December on the Runway.

 We went out for dinner last night and it was blissful. A new team has moved into place in running the hall and they are really making some fine changes. This event was a lasagna and salad main course (and bring some dessert) and it was themed as thanks the workers for plugging through two big dinners – 250 people and up, and that is a lot of potatoes to peel. Not to mention a lot of plates to clean. Some years ago we used to have a Christmas dinner for the hall workers; my recollection is that we sent out for Chinese food, but I am not sure of that. What I am sure of is that Mike, who is both chair and chief cook, with one helper, made the lasagna for 30 or so of us. And had some left over. As JG and I exited, I could hear him saying, plaintively, that everyone should take some home lest he end up eating it all week. Anyway, I got to hang out with the whole gang without the angst, if that makes sense. And I made brownies for my dessert contribution; maple free.

 It is just about time to dig out the Christmas cards and list and boxes of wrapping and tablecloths and all that. Looks as if the Festive Dinner is going to be here, as the best logistics choice. I would be really worrying except that I do have a fine, fine daughter planning to be here over the holiday; I have every intention that she will be the one hauling the turkey in and out of the oven. And if anyone wants ham as well as turkey, that person can go over to the cabin and clean and turn on the stove and lug the meat back and forth. I might exert myself so far as to put cutlery on the table and supervise the gravy. Whom am I kidding? I will be decorating and wrapping and, the daughter being a fine negotiator, making aspic. And buying chocolate. But I am thankful that I have raised two excellent cooks. And acquired a third in the ED’s man, who turns in and cleans the carcass every year.

 Speaking of men, mine is, I think, out in the kitchen planning to make chocolate chip cookies. He has taken an interest in baking lately and has the chocolate chip recipe nailed. The oatmeal raisin recipe is coming, but molasses and ginger cookies did not work out as he had planned on his first attempt. Gosh, I guess there will have to be more tries. Tsk. Actually, tsk it is. Not only the goose is getting fat. I really need to lose some weight and this cookie kick is not helping because I have no willpower and keep helping myself which is not helping …. . I need to stop. The snacking and the sentence. Wait till Grammarly sees that one.

 I will add some pictures of Chris’s beautifully decorated party tables when she posts them. The hall has not looked so good for years; she even has the bulletin boards tamed. And we have all new and much lighter tables for the dinners. But the kitchen floor is still to renovate and that is going to be Horrible. I will report, if I survive.

 Fellow writing nuts, this you will not believe. Grammarly corrected “Whom” to “Who”. And it wants ‘renovate’ in the passive voice. Hmm. That is fair.

Three days old.

 

It is a Sunday night in dark and cold November, and I am waiting for JG to arrive home with pizza for our supper. A bit unusual as I mostly try to put on a fairly formal Sunday Dinner – a more planned and elaborate meal than what would appear during the week. But we had that dinner yesterday, with guests, and I really felt that I could not face Cooking (note the Capital Letter indicating an Heroic Effort) two days in a row. And so, when asked what I had planned for dinner, I plaintively asked for pizza. We have to drive into the village to get it as the delivery service for our pizza does not come this far out into the bush. Or, not normally. Once my ingenious brother-in-law persuaded the guys that run the place to bring a birthday gift of a big pie to JG. It was well, as they say, received.

So was the dinner last night, as far as I could tell. Most of the cake was either consumed or sent home with our guests, and the main course disappeared quickly and thoroughly. JG loves to have people in for dinner. Me, not so much, although he does help out a lot if we do.

Hiatus

It is now Monday night, and I am warm because the two vests that I ordered on line, with more than a bit of trepidation, arrived today and they both fit or are close enough. One quilted ‘puffer’ vest and one plush vest with, I am informed, a telephone pocket. Since JG uses a shirt pocket and the next generation down uses the back pockets of their jeans, I am not really sure about this. As well, phones are supposed to sit on a table or be attached to a wall and not ring during supper time, tell your friends … yeah. That was then, for sure. There is also a thing, I am told, called a butt dial. JG does not need this, because he can make a phone call by mistake with his index finger. As can I. If I do put the phone into this pocket, as well, I will probably forget where it is.

It is the last week in November. It is almost That Time again. You know, the time to figure out what to give all of your loved ones for Christmas. Something that will surprise and delight them, without being too hard on the bank balance. Something different. ‘Is this my shirt’, JG asks me, each Joyous Noel, no matter how cleverly I try to wrap it. Thank goodness for the ED’s significant other, who researches and buys on line for me. That he also carves turkey is an added attraction. Even though he does better at Wordle than I do.

Wednesday

Time does fly when you are having fun. A few years back I had a stent put into my aorta to repair an aneurysm, and each year I am given an appointment to trek into Ottawa an have an ultrasound to check the state of the repair. (Just in passing, I do wonder what would be done if the repair was deteriorating. No, not thinking about that.) The Civic campus. With the parking garage where the Handicapped spaces are always full. Yesterday there was a lineup to get into the garage and so JG dropped me at the front door and drove off to park elsewhere. There was no elsewhere. He got into the line, finally made it into the garage, went right to the top to park (and found there a group of wheelchairs covered in snow) and was just leaving the car when I called him to say that I was all finished and could leave. And it cost him money to get out of the garage. Unfortunately, the ultrasound check is a very specific one and cannot be done locally. I hope the new Civic site will be easier to use.

It is the full moon, either last night or tonight. The Beaver moon, I think. It sets on an acute angle to the right of the front of the house and throws fascinating shadows. At 4:00 am. Sigh.

If I don’t quit babbling and post this, it will be Thursday. Besides, I have to go and bake a pan of brownies to take to a Hall supper tonight.

Mary, get OFF the computer, for goodness sake.

Bye.

