (sil). That's right!
It works like this. My sil's mother died about a year ago. Apparently both his parents were not interested in family or relatives. I believe the family was quite small. Very few relatives attended her memorial. When the sil's mother died about a year ago he started to look up the family.
The sil has become very interested in researching family. As my daughter says he's gone down a rabbit hole. Every time I talk to him he's excited about what he has found.
The sil knows that I'm interested in family history so he gave me a subscription to a family ancestry site that he uses.
So now I'm off to find out all kinds of new things. Before 1990 my father's family did a family tree and they located over 900 of the family.
My father's side of the family were German Lutherans who came to Canada from Volhynia in the Ukraine. Great Grandpa brought all his married children to Canada over a period of 15 years. Great Grandpa had four sons and four daughters.
Grandma and Grandpa about 1946
First a couple of family members were sent out to scout the area. They sent back good reports and their wives and children were sent out. As money was gathered for fares others made the trip. The Mennonites in southern Manitoba were a great help to the family.
After a number of years all of them relocated to the Esk area in Saskatchewan. Two of the families moved on from Esk but two sons and three daughters spent the remainder of their lives at Esk.
Now my three brothers and some of their children are the only family members left in that area.
Anyhow I expect to find a few things I didn't know. Maybe some of my followers come from German Lutheran families from the Ukraine!
Anyway, thanks to my sil for an early Father's day gift.
I love my province of Alberta, Canada. It has many great assets for fine living. We have beautiful mountain scenery. We have vast tracts of rich farmland. We are blessed with much oil and gas.
However, with oil and gas as the main resources the economy can go from boom to bust and it has. This industry also has a bad name when it comes to environmental issues.
We have a number of issues right now. Resource prices are down. We are very short of pipe lines to send our oil to the coast. We are in tough times.
Now when troubled times hit us some people go off the deep end. We have people going off the deep end now. They are determined to blame someone for the situation and they think that blaming someone will automatically bring about a solution.
So a small group decided to become yellow jackets under the guise of supporting pipelines even though they are radical right wingers. They are actually racists. Another small group here wants to separate Alberta from Canada. A third group wants pipe lines right now no matter what. Just wave the wand and build pipe lines.
Somehow these groups got together and said lets have a truck convoy to Ottawa. So everybody jumps in their big trucks to drive to Ottawa tooting their horns all the way.
Along the way they've been able to create some exaggerated stories about their size. There were only 120 trucks. Some dropped out and others joined. They reported many people waving in support along the highway....Imagination. They used the same photos to show these people.
So they get to Ottawa and there's a mixed and confused message. It seems like the racists made the biggest noise.
Since I preach about lying being so terrible , here's another example where they manufacture a cause and keep it going with all kinds of games. Throw in a little fiction and make yourself look good.
Now some of them are in Ottawa they suddenly find themselves short of money to get back home!
Maybe we should leave them in Ottawa. On the other hand they probably aren't wanted there so somebody will help them get back home.
We have issues but this group is loony and going about things in the wrong way.
This morning I noticed that I was counting as I walked from one part of the house to another. I also noticed when I started to pee I was counting. I caught myself counting a couple more times throughout the morning. What's going on?
It kind of bothered me as it was such a weird behavior. Something twigged in the back of my brain about compulsive counters. I looked it up. Yes, some people count all the time. They count no matter what they are doing.
So what's going on? To me there should be a reason for things happening.
I started to think about what was happening in my life. I have a nasty bit of rotator cuff problem. I'm doing all kinds of stretching and strength building exercises. Of course, with all of these routines you count and then you do another routine and count. I've been working hard on the stretches and strength building. I want to end my rotator cuff suffering.
So I think because I've been counting so much for my exercises I started to count at other times.
Now rotator cuff is nasty. Little tears occur under a tendon that goes over the shoulder joint. Muscles stiffen and then weaken. To complicate mine, I have arthritis. I noticed something uncomfortable with my shoulder in September but thought it would go away. It didn't go away so I asked my doc about it when I had my check up in Nov. He told me to look on the Internet and find stretches which I did. Things just kept getting worse so that in January I booked my self into physio therapy. Now I'm at a stage where I have the odd good day or good night. I hope I get on top of this thing before spring. I know one thing for sure. Counting isn't going to help me.
