Fall Colors Canadian Style - what did we do to Halloween · Thursday October 30, 2008 by colin newell
Here is an excerpt from my journal entry dated November 1, 1971…
went out for Halloween last night with younger sister. last time ever I am pretty sure. at 12 years old… it must be time. weather was perfect. cold and foggy. the ground was musty with fallen leaves and rot. dressed as a gypsy. mom and sisters creation. no idea what a gypsy is. firecrackers and fireworks everywhere. pipe bomb exploded about 100 feet away from me. wow. cool. got home at around 8. went back out for long walk because this was the last one for me. feeling grown up.
In 2008 no one lets a 12 year old out with his 8 year old sister to trick or treat. At least not in this urban jungle. And I wonder why. Is it really that dangerous out there? It was way more dangerous in the late sixties when I was a kid… and I was taking myself out trick or treating by the time I was 7 or 8. And I guess I was pretty savvy by the time I was 8. On Halloween one knew where and what to avoid. The houses that felt dark and creepy were to be avoided. We knew who the creeps were – and there were not a lot of them. Even in the 60’s we knew enough not to accept anything that was not wrapped – yes, even then. Now I think we are too cautious and too concerned about threats that do not actually exist.
And I am not suggesting that you send your children out alone – we should`nt have been out alone – there should have been an adult or a teen with us – but they were slightly different times.
Now kids are paraded through malls stopping in individual stores to collect treats! What happened to meeting the neighbors? What happened to original costumes created from imaginative minds. When I was 12 I went out in an outfit that my older sister and mother cooked up. At 11 I was a greaser from the 50`s. That was a stretch! At 10 I was a vampire. At 9 I was a ghost… and yea, there was a sheet involved. Complex or not, we did something creative with homegrown ingredients. Now people shop at Walmart for togs made in China that contain enough melamine to kill a horse… made by children that have never heard of Halloween.
I cannot believe I have actually reached the point in my life when I am using the phrase… “When I was 12…”
Happy Halloween. Be safe.
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Fall Colors Canadian Style - among the living legends · Thursday October 16, 2008 by colin newell
It is the summer of 1943. You are in Burma. As a POW (Prisoner of War). You are being held captive by the Japanese Empire. You are working on a railway. You work in unthinkable conditions working harder than you will ever work in your life – for no salary and hardly enough food to get through the day. Your brothers in this task are Australians, Brits, Dutch, Americans, fellow Canadians, and ethnic Asians enslaved by the empire for the express purpose of building a railway. You are 19. Your name is Peter.
In 1942, Japanese forces invaded Burma from Thailand and took it from Britain rule. To maintain their forces in Burma, the Japanese had to bring supplies and troops to Burma by sea, through the Strait of Malacca and the Andaman Sea. This route was vulnerable to attack by Allied submarines, and a different means of transport was needed. The obvious alternative was a railway. In June 1942, the empire of Japan set out to do the impossible. They needed labor and they got it from almost 300,000 slaves and POW’s. You survive because you are young and strong. Your American buddies who survive call you Pete. The Australians call you sir.
The estimated total number of civilian laborers and POWs who died during construction is about 160,000. About 25% of the POW workers died because of overwork, malnutrition, and diseases like cholera, malaria, and dysentery. You celebrate your 20th birthday with a bowl of rice in one hand and a pick axe in the other.
In the year 2008, I look at a flat-screen monitor struggling to boot Windows XP. I wonder if the OS is corrupt of whether or not the hard-drive is on its last legs. I unplug USB devices and switch off unneeded ports in BIOS to free up resources in memory. There seems to be little that I can do to unfurl this mess.
Over my shoulder, a very encouraging Peter B. gives me the odd clue as to the demise of his cherished PC. He enjoys his e-mail, his web browser and the photos of his grand-children and great-grand children. Peter and his wife are in remarkable health and embrace this modern technology. And yet I cannot wrap my mind around the visual… a teenage boy slashing his way through a tropical jungle, warding off disease and tolerating hunger while older men fall around him.
