Back to my personal “second-time around” A - Z Blog Challenge! For those of you who have visited my page, and the other one it is linked to, will know of some of my favorite things. The three people I want to introduce, certainly fit in one of my favorite categories.

Janet Paschal is most often considered to be an inspirational and southern gospel singer, and has become a regular on the Gaither Homecoming Concert Series. For years, I have been a fan of Bill Gaither, and when the southern gospel concert came to our city, we attended with friends, and sang along with many of the songs. Even though we had heard Janet sing in videos and CDs, it was the first time we heard her sing in person, and I loved her music. There are many videos of her music on YouTube, and this is one of my favorite videos…

John Rutter, as reported by a BBC Music magazine, is the most successful and well-known composer of choral music in recent British history. Having studied classical music for piano and organ, and sang in a church choir during my teen and early twenties, I developed a love of classical music. Rutter’s music is frequently performed around the world, and widely recorded under various labels. The Cambridge Singers have performed many of his compositions, and his setting of Psalm 150, commissioned for the Queen's Golden Jubilee, was performed at the Service of Thanksgiving in St Paul's Cathedral, London. As for classical music, he’s #1 in my opinion.

I recently learned that Rutter’s long-awaited new major work The Gift of Life has been released, and available on Amazon. I hope to soon add it to my collection. As described online, it  “is a six-movement choral celebration of the living earth, of creation, and of life itself, offering a kaleidoscope of moods from contemplative and prayerful to majestic and inspirational. Seven more recordings of recent pieces by him complete the disc.

Here is a sample of his music performed for for the Royal family.

José Montserrate Feliciano García, better known simply as José Feliciano, is a Puerto Rican virtuoso guitarist, singer, and composer known for many international hits. I have listened to his guitar music since the ‘60s, and he’s still going strong. Latin music has again been introduced to us this past year, since we have a boarder who is from South America. The rhythm of the guitar, brass, and drums is almost addictive. Song like California Dreaming, and Light My Fire are still favorites, but here is a more recent YouTube, recorded in 2012 that still has appeal to me.

With the variety of music styles in my musical library (gospel, classical, Latin, jazz, country), the very best that remains, is the music in my heart that continues every day even if I can’t hold a tune well now. Music is the expression in my heart of the joy I receive from my Lord and Saviour, JESUS!

Tags: Music Records Personal

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It has been quite a week, just in time for my next blog in my second round of the A to Z Blog Challenge. Most of my friends know that we live in a rural area, and we lack some of the “amenities” of those living in the city. Our Internet service has been slower than slow, but in spite of that fact, the company has insisted for years that 0.02 to 2.1 ghrz download speed is average, and worthy of their charges for “high-speed” Internet service. They will not upgrade any equipment until there are at least 200 new homes in our area, because they can’t afford it. Who are they trying to fool?

Two weeks ago, we learned that Costco has set up kiosks in their stores for the internet company, Primas. They were offering packages of VOIP phones and Internet service with a list of added services, at a much lower monthly rate than what we have been paying. We investigated as best we could, and even though they use the same installed equipment owned by Telus, the offer guaranteed a better service, and their monthly charge was certainly cheaper than our long-term “only” service in our area. We signed on the dotted line… and then the fun began.

Telus wants us to call them to discuss our reason for leaving their "wonderful" service. That’s not going to happen; they’ve had many opportunities to improve their service. Primas booked a technician to come to our home to insure a correct installation, and he arrived several days before the modems were delivered in the mail. When Telus migrated our telephone number to Primas, it was three days after their email message was sent to us, removing themselves from any association to our account. We did manage to keep our phone number, but when we used the phone, we could hear our callers “loud and clear”, but the caller could not hear us over the static noise on the line, and the continuing disconnects during a call.

I have become on a first name basis with “customer service” this week, all with different ideas on how to resolve the problems. Promised follow-up calls were not received by us, and the only timetable that was of any value, were those of the phone company. Yikes!

Today, we expected lunch guests from out of town, so in the middle of yet another “repair session”, I requested the technician to call me back in the afternoon because of previous plans in our home. He agreed, but we never did hear from him. HOWEVER, we received a phone call from a business associate during our meal, and the transmission worked perfectly. Somebody had found the problem, we presume!!!!

You should hear the opinions expressed by my husband, a former telephone technician fifty years ago. He still insists that the service then was much more reliable and simple in the “old days”, when we used those fancy dial phones. But… this generation is ‘hooked’ on the huge variety of electronics.

