TubaOrNotTuba

Where did you sleep last night. Where did you sleep last month. Where did you sleep last decade. I have a certain envy of those families who have had the same home for several centuries. The idea of your own stone Manor seems to be fun once you get around the obvious problems of how do you hang a picture on the wall. And so with that in mind I took a few minutes to look back on where I used to live. Across the years. I am able to identify all of my old addresses but I do notice that some are gone physically. If your house burns down in the middle of the night you don’t get to keep what is left. And I will throw in here that I have never been in a house fire but several of my former homes are now gone because of the ravages of a fire. Fortunately that is a very small part of my history. In fact most of my former homes going back through my lifetime are still standing. We have recently arranged to photograph the interior of my grandfathers birthplace. Yes I used to live there so I have good memories. And if we were out walking around the neighbourhood I could show you the older homes of family members. When you get into a city that is tougher. It is rare for a home to remain in the same family for decades although my mother’s home came close. If I had to do over I would probably accept any one of those buildings as the place for me to sleep. With the bed. I have outgrown any age to sleep on the floor. It is just that when I when I look back on where I have been, I have been fortunate. Very few moments where someone would qualify me as homeless unless I so chose to go there. Even the campgrounds where I have slept in a tent remain extent. I cannot say the same thing for automobiles that we have owned nor would I want to return to those days when a 1957 Ford product was keeping my driveway in use. Right now I know where I will sleep tomorrow night and as it turns out that is not a claim that everyone can make despite the amount of money we have in this country. Being forced to live in the streets and sleep rough is still a reality for too many. Just for the record I do keep a couple of tents around the place for those moments when I become nostalgic or forced by circumstance to get out and about.

I can depend on the news to show me how detached I am from the rest of the world. So many elements that must be common to others go right by me. Having a pager explode? What’s the pager? Learning daddy famous hip hop star has been arrested? I can’t think it was single song that he’s ever done? The price of gas coming down? The price of gas went up? Not part of my daily routine. And yet, I continue to listen to the news for those moments of insight into the world around me. My local news broadcast is extremely focused on the weather just like all the people around here. The most important news story on a given day seems to involve nothing really. Our news will not be breaking any other country. Instead I think about what I have been doing that might be of use to someone else for example I received a request to regift my iPad stylus to a student. Let the truth be known that it was still in its original box and has never been used. Back goes beyond surplus to my needs. My hope he said I’m going to be helping a student get ahead in something. Other than that I’m living in a world of heavy truck traffic. The windmill project is well underway and we have trucks passing from dawn until dusk. I just want to know when they will be done because I do not dare go out to wander on the highway. I didn’t before and I certainly do not now have any risk of being crushed buy a mammoth truck because you will not find me in there line of sight.

There are things that you do not do at home. The list is actually quite long. Yesterday the RV went to the city and got its very first refill of propane. For us this was the first time ever. Across two vehicles. Hooking your RV up to your propane tank at home is not recommended and we knew that. Locally you have to have a trained professional on site. Someone who understands all the dangers involved. Something more complex than my playing with CO2 and some hoses. And the RV tank is now filled. To 80% because that is the law. Based on our current use patterns that will definitely get us through the rest of this vacation. Why have we not looked at this problem before? No need. We also had electric heat and the idea that a gas furnace was perhaps not always available was perhaps less of a problem. But now we know the secrets. We know we can just go to a company in the city and they will do all the hard work. For around $20. A bargain when you think about it. Not much more work than when I swap out the gas tank for the barbecue. Will this change our travel pattern? That is above my pay grade. I know that a cold night can be quite uncomfortable and we now have taken that problem and put it on a side shelf. Better prepared for the future. The on board water tank was also topped off so we’re running out of excuses for not hitting the road. I know, hitting the road is hard on the fist. And the pocketbook sometimes. But we are able to plan ahead and so we shall. Knowing that will have the comforts of home with us.

I used to be a member of a virtual family. A school band. There were about 60 of us from different age grow groups and when we left school we left that band behind. But not our skills. We were trained to do something that others would love to know how to do. Follow those funny little marks on the page and make music. Just because I could reach out to some former band comrades. I found two of them which is not a large percentage. Of that small number, one of them was still making music but the other had given it up years ago. Not exactly great continuity from the point of a band director. If I put my own experience on the table I have not forgotten anything that I learned but the access to those expensive interests of playing in a band go away. Have you checked the price of a tuba recently? I still have a number of other instruments around the house but even those rarely get a chance to exercise with their friends as the saying goes there are no other people within a stone’s throw that played traditional band music. Even in my own family were three of us received training only one still plays. In keeping with what everyone else does with the skills they learn in school. Music is not alone. Ask yourself the last time you solved a quadratic equation. Do you even remember what that means? So if bands continue it is because of the new people that come in each year. My old school is gone but others in the area have taken up the flame and they can find recorded concerts online. I may not know any of the band members personally but I feel a certain comradeship because we have all been there waiting for our chance to perform. All the while counting the beats and the measures and trying to remember what to do next.

