Clothes Lines; Cheese Skippers; Short Stuff (Mini-Stories about Kids and Pets)
Clothes Lines
"There is nothing as sad as a wash hung out by a man."
That was a common saying among the women of Arthur when I was growing up.
I figure that there were two possible explanations for the saying.
Perhaps the saying meant that the fact that a man was hanging out the wash meant that there was trouble in the family, the wife was sick or had died.
Something sad had happened.
More likely the expression referred to the belief that men always made a hash of hanging up clothes. Shirts were pinned to the line by the sleeves, instead of by the tail. Men's pants were pinned by the waist instead of by the legs (with the seams aligned carefully together). And women's undies were hung in the open for all to see instead of inside pillow cases.
These thoughts were triggered by the recent arrival in our neighbourhood of several rotating outdoor drying racks placed on porches and in the garages of new homes.
The clothes seem to be neatly and correctly pinned to the lines on the racks, so one can assume they were done by a woman.
Perhaps the dryers haven't yet arrived, or perhaps the newcomers are intent on leading all of us into a greener world.
We'll have to wait and see.
In the meantime, I've been trying to think of the equivalent today of , "There is nothing as sad as a wash hung out by a man."
The closest I've been able to come is, "There is nothing as sad as a dishwasher loaded by a man."
Now, I've known one or two men who were pretty skilled at dish loading.
But most of us bung in the plates, bowls etc. wherever there is a place that fits. Our better halves thank us for our thoughtfulness but as soon as our backs are turned they rearrange everything.
In an attempt to improve my dish loading skills, I once watched a video that came with the dishwasher. A slender woman who looked as though she was on her way to a cocktail party, (a revealing dress and all) provided me---my wife left after the first few seconds---with hints on where and how to place the dishes.
When I suggested we consider adopting some of her suggestions, I was met with this, "You can't believe a word that tramp says!"
What's a man to do?
Cheese Skippers
I have had a story in my memory for years that part of me says, 'Hey, this really happened', while another part is saying, 'Are you sure your brain isn't making this whole thing up?'
I'm going to share the story with you but first I should warn people with weak stomachs that they may find the subject matter a tad upsetting.
Now the story.
My mother told me when I was young that her father---my grandfather---used to eat cheese skippers. Sometimes, while he would be sitting at dinner having a piece of cheese he would come across one of the skippers burrowing its way out of the cheese. He would mash the insect on his plate, put it on his fork with a little cheese and pop the whole thing in his mouth.
As he did this he would say, "They eat the cheese and I eat them".
Mother and her three sisters would squeal and say whatever the 1910 equivalent was of , 'Oh that's so gross!',
Mom couldn't tell me much about cheese skippers but the impression (erroneous) I got was that cheese makers put some cheese skipper eggs in the centre of fifty pound wheels of new cheese. The cheese wheels would be put in a warm storage room to age. The eggs would hatch and when the skippers appeared at the surface of the cheese, it was ready to eat.
That's the story I remember.
Did I make the whole thing up?
I could have but the one feature of the story that always stopped me from labeling it a false memory was the term, 'cheese skipper'. How could I have come up with that name?
I felt that if cheese skippers did in fact exist, then the memory would have to be given some weight. If, on the other hand, no one in biology had ever heard of a cheese skipper, that would shoot down the memory.
A few weeks ago, I decided that the time had come to try to get some answers.
I told Google to search for 'cheese skippers', and in just 0.23 seconds it proudly claimed that it had found 561,000 'hits'. We all know, of course, that Google tends to exaggerate a bit, that when it runs out of true hits for the two words it pads things out with hits for 'cheese' or 'skippers'.
But there were a couple of pages of references to 'cheese skippers'
One of them led me to a Wikipedia article on 'Cheese fly' , which you can read here, if you have a really strong stomach.
It turns out that cheese skippers are the larvae (a.k.a maggots) that hatch out of eggs laid by the cheese fly.
The old time cheese makers didn't intentionally put eggs in their fresh cheese, they just weren't too concerned about hygiene. So, cheese flies buzzing around the cheese vats laid their eggs and some months later cheese skippers started to appear.
The larvae are about 1/3 of an inch long and they can leap about 6 inches into the air, thus the name 'skippers'. Apparently, they do this by bringing their two ends together in a coil and then suddenly springing apart.
Some authorities claim that skippers, if eaten, can pass through the stomach--- unscathed by stomach acids---enter the intestines and then create lesions as they try to burrow out through the walls of the intestine. This can lead to stomach pain, vomiting, and bloody diarrhea.
I think I did warn you that this article could be upsetting.
Wait, there is more nasty stuff.
The skippers are an important factor used by CSI scientists in estimating the time of death. They don't turn up in a corpse for three to six months after death, while the larvae of other flies start arriving in just a few days.
Apparently the good folks of Sardinia make a cheese which depends for its strong flavour on the introduction of thousands of skippers. The cheese, which is called casu marzu (literally 'rotten cheese'), has been banned by the European Union--- which I think is only fair since the EU stopped the British from wrapping fish and chips in the News of the World (a racy tabloid newspaper).
OK, so cheese skippers do exist. There is at least some support for a view that the memory may be real.
But would my grandfather have eaten them?
Now, grandfather was no ignorant clod. He was a successful farmer, a popular local politician and the justice of the peace for Clarkson, Ontario (his friends called him 'the judge').
He also had, from all reports, a lively sense of fun. It is entirely possible that he was capable of putting on a show for his four horrified daughters.
So, after all this weighty research I think I can say that this particular memory is probably valid.
I am sure you are relieved to hear that!
Short Stuff (Mini-Stories about Kids and Pets)
One of my cousins, Ruth, tells a story about visiting our grandfather (and grandmother, whom he always referred to as 'Missus') at their home in Clarkson.
She and her sister were sitting at the kitchen table with grandfather, who was reading a newspaper.
Bored, the little girls unscrewed the tops of the salt and pepper shakers, poured out some salt and pepper and started mixing the two together with their fingers---I suppose today we would call it finger art.
When grandfather looked up from his paper and saw what the girls were doing he called out to his wife with delight, "Missus, missus, come see what the girls are doing!"
I suspect that the 'missus' was not quite as delighted as he was with this display of
granddaughterly creativity.
ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo
See you next Sunday for Posting #49 with more stories from our family’s universe! If you have comments or suggestions, please leave a comment at the bottom of this posting, or email me at johnpathunter@cs.com.
Sunday, November 29, 2009
Sunday, November 22, 2009
POSTING #47
Memories of an Arthur Snow Storm; Some Royal Canadian Air force Stories; Short Stuff (Mini-Stories about Kids and Pets)
Memories of an Arthur Snow Storm
Last week as I was getting ready to speak about my Russian experiences to a small group of history buffs at our local library, a man wanted to know where I was from. I told him I was from a village that he had probably never heard of, Arthur.
"Oh", he said, "I know it well and I have some very unpleasant memories of the Arthur District High School."
I forgot my nerves about the upcoming talk (it went well), and had to find out about his Arthur experiences.
It turns out that he was working at the University of Guelph in 1972, had been active in the Progressive Conservative Party, and had been invited by someone senior in the Party to run as a candidate in the federal election that was expected later in 1972.
The local Member of Parliament, Marvin (Marnie) Howe, an Arthur storeowner, had decided to retire. The Wellington- Grey-Dufferin-Waterloo constituency was as safe a seat as the Conservatives had in Ontario, and with the unpopularity of the Trudeau Government it was likely that whoever won the Conservative nomination would be a shoo-in for a seat in Parliament.
Bob Stanfield, the leader of the Party and Leader of the Opposition, planned to speak at the meeting, which was scheduled for March in the Arthur District High School auditorium.
Apparently Arthur was hit by one of its infamous March snow storms on the day of the nomination and Stanfield was not able to get through the snow drifts to the meeting.
The nomination process went ahead but I gather that without Stanfield's presence, it didn't evolve quite as the party brass had hoped.
In the end, a 22-year old from a well-know family in Fergus won the nomination, and at the general election held in October 1972 that young man, Perrin Beatty, won the seat.
I could understand why the fellow at the library had unpleasant memories of the Arthur District High School.
I told him that the high school had since been closed, with the students being bused to Mount Forest.
He didn't seem upset about that.
