THERE ARE OBITUARIES AND THEN THERE ARE OBITUARIES!

      Last week I was looking for my niece's obituary on line. I found her obituary but I also found a site with a collection of the last year of obituaries. Since it was my old home town, which I left 61 years ago, I was surprised to see that in about 25% of the obituaries I either knew the people or knew who they were.

     I found one obituary rather amusing. Most of the items in the obituary tended to end up at his favorite pass  time which was drinking beer. No matter what he did he tended to end up at the local hotel where he had his favorite beer , Pilsener! Now this obituary sounded like a few of the old boys got together over a few beers and wrote the obituary. It was somewhat humorous and probably quite accurate.

    Now my niece's obituary was very accurate. She was talented artistically and in many ways a very fine person. My niece was a super Mom and wife. She liked fishing and driving farm machinery...the bigger the better. The person who wrote the obituary expressed very well the excellent characteristics of my niece.  I'm sure it was a female who wrote the obituary.

     And then I've read some obituaries and I wonder if they are writing about the same person I know.  Many fine qualities are listed of which I was not aware . The person was a great father. , a wonderful husband, and hard worker! Where did they get these things. Who wrote them?

     Writing an obituary is a challenge. The occasion is stressful. Consideration has to be given as to who the audience will be. What does the family want the obituary to say?

    Now there are many more types of obituaries. Some of them can become very humorous and interesting. Others sincerely and accurately catch the mood of the occasion. And some obituaries are just plane awful. 

    The first obituary was humorous. My niece's obituary was very accurate. 

     So after all this it is my intention to write my own obituary if I ever get my act together in time!

SNOW

      We just had a couple of days of snow where we got about 12 cm of snow. That's a lot of snow for us at one time . I know other places get much heavier snow falls.

      It kept me busy shoveling snow a couple of times. However the snow was light , dry and powdery which makes it easy to shovel.

      The snow gives us a very clean fresh look so why not a few photos.

       This photo is for Far Side. She wants people to set up snow sticks so here's my feeble effort at a snow stick. Can you see it? I have 14 in. (35 cm) of snow.

A COLD FRONT MOVES THROUGH

     I like watching weather. I taught Middle School science from time to time and there was usually a unit on weather. One place I taught , there was a radiosonde station where they released the large weather balloons that rose about 20000 ft. I would take the kids on a little field trip. The balloons were released at 2:00 PM and 2:00 AM each day. The radiosonde technology is completely obsolete.

     As a farm boy we watched weather.

     I took my private pilot's license and that was more weather. 

    When I was in the north, I quite often gave the pilots our weather so that they knew whether to fly in or not. CAVU meant clear and unlimited visibility.

    So a few days ago a fast moving cold front went through. There were high winds and a little snow. So the trees waved and snow blew. Visibility was limited. The whole episode was over in about 30 minutes and our temperature dropped. I watched all 30 minutes of it.

MOM AND DAD SETTLE IN

      Mom and Dad met in Portage La Prairie at their church. They more or less ignored each other for a while but finally were attracted.

     As I told you before they moved out to Dad's little farm at Esk. Sask. The farm was in the Hiawatha School district which was one of the little one room country school houses. Now you know where the  name of my blog comes from.

    There was a group from the same church in the school district. Mom and Dad were devoted adherents of the Plymouth Brethern, Christians, Christians gathered in the name of the Lord and maybe there were more names. This small church gathering were very close. There was much socializing as they often visited in each others homes. I think they went out to someone's home for supper every week. They had three church services on Sunday and prayer meeting in the middle of the week. They did not have ministers as all men participated in the services. Sometimes a "preacher " would visit and they would have services every evening for a week or two. 

     So Mom and Dad found themselves in a very supportive community. 

    Mom and Dad were welcomed to the community with a special house party. Lots of visiting and good things to eat. They received small but practical gifts. One has to remember that this was in the depression of the 30's. Those small gifts were much appreciated.

    One of the farmers had a talent for writing poetry at special occasions. Uncle Tom wrote a poem about Mom and Dad and it has always been a treasured family item.

MORE BLUE AIR

    Most readers know that I am an obsessed do it your selfer. I'm beyond help! Don't say anything! You wouldn't want to see more blue air.