A quiet afternoon. Time for me to play the the blame game. What science refers to as cause and effect. In reality most situations involved neither. If I look around my neighbourhood I will notice that there are no schools. There used to be. There are also very few school age children. Does one force the other? We also have a distinct lack of railway trains. We used to. About the time that the trains left so did the need for box cars to ship things. Once again cause and effect or nothing at all. I know we still have potatoes but we also have a larger number of big trucks so at least some problems have solutions. We have fewer ice breakers sailing about. We also have less sea ice. I know this is due to global warming but did the ships leave before the ice? I do not know. If you look at newspapers we still have some of those but there is no local delivery anymore. There was a time when the man went by and left a rolled up newspaper in every post box. A historical thing I guess. I know that newspapers are still out there although I do not read them either. We have better things now like the evening news on TV. Less ads if you ask me. As well in my backyard I have a large number of small birds. Was that always the case? I should look for some of the bird count census results from a lifetime ago. Up till now I have covered transportation and communications and education. The only remaining thing that I care to look at is the number of stores locally. Oddly enough we have had the same local store for better than a century. Proof that not every business model is doomed to failure.

Teenage students have a page on their records that says this is how they tried to prove they were invincible. Yes we have them; but I have not seen my own. I have one memory that stands out though. I went to a fairly large school with about 1500 full time students. The cafeteria space was too small for such a large number of pupils so we had rotating lunch periods. And there was the inevitable moment where you had to return to your class from lunch while other students were in study. We were two or three of us, one day. We took a shortcut up the back stairwell along by the classrooms used by the Phys.Ed department and down to our locker area. And we did what teenage boys do. We knocked on the door of a class in session. The first couple of times you get away with it. But teachers are not born stupid and eventually we knocked on the door and the teacher opened it with us standing there. No place to run and no place to hide we were caught and we were brought to the principal’s office. A chance for someone to explain to us that even at our advanced age we still had to follow the rules. The penalty was minor. I think I had to make an apology to the teacher period. But it did teach me that I was neither invisible nor invincible. An important lesson to learn when you go to school. And I survived obviously. I was never again caught for such a stupid action. In other words I learned a lesson.

Be careful out there. Try not to overthink things. You slipped into a moment of introspection and suddenly you find that you have changed. You are now a legend in your own mind. Not what you want. Leave becoming a legend to others. Think of all the occasions we have to be in front of a group of people and jump to the assumption that they know who we are. Classroom teachers do it all the time even if their students have never heard them sing or seen them dance watch some try to draw a mouse. We come with all kinds of assumptions about ourselves that are not met in the minds of others. If by chance you do become legendary try to do it for a good reason. Perhaps you do not want a page in a history book if it does not make you someone that you would like to be. I am not famous. If you are reading these words put it down to chance. Or you are related to me. And the fewer moments there are for others too guess at who I am the fewer occasions there are to put on a coat that does not fit. I have been listening to a lot of history recently the history of others. And in almost all cases the person other tension and end information and the centre of it all would probably like that to be elsewhere. Now this is probably a case where there will have to be some everything done because I realized that when I cannot see or hear what I am doing I will tend to go off in directions that were not planned. Less chance of becoming famous I suppose. In other incidents from today I have refilled one of my gas bottles. For the bubbly water. And I am doing it all by listening rather than seeing. Title avoiding being a historical figure

My sneezing fit ended about 10 minutes after it started period. A reaction to a small piece of chocolate cake. I found this interesting for one reason. One of my sons has exactly the same reaction. Is that proof of DNA? I mean chocolate cake is not unknown neurotoxin. And it’s not like we had gone for a wander in a bit of Poison Ivy. This was just one of those moments that makes one curious about why things happen. If I had access to someone who worked in the field. Not the Poison Ivy field. The field of allergies gramma I would ask the question. And I guess there’s always that woman in the background. Siri. The name I dare not speak. So many answers to my unasked questions. Anyhow the chocolate cake was part of a celebration. I had not gone out to find such a treat, because it was offered to me. The sneezing was just a way to clear all of my science is at once. I consider myself fortunate that I have few allergies that I know about. Cats. Keeps the house clear of small animals that want to kill me while I sleep. Fortunately most of us discover our allergies in benign manners. No sudden moments of anaphylactic shock they put it close to dying. After all it was just a small piece of cake. As for cats they tend to avoid me which is a sign that they also may have allergies. Again I would ask the question if I had an expert but I’m not going to speak to that woman in the background. My choice.

I do not chess. Play chess. I did a long time ago learn the names of the pieces I think that most school children get to that point. However I have never found a need to immerse myself in the strategies and history of the various games. Happily we have a parallel world known as politics. If you take the time to study a little history at more than the most basic level you start to see that chess and politics are closely related. Am I willing to take on a new life as a student of chess? Do I want to know about four dimensional chess someone rumoured? Not at all I am happy to leave that job to others with a deeper seated interest. Instead I will continue to stand back and watch. Chess and politics. The whole world is watching, right now, as the campaign for president unfolds. Any race that is still neck to neck with only two months to run means that there’s something more going on than simple moves. And once you start to see the parallels you will notice them elsewhere. In the office? Of course. In the daily news? Of course happily I have never had a dog that tried to play chess with me. I think we had much more of a checkers relationship. I do like that there is so much history left to learn. About both the game and the politics that surround me. We need to have parallels in our lives. It keeps us from testing multiple possibilities that could cause deeper problems. In that sense chess is a proxy for life.