TubaOrNotTuba

I have realized that the only one who is responsible for recording my history is me I cannot depend upon my siblings nor my progeny they have a different set of memories and with that comes another responsibility. If I do not try to recall what I learned about my ancestors along the way it will be lost. You can say that it is not important but with that goes the idea that no history is important and we know that is not the truth let me look at what I know of my grandparents. I know their names?? I know where they were born and died and lived at least in part I have visited the homes of my grandparents. I know their relative professions and their children. A good start; all of my grandparents came from small villages very small in some cases the only house around was theirs. The family homes of my grandparents are still in place. A rare thing in an area where house fires consumed so much. I have been to their graves and I have tried to let my own children know some of the story. Their names are mentioned from time to time in the daily newspapers. No infamy, rather that they were known as members of their own community. If we go back a further decade or two I can actually tell you a little about my great grandparents. The same sort of information where they came from and where they died where they lived in part. I was asked recently if I knew anything about the home of one of my grandmothers; a question from someone that knew her when they were very young and I can tell you that the house was across that field for what that is worth, that house was gone before I had memories. I have visited the home of my great grandparents on one side and I have a very important photograph for me, that was another house consume by fire. What will my own grandchildren know of my life? Who will tell my anecdotes? This blog is in part a way of passing on memories to others. They may not know it, but this sort of thing will be important to them later in life. I will probably pass on a little of my music, too personal to be easily shared and if you ask who were my dogs I can give you that information. Although it has little importance. We all edit our identity’s for better or worse I hope that my own children will have a few details about me to be added to their memory bank. These thoughts came to me after listening to a blog about what was remembered from the days of slavery. Sound recordings were a new technology but we have snippets, important in the larger scheme of things.

Enough years have passed that I can talk about my worst job interview ever. It was not a crisis but it does bring back memories of how the corporation will lie to you. You see in those days there were lots of factories and in fact I had worked for one of those factories less than a year before had a great time working there left on good terms we’re back to school and now I needed another job I assumed that my old job was sitting there waiting for me because I didn’t know any better and so I went to the personnel office introduced myself and asked to speak to the personnel director I laid my case out that I was a returning employee that I expected to start again immediately he looked up from his papers took my resume read through it quickly and then told me that my old job was not available that year however seeing that on my resume I had listed taking sociology courses he felt he had something that would be even more interesting for me than what I had done the previous summer I could have a job in the foundry I did not know what that meant but I was game I could handle any job you could put before me so I said sure and reported to work several days later. My first task was to put big weights on top of the sand molds the weights were too large for me to even lift so they decided that that was not the proper task for me. I could have a job working on the hot cast shakeout again just meaningless words and so I said sure and was brought down past all the heavy machinery to a corner where I could stand by a moving belt; this was a foundry with an outside wall against a snow bank and the temperature went from very cold to very hot very quickly as well the machinery was not well maintained so I spent a portion of each shift with a shovel digging out around the belt. I did not require many days to figure out that this was a really terrible way to spend a summer and after a tragic accident on the shop floor, I went home spent the night awake reported to manpower the next morning looking for something or anything else and never returned to the foundry. The personnel director had lied and that was all he was getting from me.

During all those years did I spend in school there was one big lie. Quite apart from all the little lies that were told. Somebody was convinced that studying mathematics would be of value later in life. Spoiler alert, it hasn’t been other than at the most cursory level those hours that I was placed in agony trying to decode quadratic equations and exponents did not serve me not even once in sharp contrast with my hours with a dictionary trying to decipher old Latin texts was actually a value and my courses in pure science for example chemistry and physics were good but the average run-of-the-mill mathematics class was just one way to keep us in the same place for an hour so the rest of the world could go on. I hope my children escape now. You may wonder has anyone ever asked me to go back to math class? No not even for an hour. I did spend time as a substitute teacher in mathematics where I learned that all the answers were kept in a special book but that was hardly the point of the exercise. Once I learned that the answers were all known the problem seemed less obvious. In the same vein, I did not find my fortune while studying equations. I have a larger problem my phone number is being targeted. I get more than a dozen calls every couple of hours from scammers. I wonder if they can answer mathematical questions. A Turing test if you will, prove that you have intelligence but that won’t happen each time I get close to being able to query the caller, they go away. They figured out that I have no money to give them and that I am trying to waste their time like a modern day math teacher.

