The Ramblings and Wanderings

Archive for the ‘Everything Else’ Category

I always thought that crochet was invented by an ADD woman, being one myself.

Once upon a time, long ago, probably in France, a woman with undiagnosed Attention Deficit Disorder was puttering around her cottage. Doing much but getting nothing done, of course.

In fact she was very busily working hard at trying to find the key to her chest full of yarn (and other odds and ends that had found their way into the chest). She tore the whole cottage apart and simply couldn’t find it anywhere. She did, however, find one of her long lost knitting needles in the process. Distracted by the find, she looked about for the other kitting needle. Alas she couldn’t find that either. (For the record, the key to the chest had wandered off to the barn and the other knitting needle was out in the garden having spent part of the summer holding up a young bean stalk.)

Suddenly remembering what she had been doing a few minutes before, our heroine return to her chest. Using whatever she happened to have in her hand, the single knitting needle, she was able to pry open the chest. Happily she dug through the disorganized tangle of yarn within. Unhappily, it seemed as though all her other knitting needles had also vanished (who know where they wound up) and the last remaining one was now bent at one end.

Thinking she ought to run to the market to buy more needles before winter came, and perhaps a few other items as well, she threw on her cloak and walked out the door. Into a snow storm! Oh no, winter had started and she hadn’t gotten around to knitting warm woolly socks for her family yet!

Somewhat panicked, our heroine went back inside her home and paced about. Her husband and sons would return from the fields soon and be very cold, when they found that she still hadn’t made them socks to keep their feet warm she would be berated and hollered at for certain.

So she took up her single, bent, needle and started to desperately mess around with her wool. After much cursing and swearing, and putting that creative, think-outside-the-box, mind to work she invented the art of crochet!

The End

(My Internet connection is still wonky at times. I’m having a harder time with some sites than others.)

I live in a socialized country yep yep.

I pay for my health care in little bits, here and there, over my life time in my taxes.

Yes, if I smoked I’d be paying $10.75 a pack of cigarettes because they are a great way to tax people, and yes, I pay a %7 tax in all goods and services.

But if I got cancer I wouldn’t get one large, or several large bills to pay. If I need an ambulance, I don’t have to worry about how I’m going to pay for it, its already paid!

Yes it means certain liberties might be less. For example, I have to wear a bike helmet (bike or motorbike etc) because if I got a head injury, I’d be a drain on the public health care system. But having to wear a bike helmet is a fair trade for being able to afford to keep a roof over my head if I get sick. It’s worth it if I get to live in a country where even the poorest people get health care, where my glasses and basic dental needs are subsidized.

Yes, we trade some Liberties for others in the Great White North.

We have Freedom of Expression, but there are anti-hate speech laws.

I could walk down the streets of Toronto with no shirt on, boobs hanging out, covered in green jell-o, with blue hair, waving a rainbow gay pride flag, smoking a Cuban cigar, singing Wiccan chants all day and be well within my rights.

BUT if I then turned to a black person and called him a “nigger” I’d be arrested and slapped with a substantial fine.

A fine that will cover the hospital bill of some random child with leukemia.

Sounds pretty terrible doesn’t it?

I live in a socialized country yep yep.

I’m not a slave to my state.

Big government is only dangerous when you’re dumb enough to let people like George W run it.

From Fire Lyte, over at Inciting a Riot:

So, Project Pagan Enough is a movement, a cause, a Harmonious Riot that includes bloggers, podcasters, pagans, non-pagans, me, you, and the whole pagan community. It is my hope that the Project Pagan Enough logo becomes a beacon of progress and change for those of us living a magical life. By putting the Project Pagan Enough icon on your podcast’s site, blog, or other website, you’re making a set of promises:

1. You are pagan enough, despite how you look, act, smell, dress, believe, or are.
2. You recognize that others are pagan enough despite their appearance, smell, manner of dress, belief, practice, or other aspect.
3. You recognize that you can have an academic debate on the finer points of belief or practice, but that it does not take away from someone else’s level of being pagan.
4. You welcome, befriend, and encourage others in the pagan community despite their appearance, dress, or other physical or superficial characteristic.
5. You promise to treat members of other faiths, despite the faith, with honest-to-goodness fairness, equality, and grace, not judging them or their faith based on the actions of fringe members of their same faith.

Like the points of the pentacle, these 5 tenets of Project Pagan Enough work together and will, I hope, launch our community into a new era of tolerance, love, and all of the qualities we like to think we have.

You may copy the Project Pagan Enough logo for your own website – below – but please make sure to link back to the original blog page to allow others to know what promise you’ve made to the community at large.

Once upon a time …

Long ago, when the Human race was still young and new to this world Humanity lived in caves and in tents made of wood and animal hides. Humanity had learned to harness the power of fire and to control it. Humanity had learned to kill the other creatures of the Earth and to use their body parts for more than just food. All the other creatures of the Earth had learned to fear Humanity, for Humanity had become a mighty hunter and had begun to range far and wide over the landscape.