The Internet has become indispensable!

Tags: Communication A To Z Challenge Phones Internet

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Christmas is now in our past, and we are ready to take on 2016, filled with adventure, new challenges, some trying times and some happy times. My blog this time is from Christmases past for me. I will try to be brief, but you may know how good that works.

When our family was on the farm, my father’s favorite Christmas treat was halva, a Ukrainian treat made with Sunflower Seeds. I must admit that it wasn’t a favorite treat for me. It stuck to the roof of my mouth. It always was packed in a tin box, and our storekeeper would make sure that there was a box put aside for my dad. I wish I could find such a tin box now for my collection. I need to start checking on Ebay again.

Holly brings back memories of the Christmas family vacations we had in southern California. My husband was a Realtor, and business dramatically slowed in December, so it was an ideal time to take a family vacation. Our children traveled with us until they graduated from high school, so we would arranged to leave the day after their final exam before Christmas break. It was a different Christmas experience… no extended family, no snow, and no Santa Claus. Our children knew that all the things we did in California (visits to Disneyland, Knotts Berry Farm, San Diego Wild Animal Park, Magic Mountain) were their Christmas presents. When they were teenagers, they could invite a friend to come with us because we travelled in a van that had lots of room for growing teens and extra luggage. We didn’t have a Christmas tree (a silver tinsel or white plastic tree just didn’t cut it for us), but we could decorate with real holly that grew in the backyard of our friends in Palm Spring. We picked oranges and lemons from the trees, and fresh dates were a special treat.

Hazelnuts reminds me of the ever-available bowl of a variety of nuts, all in the shell. Hazelnuts were my favorite, but there were also walnuts, almonds, cashews, pecans, peanuts, and Brazil nuts.  There were nutcrackers in the bowl with the nuts, and the broken shells were usually left in the bowl too, eventually making it necessary to sift through everything to find a nut that still have the seed in it. I’ve heard people say that they much prefer a container of mixed nuts that are shelled, roasted, and even caramelized, because the shells are so messy. For me, much of the fun has been thrown away with the shells.

Happy, happy 2016 to each of you!

Tags: Christmas Past Treats Customs

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When it comes time for me to think about a topic for my next blog in this A to Z Challenge, I often get out old photograph albums for some ideas. I love to read blogs written by others who write about their experiences, both current and in times past. I'm hoping that Barb (kiwibarb) will write to tell us how they celebrate Christmas without snow, and what Santa wears and travels in when it is hot outside. I'd love to visit New Zealand, but so far, that destination is still on our 'bucket list'.

Now, to expand on my topic today. My mother was an avid gardener; a learned ability necessity when she was growing up in a large immigrant family. We all loved the jam that she made with the wild gooseberries that we picked in the valley behind our farm house. The berries could be quite tart, if we picked them too early, and she didn't add much sugar when preparing the jam because there were times when sugar was scarce and there was a shortage of money. She learned to work with what she had, not always following the recipe.

She also learned some tricks from my father because he also made do with what was available when he was a 'cattle driver'. He had learned to enjoy cooked goldenrod, which grew wild in abundance on the prairies. The flowers could also be eaten raw, and that now makes me think of broccoli. I had never eaten raw broccoli until the last few years (introduced by our daughter who is a great and adventurous cook), and I now much prefer it served in a salad instead of from a steamer.

Lastly, my parents always seemed to have a gaggle of geese; seems they enjoyed roasted goose meals on special occasions. All I remember is that it was a greasy meat, and for me the best part was the crispy skin. If my memory about that is correct, I wouldn't go near that kind of meat now. We are even told now that beef isn't good for us, but we would be run out of the neighborhood if we believed that nonsense. Even the avid bird hunters in Alberta who like to bag geese, but don't eat much now because it is too fatty and the ponds where the birds feed are becoming more and more polluted.

As for the gaggle of geese when I was a child, I was always told to carry a stick when I walked to the chicken coop to play, or to the corral to pet the horses. The gander was often cranky and would try to chase and nip me, and I would need to defend myself with the stick. A good whack would change his attitude quite quickly.

