#951
Including:

From Russ

Nova Scotia Sus

The Ontarion

Hi All,

Want to know what is really different this summer as compared to the past few years, not counting the pandemic related requirements? Forest fires. I can’t speak as to the rest of the country but here in BC, due to such a long cold wet spring and early summer, there has only been a tiny fraction of the normal numbers of fires. The whole of northern BC would usually be one massive infernal after another but the rain still hasn’t stopped up there and there are virtually no fires at all. In the southern half of the province, things had heated up and dried out over the past few weeks and yes, there are some fires burning but nothing as compared to other years. And to help, we are still getting waves of wet weather nicely spaced between the waves of hot dry weather and that is keeping the numbers down. The best thing from anyone’s point of view who is used to breathing, is that our summer air has stayed clear and clean. During most of the summers over the past few years we would be socked in and choking by June. This years we can still see Vancouver Island clearly, the stars at night clearly, and so on. It’s all good.

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And now for this…..I’ve been posting little music videos etc in the last several newsletters, as you may have noticed. It’s not because I’m trying to headline my interests or hobbies, or me, not meant to be some kind of tiny talent time or any such thing. It’s because there really isn’t all that much going on these days. We avoid the highway whenever possible due to the mind boggling amount of traffic, said traffic being composed of a mind boggling amount of brain dead idiots. The highway at times looks and feels like some sort of demolition derby is under way. Simply no point in venturing out, especially on the weekends, or any time during the week, if it can be avoided. So, one of the things I can putter away at and then share is the creation of the above mentioned videos and audio recordings. It gives me something to write about. So, I will keep on keeping on, using my music to as filler for my section of this letter. That leads me to think about our other contributors. I want to thank Greg for doggedly coming up with his column each and every week. I want to thank Russ for his always entertaining contributions. A quick thanks to Karl for his once in a while contribution. Carol & Al occasionally send something, thats great, do it more often if you can. Rosy often responds to the letter. Thats really great too. Kyra and Olivia try whenever they are hear. That’s pretty cool. Nova Scotia Sus gets around to it once in a while. Again, a big thank you. BC Sue gets around to it once in a while, thank you. All for the purpose of entertaining and informing the group. So, to the rest of you, give it a try. You’d be doing the readers a favor by mixing it up a bit, sharing a new or different perspective. It’s all interesting.

As I will be stating below, I’ve done another audio recording (not a video this time), the kind I like to do with added harmony tracks and added instrumentation. For some time now my old electric base guitar has been showing it’s age. The neck and body are as good as they were 40 years ago, which is just about perfect. But, the electronics and pickups have seen better days. They are noisy and troublesome. They need to be replaced once I can find a good luthier to do the job (or Ryan once things stop being all crazy and he can work on it or hand it off to his boss's luthier which would be kind of cool). Either way, for now it is relegated to being fancy decor in the corner of my music area. In it’s place and perhaps just for the fun of it or perhaps just because I could, I purchased something a bit different a few weeks ago...a Gold Tone Micro-Base. This thing is a hollow body acoustic base, meaning it has a hollow body just like any acoustic guitar, and, it is the size of a baby guitar, and, its a 4-string base. To make it even more different, it has RUBBER strings. Those rubber strings make it a bit different to play and gives it an almost upright base sound. The tiny little acoustic base takes a bit of getting used to but sounds great though my base amp and through my recording software. There is one little trick needed to play it as the rubber string tend to have a lot of friction, as rubber does, making it hard to smoothly move my fingers over the strings. The trick is to apply baby power to the strings and the fingers, then, presto, smooth as that proverbial baby’s butt. Rather than go into much more detail, here’s a picture of the baby base beside my full size Martin guitar. Size definitely does not matter, at least not with guitars.

I had posted my video of a song last week, Neon Moon, and at the time I promised I’d get around to doing an audio version of said song. In an audio version, I use Logic Pro audio software to do the recording. I can lay down lead and harmony tracks as well as instrumental tracks and mix and balance them. Well, guess what? I was able to find a few quiet hours to put down the vocal tracks and thats all that matters because the vocals are input through a mic and that requires quiet, or at least as close as I can get. The instruments input through their own internal pickups so they are ‘closed’ to external noise. So, I’ve managed to do my audio version of last week’s video song just for you guys. And, as stated above, I’ve made enjoyable use of my new little toy, the micro-base guitar for the base track. Hope you enjoy, just click this link. And, for comparison if wanted, the link to the video version is just below this link. Oh, one last thing...this is not meant to be a contest between the two versions as they are completely different in the way they are put together. It’s just a comparison.

