TubaOrNotTuba

One can learn many things from books. But, to be fair, some things are easier if someone shows you how. Many years ago a man came to our door and sold us some books. Dozens of books. So many they had to be delivered by railway train although that was a rule for many things. In our case although I was the only one apt to ever open them we bought a whole double set of encyclopedias. The person who came to our door explained that we could teach ourselves just about anything if we would only take the time to do some research . And so, in a couple of weeks, the curtains of books arrived. We had no plan. I decided to try and learn something based on the TV program that I had seen. Building a kite. I found some large pieces of wood which I tied together to make the requisite cross. Then I found a spool of thread and this used window blind. Do you follow me so far? I fabricated a kite that in proper conditions could probably have lifted a small car. It flew like a rock. Not my fault. I had followed the plan in the book. I had even constructed one of those tails that you see in pictures. Neither of my parents had any interest or background knowledge to help me so I put it down to experience. We needed better wind. I am glad that wind never came because I could have become a tourist in another province. This kite was well constructed even if it never had any chance of taking flight. And what I really learned is that even the best of instructions go better when you have someone to demonstrate where you had gone wrong. It took me many years to discover the errors of my ways. By that time you could get a kite at the local gas station and it actually worked. Plastics. And since that time I have tried other designs in other places and I have managed to fly a kite as the saying goes but the first time is a memory that will stay with me because I was so close and yet so far. Those books stayed around the house for many years mainly to hold windows open. Too much knowledge for the time and place.

Back in my day getting to school was an adventure. It literally was uphill in both directions and usually in a snow storm. At certain points the school board provided bus transportation. Usually. I have a fund memory of the day that the bus picked us up and took us to school. This was not great comfort. Our school bus I believe have been used for military transport in the day and then sold to the municipality. Forget those padded seats that children have now. Anyhow it was cold. How cold? Think of living in the high Arctic if you will. On this particular day the bus dropped us at the school door. We went to class but sometime before lunch the announcement was given that buses were cancelled for the rest of the day. That translates into find your own way home. And with that came our challenge. A group of us set out. Downhill in frigid cold in a snowstorm. None of us were lost or you would still be reading about it in the history books. What we did learn was that getting the school might be more of a challenge then we thought on certain days. I did get home and I did not freeze but at that point all of my trust in transportation by the school board went away. I would like to say that we did not go back to school until summer but that would be a fallacy. The next day we were back on the bus aware that getting to school and getting home was little more then a government promise. Keep that in mind kids when you decide to complain about having to go to school by bus. In your case if it even looks like nasty weather you will be told to stay home. I doubt that you will ever be delivered to school and then told to find your own way back. Yes it was a long time ago but some things remain etched in our memory. I also think that the school board decided to get better buses going forward but I am unsure because I graduated from school and for those that came after me they will form their own mythology.

Moving on from the big reveal yesterday that we’re going to have a snap election means analyzing what the companies are doing. Believe me, political parties are every bit as much companies as anything else. We have one side that has decided to go passive aggressive. They will allow the opposition to do the talking for now knowing that the things that are said cannot be taken back. As well the company that wants to be the opposition has a very simple strategy that comes down to 3 words that change every day. The model from a grammar point of view seems to be to verb the noun and any grade school teacher can fill in the rest. We used to call them slogans but in a world of social media in short news bursts a slogan does not have a long shelf life. Nor will the efforts in this campaign. Just over a month and we will move on to better things, I hope. Some of the numbers given for what it costs to run an election campaign are frightening. More money in those 30 odd days then the average family will spend in a lifetime. Yes you can say that the parties or companies run on donations but all of those donations are tax deductible so in the end the bills are paid by the rest of us. Keep that in mind. Unfortunately in politics we have very little actual accountability. You will have to take what you can from the substance that is offered to you. Think of the foam on top of the desert. If I had my dessert I would take some of those verb the noun moments and make sure that they stay alive. Nothing would be more just then to have some of these would be slogans stay around for years to come. Just remind the rest of us about how shallow some of the political choices are going to be. There will be no actual governance in Canada for the next two months so we will have to accept that slogans and things said by people with their own axe to grind will be the only meat in the meal. No wonder people hate politicians.