In my world music is important. We even have songs about music. Like when the music died. And no it did not. Let me tell you a little story. I was still a teenager and I received an invitation from my cousin. She will remain nameless by her own choice by my funny summer afternoon a Sunday I believe I was invited to come along to an outdoor concert. In the big city. I cannot remember how I ended up there but sometime around supper time we headed off to the event site and got a place to sit in the field. Eventually on stage a young man appeared. I only remember one song from his repertoire and that was because the the song became part of our culture. This isn’t a reference to an American Pie when I heard the song it was already famous. A lot of airplay on the radio. I had not bought the vinyl but I was really interested to see how famous people performed. This was something that I had very little experience with. And so we watched the concert and we sang along at the appropriate times and then we went home very low key if you will no huge crowds just some people sitting in the grass listening to an artist that for us was familiar. Because of that one song. I have never seen him since but at least I was there once at a time when his fame was new not yet a subject for Rolling Stone magazine I could probably find the real date of the concert but why bother it changes nothing about such a short story I can tell you that I was there when Don performed for Canada and I still remember it decades later a good musical moment this afternoon. I watched the documentary about when he started in the music business. He rode a bicycle and delivered newspapers he had no plans of being a famous singer when he started out.  

The debate was held before the election. That might be the only good thing in the whole plan. It seems that the debate that I did not watch last night went poorly for all involved. Remember these are trained professionals and yet they can’t seem to get the act together. Either one. There are still months to go before the election and that will give the majority of people time to forget. And they will because that’s one thing about the voting public. Their memory span is short. Even if the media goes out of its way to journalize what happened the average person will not go back to watch a debate from months before. Some things are just too painful I guess. Meanwhile up here in the north we’re years away from our next election and the loss of a single seat earlier this week was still news although the 500 votes separating the two should have been more of a detail than it was. You see this was a safe seat, until it was lost. Now it is just roadkill on that long path to the next government. I live in a part of the country were such things rarely happen. We have very well trained electors and they always vote the way the parties want. Not so much in the big city where the crowd changes continually. I mean I was surprised when somebody had told me how I was going to vote because of how my grand father had voted. People believe such things. Elsewhere in the world elections come and go but in North America we think they’re important. Democracy. Rarely do we actually look at the underlying trends or the same people hang around for decades. Seriously. When was the last time we actually had a new government. We tend to recycle our ideas over and over again. Recycle should not mean reuse but it does in electoral terms. And so I am able to sit back and check out the results of that big debate from yesterday knowing that it matters very little. Besides, I will not be voting. Another country. I will watch only for the comedy and there is some. If one of the debaters can barely speak and the other can only tell lies you end up with results that change very little of the actual news stream. It would be magical if they suddenly found new candidates at the last minute. I suppose we can hope.

Although my travel expectations are limited I do like to be informed about the possibilities. The world has changed a great deal over the last few centuries. We no longer need to mark our maps with a legend of «Beyond this point lie dragons ». We have checked it out and most things are reasonably safe. With one exception. I had learned a couple of years ago well following a blog about a couple traveling from north to south along the edge of the continents that there was a road that would take me all the way from Alaska to Argentina. I have no expectations of ever taking that road but I was enchanted to know the possibility existed and then I learned that it existed with one small exception. There is a gap. Found in the jungles of South America or Central America it turns out that you can only go so far in your vehicle. The highway stops being a highway and becomes a recipe for disaster. And so today I watched a documentary on just that place. Yes there are dragons in this sense. Although the number of people trying to get from north to south has increased. I will leave you to do your own research. You may go and you may die. So I have revisited my own expectations. I will not try to drive from Alaska to the South. Instead I will continue to watch videos and realize that you can be in a worse place than you think. I will continue to enjoy my own country. Still a lot to visit. I do not need to share the road with people who are desperate. And I will take one moment to congratulate son #2 who has returned from a long bicycle trek through Norway. He is home and all of his baggage made it with him.

