HOW DID I SPEND EASTER AS A CHILD?

       I received a request. I've never had a request before so this is too good to miss. 

       Debbie asked how I spent Easter when I was young. Here's where all your predictions will fall apart. Some of it doesn't make sense.

      My parents belonged to a denomination that did not celebrate the sacred part of the Easter story. Why? Since the actual crucifixion date of Christ was not known, their denomination thought that it was not "right" to celebrate if the date wasn't accurate. They did remember the death and resurrection of Jesus in their daily devotions.  So there. That's the sacred part of my Easter celebration. 

    However, the non religious part of Easter took place. 

    When we were very little in the early years , the war was on so some of the good stuff (chocolate) was not available but the meal was a big deal. We had turkey and all the trimming that were available. Since we lived on a farm the turkey and ham was readily available. After that there were many other dishes. However, cranberries were not available.

    We would celebrate with my Mom's cousins. They had four boys and our family consisted of three boys and a girl. It was quite a gang. It was an all day affair. The big meal was at noon. The afternoon consisted of visiting for the men and hard work for our Moms. For kids, we had a ball. Lots of playing with cousins even though we only lived one mile apart. 

    After the war candy became available. I'm not sure when the bunny rabbit arrived. Our Grandma sent very nice chocolate cream Easter eggs. I will never forget them. Many goodies were produced by our Moms to go along with the meal. 

    This went on all day. We had a warm up meal about 6:00 PM. Just before going home at midnight we had a cold plate.

   It was a long enjoyable day.

   So I hope everybody has a happy Easter no matter how it is observed. 

A CURLING SURPRISE

       Now my last post was to set you up for this post. 

      I hope that somewhere in my last post you got the idea that in the rural areas curling was not very highly organized. Curling was only in the evening unless it was a bonspiel. So sometimes when kids got bored we would enter the curling rink, which was never locked and throw a few rocks. If somebody caught us we got kicked out.

     I came to Red Deer in 1969 and taught in a middle school of about 500 students. There were two other middle schools in the city. One was smaller and had just opened in 1969. The other school was not highly organized in  athletic activities. Our school had basket ball, volley ball and badminton and not too much opportunity for competition.

    So in 1970 I got it in my head to start after school curling for kids. Still being this naive country boy, I phoned the local curling rink and asked if kids could play after school. Did I get a surprise. In a city this size curling was highly organized. They had just never thought of kids curling.

    After a little discussion they agreed to let kids curl after school for free. So I had some great kids who either wanted to curl or learn to curl. The next year another teacher joined me and his idea was to teach curling and he was very good at it. 

    Curling continued for three or four years. I didn't have the time to give to it any more so I did not carry on with curling. . 

    However, there was something that happened that I had never dreamed about. This naive little farm boy had never heard of high school nationals in curling. You guessed it. One of my little guys continued with curling in high school and went to the Canadian National high school competition.

    Now I worked with Doug's Mom and see her since we've retired. She always reminds me of Doug and curling and you can tell that she's very proud of him. I see Doug about every 15 years and he always talks about learning to curl when he was a kid.

  

CURLING

      I have to write about the sport of curling before I do my next post.

       It's spring and I'm a little late with a post on curling. Okay , for those who know much more about curling than I do, you can stop reading.

       Curling is a game played on ice with 40 lb granite rocks that are very carefully shaped. There are four players to a team and each player has two rocks to throw in turn with the other team. The objective is to see who can get the most rocks closer to the center. If you have two rocks closer to the center and your oppositions rock is the third closest, you get two points. 

     Curling is a game that requires great skill and there's much strategy involved. It's an interesting game to play and now it's a big hit on TV. 

    This is a brief outline and I'm sure that Jen , who watches a lot of curling will correct things for me. 

    Now , when I was a kid in the 40's and 50's every little village and town had a curling rink. They did not have artificial ice. After it froze and stayed frozen they hauled tanks of water to make the ice. For the rest of the winter these people curled. They had men's league, women's league and mixed league. They had bonspiels which was like a curling tournament. 

    The skip, the team captain told the players where to throw the rock. The player had to throw the right "weight" so that the rock would stop where they wanted it to stop. There was also the little thing of a turn..in turn and out turn. Out turn would give the rock a counter clockwise turn and in turn would give the rock a clockwise turn. The curling or turning of the rock allowed the rock to bend or move sideways and a rock could get behind the opposition's rock. It was all fun. They also have brooms and for various situations sweep like mad. They sweep to make the rock move further before it stops. They sweep to help it bend more or less.