Some Royal Canadian Air force Stories
While I was researching the stories about Bill Attewell, a Wing Commander in the RCAF during the second world war (see Posting #45, November7, 2009) , I kept remembering and running into stories about the RCAF.
Here are some of them.
In the mid-years of the war, I used to rush home after school to listen to the CBC's weekly program, 'L for Lanky'. Crouched by the large speaker in our floor model radio I would listen for the RCAF March Past that introduced the program. Perhaps because of that early exposure to it, the March Past remains one of my favourite marches. (Click here for a video of the music played by the Air Command Band---isn't it a great march?)
Thank to a great website, www.airmuseum.ca, here is a brief description of
'L for Lanky'
"The CBC radio programme, "L for Lanky," was a very imaginative program which many of us remember fondly from our childhoods. "L for Lanky" means the Lancaster bomber that was the central figure in the show. It was about a WWII flight crew and their adventures going out on raids with this bomber -- but the "narrator" of the program was the Lancaster bomber itself. The plane was given a voice and a personality, and it began each show setting up the premise, in a slightly echoed voice with airplane sound behind it, and it always started out by saying "I'm L for Lanky. I'm a Lancaster bomber....." And on it went from there, setting up that week's story and then the regular actors as airmen took over. The voice of Lanky was played by an actor named Herb Gott. A great example of how well radio tapped into the theatre of the mind - one simply bought the premise without question. Otherwise they were standard WW2 air adventures. Apparently most of the ETs [Blogger's note: I'm not sure what ETs are, but assume they are scripts and/or recordings. J.H.] were destroyed after the war and apparently there is little evidence of the show in the CBC archives. There are rumours of excerpts still in existence. "
The program was full of suspense as the bomber tried to avoid or shoot down German fighter aircraft or dodge bursts of anti-aircraft flack. Despite the problems, the Lancaster was usually able to drop its 'payload' on some enemy target.
Looking back, I guess one could say the program was a form of war-time propaganda but we needed some reassurance during parts of the war when the enemy seemed to be winning, especially with their brutal bombing of London and other cities in England.
ooo
In the Canadian Immigration Office in Leeds, Yorkshire, when I was there in the early 1960s there were two RCAF veterans, Cal Willis and Vic Smith.
They never talked about the war unless I prompted them.
Cal had a small, golden, squiggly lapel pin that he wore each day. When I asked him about it he said that it meant that he was a member of the Caterpillar Club, that he had bailed out of a disabled bomber over France and survived, thanks to the parachute. The caterpillar was chosen as the symbol for the club "because the parachute canopy was made of silk and because caterpillars have to climb out of their cocoons and fly away". (Click here for more information on the Caterpillar Club.)
Cal had been rescued by a French farm family and hidden from the Nazi's until the French Resistance could smuggle him to the English channel and to a boat that could take him back to Britain.
If the Germans had found Cal, they would have executed the family and probably shot him as well.
Twenty years later, while he was in Leeds, Cal contacted the family and invited them to join him, his wife and his little boy for lunch at a posh restaurant in the Eiffel Tower.
I wondered how the lunch would go. Would the farm family feel uncomfortable in the fancy restaurant? Would language be a problem?
When I asked Cal, he just beamed broadly.
It had gone perfectly.
ooo
Vic Smith was a navigator on a bomber He said he was viewed by the pilot and the engineer, both in their early 20s, as an 'old' man who was, after all, 30 and married to boot.
Returning from flights over Germany, the pilot liked to relax by finding a radio station playing pop music and then pump it through the intercom system so the gunners, the bomb aimer, the wireless operator and Vic could enjoy it.
The problem was, Vic said, that while the others could relax he had to get them back to base. Using information from speed and altitude gauges, his charts and sometimes celestial navigation if the night were clear he had to chart a path back to the British air base. In a pre-computer era, he was always frantically busy with his slide rule and pencil and paper calculations.
He protested to the pilot that he couldn't do his calculations with the music blaring in his ears. The pilot ignored the 'old man'.
Vic said that he would then turn off his intercom. This was potentially dangerous---what if they were hit and the pilot ordered the crew to parachute out.
But it was more important to get home safely.
I'm told that the attrition rate during bombing raids was at least 5% per raid. My memory is that Vic and his crew flew almost 50 missions.
They beat the odds, thanks in part to the 'old man' and his calculations.
ooo
Here is a story that either Cal or Willis told me.
Some Canadian crews flew daylight missions over Europe to photograph the damage that the night-time bombing had done and to identify new targets.
One crew flew several missions trying to locate a German ammunition dump. They followed the coordinates provided by reports from intelligence officials, took strips of photos but couldn't see anything that looked like an ammunition dump.
Back in Britain, a Canadian who had been raised on a farm, analyzed the photos but he couldn't see a dump.
Where the dump was supposed to be was just a pasture with cows grazing peacefully.
Then it hit him.
He called over his superior, "See those cows, they are always facing in the same direction, in each of the photos."
"So?", the city-born officer said.
"But cows always face the wind. The wind wouldn't come from the same direction day after day. Those aren't real cows."
The next night a bombing crew had the satisfaction of seeing huge explosions when they bombed the 'cows'
Short Stuff (Mini-Stories about Kids and Pets)
Here is another air force story, one that I heard a few times while living in Britain.
Here is the www.airmuseum.ca website's version of that story.
"A World War II pilot is reminiscing before school children about his days in the air force. "There I was over Germany in 1942," he says, "the situation was really tough. The Germans had a very strong air force. I remember," he continues, "one day I was protecting the bombers and suddenly, out of the clouds, these fokkers appeared. (At this point, several of the children giggle). I looked up, and right above me was one of them. I aimed at him and shot him down. They were swarming. I immediately realized that there was another fokker behind me."
At this instant the girls in the auditorium start to giggle and boys start to laugh. The teacher stands up and says, "I think I should point out that 'Fokker' was the name of the German-Dutch aircraft company."
"That's true," says the pilot, "but these fokkers were flying Messerschmidts."
ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo
See you next Sunday for Posting #48 with more stories from our family’s universe! If you have comments or suggestions, please leave a comment at the bottom of this posting, or email me at johnpathunter@cs.com.
Memories of an Arthur Snow Storm
Last week as I was getting ready to speak about my Russian experiences to a small group of history buffs at our local library, a man wanted to know where I was from. I told him I was from a village that he had probably never heard of, Arthur.
"Oh", he said, "I know it well and I have some very unpleasant memories of the Arthur District High School."
I forgot my nerves about the upcoming talk (it went well), and had to find out about his Arthur experiences.
It turns out that he was working at the University of Guelph in 1972, had been active in the Progressive Conservative Party, and had been invited by someone senior in the Party to run as a candidate in the federal election that was expected later in 1972.
The local Member of Parliament, Marvin (Marnie) Howe, an Arthur storeowner, had decided to retire. The Wellington- Grey-Dufferin-Waterloo constituency was as safe a seat as the Conservatives had in Ontario, and with the unpopularity of the Trudeau Government it was likely that whoever won the Conservative nomination would be a shoo-in for a seat in Parliament.
Bob Stanfield, the leader of the Party and Leader of the Opposition, planned to speak at the meeting, which was scheduled for March in the Arthur District High School auditorium.
Apparently Arthur was hit by one of its infamous March snow storms on the day of the nomination and Stanfield was not able to get through the snow drifts to the meeting.
The nomination process went ahead but I gather that without Stanfield's presence, it didn't evolve quite as the party brass had hoped.
In the end, a 22-year old from a well-know family in Fergus won the nomination, and at the general election held in October 1972 that young man, Perrin Beatty, won the seat.
I could understand why the fellow at the library had unpleasant memories of the Arthur District High School.
I told him that the high school had since been closed, with the students being bused to Mount Forest.
He didn't seem upset about that.
Some Royal Canadian Air force Stories
While I was researching the stories about Bill Attewell, a Wing Commander in the RCAF during the second world war (see Posting #45, November7, 2009) , I kept remembering and running into stories about the RCAF.
Here are some of them.
In the mid-years of the war, I used to rush home after school to listen to the CBC's weekly program, 'L for Lanky'. Crouched by the large speaker in our floor model radio I would listen for the RCAF March Past that introduced the program. Perhaps because of that early exposure to it, the March Past remains one of my favourite marches. (Click here for a video of the music played by the Air Command Band---isn't it a great march?)
