Last Saturday there was a big garage sale in the neighbourhood in which we live. It was a bit tedious trying to sell off some of our excess as attendance, despite a warm sunny day, was rather low. However, we had the chance to chew the cud with neighbours, socialise and extract ourselves from a long winter hibernation when socialising on the street is greatly reduced.
Its fun people watching. Its fun listening to the conversations passing by. You look at people and make assumptions. Sometimes you underestimate who they may be as a person based on appearance. I believe we all fall victim to that sad fact from time to time.
Well, in a sense I received my reminder to neither underestimate or assume.
Along the street strolled a relatively elderly couple, well enough dressed, but I could sure hear them coming! Vocal recognition was instant. Its not often in Canada that one hears an exceptionally broad Australian accent coming down the street. I looked up and looked far and saw a man and his wife. The man was wearing a broad brimmed hat and bouncing along quite healthily. He obviously had a sense of humour as he was commenting and teasing as he walked along, quite indifferent to what anyone thought. People were noticing him. I smiled.
As he pulled up alongside me he said in the broadest of bush accents that "he hadn't realised that so many people were doing this garage sale and that he would have to go and take his booty to the car and come back and buy all my stuff too." Off he wandered, leaving his wife to chat with me. She was Australian too, though with a much milder Sydney accent and she apologised for her husband's raucous presence, "a bushman and full of life!" I wondered why she apologised? We chatted about Australia and England and Canada for a while and meanwhile the man came back and walked right past my small sale. I called out to him "Heh, Australia! You said you were coming back to buy all my stuff!! Get back here!" and so he returned and we started to laugh and chat. He picked over my odds and ends and his wife suggested that he should buy a pair of unused sandals that were his size and near identical to ones he was wearing. He wasn't interested.. "Pah! I have these and they are nearly new!" I looked down to note a pair that had obviously walked a mile or ten. Another smile.
So I couldn't persuade him to buy my table full of stuff, despite a jocular attempt, but somehow we got onto the subject of aircraft and historical military aircraft and before I knew it we were deep in conversation about his life in the Australian Army and his service in the Korean war in the early 1950's. I do have to confess that at times I had to listen quite closely to his accent, one that was quite unfamiliar to me and its only fair to describe as "broad". He talked for about a half hour about some engagements he had been involved in which presented me with an aspect of the Korean war with which I was totally unfamiliar, and frankly quite fascinated, opening up views of that war which we are rarely presented with. My encouragement of his conversation was more than polite.
It is quite fascinating to hear someone who had been on the ground and "there" talking about their memory and views of the struggles they experienced. I suppose that every man there would have taken home a different rendition of the things which impacted them, but this man had brought home and retained some very accute memories and impressions and his expression of them was deeply evocative. I listened and realised that this was a view of history which we don't often see, from the grass roots level of the man on the ground. I asked him if he had written down his stories so that they didn't die with him and he said he hadn't, that no-one would be interested in them.
I had sat there soaking it all in for quite some time. I was fascinated to hear this distinctictly Australian view of a war I had not given much thought to their participation in, presented in a rather briney Australian accent by a man to whom this was a vivid, descriptive, memory which he was more than willing to share with me. I encouraged him again to consider writing down his stories.
Finally his wife said "Well you have kept this poor man tied up for a long time now. You really should buy those sandals! You can use them next summer when yours finally fall off your feet...and besides, the price is right!" He laughed, said "Sure thing!" and paid me for the sandals. It was the only thing we sold at our garage sale that day.
As we finished up our transaction his wife said "Come on Bruce, let the man have his day..."
I burst out laughing. "Is your name REALLY Bruce?"
He said "Yes sir, it is."
I had finally met an Australian called Bruce!
Neither underestimate nor assume anything about the old people who pass by you in life. They have given much.
Thursday, May 20, 2010
Monday, May 17, 2010
Looking back with the wisdom of age
hmmm. Yes another bee in my bonnet this morning. Waste and bureaucracy. Its time for a rant!
Let's deal first with bureaucracy. I grew up in England where bureaucracy was and still is rife. So many rules to follow, with rules behind them to make sure that the rules created several iterations ago are still supported and enforced, oh and let's have a NEW rule about that rule this morning.
I left England a long time ago and came to Canada (and believe me we have more than our share of bureaucracy here too) and found a less oppressive atmosphere. Yes, I said OPPRESSIVE. I had forgotten how opressive the atmosphere of bureaucracy in England was until I had cause to deal with their banking system this year.
In a nutshell, I had a UK inheritance and while I was in UK earlier in the year I tried to set in motion transferring that money to my Canadian bank. It has now been 7 weeks past and today I found out (when I eventually managed to get someone to actually give me a phone number for Customer Service) that they have totally lost track of where things are at or what is happening with the account. I offered to short circuit the messy system by initiating a new transfer request and asked that they allow me to communicate by email or fax rather than by snail mail. That could apparently only be done if I established "a protocol". So, being the rational man I am I asked what that meant. Apparently it meant me giving permission to the bank to allow me to transfer my money to myself. I said "OK, let's do that right now then!" The answer was I suppose, in retrospect, quite predictable.
"Sorry sir, you have to come into your local branch (in UK) to set that up"
"But I am in bloody Vancouver!!!"
"Sorry about that sir, but that's the way we do it here."
"When I was in my local branch in March they wouldn't let me set up a protocol!"
"Sorry Sir...."
Well, yes its worse than it used to be 30 odd years ago. I suppose that this is yet another enigma. Here I am saying that we should stand on the shoulders of the experienced and look further to achieve more. I suppose that this is a really good example of what is WRONG with that hypothesis. Clearly in some cases we stand on the shoulders of the assenine and look futher into the gaping maw of despondancy and ignorance and add to the level of stupidity.