Cake

 I have just finished making a birthday cake, with double icing. The events we are celebrating took place in August and September, and we usually try to have a cake party between the two dates. But the owners of the birthdays bogged off to Portugal for a fine trip, and we are only now getting to the celebration.

I make maple icing, mostly. Unless someone insists on chocolate, maple goes with most flavours of cake. And this recipe is both easy to make and easy to spread. I may have posted it before, but it is worth doing again. Cream six tablespoons of butter at room temperature together with six tablespoons of maple syrup, also ideally at room temp or only slightly below. Add two cups of icing sugar, half a cup at a time, in a mixer, beating well. Icing dust will adorn your jeans, so wear old ones. Spread. Chill. Done.

Chilling

A few years back, the ED gave me for Christmas a fine set of decorating bags and spouts in multiple sizes and configurations. This set replaced one that I bought in our first year of marriage, probably almost exactly sixty years ago. (I confess that I have not tossed out the old set because it is still good for some uses and easier to clean than the bag for a very small amount.) My cakes look pretty good, if I do have to compliment myself.

This is very satisfactory because before I found the maple recipe, I spent what seemed like endless hours struggling with a milk-softened icing recipe that did not spread well and ended up full of crumbs and looking crumby. And Jim’s mother’s cakes always looked wonderful, professional and delicious. One year my mother and I struggled with a cake for the ED during sugaring season at the cabin and ended up with a lopsided, although probably edible, mess. Then Mrs. G senior swanned in, and produced one of her gorgeous cakes. My mother and I very quietly hid our effort in the storage room to eat much later. It tasted fine, but Mrs. G’s cakes did too. Sigh. Since I switched to this beaten maple icing, my cakes, although not to Mrs. G’s standard, are acceptable.

And I have made, over the years, a lot of birthday cakes. Especially for the grandkid, whose nut allergy precluded her from a bought cake. One year when she was very young, she said, wistfully, that she would like a cake with roses similar to the ones she saw in the bakery. And Granma rose (sorry) to the occasion and produced flowers that, with a little imagination could be seen to be roses.

Happiness can involve pink icing roses, even small and inferior ones.

Mooning About

With thanks and respect, Beatrix Potter.

 It is 4:49 pm, my screen tells me. And it is almost entirely dark outside. The tree branches are still visible as black silhouettes against a deep blue-black sky. I am going to go out and check for the moon as I think the cloud we had earlier has cleared off. It is, I think, a waxing moon. Will check. Will report.

“The Moon's current phase for today and tonight is a Waxing Gibbous phase. Visible through most of the night sky setting a few hours before sunrise. This phase is when the moon is more than 50% illuminated but not yet a Full Moon. The phase lasts about 7 days with the moon becoming more illuminated each day until the Full Moon.” 

So much of the language around the lunar information is lovely. ‘A gibbous moon’ is what we will have tonight, with high shredded cloud occasionally obscuring it. A ghostly galleon, tossed upon cloudy seas. And ‘wax’ and ‘wane’ are also, for me, lovely words. They go back to the fourteenth century, at least, in written form. ‘Wax’ is from the Old English word, weaxan "to increase, grow". And if you are being poetic, you can use ‘wax’ still to mean ‘increase’, sort of. ‘He waxed eloquent in his description’, for instance.

And then we get modern. ‘Moonshot’ is abrupt and rough on the tongue. ‘Mooning’ someone is not only naughty, it is an ugly way to express dissent. Although it sure beats shooting. ‘Mooning about’ is dismissive, a downplaying of how someone, usually a young someone, is feeling. I am sure there are more, but I am not coming up with any of them. Reminders welcome.

I am feeling somewhat fraught this afternoon as I cleaned the [censored] Keurig coffeepot this morning. One puts a dedicated cleaning liquid through the machine, leaves it to soak and then rinses with nine, count them, nine 16 ounce cups of clean water. This flushing requires one to refill the reservoir several times and, afterwards, remove one's footprints from the floor where the water dripped and was walked in. The floor has not yet been wiped, even though I am.

However I am, as I write this, slurping down a fine cup of hot and tasty coffee. Before I go, again, to see if the moon has climbed high enough to be seen between the trees. 

Grammarly does not, of course, like ‘weaxan’. And the argument over comma placement wages on. 

Laundry Day Chez Me.

I will have to find a clothesline photo later.

 Laundry day today. It is now almost bedtime and I still have one load where I need to hang up the contents of the washer. My own fault for, I suppose, being overly obsessive about sorting. I confess, and I think I have done this before, so I will be brief, to being a bit over the top about how I do laundry. Sorting by both colours and water temperature. Hanging to dry. Ironing, including things like the dish towels. I really mourn being unable, any longer, to tote the baskets of wet laundry out of the basement and around the house to the outside clothesline. The linens smelled better that way. The cotton ironed more easily dried that way. I felt like a Good Person saving electricity that way.

Oh well. I can still obsess about recycling, washing out the containers and taking tops off and all that. And composting. And driving my hybrid car, although we ended up buying it almost by accident. It was the colour and configuration we were after, and when the salesperson said it was a hybrid, we just sort of shrugged and agreed. I love it.

I play games with it: how long can I keep you charging up on this downhill; how long can I keep you using electricity rather than gasoline; how many kilometres of each are on the dashboard data display. And all that. Plus, it has a fine, fine backup camera.

The only downside of this vehicular marvel is that it beeps plaintively at me from time to time for reasons that I cannot always sort out. If there is something behind me when the engine is in reverse, it beeps. Good. If I am too close to something at a certain speed, it beeps. Also good. But JG turns on some kind of gismo that is supposed to keep the steering holding the car in the middle of its lane, and if the tracker loses the outside line, beeps and beeps are heard.

Speaking of beeps, the internet went down this afternoon for no reason we could ascertain and just came back up a short while ago.