Thank to a great website, www.airmuseum.ca, here is a brief description of
'L for Lanky'
"The CBC radio programme, "L for Lanky," was a very imaginative program which many of us remember fondly from our childhoods. "L for Lanky" means the Lancaster bomber that was the central figure in the show. It was about a WWII flight crew and their adventures going out on raids with this bomber -- but the "narrator" of the program was the Lancaster bomber itself. The plane was given a voice and a personality, and it began each show setting up the premise, in a slightly echoed voice with airplane sound behind it, and it always started out by saying "I'm L for Lanky. I'm a Lancaster bomber....." And on it went from there, setting up that week's story and then the regular actors as airmen took over. The voice of Lanky was played by an actor named Herb Gott. A great example of how well radio tapped into the theatre of the mind - one simply bought the premise without question. Otherwise they were standard WW2 air adventures. Apparently most of the ETs [Blogger's note: I'm not sure what ETs are, but assume they are scripts and/or recordings. J.H.] were destroyed after the war and apparently there is little evidence of the show in the CBC archives. There are rumours of excerpts still in existence. "
The program was full of suspense as the bomber tried to avoid or shoot down German fighter aircraft or dodge bursts of anti-aircraft flack. Despite the problems, the Lancaster was usually able to drop its 'payload' on some enemy target.
Looking back, I guess one could say the program was a form of war-time propaganda but we needed some reassurance during parts of the war when the enemy seemed to be winning, especially with their brutal bombing of London and other cities in England.
ooo
In the Canadian Immigration Office in Leeds, Yorkshire, when I was there in the early 1960s there were two RCAF veterans, Cal Willis and Vic Smith.
They never talked about the war unless I prompted them.
Cal had a small, golden, squiggly lapel pin that he wore each day. When I asked him about it he said that it meant that he was a member of the Caterpillar Club, that he had bailed out of a disabled bomber over France and survived, thanks to the parachute. The caterpillar was chosen as the symbol for the club "because the parachute canopy was made of silk and because caterpillars have to climb out of their cocoons and fly away". (Click here for more information on the Caterpillar Club.)
Cal had been rescued by a French farm family and hidden from the Nazi's until the French Resistance could smuggle him to the English channel and to a boat that could take him back to Britain.
If the Germans had found Cal, they would have executed the family and probably shot him as well.
Twenty years later, while he was in Leeds, Cal contacted the family and invited them to join him, his wife and his little boy for lunch at a posh restaurant in the Eiffel Tower.
I wondered how the lunch would go. Would the farm family feel uncomfortable in the fancy restaurant? Would language be a problem?
When I asked Cal, he just beamed broadly.
It had gone perfectly.
ooo
Vic Smith was a navigator on a bomber He said he was viewed by the pilot and the engineer, both in their early 20s, as an 'old' man who was, after all, 30 and married to boot.
Returning from flights over Germany, the pilot liked to relax by finding a radio station playing pop music and then pump it through the intercom system so the gunners, the bomb aimer, the wireless operator and Vic could enjoy it.
The problem was, Vic said, that while the others could relax he had to get them back to base. Using information from speed and altitude gauges, his charts and sometimes celestial navigation if the night were clear he had to chart a path back to the British air base. In a pre-computer era, he was always frantically busy with his slide rule and pencil and paper calculations.
He protested to the pilot that he couldn't do his calculations with the music blaring in his ears. The pilot ignored the 'old man'.
Vic said that he would then turn off his intercom. This was potentially dangerous---what if they were hit and the pilot ordered the crew to parachute out.
But it was more important to get home safely.
I'm told that the attrition rate during bombing raids was at least 5% per raid. My memory is that Vic and his crew flew almost 50 missions.
They beat the odds, thanks in part to the 'old man' and his calculations.
ooo
Here is a story that either Cal or Willis told me.
Some Canadian crews flew daylight missions over Europe to photograph the damage that the night-time bombing had done and to identify new targets.
One crew flew several missions trying to locate a German ammunition dump. They followed the coordinates provided by reports from intelligence officials, took strips of photos but couldn't see anything that looked like an ammunition dump.
Back in Britain, a Canadian who had been raised on a farm, analyzed the photos but he couldn't see a dump.
Where the dump was supposed to be was just a pasture with cows grazing peacefully.
Then it hit him.
He called over his superior, "See those cows, they are always facing in the same direction, in each of the photos."
"So?", the city-born officer said.
"But cows always face the wind. The wind wouldn't come from the same direction day after day. Those aren't real cows."
The next night a bombing crew had the satisfaction of seeing huge explosions when they bombed the 'cows'
Short Stuff (Mini-Stories about Kids and Pets)
Here is another air force story, one that I heard a few times while living in Britain.
Here is the www.airmuseum.ca website's version of that story.
"A World War II pilot is reminiscing before school children about his days in the air force. "There I was over Germany in 1942," he says, "the situation was really tough. The Germans had a very strong air force. I remember," he continues, "one day I was protecting the bombers and suddenly, out of the clouds, these fokkers appeared. (At this point, several of the children giggle). I looked up, and right above me was one of them. I aimed at him and shot him down. They were swarming. I immediately realized that there was another fokker behind me."
At this instant the girls in the auditorium start to giggle and boys start to laugh. The teacher stands up and says, "I think I should point out that 'Fokker' was the name of the German-Dutch aircraft company."
"That's true," says the pilot, "but these fokkers were flying Messerschmidts."
ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo
See you next Sunday for Posting #48 with more stories from our family’s universe! If you have comments or suggestions, please leave a comment at the bottom of this posting, or email me at johnpathunter@cs.com.
Saturday, November 14, 2009
POSTING #46
A Mysterious Credit Card Purchase; Boris from Ulyanovsk; Short Stuff (Mini-Stories about Kids and Pets)
A Mysterious Credit Card Purchase
Pat and I were in a mall in Brampton recently doing some shoe browsing (or is that 'surfin') waiting for the start of hospital visiting hours when my cell phone rang.
A woman who said she was from the Fraud Prevention and Detection bureau of one of our chartered banks wanted proof that I was indeed John Hunter. She asked a slew of questions that I was able to answer but I stumbled when she asked the maximum on the card we had with her bank. Like most seniors, we pay off our credit card accounts when they come in and although we love our Canadian banks we would not think of paying them 17.9% interest, or whatever it is they are charging (gouging) today for unpaid balances.
So, I didn't know the maximum.
When I finally convinced her that I was who I was, she wanted to know if I had made a purchase of $1.27 at 12.30 am that morning.
I told her I was sound asleep at that time.
She asked if I recalled making any payments to an APL account.
Nope!
Now any young person reading the above will know immediately what was happening.
I didn't have a clue.
To make a long story short, it turned out that someone had acquired our credit card number and downloaded a song from iTunes, which is owned by Apple.
The bank official speculated that some company at which we had used our card had not protected its computer records carefully enough. Someone had hacked in, got thousands of card numbers, ours included, and then sold them to youngsters who wanted cheap music.
I'm really impressed with the bank. It detected the misuse quickly and we had new cards with new numbers in 5 days. The bank told us it would erase the iTunes amount and would accept responsibility for any other charges that came in for the old card.
Well done!!
Boris from Ulyanovsk
One of the model offices we created during the Russian aid project was in Ulyanovsk on the Volga, named in Soviet times for Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov, who in 1901 changed his name to Lenin, to confuse the Czar's secret police.
On my inspection trip, I met the Regional Employment Director, Boris, (not his real name), and his manager of the proposed model office.
The visit went well. I toured the office and quickly agreed that it would make a good model office. I proposed a plan of work for the consultants, which Boris and the manager accepted.
Over dinner, Boris and I found that we had two things in common: we were born in the same month of the same year and each had three children. He, however, had a number of grandchildren and Pat and I had none. He told me I was to tell our children to get a move on (we didn't, but they did).
A burly fellow, he had been a senior Communist Party official, responsible for assembling the workforce required to build the Ruslan, (also known as the Antonov AN-124) for many years the world's largest assembly-line plane. The huge workforce required a large new town, but coming from peasant stock he insisted that the rich top soil be carefully scraped off the site and used elsewhere.
Our discussions were very cordial until I asked the wrong question. My map of Russia showed the name of the town we were in as Simbirsk, not Ulyanovsk, and I wondered why. My interpreter tensed up as he translated my question---usually a sign that I was putting my foot in it.