There is something about helping a veteran from another era that is sobering and humbling – when men and women fought for the very survival of freedom and democracy and paid the ultimate price.
Words escape me. They really do. On November 11, 2008 (Remembrance Day in Canada) – think about Peter, the survivors. And those that did not survive.
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Summer food fun and drink - time to butt out this theme · Monday September 8, 2008 by colin newell
It is a beautiful summer night in our concrete and steel tower overlooking the miserable neighborhood of Rockland… Million dollar houses. Rich folks with their noses in the air.
And now I know why.
They are trying to breathe.
On this perfect night, Andrea and I open the windows to let in a softening breeze. The mid-September evening is rich with a delicate sea breeze and the aroma of summer drawing to a close.
But wait, there is more. The slow moving zephyr brings in the noxious assault of a neighbor puffing away on her balcony.
She has a new baby and she is crashing with her folks. Naturally, we would not want her exposing her bambino to the effects of second hand Butt smoke.
So let’s expose the neighbors instead. What we could find out!
Oops. Digression.
The way I see it: If someone does not give a rodents ass what they press and suck into their mouthes, they sure as heck are not going to spend much time worrying about my lungs.
Oh well. I need to be more patient. She has a new baby. No father. And no one is going to be kissing her anytime soon.
It sucks.
So please don’t exhale.
Summer fun food and drink - Doing stuff on top of stuff and stuff · Tuesday July 22, 2008 by colin newell
Ever get the feeling that you’ve got a tad too much on the go? My mother reminds me of this, well, almost daily – Like, since when was a man too busy or too multi-tasked by working on his guitar, his studio, his photography, his writing, his work, his radio stuff (deep breath…) to take on one more thing?
There are 24 hours in a day after all. And it is not as if I do all these things at once. Because I don’t. One thing at a time. With lots of coffee breaks in between.
I am, quite seriously, not one of those people that sails down the Trans-Canada highway with one ear on the Sirius satellite radio, one ear on his iPhone (when he is not text-messaging head office) – all the while barking orders to his 3 kids in the back seat of his Humvee while contemplating that recreational property and the hostile takeover of Langford, British Columbia – Now that would be something wouldn’t it!?
Digression complete. One of the advantages that I have is that I am not a member of the Millennial Generation, The Gen-Y’s, The Gen-Xer’s… and… I am stopping there. Let’s just say that I was born prior to 1970 – actually watched the first moon landing…
Double digression.
I work with the Millennial Kids and lots of them (my Employer-A University)… And folks, it is interesting. A more suitable name for my clients would be the Me-menial generation because that is what they are all about: Me. I mean. Them. Themselves. And they really do not get the value of actual labor… of any kind. Paid or unpaid. And it is amazing that at a University of all places that so many of them do so well – when there is so much work involved.
But here are some observations: When Millennial Kids show up for work, they seem to be more ready to play; facebook time, hotmail time, blog time, twitter time…
Yea. Twitter. I kid you not. Twitter. Twitter is a free social networking and micro-blogging service that allows users to send updates (otherwise known as tweets) which are text-based posts of up to 140 characters in length…
140 characters. Limiting them to meaningful conversations like…
“Bro, what’s up?”
“Yea, I am just at the University with…”
“my GF and I need to get…”
Scintillating huh?
In my World, I operate on a team of tech dudes – a team whose size has not changed in over a decade – and our work load has increased by a factor of about 5. There was a time where I could start and finish a job. Now I get interruptions on the 3 projects that I am trying to finish and often that interruption will get jumped on by some higher priority in the queue… or an emergency will crop up.
A Millennial Kid would take one look at what I do every hour of my work day and plug in their iPod buds, crouch behind their Asus Mini-PC, turn the lights down… and tweet.
And that my friends… was a couple more than 140 characters… Good night.
