Issue #966
Including:
From Russ
From Nova Scotia Sus
The Ontarion

Hi All,

I kept waiting for something interesting to happen so I could write about it in this week’s issue but to no avail. Nothing of note has happened. So that leaves me with the problem of writing something interesting about nothing. Ok. ‘Nothing’ is an interesting concept and could be approached from several directions, most of which I’m not qualified to write about. Nothing is the opposite of something, obviously, and yet where you assume there to be ‘nothing’, there is most often definitely ‘something’. It seems to be more valid as a concept than a finding, and often prone to change. So, I’ll not be writing very much for this week but it will be more than nothing, hopefully qualifying as something.

So, here is a something that is totally wrong because it’s totally backward…. You know how the water taps at your kitchen sink or the bathroom sinks and tubs have to hot water tap marked with red and the cold water tap marked blue? Well, no, nope, wrong designation. In real life blue is hotter than red. The blue end of the energy spectrum is the hot end, the red end is the cooler end. Just think about the flame in a gas stove etc or color signatures of stars. We got our water taps wrong. Kinda’ makes you wonder what else we take for granted as right but is totally incorrect.

On another note, I quite often go for a walk with our neighbor. He’s the guy who’s dog thinks our old dog was her mother and seems to think we are her grandparents. Zoe (the dog) often comes knocking on our door and Neil knows exactly where to find her. Anyway, there are trails all over the place around here and just to be different we headed for one that is just over on the other side of the university, about a 5 minute drive from here. A very short distance down the trail from the trail-head is a foot bridge over Ring Creek. As you know, this area is very rugged with raging streams coming down the mountains. This foot bridge crosses the wild waters of the creek at a deep, vertical canyon. It’s an area I hadn’t been to since we used to do a lot of dirt biking years ago. When you look down at the swirling water you can see how anyone slipping into one of these streams would never be found, there are water falls, deep pools cut into the rock by the force of the water, and so on. One of the things that the local search and rescue people keep telling hikers etc is to NEVER try to follow a stream down hill in order to find your way out if you are lost. You would end up deep down in some ravine (like the one under the bridge) and not be able to get out, and not be able to be found. We regularly hear of lost hikers who didn’t head those warnings. However, we were not lost, we were just marveling at the majesty of the ruggedness of this area from the vantage point of the foot bridge.

For this week’s musical interlude I’ve chosen another Ian Tyson song called ‘Cowboy Pride’. This is a story song in that the song tells a story. The premise is that an old cowhand writes a letter (no email back then) to a longtime friend to let him know how he is letting his cowboy pride get in the way of doing the right things with his life. This friend has bumped heads with the large conglomerate cow company he had worked for and is now gone from that job. He has also left his wife. The writer of the letter is telling him to not make some of the mistakes he has made and get his life back together. It’s a bit of a sad song, a bit of cowboy poetry. It’s a song I tend to like. Hope you do too.

Cowboy Pride

doug

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From Russ

Overwhelmed!

This is not my usual time or day to submit a Column for the Great Squamidian, but tomorrow there is a pretty 37 year old VON coming to my home again to clean, pack, and bandage the ulcer on my heel that is in it’s second year of refusing to heal. (I noticed she had a nice ‘bottom’ as she was leaving my kitchen the first time). Looking forward to her returning.

Also there is a kind gentleman arriving early in the morning to present me with about 400 more photographs he’s scanned and loaded into/onto a ‘memory stick’, any or all of which must be studied to see if they are relevant to the book I’ve been working on to keep busy during this “Dampenic”! .

Also, the ‘hearing’ person phoned to see if I’m satisfied with my new ‘ears’, I said I was, now they want me to come into their ‘parlor’ to have me come up with the 5 grand they cost.

Also, the guy who sprays my head and shoulders with ‘rocket fuel’ to burn the ‘becel’ (sp?) cancers, phoned to remind me to come into his ‘parlor’ on Monday, November 30th. I said, I’d be there.

Also, the men just finished (it’s 5PM and nearly dark) the Fall clean-up of my extra-large yard of extra wet leaves. They charge $90 per hour, and it took the two men six hours to finish.

Also, this morning while getting laser treatment on my feet to lesson the ‘diabetic neuropathy’ pains which I enjoy immensely, the doctor said happily, “You may be having ‘thrombosis’ (spelling?) in your leg”.

Is that bad? I asked in all innocence. To which he answered happily, “You have a choice – you will either have a heart attack or a stroke”. That’s nice, says I sarcastically. When can I expect these damning choices, I asked.

“Who’s your ‘family doctor?”. I told him his name, adding, I don’t like him.

“Like him or not- that’s where you start – why don’t you like him?”

I related the incident which happened in 2017 where the doc in question gave me a shot of something into my left shoulder which nearly killed me. And when I came to, I said I must have had a “reaction” to the shot.

“No, you didn’t have a reaction – you were just over-reacting”. That’s when I wished I still had my 12 gage shotgun – I felt like giving HIM a shot! And it wouldn’t be in his arm!