Boris launched into a diatribe about how the new government was changing all the Communist-time names back to the old Czarist names. Leningrad had become St. Petersburg, Stalingrad had become Volgograd and so on. He almost pounded the table as he declared that Ulyanovsk was going to stay Ulyanovsk, in honour of Lenin.
That should have alerted me that we might have problems with Boris.
Back in Moscow, I made plans to include Boris and his office manager in an upcoming tour to Canada. Just before the group was to leave for Canada, I heard that Boris couldn't go---he had been diagnosed with some kind of cancer. His deputy went instead.
The two Ulyanovsk officials came back from their trip full of praise for what they had seen and ready to start changing their office.
The Canadian employment officers selected for Ulyanovsk---four very strong people---arrived in Moscow, were briefed and then took off for their assignment.
Emails from the team were positive, things were going well. The team members finished their task and returned to Moscow. They told me that the office manager and staff had hosted a lavish send-off dinner, and everyone promised to stay in touch.
In the midst of this debriefing, my Russian liaison officer interrupted. She said that Boris had just phoned the President of the Russian Federal Employment Service complaining that the team had not done what I had promised they would do. He was not going to accept that etc. etc.
The team, which was getting ready to fly home, was puzzled and upset at the complaint.
In the end, I agreed to keep another Canadian team in Russia for an extra two weeks so they could go to Ulyanovsk and remedy whatever shortcomings there were.
After the second's team visit to Ulyanovsk, Boris told Moscow that he was satisfied, but not enthusiastic, with the work of the team.
Ulyanovsk was the only location where we had had any complaints about our work and it rankled with me. In the end, I decided that you can't win them all.
As the project was coming to a close I was assembling the last study tour to go to Canada. My Russian liaison officer came to say that Boris's doctor had declared him fit for travel, and he was demanding to be included in the study tour.
Although our contract didn't require us to include him in a tour---we had already sent two officials from Ulyanovsk--I recommended that he be allowed to travel and Ottawa agreed. I met Boris when he came to Moscow on his way to Canada and took him through the Canadian itinerary.
He was correct but cold---there was no sign of the earlier warmness when we had first met.
Three weeks later, Pat was in the office helping me pull together the final reports required by the World Bank when the interpreter came in and said that Boris was back from Canada and wanted to speak to me.
I thought, "What now? What went wrong in Canada? What is he going to complain about this time?"
Boris started to talk in a low voice, looking at the table. After a few minutes, the interpreter stopped him so he could translate that part.
The interpreter said that Boris saw employment programs in Canada of the kind he had never imagined.
He talked about rehabilitation programs for the disabled in which people in wheel chairs were being taught to use computers by tapping on keys with a stick attached to their forehead.
In Russia, he said, when a person becomes disabled they are left in their apartments to die because there are usually no elevators.
The interpreter told Boris to continue.
Boris resumed talking in Russian but this time instead of looking down at the table, he was looking at me, eye to eye.
After a couple of minutes, he stopped.
The interpreter said that Boris was saying that when the Canadian team was in Ulyanovsk he had been hard on them. He didn't believe that Russia had anything to learn from a NATO country.
The interpreter ended by saying, "Boris wants to apologize. He was wrong and you were right."
Pat said later that you could have heard a pin drop.
Boris and I got up and gave each other a Russian bear hug.
He was a big man---in every sense.
Unfortunately, the cancer came back a few years later and he lost his battle with the disease.
Short Stuff (Mini-Stories about Kids and Pets)
The greatest British drinking song, in my humble opinion, is "On Ilkla Moor Baht'at". It is sometimes sung by people from the south of England but they should stick to "Knees up Mother Brown". They just can't do the Yorkshire accent.
The rollicking and cheerful song is about a young man who visits Ilkley Moor (a few miles north-west of Leeds) without a hat, catches cold, dies, is eaten by worms etc. etc.
Really cheerful stuff!
Click here for more information on the song.
On the way out of the town of Ilkley there is a cattle grid to prevent the sheep, which graze on the moor, from coming into town and eating the roses.
Friends from Ilkley told us when we lived in Leeds that some sheep had learned how to defeat the cattle grid. They would lie down, tuck in their legs, and roll over the grid.
Now, I think the reader will agree that this is a good story.
And I've told it often, for almost fifty years.
But each time I've wondered whether it was true, or just another urban (rural?) myth.
Thanks to Google, I have now been able to get some corroboration---of a sort. A biologist researching animal behavior posted this request:
"I am a biologist doing research on animal behaviour. There have been several reports in the press about sheep excaping (sic) from pastures by rolling over cattle grids, and i am trying to find out how widespread this behavious (sic) is. Has anyone seen it happening?"
One person responded with this account:
"I've seen it in the Forest of Dean with animals trying to get on to an Industrial Estate. It involved a ewe and, I presume, her two yearling lambs. The first sat down part on a corner of the grid part on the ground whe (sic) was leaving. The other two walked over her, she then used her back legs (front legs still in a kneeling position) to push herself into a half roll so that her back legs were then on the 'new ground.' She then pulled herself back off the grid and only straightened her front legs when she had got them onto the 'new' ground."
(To see the exchanges, click here.)
It is not easy to understand the response but I take it that the ewe lay down on the grid so her lambs could walk across her to the other side. She then rolled, to the other side.
I think that this story from Gloucestershire is even better than the Ilkley moor one, implying as it does intelligence, planning and maternal love.
But "On Ilkla Moor Baht'at" is still the best British drinking song.
ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo
See you next Sunday for Posting #47 with more stories from our family’s universe! If you have comments or suggestions, please leave a comment at the bottom of this posting, or email me at johnpathunter@cs.com.
A Mysterious Credit Card Purchase
Pat and I were in a mall in Brampton recently doing some shoe browsing (or is that 'surfin') waiting for the start of hospital visiting hours when my cell phone rang.
A woman who said she was from the Fraud Prevention and Detection bureau of one of our chartered banks wanted proof that I was indeed John Hunter. She asked a slew of questions that I was able to answer but I stumbled when she asked the maximum on the card we had with her bank. Like most seniors, we pay off our credit card accounts when they come in and although we love our Canadian banks we would not think of paying them 17.9% interest, or whatever it is they are charging (gouging) today for unpaid balances.
So, I didn't know the maximum.
When I finally convinced her that I was who I was, she wanted to know if I had made a purchase of $1.27 at 12.30 am that morning.
I told her I was sound asleep at that time.
She asked if I recalled making any payments to an APL account.
Nope!
Now any young person reading the above will know immediately what was happening.
I didn't have a clue.
To make a long story short, it turned out that someone had acquired our credit card number and downloaded a song from iTunes, which is owned by Apple.
The bank official speculated that some company at which we had used our card had not protected its computer records carefully enough. Someone had hacked in, got thousands of card numbers, ours included, and then sold them to youngsters who wanted cheap music.
I'm really impressed with the bank. It detected the misuse quickly and we had new cards with new numbers in 5 days. The bank told us it would erase the iTunes amount and would accept responsibility for any other charges that came in for the old card.
Well done!!
Boris from Ulyanovsk
One of the model offices we created during the Russian aid project was in Ulyanovsk on the Volga, named in Soviet times for Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov, who in 1901 changed his name to Lenin, to confuse the Czar's secret police.
On my inspection trip, I met the Regional Employment Director, Boris, (not his real name), and his manager of the proposed model office.
The visit went well. I toured the office and quickly agreed that it would make a good model office. I proposed a plan of work for the consultants, which Boris and the manager accepted.
Over dinner, Boris and I found that we had two things in common: we were born in the same month of the same year and each had three children. He, however, had a number of grandchildren and Pat and I had none. He told me I was to tell our children to get a move on (we didn't, but they did).
A burly fellow, he had been a senior Communist Party official, responsible for assembling the workforce required to build the Ruslan, (also known as the Antonov AN-124) for many years the world's largest assembly-line plane. The huge workforce required a large new town, but coming from peasant stock he insisted that the rich top soil be carefully scraped off the site and used elsewhere.
Our discussions were very cordial until I asked the wrong question. My map of Russia showed the name of the town we were in as Simbirsk, not Ulyanovsk, and I wondered why. My interpreter tensed up as he translated my question---usually a sign that I was putting my foot in it.
Boris launched into a diatribe about how the new government was changing all the Communist-time names back to the old Czarist names. Leningrad had become St. Petersburg, Stalingrad had become Volgograd and so on. He almost pounded the table as he declared that Ulyanovsk was going to stay Ulyanovsk, in honour of Lenin.
