Here in the neighbourhood

Well, whodathunkit? I went for a long walk today. Took lots of photos. Came home, spent two hours trying to convince my computer to accept my new photos from my iPhone. Sigh.
Finally got some...enough for one blog post anyway, so here I am. It's still Tuesday in this part of Canada, so I am sharing this ordeal with Our World Tuesday.

So, it started with me going on a walk with my walker, and realizing (duh) that my cell phone, which I use as a pedometer, can also take photos.
Out with the cell phone, then ask a neighbour if I can get a photo of the little iron dog on his lawn. I sure think it's cute.

The Redcliff Public Library (above) and the Seniors' Drop-in Centre, below left, are popular, busy places here in our town. The metal building across from the Seniors' Centre is the Youth Centre. Hmmm...

...I never thought about it before: the interesting juxtaposition of the Seniors' Centre and the Youth Centre. What about young adults? And middleaged adults, too? Gotta wonder.

The bedraggled remains of this basketball net looked lonely in the empty parking lot of the Rec Tangle, which I always call the ice rink, because winter finds it busy with hockey players, figure skaters, and recreational skaters.

I enjoyed the shade of the trees here at the "pillar park" down the street from our house, and found a few photo ops.

Redcliff, now a quiet residential town, used to be a bustling place with several large businesses, like the rolling mill to which this plaque is dedicated.

Behind the brick structure and the plaque, in a quiet park, are several large columns commemorating the town's industrial heritage and, behind them is a tennis court and a children's play area. A baseball diamond nearby is, of course, a busy place in spring and summer.

The flag at the Baden Powell Centre was hardly moving at all in the stillness of this late summer day.

Next to the Baden Powell Centre, and just a block from our house, is the bike park, which held no mad young cyclists when I first passed by, but there were some there when I was headed home. However, they were moving too fast for me to capture photos of them with my cell phone.
Is it like this for everyone? Take the phone out of pocket, purse or whatever, turn it on, enter password, click to turn it into a camera...impossible for me to get there very fast.

I couldn't resist another look at our neighbour's little warning-dog. I wonder if it really discourages disobedient dog-walkers.

And speaking of walkers, I was completely un-thrilled when I remembered I had to fold mine up, then hoist it into the trunk of my car.
Funny thing: I walked 3286 steps today (it's now 3 pm-ish) but I walked 3793 steps yesterday, when I didn't even take my walker out. True fact.

 

Here in the neighbourhood

Well, whodathunkit? I went for a long walk today. Took lots of photos. Came home, spent two hours trying to convince my computer to accept my new photos from my iPhone. Sigh.
Finally got some...enough for one blog post anyway, so here I am. It's still Tuesday in this part of Canada, so I am sharing this ordeal with Our World Tuesday.

So, it started with me going on a walk with my walker, and realizing (duh) that my cell phone, which I use as a pedometer, can also take photos.
Out with the cell phone, then ask a neighbour if I can get a photo of the little iron dog on his lawn. I sure think it's cute.

The Redcliff Public Library (above) and the Seniors' Drop-in Centre, below left, are popular, busy places here in our town. The metal building across from the Seniors' Centre is the Youth Centre. Hmmm...

...I never thought about it before: the interesting juxtaposition of the Seniors' Centre and the Youth Centre. What about young adults? And middleaged adults, too? Gotta wonder.

The bedraggled remains of this basketball net looked lonely in the empty parking lot of the Rec Tangle, which I always call the ice rink, because winter finds it busy with hockey players, figure skaters, and recreational skaters.

I enjoyed the shade of the trees here at the "pillar park" down the street from our house, and found a few photo ops.

Redcliff, now a quiet residential town, used to be a bustling place with several large businesses, like the rolling mill to which this plaque is dedicated.

Behind the brick structure and the plaque, in a quiet park, are several large columns commemorating the town's industrial heritage and, behind them is a tennis court and a children's play area. A baseball diamond nearby is, of course, a busy place in spring and summer.

The flag at the Baden Powell Centre was hardly moving at all in the stillness of this late summer day.

Next to the Baden Powell Centre, and just a block from our house, is the bike park, which held no mad young cyclists when I first passed by, but there were some there when I was headed home. However, they were moving too fast for me to capture photos of them with my cell phone.
Is it like this for everyone? Take the phone out of pocket, purse or whatever, turn it on, enter password, click to turn it into a camera...impossible for me to get there very fast.