I rarely use the word imminent. But here I am on a quiet Sunday afternoon waiting for the imminent drop of the writ. For those of you who do not follow politics that is a moment where the Governor General disolves the parliament completely and starts off the race to a new elected majority or minority. All we know at this point is that the call will be given sometime today. The actual term involved will be just around a month. Again I lack the specificity required to put a date on things. I can find these statistics on the number of ridings involved and potentially the number of candidates. In my own area some of those names are already familiar. When we finally get to the polling station the names on the ballot should be all familiar to me. Only because I pay attention to such things. I am curious if any of the candidates will find their way to my driveway. Such a visit would be a novelty. Because, anyone persons ballot carries very little weight in making decisions now. I am the equal of all those around me. I am similar to everyone else in the nation. For many when the ballots are finally counted and the totals are posted on the screen a lot of the writing names will be unfamiliar. We are a larger nation than we used to be. I will be watching the results a month from now for here because in the end I only get to cast one vote for one member of the parliament. I do not have a special vote to choose the nation’s leadership and so I will take the next four to five weeks to solidify my understanding of the issues and after the election is over I will move on to living my life. Based on past experience anyone election will have only minor consequences for my life. I have always lived in a time of peace. I just hope that the tendency will continue.

I am a little gobsmacked. I have been listening to political rhetoric again. Not a great way to spend the day. One of our premiers has decided that rules do not apply. Rather the idea that one province can decide for all the others about something as important as the environment in order to make money with the gas industry is outside my own experience. It seems that Alberta believes that they have a manifest destiny and I use this term in the best historical context to sell oil or black sand to the rest of the world. Something about money and more money. If Canada has laws that control that commerce but this province believes that those laws should be set aside because money is more important than anything else. Have we ever heard a thing like this before I wonder? Anyone who is growing up with siblings will be aware that sometimes members of the family speak without thinking. I hope that is what is happening here. I am not looking for a father over children role either. Rather I believe that we have one province that has loss the north. There are pipelines that had been built using the money of the other provinces. However since the oil industry is looking at a firm barrier and looking at a chance that the market will not be there in a half century, that industry wants everything now. I think there’s a Bible verse about that. Something about the prodigal son. But as I said it all comes down to money and I feel sure that the people working in the big offices in Calgary and Edmonton have no dirt under their fingernails. Stand by everyone, things are going to be rough for the next little bit. Anyhow when Alberta decides to have new pipelines going west and east and enter territories over which they have no control, we now understand the outspoken call on the Prime Minister to do things for them or they will do something else. Is this a 51st state? On the calendar in that office I am unsure that the Americans want the crazy stuff that comes out of our oil patch.

I tend to think of it as death by 1000 tiny cuts. Or if you will the zombies. Forget what you’ve seen in the movies. We now have a world where companies collect money for services that they might someday give you. In fact they are so sure you will love their product that they will bill you and collect their money in advance. Yes I am referring to those services that are done by subscription. Ones that require no effort on the part of the company other than to be there to take your money at regular intervals. Once a year in many cases. In going back through my e-mail box I notice that I have received confirmation of payment for a number of services that I had not thought about in years. Tiny services like the ability to collect data from my TV set if you will. The charges are not large taken one service at a time but the amounts add up. I now better understand what it would take to become rich. Subscriptions. I am not going to list all the offenders because they do not care. In fact if you go through the steps of trying to cancel some of these services you will receive yet another e-mail. One that says they cannot find any trace of your account. Note that they already have collected your money for the next year. And if I was willing to put more time into it and effort I could probably resolve each case to my satisfaction. At least, I hope so. It is hard to remember what a particular electronics service offered me in the beginning that convinced me to sign up in perpetuity. I doubt that the word perpetuity was ever used in the original offer of service. I will be working through this one company at a time. I just want to warn the rest to you that zombies are not a mess. Rather they’re little collections of money done electronically for things that you had not thought about in a decade. And yes all the fault lies with me big is at the other end there is no human. Just a carefully programmed computer that has my name and number and I need to provide revenue to their company. One small payment at a time.

Please excuse me if I sound like I have a bit of a cold. That’s a nice way of saying that may have caught a virus the last time I went out into a public place. I have no colds in my house. Bit of a miserable time but it’s the price we pay to be human. I never heard my dog cough. I do not go out into public places very much and so the choice of going to a huge concert hall with hundreds of other listeners may have been what it took for me to be suddenly infected. Of course it could also have been that I had to use the handrail to go up and down flights of stairs. We no longer have the safety rules in place that we had only a few years ago no compulsive hand wiping or spray chemicals everywhere. We just get a cold and go along with it. Spring has arrived. Is this part of the deal of changing seasons? All I can do now is wait things out. Despite all the advances in medical science through the centuries we still have not found a way to avoid feeling like someone had tried to stavas in the throat. Agreed. I have never been stabbed in the throat but I’m guessing. And in a few days or weeks this too shall pass. Already there promising warmer weather which will bring other problems. It turns out we also have some trash can bandits in the area. You may call them raccoons. And there is no reason for them to want to get into my piles of old tin cans. Hardly a balanced diet for a wild creature. In other World News one of my sons has told me that there was a fire in his old apartment a couple days ago. He has not lived there in years so this is only an anecdote. He managed to pass through the risks of people breaking in and trying to steal stuff and now he is trying to remember all the details that have been erased by a sudden fire. I guess he feels glad that he moved away from that location.