That should have alerted me that we might have problems with Boris.
Back in Moscow, I made plans to include Boris and his office manager in an upcoming tour to Canada. Just before the group was to leave for Canada, I heard that Boris couldn't go---he had been diagnosed with some kind of cancer. His deputy went instead.
The two Ulyanovsk officials came back from their trip full of praise for what they had seen and ready to start changing their office.
The Canadian employment officers selected for Ulyanovsk---four very strong people---arrived in Moscow, were briefed and then took off for their assignment.
Emails from the team were positive, things were going well. The team members finished their task and returned to Moscow. They told me that the office manager and staff had hosted a lavish send-off dinner, and everyone promised to stay in touch.
In the midst of this debriefing, my Russian liaison officer interrupted. She said that Boris had just phoned the President of the Russian Federal Employment Service complaining that the team had not done what I had promised they would do. He was not going to accept that etc. etc.
The team, which was getting ready to fly home, was puzzled and upset at the complaint.
In the end, I agreed to keep another Canadian team in Russia for an extra two weeks so they could go to Ulyanovsk and remedy whatever shortcomings there were.
After the second's team visit to Ulyanovsk, Boris told Moscow that he was satisfied, but not enthusiastic, with the work of the team.
Ulyanovsk was the only location where we had had any complaints about our work and it rankled with me. In the end, I decided that you can't win them all.
As the project was coming to a close I was assembling the last study tour to go to Canada. My Russian liaison officer came to say that Boris's doctor had declared him fit for travel, and he was demanding to be included in the study tour.
Although our contract didn't require us to include him in a tour---we had already sent two officials from Ulyanovsk--I recommended that he be allowed to travel and Ottawa agreed. I met Boris when he came to Moscow on his way to Canada and took him through the Canadian itinerary.
He was correct but cold---there was no sign of the earlier warmness when we had first met.
Three weeks later, Pat was in the office helping me pull together the final reports required by the World Bank when the interpreter came in and said that Boris was back from Canada and wanted to speak to me.
I thought, "What now? What went wrong in Canada? What is he going to complain about this time?"
Boris started to talk in a low voice, looking at the table. After a few minutes, the interpreter stopped him so he could translate that part.
The interpreter said that Boris saw employment programs in Canada of the kind he had never imagined.
He talked about rehabilitation programs for the disabled in which people in wheel chairs were being taught to use computers by tapping on keys with a stick attached to their forehead.
In Russia, he said, when a person becomes disabled they are left in their apartments to die because there are usually no elevators.
The interpreter told Boris to continue.
Boris resumed talking in Russian but this time instead of looking down at the table, he was looking at me, eye to eye.
After a couple of minutes, he stopped.
The interpreter said that Boris was saying that when the Canadian team was in Ulyanovsk he had been hard on them. He didn't believe that Russia had anything to learn from a NATO country.
The interpreter ended by saying, "Boris wants to apologize. He was wrong and you were right."
Pat said later that you could have heard a pin drop.
Boris and I got up and gave each other a Russian bear hug.
He was a big man---in every sense.
Unfortunately, the cancer came back a few years later and he lost his battle with the disease.
Short Stuff (Mini-Stories about Kids and Pets)
The greatest British drinking song, in my humble opinion, is "On Ilkla Moor Baht'at". It is sometimes sung by people from the south of England but they should stick to "Knees up Mother Brown". They just can't do the Yorkshire accent.
The rollicking and cheerful song is about a young man who visits Ilkley Moor (a few miles north-west of Leeds) without a hat, catches cold, dies, is eaten by worms etc. etc.
Really cheerful stuff!
Click here for more information on the song.
On the way out of the town of Ilkley there is a cattle grid to prevent the sheep, which graze on the moor, from coming into town and eating the roses.
Friends from Ilkley told us when we lived in Leeds that some sheep had learned how to defeat the cattle grid. They would lie down, tuck in their legs, and roll over the grid.
Now, I think the reader will agree that this is a good story.
And I've told it often, for almost fifty years.
But each time I've wondered whether it was true, or just another urban (rural?) myth.
Thanks to Google, I have now been able to get some corroboration---of a sort. A biologist researching animal behavior posted this request:
"I am a biologist doing research on animal behaviour. There have been several reports in the press about sheep excaping (sic) from pastures by rolling over cattle grids, and i am trying to find out how widespread this behavious (sic) is. Has anyone seen it happening?"
One person responded with this account:
"I've seen it in the Forest of Dean with animals trying to get on to an Industrial Estate. It involved a ewe and, I presume, her two yearling lambs. The first sat down part on a corner of the grid part on the ground whe (sic) was leaving. The other two walked over her, she then used her back legs (front legs still in a kneeling position) to push herself into a half roll so that her back legs were then on the 'new ground.' She then pulled herself back off the grid and only straightened her front legs when she had got them onto the 'new' ground."
(To see the exchanges, click here.)
It is not easy to understand the response but I take it that the ewe lay down on the grid so her lambs could walk across her to the other side. She then rolled, to the other side.
I think that this story from Gloucestershire is even better than the Ilkley moor one, implying as it does intelligence, planning and maternal love.
But "On Ilkla Moor Baht'at" is still the best British drinking song.
ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo
See you next Sunday for Posting #47 with more stories from our family’s universe! If you have comments or suggestions, please leave a comment at the bottom of this posting, or email me at johnpathunter@cs.com.
Saturday, November 7, 2009
POSTING #45
Amelia; The Worshipful Company of Fruiterers; Short Stuff (Mini-Stories about Kids and Pets)
Amelia
In the fall of 2007 we were negotiating the sale of our lakefront home in Grimsby to a family from Oakville.
During those discussions, Chris, who is a location manager in the movie industry, was spending a good bit of his time at the Niagara District Airport in Virgil making arrangements for the use of the airport for scenes to be included in a film about Amelia Earhart.
Filming took place in late June and early July last year and we enjoyed watching from the back deck of our new home as vintage aircraft, followed by a modern plane with a film crew, performed various aerobatic maneuvers.
Although there were rumours that the stars, Richard Gere and Hilary Swank, would be coming that doesn't seem to have been the case---at least according to one waitress who chased down each of the rumours so she could have a look at hunky Richard.
The eternally cash-strapped airport was happy to receive $25,000 for the rental of the grounds and hopes that this was just the first of many films.
The film was released locally on October 22 and although the reviews weren't good Pat and I decided to see it last Sunday, because of the Virgil connection.
Too late.
Amelia had come and gone.
We'll have to wait for the DVD, which, given the short run here, shouldn't be a very long wait.
The Worshipful Company of Fruiterers
When I took over the London Immigration office in 1963. I was introduced to the locally engaged officials, who were all English except for one man, Bill Attewell, who when we shook hands pointed out that he was Canadian, had been in the RCAF during the war and had decided to stay in Britain.
He seemed to be in his 60s, with a lived-in face and hair that looked as though it had been touched up a bit. Later, someone told me that he had a young daughter and that he didn't want to be mistaken for her grandfather.
His work involved preparing landing documents for immigrants, work that had to be absolutely accurate and often had to be completed under pressure---immigrants wouldn't get their passports until the last minute and then our office had to rush to get the documents to them so they could catch their ships or planes.
He was an intense and concentrated worker. Things had to be done correctly or he became upset.
Personally, I found that a very good character trait because it helped me sleep better at night---knowing that I wouldn't be getting rockets from Ottawa about inaccurate documents.
And then came a surprise about Bill.
Someone told me that he had been a Wing Commander at the UK Headquarters of the RCAF during World War II and had played a very key role in supporting the Canadian fighters and bombers.
In recognition of his work King George VI had made him a Member of the British Empire and the City of London had made him a Freeman of the City.
This was Bill Attewell in our documents section!
What was going on?
Why was he, with his background, doing clerical work in our office?
I had two theories. One was that he had a good retirement pension and was just looking for something to keep himself occupied.
The other (and I guess they are not mutually exclusive) was that his work during the war had taken a considerable toll and although he needed some stress he didn't want to have to cope with managing a lot of people.
I never did solve this mystery. Although we occasionally had lunch together in the cafeteria, it was usually with others and he didn't open up very much.
Bill did explain to me that being a Freeman of the City of London came with certain privileges. Among them was one that permitted a Freeman to drive sheep across London Bridge, a privilege that went back to the 11th century.
