DECEMBER BIRTHDAYS

           A couple of columns ago I had mentioned that I was fast approaching the last birthday I will reach in my 50’s. As a matter of fact, I started writing this column on December the 12^th and it’s my birthday. 59 years-old. Yikes! Well, at least it’s not 60!

            I was born at five minutes past midnight; a fact that has bothered my sister Judy for…I don’t know… some 59 years, I guess. You see, she was born on December 11^th about a decade before me and I was going to be her actual birthday present. I was going to be born on her birthday and I missed it by five minutes! Well, technically, I didn’t have anything to do with it. It wasn’t my call, I don’t think. I didn’t even hear about it until I was much older.

            Being born two weeks before Christmas has no advantages whatsoever to speak of. That’s the way I see it and my sister Judy concurs. It’s pretty tough to get a really great birthday present when the parents are hard-pressed to supply enough Christmas gifts for their nine children let alone throw in a couple of birthday presents in there to boot. I can’t imagine what it’s like for the people born on the 25^th, though. That’s a tough one. But still.

            And you can forget about a birthday party altogether as there is no way you are going to gather a bunch of kids in the house when we’re only two weeks away from Christmas. What with all of the cleaning and baking and wrapping and shopping who has time to organize, conduct and clean up after a bunch of wild boys? Forget it!

            Mom’s solution was to combine my birthday party around the time when my older brother Gordon celebrates his very timely May 1^st birthday. Five months after mine. You know, have them together. Nobody’d think it’s just Gordie’s party. Why would they think that?

Out of the whole year, May 1^st has got to be one of the most ideal times for a birthday party. Everything can be held outside, nobody should get sunburnt like they can at those July birthday parties, most of ‘em probably won’t even use the bathroom in the house, there’s very little chance of them breaking anything in there, either, and their noise will mostly disappear into the air, saving on the headache medication.

But it was okay in the end anyway. Gord was only a year older than I was and his friends were my friends and my friends were his. We all hung out and did the same goofy things we always did together. We ended up having a great time, as usual, with very little household upheaval. Funny, too, though, for all my talk about presents and gift receiving I can’t remember any specific gift at all. All the fun must have blocked it out.

Well, that was my pity party. Thanks for coming. Now it’s time to get ready for the real party. Enough whining. 59 years-old and counting. And I hope for a while, yet.

 

“Age is a case of mind over matter. If you don’t mind, it don’t matter.”-Satchel Paige (1906-1982).

THE 300TH

           Let the bells ring out and the banners fly…it’s hear, it’s hear! Number 300 is here, that is. That’s right folks, you are now reading the 300^th submission of the “In My Humble Opinion” weekly column. I know! Already? For a part-time-cover-the-maternity-leave-temporary-position I seem to have been at this for a long time. How long does it take to have that baby anyway? Hmmmmm? I will have been doing this column for six years as of February 7th of 2016.

            Obviously, the previous page four Columnist, Darcie Khounnoraj, decided on a different career path as she did not return to The Citizen after her maternity leave and you’ve been stuck with me ever since.

            So what have you learned, Dear Reader, after all of this time together? One thing I’m sure that you have learned is that I can procrastinate with the best of them, hence 300 submissions but not 300 original columns, as I have submitted some of the columns more than once, due, in part, to those finely honed skills of putting things off.  And, yes, I know, I know, I should be working on that and I will, I will…some…day.

            Another thing you may have noted, over our time together, is that I like sports. Many sports, in fact, and I write about them often. There might be more than a few sports-themed columns in those 300+/- page-four articles.

            If you hadn’t noticed, over these many years, I am also very fond of Daylight Savings Time. Do you remember what Daylight Savings Time is folks? We’ve never had it around here but I’ve heard of other places that do it. If you didn’t know, it’s the twice-yearly altering of the clocks that is done in every other jurisdiction of our country, save Saskatchewan, because Saskatchewanians prefer our daylight early, early, early in the day.