I have had a lifetime of being basically less than social. I have people living on the road near here that have never met me in over a decade. I’ve had cities where I’ve lived for three decades and never visited the people next door. That’s me. I may know who you are but I feel no reason to go in and knock on your door and come and sit down the table. Our nation is headed into the same Pattern of life. Ask around and see how many of your friends are planning to go South for their next holiday you will only need a few fingers. We have decided that crazy is enough to keep us away. From what I’ve heard on various podcasts this is not me this is everyone. I mean there are places that I have no expectation of visiting. Looking at you King of England. I know where you live but I will be not dropping by for tea I call it being a good neighbor. A sense of mutual respect. The king has no reason for me to drop by for social hour. That same thing holds true for pretty much anywhere I have ever visited. When I lived in our capital city I had the chance to go into a lot of different houses but only because I was the census taker. That opens a lot of doors. And they knew who I was because of my ID. No expectation of regular visits. And so as the number of cross-border visits dwindles and fades away it will soon be historical memory of going South for the holidays. Most of us are finding other places to visit. Can’t go South? Trying north east and west. There I have solved the problem. By the time I have to renew my passport I will be an older and wiser citizen. And for what it is worth they can still call me. I do answer the phone when it rings. I have a whole series of new acquaintances who work for Amazon. What about you? Are you going South for your holidays? Why? Do you still buy products from across the border? Why? Are you too lazy to seek out alternatives produces closer to home. Apparently they have an app for that.

We can all agree that competitions can be fun. Not all competitions but we do tend to make it into something larger than life. No matter the sport no matter the place someone will be trying to be better than the person beside them. But if you want to try something interesting go look at a book of world records. Move beyond the obvious ones like who ran fastest or who climbed highest. Go for the silly things. Look for the person that ate the most pudding in the session. And it works for more than people I have a fond memory of going camping with a big crate or cardboard box if you will of marshmallows. I had no intention of eating them but I found a couple of dogs on the beach and they were keen. Who could eat the most. Until they could not. Dogs are perhaps wiser than humans and they know when to move away and look for something better to do with their time. I made it through high school with only a minimum amount of competition. When we climbed those large ropes in the gymnasium we were playing with a watch but the real game was to keep from falling off and getting hurt. How do you spot for an event like that. And so we move back to the classroom ended things are much less dangerous. Who could complete the largest number of quadratic equation solutions in a day. Just for the record it was not me. I turned from competition to music if only for my sanity. We do not give awards for the person who gets through the piece of music before all the rest. Oh I’m sure there’s a competition summers but not one that I have come across. Similarly if you told someone that you had watched a large number of movies they knew the secret. It takes a lot of time. Looking for a speed reader? Don’t waste your time. And so I am now left to check the weather records. Was this the coldest day in the last month? I think you know that it does not matter. There will always be something else coming along that will take the record away. And so when you watch sports or check the financial pages know that someone is looking for a record at the end of the day. It turns us all into people armed with a keen eye and a stop watch. Not much else.

I am pretty sure then I have fallen off the radar for one industry. The fast food industry. Or as others know it the fat food industry. Put it down to demographics or geography or change in income but I no longer receive those bundles of coupons that invite me to come in for yet one more burger. I still have a postal box but no sign of any interest in them giving me something for free. That is probably a good thing. Since I no longer go to their restaurants I tend to eat in a more healthy fashion. Smaller portions that are prepared here at home. If I have a hamburger it is by design not hunger pangs. I watched some footage that talks about the changing industry. About how some of the bigger names are going to disappear. The clientele is still out there but there does not seem to be the uptake or uptick in client numbers. When I hear about someone that took the time to eat a fast food burger every day I am left with a sense of curiosity. Was it the sauce? Or the convenience? Going home from work and preparing meals is labour intensive. The fast food industry depended upon that. With multiple restaurants on every corner in a larger city there was always someone willing to sell you a burger and fries for cheap. Remove the clientele and the business model makes much less sense. Or dollars. I am hard pressed to remember the last time I went out and bought something like a bucket of chicken. Measure that in years. Or a foot long sandwich. Something I might do while traveling a long distance in the car but otherwise much easier to go home bread and some cold cuts. As for soda from the fountain? I do not miss it. We purchased one of those machines that allows you to carbonate your own liquid’s and even there I use much less fizzy water than before. Still have it in refrigerator but not on the table. I think I may have broken clear of the fast food industry. I will let them attract clients as they see fit but I do not think that they miss me nor I them. Funny how that changes. When I bought my first burger for $0.10 I thought that the world had changed. I agree, that was a long time ago. And there are no restaurants in my immediate area offering products that make me want to go to them. Not even a pizza because I have a refrigerator and a freezer at home.