Bill said that he had never attempted this, but I have found an article about another Freeman of London---Amanda Cottrell---who drove 6 sheep across the bridge last year to give publicity to two causes: the Save Canterbury Cathedral Appeal, and Produced in Kent, a scheme to persuade people to buy local produce. Click here for this fun article.
Bill also told me that a Freeman has the right to join one of the ancient London guilds, for example the guilds of goldsmiths or silversmiths. In medieval times, the guilds existed to protect their trade and their members, but now while they promote their industry they are primarily social and charitable organizations, often with ancient guildhalls that they look after.
As I recall (I'm not too sure about this) Bill decided that because his father had had some connection with the fruit business---perhaps owned a store, or perhaps worked as a clerk in one---he would join the 700 year-old Worshipful Company of Fruiterers.
And he invited me to the annual banquet of the Worshipful Company of Fruiterers. He said that it would introduce me to an aspect of London life that I wouldn't otherwise experience.
Apparently the Fruiterers no longer had a hall of their own (I don't recall what happened to it) so the banquet would be held in another guild's hall.
At the banquet, he was a gracious host, explaining the significance of the rituals and the elaborate livery worn by the officers of the Company (it was an impressive show--the kind that only the British can mount), and introducing me to members of the Company. All of this was fascinating to a person from the 'Colonies'.
The dinner was superb, filet mignon (I think) with the best Bordeaux I have ever tasted (of that, I am absolutely sure).
I thoroughly enjoyed the evening and told him so. He seemed to be pleased that I had liked the experience.
For that evening he was no longer the person I was used to seeing, a person bent over immigration documents. He was a Wing Commander, a Member of the British Empire, and a Freeman of the City of London.
ooo
In doing some research for the above, I came across more information on Bill Attewell, information that I wish I had known when we were working together.
• He immigrated to Canada in 1914 just before the start of World War I when he was only 15 years old;
• He then lied about his age to get into the Canadian Army so he could flight in the War;
• He was seriously wounded in Europe and was invalided back to Canada;
• He became an aircraft mechanic and then joined the RCAF in the 1920s;
• He started in the RCAF as a lowly airman but was commissioned as an officer in 1940.
As I write the stories for this Blog, I feel again and again that I should have found out more about the people I was meeting.
Bill Attewell is right at the top of that list.
I understand that Bill died at the age of 69, just three years after I returned to Canada from London.
He was a good guy.
Short Stuff (Mini-Stories about Kids and Pets)
The other day I was coming into the house when I heard deep and ferocious barking from just down the street.
I stopped to see what the trouble was.
A woman was pulling on a German shepherd-type dog but he kept turning his head and looking back at a boy with inline skates who was shooting a ball at a net with a hockey stick.
Each time the dog turned he barked, long and deep.
Assuming the dog wanted to attack the boy, perhaps because of the stick or the skates, I was glad the woman had a good grip on the leash.
As she came past our house she said, "It is so embarrassing taking him for a walk. Whenever he sees a ball he goes crazy. He just loves balls."
It wasn't the boy on skates he wanted.
It was just the ball.
ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo
See you next Sunday for Posting #46 with more stories from our family’s universe! If you have comments or suggestions, please leave a comment at the bottom of this posting, or email me at johnpathunter@cs.com.
Amelia
In the fall of 2007 we were negotiating the sale of our lakefront home in Grimsby to a family from Oakville.
During those discussions, Chris, who is a location manager in the movie industry, was spending a good bit of his time at the Niagara District Airport in Virgil making arrangements for the use of the airport for scenes to be included in a film about Amelia Earhart.
Filming took place in late June and early July last year and we enjoyed watching from the back deck of our new home as vintage aircraft, followed by a modern plane with a film crew, performed various aerobatic maneuvers.
Although there were rumours that the stars, Richard Gere and Hilary Swank, would be coming that doesn't seem to have been the case---at least according to one waitress who chased down each of the rumours so she could have a look at hunky Richard.
The eternally cash-strapped airport was happy to receive $25,000 for the rental of the grounds and hopes that this was just the first of many films.
The film was released locally on October 22 and although the reviews weren't good Pat and I decided to see it last Sunday, because of the Virgil connection.
Too late.
Amelia had come and gone.
We'll have to wait for the DVD, which, given the short run here, shouldn't be a very long wait.
The Worshipful Company of Fruiterers
When I took over the London Immigration office in 1963. I was introduced to the locally engaged officials, who were all English except for one man, Bill Attewell, who when we shook hands pointed out that he was Canadian, had been in the RCAF during the war and had decided to stay in Britain.
He seemed to be in his 60s, with a lived-in face and hair that looked as though it had been touched up a bit. Later, someone told me that he had a young daughter and that he didn't want to be mistaken for her grandfather.
His work involved preparing landing documents for immigrants, work that had to be absolutely accurate and often had to be completed under pressure---immigrants wouldn't get their passports until the last minute and then our office had to rush to get the documents to them so they could catch their ships or planes.
He was an intense and concentrated worker. Things had to be done correctly or he became upset.
Personally, I found that a very good character trait because it helped me sleep better at night---knowing that I wouldn't be getting rockets from Ottawa about inaccurate documents.
And then came a surprise about Bill.
Someone told me that he had been a Wing Commander at the UK Headquarters of the RCAF during World War II and had played a very key role in supporting the Canadian fighters and bombers.
In recognition of his work King George VI had made him a Member of the British Empire and the City of London had made him a Freeman of the City.
This was Bill Attewell in our documents section!
What was going on?
Why was he, with his background, doing clerical work in our office?
I had two theories. One was that he had a good retirement pension and was just looking for something to keep himself occupied.
The other (and I guess they are not mutually exclusive) was that his work during the war had taken a considerable toll and although he needed some stress he didn't want to have to cope with managing a lot of people.
I never did solve this mystery. Although we occasionally had lunch together in the cafeteria, it was usually with others and he didn't open up very much.
Bill did explain to me that being a Freeman of the City of London came with certain privileges. Among them was one that permitted a Freeman to drive sheep across London Bridge, a privilege that went back to the 11th century.
Bill said that he had never attempted this, but I have found an article about another Freeman of London---Amanda Cottrell---who drove 6 sheep across the bridge last year to give publicity to two causes: the Save Canterbury Cathedral Appeal, and Produced in Kent, a scheme to persuade people to buy local produce. Click here for this fun article.
Bill also told me that a Freeman has the right to join one of the ancient London guilds, for example the guilds of goldsmiths or silversmiths. In medieval times, the guilds existed to protect their trade and their members, but now while they promote their industry they are primarily social and charitable organizations, often with ancient guildhalls that they look after.
As I recall (I'm not too sure about this) Bill decided that because his father had had some connection with the fruit business---perhaps owned a store, or perhaps worked as a clerk in one---he would join the 700 year-old Worshipful Company of Fruiterers.
And he invited me to the annual banquet of the Worshipful Company of Fruiterers. He said that it would introduce me to an aspect of London life that I wouldn't otherwise experience.
Apparently the Fruiterers no longer had a hall of their own (I don't recall what happened to it) so the banquet would be held in another guild's hall.
At the banquet, he was a gracious host, explaining the significance of the rituals and the elaborate livery worn by the officers of the Company (it was an impressive show--the kind that only the British can mount), and introducing me to members of the Company. All of this was fascinating to a person from the 'Colonies'.
The dinner was superb, filet mignon (I think) with the best Bordeaux I have ever tasted (of that, I am absolutely sure).
I thoroughly enjoyed the evening and told him so. He seemed to be pleased that I had liked the experience.
For that evening he was no longer the person I was used to seeing, a person bent over immigration documents. He was a Wing Commander, a Member of the British Empire, and a Freeman of the City of London.
ooo
In doing some research for the above, I came across more information on Bill Attewell, information that I wish I had known when we were working together.
• He immigrated to Canada in 1914 just before the start of World War I when he was only 15 years old;
• He then lied about his age to get into the Canadian Army so he could flight in the War;
• He was seriously wounded in Europe and was invalided back to Canada;
• He became an aircraft mechanic and then joined the RCAF in the 1920s;
• He started in the RCAF as a lowly airman but was commissioned as an officer in 1940.
As I write the stories for this Blog, I feel again and again that I should have found out more about the people I was meeting.