Then there is the subject of waste. (Don't you love a good rant???)
When I was a kid we had a single steel "dustbin" (garbage can for the non anglo's in the audience) which stood beside the garage and maybe every third or fourth week we would put it out for emptying. Its content included ...hmm what did it include? Largely ash from the two fireplaces as I recall. We didn't have central heating in those days. The newspapers were "recycled" by turning them into tightly wound paper spills with which to start the fire in the fireplace each morning. We were not inundated by flyers and local free "newspapers" which were really either just advertising all bundled up, or a means of delivering advertising. I seem to remember that we had chicken and fish bones in there too, and very rarely something plastic and filmy, as we didn't see much in the way of plastic because we took so-called "String bags" shopping with us. I remember when in-store plastic bags first started to appear.... Man oh man, were they a GREAT idea we thought.....yes sir, we really stood on the shoulders of great men and looked farther ahead on that one! Mind you, today they do come in really handy for picking up our doggydoo, something I remember RARELY happening in dog-loving England of the 50's and 60's. Parks were a lovely place to play on the grass in those days. Pathways were an obstacle course of small or not so small deposits. And of course English people to this day still have the disgusting habit of wearing their outside shoes inside their fully carpeted homes....but then I digress.
Milk rather strangely did not come in disposable plastic containers or waxed cardboard boxes (unless you were buying perpetual (sorry UHT) milk), but it was delivered daily to your door in glass bottles which were collected next day when the next delivery came.....we didn't call it recycling in those days... it was common sense, and quite normal.
Here in Vancouver some years ago, some almost 40 years later, we found it harder and harder to buy milk in glass bottles and had to spend a lot of time and fuel resources running to the dairy once a week, so we gave up and now we buy in 4 litre plastic jugs which we collapse (or use for bulk water storage in our earthquake preparedness area at the back of the garage) and put in the plastic blue-box for the weekly recycling exercise, and then wear as a winter sweater some months or years later.
Things sure got technical.... now we have a blue box for metals and plastics, a blue bag for newsprint (but don't you dare add non-newsprint paper to that blue bag), a yellow bag for "all other paper type waste", we still have our own composter (also known as a red-wriggler worm farm) which does an amazing job of destroying vegetative food wastes and creating a worm-mold compost for the garden. No matter how much we put in it, it never seems to get more than half full....we use public transit as much as possible to avoid putting cars on the road and carbon mon and di-oxide into the atmosphere.
But there is still a garbage problem in our lives..... despite trying to purchase responsibly (in a city environment) and putting out our triple system recycling apparatus weekly, we still find that when we put our plastic garbage bin out roughly once a month (lined of course with a plastic garbage bag to keep the bin clean), what is in there is largely chicken bones and plastic and styrofoam wrappings. Plastic is the saviour and bane of modern society.... How on earth we as a species managed to live without plastic wrapping everything not just once, but twice and thrice, and then putting it into a cardboard box which is again wrapped in plastic I just do not understand! And please do not misunderstand....I am not just describing the awful amount of processed food we are encouraged to eat, but the organic produce from the local vegetable store which is unitised and presented on foam trays and wrapped in plastic!
Young people (and old ones too)... Please protest and get smarter.... we do not need all this plastic and cardboard . No, we cannot all have a cow on the patio and no, urban chickens are not welcome everywhere.
Stop to think. It all has to go somewhere and if its not piling up in your backyard, it sure as hell is beside someone elses!
Let's deal first with bureaucracy. I grew up in England where bureaucracy was and still is rife. So many rules to follow, with rules behind them to make sure that the rules created several iterations ago are still supported and enforced, oh and let's have a NEW rule about that rule this morning.
I left England a long time ago and came to Canada (and believe me we have more than our share of bureaucracy here too) and found a less oppressive atmosphere. Yes, I said OPPRESSIVE. I had forgotten how opressive the atmosphere of bureaucracy in England was until I had cause to deal with their banking system this year.
In a nutshell, I had a UK inheritance and while I was in UK earlier in the year I tried to set in motion transferring that money to my Canadian bank. It has now been 7 weeks past and today I found out (when I eventually managed to get someone to actually give me a phone number for Customer Service) that they have totally lost track of where things are at or what is happening with the account. I offered to short circuit the messy system by initiating a new transfer request and asked that they allow me to communicate by email or fax rather than by snail mail. That could apparently only be done if I established "a protocol". So, being the rational man I am I asked what that meant. Apparently it meant me giving permission to the bank to allow me to transfer my money to myself. I said "OK, let's do that right now then!" The answer was I suppose, in retrospect, quite predictable.
"Sorry sir, you have to come into your local branch (in UK) to set that up"
"But I am in bloody Vancouver!!!"
"Sorry about that sir, but that's the way we do it here."
"When I was in my local branch in March they wouldn't let me set up a protocol!"
"Sorry Sir...."
Well, yes its worse than it used to be 30 odd years ago. I suppose that this is yet another enigma. Here I am saying that we should stand on the shoulders of the experienced and look further to achieve more. I suppose that this is a really good example of what is WRONG with that hypothesis. Clearly in some cases we stand on the shoulders of the assenine and look futher into the gaping maw of despondancy and ignorance and add to the level of stupidity.
Then there is the subject of waste. (Don't you love a good rant???)