No, Rosemary, I’m NOT whining. Nor am I ‘winning’. My other ulcer is acting up, it’s in the place where the sun don’t shine – the nurse knows about it, but being too shy to let her have a look, I lied and said it comes and goes – right now it’s gone. (Grumble, grumble, grumble)

Can’t stand sitting any longer – going to bed.

Your very old Uncle Russ.

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From Nova Scotia Sus

Good times in the Maritimes is certainly changing. Up till recently we had very low cases of the virus and felt pretty lucky but now things are catching up with us. Halifax and surrounding area is showing huge jumps in numbers of cases, some travel related and some from careless people hanging out in bars and parties. We may be looking at another lock down. Newfoundland and Prince Edward Island have cut off from the Atlantic bubble we created. Luckily we live in a rural area and our lifestyle doesn't include lots of people. I am still cutting hair at my home. My clients are all older and retired and above all do not want to get sick. So for now we feel quite safe.

Our weather is holding out well with an exceptional summer and fall this year. Too bad we didn't have tourists this year to enjoy it. We have been doing some clearing of land and burning brush on rainy days. Some of our spruce trees have reached their limit and are of more use as firewood besides we like open spaces where the sun can shine in.

My sister, Michelle and her husband Chris, have moved from B.C. to Alberta this past fall. They sold their condo in New Westminster and bought a house and property in the town of Bashaw, Alberta. They are so excited to move to a small community and be fairly close to their son, Seth, who lives in Fort MacMurray. They are so happy not even the early snow has bothered them. Michelle has started writing a weekly report, quite like the Squamidian, and sending it out to their family and friends. She is an amazing writer as I have discovered. I may see if she might like to contribute sometime, you can feel the energy in her writings.

I hope everyone is keeping well and staying safe. Keep up the good reports.

Sus

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THE ONTARION REPORT

Hello Everyone!

With most of the snow from this past weeks storm almost gone now it makes me wonder how long it’ll be before we get bashed with another heavy heap of the white stuff! Guess we’ll just have to wait and see! I’m sure many of you will remember back to the 50’s and 60’s when we had so many bad snow storms it was hard to keep up with the clearing of the streets and sidewalks. I remember having so much snow piled on the sides of our street that there was only one lane of drivable pavement on the street and even it was covered with about 6” of snow! I also remember that the amount of snow on the boulevards was so high that we could almost touch the wires of the telephone and hydro by standing on top of the piles. We were only kids but that much snow was a lot of fun to have on the ground! We would get together with the Floyd St gang and make huge snow forts on each other’s front yards. Then there would be snowball fights going on constantly after school each day until dark most times. We even had some completely closed in igloos that made the neighbourhood look like an Eskimo village at times. The ideal forts were made from packing snow into wooden corned beef boxes that my dad had brought home from his job at Burns Meats. The boxes produced great blocks of snow with which to build our forts. In those days, there was so much snow that even after building a fort, there was never any green grass showing through like you would see today after rolling a ball up to make a snowman!

If this coming winter is anything like they are predicting, we may just see a throwback to the storms of those days! I don’t know if any of you will remember this but there used to be what we called “The Rag Man” and he would come around the neighbourhood in a horse drawn open wagon and collect old clothes and other rags about once a month or so. His wagon would be piled high with sacks of rags and old clothes etc. I’m not sure what he ever did with the stuff he collected but he sure picked up a lot of material from all the houses he visited. In the winter time, he still came around but his wagon had skis on it to allow it to be easily pulled by his horse! He used to be wearing the heaviest long overcoat I’d ever seen and an old fur hat made out of rabbit fur. He wasn’t the only horse drawn vehicle in the neighbourhood, we also had a milk man by the name of “Shorty” who worked for Maple Lane Dairy and he drove a horse drawn covered wagon to deliver our milk each week. When I worked out of head quarters of the Fire Dept on Weber St in Waterloo, I was surprised to find that Shorty was the milkman that delivered to that fire hall. Of course he had converted from horse drawn wagon to a “Divco” delivery truck for his rounds. That was in the mid 70’s but he was still making the rounds with his milk still on Ice! It was amazing how things had progressed but still had some aspects of it that remained the same. You would have thought his truck would be refrigerated by then but he still had the blocks, of ice on the crates of milk even then. Oh well, nowadays the home delivery of such things as milk are non-existent and are only a distant memory to old fogies like me! LOL! It’s fun to look back on such memories and pass them on to the younger generation. It’s a matter of history now! I think it’s important to let the youth of today know what things were like 60 or more years ago so the days of our youth are not forgotten. This lets the youth of today realize how much things have improved and just how good they have life today! Maybe stories of this kind will show them just how good they have things today because of the efforts of bygone “pioneers”! Just think, where would the youth of today be if Alexander Graham Bell hadn’t made that first phone call in Brantford Ontario?

That’s about all for this week folks!
Thanks for tuning in and I’ll look forward to talking to you all again next week in The Ontarion Report!

Bye for now … Greg

PS: Something To Think About>
The great inventions of the past 50 years and more!

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