And that is my explanation for this really terrible post. Why did you not write it even if the internet was down, I hear you wondering. Well, laundry obsessing. And so we are summed up. And I still have two pairs of jeans and six socks to hang up. Inside. There’s a whole lot of sleet out there.

An Accidental Doze

 There’s another day gone by in which I did not post. And it was not a fun day, in spite of sun and a visit from the ED and her partner with goodies. I could not get myself moving, and when I did move, I hurt. Bad back day, coupled (if I can use that expression for this) with a sore knee day. There were, however, pumpkin spice butter tarts. Maybe my day, in retrospect, was coloured by the evening.

We chose (badly, for sure) to watch the latest episode of ‘The Crown’ to air on Netflix. Yuck. The whole season so far has been panned (I wonder why we use that expression to say the thing is terrible). This episode, in particular, has been criticized. (Hmm, better?) If you are going to watch it, this is a spoiler. The script has Diana’s ghost appearing to the Queen and Prince of Wales. And the boys’ pain is mined to its depths, unfairly, I think. If I were to act on my convictions, mainly that the whole series is in bad taste, I would not have watched it, but, hey, nosiness always wins out, like entropy,

We followed this downer with the first episode of ‘All the Light We Cannot See’. I have had this film praised to me, and I have read, struggling, the book on which it is based. But by the very nature of the story, it is full of pain and angst and nasty people shooting other people dead. Sigh. I am not sure what you would get out of the episode if you had not read the book. JG needed a lot of explication, but he often does. LOTR puts him to sleep, and he wakes up lost. Poor guy. Our taste in what to watch is not the same.

Muttering to myself. I wrote that this morning, and, for some reason, went to sleep IN my office chair, in front of the computer. I am not sure for how long. JG woke me coming in for lunch. After lunch, I zoned out again, this time with my blanket and pillow in my lounge chair. I have just now finished hurling the brownie mix pans into the oven and have until they are finished to finish this.

Yeah, November. A quiet month for sure. Talk about sleeping. Oh dear.

Sometimes You Just Have to Give Your Head a Shake

I am planning to attend a community lunch on Monday, the purpose of it being twofold; fun and planning for community halls. I just received an email asking that any of us bringing food should have a complete ingredient list with it. Sigh. I use a commercial pie crust, usually, for my signature maple cream pie. It is easier and faster than playing around with pie dough. I guess I could use the label on the container it comes in, but that would mean to admitting to the whole world that I am cheating, sort of, on my crust. (‘Grandma,’ I can hear a clear little voice asking. ‘Is this FROM SCRATCH or a mix?’) To give Little Miss the credit she is due, she was tuned in on ingredients because she has a potentially serious nut allergy. And I assume someone coming to this lunch has a concern. We had the same question before our hall’s roast beef dinner. But, the more I think about it, the more I think I may just make brownies instead of pie. Better for a group anyway, right? 

She who fights and runs away, lives to fight another day.

It is a grey, but very mild, day out there just now. The cloud moved in just after daybreak and the dawn light on the strips of cloud as they came was beautiful. It is now not-beautiful, with the odd left-over leaf floating by and everything in muted, dull tones. Not a day to entice oneself out for a walk, even if walking was easy. Yesterday, now, the sky was a pale blue and there was also the brighter blue of the jays as they gobbled up their daily corn ration. They are little blue pigs about the corn and only go to the silo feeders for sunflower seeds when they have eaten every corn scrap. It is the kind of day that sound carries easily, too. 

Yesterday morning I heard two gunshots in quick succession and later found out that the guys at the hunt camp next door got their third deer – for three of them. The Ministry of Natural Resources sets a limit on how many deer can be hunted in each season and in each segment of the province. ‘Deer tags’ are issued to applicants with hunting licences. It seems to work, as our deer population stays about the same year by year. When we first got this land in the mid 1970’s, deer were very, very rare, but now we see them frequently. There were three at our gate when I drove out on Tuesday. Although I love to watch them, and hate the thought of their being shot, I have to admit, in fairness, that our neighbours use or eat every scrap of the deer they take.

Hmm. How would that look on an ingredient list.

Speaking of lists, Grammarly really, really does not like doubled modifiers. And the nagging I am getting about my use of commas is horrendous. I would love to have a good argument with whomever set it up.

Rough Kindness

 I spent yesterday writing up the minutes of a Hall Committee meeting, one called not just for general business but to do a post-mortem on the big dinner we held last Sunday. The workers from the dinner were told of the meeting and welcomed to the first part of it to do their analysis. I boiled this down to a one-page summary, plus appended notes on changes of the quantity of some food items. It took me all day. At one point JG came by and looked at me swinging in my office chair and said ‘You will wear that chair out’. I was Not Amused.

What is it about teasing and being teased? Some people do it and take it gracefully and graciously. It can be especially funny and meaningful if people pull it on themselves. I cherish the memory of a practice of the basketball team I was on in high school. This was the first practice after the summer break. We were all sitting on a bench in a row, waiting to start, and one of us looked up and down the row and said “You are all darker than I am!”  We were. Carol was what would then have been called a ‘Black’, because although she was, I am quite sure, of mixed race and was pale skinned, she had the characteristic hair and features we identify as African=American. She had been, lucky creature, in an office job during the summer holiday and those of us sitting on both sides of her had mostly been either lifeguards at outdoor pools or facilitators for children at local parks. And, that being the 1950’s, we were all tanned. Heavily tanned. Carol’s legs were paler than those of most of the rest of us. We all howled with laughter. I still smile when I think about it.

