Another great Saturday

I finally took my granddaughter horseback riding this past Saturday. We’d been waiting for a suitably warm and dry day to go with her, as that’s what she’d wanted for her birthday outing.

Her birthday was last fall, but I was out in South Africa so couldn’t take her anywhere then.

We had a grand day! She made fast friends with the fattest barn cat I have ever seen and spent the time we were waiting to saddle up being slave to this feline’s bottomless desire for endless head scratches and tummy rubs.

Out on the trail, her horse took the lead and mine hung back, so we didn’t get to do much talking on the trail. I really wanted to show her the woodland and field wildflowers that were there. I saw wild strawberry blossoms, blooming crabapple trees, the end of the dogtoothed violets, masses of trilliums, Mayapples popping up and a couple things I couldn’t identify.

But she did see two blue jays and an Eastern bluebird which I didn’t see - and though I heard the red-winged blackbirds I didn’t see them.

After a leisurely hour and a bit walking through the woods, we came back to the farm, watered the horses and finished giving out the apple slices and carrot chunks I’d brought as treats for the horses. Some of those we gave to the new colts.

The granddaughter stretched out in the grass, not seeming in any hurry to leave the peace and get back to the city. I sat and watched a half-dozen red-tailed hawks circling overhead, and was told by the farm staff that the past couple of years they have also had some turkey buzzards in the area. I didn’t know that they came this way at all.

The granddaughter’s horse was great. One horse ran away for a brief period with it’s tiny female rider, but that was controlled very quickly. Since our group was so big, they had to dig down to get enough horses and I ended up with a Belgian, usually used for draught horses and more used to pulling in teams than being ridden singly. It was really rather like trying to ride a card table, she was so wide, and my thighs are feeling it today. Oh, well . . . I love it out there and don’t much care, just wish I could go often enough that I’d get used to it again. Until I started taking my grandkids last summer, I hadn’t ridden in over 40 years, so a bit out of practice.

But what a lovely day - sunshine, fresh air, time in the bush and with animals, and time with my granddaughter.

Boys, birds and wildflowers

This has been a glorious weekend.

I went to visit my grandsons in Cambridge. It takes a couple hours to get there, depending on the traffic, and this time I went across the QEW and up highway 6 to Safari Road.

Going west on Safari Road, first I thought I spied some May Apples, which I haven’t seen since I was a child living in the country with plenty of time to roam through the woods and just look to see what was there. Then I DID see a Snow goose. It flew very low across the road right in front of me. I’ve never seen one of those before and didn’t even know what it was until I looked it up. What a beautiful creature!

Just after I arrived at the boys’ house, I was sitting on the side porch and heard the youngest grandson coming up the walk with his friend in front of him. His friend stopped when he saw me on the porch (we hadn’t met before) and I heard my grandson say to his friend - as he passed my car - “Granny’s here! She’s really nice.” What a great treat to hear an endorsement like that when it wasn’t necessitated by duty.

The best part of the weekend was seeing my oldest grandson’s latest spelling test. He got 28/30, and it was handwritten beautifully - this from a child that his previous school had forecast would never learn to read well or write at all, despite his well above average intelligence. They said he’d have to use a keyboard forever for writing and have an aide to read things to him.

He’s been in a new program for a couple years now. It falls under the PHAST banner and I think is called Empower Reading. It has done absolute miracles for him and he’s pretty much functioning as he should now. He’ll stay in that school for one more year to solidify his gains and then he’ll be off and running. It is *so* wonderful to see him being what he was meant to be.

Coming home along Safari Road again, I kept my eyes open to see what wildflowers I might see. It was wonderful! Dogtoothed violets, trilliums, May apples and a couple other things I couldn’t immediately identify, since it was raining really hard - much too hard to get out of the car and look. And if I slowed down too long another car would surely come along. It was such a nostalgic experience - I know where I’ll be with my camera next May. Makes me want to pull a Thoreau and move to a cabin in the forest.

Unfortunately, there’s this thing called snow-shovelling that also has to be done, and I’m not up for a real lot of that anymore.

I got home and the English wild violets were blooming under the big maple in the backyard, and the buds on the lilac are fat enough to burst open soon. This will be the first year I get a lot of blooms on the lilac as usually the maple blooms first and shades it too much. I’m going to have to move it.

I’m so content and happy I just keep sighing and smiling . . . life should always be this good.

Telephone Memories

Yesterday a friend sent me the story that has made the rounds a few times about the young boy who called the information operator on the old crank phone to get answers for all sorts of things and they get to be friends.  You probably know the one.

It started me reminiscing about the old crank phone that we had.  It was a party line, two sided, 28 families on it and that meant that 14 other people’s phones were ringing into your house - and 14 other families could listen to your conversations.