            Do you know what else I like? That’s right, Dear Reader, I really, really like sarcasm. Sarcasm is so very useful as a writing tool, don’t you think? Sometimes you can even get a laugh without really trying. Ahhhh, such a wonderful thing.

            There are other real joys to being a writer from Saskatchewan, besides the fact that we don’t have to confuse ourselves with all that clock altering and everything, and that is this province provides us with a convenient subject that one can never say enough about. And that is the weather. It is so varied and different and changes hourly not just seasonally or yearly giving one reams of material.

            Frankly, subjects are rarely hard to find with so much weird happening in the world all of the time. We are so inundated with information that it would appear difficult not to find something to write about. Yet, it happens.

            So, now what? 300 down 300 to go? I’m not sure about that but we’ll see. I’ve kind of gotten used to this temporary permanent position, though.

 

“Writing is an exploration. You start from nothing and learn as you go.”-American writer E.L. Doctorow (1931-2015).

DECEMBER IS HERE!

            2015’s version of Agribition, the 103^rd Grey Cup Game and Movember are once again filed away into the memory banks so that must mean that November is over and December is upon us already. That’s another year almost gone. How’d that happen so fast?

            December will also fly by, I’m expecting, as it is the busiest, as well as, the most wonderful time of the year. There are a number of significant events and activities crammed into these next 31 days. Christmas music concerts, local Dinner Theatre performances, school productions, staff parties, decorating, shopping, baking, hangover recuperations…yikes! I’m getting exhausted thinking about it.

            Speaking of hangover recuperating, it turns out that I will be celebrating my last birthday “in my 50’s” this month. More yikes! And more, “how’d that happen so fast?!” questioning as well. Then again, at the very least, I will be celebrating another birthday which is an event, sad to say, that many people will be unable to do.

            Besides my birthday, there’s another birth event that many of us celebrate on the 25^th of this month. You know who I’m talking about? Yes, Christmas is coming fast and if you didn’t know that there are less than three weeks of shopping left you’d better get at it. That is, of course, unless you’re one of those keeners who have all of their shopping done and hidden away somewhere. I’m so happy for you.

            Seeing as how I mentioned my birthday ahead of Jesus’ it may be of note that December’s birth flower is the narcissus. Hmmmm…that’s an interesting tidbit of information. Also sharing December birthdates are the likes of Woody Allen, Ozzy Osborne, George Armstrong Custer, Keifer Sutherland, Frank Sinatra, (same day as me), and our Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, (same day as Jesus), to name but a few.

            There are many other notable event anniversaries in the month of December. It was on December 1^st, 1955 in Montgomery, Alabama when Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on a municipal bus to a white man marking the beginning of the modern American Civil Rights Movement.

            On December 2^nd, 1804 Napoleon Bonaparte was crowned Emperor of France by Pope Pius VII in Paris, then on December 2^nd, 1852 The Second Empire was proclaimed in France with Napoleon III as Emperor.

            On December 5^th, 1492 Christopher Columbus discovered Haiti. Of course, there was the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii on December 7^th, 1941. On December 15^th, 1964 Canada adopted its new red and white flag. The list goes on and on.

            December really is the most wonderful time of the year. To me it is, anyway. I’m not saying I don’t mind the milder El Nino induced temperatures that we have been getting this last little while but I think we could use a little snow around here. At least for Christmas. Nothing stupid or anything but a few inches wouldn’t hurt the scenery would it? Pretty hard to sleigh ride in the gravel too, I’d think.

            I hope you have a great December. Enjoy the preparations and the festivities. Take the time to soak it all up. It only comes around once a year and you know how fast that goes by, don’t you?

            “How did it get so late so soon? It’s night before it’s afternoon. December is her before it’s June. My goodness how the time has flewn. How did it get so late so soon?”-Dr. Seuss.