     For the time I'm talking about it was a very social game and activity for the rural people on the Canadian Prairies. They wore special sweaters which they called curling sweaters. Women  knitted these sweaters. These old rinks were unheated and just as cold as the outside. Everybody had a special sweater. I still have my curling sweater. Mom knitted it and sent it to me in Inuvik in 1964. 

 

ELECTRICITY RATES

         Today I had the pleasure of receiving my electricity bill. Like you, the cost of electricity has gone up very much. I happen to have signed a contract a few years ago but contracts come to an end and I don't like the options I see.

       Without contracts energy is 18 cents a kilowatt. I would think that most people are on the 18 cent a kilowatt rate.

      So lets go back a few years. About 30 to 35 years ago we had a politician and government that thought that utilities should be owned and run by private companies. Their  belief was that with private companies could do things more efficiently and with competition, energy rates would decrease. It hasn't happened yet. In fact, rates have actually gone up.

    It wasn't long before the companies approached the government to see if they could charge a separate  administration fee. Of course, the government said yes. Then the companies were back to have a special billing fee. Of course, you can have a special billing fee. This went on until we have seven added charges. The extra charges are more than we pay for electricity. 

    So in these days of inflation the very kind government is bending over backwards to "help" us with electrical payments. Last month they gave me $75.00 to help me pay my electrical bill.  This month it's only $25.00 and I don't know why it's only $25.00..Could it be that we have an election in May?

       In the good old days there was some stability to electrical charges. The province produced and sold the electrical energy. People knew what the price was and could live accordingly. Yes, the government assisted consumers regularly with this system. 

     This system has opened the door to abuses of the system that hurt the consumer. 

     

    

ARE POLITICIANS TOO AFRAID TO LOSE?

             The behavior of many of our politicians could be described by many different words. All of them bad. 

           Before I go on I must say that there are many honorable politicians. The idiots get the publicity. Hard working politicians do not get the credit and notice they deserve. 

         If I was a politician, I'd find it very hard to lose an election. It would crush my fragile self image. As a result I have not run for any kind of position which requires an election. 

       Many politicians seem to be interested in only one thing and that is to get elected. As a result they spend all their time and money for the purpose of getting elected. No stunt is too wild to gain attention. Twist their words and other politicians words. Truth goes out the window. Defend all the looney ideas (oops, they don't have any ideas)  antics they come up with. The wacky behavior is to try and get elected. 

     Our premier has recently been caught contacting the justice system regarding certain people who are facing criminal charges. The justice system is not to be influenced by politicians. There's a separation between the two for good reason. Politicians would make very poor judges. 

      So I think that many of these people are terrified to lose an election. Their egos are fragile. That's all they have to offer. They don't have ideas. They've never heard of the government setting up systems to help people. 

SNOW ON THE ROOF

       Most of the houses here still have snow on the roof. 

           A snowy roof from a few days ago.

      To me snow on the roof of houses indicates that very little spring thawing has occurred. Yes, the snow is gone from some of the roofs that may face south  or the house may not have much insulation. 

      I don't know if this is scientific or just the deductions of an elderly man. First, the snow melts off the roof and then snow starts to melt a little faster on the land. Snow can be found in the bush for quite a while after snow in the open has melted. 

     The low temperature last night was minus 18 C. That means that it doesn't warm up much in the daytime so very little snow melting takes place. Today our high was minus 2 C with some wind so it wasn't  very pleasant day. 

     To make me feel bluer, there is not much spring warmth in the seven day forecast. We get a couple of days with highs of plus 5 C and then the highs are below 0 C.

     When spring does come here it will be fast. This morning the sun rose at 7:19 and sets tonight at 8:02 for 12 hours and 43  minutes of sun. This means that when it does decide to warm up it will happen rapidly. 

      So I may be a bit blue with this cold spring, but I know that spring will be here sooner than later. 

I FEEL LIKE CRAP

        I feel like crap today and I'll tell you why I think I feel like crap. 

        I had my sixth covid shot yesterday. It was pfizer with the two parts. So I think I'm under the weather from the results of my covid shot. None of the previous shots bothered me in the least. The Micro Manager had no problems before. But this shot has both of us feeling pretty miserable.  We are fatigued and very irritable. However, I guess it doesn't last long and it's much better than getting covid. We still have about 2000 new cases a week and around 25 deaths a week. 

      Today I had two grocery stores to visit. I needed seven items at one grocery. I got the wrong brand of one item and then bought an item that was past it's best before date. I was just not sharp at all. The next store  I needed three items and missed two of them altogether. I  seemed to be fighting to stay focused and follow the regular shopping routine.

    How many people have had a sixth covid shot? Is the  sixth shot the one that makes us miserable.