Posted on November 8, 2021 under Monday Morning Musings with no comments yet

Peter sand boarding on the Imperial Sand Dunes

(Pete MacDonald photo)

 

“Water, water, everywhere,

And all the boards did shrink,

Water, water everywhere,

Nor any drop to drink.”

The Rime of The Ancient Mariner – Samuel Taylor Coleridge

I am not a mariner… but I am ancient.

So many things in life we take for granted. Compared to many in the world, we are a pretty spoiled lot. We expect clean air. We expect employment and suitable housing. We expect things to run on time. We expect food to be delivered to our grocery stores without interruption. We expect a large bag of potato chips to be half filled with air.

In case you haven’t noticed, the most precious commodity is water. Clean water. Affordable water. Predictable water. Most of us rarely give it a thought when we turn on our taps. But I can tell you, that in many parts of the world water is revered.

Five years ago, at this time, I was living in India. (Oops. Another 5 years just went speeding past me). In many of the rural villages I visited, water was always something important for households and farms. One of the NGO that I worked with, provided the skills and equipment for communities to build water infrastructure. Many of you know, that during my time in Kanyakumari, at the very southern tip of India, I lived adjacent to a small community of people afflicted with leprosy. Water was a constant source of concern, conflict and aggravation for people already dealing with isolation and a host of other problems. There were ten water taps scattered throughout the community and people had to line up every day of their lives to get water for bathing, cooking and drinking. Through the generosity of people back in Canada, most notably the Wishing Well Society of St.Andrew’s (Antigonish County), Nova Scotia, we were able to provide new taps for every household bringing water to their doorsteps. The impact was immediate.

Several years ago, I travelled through the United States with my son, Peter. We were both mightily impressed with the state of California. It is massive and has every landscape that one might imagine. I can still see Pete snowboarding down the Imperial Sand Dunes. The dunes are located in the southeastern corner of the state. The dune system extends for more than 40 miles in a band averaging 5 miles wide. The dunes often reach a height of 300 feet above the desert. One other thing that became obvious as we wended our way northward was the concern about water management. Farmers were screaming for more water in the middle of a drought. Off and on, the state of California has experienced drought conditions for the past 20 years.

Canada is blessed with an abundance of water. Some estimates say that we have upwards of 20% of the world’s surface freshwater. With the issues in California and many other states, it is not inconceivable that there will be battles over water between the two countries in the years ahead.

So, you’re wondering where I am going with this story. This is a very long lead in but today, as is the case many days, I have so little to say and so much space to fill.

All of the homes and businesses in our village receive their water by tanker truck. Because of the permafrost and rocky landscape, water cannot be delivered by underground pipes. The folks who drive the trucks are hard working and reliable. Everyone in the village is conscious of their water consumption. In the winter after a storm, we are all warned to conserve water because every home has to be plowed out for the trucks to get access to water outlets. The same goes for sewage trucks, and oil trucks.

Last weekend, my water supply was getting very low. I am one of the lucky ones. From the comfort of my home, I can go into the furnace room where the water tanks are located and see exactly the status of my water. Most homes in the village have a separate room containing the furnace, water and sewage tanks accessible only from the outside. The only way to know if you are running out of water is when you see a red light in your house that goes on when you have no water.

I hadn’t received water for several days and I could see that my water supply was very low, and it was the weekend. Maybe the guys driving the water truck have seen me walking through the village wearing  blue jeans all the time and wondered if I ever did laundry or bathed for that matter! Knowing this, I was conserving water at every turn. I didn’t shower for a few days, and I only flushed the toilet when absolutely necessary. You cottage owners understand that equation!

Come Saturday, I had a conundrum on my hands. Should I shower? Do a load of laundry? Do the dishes? Or flush the toilet?  For sage advice (and for a bit of fun) I reached out to my colleagues on Messenger. You can well imagine the array of comments that I received. In summary, my friends felt that all matters could be resolved if I just stepped outside. With Wakeham Bay a few steps away, I could bath, pee, do my dishes and even wash my clothes. Don’t tell me that you haven’t peed in the ocean!

“The fair breeze flew, the white foam flew,

The furrow followed free;

We were the first, that ever burst,

Into that silent sea.”

It’s -10 today.

There will be no bursting into that silent sea!

Have a great week.

P.S. I always have drinking water compliments of a lovely water cooler in my house. I go to the water plant to refill the water jugs.

Cooler heads prevail

 

Posted on November 1, 2021 under Monday Morning Musings with no comments yet

Stone faced

 

The week that was… or wasn’t.

Every week I pray for normalcy. Every week my prayers go unanswered. I guess I’m a sorry excuse as a prayerful person.