I JUST WANTED TO BUY YOUR PRODUCT

           A few weeks ago I was sitting in my favourite chair with my laptop, appropriately enough, in my lap and the Blue Jays' Playoff Game on the big screen, snacks and beverages lined up around me, with my smart phone in my hand to check on the TV announcers’ facts, you know, like all modern sports fanatics do, when an ad caught my eye between innings. Usually I don’t see many ads as I am quite deadly with the remote control flipping through the other channels during the commercial breaks and all but this time I didn’t have a hand free for the remote so I had to watch the whole ad. It was an ad for Crave TV. Hmmm... this looks interesting, I thought.

            So, while I'm watching the game I start Googling Crave TV, which is a Canadian pay television video on demand service, and investigating how we could sign up for the service because it’s looking pretty good. During the investigation I find out that you have to be either a Bell Satellite TV customer or subscribe to SaskTel Max Cable to be able to receive the service in Saskatchewan. By the way, CraveTV is owned by Bell Canada. We don’t have cable and Bell Canada isn’t our satellite provider.

            There are a lot of spare minutes during the watching of a nine-inning baseball game what with the batters taking forrrevverrrr between strikes and the numerous pitching changes and everything so without the risk of missing too much of the ball game I thought I’d give old Bell Canada a call just to see what they have to offer for satellite services and further check out this CraveTV.

            By the time I went through the pushbutton phone directions I finally got through to a human voice which seemed to belong to a fourteen year-old boy. Anyway, he announces that it’s my lucky day and he can provide this, that and the other thing for half of what we’re paying for our current services with CraveTV thrown in to boot. Installed! Excellent! I like it! Sign me up!

            He walks me through all of the information which included my name and physical home address, something fairly important to the delivery of their services, mind you, and he tells me we’d be receiving a confirmation email and the technicians would be out in about ten days to install the system. Sounds great. Back to the ballgame I go.

            I watched the rest of that game and another one, too, forgetting about the confirmation email until the following day. I opened it up and noticed that the Bell-boy/sales rep had mistakenly recorded my name and physical address wrong. They had me as a Mr. Terry Hubbard and our house street address where the Kipling Post Office currently sits. Terry is as good a name as any but it isn’t mine and we don’t live at 600 1^st St. Again, information fairly important to the delivery of their services.

            I had to call back in to Bell to make the changes and after another forty minutes on the phone I get reassured that everything is a go and they corrected the name and address. A couple of days later I receive another phone call from Bell stating that the installation service is only provided in Ontario and Quebec. Really? Okay then. Whatever.

            However, upon reflection, I wasn't quite ready to give up just yet so I phoned a local Bell Store and the rep there assured me that Bell Canada does provide the installation service in Saskatchewan so she gave me a different phone number to call and I did that and after another forty-five minutes of runaround the rep on the phone assures me that we'll be getting our new Bell Canada satellite TV system as first arranged. Sounds good.

            The final straw in the whole Bell Canada fiasco came to an end a couple of days later when the last spokesperson that I would be talking to from Bell called to tell me that they don't even know what a Saskatchewan IS let alone find it to put in a TV system at 600 1st St in Kipling...THAT'S NOT MY ADDR....nevermind. I give up.

            All I ever wanted to do was buy Bell Canada's product. It should have been easy. It wasn't. Now, all I'm left to do is chalk it up as another one of life's curveballs thrown my way, forget about the wasted time and continue on with life sans Bell Canada Television.

 

"The best customer service is if the customer doesn't need to call you, doesn't need to talk to you. It just works."-Jeff Bezos (1964-).

PRETTY SAFE HERE, I THINK

            As if the residents of the province of Saskatchewan didn’t have reason enough to love our rectangular shaped province the outbreak of more terrorist attacks in Paris, France, on Friday November the 13^th may have solidified that love. Well, maybe you don’t “love” the province but I would dare say that you would be hard-pressed to find a safer place on the planet to live.

