TubaOrNotTuba

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.

The skit was funny. Involving Julie Nolke and the  PM-JT. Got your bearings yet? OK we will carry on this was a supposed job interview and the question that came out immediately after was how did she convince him to go in that skit? Again a reasonable question. There are some facts that you need to remember. JT is not the president. He is one of several 100 deputies even though he gets to sit in the big chair occasionally and if he would decide to go into a dramatic skit, keep in mind that he was trained as a drama teacher. Are we good yet? Carry on. What made this skit amusing for those of us in the know was that such a thing actually could happen. We live in Canada and we take our politicians as representatives of us. Not a God among them. They come and they go every few years. We might put up a statue occasionally or put their face on the dollar bill. Stop looking to the big name performers on the big stage. Some of the best material is available closer to home on the net. Change your ticket. Do something more.

Years ago people did not travel very far from home. There was no need. Most of your food was locally sourced and your school was just up the road and church was just a wagon ride away. I can remember the wagon sitting in the yard beside the woodpile. No horse attached because we already had our version of the horses carriage by that point. I can also remember when the roads were paved for the first time. Before that you waited for the snow to come then you waited for the end of mud season and in the middle of summer you could get out on the road beside the house and go down as far as the neighbours without needing to wade through the mud. It was a different age. My father one afternoon explained that he never made it to town until he was 16 which came as a shock because I thought I was well traveled by that point. I had been to town. But again there was no need. If you were sick the doctor came to the house if you died the priest came to the house if you had any other reason to go see someone they probably lived close enough by that there was no real difficulty. I live in one of those roads, now. Paved after a fashion. And I still don’t go to town anymore than I used to. I have Internet now. In the summertime when people come to visit the window of opportunity is narrow and we stay home waiting for them to come in the driveway. I am particularly interested in some old roads that run west of here along the cliff edge. The original roads from well over a century ago. At that point people still went from place to place by boat or by horse period. But the road is still visible is a credit to how deeply into the mud the wheels would go period. I should dig out some old pictures. Quite a contrast from later in life when I moved to the big cities. They had so much road they even had sidewalks. Imagine. And the horses are all gone. Too much trouble when you can just keep one of those contraptions in the driveway and put a little gasoline in the tank. Easy come an easy go. I watched a video this morning from a small island off the coast of Scotland and they went through the same cycle of inconvenience. The roads are still just one step above impossible. No need to go over there when you have everything at home. Anyhow I will not be traveling today. I cannot think of a single reason to go to town.

At this moment I am feeling rather pleased with myself. Self satisfied. I had been watching a video that made an obscure reference to a piece of classical music. Of course I went looking for the melody and upon hearing it I said to myself I recognize that. No idea why. It might date back to my time and senior band in high school. I don’t know but it proves to me that my musical education was worth everything I paid for it. We hear a lot of music in our lives and very little of it ever gets a title so when I have a chance to add a name to a tune I do so. Self education which brings South satisfaction. Not going to name the melody. Accept that it was an overture. And then dig for yourself. We’re getting a little rain this afternoon which comes from a hurricane that did not make it this far. Funny how that works. I mean we did not even get the wind. Just the water. So much less water then people to the South. I tried to imagine what you do when you get feet of water in an afternoon from the sky. Perhaps keeping a set of plans for an arc on a shelf are not as silly as we used to think. Anyhow I am at ease with my world. So much still to learn. We had a little feedback from the summer company and it seems that we met the grade. Will they come back? That I do not know because I am not a tour director. All I can offer is the place. Up to them to choose the time. I can at least keep listening to obscure tunes. I wonder how people who have a more artistic band handle such things. Do they draw pictures. Do they write poetry to commemorate the moment? I will settle for listening and mentioning.