Just for fun, I decided that I would look up the meaning of normal. “Conforming to a standard; usual, typical, or expected.” Is it just me or has the term normal become extinct? When people start taking ivermectin to treat Covid-19, all bets are off. In case pandemic fatigue has gotten the best of you and you stopped reading about cures several month ago, some people are ingesting a medication intended for livestock to treat or prevent Covid. The FDA in the U.S. and several other health agencies suggest that people who do this are barking up the wrong tree. In some Latin American countries (according to a BBC radio documentary), physicians (!) are giving people intravenous injections of bleach to ward off the virus. I will come clean. I believe in vaccines.

I can honestly say that there hasn’t been a single week during my time in the north that I could consider a normal week. Of course, my timing wasn’t the best. I arrived here a few months before Covid became a household word.

Last week began with the school closed on Monday because of 2 Covid cases in the village the previous week. The next three days were scheduled Professional Development days. The school board decided to open the school back up on Friday. Children and staff arrived at school, donned in Halloween costumes. By 11:30, everyone was sent home… again. Someone in the village had tested positive for Covid. When school will reopen is anyone’s guess. Cases of Covid in this region of Quebec (Nunavik) are rising at an alarming rate.

Those of you who have been following my posts lately know that I have been on a mission. At first, I thought it was “Mission Impossible” but slowly but surely, I have been reorganizing several rooms in the school that needed a major tidy up. I’m being charitable with my choice of words. I have compared “Len’s Labours” to those of Hercules.

This week, I tackled the former computer lab. When I first stepped inside this room, it more resembled a computer labyrinth, “a complicated irregular network of passages or paths in which it is difficult to find one’s way; a maze.” This room is very close to the entrance to the school on the elementary side. I asked the ever-patient maintenance guys to completely empty the contents of the room out into the hallway near the entrance to the school. Yes. There were indeed many old computers and computer parts but there was a lot more. The most interesting item was a rather large, and quite magnificent, Inuit sculpture. Two summers ago, construction workers moved the sculpture into the computer lab while they were installing a new floor in the lobby. It never got moved back.

Our high school math teacher is a pretty amazing guy. He is a top- notch educator. He has been at the school for 12 years. He cares about the students and the school. He is also our tech guy. When something goes wrong in the school, Ben is usually the problem solver. Now those of you who know me well understand that technology is not my friend. Oh yes, when it works well, it is my best friend but at the slightest hint of a problem, it becomes my mortal enemy. I wrote about my love/hate affair with computers a few years ago: https://www.week45.com/ctrl-alt-del/ Ben agreed to help me with this truly Herculean task of trying to determine which computers worked and which did not. We set up a workstation in the hallway and began the onerous task of assembling computers and monitors. It took us two full days. Len’s Labours #5 is done!

Some people go all out for Halloween. I am talking specifically here about adults. God bless them. Many of our younger teachers arrived last Friday wearing amazing costumes. They had obviously given a great deal of thought about their costumes. I am not a Halloween grinch, but I was too tired from my most recent labours to put any thought into a costume. Thankfully I wasn’t the only person who arrived at school sans costume.

I told teachers and students that I dressed up as I normally do… as an old man!

Have a great week and welcome to November.

 

Work in progress                                                                                                                                                         The finished product

Posted on October 25, 2021 under Monday Morning Musings with no comments yet

“Songs in the key of life” (SW)

 

“Well, I got a brand new pair of roller skates,

You got a brand new key.”

Brand New Key – Melanie

The four keys to a happy and fruitful life, according to my mom are as follows:

1. Say please and thank you.
2. Show up on time.
3. Finish what you start.
4. Do what you say you are going to do.

I would like to add a fifth: Keep track of your keys.

There are no easy jobs in any school and the one in which I work is no different.

When I decided to return to the north for one more year, I wasn’t totally delusional. I had indicated to my principal last spring, that I didn’t want a full-time teaching position. The offer I received this summer was for a 50/50 position which would include administrative duties along with some classroom help. On the surface, it seemed like just about the perfect job. I could maintain contact with the students and help out in the office without the pressures of a classroom teacher. No more standing out in the playground at -30 holding the end of a skipping rope!

Upon my arrival, I started to work in the office. With no full-time secretary for well over a year, I was asked to take on this role. You school secretaries know how busy things are at the main office. It is relentless. Along with my regular duties, I was asked to organize the order books. Every spring, teachers and administration order supplies for the following school year. This includes everything from paper to office supplies, furniture, janitorial and maintenance supplies and the like. Work orders are sent in and when parcels arrive in the office, everything in the boxes needs to be checked, itemized and put in its rightful place. Then the packing slips need to be matched up to the order form to ensure that everything arrived. Ninety-nine percent of the time, orders are incomplete. The packing slips are kept in big binders. I decided that the binders needed to be better organized. It was a big job but satisfying. Anyone could come to the office and check the order books and see in an instant, the status of their order. This was the first of Len’s Labours, as I will call them.