One could Google exactly where the safest place on Earth would be but because there seem to be so few people, including our own fellow Canadian citizens, who know where Sask-at-chee-wan is it’s unlikely that the province of Saskatchewan  would be in the top ten, or even on the radar for that matter. What’s more unlikely is a terrorist strike here…but, then again, you never know, do you? Anonymity can be a good thing sometimes, though, don’t you think?

            I’m certain that if one were to spend hours upon hours upon hours of reading and researching and reading some more and researching and interviewing and digesting the motives and actions of some fanatical zealots who seem to have morphed from Al Qaeda to ISIS but still continue their murderous terrorist actions one could ascertain how these types of people believe they are performing “religious acts”. Hmmm… “religious acts?” It’s a head scratcher to me, I’ll tell you.

            Then again, if you were to read one of the definitions of “religion” in the English Oxford dictionary, (“The freedom to manifest religion or belief in worship, observance, practice and teaching encompassing a broad range of acts.”), you might stretch the argument to include suicide bombings and innocent civilian murders and online decapitations etc as religious events but, as mentioned, it’s more than a bit of a stretch. At least to this humble scribe it is.

            A 700 word, or thereabouts, essay on page four of a weekly newspaper can hardly do justice to the deep theological discussions that would be required to fully digest the advantages and disadvantages of organized religion, so I will not attempt it here. Suffice to say, though, that it is not only the followers of the Quran who have killed for religious reasons. Please do not misinterpret the above statement as condoning murderous or violent actions for religions’ sake. I do not. Ever.

            Saskatchewan can be a cold, hard place to live in for many weeks of the year and I don’t think I’m alone when sometimes I wonder why our forefathers decided that this was the place to stop and put down their roots, it must have been a nice June or September or something, but the one common theme amongst the pioneers of the prairies was that they were looking for a better place to live and by all accounts, I think they found it.

            “There is nothing more important than a good, safe, secure home,”- Rosalynn Carter (1927-).

REMEMBRANCE DAY POST

            I have stated this before, but it’s not like you haven’t read something in these articles that I’ve said before anyway, so I’m going to tell you again that sometimes writing a weekly column in a weekly paper throws the timing off a bit so there are times when I cannot exactly sync my column themes to calendar events, if you know what I mean?

            November is chock full of events and two of those events are very near and dear to my heart and they occur very close together in the month and have oftentimes overlapped. One event is the Dale Blackstock Memorial Recreational Hockey Tournament and the other one is Remembrance Day.

            This year, 2015, the Blackstock Tournament came before Remembrance Day so that was the theme for my column right before the weekend of the 7^th and 8^th. Next week Remembrance Day will fall on a Wednesday so I have to theme this column when it will all be after the fact. Then again, I cannot in good Canadian well-raised conscience not talk about such an important day for our country even though it will have already passed by the time you open up this edition of The Citizen.

            Every year Canadians come together on November 11th to mark the end of World War I and in 2015 it will also mark two milestone anniversaries. It is the 100^th anniversary of the writing of Lt. Col. John McCrae’s iconic poem In Flanders Fields and it is also the 70^th Anniversary of the end of World War II.

            Since 1921 Canadians have been wearing poppies to honour war veterans. The Royal Canadian Legion has a Poppy Manual which outlines poppy wearing protocol. I know, I know, you sure could have used this last week but keep the information for next year and…better late than never I say.

            Everyone who wears a poppy thinks the pin that comes with them is a real pain in the derriere, or finger tip or chest, as it were, and the poppies always fall off but the Legion’s position is that the pins shouldn’t be substituted; including using a Canadian flag pin to hold poppies on but the Legion is a little flexible on this, stating, “It is undoubtedly better to wear a Poppy with a Canadian flag in the centre than not to wear a poppy at all,”.  My suggestion for keeping your poppy in place would be to use a pair of pliers to turn the tip back in towards the poppy. It works.

            Who should wear a poppy? Anyone who wants to honour a veteran. The Royal Canadian Legion notes that 117,000 Canadians gave their lives for freedom, which also means the freedom not to wear a poppy, should you so choose.