    Well, it's still about the new Brother printer I bought. As you remember it was a challenge to set the printer up as wireless. I thought It was cool that I discovered the printer was connected to WiFi when after three frustrating tries with brother I thought everything failed. The printer worked. Of course , it's a no brainer that the copier worked. The scanner sort of worked.

     So two weeks of trying to figure out the scanner. I tried a few things and whoops, I lost the Internet connection. Oh I thought, there should be something to reverse what I did and get back on Wi fi. No way.

     So I phoned the Internet provider. No help there. I phoned the Geek Squad ...too busy. I checked manuals. I checked help sites. No help. I phone Brother's 1 800 but they were closed Saturday.

     Now the first time trying to connect by wireless, it was chat and there was a printout. I went back to the printout as a last resort to try it again. The process I went through on chat was frustrating .. Slowly, I went through the steps. After the ninth step, the green Wi Fi light came on. Ah success. There was supposed to be a test page. Press print.

Out came the print test page.

     Now I realized how poor the Brother people were in their help. They kept asking if I saw a test page after step nine. Every time!  No! I looked all over the printer. I looked all over the PC. What the Brother people neglected to give me was the last and most important step...PRINT. 

     Now to get back to the scanner. After I'd been through the wireless setup, I had a better idea of what was going on. I tried the option and presto it scanned. 
I had looked at manuals for directions to print and none of those instructions were close to correct.

    Needless to say I'm not impressed with Brother's help. Too many unavailable sites. Too many printers in one manual.  Too many incomplete instructions,

    But I fixed the beggars. I got my printer to work.

COMPOSING A BLOG POST

     A few weeks ago a blogger commented on "composing" a post. The composing caught my attention and I have been thinking about it ever since. What has to be done to put a blog post together?

    First , I have to think that I have something to say. My Mom's advice was to say thank you and then sit down. Some people may disagree with me but that's allowed. Now I don't post on a regular basis. I don't have the time or ideas to post everyday.

     In my case, I may have a few topics in my head. I have to list them or I'll quickly forget them. When I decide on what topic I want to write on, I roll it around in my head. I think about information that I have or need. I think about the order that I want to say things . I wonder if I have any photos.

     I have all of these things in my head and then I sit down and write. I usually go over things two or three times. Sometimes I add things. Other times I change the order and sometimes things are better left unsaid. 

    Sometimes it's very hard to come up with a topic. There's just nothing I want to say. So sometimes I'm absent for a while. One has to have a little fire in the belly to keep on posting.

    Then , I pick my font, print size and run spell check. Oh yes, throw in a few labels. And let my friends on Face book know I've posted . Then I also ping it. I don't know if pinging does any good but it was recommended in Blogging for Dummies.

      I like to keep my audience in mind and try to attract other readers. That's part of writing. Sometimes I write for myself and other times I think of readers. Most of the time it's probably half and half.

     Now I notice many different writing styles out there. They're interesting or I wouldn't follow them. It's part of what makes blogging interesting.

    So how do you put things together? Well, okay, if you don't want to give your secrets away that's okay.

IT'S MORE THAN GUNS

      Mass shootings are absolutely mind numbing. It's just impossible to understand.

      How can some coward blow away another human being let alone 17 young people.

      The gun issue always comes to the fore after a major shooting and then quickly loses steam as a discussion  topic.

      I can't imagine the horror that went on in that school.  My heart goes out to all those who've had losses.

      However, I think there's much more that has to happen along with major gun legislation.

      There are too many major divisions in North American society. There are major religious differences that separate people and cause friction. There are many Christian denominations and some of them fight openly. They don't like each other.

     There are racial divisions. Dozens of divisions which bring about all kinds of racial prejudice. Various groups are discriminated against.

     There are major economic divisions.  These divisions are becoming wider and wider. The poor and middle class have been exploited.

     What's the matter with good old unity where we work together for the good of all?

     Frustration grows up within marginalized groups. Marginalized groups feel that they are discriminated against.

      At some time people have to mix with others and get to know them. There's too much pressure from smaller groups who want  their specific agenda pushed forward whether others want it or not.

     So there are many reasons for anger. First, I would like to see major gun legislation but after that we have to change some basic parts of society. We have to work together for some common good. There are many different ways to live together rather than fight each other. Get to know the other guys. Some of the differences would seem very small and not worthwhile thinking about.