I couldn't resist another look at our neighbour's little warning-dog. I wonder if it really discourages disobedient dog-walkers.

And speaking of walkers, I was completely un-thrilled when I remembered I had to fold mine up, then hoist it into the trunk of my car.
Funny thing: I walked 3286 steps today (it's now 3 pm-ish) but I walked 3793 steps yesterday, when I didn't even take my walker out. True fact.

 

It wasn't a foot race, but...

This is about as athletic as I ever got,
standing in front of a picture of Shaq in Miami.
Most other photos of me include food.

I wish I had timed my walk today. I don't know why I find it necessary to walk so fast, instead of stopping to smell the roses.
However, today I had walked 2520 steps by the time I got home. Some of those steps, admittedly, were inside the house...getting dressed, taking a basket of clothes to the laundry room...that sort of thing, no biggie.
But...2520 steps is 1.07 miles.
A mile and then some. Who knew?
Today, instead of walking down the street until I'd passed the ice rink, I walked to and then all the way around the ice rink. Yes, I did...the shortest way possible, close to the building. Shorter but not easier, because it was gravel, not pavement. Next time I'll take the sidewalk all the way, farther or not.
Sigh.
And I walked fast...strolling lazily might be better for my poor diabetic-nerve-damaged feet, but I always think it's a speed walk, I don't know why.
And did I stop to rest as the doctor ordered? Nope, I forgot.

High Tea, at the original Cocoa Been Cafe.

Will I ever learn? Not likely, but hey...a new element was added to my racecourse today...I paid attention to how I walked. Ever since I fell in the spring (kapow! straight down to a sitting position on the floor, with my legs straight out in front of me) and then fell again a few weeks later, I have been walking toes-first and leaning forward.
So today I made a point of walking heels-first. My back thanked me, even if my feet didn't.
Stand up straight and tall, Kay. Heel-to-toe, heel-to-toe, I lecture myself. And it did help. My feet are sore but my back, with its compressed discs trying to heal, feels much better.
Live and learn, they say, and if I ever find out who 'they' are, I might even thank them.

Math and wrath: Auntie Kay on warpath

Okay, before I forget, yesterday's walk was 2062 steps...and today's was 2132, which is nine tenths of a mile,  and that included a stop for manual labor.

I am on the warpath, and it's unlikely the perpetrator will be reading this, but I must get it off my chest, just as I tried to get it off the sidewalk.
Broken glass, I don't know how many small shards of it, on the sidewalk by the swimming pool, where children walk...some, perhaps, barefoot because they've just been swimming.
I didn't have a container with me, but I did have a facial tissue, because one never knows, but the nose knows...
So there I was, an old lady with a walker, not to mention a bad back, stooping down to pick up as many shards of glass as one tissue could hold, then carefully carrying the whole thing to one of the dumpsters beside the ice rink, with disposal in mind.
I am a childless aunt/great-aunt/step-grandma, and I take those roles very, very seriously. My instinct, as my eldest niece and my youngest brother can tell you, is save-the-child.
But wait, there's more...yes, more broken glass, on the ground all around the dumpsters.
Saving the town's children from broken glass suddenly looms as an impossible task. The best Auntie/Grandma/Nana Kay can do now is write a letter to the editor of the local rag.
Sigh.

But it was a good walk otherwise, although I started too late, so the shadowy places were smaller and farther between. There was a nice breeze, though, and the walk would have been quite enjoyable except for being on the warpath.
For instance, these photos were fun to take,
because I wanted to compare the leaves and fruit of a neighbour's tree with the leaves and fruit of our own ornamental crabapple tree.
As you can see below, allowing for the difference in seasons, the leaves of our ornamental crabapple are distinctly green, with nary a bronze leaf in sight, but the fruit of each is definitely similar.

Stay tuned while I solve this mystery. I'll be right back, probably tomorrow.

Cruising with my walker on a somewhat cloudy day, the one I love gives me a shove...

Okay that doesn't have quite the right ring to it, somehow but that's what I'm doing, but not with the one I love, or even the dog.
And going for a walk is new news because I have been fighting my overwhelming team of caregivers for many months now, especially the one who wants me to use a walker so that I get more exercise.
Sigh.
Okay, I need a walker, but it has to be a walker that will hold two small suitcases. Then, when I travel by rail, I can use it as a luggage cart if necessary. Not in huge airports, of course. There I agree to take the assistance available to unfitties in large airports.