Bill Attewell is right at the top of that list.
I understand that Bill died at the age of 69, just three years after I returned to Canada from London.
He was a good guy.
Short Stuff (Mini-Stories about Kids and Pets)
The other day I was coming into the house when I heard deep and ferocious barking from just down the street.
I stopped to see what the trouble was.
A woman was pulling on a German shepherd-type dog but he kept turning his head and looking back at a boy with inline skates who was shooting a ball at a net with a hockey stick.
Each time the dog turned he barked, long and deep.
Assuming the dog wanted to attack the boy, perhaps because of the stick or the skates, I was glad the woman had a good grip on the leash.
As she came past our house she said, "It is so embarrassing taking him for a walk. Whenever he sees a ball he goes crazy. He just loves balls."
It wasn't the boy on skates he wanted.
It was just the ball.
ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo
See you next Sunday for Posting #46 with more stories from our family’s universe! If you have comments or suggestions, please leave a comment at the bottom of this posting, or email me at johnpathunter@cs.com.
Sunday, November 1, 2009
POSTING #44
Fire in Niagara-on-the-Lake; Some Stories About Economic Success in Asia; Short Stuff (Mini-Stories about Kids and Pets)
Fire in Niagara-on-the-Lake
Last Sunday after a visit to Queen Street in Niagara Falls, Pat and I decided to drive to Niagara-on-the-Lake for a pleasant stroll on its Queen Street (does every town in Canada have a Queen Street?).
As we neared the town, we could see clouds of brownish-gray smoke billowing up from a site that seemed to be close to the Prince of Wales Hotel---the hotel that has just been named the best hotel in Ontario.
We feared the worst.
It turned out that the fire was not in the hotel but in two heritage, wooden buildings just to the west of it.
For several hours we watched the fire fighters from a spot in front of the restaurant Corks, only about a hundred yards across the street from the flames (for people familiar with NOTL, Corks has replaced the Buttery Restaurant). The NOTL and St. Catharines fire departments arrived at 1.15 PM to fight the stubborn blaze and finally turned off the hoses at 9.15 PM.
They had an aerial ladder on Queen Street pumping water on the front of the buildings and another in a parking lot behind the stores, plus a number of hand-held hoses spraying the fire and cooling adjacent buildings. At one point as the aerial ladder behind the stores swiveled to change its target, water sprayed across the street drenching us.
It was a surreal experience.
A few feet in front of us was the command centre with tables of food and drinks for firefighters taking a break. A woman with a stroller and two young children beside us said that she had two brothers fighting the fire.
A few feet behind us, on the veranda of Corks, people were laughing and joking as they ate their meals and drank their beer. The first line of Lord Byron's poem about the battle of Waterloo kept running through my head, " There was a sound of revelry by night..."
We understand that the fire started in the basement of one of the stores from some sort of electrical problem. Ironically, that store was NOTL's fire hall for part of the 1800s.
No lives were lost, but NOTL has lost two historic buildings that gave character to its main street.
Some Stories About Economic Success in Asia
Recently I was reading an article that analyzed the shift of the world's economic centre of gravity from Europe and North America to Asia.
There is an amazing and continuing transformation of economies that were once known primarily for the production of cheap knock-off watches, lighters, handbags and the like.
Here are three stories about change in Asia.
In 1969, during a visit to the Canadian Consulate in New York I saw one of the consular officials shaking his head.
He had just had a request for assistance from an unnamed Japanese car company. He explained that the Japanese company wanted to buy a hundred used cars from different regions of Canada and ship them to Japan. The company had provided a detailed list of the cars it wanted to buy---both North American and foreign--showing the make, age and location. For example, one of the cars was to be a 5 year-old Chevrolet from Sudbury.
The cars would be taken apart piece-by-piece in Japan by the company's engineers so they could see what driving in Canada did to cars.
The company wanted to be sure that there were no government regulations that would interfere with the purchase of the cars or the shipping of them to Japan. The consular official assured the company that if they wanted to spend a lot of money and time buying used cars the Canadian Government would not object.
He thought the whole thing was bizarre.
Perhaps not so bizarre.
Japan had started shipping cars to Canada in the 1960s and they hadn't fared very well. Japanese cars had to be coddled in the winter or they wouldn't start, and they rusted like nobody's business.
North American cars were no great shakes either but they started better in the winter and didn't rust quite so badly.
Quality was a problem though. This was the time when newspaper articles told us not to buy cars built on Mondays because of high absenteeism after weekends. The factories would produce the same number of cars so the managers could meet their production goals but the cars would often be missing nuts, bolts, bits of trim and other parts.
Japan had begun to listen to Dr. W. Edward Deming, an American expert on quality, who had few if any followers at that time in the North American auto industry. The Japanese car companies and soon most of their manufacturing industries had committed themselves to Deming's 'quality revolution'.
Viewed from this perspective, the buying of used cars doesn't seem so bizarre. The Japanese were determined to build cars that would be reliable in a Canadian environment.
ooooooooo
One of the regular guests around 2000 at our Denwycke House at Grimsby bed and breakfast was a senior manager at a Canadian company that manufactured high-end shower enclosures and whirlpool tubs. As the companies they competed with transferred production off-shore to lower cost countries, his company decided that if they were to compete they would have follow suit.
They decided to shift their production to China.
Our guest visited the Chinese company a few months after it had begun producing goods for his company. He said that as he toured the plant, managers and supervisors kept repeating to him---almost begging, he said---that he and his colleagues must alert the company immediately if they ever found anything wrong with the components. The Chinese wanted to be given a chance to correct the problem.
At the end of the tour the plant manager asked him if he had seen anything that could be improved in how the plant was operating. The Canadian said he thought things were operating pretty well, but taking an envelope from his pocket he started sketching how the various machines might be shifted to create a somewhat smoother production flow.
The plant manager thanked him profusely and asked if he could have the sketch.
When the Canadian returned to the factory the next morning the plant manager asked him if they could take another tour of the plant.
The Canadian was puzzled---they had just toured the plant the day before---but he agreed.
As they entered the factory floor, the Canadian saw that all the machines that he had suggested be moved, had been moved.
He was flummoxed. The machines were large and heavy, and had to be anchored to the floor. How could they have been moved so quickly?
The plant manager told him that he had called in extra teams and they had worked all night to relocate the machines.
The manager bowed and thanked him for his help.
ooooooooo
In the 1980s, officials from the Chinese Public Employment Service were visiting the national headquarters of Canada's Employment Service. After a presentation on Canada's internationally groundbreaking dictionary of occupations that described and classified some 65,000 occupations, the Chinese asked if they could have a copy of the dictionary.
The Canadian officials said they would be happy to provide a set but pointed to the five large, heavy volumes that made up the set and asked if they really wanted to lug those back to China in their luggage. The Chinese said there was no problem, they would divide the set among them.
A couple of years later, a Canadian employment service person was in Beijing visiting one of the Chinese officials who had come to Canada. The official pointed to his bookcase. Sitting on the shelves were the five volumes of the Canadian dictionary, and beside them a number of other volumes with Chinese lettering on the spines.
The official explained that they had translated the Canadian dictionary into Chinese.
This was a monumental task and the Canadian was amazed that they had done so much work and done it so quickly.
But he had some news that he didn't know whether he should share with the Chinese official.
Canada was about to release a new dictionary of occupations that would be more complete and accurate, and that would make the earlier dictionary obsolete.
He finally decided he had to tell the official about the new version. Instead of showing any concern, the official asked if they could have a copy of the new dictionary. He explained that the work they had done on the first dictionary would help them translate the new one.
And, he added with a smile, "We have lots of translators."
ooooooooo
During the latter stages of my government career I helped train senior managers and I suppose it is that experience that makes me ask, 'What are the learning points from these stories?"
It seems to me that they suggest that the Asian economic success is based in part at least on their citizens being willing to learn from others and then to act---to change---and to do so quickly.
A recent article said that the Chinese Government, which as everyone knows has had a poor reputation in the past on pollution, has now decided to be a leading player in green technology. While some of us---and some of our leaders---are debating about whether climate change is real, the Chinese, Japanese and Koreans will be building solar systems, wind turbines and electric cars.
And selling them to us.
The Asian nations have benefited by learning from us.
Perhaps it is now time for us to learn from them.
Short Stuff (Mini-Stories about Kids and Pets)
When our children were young, we bought a globe for Christmas one year.
