Posted on July 23, 2025 under Wednesday’s Words of Wisdom with one comment

BTO – It’s not what you think!

(Thanks to Pete for the photoshop)

 

Lud.dite

1. A person opposed to new technology or ways of working.
2. A member of any of the bands of English workers who destroyed machinery, especially in cotton and woolen mills, that they believed was threatening their jobs.

What makes the human species special is our ability to adapt. There is always something new on the horizon. We are creatures of habit and any change to our lives or routines can be upsetting but if we are going to navigate the modern world, then adapt we must.

We’re problem solvers. Long before computers came along, most of our problems were of the human kind. We learned how to solve these with face to face conversations which occasionally became fist to fist confrontations. I think my computer thinks it’s human the way I swear at it by times.

I won’t bore you with the details but after penning in excess of 1400 stories and posting them on my website, I have the drill down to a science. My stories are shared on a number of platforms including Facebook. Last week was no different except when it came to sharing it with Facebook, things went sideways. It appeared that FB was having a bad morning. Maybe it ran out of coffee.  Try as I might, it would not allow me to post my story in the usual way.

Now my loyal readers are also creatures of habit and a handful of them are early birds and they simply can’t get their day underway without reading my words of inspiration. And pigs fly. I was muttering to myself as I tried to troubleshoot. I did a few Google searches, and in the end, I uninstalled FB, re-installed it and created a shortcut so that the site would appear on the home page of my laptop. This took me the better part of an hour to figure out. A 5-year-old could have done this in under 2 minutes.

I was justifiably proud of myself. I shared this small victory with one of my daughters. She cheekily suggested that with my expertise I might win the Boomer Technology Olympics. BTO. Not to be confused with Bachman-Turner Overdrive.

I have a love/hate relationship with technology. When I got my first laptop and started to learn how they operated, I was easily flummoxed, to the point where I threatened on more than one occasion to stand at the top of a very tall building and toss my computer to the ground.

There was a time that I thought I had to physically be near my computer in order to post my stories. When I taught in the north where internet connections were spotty, I would stand outside my apartment at 5:30 a.m. with the temperature hovering around -45, to make sure my story got posted. I must have looked completely ridiculous to my Inuit friends.

I am fortunate that I have 4 children who grew up with this technology and more than once, they kept me from stepping off the precipice.

I have learned how to cut and paste. The only other time that I tried to do this was in Sister Mary Roderick’s art class at Morrison school. I know how to scan and e-mail. I can edit a post. I can create a Word document. I can create shortcuts although I have been doing that most of my adult life. I can refresh a page and can do track changes to a document. I can make a PowerPoint presentation AND… export it to a USB drive. (flash drive, thumb drive, memory stick – take your pick).

Bravo, Len!

I’m not convinced that any of these remarkable achievements will guarantee me a podium finish at the BTO’s but surely, I will garner a participation medal.

I am not a Luddite, but I have a warm spot for those woolen mill workers.

“And I’ll be taking care of business (every day),

Taking care of business (every way).”

Takin’ Care of Business – Bachman-Turner Overdrive.

Have a great weekend.

 

Posted on July 16, 2025 under Wednesday’s Words of Wisdom with no comments yet

My all access pass -a “lenyard”!

 

“By the time we got to Woodstock,

We were half a million strong,

And everywhere was a song,

 And a celebration.”

Woodstock – Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young

DISCLAIMER: I did NOT attend Woodstock in 1969.

The summertime music Festival season is in full swing. If a person had unlimited time, unlimited resources, and unlimited stamina, he or she could attend music festivals every day of the summer and well into the fall in Nova Scotia. It’s a glorious time of the year when you can be outdoors listening to live music, enjoying a beverage and basking in sunshine.

I remember my very first folk festival. Let me rephrase that. I remember attending the Winnipeg Folk Festival in 1979, but distinct memories are a bit foggy. I was travelling across Canada with a friend, and she had friends who lived on a farm not far from Bird’s Hill Provincial Park, the site of the festival. The farm was more like a commune replete with “long haired freaky people”. Some, not all, were fully clothed. There was a pharmacy of drugs available, not any of them legal as far as I could tell.

Bird’s Hill Park was a terrific venue for this event. There were several small stages nestled into copses of trees and a main stage for the evening’s big shows. There were some 83 different acts, most of them folk singers with the likes of Valdy and Shari Ulrich as headliners. Valdy is still on the folk festival circuit. Tie die shirts, headbands and cut off shorts was the common attire.

As far as I can remember, I had a great time!

Later in life, I attended Stanfest in the seaside town of Canso, Nova Scotia. This has become a world class festival with an eclectic mix of music and musicians. Weather in this part of the world can be quite unpredictable. It can be sunny and warm and an hour later, fog can roll in creating an eerie setting.