Tags: Memories Favorite Food Customs

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We were hearing a lot of things about the young man our daughter met at Seattle Pacific University. She had come home for the summer to earn some money, and it wasn't surprising when she told us that David was coming for a visit. They had a long distance friendship for several years; he traveling in Europe after graduation, she lived in Washington, then he came back to university in New York and she returned to Canada. His home was in southern Washington, and he had never been to our area of Canada, and we were quite sure he wasn't coming to experience the weather or take sightseeing trips to the mountains.

When he arrived, we wondered why he was so fascinated by our location and the view of the river valley, repeatedly referring to the river as the 'blue ribbon Bow'. When we asked why he gave it that name, he explained that he had read about it in his father's Fly Fishing magazines since he was a small boy. Along with his father and older brother, they hoped that someday they would have the bragging rights to show their friends that they had caught at least one trout in the Bow.

Being that we had no leanings toward fishing (we rarely even ate fish because we live in beef-raising country), we did some phoning to friends who may be willing to take our visitor for a day of fly fishing. A friend from our church was pleased to have a fishing companion for a day, and even rented a fly fishing river boat. We made 'big points' with our future son-in-law that day! He was well-equipped for the experience... Camera, measuring tape, a borrowed fishing rod and slicker, in case it rained, and a huge smile on his face.

One more thing we learned about this fine young man... He is FORGETFUL! The day he was returning home, he realized, when they arrived at the airport which is 45 miles from our home, he had left his ticket in our guest room. That's another story!

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When I received my first computer, there was no such thing as an email or an ebook; I hadn't even heard the terms before. I had enough trouble identifying with a machine that looked like a typewriter but worked on its own with no need to press 'return' (on my electric typewriter), or grab the handle to move to the next line on my high school typewriter. It was fast too, typying 17 characters per second. The idea of being able to communicate with family and friends in another province or country, or even a different continent was just too unreal. I didn't even need to lick a stamp or walk to the mailbox or post office to send a note on its way, and I could receive a reply in a very short time, sometimes even the same day.

There were many improvements to computer equipment over the next few years... daisy wheel and dot matrix printers have come and gone, then ink jet printers moved to toner, then to wax printers, all of which I have used in my work and leisure time. Penmanship has become almost a lost art. I lost count of how many times my teacher in Elementary School would tap my writing hand with her ruler to remind me to stop writing "backhanded". She would encourage her students to be diligent in their efforts to improve their writing skills so that they could have their submitted entrys to the competition to at Calgary Stampede accepted and displayed publicly, and possibly win a prize.

In just the last few years, we were introduced to ebooks that make a whole personal library fit in a handbag or briefcase. As always, there are varying opinions about them. Many people love to hold a 'real' book with paper pages where notes can be handwritten in the margins, and some claim to miss the smell of a book. They've lost me there. Convenience trumps odors for me every time! 

Tags: Computers Books Beginnings

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My husband’s father was 19 years old when he emigrated to Canada from Chester-le-Street, a village near Durham in Northern England. He traveled on a cargo ship from Liverpool, England to Halifax, Nova Scotia, then continued west by train, looking for homestead land. He had studied Animal Husbandry in England, and thought the only job he would ever enjoy would to be a farmer.

He eventually settle in the province of Saskatch-ewan, met a lovely French lady, and soon had three sons. In his personal documents, which we now carefully care for, was a baptism certificate from Durham Cathedral and records that showed that his father was a sweets salesman for Dainty Dinah. The journal that Fred kept as he journeyed to his new homeland was in a writing book with a distinctive colored hardcover. The entries often were very brief, and the last entry was posted on the day that he received the documents, confirming his ownership of his homestead.

He didn’t talk much about his home in Great Britain, so the family knew very little about his British family. We actually came to our “uninformed” conclusion that he probably was a Remittance Man. I checked Wikipedia for a definition, and this definition is exactly what I heard from his Canadian family;

Within Victorian British culture, this often meant the black sheep of an upper or middle-class family who was sent away (from the United Kingdom to the Empire), and paid to stay away. These men were generally of dissolute or drunken character, and may have been sent overseas after one or more disgraces at home. "Remittance men" also lived in several towns in the American and Canadian West. There were also remittance women' but they are rarely discussed in scholarly works. Many remittance men were sent to the Australian Colonies.