So...I bought one. I didn't use it, but I bought a walker.
Then, last week, I saw the same doctor, who asked me, "Where is your walker?" and also said, "You aren't even using a cane."
"I left them both in the car," said I.
True fact, that's what I did. Walker in trunk where I wouldn't be reminded of it, and cane in the front seat where I could use it if accosted by...um, any dangerous persons lurking in the hospital parking lot.

So...the plan is, I am going for a walk this morning. With my walker.
I'll be back afterward to tell you all about it. It isn't likely to be exciting, but it will be progress, something this stubborn female hasn't made much of lately, walking-wise.

Forward one half-hour.
"Honey, I'm ho-ome!" No response. He is more stubborn about his hearing aids than I am about the walker, and has been for quite some time, but I digress.

I swear it took longer to put the folded walker back into the trunk of my car than it did to walk three long blocks and back (for a total of six blocks, don't forget) until my feet hurt.
The doctor who prescribed the walker intended me to walk as far as I comfortably could, then to lock the wheels of the walker and sit down in the seat thereof until my diabetic nerve-damaged feet stopped hurting.
I didn't stop to rest. Not even in the dense shade of the ice rink. Sure, I walked down the avenue to the far end of the ice rink, but still...
Okay, my bad.
Decided yes, mornings are the best time for me to go walking. There is shade on the east side of every long block in town, and not too much sunshine on the cross-streets.
Howsomever, I didn't take my cell phone along for the ride, which means I also didn't take my pedometer, so I plan to take the same route tomorrow, to check out my mileage (using the term 'mileage' loosely because 'footage' would mean film, which this isn't).
I shall return anon (which means sometime in the near future) with new news about Project Fitness. In the meantime, this unfittie is losing weight. Yes, I am, and my blood sugar is bloody marvellous. After a nurse checked it for me, I had to tell everyone within telling distance, and then to tell my husband by phone.

Sharing this, somewhat belatedly, with Lady Fi's
Our World Tuesday

A most amazing friend

 That's me on the left, a few years ago, enjoying a visit with my high school friend Carola, who is one of the people I know well and admire most.

She probably doesn't want these things published, because she is a humble person, not given to tooting her own horn. So I'm going to toot it for her.



Carola has always loved reading books, learning new things, sewing her own clothes, photography, and quilting. Maybe I should have put quilting first, because it is her creative voice. Quilting is what she loves.

The quilt above my bathroom mirror was one she'd made for her husband's office. When he retired, she gave it to me. I don't know if she intended it for my bathroom, but that's where it is, so I see it every day.

A few years ago, Carola lost the sight in one eye. Doctors and optometrists and ophthalmologists consulted to find the reason for this sudden loss. While they dithered, Rome burned. Well, while they dithered, she lost most of the sight in her other eye. She was left with a tiny bit of sight in the bottom of one eye.

Undeterred, she didn't sit around and weep. She still manages to travel, to read e-mail and visit on Skype with the little bit of eyesight she had left.

Then she decided to return to quilting, and the first quilt she made was for our darlin' dog, Lindy. I am forever grateful to have Carola for a friend.



I'm sharing this post with Our World Tuesday

Can this be the same dog?

Yes, of course it can...those of you who know our Golden Retriever, Lindy, will know she has become a Grande Dame, but one who is not averse to lying on the floor in front of the refrigerator, just in case someone thinks of food.





Even the size of the photos, when enlarged, show how much girth our girl has grown since she came to live with us...but we love her, large or small, white hair or golden...she's wonderful.

Sharing with Our World Tuesday

A long uninformed dissertation on child labor

(Note to my fellow Canadians, make that "labour.")

My husband (you know, my personal photographer, that husband) and I watched, recently, a TV program about child labour, specifically in India.
Although I knew intellectually, I can now clearly see that it is still a horror in the 21st century, as the feature program showed us the people who are now dedicating their work to try to end child labour there in the land of Mother Teresa.

Although she was undoubtedly the world's most popular and successful nun, conflicting online sites have Mother Teresa born in Skopje, Macedonia, and also in Gotarrendura, Spain. Delving further into Wikipedia's varying opinions on her birth, I find she was most likely to have been born in Skopje, and unlikely to have been born in Spain. Some years later, as a young woman, she received her education in Rathfarnham, a suburb of Dublin, Ireland.

