TubaOrNotTuba

If you were watching you might have noticed that sticker on the tail end of a school bus. Something about how this vehicle stops at crossings. Not locally mind you. The real thieves took away all their rails back in 1989 but elsewhere that is still a relevant statement. However as of midnight the trains are not running. A nationwide dispute that puts stockholders and politicians back into attention mode. I can see the notices now telling members of parliament that they are being recalled from their summer hiatus to take care of a nation wide problem. The trains have stopped. And with it the movement of most of the products used in this country. I know not everything not all the time but much of our commerce depends on the railway taking things from here to there and back again. If you shut everything off there will be problems. As as statement goes perhaps not today perhaps not tomorrow but sooner or later there will be problems. Food supplies that are no longer on the market shelves. Fuel no longer available at the pumps. And so much more. I have no supporting figures but I believe that the railroads are still a pretty big deal in Canadian terms. And so what is the problem? Well of course it is money. The workers are aware that the railroad shareholders are still getting rich even though their incomes have plateaued. Enough to make someone join a union and then go on strike I guess. How long will it last. Or? No one knows for sure for based on precedent this will not be a long strike. The politicians will put things back on the rails as they say and there will be a lot of employees that are upset but then again, a pay-check is important to them as well. And so short term we will all tighten our belts and be aware that if there’s a shortage in the supply chain we can point fingers at the railroads. Even if it is not their fault.

I spend a lot of time playing that was then and this is now. In part because I don’t always see what I’m doing but that’s for another day. Today I’m going to focus on diet. Specifically what I have available to me that fits under the rubicon of fruit. Back in the old days the only fruits we ever saw regularly where apples. Generally apples found on a tree in the backyard. Citrus was reserved for Christmas and they required the intervention of Santa Claus. But now we are much better served by the grocery industry. On any given day at the local market I can find a whole selection of fresh fruits. Sufficient to make a fruit salad if I so desired. I am much more apt to take a banana or a page or nectarine rarely an apple. We have a whole series different citrus fruit available to alloy have not yet sorted out all the names that are used period. I almost never go looking for things that are exotic. Things like dates. Is the date even a fruit? And what about those hairy little green things that I sometimes find in the closet or the refrigerator or other odd locations. I really need to get better control on where i find my food. I am fortunate that there are also grapes because by definition every single grape qualifies as a piece of fresh fruit and on the pieces we buy meaning the vines we can have as many as 100. A pretty good way to get my vitamin C don’t you agree. I do abstain from cans of fruit salad but that is due to the overpowering sugar syrup. And a certain time of the year I can get a fresh Peach but that seems to last only for a couple of weeks and then back to the usual fair. Still I will not complain. Not nearly as monotonous as a barrel of apples. Perhaps if I turn the apples in the cider I will be happier.

I believe in the law of 6° of separation. There are many people who are not related to me by blood but who I can say I know who they are. Like one of the more famous singers in our country. I never met the man but I lived in the same town. And it turned out that his girlfriend in high school went on to become a teacher. My teacher period period two different years in high school. That is a connection you know period. As well I was in high school with one of his cousins. And his uncle worked in the same factory that I was at during a two summer. That is also a connection. Oh, and i know where he grew up because I passed by the house each day on the way to high school. This was a small town after all. Now he’s gone and he has a couple of statues and people associate his name with that town. But I know there’s more to the story. I also lived in I town and although I am not as famous that’s not what 6° of separation is all about. We take our connections where we can find them and we hold them close because most of us never become famous other than in our own minds. Actually I have no urge to have a statue with my name on it. All I want is for people to know that I know. Who I am and where I lived and who taught me. The small details that make up a life. No if I was to do things over again what would I add? Well going to one of the concert would have been nice but they were in a different place in a different time. I did not go to concerts then or now. But I can still sing some of the songs that were sung by other people and I can still pretend that I could have been there. The myths of our lives I guess.

Listening to the local news this evening they took the time to remind us there’s time to go and buy school supplies. After all there will be people back in the bunkers within a couple of weeks. But I found the announcement to buy your school supplies a little short. I wonder how many among us remember the good old days. Back when we went to Eaton’s downstairs to buy not only our school supplies but our textbooks. Yes there was a time when governmental largess stepped back from the plate and left families responsible for purchasing all those readers and math books at other items of learning. For me because I was an avid reader there was great joy in getting first access to the thick reader even though it was probably not the best move academically. Families had to stretch the budget in order to make sure that the list of textbooks was covered. If you lived in a large family you could depend upon having hand me downs in the classroom. And then suddenly the government decided that purchasing a full set of textbooks for the province was a good idea. I have no clue how much they spent for that little move. Probably a lot of money from the federal government. And with that move came a change in routine. Getting ready for school could be handled by a trip to the local general store. After all they sold scribblers and pencils. I no longer have any of my textbooks. Some things do not make it across the stretch of time but I remember the titles and I remember some of the stories. A credit to the people that designed curriculums back in the day. I mean where else would I learn about the barn that caught fire after the whole crop of kernels had been stowed away.

