Get your own
 diary at DiaryLand.com! contact me older entries newest entry

12:15 - 08/13/2009
Rambles
I had a quality assurance assignment - something I have been quite busy with the past week - two communities away from me yesterday. My youngest and I have been walking to anything we need to get to lately, because we are down to our last few bus tickets; good exercise and good for reducing anxiety. Tires one out so there is no energy left to spend on worrying, you see.

My youngest arrived home on the Greyhound bus last Thursday. His stories of his time in Ohio prompted me to take A+'s camera with me yesterday, so that I could capture photos of his childhood haunts in order to create a "His story" to post on my Facebook page for his new wife and daughter - ready made grandchild, yay! I had borrowed A+'s camera for last weekend so as to take photos of my siblings at the first family picnic of the year. I planned to post those for my son's new family, as well as include them in the on-line family tree that I have been working on a lot the past couple of months. "His" and "Her" Stories posted there too. Even the photos of my youngest's new family's churchyard headstones might have a place in that storytelling.

Meeting A+'s sister and nephew, when they visited from our left coast, as well as the reconnection with my sibs on the weekend reminded me too, how important it is to use all means to keep in contact and communicate even when separated by distance or life circumstances. I was really touched this weekend when my brother offered to drive me to the next family picnic, for example, just so we could spend some time together. He is so busy with his job otherwise, that we only really see each other very briefly once or twice a year. His employment is concerned with computers. He hates using them when he is not working. I am still somewhat phobic about using the telephone - his preferred form of communication - because of the countless hours I spent on it both while volunteering, as well as in my work administering elections. Photos are a natural compromise, I guess.

Anyway, plugged in the i-pod loaded with my walking music. Succeeded, mostly, in not dancing on the street - at least not on the really busy ones. Odd synchronicities as I snapped away as I walked. For example, taking photos of the Catholic (Separate School) High School as a selection from Nusrat Fatah Ali Khan, the Sufi qawwal, played. I started giggling a bit, but was facing away from any observers, so that was alright. As I walked and snapped, I was thinking of the commentary that I should include with my photo essay. Should I add clips of songs for colour? Either those that were playing on the ipod as I snapped away, or those on the vintage '30's radio my Dad rebuilt and gave me for Christmas, or that were playing in my head and on youtube as I worked with the photos later on that day. Either way, I think I'll have to write the whole thing once for my own consumption, then edit mercilessly.

You see, a lot of my volunteer efforts were anchored in trying to manifest the physical buildings and services that eventually were brought in to these communities. My youngest attended his first committee meeting, cradled in my arms, when he was only three weeks old. Those meetings would be a staple of his childhood experiences until he started attending school. He met people from all walks of life and visited places that many adults would have given a great deal to have access to. Not that he cared, as long as there were his diaper bags of toys/books/crayons as well as some of the other volunteer mom's children to play with. Even my work in such areas as elections have their origins here in this community. I noticed that my thoughts had some pretty powerful political and ethics-driven overtones. Even maybe, the occasional rant like the ones in my last post to you, dear diary. Although the social/political issues were the reasons I got involved in those projects, I don't think that a story book meant for a child's consumption would be the appropriate place to express them, eh? Especially since I don't really know her family at all. The "storybook" might also arouse some angst among my Facebook friends as well. Many of them were part of the teams of citizens who worked together to improve the quality of life for our families and neighbours. Memories.... I really miss those times. A+ and I watched the movies "Last Holiday" and "Joe vs the Volcano" in the past few weeks. Maybe that's what is triggering that nostalgia. What would I really choose to do, if I only had a short time left this lifetime.


"Do what you can, with what you have, where you are." - Theodore Roosevelt

On the other hand, I think I can talk about how much pleasure it gives me to see people using the park that I spearheaded the fund-raising for, so long ago. My guys contributed a lot to that effort both in direct assistance, as well as in allowing me to invest so much time and attention to it when they could have rightfully demanded it for themselves. I can also explain, in pictures, how it is that my youngest probably had acquired enough expertise to administer an election event himself before he was out of his teens, because of the countless hours he spent helping me with the number crunching and using the graphics programs to create the visual representations of those numerical analyses. Hmmmm.

