Prompt #9 - Hallowe'en

Prompt #9 - Hallowe'en

Halloween to me means the one time a year I purchase candy. And because I never know how many Trick or Treaters to expect, anywhere from 0 to 20, which is small, I know, but it's a cul de sac, and the firemen put on a party at the school, for safety's sake, so fewer revellers wander this dark end of town. Just to be safe, I only buy candy which I like, on the theory that I may be forced to eat it later, if too few kids arrive.

About being a kid at Halloween, I remember the dread of trying to come up with costume ideas and being jealous of the kids who had access to the figure skating costume closet, or to older siblings or parents who had this sort of imagination. And I remember the weather. As we lived on a farm, we costumed up and then were driven into town to go Trick or Treating. I remember that in the seventeen years I lived there, there was perhaps only one or two years when there was snow on Halloween. This could be disastrous if you were using a paper shopping bag as a collecting tool, and the bag dragged on the ground, got soaked, and released your precious collection in dribbles or in one big tragic drench.
 

The best Halloween I remember was at university, the University of Manitoba, in Fort Garry, Winnipeg, (Manitoba, Canada) in the late 1960s. Many "gangs" went around campus streamering the bare trees with toilet paper. But if you had the good luck to be dating an engineering student, you could get invited to their own imaginative Trick or Treating. Just bring an empty beer mug, and hold it up when someone answered each door bell. We gathered on campus and then walked into the surrounding suburb, Fort Richmond, where many university people resided. Of course, as we were walking, we were not creating a driving hazard, and, as we were in larger groups, we were not making ourselves obvious targets for victimization. I believe the only costumes we wore were the famous brown and gold Engineering Faculty team bomber jackets, and probably ball caps. Most of the people who answered the doorbells just laughed and came back with brown bottles to pour, emptying them into our proffered cups. It was a trick which garnered a well-enjoyed treat. Chug-a-Lug. And I still have my mug.

Prompt #8 - Time Capsule

Prompt #8 - Time Capsule
I'm passing on this prompt for now.

Prompt #7 - Grandfather #1

Prompt #7 – Grandparents

I had a wealth of grandparents, three of whom I knew fairly well. The fourth, my maternal grandfather, Stanley Livingstone Bubar, was born in Hartland, New Brunswick, on April 9, 1876. The Bubar family had lived in the New Brunswick/Maine area since before the American Revolution. We do not know where they came from, before moving to one of the thirteen colonies. When he was four or five, Stanley's parents, Charles Wellington Bubar and Sophronia Day Bubar, migrated to what had been the Red River Colony, and was, since 1870, the province of Manitoba. CW's brother George had been in Red River since before the rebellion and had been confined in Lower Fort Garry by Riel's provisional government. Rumour has it that GB's initials are carved on the tyndall stone wall near the main gate of the fort. The brothers, George Bubar and Charles Wellington Bubar, SL's father, ran a paddlewheel riverboat freighting business out of Selkirk, Manitoba, hauling produce from St. Paul, Minnesota to Winnipeg. The completion of the trans-continental railroad across Canada in 1885 undercut the river freight business. The American route was no longer necessary. CW took the train west to scout out new opportunities. In 1891, he found land in British Columbia's Kettle River valley, a couple of miles north of the 49^th parallel, east of Kelowna and Osoyoos, and purchased the ranch from Mr. McCallum, the man who owned the preemption. Three hundred and twenty-three acres for $291.25, paid in four installments. The old Dewdney Trail built in 1858, linking Fort Hope and the mining district in eastern BC, skirted the northern edge of the ranch. And in 1910, five or so miles of river frontage were expropriated for the construction of the Kettle Valley Railroad.

But I've already gotten ahead of myself. In 1891, Charles (CW) and Sophronia moved their family to Kettle Valley, BC. Seven of them set out—father, mother, Stanley, Franklin, Bayard, Beatrice, Charles, and six year old Miles who did not survive the journey. His was the first grave in the family cemetery on the hillside above the ranch house. Six years old. The family built log barns and stables. They lived in a log cabin and later built a log house. The cattle brand for the ranch was 91, the year they began ranching. CW augmented the unpredictable ranch income by doing contract work, freighting, and working in sawmills. On July 4, 1900, he drowned in a log boom accident in Golden, BC, leaving Sophronia and her sons to run the ranch. When Franklin married the local school teacher, the ranch was split between the two older brothers and a second home was built at the western end of the property. (The two younger brothers later purchased ranches at Beaverdell.)

Stanley lived in the main ranch house with his mother, Sophronia. He loved horses and raced his horse Solo in local fairs and contests. There is a professional portrait of him taken in Walla Walla, WA, and another tourist shot of him standing inside the famous hollow tree in Vancouver's Stanley Park. And the iconic photograph of him fording the Kettle River driving his two white horses known as the Two Blind Mice. A large print of this photo hung in the ranch house dining room all the years of my childhood.

 

In 1919, during the Great Flu Epidemic which followed the first World War, Stanley drove his sleigh (now in the Midway museum) pulled by his favourite black team up to the door of a quarantined house in Rock Creek, a few short miles from the family ranch in Kettle Valley. He handed a sealed envelope to the child at the door and asked that it be given to the nurse, Miss Hayne. This was the way he proposed to my grandmother, Winifred. She must have said Yes as they were married, not sure where, but registered in the courthouse in Nelson, BC, on June 25, 1919. Stanley was 43 years old and Winifred was 25.