When I was a kid we had a single steel "dustbin" (garbage can for the non anglo's in the audience) which stood beside the garage and maybe every third or fourth week we would put it out for emptying. Its content included ...hmm what did it include? Largely ash from the two fireplaces as I recall. We didn't have central heating in those days. The newspapers were "recycled" by turning them into tightly wound paper spills with which to start the fire in the fireplace each morning. We were not inundated by flyers and local free "newspapers" which were really either just advertising all bundled up, or a means of delivering advertising. I seem to remember that we had chicken and fish bones in there too, and very rarely something plastic and filmy, as we didn't see much in the way of plastic because we took so-called "String bags" shopping with us. I remember when in-store plastic bags first started to appear.... Man oh man, were they a GREAT idea we thought.....yes sir, we really stood on the shoulders of great men and looked farther ahead on that one! Mind you, today they do come in really handy for picking up our doggydoo, something I remember RARELY happening in dog-loving England of the 50's and 60's. Parks were a lovely place to play on the grass in those days. Pathways were an obstacle course of small or not so small deposits. And of course English people to this day still have the disgusting habit of wearing their outside shoes inside their fully carpeted homes....but then I digress.
Milk rather strangely did not come in disposable plastic containers or waxed cardboard boxes (unless you were buying perpetual (sorry UHT) milk), but it was delivered daily to your door in glass bottles which were collected next day when the next delivery came.....we didn't call it recycling in those days... it was common sense, and quite normal.
Here in Vancouver some years ago, some almost 40 years later, we found it harder and harder to buy milk in glass bottles and had to spend a lot of time and fuel resources running to the dairy once a week, so we gave up and now we buy in 4 litre plastic jugs which we collapse (or use for bulk water storage in our earthquake preparedness area at the back of the garage) and put in the plastic blue-box for the weekly recycling exercise, and then wear as a winter sweater some months or years later.
Things sure got technical.... now we have a blue box for metals and plastics, a blue bag for newsprint (but don't you dare add non-newsprint paper to that blue bag), a yellow bag for "all other paper type waste", we still have our own composter (also known as a red-wriggler worm farm) which does an amazing job of destroying vegetative food wastes and creating a worm-mold compost for the garden. No matter how much we put in it, it never seems to get more than half full....we use public transit as much as possible to avoid putting cars on the road and carbon mon and di-oxide into the atmosphere.
But there is still a garbage problem in our lives..... despite trying to purchase responsibly (in a city environment) and putting out our triple system recycling apparatus weekly, we still find that when we put our plastic garbage bin out roughly once a month (lined of course with a plastic garbage bag to keep the bin clean), what is in there is largely chicken bones and plastic and styrofoam wrappings. Plastic is the saviour and bane of modern society.... How on earth we as a species managed to live without plastic wrapping everything not just once, but twice and thrice, and then putting it into a cardboard box which is again wrapped in plastic I just do not understand! And please do not misunderstand....I am not just describing the awful amount of processed food we are encouraged to eat, but the organic produce from the local vegetable store which is unitised and presented on foam trays and wrapped in plastic!
Young people (and old ones too)... Please protest and get smarter.... we do not need all this plastic and cardboard . No, we cannot all have a cow on the patio and no, urban chickens are not welcome everywhere.
Stop to think. It all has to go somewhere and if its not piling up in your backyard, it sure as hell is beside someone elses!
Friday, May 14, 2010
Tiny impulses create value beyond count
When I was a kid I collected stamps...(LOL I still have them all!).... and people used to think I was nuts.... but I looked at each stamp and discovered that they told me a story, a story of time and change and progress and technology and geography and and and.... and from each stamp I learned just a little....I heard of far away islands with names like Montserrat and Naui, I discovered history of a great Commonwealth spanning the geography of Africa and Asia and the Americas...I could go on and on and on....I was fascinated by the things that people put on their stamps.... I learned about politics and trade. Although I kept all my stamps inside big albums, row upon row , I looked at them individually and thought of how each one should be individually framed and hung on a wall, individualised so that each could be studied and researched for its OWN meaning by the viewer. Again most people thought I was mad.
When I see a special stamp issued by one country or another to memorialise someone or something, I think about how significant that commemorated thing must be to earn its way onto a national stamp. But then I see the small bit of paper it is printed on and realise that most people never really look at the design, the fine craftsmanship, the art that is front of them, let alone look INTO the image and find out a bit more about that tiny reminder of something precious.
I hope that stamps never vanish from our world. The postal system may be cumbersome and expensive and to a degree inefficient in our world, but I think about the kids who will never have the chance or exposure to be so inspired if those tiny flashes of inspiration were to vanish. Never underestimate the impact the tiniest item has upon the mind of a child.
oldlincolnian
When I see a special stamp issued by one country or another to memorialise someone or something, I think about how significant that commemorated thing must be to earn its way onto a national stamp. But then I see the small bit of paper it is printed on and realise that most people never really look at the design, the fine craftsmanship, the art that is front of them, let alone look INTO the image and find out a bit more about that tiny reminder of something precious.
I hope that stamps never vanish from our world. The postal system may be cumbersome and expensive and to a degree inefficient in our world, but I think about the kids who will never have the chance or exposure to be so inspired if those tiny flashes of inspiration were to vanish. Never underestimate the impact the tiniest item has upon the mind of a child.
oldlincolnian
Wednesday, May 12, 2010
Dating much older people
That may sound like a funny title to launch into.
The purpose of this post is to encourage both younger people to date older people and older people to encourage themselves and others to date younger people.
No No...don't go getting all juiced up and excited. This what I mean:
There is a great deal of value in younger people associating with, seeking out and spending time with much older people. As a young lad I used to spend a lot of time with my Grandfather who lived about a mile or more away. I was so lucky to have him there. I enjoyed his company first of all. He treated me as another person of equal stature to him, a fellow human being, and somehow in a totally non-condescending way. He would talk to me about pretty well anything, history, current affairs, whatever my current interests were, family history, his own youth and experiences, World War One in the trenches, World War Two having a son stuck in Malta, being a Police officer, his gardening interests, what he knew about plants, animals, mechanical things, politics and politicians...in fact you name it and he probably had conversations with me about it! Added to that he made a point of always introducing me to other older men anytime he had the chance.