Other times and other comments do not make me smile. Comments delivered with a smile can still be cutting and meant to hurt. I think women are more likely to do this than men are, but I am not sure why I think that. I have overheard groups of boys and men saying awful things to one another and everyone laughing. I am unable to interpret whether that level of ‘teasing’ is a bonding activity or as cruel as it sounds from outside the group. If, for instance, someone said “You dickhead” to me, I would not laugh. But women tend not to use that kind of rough ‘kindness’? It’s the catty little digs that I hear, things like ‘What a pretty dress, dear. You must have made it yourself. And it is how and when it is said that determines the degree of nastiness intended.

The way I read it, some people tease because they want to be closer but do not know how. My mother’s grandfather comes to mind. My mother always said she hated him as a child because he teased but later realized he wanted to engage her but knew no other way. In the case of JG and the chair, though, I am not sure whether he was delivering a message about how long I had been messing about with the minutes or just commenting. And so, I took it as a criticism, gently delivered as a tease. And I did not like the idea that it was a criticism. And did my imitation of Queen Victoria in old age.

It is now the next day and I am back at the computer. Again. Note that my office does not have a door. We shall see what the day brings forth.

Marching in Step

 Warning: Long and probably boring unless you like this stuff!

A Discussion of Cohorts and All That

Back when I was in my forties and had a lot of energy, I ‘went back to school’ – I took a two-year ‘certificate’ course in Advertising at a local Community College. It was quite a culture shock; the next oldest student to me was about 25, and one of them had been in the same high school class as my daughter. It was fascinating, being back in class at that age. I was a whole lot worse at memorizing things than my classmates, but better at synthesizing, at putting a concept together in a coherent form.

The discussion and teaching around ‘generational cohorts’ was an area that I really loved. I suspect that we have all, for most of our reading lives, run into tags like ‘baby boomers’, ‘the beat generation’, and on and on. Journalists generated and used them, but it is in marketing that you hear about it constantly. My age group was often dismissed, not even mentioned much, in these lessons. It puzzled me as to why at first but, as the discussions continued, it became clearer that older people did not spend enough money to warrant the attention paid to younger cohorts. Like that really old joke about the ladies of Boston who, when asked where they bought their hats responded that they ‘had their hats’.

At any rate, I have been keyed into this kind of analysis ever since I took the course. I am putting up this second discussion, really, in answer to two comments; one that the reader had not heard about the tag and another that the tag was unfair, or unpleasant. Not sure which. It was not, as I told her, my tag, but one I found online. And so, the following material is from information I found online in a quick search.

As follows: “Generational marketing strategies were born when marketers realized that each age group responded to different messages on different channels. Each generation uses social media differently, and some have more brand loyalty than others. Attempting to target all generations at once can result in ineffective marketing.” [1]

“This birth period links groups in time together, Karl Mannheim says in his seminal work on generations, because it “creates the potential for the development of a shared consciousness that unites and motivates people…[and] represents nothing more than a particular kind of identity of location, embracing related age groups embedded in a historical-social process.”[2]

“I have to acknowledge that it is easier to call for more generational research than it is to actually do it... As we all know, many people who are born within a fifteen-year or so period will differ a great deal in consumption behaviour, religious beliefs, political views, etc. This does not mean there are not key similarities in comparison to previous groups, but it does bring significant noise into data analysis.” [3]

 “The issue is that people confuse generations, which are specifically defined by birth dates, with "cohorts," a slightly more vague grouping of people based on common experiences.  The divisions we know and reference are usually hybrids of the two. Here's the breakdown of the terms used and what people mean by them.”

The Silent Generation, also known as: The Depression Cohort, The Silent Generation (later), the G.I. Generation (early), the post-war generation, the seekers. Approximate dates: Born 1901-1924 (early) 1924-1943 (later)

Defining characteristics: Grew up, and frequently were defined by their experiences growing up, during The Great Depression and World War 2. Those too young to serve, called "The Silent Generation," experienced the war as children or very young adults, and were described by the Time story that named them as "grave and fatalistic," inclined to work very hard, but not say all that much.

Baby Boomers, Also known as: Boom generation, hippies (subculture) Approximate dates: 1946-1964

Defining characteristics: Loosely, those born during the post war "baby boom" of the late '40s and ensuing decades, where birth rates significantly increased. Among their defining experiences were the first space flight, the assassination of John F. Kennedy, and later, the Vietnam War and Watergate. They developed some of the first counter-cultures, and though early boomers were known for their tendencies towards freedom and experimentation, that grew into a sense of disillusionment and distrust for the government for the latter members. In the '60s, the stereotype of the generation was a navel-gazing hippie, but now, the generation is more identified with those currently in power.”[4]

Enough, already. But the material does show some of the stronger issues we discussed.

What I tried to express in my post on the 11^th is that I felt, from my twenties on, a gap between myself and those just a few years younger. My nieces, only a few years younger than I was, seemed to be coping with a different culture than I had ever encountered. One of them, at the same university my husband and I had attended, really did describe a different ambiance entirely. Also, the teenagers I taught, in my first years out of university myself, dressed, spoke and acted in ways I never would have. Never would have been allowed to attempt, in fact, even if I had wanted to try.

The extreme example? The 1969 Sir George William University student riots.[5] « In 1969, Sir George Williams University students occupied the ninth-floor computer lab to protest how complaints of racism made by Black and Caribbean students had been mishandled and allegations dismissed. On February 11, after negotiations failed, university leaders called the police which resulted in the arrest of 97 students and long-lasting psychological, physical and social repercussions.”[6]. The nasty confrontation at Concordia (same university) last week appears to me to be not that different. I am not sure why it bothered me so much; the confrontation at the American Congress structured by Trump et al should have worried me more, but, no. Perhaps it is so distasteful because these students should be debating, thinking, researching, LISTENING to one another. Perhaps it is my age. I am just sad and discouraged.