I was then asked to reorganize every student file. I won’t bore you with the details, but this took the better part of a month and a half. Put a check mark by Len’s Labours #2.

Over the past 18 months, like every other school in Canada, we have been receiving shipments of Covid supplies. Who ever thought that a safe and secure Covid room would become the mainstay in a school? Our Covid material happened to get stored in a number of closets, so my next task was to consolidate and have everything in one spot that didn’t require a step ladder to get to. (ed. note. I often use a preposition at the end of a sentence. Tut. Tut. After exhaustive research (thanks MG!), I discovered that there is absolutely nothing wrong with this practice.)

Len’s Labour #3 ratcheted up the degree of difficulty. I wasn’t a gymnast. Len in tights? (cue Men in Tights from Robin Hood) https://youtu.be/G59JnM4JKNQ. Nor was I a figure skater so you’re probably wondering what I could possibly know about “degree of difficulty”. I was asked to tackle one of the resource rooms. When I opened the door to this closet, I realized quickly the meaning of degree of difficulty. I wrote about this task last week.

https://www.week45.com/category/monday-musings/

Last week, the principal gave me a task that can only be described as Herculean. The problem is that, unlike the real Hercules, I am not a demigod, nor do I have superhuman strength. However, I do possess a streak of determination (stubbornness) derived from my Irish/Scottish ancestry.

The school and the teachers’ apartments have doors. Doors have locks. Locks need keys. Now, over a period of years (decades), door locks are changed, teachers come and go and what results is a collection of keys. A very large collection, all stuffed into supersized zip lock bags. From time to time, keys go missing and finding a replacement key becomes, well, problematic. I am being kind here. I am in mixed company. On more than one occasion, I have witnessed someone on staff going through literally hundreds of keys, weeping at the seemingly impossible task. Last week, the principal, dropped all of these keys on my desk and asked me to sort them. I thought she was joking. She wasn’t smiling.

I smiled and thought to myself:” She’s trying to break me”, and just like Hercules and his 12 labours, I just added this to Len’s Labours.

Where to begin? I’ll let you mull this over for a few seconds. I decided that this needed decisive action, so I grabbed a coffee and ignored the 8,431 keys in front of me for 24 hours. Sounds a bit like procrastination, don’t you think?! No, you sickos, I didn’t count them. Trust me, there were hundreds and hundreds, some of them on key chains, some on lanyards, and many just loose.

When I was in India (“Oh god, Len, don’t go wandering off topic”), I was driving along a road when I encountered two elephants. I wondered to myself, after staring at these massive beasts, how one would go about eating an entire elephant. It’s quite easy actually – one small bite at a time.

With this in mind, I decided to break down the task into bite sized pieces. I removed the keychains and lanyards and put the whole kit and kaboodle in a heap… and silently wept. I started by sorting the keys by shape, size and model. I ended it with about 15 different piles of keys. (This might be the most boring piece that I have ever written but with school closed because of Covid, I have all this time and nothing better to do).

As all you locksmiths know, certain shape keys fit into certain keyholes. I grabbed the first pile which resembled the school’s master key. I placed them in a plastic bowl and then wandered the school looking for every doorknob that would accept this style of key. I should note at this key point in the story that, in addition to school keys, there were bags of keys for the 20 or so teachers’ apartments which also had to be checked. I must confess that this was a stern test of sobriety. Um, in many cases the number of the teacher apartments weren’t on the keys. Can you say, “trial and error”?

The dividends were almost immediate. I was getting near the end and there was still a small pile (maybe 30 keys) sitting on my desk. At the end of the day on Thursday, moments before the shutdown of the school, due to Covid, a slightly panicked teacher came to see me. She had locked her keys inside her classroom. Not only did her key ring have her classroom key but also her 4-wheeler key, house key, post office key etc. Ironically, her classroom had a unique lock. There wasn’t another like it in the school. Go figure. I grabbed the bowl with the remaining keys and went to the second floor. The very last key that I tried worked!

I was also able to get rid of a hundred or more keys that were obsolete.

I am anxiously awaiting my next labour. If it involves polar bears, I will place a call to the Greek gods.

At least I haven’t been asked to clean the stables of King Augeas. There aren’t any cows in Kangiqsujuaq!

Have a great week.

P.S. As reported on my FB page last Friday, we have a case of Covid in the village. I will be extra vigilant to be sure, but I am not too concerned. After all the vaccines I have received over the years including a plethora for India, flu shots, shingles, Covid and most recently a pneumonia shot, I reckon I’m nearly radioactive. No self-respecting Coronavirus would dare come near me!

P.P.S. I am sooooo kicking my ass for not taking a picture of the entire pile of keys but, then again, I didn’t think I would be writing a 1400 word piece about keys!