In short, he engaged me in interesting conversations in ways which drew me into them. He gave me interesting examples, shared things with me. He showed me how the continuing reality of my own life was a continuation of many things which I could observe and learn from. I hated hearing " Well its time to head on home now ......"
My Grandfather died when I was 21, mere weeks after I graduated from my post-secondary education. I had so much more to share with him too. I missed him in 1973 and I am still missing him in 2010. It seems that it is just not possible that he has been gone 37 years now. I still talk to him and think about the input he would give me on any given subject.
However, loss aside, he gave me a continuing inspiration. Always engage older men, learn from them. And I have done that. In my jobs and career moves I have always sought out the senior people, usually men, though I very strongly believe that girls and younger women should seek out the wisdom of older women also. (Yes I do believe very fundamentally that men and women in general function in very different ways.)
So why have I chosen to write about this, my own very personal experience?
As stated at the beginning I want to encourage younger folk to deliberately seek out and date older folk and I want older folk to make themselves available to younger folk, not just if asked, because I think that generally younger folk will not engage older folk, knowing full darned well that they have nothing to offer. I think that older folk have an obligation to put themselves in the paths of the younger folk and seek out suitable venues to engage them. When I have seen this happen, I have seen great results!
The means can be as varied as chalk and cheese. Leaning on a fence and listening to the neighbour's child talk, eliciting their interests and then expanding upon the converstaion and showing a continuing interest can be fun. Just smiling at a child or younger person and saying "Hello! How are you today?" but then not dropping the ball when they reply with "I am well, thank you!" but expanding it, gradually, until the younger one opens up a little.
I know that this can in certain circumstances be a little uncomfortable. Here is an example from my own experience. I have Russian neighbours. Educated people. They have a young daughter with an inquisitive smile and bright red hair. At the age of 5 or 6 this little one spoke both Russian and English quite flawlessly and she asked a lot of questions. Me being me, she got answers, and she asked more! Sometimes when the air wasn't too cool or too wet she'd be outside sitting on the wall, watching the world go by and I would greet her and join her, and before long we would be having a great back and forth conversation appropriate to her age but being handled by her at a level way over her age. Really inquisitive that one!
One day another neighbour made a comment to me that "I seemed to be spending a lot of attention to that young girl"... the suggestion being that it was considered inappropriate. It had never dawned on me to see it in that light, but obviously it was possible that there was such a perception in the mind of some. Consequently I spoke to her parents and said "Look, your daughter and I like to sit on the wall and chat... and you have seen and heard us do this many times. I think I need to ask you..... Do you mind me doing that with her? Some people seem to think its inappropriate."
I was granted permission quite gladly. As time went by she started into school and was placed in a French langauge immersion school and very quickly it became apparent that she was learning French very fast, so our conversations turned into conversations in French. That small girl is now almost 10 and speaks Russian, English and French very comfortably. Her parents do not speak French (and I dare say she gets plenty of it in school), but its nice to sit down from time to time on the wall and speak French with her. As she gets older, she has engaged more with her own friends and is less available to chat with now but a small sort of bond developed and I always get a small smile and a Hello!
Do I have any pretentions that this experience changed her life? No not really. However it puts me in mind of a man whom I considered ancient when I was 8 years old, though he was maybe only 10 years my senior today. My family used to visit the same small seaside village every year and we had the use of a beach hut up on the seawall. Adjacent to our hut (which was named Shibden) was a shelter with seats for the public to sit and watch the world go by or to meet, or shelter from the rain. On the other side of that shelter was another beach hut occupied by a family who always brought "grandfather" along with them. The children of that family were a little older than me and at that age it meant that we did not associate, but "grandfather" used to sit in front of their hut and wittle away at wood with a pocket knife, for hour after hour after hour. This facinated me. He had a windbeaten, leathery, old farmer's face, big gnarled hands and a lovely smile whenever anyone approached him (which didn't seem to be often). I made up my mind to ask him about whatever it was he was doing with a lump of wood and a knife.
He explained to me that it was "just something to do", making shapes or spoons or whatever took his fancy. It seemed that he wanted to have something to do with his usually busy hands while dragged off to the seaside by his family. From what I could see his own family didn't spend much time with him, so I made a point of doing that. I discovered that he was a farmer and lived in the Lincolnshire village of Billinghay, which for some reason fascinated me as a name. His family always dragged him away for this 2 week period while his crops were growing, but he was like a fish out of water away from his farm. So he carved wood!
I learned so much from him about farming in the two years when I saw him for 2 weeks at a time. Then he stopped coming with them the next year and then they stopped coming to the same location too. However, its obvious that I have never ever forgotten about this man or the impression he made upon me. He gave me his time and we had some great conversations. He added depth and breadth to my life.
We should all try to do that for those who are younger than us, no matter what we have to offer.
Even as an aging man myself, I continue to seek out the company and wisdom of older men. More on Charley and Woody later!
The purpose of this post is to encourage both younger people to date older people and older people to encourage themselves and others to date younger people.
No No...don't go getting all juiced up and excited. This what I mean:
There is a great deal of value in younger people associating with, seeking out and spending time with much older people. As a young lad I used to spend a lot of time with my Grandfather who lived about a mile or more away. I was so lucky to have him there. I enjoyed his company first of all. He treated me as another person of equal stature to him, a fellow human being, and somehow in a totally non-condescending way. He would talk to me about pretty well anything, history, current affairs, whatever my current interests were, family history, his own youth and experiences, World War One in the trenches, World War Two having a son stuck in Malta, being a Police officer, his gardening interests, what he knew about plants, animals, mechanical things, politics and politicians...in fact you name it and he probably had conversations with me about it! Added to that he made a point of always introducing me to other older men anytime he had the chance.