Our ring was two “longs” and one “short”.  It was quite an event to get a phone call in those days since people didn’t usually phone just to chat - it had to be something important.  So for the gossips in the community telephone conversations were a great source of information.

I remember a time when one of the women in the community got the recipe for a really fancy cake along with extensive decorating instructions from her relative in a big city.  She was determined to win the cake-baking competition at the local church’s Strawberry Social.

You have to try and understand that in those days, when the only validation or respect a woman got was for her competence as a wife and mother, winning something like this was a really BIG DEAL.  It gave you a considerable amount of status, especially in a small community.

Well, you can guess what happened.  Another woman who was on the same party line entered exactly the same cake in the competition.  It was vicious!  By the time I left the second generation of women still wasn’t speaking to each other, and the men didn’t dare if the women were around.

The only time I ever heard my mother take the Lord’s name in vain was during a telephone conversation she was having with her mother who lived quite a long way away.  Someone with a cold kept sniffing and sniffing.  Well, sniffing had always been something my mother couldn’t stand, just as she couldn’t stand nosy Parkers, and she finally, in exasperation hollered “For God’s sake go and blow your nose!  We won’t say anything until you get back.”

It’s odd, you know.  In those days we would have given anything for some privacy during a telephone conversation.  Now everyone strolls around with their cell phones spouting their business and foolishness at the top of their voices so everyone they pass has to hear it whether they want to or not.  I truly can’t figure out whether it’s ego, thinking that their business is so fascinating that everyone else is just dying to hear it, or just plain rudeness and not caring how much they disturb other people who have to use the same streets and buses.

Of course the other major invasion of privacy was the post office.  Our post office, such as it was, was little mail boxes in the egg-candling shed of a local farmer.   He would ‘candle’ the mail as he sorted it, so always knew your business before you did, and he’d likely told half the community by then too.

I really still don’t understand how news gets around so fast in the country.  I experienced it when I was in another country and went way up in the hills where houses were few and far between, there were no telephones, and most everyone was out somewhere far from the road (I never saw anyone) in the fields working.  I stopped at a small lean-to that served as the local store and had rice and oil and other bare necessities.  I wasn’t there half an hour before people started showing up, having heard there was a tourist there.  It’s truly amazing how news gets passed on.

Fare Bistro, Toronto

Well, due to what I think were mostly personal problems between the owners, my favourite restaurant, Verveine, closed and a new place opened at the address.  It got good initial reviews, but I haven’t seen anything about it recently.

The first time I went, the food seemed good, and the service too, though the stools they have at the bar (I always sit at the bar when I go alone so I don’t take up a table) are the most uncomfortable things I’ve sat on in a long time.  But that’s minor.

I went again today and was sadly disappointed.  I ordered the risotto and it was crunchy, it was so undercooked.  It had some long brown strips garnishing the top, which tasted just like what I imagine 80 year-old wallpaper would taste like if you peeled it off the wall and added it to your dish.  The salad, the same one I ordered the first time I was there, was oily and not very good and the dessert was disappointing. 

 Actually, the dessert I had the first time I went was really awful, so I decided not to ever order anything that involved pastry there again, as they obviously don’t do it well.  So this time I ordered a chocolate thing - and it was like glue.  I practically had to pry my teeth apart with my fingernails.

The worst part was when they served someone sitting near me a fish dish, and the fishy smell was so overpowering I thought I’d retch.  You don’t get that smell with fresh fish.

I also noticed that they were using off-brands for the highball mixes, and I think that’s a sure sign of trouble.  Maybe this long and dreadful winter has put them in financial straits and they think that cutting corners will keep them afloat.  NOTHING will keep them afloat if their regulars don’t come back because the food doesn’t cut it any more.

They seem like nice people, and we surely need good food.  I’d hate to see this place go down the tubes too, but I don’t think I’ll go back again - at least not soon.  I’ll watch to see how it goes.

So I guess it’s back to Barrio when I want a night out for myself.  The food there is always top-notch, though you really can’t get a full meal.  I wish they’d offer that option.  And Kevin, Barrio’s owner, may be selling out and “moving to the country” to start a new place.  I’ll be broken-hearted if that happens.

 

Stomp and Soweto Gospel Choir

Took two of the grandchildren to see Stomp last night. The kids are 9 & 11, and were captivated by the performance. The 9 yr old was in danger of falling out of her seat she’d get leaning so far forward to keep track of all that was going on. I had seen it before, and was not at all bored by seeing it again. It is well worth seeing by anyone who has any love of rhythm.

And I took the youngest, who won’t be 4 until May, to see the Soweto Gospel Choir at the end of February. She’s my singing and dancing girl. She loved the singing and the tribal dress, and ended up out in the aisle trying to follow the dance sequences so she could show her mom when she got home.