I can explain, photographically, about the transit/mobility issues our community had to address by including photos of our train station and talking about my youngest's arrival home last week. You see, I arranged to meet my oldest son downtown first, so that I could take his two children - my oldest grandbabies - with me to meet my youngest. The plan was that they would come home with us and remain overnight, while their Dad continued on to work. A medical emergency on one of the trains entering downtown before my chariot arrived, meant that my son, the grandbabies, and I played musical trains through the length of downtown rather than being able to meet at the station we had originally agreed upon. My youngest's bus was nearly an hour late, so I can next tell stories about the activity in the Greyhound bus depot, as well as my youngest's stories about his 2+ day journey from Ohio to home through including his photos.

I might also talk about the scenes I witness regularly while on transit - the good, the bad and the ugly, as well. The good? Like the time one gentleman and his wife noticed me running to catch a bus as it arrived at my stop, while I was still half a block away. Drivers don't always wait, you see. He looked at me, reached into his pocket and deliberately scattered some coins on the ground, then slowly bent to pick them up while keeping an eye on the driver of the bus. His wife entered the bus leisurely and then spent some time digging around in her purse, before producing her fare for the driver. I arrived just as both of them had completed their acts of kindness for a total stranger. On another bus, one of the local stand-up comedians entertaining one grumpy young thing travelling with her Mom. By the time we arrived at the station, they were exchanging Knock knock jokes with great enthusiasm. The bad? The angry young man shouting as he exited one bus, because he had boarded for the wrong bus route. Grabbed a shopping cart and threw it toward a group of travellers waiting to board. Everyone cowering away, as he cursed and howled with a rage that could be heard, even after another passenger and I walked away together and were half a block away. The ugly? Three successive waves of transit police moving through our car when the grandbabies, my youngest son and I were travelling back home last Thursday. The first wave were checking "everyone's" validated fares - except they were only checking those of males of a certain age and race. Didn't even glance at ours. The first group of police seemed to be using walkie talkies to pin-point certain of the people they checked for the next two waves of enforcement officers moving through the cars. It was obvious they were looking for one person - or one group - in particular. Made me a little tense, as I was wondering how to protect my grandchildren if some sort of confrontation arose on our car as a result.

Between the music on my ipod and the photography sessions - not as well done as when A+ is with me coaching - the time I spent walking yesterday passed very quickly. There were even wolf whistles directed at me, which made me look around to see what pretty young things were walking nearby. None at all. The city and construction workers just do that out of habit, I think, but the cowboy-hatted fellow in the red pickup truck actually leaned out his window and said he only stopped for the pretty girls - like me. Must need glasses. If I had been wearing the handkerchief dress I found at the back of my closet, while still sorting out the clothes to give away because they are too big for me, then I could maybe understand the attention. It is so low cut that I can't wear a bra under it. A+ says the Hollywood stars use tape in such instances to hold up their bosoms, but mine are way too ample for that to be an effective solution. I've mentioned before how much I hate "jiggling" as I walk. Although I did practice a few belly dance shimmies as I was walking home through the park through the trees where no one would see. As it was though, yesterday I was wearing black jeans and a black denim cowboy shirt, purple teddy peeking out a bit, and moccasins with my hair tied back in a tight ponytail. My "costume" when assignments are in a neighbourhood where I am often dealing with people from cultures where modest dress is an imperative and where high end/office fashion would seem very out of place - pretentious. I arrived home about 4 hours after I began my adventure. Quite honestly, I would be very happy with my life the way it is right at the moment, if only I could make enough to pay my bills and buy the necessities of life - like food. Too bad some of the wolf whistlers didn't offer me a good job instead of, ummm, appreciation, much as it was a morale booster in a weird sort of way.

On the home front, when we arrived home from meeting my youngest son last Thursday, it was to witness the landlord of the home west of us yelling at the young woman who seems to be the main tenant there. Later that night, around 2 in the am, I heard something going on around the gate leading into my backyard. Woke up the next day to find that the lock had been broken off that gate. There was also a large garden-size bag's worth of garbage left for me to pick up left by whoever was trying to break in. Maybe it was the last hurrah for the tenant's party friends. Since then, all has been "Quiet on the Western Front". The cats are very happy both with the return of "their boy" and the squirrels and birds who had fled due to the partiers. Anyway, guess I should go attend to my "His story" project now, so that my new granddaughter isn't graduating college by the time I get it finished.

previous - next

about me - read my profile! read other Diar
yLand diaries! recommend my diary to a friend! Get
 your own fun + free diary at DiaryLand.com!

web stats