In short, he engaged me in interesting conversations in ways which drew me into them. He gave me interesting examples, shared things with me. He showed me how the continuing reality of my own life was a continuation of many things which I could observe and learn from. I hated hearing " Well its time to head on home now ......"
My Grandfather died when I was 21, mere weeks after I graduated from my post-secondary education. I had so much more to share with him too. I missed him in 1973 and I am still missing him in 2010. It seems that it is just not possible that he has been gone 37 years now. I still talk to him and think about the input he would give me on any given subject.
However, loss aside, he gave me a continuing inspiration. Always engage older men, learn from them. And I have done that. In my jobs and career moves I have always sought out the senior people, usually men, though I very strongly believe that girls and younger women should seek out the wisdom of older women also. (Yes I do believe very fundamentally that men and women in general function in very different ways.)
So why have I chosen to write about this, my own very personal experience?
As stated at the beginning I want to encourage younger folk to deliberately seek out and date older folk and I want older folk to make themselves available to younger folk, not just if asked, because I think that generally younger folk will not engage older folk, knowing full darned well that they have nothing to offer. I think that older folk have an obligation to put themselves in the paths of the younger folk and seek out suitable venues to engage them. When I have seen this happen, I have seen great results!
The means can be as varied as chalk and cheese. Leaning on a fence and listening to the neighbour's child talk, eliciting their interests and then expanding upon the converstaion and showing a continuing interest can be fun. Just smiling at a child or younger person and saying "Hello! How are you today?" but then not dropping the ball when they reply with "I am well, thank you!" but expanding it, gradually, until the younger one opens up a little.
I know that this can in certain circumstances be a little uncomfortable. Here is an example from my own experience. I have Russian neighbours. Educated people. They have a young daughter with an inquisitive smile and bright red hair. At the age of 5 or 6 this little one spoke both Russian and English quite flawlessly and she asked a lot of questions. Me being me, she got answers, and she asked more! Sometimes when the air wasn't too cool or too wet she'd be outside sitting on the wall, watching the world go by and I would greet her and join her, and before long we would be having a great back and forth conversation appropriate to her age but being handled by her at a level way over her age. Really inquisitive that one!
One day another neighbour made a comment to me that "I seemed to be spending a lot of attention to that young girl"... the suggestion being that it was considered inappropriate. It had never dawned on me to see it in that light, but obviously it was possible that there was such a perception in the mind of some. Consequently I spoke to her parents and said "Look, your daughter and I like to sit on the wall and chat... and you have seen and heard us do this many times. I think I need to ask you..... Do you mind me doing that with her? Some people seem to think its inappropriate."
I was granted permission quite gladly. As time went by she started into school and was placed in a French langauge immersion school and very quickly it became apparent that she was learning French very fast, so our conversations turned into conversations in French. That small girl is now almost 10 and speaks Russian, English and French very comfortably. Her parents do not speak French (and I dare say she gets plenty of it in school), but its nice to sit down from time to time on the wall and speak French with her. As she gets older, she has engaged more with her own friends and is less available to chat with now but a small sort of bond developed and I always get a small smile and a Hello!
Do I have any pretentions that this experience changed her life? No not really. However it puts me in mind of a man whom I considered ancient when I was 8 years old, though he was maybe only 10 years my senior today. My family used to visit the same small seaside village every year and we had the use of a beach hut up on the seawall. Adjacent to our hut (which was named Shibden) was a shelter with seats for the public to sit and watch the world go by or to meet, or shelter from the rain. On the other side of that shelter was another beach hut occupied by a family who always brought "grandfather" along with them. The children of that family were a little older than me and at that age it meant that we did not associate, but "grandfather" used to sit in front of their hut and wittle away at wood with a pocket knife, for hour after hour after hour. This facinated me. He had a windbeaten, leathery, old farmer's face, big gnarled hands and a lovely smile whenever anyone approached him (which didn't seem to be often). I made up my mind to ask him about whatever it was he was doing with a lump of wood and a knife.
He explained to me that it was "just something to do", making shapes or spoons or whatever took his fancy. It seemed that he wanted to have something to do with his usually busy hands while dragged off to the seaside by his family. From what I could see his own family didn't spend much time with him, so I made a point of doing that. I discovered that he was a farmer and lived in the Lincolnshire village of Billinghay, which for some reason fascinated me as a name. His family always dragged him away for this 2 week period while his crops were growing, but he was like a fish out of water away from his farm. So he carved wood!
I learned so much from him about farming in the two years when I saw him for 2 weeks at a time. Then he stopped coming with them the next year and then they stopped coming to the same location too. However, its obvious that I have never ever forgotten about this man or the impression he made upon me. He gave me his time and we had some great conversations. He added depth and breadth to my life.
We should all try to do that for those who are younger than us, no matter what we have to offer.
Even as an aging man myself, I continue to seek out the company and wisdom of older men. More on Charley and Woody later!
Sunday, May 2, 2010
The Enigma
This morning Tom emailed me with some deeply personal comments about his own experiences as a young fellow and how they are impacting him as an "aging" man. Tom is less verbose than I am, and he managed to bring to mind for me that one of my proposed "discussions" was about Enigma. I was thinking to discuss this sometime soon, but the poignancy of his mail encouraged me to spend some time on a Sunday morning and exercise my two finger typing skills before my day got too complicated.