After meeting Dad’s sister, a retired Army nurse, who came to live with Dad, we were anxious to travel to England to meet more relatives for the first time. At one family gathering, a cousin came to our table and handed several small books to Ed, saying that it was time these books returned to their Canadian family. The books had the same cover as Dad’s journal, and we were told that they contained copies of letters that Dad had received from his father, offering help and support to his oldest son. The onion skin pages were fragile and faded, but we eventually were able to reproduce the writings to computer files, so that they could be shared with Ed’s brothers and their families. We also learned that the books were actually order books that included the onion skin and carbon paper for order copies from Dainty Dinah Sweets Company, the company where Ed’s grandfather worked for many years.  I am including a couple of photos; one of Durham Cathedral that I took on our last visit, and a picture of the vintage Dainty Dinah Sweets tin that I purchased on Ebay some years ago.

Tags: Family History Sweets

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When we moved from the city to our present country location in 1975, we were willing to get pets to join our family, thinking it would help our son and daughter make the transition from city to rural living.

Kathy, our eight year old daughter had requested to have an orange cat, and Jason, our nine year old son wanted any kind of dog to play with. In short order, the orange cat arrived and was named 'Cfer' by our daughter, and an adult German Shepherd who loved the outdoors, became our son's constant companion.

Living in the country gave all of us a lot of freedom, as well as great neighbors, and we all adjusted quickly to our new home. Our kids are gone now, grown up and married with their own family and pets, and we are still “country bumpkins”, planning to remain here until the Handi Bus become our mode of transportation. The mother of this family, (that would be me) had never had much love for cats. Their personalities are interesting, but I hated cat hair all through the house, and especially on my black clothes.

C-fer did help to keep the mice population in our house to a minimum, and was very proud to drag any result of his hunting expeditions in the 'great outdoors', up a full flight of outside stairs to deposit his trophy (mice, gophers, moles, small birds, and the occasional rabbit) to the patio door by our kitchen. He also learned to accompany the dog down the road to meet the school bus, hoping that his favorite girl would carry him back home (which she often did). At night (and any other time he could get away with it) he would ignored his bed to sneak into his girl's bed.

When it was time for Kathy to attend university in another country, she found a new home in the neighborhood for C-fer, and I must admit that even I missed his antics. Kathy was always welcome to come by and visit her furry friends whenever she came home. Here is my favorite picture of C-Fer... taken in 1979.

Oh...I almost forgot to tell you about our country cat's name. If you haven't already figured it out, it was Kathy's idea (with some help from her father) to give her new furry friend a very cute name, even though she had never heard it before. It was the shortened version of 'C' for Cat! Can you guess our son's dog's name?

Tags: Pets Cat Family Country Living

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It was September of 1958, and most of my nursing classmates were the same age as me, fresh out of high school and away from home for the first time. Life had certainly taken a turn.

We had three weeks of classes to learn some basic nursing skills before our first assignment. In addition, we were also taught us how to properly “assemble” our uniform, and the importance of being on time. We were reminded to show respect to both the doctors and the patients wherever we met them. We still wondered if we knew enough to be able to do anything significant or helpful on a ward occupied by sick people, and would the staff nurses, who were much older and smarter, think we were just dumb kids?

The list of things (considered to be on our list of abilities) was longer than we realized; take temperatures, check pulse rates and blood pressure, give a patient a bedpan, and empty the results in the service room, and when all this information was gathered, we could sit in the record room with other nurses to update each patient's medical chart. We also could deliver meal trays, bouquets of flowers, and daily newspapers, and make sure that each patient had a jug of fresh water with an ample amount of ice cubes, as well as a clean glass.

We soon learned that most patients appreciated what we could do for them. It's not easy for some patient's to eat when not able to sit up, and we were there to help them by putting their meal in easy reach; even holding their spoon or fork to help get the food to their mouth without spilling it on the bed. Helping a patient change a position (from side to side), and giving them a back-rub, complete with applying a bit of alcohol to cool the skin, and baby powder to smooth the skin, resulted in many expressions of gratitude.

A bed bath was a challenge for us. If a patient was not able to get out of bed or do much for themselves, being clean was still important. We learned that giving an efficient full bath in a bed, without having everything soaking wet, was considered to be an “art”. Our instructor would come by to check on how we were doing, and corrected us when needed to improve, for the sake of the patient. As much as possible, we didn't invade the personal privacy of male patients because there were male 'orderlies' that we could call (thank goodness!)

That wasn't the case at the small country 19-bed hospital where I first worked as a graduate nurse... but that is another story.

Tags: Nurses Student A-z Challenge

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