 [1]  Citation lost but I think it is from Demographics of Age: Generational and Cohort Confusion by John Markert. Location is https://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/document?repid=rep1&type=pdf&doi=27fbe077046f565f827c24557e48ac3496f00ebd

[2] From: Generational research and advertising to various age cohorts by Charles R. Taylor

Pages 683-685 | Published online: 30 Aug 2021 Location is https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/02650487.2021.1959986

[3] From How To Know If You're Too Old To Call Yourself A Millennial by Max Nisen, https://www.businessinsider.com/definition-of-generational-cohorts-2013-5

[4] Nisen, ibid

[5] . Citation: https://www.concordia.ca/about/history/1969-student-protest.html.

[6] You can find the details of the incident at https://www.concordia.ca/about/history/1969-student-protest/timeline.html#:~:text=January%2026%2C%201969,-During%20the%20hearing&text=After%20several%20months%20of%20inaction,Hall%20Building You can find the details of the incident at https://www.concordia.ca/about/history/1969-student-protest/timeline.html#:~:text=January%2026%2C%201969,-During%20the%20hearing&text=After%20several%20months%20of%20inaction,Hall%20Building

Wearing my Poppy in Prose

 I am a member of a very small ‘cohort’, a cohort being the term used as people of a like age are characterized. I qualify as both a member of the Silent Generation and as a War Baby.  And I am the child of a father who served in the navy during almost all of WWII and its immediate aftermath. (He was discharged from service in 1946, skeletally thin and newly released from hospital.) My father had had only brief visits with me during those years; it was almost like a new family for him and for me when he returned home for good.

 The ‘Silent Generation’ refers to people who were born between 1925 and 1945. There are several theories as to where the label 'Silent Generation' originated. The children who grew up during this time worked very hard and kept quiet. It was commonly understood that children should be seen and not heard. The Silent Generation (age 77-94) is often characterized as thrifty, respectful, unassuming, and loyal. (Baby boomers (age 58-76) are portrayed as demanding, self-assured, independent, and competitive.*)

 Because of childhood experiences, the Silent Generation is characterized as holding people who tend to be thrifty and prefer to maximize the useful life of goods and who are distant from technology (although this gap has narrowed in recent years). For that reason, they are people who value talking in person, contact with others and the more traditional means of communication such as radio, television or newspapers. (I find many of us blogging, but that may simply a factor of where I am looking and whom I am reading.) In addition, as elderly people, they are a group that has contributed a lot to society thanks to their legacy, mentality and behaviour.

Understanding the differences between generations creates a bridge between them. Please note that most of the information above was put together after a quick Google search and cut and paste from Wikipedia and several other sources. The material below is all mine.

 I was born in 1942, while my father, RCNVR, was the Executive Officer of a corvette being built and fitted out in Levi, Quebec and later in Halifax. I was born because he, although he enlisted in the Navy shortly after the start of WWII, had a ‘shore job’ in 1941 in Winnipeg where my mother joined him. I qualify, therefore, as a ‘War Baby’ also, although not, according to definition, as a ‘War Child’. You can look this up to see the difference. Children my age are either the children of parents who did not fight in WWII or anomalies such as I am. We preceded the Boomers and, in most cases, were and are heartily sick of them. In my case, the high school I attended was under construction, being added to in order to house the bulge of Boomers following me and my English class, in particular, was accompanied by the noise of building. Boomers did me one favour, however. The schools were so desperate for teachers when I was in university that I was hired before I had even graduated.

What all of this is leading to is one observation; I hope, a pertinent one. I am a person who has, as a basic, been shaped by war. Certainly not in the way my peer group in Europe would have been shaped, but markedly. My parents’ beliefs and behaviour are a fundamental part of who I am. And hearing my father shouting commands to his gunners because a sharp clap of thunder had pushed him, sleeping, back onto his Corvette, that is formative for a child. Watching my mother obsessively count every penny, fear boats and water, hover over my father’s health, that was a large part of my childhood. They assumed I would be quiet, obedient, get good grades, help in the kitchen. (And in the yard – no brothers.) The way my country’s culture changed between 1959 and 1970 or so was confusing, even frightening, to me as well as to the adults who formed the bulk of the Silent cohort. In many ways it no longer seemed to be my world.

 I am writing this on Remembrance Day, as an honouring memory to my father, whose courage, decency and generosity should be known. He gave five years of his life to keep his family and his country safe, and the rest of his life to dealing with the personal aftermath. If I describe myself as puzzled at what the world I knew became, you should be able to imagine how my father was affected. He truly believed that there might be a world-wide collapse of civilization and urged me to teach my children how to use a bow and arrow and find food in the wild. And he worked, all his life, to make a safer world for me and for his beloved grandchildren, and for his community and his country. The world could use a few more like him, and not silent. Not any more.

*AC, this is not my thought. I cut and pasted it from Wikipedia or somewhere similar. Just so you know, I am not, what do they call it, 'dissing' you. This time.

Little Day Lost

 This was sort of a lost day. I have a recurring appointment each month to get my aged and horrible toenails cut by a nurse at our local Community Health Centre. She is just great, and I now have an appointment in 2024, because the holiday is causing a bit of a stretch. Yikes. But it is coming. The, shudder, Holiday Season is bearing down on us like a runaway freight train. Already the Christmas catalogues are out and I received my first envelope of cheap and ugly Christmas (and Season’s Greetings, of course) cards, tucked in with a request for money. They could have kept and used the money it cost to send it, IMHO.

And the mouse is there because there was a dead one in the hall when the inspectors came through. The new and extremely hard-working crew, who have tried everything to eradicate the little monsters, are not happy. I am dreaming of a resident Hall cat. Except that, cats being cats, it would probably gift the next inspector with a fine and very dead specimen of same, plus a hairball.