Neon Moon – the audio version

Just for comparison, or to refresh the old memory, here’s a link again to the video version ‘featured’ in last week’s letter.

Neon Moon – the video version from last week.

doug

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From Russ

Things happen

They say things happen in three’s. I tend to believe they do.

1st accident - shaved off my beloved old beard of 49 years.

2nd accident - ink in my boiling corn.

3rd accident - almost ‘hatched’ a chicken.

Third one needs some explaining and I caution, some of you may find this one offensive.

Putting eight eggs on to “hard boil”, I went into the living room to watch the evening news. I accidently fell asleep.

“POP!”

“BANG!”

“SMACK!”

What the hell is that? “Whose there?” I holler, thinking someone’s banging on my door (the bell doesn’t work). Then I smell it – the eggs!

Rushing (yeah, right) to the kitchen I beheld an awful scene! Egg in various stages of eruption – pieces clinging to the vent above the stove, chunks perfectly wedged into the electrical burners – Oops! Just stepped into some scrambled eggs! Thank goodness the floor’s clean – can still scrape it up and eat it while it’s warm.

Now, most of you would simply throw out the 4 still remaining in the pot. Can’t – they’re all cracked open and stuck

Permanently to the burnt-dry pot. These, I’m safe to eat – I’ll carefully pry them, one-by-one off the bottom and “YIPE!!” Can’t be! But there’s no mistaking an embryo!! On closer examination I can make out part of a wing and dark grey body of a ‘full-term’ chick. The pitiful creature has made its way only part-way out of the cracked open shell. What to do? Don’t have one of those fancy cameras you kids carry (all the time!). Can’t eat it – it’s dead, of course. But-then, who eats live chicken? One shouldn’t waste food I’m thinking, as I dump the whole menagerie into the garbage.

Hope I haven’t turned you off eggs, but for me – hmmm – it’ll be ‘some time’ before I can look an egg in the eye.

Russ

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From Nova Scotia Sus

We are having a very different summer here in Nova Scotia. Everyday for weeks hot and humid and no rain. In order to save our garden we bought an electric Sprinkler Pump and set it up down at the pond. After hooking up 125 feet of hose to reach the garden we were very impressed with the volume of water it produced. The pond is fairly low from the dry summer but not that low that we can't use it. It looks like we saved our garden just in time.

Another project we started is building a root cellar/ cold room to store our

vegetables over winter. It's actually not below ground but added on to the back of our house. Last Saturday we harvested our garlic crop and have them drying in our bunk house. Later I will braid the garlic into bunches of 10 bulbs to sell to my customers. What I don't sell will hang in our new cold room. I started sending braids of garlic to family members as Christmas presents...they love it and it solves the problem on what to get them for Christmas.

Lately we have been seeing lots of wildlife around here. I guess the dry weather is affecting them too. A bear found our burial ground for older chickens that have passed on. We thought we did a good job burying them but not so. I came out our back door to head over to the chicken coop and stopped in my tracks when I saw him. He stared at me as if to say you caught me in the act. His face was all dirty. Another day I was faced with a skunk and a very pretty one. Luckily it was just curious and did not feel threatened.

And yesterday a coyote ran out in front of my car and jumped into the woods.

Also the deer are everywhere. I put those deer whistles on my bumper and so far I haven't hit any.

Eight weeks ago we purchased 12 day old laying hens and 18 meat birds. We raised them together and as time went by the meat birds grew more than twice the size of the laying hens. As it almost always happens 3 of the meat birds died leaving us with 15 to be taken to the butcher. They are now in our freezer. The laying hens are a great success not losing any of them. One turned out to be a rooster to our surprise. All the chickens looked the same except the rooster grew faster and was very bossy. We found a good home for him at a friends farm. I didn't want to deal with a bossy chicken.

I hope everyone is doing well and staying safe,

Sus

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THE ONTARION REPORT

Hello everyone!