We took our children to Stanfest a few times. You haven’t been to Stanfest if you haven’t tented in the acoustic campground. One memorable night, the partying outside ran into the wee hours of the morning. As the sun was rising, things were still going strong. I wondered who in the hell had the stamina to play all night long. I opened the flap of the tent and saw my two eldest children in the thick of things.

A few weeks ago, I drove to Miramachi New Brunswick to attend the New Maritime Music Festival. It was a long drive (4 hours) for this septuagenarian, but my son’s band was performing. It was a beautiful day. I had a place to stay after the concert (in Cocagne, an hour away from the concert venue) and an “all access pass”.

My pass gave me unfettered access to the stage, the green room, food and beverages if I had chosen, and perhaps most importantly, an actual bathroom in the bar next door to the stage. Yes, there were probably 50 port-a- potties lined up like soldiers but these can get a bit seedy.

My friends in Cocagne had promised me a late dinner so I declined poutine and greasy fish and chips at one of the food vendors. As the evening wore on, I was getting quite hungry, so I went to my car and got a bag of homemade granola and a mandarin orange to tide me over. I had brought my own lawn chair and as I sat there eating my snack and drinking triple-filtered water from the bar, I thought about how far away I was from my first festival. Instead of lying in a daze on a blanket in Bird’s Hill Park, here I was, an old man in a lawn chair eating granola and sipping water. The only thing that would have made it more embarrassing would have been if I had taken the blanket and hoodie from the car to cover me up. Mercifully, it was a warm evening.

Pete’s band was awesome, and it turned out to be a night to remember.

Some things never change. The smell of marijuana still permeates the air at these gatherings. The only difference is that it’s now legal.

I didn’t go to Woodstock in 1969, but I’ve been to Woodstock, New Brunswick.

Have a great weekend.

Posted on July 9, 2025 under Wednesday’s Words of Wisdom with no comments yet

 

School’s out

“No more pencils, no more books,

No more teacher’s dirty looks,

Out for summer, out ‘til fall,

We might not come back at all.”

School’s Out – Alice Cooper

If you are a young person, is there anything more delicious than the last day of school?

Surely you all remember that feeling of pure joy when the bell rang one final time and you were set free, with two endless months of anticipation at your disposal. It’s impossible to describe the feeling but if you’ve lived it, you know what I mean.

I was a golf nut. Let me rephrase that. I was a nut who liked to play golf. (My children often admonish me for using labels). The moment that I got home from school, and after showing my parents my report cards (some of which I still possess), I would head to the golf course where I spent entire days. The rest of the time, I was shirtless and hatless at the beach (and clueless as it turns out). Little did I know that all that time spent in the sun would leave me in stitches (sutures, actually) later in life.

Summers lasted forever.

The school year ended in our province on June 30^th. I’m sure those in authority can explain the timing but dragging students back for one hour on the Monday before Canada Day seemed like an odd call to me and almost every other teacher, parent and student. I was actually surprised at how many students showed up.

I hadn’t planned to go to the school, knowing the chaos of the final few hours, but the timing of my morning walk coincided with the final bell. Just as I was passing the school, the front doors of the school exploded and all the grade 8s came cascading out into the courtyard. This was to be their final day at SAJS as they would be attending the Regional High School in September.

I stood alongside a few teachers and administrators and started dishing out high 5s. I spent a lot of time with the grade 8s this past year until I stumbled into oblivion in the parking lot at Sobey’s in early April – my own version of an April Fool’s joke, me being the fool.

These students had come outside for a class picture and a few moments later, they re-entered the school to grab their personal belongings including their yearbooks. I had the honor of signing many of these.

I chatted with several members of staff and then left. A few hours later, the school would be empty, no longer an educational institution but just a mass of brick and mortar. The key ingredient in a school is the children. No kids. No school. Just a building until September comes a calling.

Many local businesses hand out free treats to students on the final day. Students, resembling packs of wolves, were seen marauding the streets of Antigonish. I have a suspicion that many of these young people ended up with upset tummies after this avalanche of sugar.

In all likelihood, I was the only person at school that day who was sad to see the year end. Had I expressed these sentiments out loud, I might have been put in a straight jacket and hauled off to the psychiatric unit at the hospital. For once, I had the good sense to keep my mouth shut.

Most of us aging souls know that having a purpose is every bit as important as diet and exercise. Substitute teaching gives me purpose and much more. It has become my community. Unlike discussions with my peers, conversations with young people don’t involve surgeries, artificial body parts, canes and walkers. We talk about hockey and horses and hairdos (I remain mute on this last one!) … and “tats”. For you very uncool oldies, tats is short for tattoos. I have one on my upper arm which instantly makes me cool in the eyes of my students.

Will I return in September? You betcha…the good Lord willin’.

“See you in September,

See you when the summer’s through.”

See You in September – The Happenings

Have a great weekend