We had some rain this morning. Perfectly normal for this time of year but it brought to mind that there are things that I have to take care of when I change things around me. Like the dog leash that I placed outside for our guest. He is gone home but I wanted to put the leash away. And so i did. Just in time to learn that he is coming back and i can do a repeat on the operation. I will get good at this. And then he probably won’t come around for many more months. Having a dog at the further bed was somehow reassuring. He does not talk but he also does not push one out on the floor. All good. Also the rain was very brief. Just enough to remind us that if we don’t get rain then things dry up. Go ahead, listen to the weather from elsewhere. We are fortunate because we do not live in overpowering heat with overpowering winds. We live in a very temperate environment. I’m sure this will change with time but for now my only thing to remember is that if I put the leash out for the dog I should take it in again. Especially because he is not my dog and there is no sense of permanence. I do it so that he will not run home unexpectedly. Other than that today was a quiet day. I did not even get my usual list of spam calls from Amazon and bell. Someday I will figure it out what they really want from me but for now it’s just a reminder that the light on the telephone helps me find it even on my greatest days. I watched some more video content from the north of Scotland and they have a life much like ours. The same language almost. And the same ocean almost. From what I have been told I could get from here to there if I will be willing to row for a very long time. I will skip that step for now. 

I live on an island. What makes that different from the mainland as we say is that we have ferry boats and a bridge but that’s because we’re also very modern. Anyhow, the ferries have been part of my life all my life. In one way or another they have always been there. I might not take the ferry in any given calendar year but the reassurance I could get away from the island to the mainland has been a staple part of my plans for the future. Was there more than one ferry? Yes actually. I did a quick count and I came up with five different sites in my lifetime and I know that there were others in the past. The local radio stations would carry the next sailing times and the newspapers would carry the next sailing times. No attention paid to those that had already gone because like everything else that has left the dock it is no longer available to you as a passenger. What I can tell you is that the ferries are all different, one from the other. They have different names and different sizes and above all else different characteristics. I can remember when the ferry carried railway trains. That is no longer necessary. I know that the ferry can carry a cement truck because it does that when needed. And I know that the ferries go to different provinces. That’s how we learned geography in the good old days. People did not ask where you were going they asked how you would get there. Of course since I am really old I can run when planes came into play a lawyer almost never used that ability to get away. Taking the ferry was sufficient even with the bicycle. If I look back to all the different places where ferries sailed I can still find some infrastructure. Docks that are no longer used. I have photos of some of the older ferries which means that I am operating a small history book in my own home. Keep in mind that since the bridge came into place a quarter century ago many young children no longer understand the relevance of a boat that goes from here to there and back again. On schedule or not. And these boats sailed in some of the worst weather conditions you can imagine. Big storms while trying to breakthrough thick ice. Not anymore now that we have global warming but you get the idea. The ferries held a special place in our life.

Finding a job or a place to go to school or a place to live takes a lot of energy. Or so I’ve been told. After some reflection I believe that I had an approach that can only be described as minimalist. Applying to university; got in. Looking for a place to live well the 1st place had no square corners so I took the second one. Jobs? I never kept multiple resumes to drop off period. It just did not happen period. If I thought I wanted to work for you I came prepared to work and that seems to have been an acceptable approach. None of this drumming on doors to get the job that you did not want. And looking back I think I had the right approach in all cases. Sure there were a few jobs that I did not get but those are usually because I was aiming far above my niche. I really was not trained to be an EMT cameraman and I think that the person hiring knew that. I was never meant to run all university department and I think the people doing the hiring process knew that. Equally I I managed to avoid any bad financial decisions. I have a faint memory of trying to buy a car and when the bank confirmed that I had no money and no reason for them to give me money I simply went back to walking from place to place. Easy. I mean you can always get a bicycle if you live in the part right part of the world. I bring this up after listening to two many people talk about their search for this and that. Maybe you put too much energy into the searching and not enough energy into the projecting. The projection that you were already the person they wanted. Overconfidence? A bit. But not enough to make my life go badly. Ioffer this to any of my children who are looking for good advice from their father period. Even if they’re not. And now I will go back to waiting for our guest to arrive period. We have a dog coming to stay with us for a few days and that is cool.