Well, it’s that time once again to blab about whatever comes into mind this week. I don’t usually write much about what’s happening in and around the Kitchener area but as the Ontarion states, it’s a report so maybe I’ll try to write about local stuff this time. The city hall has announced that they’re going to spend $12,000,000.00 on a new front entrance to the city hall building on King St. I could give them any number of good projects that could use that funding for the good of more people than use the fountain or skating rink that’s already out in front of City Hall. I can’t for the life of me see spending that much money on rebuilding the same items that are already there! What a waste of cash if you ask me. That’s the point indeed, the city council hasn’t taken the time to ask me or the other taxpayers of Kitchener What they would like to have out front of City Hall. I’m sure the existing fountain and rink would last another 15 or more years so WHY in the name of heck do the councillors of Kitchener think they have the right to just waste that much money on a duplicate entrance to City Hall. Do they and the Mayor just want another big money item to attach their names to so they can brag about their legacy in the future? They already have the ION Train system that’s a waste and something that the taxpayers will have the burden of paying for the next 40 years! They didn’t ask the citizens if they even wanted the ION in the first place but we are now stuck with that burden for the sake of the city and regional councillors way into the future! It’s time the city governors started to ask the taxpayer’s opinions before throwing away millions of our tax dollars!

They could take the $12,000,000.00 from the city hall project and done something to help the homeless people that are stuck on the streets of Kitchener and area, Now that would be worthwhile and something to be proud to attach their names to in the Future on a plaque inside the foyer of City Hall!

It seems that every group of people that has a grudge or feel they have an axe to grind is organizing protests these days! If it’s not the Black Lives Matter (which of course I agree with) marches and demos that dominate the news it’s the Indigenous people wanting to reclaim the land that is and has been for years a spot in the middle of Kitchener that we call Victoria Park! Why didn’t they lay claim to that land when the park was first established? I understand that they have a treaty that was signed two hundred years ago that gave them claim to the land aligning both sides of The Grand River for Two Miles width on either side. I guess we’d have to ask the people that signed that treaty why it wasn’t adhered from the moment it was signed! Did the indigenous people not object to the establishment of the cities of Kitchener Waterloo and Cambridge two hundred years ago before the size of these cities got out of control? One would think there should have been uprisings back then to stop the building of Cities on Indigenous land? To wait 200 years to start bitching about it seems a tad too long!

The one other complaint that has arisen lately is the demand that we defund the police forces around the nation both here in Canada and the USA as well! Now in my opinion that’s one foolish demand for sure. I’m sure that if they take away major funding from the police forces it wouldn’t take long before the rise in the crime rate would have those same people screaming because the police weren’t doing their jobs! I’d say you can’t have it both ways people! The same people that are asking for the defunding of the police demand that there be a police presence attending their demonstration rallies to give them security while chanting and voicing their demands against the very police that are asked to be there to keep the peace! It seems to me that the very reason the minorities are the majority of prison inmates is because they are the ones committing the majority of crimes in our cities! Not that I’m blaming the minority supporters or being a bigot here but, there is a reason for the imbalance in the prisoner population in both the USA and Canada! I’ve always thought that most of the race problems were south of the 49th parallel and lower! We here in Canada have been exposed to that problem to a much lesser degree. However, with the advent of the computerization of our society we’ve become more aware of the number of racial problems that we have here in Canada and many of us Canadians of all races are becoming much more involved in the causes that are in the news these days. To say it doesn’t happen here in KW, is a misnomer for sure! We are beginning to have such demonstrations right here in Kitchener and to deny that is to burry our heads in the sand. I would like to think that City Hall would recognize these problems and spend our taxpayer dollars on solving such situations rather than throw the millions away on less important subjects!

Maybe the councillors and mayor should take their heads out or the sand too!

It’s time to wake up to many of the problems facing society these days rather than forging a legacy for their name’s sake!

Wake up City Hall!

I sincerely hope I haven’t offended anyone with this weeks Ontarion, just trying to state some well known and important facts that face us right here in Kitchener!

That’s about all I have for this week folks!

Thanks for tuning in and I’ll look forward to talking to you all again next time in The Ontarion Report!

Bye for now … Greg

PS: Something to Think About>

I think I’ve given you all enough to think about in the main text of this week’s Ontarion!

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