            Traditionally, poppies are worn during the Remembrance Day period, which runs from the last Friday in October to the end of the day on Nov 11^th. Poppies should be worn on the left lapel close to the heart. Disposing of them by placing them at a memorial for veterans at the end of Nov 11^th is particularly respectful. Reusing them next year isn’t.

            I’m writing this before Remembrance Day so I know where I will be disposing my poppy. It’ll be right at the new Memorial Cenotaph across from the Post Office. I am very impressed with the look and location of the new cenotaph; kudos to those responsible. The local Legion Branch could use some help in the funding of the project, too. More work is yet to be done and more funds needed. What better way to honour our fallen than to invest in their legacy.

“I am a Canadian, free to speak without fear, free to worship in my own way, free to stand for what I think right, free to oppose what I believe wrong, or free to choose those who shall govern my country. This heritage of freedom I pledge to uphold for myself and all mankind.”- John G. Diefenbaker (1885-1979).

CANCER TOUCHES EVERYONE

           Before we get to the meat and potatoes of this week’s subject I’m going to let you in on a hot tip. Are you ready? This is for all you risk takers and bettors out there. So here it is…take a sport, any sport with two teams vying for a championship…phone me…ask me who I am betting on…go the opposite way…and…voila…cash in your hands. It won’t work every time but 9 out of 10 ain’t bad. (Writer’s disclaimer-Betting entails some degree of risk. Bettors should inform themselves of the risks involved in engaging in any legal or illegal wager before acting on the advice of said writer.)

            Now, if you had bet on the New York Mets to win the World Series then we’re both losers. Actually, I didn’t bet anything on the series because-1.) Gambling is one of the few vices I don’t have…yet…and 2.) I have never been able to convince my heart what my head knows. There you have it, so congratulations Kansas City Royals, (insert sarcasm here)-yay. It’s not that they weren’t deserving champions, or anything, that is one talented ball club they’ve got there, it’s just that I liked the Mets better, especially after Kansas City beat the Blue Jays in the American League Championship Series. Enough with the sour grapes now; let’s move on, shall we?

            As with any sports series these Major League Baseball Playoffs, including the World Series, had their share of great plays, misplays and some awful weird plays going on at different times. There were some very cool moments, too. 

            One of the coolest, most moving and somewhat sad moments occurred on October 30^th during Game 3 of the World Series at Citi Field in New York City when players, fans and everyone else in the ballpark on that night joined together to Stand Up 2 Cancer (please visit-StandUp2Cancer.org). Every person at the ballpark that night was given a card so they could write a name of someone they know, or knew, who has had, is battling, or has beaten cancer. Seeing that sea of cards throughout the entire ball park of roughly 45,000 people was quite a moving moment.

            Sadly enough, though, as I was sitting there watching the spectacle, I was running through quite a list of people I knew and know who have or are still battling cancer. Picking one name for a card would have been very, very difficult because, unfortunately, there are just way too many to choose from. Actually, I’m doing an inventory again and I cannot believe how many people it is. I’d put some names to that too-large number but that always leads to somebody being left out.

            It is, however, appropriate and timely that the one name that I will use in this week’s editorial is Dale Blackstock. Dale succumbed to the miserable disease when he was barely thirty-years old. So sad. Dale was a good friend, workmate, teammate and one of the funniest people that I have had the great privilege of sharing company with. A fine example of “the good die young.”

This weekend the Kipling Arena will once again be the site for the 29^th edition of the Dale Blackstock Memorial Recreational Hockey Tournament. In 1987, it was a small way for the Kipling Royals Senior Hockey Club’s executive to pay tribute to a guy who loved the game of hockey, loved the team and town he played for and loved the guys he played with. That little gesture has become one big event.

If I was a betting man, and a surer bet you’ll never find, I’d bet that there’ll be lots and lots of fun at the old Kipling Arena this weekend. You can put money on it.