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The
Squamidian Report – April 18/20
Issue
#934 From
Nova
Scotia Sus Hi All, You’ve probably noticed how clear the air and sky is now. With the massive reduction in air travel, surface transportation and industry emissions we are finding ourselves in a vastly less polluted environment. The sky is more blue, the air more transparent. Because we are in the mountains, surrounded by snow-covered peaks, we can really see the results. This part of the worlds in by nature fairly clear most of the time but now the details are striking. Scenic clarity. Individual trees on the mountainsides miles away on the other side of the valley are distinguishable. The snow-cover has stayed a brilliant white. Satellite images of parts of the world that are usually choked with smog are showing clear sky's. It won’t last. Once this is over we’ll all go back to pumping the air full of everything but it does show how it could and should be. And it is kind of nice to know that when you go outside and take a deep breath, most of what you are breathing in is in fact air. How cool is that? And then just to spoil it for us, it changed instantly. Some brain dead morons decided to burn slash piles just up the river from here, about 10km north of town. The last several weeks have been very dry. In the blink of an eye the side of Cloudburst Mountain went up in flames. Within a few hours both theUpper Squamish Valley north of here and Paradise Valley were under evacuation notices. This was Wednesday afternoon. By dinner time the smoke had filled the air all the way out the sound and all those clear views were lost in the haze. There was lite white ash falling like fine snow all around. By evening the fire crews and helicopters were hard at work but the fire had grown to about 15 hectors and those rural homes were being evacuated. The winds died down a bit and changed directions so Thursday and Friday were less smoky here, almost clear on this side of the valley but the fire had spread to over 100 hectors. There are numerous small hobby farms up in the Upper Squamish and reports have come out that many have been burned out. One report is of a man and his daughter standing in the river with their horses as they watcher their building burn to the ground. I don’t know if it’s true or not, but supposedly an open burn fire ban was going into place as of Thursday which is why whoever started burning the brush piles was in a hurry to burn the brush, before they would be prohibited. Well, I sure hope they end up facing big fines and law suits. We simply don’t need this kind of thing and this kind of thinking, now or ever. * Ok, this one actually turned out a lot better than I’d expected or hoped for. For one thing, the chances of making it through a recording track without interruption or unwanted noise (all external noise in unwanted) is almost impossible these days. So it was put together during little windows of time whenever I could find them, often ending in hitting the old ‘delete’ button due to the inevitable interruptions. But, we got there. You have no idea how much effort and determination it takes to get a song ready for inclusion in the letter just to give a little bit of distraction from our world-wide current ongoing situation. As well, there is this song itself….it’s an old Bob Dylan song from way, way back. A song that most of us have know and perhaps even sung many times over the years and then mostly forgot about. Well, here it is again, dragged up up from the dark and spider web covered crags and crevices of our memories. A few guitar tracks, some 4-part harmony and this is the results. Boy, I sure wish they would invent cloning so I could do the harmony tracks all at once instead of having to do them one at a time but that’s what I and we are struck with. Anyway, hope you enjoy my cover of Dylan’s very old song, ‘Don’t Think Twice’. doug **** A mental health outing down to the waterfront. It was that or our heads would explode.  **** From Nova Scotia Sus Here is one more Easter story. Our father, Howard also carried on the tradition of hiding our Easter baskets. Dad was especially good at hiding baskets so the hunt went on for hours giving us hot and cold hints if we were ready to give up. There were always one or two that couldn't be found and Dad not remembering where he put them. In years that followed Dad would hand over the job to one of us kids. One of the boys took over hiding a basket in the oven (that one melted when Mom turned on the oven) another in a tree (that one fell out and broke to pieces) another one in a hole dug in the snow( messy). That Easter bunny was fired never to return again. When I moved to Nova Scotia and built my log house I carried on the tradition. By then there were lots of nieces and nephews to be involved in the hunt and lots of room to wander. The boundaries were huge including around the pond and between each house, probably 3 acres in all. There were people of all sizes and ages involved, some frustrated and some happy. Great memories! Sus **** From Russ Bored Stiff! “I’m bored stiff” is an expression mom used quite frequently. On second thought, maybe it was my wife. Can’t think mom was ever bored raising a big family! Being cooped-up (locked down) for a month, which seemed like three, I almost panicked when I ‘had nothing to do!. Pacing the floor, reading, riding, watching TV ; humdrum!.’ In desperation I decided to do something I’ve been saving to do ‘for a rainy day’ – purge my files. Where to start? I’ll tackle the cabinet in my ‘office’. Wow! Some of these letters and documents date back to 1968 – why am I still hanging onto them? In shame if not self-defence, I justify keeping some of the stuff as ‘memorabilia’, so I started a new file with that designation – only to find I already HAD a MEMORABILIA file! Who was it said, “Choice will kill you” ? How true – I now have two files to torment me. What to toss? What to keep? Maybe that’s the answer –. I should start a “KEEPING” file. You guessed it – I already had such a file! Now I’m MAD! I’m also the world’s worst filing clerk! Let’s get organized; as I pull out a file, the content is given only one of three destinations; keep/file. Recycle. Toss. Now, I’m on a role! This isn’t such a bad job after all! Bet I’ll finish in three to five days! STOP THE PRESS! Some of these letters/documents have personal banking information, and getting into the wrong hands may result in “Identity theft”, or worse!!. Out comes the shredder and it doesn’t like staples. Pulling them is slow and tedious. Cutting the corners containing the rusty, old staples is much quicker – even fun as they are tossed into the garbage. And we all know the ‘fussy’ recycle guys don’t want metal mixed in with paper. Another big ‘rip-off’ must take place! Did I tell you we have another two-drawer filing cabinet in the bedroom? This one is for Income Tax, Life Insurance, Pension, Medical, Etc., but sad to say I found other files labelled, MEMORABILIA; KEEPING; and PERSONAL! Procrastination stalled me another few days, but I finally got my files in both cabinets clear of unwanted; duplicate; and expired stuff!