Enigma. Something that defies explanation by rational means. I suppose the very concept of trying to add value to young lives can be considered enigmatic. I refer back to an earlier comment that the more you understand, the harder it is to explain it. As one gains experience in life, as experience after experience come together like the pieces of a complex jigsaw puzzle with no hard edges, slowly making a discernable and to some degree predictable pattern out of the mess of life's experiences, it becomes harder and harder teach that it is the process in which lies the value rather than the end result.
Read that again.... that is the enigma....an argument against itself.
Not everyone likes jigsaw puzzles. The presentation packaging gives them an image of what to expect in the end result. Why take it further? Its a picture of Constable's painting of Dedham Mill. So what? Who was Constable anyway? When does the pub open?
Others may look at the packaging, the same packaging and see an amazing image, and be curious about the way it impacts their eyes and senses and be curious as to who and what this fellow Constable was and what was he trying to achieve and go on to look him up in the Library or on the Internet and use that as a springboard to further exploration of art and culture
Others may take the puzzle, open the packaging, scatter the pieces, and simply become immersed in the act of assembly of the adjacently matching elements of the puzzle, entralled by the complexity of the image. An urge to complete the task for the sake of it.
And still others may become immersed in the complexity of the assembly but carefully study the elements contained in each small piece and then look at the complexity of the art as it assembles and perhaps be driven to go and find the artwork in its original form and stare into its rurality.
Each response is a valid response. How each response comes about is an enigma. Clearly each response brings about a different result. It is clearly inappropriate to judge the response, but it is part of human reality to consider the response in light of the viewer's self perception and sense of their own life.
Parents, in their own way, informed by their own sense of being and aggregated experience in life, try to influence to a greater or lesser degree the experiences of their children. Adults do the same for the young, and older people do the same for younger adults. It is a cycle, a natural cycle. It is an enigma that seems to grow stronger with age. Most everyone experiences that feeling of wanting to add value to younger lives to some degree or another and the older we become, the less we seem able to explain to our younger cohorts how important and valuable it is to learn in this way.
At the same time, winding the clock backwards instead of forwards, the young seem, the younger they get, to reject that the experience of others has any value. There is a striving in the human animal to learn from experience, but their own, not that of others which may project them further forwards. It seems that we are destined for the most part to continually re-invent forward motion, thus standing largely on the spot, with perhaps only marginal forward motion evident.
The power of the human mind is so vast, yet we faithfully resist applying it. In a technological sense we seem to need bigger and bigger hard drives in our computers to store and to be able to re-use more and more "already done" work, yet we cannot make the connection that this applies to life also. Sadly we seem to find the offer of input an affront to our personal growth. This is especially noticable in the young. Yet we must not give up in our effort to add value to young lives, no matter how fruitless and frustrating it may feel at times. Once in a while it is welcomed.
It is noticable that Newton was correct. When mankind accepts the foundation of knowledge we have already developed and stands on its shoulders and looks further ahead, we can make vaste strides. Yet when we must keep re-inventing old things we can actually lose knowledge. There are many examples of lost learning. We keep finding ancient things again and what they show us about understandings we have since lost is actually awe inspiring at times, humbling at others.
What an Enigma!
Enigma. Something that defies explanation by rational means. I suppose the very concept of trying to add value to young lives can be considered enigmatic. I refer back to an earlier comment that the more you understand, the harder it is to explain it. As one gains experience in life, as experience after experience come together like the pieces of a complex jigsaw puzzle with no hard edges, slowly making a discernable and to some degree predictable pattern out of the mess of life's experiences, it becomes harder and harder teach that it is the process in which lies the value rather than the end result.
Read that again.... that is the enigma....an argument against itself.
Not everyone likes jigsaw puzzles. The presentation packaging gives them an image of what to expect in the end result. Why take it further? Its a picture of Constable's painting of Dedham Mill. So what? Who was Constable anyway? When does the pub open?
Others may look at the packaging, the same packaging and see an amazing image, and be curious about the way it impacts their eyes and senses and be curious as to who and what this fellow Constable was and what was he trying to achieve and go on to look him up in the Library or on the Internet and use that as a springboard to further exploration of art and culture
Others may take the puzzle, open the packaging, scatter the pieces, and simply become immersed in the act of assembly of the adjacently matching elements of the puzzle, entralled by the complexity of the image. An urge to complete the task for the sake of it.
And still others may become immersed in the complexity of the assembly but carefully study the elements contained in each small piece and then look at the complexity of the art as it assembles and perhaps be driven to go and find the artwork in its original form and stare into its rurality.
Each response is a valid response. How each response comes about is an enigma. Clearly each response brings about a different result. It is clearly inappropriate to judge the response, but it is part of human reality to consider the response in light of the viewer's self perception and sense of their own life.
Parents, in their own way, informed by their own sense of being and aggregated experience in life, try to influence to a greater or lesser degree the experiences of their children. Adults do the same for the young, and older people do the same for younger adults. It is a cycle, a natural cycle. It is an enigma that seems to grow stronger with age. Most everyone experiences that feeling of wanting to add value to younger lives to some degree or another and the older we become, the less we seem able to explain to our younger cohorts how important and valuable it is to learn in this way.
At the same time, winding the clock backwards instead of forwards, the young seem, the younger they get, to reject that the experience of others has any value. There is a striving in the human animal to learn from experience, but their own, not that of others which may project them further forwards. It seems that we are destined for the most part to continually re-invent forward motion, thus standing largely on the spot, with perhaps only marginal forward motion evident.
The power of the human mind is so vast, yet we faithfully resist applying it. In a technological sense we seem to need bigger and bigger hard drives in our computers to store and to be able to re-use more and more "already done" work, yet we cannot make the connection that this applies to life also. Sadly we seem to find the offer of input an affront to our personal growth. This is especially noticable in the young. Yet we must not give up in our effort to add value to young lives, no matter how fruitless and frustrating it may feel at times. Once in a while it is welcomed.