I love introducing the kids to new things. Broadening your horizons constantly is one of the only ways you are going to find what is your passion in life. And for most of us, even if we can’t make music a career, we certainly benefit from all the things we can get from music - peace, joy, exhilaration, hope . . . the list is huge.

I don’t know how I’d get along without music.

Dancing Girl with one of the Soweto Choir.

Civilian rights and dash cams

I’m beginning to wonder why we’re not seeing more legal charges against police officers with the use of dash cams in the cruisers.

I sometimes watch those TV shows - World’s Most Amazing Video-type of program - and frequently they’ll have a show that seems to be mainly taken from police cameras. I simply cannot believe what I see there.

Recently there was a sequence where two police officers completely emptied their revolvers at an unarmed, fleeing person who had been pulled over for some minor infraction and then gotten stupid and resisted (not violently) and run. It was pretty scary too, to see that those bozos didn’t hit anything once with all those bullets. What if they had really needed to hit something to save their lives? Who is training these incompetents?

There have been countless videos showing police officers needlessly crashing their cruisers into a suspect’s car and doing major damage to both vehicles and to both drivers. Who pays for these cruisers that they ruin without need? And since it seems that they crash them either out of a disinclination to have to chase the guy if he exits and runs (it’s also amazing how many *really* fat police officers there are) or out of adolescent spite and testosterone overdosing - who chose these guys to be peace officers in the first place, and who is making sure that they are fit to remain in that position?

And for those police officers that aren’t really fat - has anyone else notice that some forces seem to have these Schwarzeneggar types pretty consistently? I know the stories of steroid use/abuse on the police force in my own city are in every hard-core gym in town, and just looking at the types that are on some of the other forces, it’s pretty obvious that Mother Nature is getting a large helping hand. Are these guys ever tested for steroid abuse when thy flip out on some poor citizen? Are they tested for anything? Ever?

Pretty scary stuff . . . . and that’s before we even start talking about the recent (over)use of Tazers and stun guns, which seem to be turning out to be just new, shiny, fascinating - and dangerous - toys for big boys, and they can’t resist using them whether they need to or not.

I asked a police sergeant I knew years ago, out of curiosity, how many men he was in charge of.  He gave me the strangest look, and said “Only two.  The rest are animals.”  If that’s the situation in ‘Toronto The Good’, how much more dreadful must it be in other places?

Work words

I am also getting distinctly depressed with the prevalence of “moo-zarella” and “halapeenos” (or worse, jala-pe-nos) on cooking shows. Can’t people even articulate the words that are to do with the business they are in?

In real estate, and especially on HGTV, most everything french gets a french pronunciation except foyer, which real estate people insist on pronouncing ‘foy-er’ instead of ‘foy-ay’. Why is that?

And clothing? Good grief!! The number of shops that advertise ‘mock-neck’ sweaters is too numerous to keep track of. I keep trying to tell them that if I had a ‘mock-neck’ my head would really be in trouble - but they just don’t get it. Fabric names get butchered beyond belief.

Dinosaurs and curmudgeons, unite! Do not do business with those whose ignorance about their work is so deep that they can’t even talk about it properly.

Lazy journalists and educators

Has the plural “there are” and its contraction “there’re” been completely erased from the English language? Even SpellChek notes the contraction as an error.

I hear even the supposed best and most literate journalists, newsreaders and commentators using the singular “there is” and its contraction “there’s” in place of the correct plural form.

I find this distinctly depressing.

It’s doubly depressing when the majority of people I can find who actually speak reasonably good English were all educated in foreign countries, whose standards of English instruction are far better than those in North American schools.

I suppose it’s not the end of the world, but it would really bolster my confidence in the education my children and grandchildren were getting if I could find a teacher who could spell.

Not yet ready for prime time

Why is it that so many tech toy and computer companies seem to get away with putting things out for sale that are completely unready to be used? They seem to do it over and over again, from what I read, and I have problems accepting the fact that these corporate decision makers have no more respect for their customers than to throw them in as lemming beta-testers for each new product that they want to appear to have beaten their rivals to the market with.

Have consumers taught these companies that they can get away with this kind of disrespectful behaviour - and repeatedly? Are there people so desperate for the next new thing that they’ll buy it whether it works or not?

I had forgotten how often I had read these things when I bought my Archos media hoo-hah before Christmas. After numerous software upgrades and the tech support phone number being removed from the website, I gave up. It sits here, in its little black bag, unused, with it’s owner hoping that they’ll get their act together before I go off on the long trip I bought it for.

BAH!!

And if you want to see what happened with that, and the service -or lack thereof- that I endured on my trip from both Archos and Sony (why did I ever buy anthing from Sony when I know their reputation is so bad?) you can check it out on my trip blog at: grannym.wordpress.com