A short while ago JG discovered a bag of iced Christmas cookies in the downstairs freezer. They are now upstairs, thawed and stored in a cookie tin. What is left of them, that is. The good thing about the Holiday Season (Note my Use of Capitals, Nance) is that the YD will be home and make more of them. A lot more, if it is anything like last year. JG did find a whole bag of flour that she did not use in her mad cookie production, and he is finding it useful in his search for the Perfect chocolate chip cookie. I am glad to help with this search by testing each product. 

Tomorrow is Remembrance Day. I am thinking about my parents, who were both hit hard by WWII, but that will make a post for tomorrow, I guess, to be sure of marking the day appropriately. I am not sure how to mark today, other than to note that I have done five days of gratitude, but should probably do 365. 

When I read the newspaper or online news, between two wars (actually, three, when I think about it), the sickening saga of Mr. Trump, the horror, again, in parts of Africa, and the absolutely disgusting incivility at Concordia, my gratitude is all about my country, my neighbourhood, my family and all the little things that make life worth living. Even if we did have a neighbour who went and got a Trump campaign sign and posted it on a Hydro pole. I never did find out why. He has since moved away. Phew.

And, to carry the theme on (thank you Jane, neighbour extraordinaire), I am grateful to you, for being you, among other things. And to your daughters, who keep me in the loop.

Gratitude. Day 5

Yesterday was supposed to be Day 4, and I was grateful for good, waterproof winter clothes. Only I didn’t tag it. I got involved in writing it out and finding a photo and forgot to do that. So, please note that yesterday I was grateful. 

I am grateful every day, in fact. For many, many things. Among these things are: a sixty-year and counting marriage; parents and grandparents who loved me and supported me and had me taught and allowed me to learn; teachers who cared and knew what they were doing; a city to live in that was clean, well-ordered and prosperous, mostly; good health and dental care that we could always afford; friends; a library close by; the time and money to travel. All of that.

But I am almost overwhelmed when I think how lucky, how blessed I am, in our two amazing children. They were and are intelligent, curious, hard-working, funny and generous. They have good health and outstanding careers. Okay, they were occasionally a royal pain as teenagers, not to mention teething, braces and the odd bad choice of boyfriends. Whose children missed those landmarks? But I have always been able to be proud of them.

I have always been able to talk with them, even if some conversations were pretty stressful. They bring me butter tarts and Belgian chocolate. They run their father’s errands and do his heavy lifting. They know how to work iPhones and can fix my (and his) problems. They even clean my kitchen. Although they have tasked me to look after both the grandkid and the granddog, child and animal were well-behaved and came with written instructions as needed. (And both the kid and the dog took pills without trauma.)  They have taken me on trips and vacations.

They even seem to like me. How unusual is that?

I suspect that every mother feels, in her secret heart, that her children are the absolute models of what offspring should be. Even if, sometimes, they really aren’t. But mine, mine, really are! And, oh my, am I grateful.

Snow Pants

It is shortly past 7:00 am as I write this and there is a two inch or so layer of nice new, wet snow showing in the early morning light. I will have to go and dig out my snow boots. I did not do this for the first snowfall because I knew it would melt, but this one is here for a while. And, this morning, I am grateful for … synthetics.

I grew up, you see, wearing wool winter clothes. And when they got wet, as you played outside, they stayed wet. Your mother had to hang them by a heat source to dry them and so you got one chance a day to skate or make snowmen or whatever. I got my first waterproof jacket sometime in, as I recall, university. And after I was married and my husband decided we would be snowmobilers, I got my first synthetic snowsuit. Bib pants with zippers, a matching jacket, and boots with an outer waterproof layer and felt liners. For the first time ever I was warm outside in the winter and it was wonderful. A revelation.

I know I have photos of myself encased in wool; I just have not got the time or patience to find them. But I did easily pull this one of myself in, I think, my second snowsuit; this one less bulky, as when you are working in the sugarbush, you get quite warm.

Note the mukluks. They were leather, useful with snowshoes, and were waterproofed by being rubbed with a wax product called, as I recall, 'Dubbin'. It came in a can and you got a fingerful of it and rubbed it in. Worked. Sort of.

 We had purchased, as recreational land, a hundred-acre plot that had been farmed once. Then it was probably logged over several times and it had grown back as ‘bush’ – many younger trees with trails through them. We used the snowmobiles to explore this land and surrounding trails and later to facilitate making maple syrup. The children travelled with us in a sleigh pulled behind my machine, and later, riding behind us. And they had synthetic snowsuits that could be wiped down, shaken off and dried quickly. I could put their soggy felt boot liners close to a heat source and back on their feet quite quickly. We got snowshoes and, later, cross-country skis. Winter was fun; for them and for me.

When my parents moved from Windsor to eastern Ontario, a colder and wetter climate, I persuaded my mother into snow pants. She loved them. My father bought a snowblower for the driveway and garments to go with it. He also discovered lined mittens. They both had quite a bit to say about the winter weather, but they managed it.

Just in closing, in the hall closet sits a pair of mukluks, belongings of the daughter presently living in Europe. She left them here last winter and I keep meaning to put a coat of waterproofing on them. Before she comes home this winter. I guess what goes around, comes around. After I dig out my boots, I will probably dig out the Dubbin.

By the Yard

 There was a lot of noise in our yard yesterday morning. The ‘Tree Guys’ that took down our two old and dangerous maples at the laneway exit were back. This time JG had identified seven big trees that, if they fell, would hit the house or the hydro wires or the cabin. There were two very tall basswoods, a maple and pine right beside the screen porch, a maple at the cabin and several others. So, there were three men, with chainsaws, a huge chipper, a 'cherry picker' and a fantastic and fun little jitney of a machine that picked up large, almost tree-sized branches, and deposited them at the splitter.

They had big chainsaws, small chainsaws and something that appeared to fit into a holster, all making roaring noises, in varying tones. At once. It was impressive, for sure.