After I had explained that this was how the Earth would appear from outer space, one of them wanted to know what 'the lines' were for, pointing to the latitude and longitude lines.
Thinking that this would be a good opportunity for 'a teaching moment', I described how people could use those lines to find their way around the world.
The child thought about this for a moment and then said, "But there are no lines on the land."
I still treasure that moment, as the child tried to make the mental leap from the concrete to the abstract.
ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo
See you next Sunday for Posting #45 with more stories from our family’s universe! If you have comments or suggestions, please leave a comment at the bottom of this posting, or email me at johnpathunter@cs.com.
Fire in Niagara-on-the-Lake
Last Sunday after a visit to Queen Street in Niagara Falls, Pat and I decided to drive to Niagara-on-the-Lake for a pleasant stroll on its Queen Street (does every town in Canada have a Queen Street?).
As we neared the town, we could see clouds of brownish-gray smoke billowing up from a site that seemed to be close to the Prince of Wales Hotel---the hotel that has just been named the best hotel in Ontario.
We feared the worst.
It turned out that the fire was not in the hotel but in two heritage, wooden buildings just to the west of it.
For several hours we watched the fire fighters from a spot in front of the restaurant Corks, only about a hundred yards across the street from the flames (for people familiar with NOTL, Corks has replaced the Buttery Restaurant). The NOTL and St. Catharines fire departments arrived at 1.15 PM to fight the stubborn blaze and finally turned off the hoses at 9.15 PM.
They had an aerial ladder on Queen Street pumping water on the front of the buildings and another in a parking lot behind the stores, plus a number of hand-held hoses spraying the fire and cooling adjacent buildings. At one point as the aerial ladder behind the stores swiveled to change its target, water sprayed across the street drenching us.
It was a surreal experience.
A few feet in front of us was the command centre with tables of food and drinks for firefighters taking a break. A woman with a stroller and two young children beside us said that she had two brothers fighting the fire.
A few feet behind us, on the veranda of Corks, people were laughing and joking as they ate their meals and drank their beer. The first line of Lord Byron's poem about the battle of Waterloo kept running through my head, " There was a sound of revelry by night..."
We understand that the fire started in the basement of one of the stores from some sort of electrical problem. Ironically, that store was NOTL's fire hall for part of the 1800s.
No lives were lost, but NOTL has lost two historic buildings that gave character to its main street.
Some Stories About Economic Success in Asia
Recently I was reading an article that analyzed the shift of the world's economic centre of gravity from Europe and North America to Asia.
There is an amazing and continuing transformation of economies that were once known primarily for the production of cheap knock-off watches, lighters, handbags and the like.
Here are three stories about change in Asia.
In 1969, during a visit to the Canadian Consulate in New York I saw one of the consular officials shaking his head.
He had just had a request for assistance from an unnamed Japanese car company. He explained that the Japanese company wanted to buy a hundred used cars from different regions of Canada and ship them to Japan. The company had provided a detailed list of the cars it wanted to buy---both North American and foreign--showing the make, age and location. For example, one of the cars was to be a 5 year-old Chevrolet from Sudbury.
The cars would be taken apart piece-by-piece in Japan by the company's engineers so they could see what driving in Canada did to cars.
The company wanted to be sure that there were no government regulations that would interfere with the purchase of the cars or the shipping of them to Japan. The consular official assured the company that if they wanted to spend a lot of money and time buying used cars the Canadian Government would not object.
He thought the whole thing was bizarre.
Perhaps not so bizarre.
Japan had started shipping cars to Canada in the 1960s and they hadn't fared very well. Japanese cars had to be coddled in the winter or they wouldn't start, and they rusted like nobody's business.
North American cars were no great shakes either but they started better in the winter and didn't rust quite so badly.
Quality was a problem though. This was the time when newspaper articles told us not to buy cars built on Mondays because of high absenteeism after weekends. The factories would produce the same number of cars so the managers could meet their production goals but the cars would often be missing nuts, bolts, bits of trim and other parts.
Japan had begun to listen to Dr. W. Edward Deming, an American expert on quality, who had few if any followers at that time in the North American auto industry. The Japanese car companies and soon most of their manufacturing industries had committed themselves to Deming's 'quality revolution'.
Viewed from this perspective, the buying of used cars doesn't seem so bizarre. The Japanese were determined to build cars that would be reliable in a Canadian environment.
ooooooooo
One of the regular guests around 2000 at our Denwycke House at Grimsby bed and breakfast was a senior manager at a Canadian company that manufactured high-end shower enclosures and whirlpool tubs. As the companies they competed with transferred production off-shore to lower cost countries, his company decided that if they were to compete they would have follow suit.
They decided to shift their production to China.
Our guest visited the Chinese company a few months after it had begun producing goods for his company. He said that as he toured the plant, managers and supervisors kept repeating to him---almost begging, he said---that he and his colleagues must alert the company immediately if they ever found anything wrong with the components. The Chinese wanted to be given a chance to correct the problem.
At the end of the tour the plant manager asked him if he had seen anything that could be improved in how the plant was operating. The Canadian said he thought things were operating pretty well, but taking an envelope from his pocket he started sketching how the various machines might be shifted to create a somewhat smoother production flow.
The plant manager thanked him profusely and asked if he could have the sketch.
When the Canadian returned to the factory the next morning the plant manager asked him if they could take another tour of the plant.
The Canadian was puzzled---they had just toured the plant the day before---but he agreed.
As they entered the factory floor, the Canadian saw that all the machines that he had suggested be moved, had been moved.
He was flummoxed. The machines were large and heavy, and had to be anchored to the floor. How could they have been moved so quickly?
The plant manager told him that he had called in extra teams and they had worked all night to relocate the machines.
The manager bowed and thanked him for his help.
ooooooooo
In the 1980s, officials from the Chinese Public Employment Service were visiting the national headquarters of Canada's Employment Service. After a presentation on Canada's internationally groundbreaking dictionary of occupations that described and classified some 65,000 occupations, the Chinese asked if they could have a copy of the dictionary.
The Canadian officials said they would be happy to provide a set but pointed to the five large, heavy volumes that made up the set and asked if they really wanted to lug those back to China in their luggage. The Chinese said there was no problem, they would divide the set among them.
A couple of years later, a Canadian employment service person was in Beijing visiting one of the Chinese officials who had come to Canada. The official pointed to his bookcase. Sitting on the shelves were the five volumes of the Canadian dictionary, and beside them a number of other volumes with Chinese lettering on the spines.
The official explained that they had translated the Canadian dictionary into Chinese.
This was a monumental task and the Canadian was amazed that they had done so much work and done it so quickly.
But he had some news that he didn't know whether he should share with the Chinese official.
Canada was about to release a new dictionary of occupations that would be more complete and accurate, and that would make the earlier dictionary obsolete.
He finally decided he had to tell the official about the new version. Instead of showing any concern, the official asked if they could have a copy of the new dictionary. He explained that the work they had done on the first dictionary would help them translate the new one.
And, he added with a smile, "We have lots of translators."
ooooooooo
During the latter stages of my government career I helped train senior managers and I suppose it is that experience that makes me ask, 'What are the learning points from these stories?"
It seems to me that they suggest that the Asian economic success is based in part at least on their citizens being willing to learn from others and then to act---to change---and to do so quickly.
A recent article said that the Chinese Government, which as everyone knows has had a poor reputation in the past on pollution, has now decided to be a leading player in green technology. While some of us---and some of our leaders---are debating about whether climate change is real, the Chinese, Japanese and Koreans will be building solar systems, wind turbines and electric cars.
And selling them to us.
The Asian nations have benefited by learning from us.
Perhaps it is now time for us to learn from them.
Short Stuff (Mini-Stories about Kids and Pets)
When our children were young, we bought a globe for Christmas one year.
After I had explained that this was how the Earth would appear from outer space, one of them wanted to know what 'the lines' were for, pointing to the latitude and longitude lines.
Thinking that this would be a good opportunity for 'a teaching moment', I described how people could use those lines to find their way around the world.
The child thought about this for a moment and then said, "But there are no lines on the land."
I still treasure that moment, as the child tried to make the mental leap from the concrete to the abstract.
ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo
See you next Sunday for Posting #45 with more stories from our family’s universe! If you have comments or suggestions, please leave a comment at the bottom of this posting, or email me at johnpathunter@cs.com.
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