Mother Earth loved all her creatures but She loved Humanity best. For through Humanity could She perceive Herself in all Her glory. She could watch the Sun rise through Human eyes; feel the wind blow against Human skin, taste meat and fruit with Human tongue. She could feel what it was to make love, experience the thrill of the hunt and She learned about the fear of death.

That the Mother loved Humanity best also caused the other creatures to fear them. Many creatures learned to run at the sight or smell of Humanity but some did not. Some creatures liked the taste of Human flesh and others would fight Humanity if they should try to hunt them.

Wolf feared Humanity. Much more than that, Wolf feared Humanities fires. The thought that Humanity dared to bring fire into their dens filled them with fright. Fire was far too dangerous to have in one’s den! Wolf learned to stay away from Humanity.

One day, however, a young she Wolf was walking through the woods and caught the scent of blood on the air. She was very hungry, for she carried pups in her womb. Her pack mates had been killed by a bad Winter and she had no one to help her hunt. She followed the delicious smell, her stomach rumbling with hunger. When she saw where the smell was coming from she shivered with fright, for the smell came from just outside a Human den. The smell of meat was so strong she could not turn away. So she hid and she watched the frightful Humans.

She watched Humanity carve hide and flesh off a kill and divide its parts amongst them. She watched with horror as they burned flesh over a large fire. Yet she stayed, for the smell of the meat made her pups move within her. She stayed out of hope. Then she watched as one Human took some bones, scraps and other things out of the Human den and walk away from it. Silently she stalked the Human, watching his every move. The Human took the scraps and placed them into a shallow pit a ways down a Human trail from the Human den. Then, he left.

The she Wolf waited as long as she dared, to see if any Human would return to the pit. She whined. Fear and hunger waged a war within her; finally the need to feed her pups won and she slunk out of the bushes and into the pit. There she found and snatched a bone that still had meat clinging to it and ran off, back into the bushes. She did this three more times through the night until at last, her belly was full.

Wolf made a den not far from the Human scrap pit and she stole food from it late at night. Then as the Moon full and high in the sky, she gave birth to five pups. Wolf ate the placentas and cleaned the pups; she fed them with good milk thanks to the food she had gotten from the Human pit. Once her pups bellies were full and they slept, she snuck out of the den and went as far from them as she dared, to mark territory in the way that Wolves do and to gaze up at the Moon. She spoke a prayer of gratitude to the Mother for her healthy pups, her safe den and the Human pit.

Wolf taught her pups how to steal from the Human pits and they also learned how to stalk Humans as the Humans stalked their prey. Wolf and her pups cleaned up the Human kills once they returned to their Human den. Wolf’s pups and their pups grew to understand Humanity more as they watched them. They grew to fear them less and less. They made their dens near the Human den.

Then another bad Winter came. The freezing cold brought sickness to the small Wolf pack and many died. Only a few pups who had just begun to be weaned survived. They cried and cried for their mother but she never came. One by one, they began to die themselves until there was only one. The last pup dared to climb out of the den in search of her mother and cried for her. She was so very, very cold she knew if she had no warm mother soon she would die. Then something came towards her and she cowered in fright. The thing picked her up and held her close. The smell of a Human scared the Wolf pup greatly, but then she realised she was warm, snuggled within the furs the Human wore. She found herself being lulled to sleep by this warmth and by the sound of the Human’s heartbeat.

The bad Winter had also not been kind to Humanity. The sickness the Winter brought had taken a child from this Human woman and she had walked the woods in mourning. When she heard the cries of the pup she had been filled with the power of the Mother and could not turn away and leave the pup to die. The Human took the pup back to her den.

The other Humans were afraid, for they feared Wolf. But the wisest Human among them saw the Mother within the woman who had brought Wolf into their den and spoke on her behalf. The woman took the pup into her part of the den and she cared for her. She fed her scraps of meat mixed with her own milk, milk she had no child to give to. She raised her as if she was her child and grew to love her.

As the pup grew into a Wolf she began to leave the Human den more and more, answering the need to be a Wolf. However something magical had happened, for in the time the pup was in the Human den, Humanity had learned about Wolf and Wolf had learned about Humanity.

This Wolf remembered the love she had been given by the Human woman and she taught this love to her own pups. Those pups were less afraid of Humanity than any other Wolves had ever been, for they knew how to love a Human and not to fear Humanity. Their pups grew even bolder and so did their love for Humanity. Humanity learned not only to respect and fear Wolf, but also how to love Wolf.

Eventually the Wolves of the Humans were free of their fear of Humanity and only full of love for them. Humanity called these Wolves “Dog”. The Dogs changed their shapes, colors and sizes to better suit Humanity and Humanity grew to love Dog as one loves a best friend. Dog’s love for Humanity grew so great that of all the Mother’s creatures, Dog’s love runs the deepest, even deeper than Humanities’ love.