It is noticable that Newton was correct. When mankind accepts the foundation of knowledge we have already developed and stands on its shoulders and looks further ahead, we can make vaste strides. Yet when we must keep re-inventing old things we can actually lose knowledge. There are many examples of lost learning. We keep finding ancient things again and what they show us about understandings we have since lost is actually awe inspiring at times, humbling at others.
What an Enigma!
Shaken, not stirred
I had the privilege at several points in my life, after my own post secondary education, to teach in several post secondary institutions, both in UK and in Canada. I viewed these opportunities with a sense of awe, for a while at least.
When I was a post-secondary student myself in UK, I went off full of trepidation into a new, rather more liberal world than the one I had inhabited during my secondary education, in a school with almost a thousand years of history. The new environment was going to be different. Somehow I was going to learn the "real stuff" now from "professors" who somehow were far more elevated than the teachers I had had in secondary education. How wrong I was.
They were friendlier, more familiar for the most part. They failed to inspire me. Some were buffoons, posers, some seemed interested in the art and notion of genuinely teaching, but failed to grab my attention. I wanted to learn and synthesize, while it seemed that some of my classmates were rather putting in time before the student union bar opened. It was an eye opener to personal responsibility. If I wanted to learn something, I had to use what I was hearing as a spring board for further personal study of something else other than the sudsy bottom of a beer glass. I have to admit that at times the lure of the beer glass was inordinately strong.
Upon my own graduation, I was amazed to find that my application to work in a another University department in Wales was accepted. I was appointed to the highest salary ever granted a graduate of my program and I thought I had it made. Visions of professorial grandeur after some very interesting work periods were visualised.
Reality was quite different. I was actually expected to sit in front of a class and teach. I was younger than some of my students. Ooooer! That was quite disconcerting. These were bright, intelligent people. I was expected to impart things to them which would expand their knowledge and in a way that made it interesting for them. This was serious business! I knew instantly that I had to find a way to engage these people. Then I remembered where I had just come from and understood that they were thinking about how long it was to get to the student union bar. Non the less they engaged me and put effort into their studies because I worked hard to make the theoretical material clearly relevant to things they would use and need to know in a practical sense in their working life. This seemed important to do and it motivated me. However, it didn't take long to learn that many of these "young folk" were working to just get through because the course was a compulsory component of a bigger program.
I learned here what it took to catch the imagination and discovered that only a small number could be hooked while the rest were "C-ing their way through". However there was a willingness and a basic ability to LEARN.
Later, while again teaching, but now in the post secondary system in Canada, I learned that teaching in different countries is like teaching on different planets. There are similarities, but the difference is greater than I could have imagined.
Growing up in UK, attending an all boys school where the "Masters" wore their academic gowns, the boys wore a strictly controlled uniform and because of being a product of the 50's and 60's in England, I had grown up in a relatively stiff, perhaps stuffy, traditional world, where respect was an integral part of both the boy's life and for the most part the Masters' too. While this heaviness had eased in my UK post-secondary experience, that attitude of mind, that way of being, was deeply ingrained in me and those around me. You gave and got respect while earning it.
Teaching in Canada was a shock. There were very touchy/feely situations in place and the students were your "client" and you were there to "serve" them. At the end of each course, the students evaluated the teacher and security and tenure depended on one's popularity in the class. This made properly evaluating the effort and endeavour of the student and equitably grading their work very difficult in some cases. The students bore an air of entitlement, some very much so. They had paid heavily to attend the class and they came into it with a sense of expectation of getting high grades. Marks on the whole it seemed were given far more liberally in that system than the one I had grown up in and experienced myself. People complained bitterly if their mark was lower than 75%, where my experience had been that to achieve 75% was considered a good mark.
What struck me the most when teaching highly complex and mathematical/technical matters to 18 year olds was that they came into the system woefully unprepared to work, ill-prepared to study and largely incapable when it came to literacy. I was shocked. While some may be offended by the comment, I was amazed that some had graduated High School. This was late 1970's to early 1980's. Me daring to make such comments to my cohorts at that time was considered to be in poor taste and rather shocking. Interestingly I note that some post-secondary teachers today are still making loud noises more generally about this in Canada.
Well, I had a job to do, a job I rather enjoyed. I wanted to impart this possibly complex knowledge to the students and knowing my material well, I worked very hard at making it relevant and contextual and exemplified in practical hands-on ways. With relatively small classes, the opportunity to learn was high for the students, but I found all too often that a dumb, angry look took them and no matter how I simplified things and gave them techniques to use to aid the learning process, they struggled and did not exemplify "learning".
I started to question myself. Do I know my material? Am I teaching in a digestible way? I modified and modified to the point that I was starting to dumb-down the content of the material to a point that was unacceptible for the level of coursework. No matter what I did, a too substantial portion of the class was simply not getting it and was exhibiting strong anger towards myself because of it. I was verbally threatened, promised bad reviews if the marks didn't come up. Finally I talked this through with my colleagues. They empathised. They were also aware that the students seemed to be struggling in general. I sat down with my students and tried to ascertain what the blocks to learning were. Some blamed my cultured English accent and said I was a snob. That certainly helped. I was shocked by the ATTITUDE of the students who were struggling. Their sense of entitlement was enormous. They had paid their fees and they expected a passing grade. It was that simple. They had bought their education as a commodity. Probing brought out that they rarely if ever did assigned reading outside of whatever I was prattling on about in class. They never reviewed their incomplete notes or read to xpand their understanding and they never came to me in my office for aid, despite my repeated offering to set up coaching and review.