There is no uncertainty, however, about Mother Teresa's dedication as a Roman Catholic nun to the people of India, where she tried to relieve the grim poverty and abhorrent death rate. She was, as a result, among some of the first women to have argued against child labour.

She did much, probably more than any one other individual, and although she won a Nobel Prize for her exemplary efforts, and was beatified a saint by the Roman Catholic Church, even Mother Teresa couldn't eliminate horrors such as child labour.

Nor could rabblerousers, missionaries, and lawmakers who followed—but not for lack of trying.

Most of us in this 21st century abhor the thought of child labour, and can often be heard opining "something should be done about that" but, here in North America, we are pretty much helpless to do so. Child labour (we hope) is no longer listed among the many deficiencies of our society, but is an ever-present fact in countries as diverse as India and China. Therefore, we wring our hands but can do little or nothing.

However, believe it or not, I digress. All of the above came to me as a result of that TV show, and of revisiting one of my all-time favourite poems: The Ballad of East and West, by Rudyard Kipling, and, indeed, the part of that poem I have always loved best. No, not the refrain, which has been quoted for various conflicting reasons, probably ever since it was first published in 1889, and has caused many a difference of opinion in the meantime.

No, this essay of mine is, would you believe, about child labour, and how I came to think of it...via that TV show, and because I had just been reading that poem. Sending offspring into servitude has long been a necessity, but none so seemingly glorious as Kipling has it here, when Kamal, the border thief, reaches a truce with the Colonel's son:

"...if thou thinkest the price be high, in steer and gear and stack,
Give me my father's mare again, and I'll fight my own way back."
Kamal has gripped him by the hand and set him upon his feet.
"No talk shall be of dogs," said he, "when wolf and grey wolf meet.
May I eat dirt if thou hast hurt of me in deed or breath;
What dam of lances brought thee forth to jest at the dawn with Death?"
Lightly answered the Colonel's son: "I hold by the blood of my clan,
Take up the mare for my father's gift—by God, she has carried a man."
The red mare ran to the Colonel's son, and nuzzled against his breast;
"We be two strong men," said Kamal then, but she loveth the younger best:
So she shall go with a lifter's dower, my turquoise-studded rein,
My 'broidered saddle and saddle-cloth, and silver stirrups twain."
The colonel's son a pistol drew, and held it muzzle-end,
"Ye have taken the one from a foe," said he. "Will ye take the mate from a friend?"
"A gift for a gift," said Kamal straight, "a limb for the risk of a limb,
Thy father hath sent his son to me, I'll send my son to him!"
With that, he whistled his only son, that dropped from a mountain crest:
He trod the ling like a buck in spring, and he looked like a lance in rest
"Now this is thy master," Kamal said, "that leads a troop of the guides,
And ye must ride at his left side as shield on shoulder rides.
Til death or I cut loose the tie, at camp and board and bed,
Thy life is his—thy fate it is, to guard him with thy head.
So, thou must eat the White Queen's meat, and all her foes are thine,
And thou must harry thy father's hold for the peace of the border-line.
And thou must make a trooper tough, and hack thy way to power,
Belike they will raise thee to Ressaldar when I am hanged in Peshawur."

There's more, and if you are Kipling fan, you'll know, but my point is "I'll send my son to him...now this is thy master...ye must ride at his left side as shield on shoulder rides..."
While this is hardly child labour, it shows how readily people in the 19th century bartered their offspring. "I'll send my son to him"...sons were items of trade, or were rewards, as in this case. No thought was ever given to the feelings of the mothers and sisters of the young man. He was sent from one life into another as a gift. The word "dower" was even used.
But when I first heard of him, that nameless son of a border thief, at a young and impressionable age, I fell in love..."he trod the ling like a buck in spring, and he looked like a lance in rest." Sigh. There's something to be said for the 19th century after all.

My personal photographer's photos

    That's right, I have a personal photographer. I can no longer walk the red crushed-rock paths around the coulee nearby, nor can our wonderful dog Lindy, but my husband goes out every afternoon or evening. I love it when he does evenings, because sometimes his photos are extraordinary. (see previous post)

    However, in a previous post I said I would have more about coulees. These photos were taken some years ago, at a particularly rocky part of our coulee, and of course the first and last ones feature our dog Lindy when she was younger. She didn't climb around on the rocks, but she loved walking the paths with her daddy. (I know, I know, sappy old lady talking about her dog.)

Photos by Richard Schear