We tend to break time indent into 3 sectors. The past the present and the future. Think of verb tenses if you need a model. And since most of my life has been spent in one way or another dealing with music let’s look at that for a moment. If I was to be presented with the chance to have a do over. What would they do? I cannot control the future. No idea what’s going to happen there. The present is pretty ordinary. Let’s go into the past. Imagine having the chance to have a do over on some of those musical moments. Not just the ones provided by listening to someone else but the ones where I actually had a place to play in the whole scheme. Sitting in my chair in band practice. Surrounded by 30 or 40 other individuals. We had a direction provided by the director and we had a plan provided by the musical page. What we did with it after that was where the creativity came into play. I would love to have the chance to retry some of those moments. And not just the climaxes. I would settle for one of those repetitive sessions where we practiced one piece over and over until the director was satisfied. At the time they seemed painful but to have them again I might notice other things in the mix so to speak. I would listen differently I believe. I would base much of it on my previous experience and I would look for things. I actually should say listen for things. Listen for things that would make that piece of music not only sound better but be better. Richer. No given my eyesight I will no longer have a chance to sit with a band and play a piece of music from a sheet. I will have to rely on memory and that becomes harder with age. I say all this because I have dreamed for many years I’ve actually producing my own pieces of music. I know you need more than just an idea. But think of the fun I could have. Bringing my collected experiences into let’s say a studio and working through an idea until the idea took shape. It is not too late. I just need to be a little more driven. Standby world because I might get there. That comes from listening to an interview involving some people who have made their lives recording. They understand the game plan.

Time for a little history. A combination of social history and economic history. I live in a country where we are secure from the worst of the excesses in the workplace. We have rules and we have expectations. Among them a kind of insurance policy no one in the good old days as you I. It provided a small amount of money as a dividend for those times when you did not have a regular salary and you still needed to do things like eat and sleep. We referred to it as stamps. If you were getting stamps you will get a check every couple of weeks. In return you will be called to work in random places at random jobs for random amounts of time. Proof that you were willing and able to work. And so at one point I agreed to do something outside of my experience. Forget all my expensive education. I was called to help unload a truck. I received the address and time and I took my bicycle and went there. The job was much simpler then one might expect. Taking small boxes of food from a tractor trailer into a warehouse. I remember the boxes containing something like meat spread. And the driver who met me on the dock explained that he needed his truck unloaded so he could go for his next job. Sounds fair. The salary as such was minimum but it was salary which meant that I would meet all the expectations of my insurance program. So let’s get down to it. We had some kind of conveyor belt mechanical and we had small boxes to remove from the truck and get them inside. I can handle that. I spent the whole of the day transferring small boxes from point A to point B. And at the end of the afternoon the driver met me with the agreed amount of money in his hand and something extra. Not just extra money but a heartfelt thanks for having done a job all the way from point A to point B. He traveled a lot and what he found for the main part was that people would show up and then find ways throughout the day to avoid doing anything useful. I was the first person who would ever come in and just done the job. I put it down to my education and my sense of moral obligation but he put it down too what a difference. His truck was now unloaded and he could go off to his next appointment and I could get back on my bicycle and ride home. A day in the life of a manual labourer. As you can guess this was my only opportunity to unload a truck with sandwich meats or any other kind of truck I wasn’t the one that people usually called. I was just someone in the right place at the right time with the right morals. If I have passed anything on to my children I hope it is that sense even though they have never helped me unload any kind of truck. As I’ve explained to my sons a job is something that you do because someone else gains from your effort. And if they pay you that is a bonus.

My career in public education lasted just over a decade. In that time I moved through three provinces and a number of different systems. In only one case day scored a brand new school. Completely new built from the ground up with new seats and new books and new teachers. The ink barely dry on their diplomas. We were a school fed by other schools so there wasn’t even a set of people who knew each other for a lifetime. Novelty. I have a set of memories about that school. Most of them good. We did nothing out of the ordinary and we had a set of buildings because it was an older school. Finding our way to the shops in the art area and the gymnasium all required skills that I had not mastered when I arrived. My year went well and come the month of May I received word that my family was moving yet again to another province. With that I visited the front office for the first and last time to do a closing interview with the school principal and to be wished success in my further studies because that’s what principals do with students they do not know. There were no school clothes or big fancy musical moments. This was a smaller school in a smaller province and in the end when I bid it farewell, I had no expectations of ever returning. And so I did not. I wonder where they all are now. Those teachers and students and dreams. It all seems like a long time ago. What I remember best is to walk up and down the long hills to get home at the end of the day.