I am not sure what took the most skill and sheer strength. One guy climbed the tallest basswood with foot spikes and a waist belt, limbing (cutting off the branches) as he went. Then he bounced back down, cutting off large chunks of the main trunk as he descended. He took off his jacket halfway up and dropped it. It stuck in a pine beside the tree he was working on. The next time I saw it, it was close to the ground. The next time after that, he had it on again.

The big limbs were being pulled by the guy who was running the bug, since the bug has a clamp on the front of it with which the operator can pick up big piles at once. And at speed. They all went full out, with two very short pauses between about 8:30 a.m. and 1:00 p.m. The guy with the rake? There was hardly a small branch or twig left where he had cleaned up. And it all went into the chipper.

So, what we have left are … chips.

I was too fascinated by the climber to get photos, but JG says he has some on his phone. 

Coffee!!!

 The Gratitude Challenge. The rules are that you post for five days listing three things each day that make you grateful, then pass the challenge on. A friend and I did this a few years ago and agreed that it is time to run it again. All contributors are more than welcome.

Day 2

I staggered out to the kitchen this morning, turned on my coffee maker, plopped a pod into it and hit the brew button. A short time later, I was slurping down my drink and life was starting to look livable. When I thought about this day’s Gratitude Challenge, the coffee maker was top of mind.

But, hey. Some clever man or woman designed it and others manufactured it. And it runs on electricity, as does the hot water tank that dispenses all the steaming water we need for showers, dishes and the like. As does the thermostat that controls the climate condition inside our house so that at the push of a lever, we can be warmer or cooler. As does the nest of wires supplying power to lights, chargers and, not least, this computer. So, the gratitude spreads out over a lot of designers, inventors and, not least, to the intrepid Hydro One crews that are called in when the supply is interrupted, at whatever hour they are needed, to climb poles, wield chainsaws and do finicky things in February temperatures with ungloved fingers. I try, daily, to be grateful for all I have that is supplied to me by so many dedicated people.

And, not least, I find myself grateful for the wonderful little inventions and adaptations that make it possible to do most things with eighty-one plus fingers, ears and eyes. Glasses and a magnifying lens, hearing aids, wide-handled peelers, all of those. You don’t think about them until you need them, and then they are extremely useful. A cane, walking poles, wide shoes with elastic laces. A magnifying mirror in which I can see my earlobes to insert stud earrings. And a coffee mug with a wide, easily graspable handle.

Inner (Dinner?) Gratitude.

 The Gratitude Challenge. The rules are that you post for five days listing three things each day that make you grateful, then pass the challenge on. We did this a few years ago and agreed that it is time to run it again. All contributors more than welcome. 

Day 1

I was at a dinner tonight at our local community hall, the @Watson's Corners Community Hall. The kitchen and serving areas were swarming with volunteers, cooking, carrying, pouring, cleaning, organizing, helping out. It was a fine, fine outpouring of neighbourly spirit and generosity. And, it was fun.

Besides that, the food was amazing. Way to go, Mike. No detail was too small to have been planned for and set up. Way to go, Chris.

I love where I live. I am grateful, so grateful, to be a part of this.

ps This is yesterday's post, just so you know I am trying.

Maple Cream Pie

Edited to add this photo of some of the pies donated to the hall's dinner. One of mine is second from the right in the first full row. We had a good turnout, although numbers were down from pre-COVID events. And the food was just excellent; 

Tomorrow the local community hall where I work is holding a fundraising dinner. It is a popular one, or has been in pre-Covid years. We get three hundred people or more fed inside two hours plus a bit. To do this we need vast quantities of food, including sixty pies. One of our members is tasked with phoning the baking list and collecting these. My order is for three; and I have, for many years, made maple cream pies.

At present, the filling is in the shells and cooling. Tomorrow morning I will whip up the whites of nine eggs with sugar and spread the resulting meringue over the filling, shove the pies into a 400°F oven to brown it, let it cool and transport, with some care, the pies to the hall. We are asked to bring the pies into the hall in the morning; the dinner starts at 4:00 pm – that is 5:00 stomach time since we go back to Standard Time tonight.

Which reminds me that I have to reset a whole whack of clocks before I go to bed. We have two that set themselves as does, thank goodness, the clock in my car. But there is the microwave, my alarm clock, the one in the laundry room… you know the drill, I am sure.

So, given that the very thought of Maple Cream probably makes you hungry, here is the recipe for this pie. Easy, as long as you have a source of, preferably, dark maple syrup.

1. Melt 1/4 cup butter in a heavy pan
2. Stir in 1/2 cup flour
3. Add 1 1/2 cups maple syrup and 1 1/2 cups boiling water.
4. Stir until thick and add three egg yolks. Cook over low heat for five minutes. Pour into baked pie shell and cover with a meringue made from three egg whites and 3 tablespoons white sugar. Bake in 400°F oven until lightly browned.

This recipe came to me from a very good friend who was an amazing cook. It is easy and never fails. Plus, if you use a small pie plate, there is enough left over in the pan to scrape out and eat off a spoon before you wash the pan.

I will add photos to this, perhaps, after I deal with the clocks.

The whole DAY has been like this.

 I am on hold, the second caller in the queue.

I wrote that this morning.  The problem was eventually identified and fixed by a very, very clever young man who noticed that someone had spelled our name wrong and that was the spoiler. We are an ÈourÈé, not an 'ore'.

 Oh, drat and other expletives. My keyboard has shifted to French. Again.

Back later. Or, perhaps, Encore un fois. Whatever.

Hah! "our".

I went to get my hair cut this afternoon. My wonderful stylist, who has been cutting my hair for twenty years, disappeared from the salon just as I arrived. Family problem. I have done the same thing myself and so I do not fault her. But a lovely young colleague of hers gave me quite a different cut. 