Now, our Premier has extended the “Lock-down” until the 2nd week in May. I’m thinking I should purge my clothes closets next. There are five in my wee cottage – I live alone – I’ve got clothes in all FIVE! Hoping you were not “Bored stiff” reading my entry for this week; I remain…. Your Old Uncle Russ. PS Some stuff would not fit ANY file (or I was ashamed to file it), so, don’t tell anyone, but I stuffed it under the day-bed in my office) **** From Carol There has always been a problem with ants at the Homestead, especially in the spring. This year is no different. I purchased a set of 3 ant traps and placed them in the kitchen. A few days later only one trap was left. We searched under the stove and any where they might have been accidentally kicked. To the best of our knowledge only Gale, Nick, Al & I have been in the house and none of us removed the traps. Off I went and lined up outside the hardware store to purchase more ant traps. The next day only one ant trap could be found. We have several theories. One is the ants were so big they carried the traps off. I also put mouse poison out in a couple of locations so perhaps the mice had taken the traps. Nick’s theory is that Dad’s spirit is hanging around and that driving us crazy with the ant trap mystery would be his kind of practical joke. It could all be related to his kitchen clock that runs backwards. So do any of you have suggestions on who or what is behind our mystery? Or maybe we should just hold a séance and ask Dad. Carol **** THE ONTARION REPORT Hello everyone! Well, the sky is bright and cloudy again today but at least it’s not raining out! It seems the sun is trying to shine through but with little success. When the sun shines it takes the gloom off the thoughts of the Covid 19 situation. We managed to get out two days ago for an hour or two and do some much needed shopping at the No Frills and Giant Tiger stores and it was like being released from jail for a couple of hours! The only problem was that the restrictions demand that you line up outside and be let into the stores one at a time. It does however show that the owners or managers of the stores are thinking in the right way about keeping people distanced from each other for safety reasons so that’s a good thing for sure! Even so, there are still people that are numb skulled enough that they can’t keep their distance from others and are not wearing masks and that ticks me off to think that they don’t care enough to take the proper precautions these days. I think that they are foolish enough to think it won’t happen to them so why wear a mask or surgical gloves when shopping and touching everything on the shelves. Giant Tiger was thoughtful enough to have directional arrows on the floor to show you the direction of flow for the shoppers to take so they don’t have to pass each other in the narrow isles of the store. Even then, there are morons that don’t know enough to follow the arrow directions! We found ourselves having to reverse and take the next isle to keep our distance from these jerks! Oh well, I guess there will always be those that buck the system! Sometimes I think we must be living in the USA when I encounter such idiots! I heard that Trump wants to open the Canada US border already since their number of cases have dropped for the first time since this all started. Is he nuts or what? Thankfully Trudeau has enough sense not to agree with that fool of a President that’s running and possibly ruining the USA. I’m surprised someone hasn’t Wised up to his greed and selfishness and bumped him off his throne! I guess they already tried that with the impeachment that failed. Oh well, I guess the US is stuck with him until the end of his term and that means the rest of the world is stuck with him as well! Hopefully the world of science will come up with a cure for Covid 19 before half the world’s population dies off from it! The way Trump is going, the USA will lose half it’s population from listening to him! They say that Texas and Georgia are the next two states to suffer greatly from the Covid 19 illness and that Alabama is demanding that the restrictions on businesses be lifted now! What a bunch of fools they have living in that state for sure. Hopefully someone like their governor will be able to control them and stop their demonstrations before they all kick off from their damned fool demands! I must say, if Trudeau gives in to Trump’s request to open the border then he needs his ass kicked right out of office for endangering the lives of all Canadians! If he allows the border to be opened we’ll be flooded with Covid bearing Americans and the thing will just spread like the fires did in Australia! Lets pray that our PM isn’t that foolish! I’m going to make this column a short one for this week since the Virus seems to be all that’s occupying my mind this week. Every time we put the TV on that’s all every channel is talking about. I like to keep informed but I’m also getting sick and tired of hearing the same old gloom and doom over and over again! It would be wonderful to suddenly hear that a scientist somewhere has come up with a cure for this dreaded disease so we finally have a shred of hope for the near future! I’m afraid we’re in for a much longer ride with this Covid than I’d like to hope so we’ll just have to settle in and keep on following the safety rules that are in place at the moment and be patient rather than becoming patients! That’s
all
for this week folks! Bye
for
now … GregPS:
Something To Think About> ****
Have
a
good one.. |