With this love and with the remembered gratitude of the Wolf who was hungry and the pup who was cold, Dog has ever served Humanity. Dog freely gives up life and limb, freedom and the woods to be in the company of Humanity.

Without the service of Dog, Humanity would have struggled even harder to learn to herd animals, to protect crops and their dens. Humanity would not have a warm Dog to snuggle when the Winters are bad. Without the service, love and loyalty of Dog, Humanity would not be what it is today.

Above all this however, the greatest service Dog has ever provided Humanity is the ongoing lesson of unconditional love.

The end

I wrote this one years ago, but I still bring it out every spring when the roads open up and the construction season begins and since the Olympics are just around the corner in my hometown, and that means a lot of traffic and frustrated people. I thought I’d share it now.

My mother is a Traffic Control Person, also known as a flagger. You know, one of those people in the orange or yellow vest who stop you at construction sites.

Many people hate to see a flagger with a stop or slow sign in their hand step in front of their vehicle. After all, you don’t want to be 2 minutes late to get wherever you are going. Its such a pain in the butt to have to wait a few minutes, or to slow down when traveling through a construction zone. Many people tell my Mother that her job could be replaced by a bucket of sand, just stick the sign in that; who needs some person telling them how to drive?

The purpose of my Mothers job is very clear to her, even if you may not understand it. Her job is to protect the lives of everyone working in and driving through a construction zone.

Her job is to stop you from driving into a sinkhole, or from driving into a dump truck; its to keep you from going into head-on traffic when there are lanes closed.

Did you know that when a road is closed off, many crews will dump the load of gravel or dirt from the dump truck right in the middle of the road? Or that they will park heavy equipment in the middle of the hiway? When traffic is stopped, they know it only takes a minute or two to move it, so they leave it there, to make their jobs easier. So, what happens when you blow past that stop sign and drive right into a pile of dirt, or a giant backhoe? You just might die; you just might kill somebody else.

What happens when you speed through a construction zone? You put the lives of everyone around you at risk. People have loved ones working there.

Did you know that firemen and police officers have been killed by people speeding past a parked fire truck or police cruiser with flashing lights and everything going?

In some States and Provinces, a flagger can make pretty darn good money. Not in my Province though, my Mom makes 11 dollars an hour to step in front of moving vehicles.

Flaggers work long hours, often 12 or more.

They rarely get lunch or even potty breaks, many of these people have to pee into cans they keep in the back of their work trucks.

They stand out in all kinds of weather, including below freezing conditions, or extreme summer heat.

All day long, they get to listen to people yell at them, call them awful names and threaten them just for trying to keep those people safe.

My Moms job is to keep you safe and alive, but many people call her terrible names for this. They flip her the bird, they throw objects, like beer bottles, at her from their cars. There has even been a few times where angry men have gotten out of their cars, intent on attacking my mother because they didn’t want to wait any longer. My Mom is 50+ years old, she is 5 feet 3 inches and weighs 120 pounds soaking wet, thank the Gods for the guys on the work crews who have saved her from attack every time!

I don’t care if they’re making 25 dollars an hour; these people risk their lives everyday to make sure you get home safely and to make sure the guys working the construction zone get home too. There is not enough money in the world to justify losing my Mom to a drunk driver or speeding asshole.

I know, I know. Obviously these people are horrid, uneducated blue collar slobs who can‘t even get a real job. They MUST be drunks or something to wind up working in construction … Somebody has to do that job, would you prefer a job lottery? Maybe you’d be cleaning my toilets next week.

A few years ago I was especially relieved that my Mom had taken a few days off.

In March 2006, at about 11:40 pm, a speeding Camero came roaring through a construction site on the hiway in Kelowna.

The driver swerved around another vehicle, clipping marker pylons before swinging back and ploughing into a parked vehicle and the flagger.

The flagger was standing beside her work truck when he hit her.

She was squished between the two vehicles before being thrown across the hiway.

The car then slammed into a dump truck and a backhoe working on the crossing of Highway 97 and Highway 33.

The flag person was pronounced dead at the scene.

The flagger was a friend and co-worker of my Moms. She was 43 years old and her name was Theresa. She was a single mother of a teenage daughter, who now has no family at all. Imagine waking up to hear the news that some drunk driver killed your Mom.

Please, I beg you. SLOW DOWN, OBEY THE SIGNS, WAIT PATIENTLY, DON’T ROAD RAGE, DON’T DRINK AND DRIVE, TURN THE CELL PHONE OFF IN THE CAR

And don’t kill my Mom too.

Please folks, if you are driving around Vancouver during the Olympics be a good driver and be kind to the people whose job it is to get you there safe. Leave really early so you won’t be late, and if you are running late, then be late. Please don’t risk other people’s lives and yours as well to make it to an event (or even work) on time.

Thanks, Juniper