In the end I understood what they expected. They wanted me to open their cranium, poor in measured amounts of knowledge which would instantly form a part of their reality, close the cranium again and shake gently to ensure an even coating of knowlege on the inside of their empty skulls, rather than shake their world and drive them to explore it.
I was shaken by this experience and certainly not stirred to continue for long in the environment.
Teaching those who pay for their education is no-where near as effective as teaching those who earn their education.
oldlincolnian
When I was a post-secondary student myself in UK, I went off full of trepidation into a new, rather more liberal world than the one I had inhabited during my secondary education, in a school with almost a thousand years of history. The new environment was going to be different. Somehow I was going to learn the "real stuff" now from "professors" who somehow were far more elevated than the teachers I had had in secondary education. How wrong I was.
They were friendlier, more familiar for the most part. They failed to inspire me. Some were buffoons, posers, some seemed interested in the art and notion of genuinely teaching, but failed to grab my attention. I wanted to learn and synthesize, while it seemed that some of my classmates were rather putting in time before the student union bar opened. It was an eye opener to personal responsibility. If I wanted to learn something, I had to use what I was hearing as a spring board for further personal study of something else other than the sudsy bottom of a beer glass. I have to admit that at times the lure of the beer glass was inordinately strong.
Upon my own graduation, I was amazed to find that my application to work in a another University department in Wales was accepted. I was appointed to the highest salary ever granted a graduate of my program and I thought I had it made. Visions of professorial grandeur after some very interesting work periods were visualised.
Reality was quite different. I was actually expected to sit in front of a class and teach. I was younger than some of my students. Ooooer! That was quite disconcerting. These were bright, intelligent people. I was expected to impart things to them which would expand their knowledge and in a way that made it interesting for them. This was serious business! I knew instantly that I had to find a way to engage these people. Then I remembered where I had just come from and understood that they were thinking about how long it was to get to the student union bar. Non the less they engaged me and put effort into their studies because I worked hard to make the theoretical material clearly relevant to things they would use and need to know in a practical sense in their working life. This seemed important to do and it motivated me. However, it didn't take long to learn that many of these "young folk" were working to just get through because the course was a compulsory component of a bigger program.
I learned here what it took to catch the imagination and discovered that only a small number could be hooked while the rest were "C-ing their way through". However there was a willingness and a basic ability to LEARN.
Later, while again teaching, but now in the post secondary system in Canada, I learned that teaching in different countries is like teaching on different planets. There are similarities, but the difference is greater than I could have imagined.
Growing up in UK, attending an all boys school where the "Masters" wore their academic gowns, the boys wore a strictly controlled uniform and because of being a product of the 50's and 60's in England, I had grown up in a relatively stiff, perhaps stuffy, traditional world, where respect was an integral part of both the boy's life and for the most part the Masters' too. While this heaviness had eased in my UK post-secondary experience, that attitude of mind, that way of being, was deeply ingrained in me and those around me. You gave and got respect while earning it.
Teaching in Canada was a shock. There were very touchy/feely situations in place and the students were your "client" and you were there to "serve" them. At the end of each course, the students evaluated the teacher and security and tenure depended on one's popularity in the class. This made properly evaluating the effort and endeavour of the student and equitably grading their work very difficult in some cases. The students bore an air of entitlement, some very much so. They had paid heavily to attend the class and they came into it with a sense of expectation of getting high grades. Marks on the whole it seemed were given far more liberally in that system than the one I had grown up in and experienced myself. People complained bitterly if their mark was lower than 75%, where my experience had been that to achieve 75% was considered a good mark.
What struck me the most when teaching highly complex and mathematical/technical matters to 18 year olds was that they came into the system woefully unprepared to work, ill-prepared to study and largely incapable when it came to literacy. I was shocked. While some may be offended by the comment, I was amazed that some had graduated High School. This was late 1970's to early 1980's. Me daring to make such comments to my cohorts at that time was considered to be in poor taste and rather shocking. Interestingly I note that some post-secondary teachers today are still making loud noises more generally about this in Canada.
Well, I had a job to do, a job I rather enjoyed. I wanted to impart this possibly complex knowledge to the students and knowing my material well, I worked very hard at making it relevant and contextual and exemplified in practical hands-on ways. With relatively small classes, the opportunity to learn was high for the students, but I found all too often that a dumb, angry look took them and no matter how I simplified things and gave them techniques to use to aid the learning process, they struggled and did not exemplify "learning".
I started to question myself. Do I know my material? Am I teaching in a digestible way? I modified and modified to the point that I was starting to dumb-down the content of the material to a point that was unacceptible for the level of coursework. No matter what I did, a too substantial portion of the class was simply not getting it and was exhibiting strong anger towards myself because of it. I was verbally threatened, promised bad reviews if the marks didn't come up. Finally I talked this through with my colleagues. They empathised. They were also aware that the students seemed to be struggling in general. I sat down with my students and tried to ascertain what the blocks to learning were. Some blamed my cultured English accent and said I was a snob. That certainly helped. I was shocked by the ATTITUDE of the students who were struggling. Their sense of entitlement was enormous. They had paid their fees and they expected a passing grade. It was that simple. They had bought their education as a commodity. Probing brought out that they rarely if ever did assigned reading outside of whatever I was prattling on about in class. They never reviewed their incomplete notes or read to xpand their understanding and they never came to me in my office for aid, despite my repeated offering to set up coaching and review.
In the end I understood what they expected. They wanted me to open their cranium, poor in measured amounts of knowledge which would instantly form a part of their reality, close the cranium again and shake gently to ensure an even coating of knowlege on the inside of their empty skulls, rather than shake their world and drive them to explore it.
I was shaken by this experience and certainly not stirred to continue for long in the environment.
Teaching those who pay for their education is no-where near as effective as teaching those who earn their education.
oldlincolnian
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