And there is no Quick Blending flour in either of the grocery stores in my shopping town.

And it is 11:05. I have just turned into a pumpkin - the kind that has just had its brains scooped out with a spoon.

Tomorrow I have to go and work at the hall in the morning, my daughter and partner are coming for lunch, so they will make it. Then I have to make the filling for three pies.

On Sunday I will put the meringue (Where is an accent when I want one?) on the pies, schlep them to the hall, perhaps clean and fill twenty odd pair of salt and pepper shakers, come home for a break and go back to work on the door for the hall dinner.

So much for posting every day with any coherence or plan.

 I rolled off to Book Club today, with my three typed pages of text about Follett’s Cathedral series. And when I handed it out, most of the other members remembered reading the The Pillars of the Earth tome. They seemed interested in reading the newest sequel, as reported. I did warn about the possibility of lack of sleep thereby. And then the rest of the group reported, historical fiction being our genre for this meeting. And each of the other choices was a book based on a real event or happening. And each of them was Meaningful; indigenous people’s suffering, Japanese-Canadian internment during WWII, the pogrom of Jewish people in Poland, ditto. And more. To be honest, I felt a bit of a fraud with my cheerful epics of what never was.

It is November 2^nd, and the calendar page has been turned. Our daughter contemplating the pond has been displaced by three candid snaps of the step-grandsons. Lovely to have this piece on the kitchen wall to admire, although we keep our data on a less exotic piece of paper on a clipboard. And in calendar booklets, pocket and purse sized. We do not use our iPhone apps; for one thing, we are not sure we know how and for another, we are used to our twentieth-century tools. JG’s brother used to be on at us about this, but we ignored him.

Tomorrow I am finally going to get the haircut I have needed for the last month. Also, while I am in town, I am going to buy the pie crusts I will need to make three pies on Saturday afternoon after I finish working at our community hall on Saturday morning to get the potatoes peeled for the dinner we are putting on on Sunday as a fundraiser. Thus, also, the pies. I think I have written about this event and the pie cooking before; the event is called the Hunters’ Dinner and we run it (Covid years excepted) on the Sunday before deer hunting season starts in this location. We have a neighbour who sights in rifles, and so the loud bangs have already started. The YD’s dog always hated these bangs and would need her paw held for some time after she heard one. Sadly, she is no longer around to hear them.

Nor is the YD around, as she is resident in Brussels for the next couple of years. Today her father wanted to show a photo of her swimming in a very cold-looking bit of water, but when I tried to find the photo on his phone, I phoned her by accident. Three times, I think. Three overseas calls. Thank goodness it was not a charged call series. I have a book on how to use an iPhone, and should perhaps be reading it in preference to Follett’s addictive fiction.

But reading is my delight, as well as my fortress. And evening is the time to indulge, yes?

Signing off. There is a novel waiting patiently beside the computer. (Note that Grammarly made me add those hyphens, but also wanted me to correct ‘sights’, not recognizing the usage. And corrected a spelling error.)

Ken Follett's Cathedral series

So, if I am going to post every day, some leeway should surely be allowed? This is what I will be presenting tomorrow at Book Club. I have just edited out about 90% of what my poor book club buds will have to look at. But, opinions are eagerly requested on this version!

"Follett surprised his readers with his first non-spy thriller, The Pillars of the Earth (1989), a novel about building a cathedral in a small English village during the Anarchy in the 12th century. The novel was highly successful, received positive reviews and was on The New York Times Best Seller list for eighteen weeks. It topped best-seller lists in Canada, Britain and Italy, and was on the German best-seller list for six years. It has sold 26 million copies so far. (written in 2017, I think.)

Its much-later sequel, World Without End (2007), returns to Kingsbridge 157 years later and features the descendants of the characters in Pillars. The next novel in the series, A Column of Fire, was published in September 2017. Beginning in 1558, the story follows the romance between Ned Willard and Margery Fitzgerald over half a century. It commences at a time when Europe turns against Elizabethan England, and the queen finds herself beset by plots to dethrone her. A fourth novel, The Evening and the Morning (2020), is a prequel to The Pillars of the Earth. Set in the decade around 1000 AD – in the so-called Dark Ages – the story "concerns the gradual creation of the town of Kingsbridge and of the many people – priests, nobles, peasants, the enslaved – who played significant roles". 

A fifth novel, The Armour of Light, was released in September 2023".

The information above is “cut and paste” from Wikipedia. There is a very extensive biography and discussion there; worth looking through.

I read The Pillars of the Earth many years ago and enjoyed it immensely. Well written, it has a marvellous storyline and is a bit of a learning experience about cathedral construction.  When I saw that there was a series stemming from it, and a new book out, I picked it for the club. And ended up rereading Pillars and chugging through the whole series.

Follett writes, in my opinion, stories that you cannot leave, even when it is far past bedtime. His research is really very good, insofar as my knowledge goes, and he writes good, clean prose. Again, in my opinion, the books are uneven. The prequel is almost what I categorize as a potboiler. It does not have the drama of the others, possibly because the characters are mostly not as well drawn. 

The newest book has a weak ending, for me, as he manages to move through the Battle of Waterloo in a very few pages, leaving me thinking he had either quit researching or had decided the book was too long. He has the set up - his characters are gunners. But the battle on the heights is almost ignored. However, the majority of the book is a lot of fun to read and instuctive on the cusp between home spinning and weaving and industrial methods. The medieval centre book is good, but the setting is not as well done as in the first and last, and he tries, almost, to cram in too much again. The Elizabethan one is the best structured, but not as compelling a read. 

I usually read books twice, once for the plot and once for the language and nuance. I will certainly read The Armour of Light again. I got it as an ebook on my Kindle, but am thinking that it is a book I would like to have as a real book. And Christmas is coming, right, YD?