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Issue #975
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From Russ

The Ontarion

Hi All,

Would you believe we’ve actually had our first taste of winter this week. It actually snowed, but just a bit. There is no frost in the ground and the temp didn’t drop enough for a few centimeters to stay around long but for a little while it looked nice and bright and white. But getting back to there being no frost in the ground and very few episodes of freezing temps, we have a problem. The buds have started. My blueberries are starting to bud, the rhododendrons are getting ready to burst into flower. The alder tree branches have turned red, a sign of them budding. Our grass never stopped being green. What it has been mostly is just wet with constant waves of rain pumping in off the ocean and no arctic outbreaks at all. But thats ok, the sooner winter snow doesn’t come, the sooner we don’t have to shovel it.

I don’t know about any body else, but for us the days have all blended into a ‘sameness’. Each day is just a repeat of the one before, we are all living ‘Groundhog Day’ (the movie). With lockdowns getting tighter there is no hope at all of seeing the kids or hanging out with friends. We must do what is right and hunker down but it sure gets tiresome after a while. Masks are an important tool we all need to use but having said that, I did come to realize that they don’t work as well as I had hoped. Seems that no matter where I go wearing a mask, I still get recognized. Yes, I’m being silly and yes, I’m rambling but there is not much going on and not much to write about. So, my entry for this week is short and pointless. However, I do have another video for you and if a picture is worth a thousand words, a video must be worth gazillions.

To that end, how about another Ian Tyson number? There is really no reason not to so we may as well go ahead and do it. He wrote this song while on tour in Japan back in the early 70’s, shortly after going out on his own after Ian & Sylvia broke up. For some reason its fairly obscure which is a polite way of saying almost no one has ever heard of it let alone ever heard it. Thats a bummer because its a pretty good song, being about a trucker who spends a lot of time on the road and hopes his ‘honey’ will still be there when he gets home. So, here’s my bare-bones video to add something different to this endless sameness.

Warn To A Frazzle

doug

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From Russ

Tread lightly > > >

Always wondered what she carried in her extra-large bag.

“Hand me my bag, will you, please?” she would ask as I was driving her somewhere. Now, she always set it in the back seat as it was too large to sit on her lap. Obediently I would reach into the rear of the car with my right arm, grab the big bag and lift it into the front, trying hard not to hit her on the head – sometimes I missed.

“WHAT in HELL do you carry in there?” I would complain wincing with pain as I tore some more ligaments in my right shoulder.

“Oh, stop your complaining” was her usual sympathetic response. Looking into her bag was taboo – reaching into her bag was a hanging offense! But, she mellowed with age and sometimes would ask ME to search for something she knew she’d put in her bag – but, now couldn’t find. (I used to bravely say out loud, that anything dropped into her bag was lost forever!) But, I DID discover what all she kept in that XXXL size sack. Here’s a partial list:

Duplicates of everything in our medicine chest (at home and in the cottage);

Everything needed for her hair – net, pins, combs, rain-hat, kerchief, hairbrush, shampoo, dye (to hide the grey ones now showing up regularly), and other objects used to keep her hair in place should she suddenly be swept away in the wind!.

House keys, car keys, office keys, cottage keys, mail-box keys – and keys for cars we no longer had, keys for locks that had been changed years ago, and keys she could not identify, but should keep – just in case. And, Aha! Just as I’d suspected – two bricks in the very bottom (for ballast in case the bag got to floating).

And finally, to her credit – no weapons; her mother frequently carried a ‘ladies pistol’ – an “Ivor Johnson” hand-gun especially for the dainty, wee hands of a fair damsel. Five shot, .38 Cal., break-action, with safety built into the trigger- guard.

Next week, if you are at all interested, I’m relating a very sad, funny, natural event pertaining to a woman’s purse, and a woman’s temper!

PS Sorry ladies, but these tales MUST be told.

Your old Uncle Russ.

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Here's some space that not one wants
Can't seem to give it away
Be we'll keep hoping that someone will write
A story for another day.

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THE ONTARION REPORT

Hello everyone!

Have you ever gotten so into a television series that you could not tear yourself away from it until it was finished? Well that’s what happened to me last night. I usually go up to my office at 8pm to start writing my Ontarion on a Thursday evening but, last night, we started watching a recommended series called “The Stranger” and it was like a good book that one just could not put down! It’s a British TV series that Carole’s cousin in England told her about and she was right, it was terrific! I won’t tell you the details, that would spoil it for anyone that wants to watch it. Here it was on Rogers Cable so if you can look it up, do so, you won’t regret it I’m sure! There were a total of 8 “1hr” shows in all and we started watching them at 5:30pm and finally finished the set at 1:30am. It’s not often that we get hooked on a tv show but this one was exceptional! Consequently we were so engrossed in this series that I forgot all about going up to write my weekly column to send to Doug. It was about 10:30 pm when I realized that I hadn’t written my Ontarion. So I Quickly fired off an e-mail to Doug to let him know my Ontarion wouldn’t reach him until sometime Friday morning. Oh well, no big deal guess as long as he gets it before it’s time to send it to all members. In fact I sometimes wonder if most of our readers would even miss my babbling should it stop after all these years! However, here it is again and I sincerely hope you’re all still there to read it!

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On another note, I was out to do some much-needed grocery shopping yesterday and encountered another incident that was quite disturbing to me. I was standing in line to take my turn at the checkout and two fellows behind me were laughing and yapping to each other and one of them stepped past me toward a table filled with yellow packages of crackers and as he walked around the table he dragged his hand across a good portion of the packages. I noticed he wasn’t wearing a mask as all of the other patrons were and it really irritated me to that he was touching so much of the product with his hands with no regard or intent to purchase them. So, I took it upon myself to ask him why he’d be dragging his hand across the pile of product! He looked at me and said “I can’t wear a mask because it makes it hard for me to breathe! I said, “I’m no doctor but it appears to me that you can breathe just fine!” I then said, “Have you no regard for other peoples safety and health?” To which he replied “Why?’ I said, “You were just touching half the product on that table and you have no gloves on as well as no mask! He laughed and said, “So what I can’t wear a mask!” I realized at that moment that there was no reasoning with him and I just shook my head and took my turn at the checkout! It was a stern reminder of how some people just don’t give a damn about others and their safety during this pandemic we’re in the midst of! So the lesson I learned from that little incident was, when you’re shopping, be sure to pick the item that is the farthest back on the shelf if you want to have the one less likely to have been contaminated by a careless shopper! Give me a break! Are people really that ignorant? The answer to that question is “YES!” they are really that ignorant! It’s no wonder we can’t get this virus under control! God help our beautiful country and world in total! With fools such as the one I encountered yesterday, will we ever get rid of the virus? I hope so but it’s going to be a long process with people like that continuing to ignore the rules that have been put in place to stop the spread! Let’s hope for better days ahead!

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 week in The Ontarion Report!

Bye for now … Greg
PS: Something to Think About>Please be considerate of others and be sure to follow the rules to help stop the spread of Covid-19!

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Take Care And Be Safe
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The articles in these issues are the sole property of the persons writing them and should be respected as such.