For several afternoons now my telephone seems to ring almost continuously . No big deal I know how to answer the phone but I am somewhat puzzled. Is this an uptake because we are at the end of a month? Do these callera have to make a quota? Let’s look at some of the positions they offer me. Should I be worried that there’s been a telephone ordered in my name from a famous online dealer. I can return it you know. And if my social number has been compromised does that mean I no longer have to pay taxes? Sounds like a plus to me. Oddly none of the callers seem to have answers to my questions. Also I am trying to figure out what they hope they can learn from me when I say I want to cancel an order. Is this some sort of weird ritual to test whether or not selling things to people via the Internet is a good business model? I think that one has been proven. You may wonder why I even bother to answer the phone and that answer is simple. The ring sound it’s not as much fun as you might imagine. It breaks my silent reverie. Perhaps I need a new telephone with a different ringtone. I have stayed on the line to the point where the line hangs up. I have asked questions from anyone that will talk to me. And I have never received are good answer for what information they really want me to give them. I mean, if you have my phone number and credit card number go ahead. Charge me for that fake phone but stop with the incessant phone calls that go on from morning to night. You have to pay those employees. I work for free. And so far you have not made much money from my side of the ledger. I will keep trying to figure it out though because I am really curious. And there you have it.

When you have a limited budget you have to learn to think outside the box. And that includes using the box I assume. I remember the first time I checked the assignment given to a friend who was in basic engineering. The title was 100 uses for the common nail and that has never left my memory. I have not yet discovered all of the uses that you can have for certain things. I’ve been watching videos where people show off nifty gadgets they have found to be used while camping. There are generalized themes but the number of individual items seems to be without limit. Thank you Amazon. If you can think of it then someone else has probably done it before you and marketed a cheap tool to get the job done. Seriously. Go onto any of the channels and those who live in an RV for example can you meet immediately struck by the number of ways that people get around common difficulties. Without spending much money. Who knew that having a hook in your pocket to hang over the shower door at the campground could be so utilitarian. And what about ways to deploy your anti bug stuff. Sure beats holding everything in your hand. To be fair mankind is often relied on the hand as a way to get things done but you only have a maximum of two of them. Having some ways to accessorize can make your day go by with much less stress and pain. And minor burns I suppose. I mean we can’t spend our lives training the dog to do jobs for us. Or cat if that’s possible. Or younger siblings because they tend to grow up I learned that their lives can be better spent serving themselves. Just take the time to look around your house and see how many ways you have avoided purchasing something unnecessary. Yes you have a brain. And yes you have ways of thinking the problem through from start to finish. Like that engineering assignment I mentioned. I mean, who knew that plastic bags had so many uses. Until the stores stopped providing them and then we hit a wall.

A short video that I watched today remind me of how my travels through literature were sometimes controlled by others. Yes there was a school library but I also had to read the things that had been chosen in the curriculum. For example, books by Mark Twain. I have to wonder why the school board was willing to take those on while ignoring the obvious choices of books about the Drew and Hardy for the children. Or the Bobbsey twins. I would like to think that school boards put a lot of time into making curriculum choices but this is probably not so. Rather book choices were made at a higher level in order to fulfill enormous book orders. Much better to buy several thousand copies of a paperback then to go through the hassles of single orders for thousands of children. I cannot remember the first time I visited a real bookstore. Probably much later in life. Instead we received small flyers that gave us access to a curated list of books for people of our own age. Often reduced in content to fit it into a chosen book size. As for the textbooks in my school they were designed to last forever. Or so it seemed. Rooms filled with stacks of books purchased at an earlier date. We paid no attention to the date of printing. We had no choice. When you learned which Shakespeare play would be on the curriculum for a given grade level everything else seemed to fall into place beside it. I realize that the plays by famous authors that were given as choices were anything but. There was a plan. Why else have us read some of those books. I think back to a book called «Cue for treason» which was hardly political. Instead it gave the school a chance to present us with an alternative view to history. Opening our minds to greater things. I tricked them because I then turned around and went to the library and read most of the other books by that author. Breaking out of the mold I guess. And have I ever offered any of those early pieces of fiction to my own children? I hardly think so. By the time my children could read they had also learned that there were places to get pretty much anything you wanted. Good libraries for example. It would be easier to have a book where all of the questions had been pre decided by a committee but that was not how things went.