 

For the first eight years, the couple lived with Sophronia in the big ranch house. Winifred bore seven children (one was stillborn) between 1919 and 1931—Anne Patricia, George Murray, Elizabeth Jane, Margaret Norah (my mother), Stanley Livingstone Jr., and Arthur Leonard. Sophronia did not approve of Winifred, or of her “English airs” so Winifred retreated to the library. Sophronia died on July 2, 1928, when the house became Winifred's domain. Her daughters did all the house work and cooking. The whole days worth of dirty dishes awaited the girls when they got home from school. Auntie Betty remembers her father Stanley closing the door between the dining room and the kitchen, rolling up his shirt sleeves, and helping the girls wash dishes. There are snapshots of him tickling his daughter Anne when she is maybe four years old, and of him cutting his sons' hair outside at the woodpile, and one of him and Winifred a couple of years before he died.

 

Bill Harpur, a neighbour whose mother Mary was a friend of Winifred's, remembers the couple coming to the Harpur home for a meal. When the platter of fried chicken was passed to Stanley, he piled his own plate high with pieces, announcing to the table that “I was invited to a chicken supper and I'm going to eat chicken.” I can just imagine Grandma tut-tutting “Oh, Stanley!” This story may be the origin of my thinking of my grandfather Stanley as a cross between King Henry VIII and Tom Jones.

Stanley died of a heart attack in September 22, 1937. His young son, Stanley Jr. had been sent by his mother to call his father in for lunch. “I found him there, lying in the field, stone dead,” Stanley Junior recalled. “I was seven years old.” Stanley Sr. joined his parents and young brother in the family cemetery. Winifred, with six children under 16, carried on. She ran the ranch along with her sons until she retired in 1959 and moved into a small house in town (Midway, BC).

 

My mother was eleven when her father died. I think she felt abandoned. I know she missed him terribly. I never met him, but I feel that I would have liked him. I loved his three sons, my uncles Arthur, Stanley Jr., and George. I have visited the family cemetery. Visiting the family origin sites in Maine and New Brunswick is still on my bucket list.

Prompt #6 - Diaries and Journals

 

Prompt #6 - Diaries and Journals

 

I do not keep a diary or a journal. The closest thing for me is my TO DO List which I keep, monthly, with daily updates, which includes work, home, and social records. At the end of each month I run it off (keep it as a WordDoc) and store it with my business accounts. Not terribly romantic or revealing. Maybe revealing in the sense that I think of my work seriously, as a business. That's partly why I tend not to journal. I feel it is a way of evading work, or of putting my energy and inspiration elsewhere, taking away from work. I think of journalling as therapy, and I think of writing as something that is not really done, finished, until after it has been re-written, revised, polished. Which does not seem possible with a diary or a journal. I guess you could write "I should have said". Do people keep diaries on computers? Because, for at least twenty years, I have done all my writing at a keyboard, and before that for another twenty, on a typewriter. My handwriting has deteriorated from lack of practice. I am curious to learn how others make this balance between private and public writing. I do make profuse notes on scraps of paper which I refer to for writing ideas and prompts. Periodically, I sort through these scraps piled around my desk and file them in the appropriate file folder.

I have a diary I started when I was nine, and trip diaries I have started and mostly not finished, and a couple of work diaries, again usually petering out after about two weeks. I tend to avoid looking at these documents. Avoidance is my default position.

I have inherited one red scribbler which my mother used as a diary for one year. I do not know what prompted her to do this. It was very unlike her. I suspect it may have been suggested by someone else as a way for her to cope as it seems to cover about one year after her father's sudden death when she was almost twelve. It talks about school, work, sports, money she made cleaning homes and the school, visitors to their ranch home, trips taken. The most exciting page is the day she met my father, a new hired man, working on the ranch owned by friends of the family. She describes the day (and later told about things too risque to write down) when she was twelve/thirteen and he was eighteen and a group of teens went to the old swimming hole. They were never an item then. He may have dated one of her older sisters. They did not get together until ten years later, after the war.

I take a lot of photographs. I have a cupboard full of shoe boxes of photos filed by place or family grouping. Since I got my first digital camera at least five years ago I have taken more than 10000 photos which are on my hard drive filed by date (making it very difficult to access a specific shot). I also have all my mothers' old photo albums, a trunk full. My passion is flowers, followed by greens, then landscapes. I don't have any photos of myself that I like but I have taken several snapshot portraits of friends which I treasure. I don't even want to think about what will happen to my photos as I have no descendants. And doesn't it seem to be a truism: we all get "into" genealogy after it is too late to interview the people we really needed to talk to?

Prompt #1 - Who Are You?

Prompt #1 (September 3, 2013) – Who Are You?

I am: a Canadian, a writer, a reader, a blogger, a teacher, an editor, a photographer, an advocate of human rights.

I am a homeowner, a driver, a sister, an aunt, a great aunt, a friend, a brunette, a Scrabble player.

I am an ex-wife, an ex-screw, an ex-Manitoban, an ex-lover. A traveller, a collector, a lover of nature, a lover of cats, a lover of art.

I am J.M., Joan, Joni, Bridget, Eartha, Jamie. A female, a woman, a watcher, an observer, a natural.

The wording of the question "Who" implies to me, a very literal-minded reader, a noun response. Not adjectives or adverbs. The public exposure of a blog invites positive responses, keeping up the facade, a persona of optimism and positivity, of what is acceptable, expected.

Ideas abducted from reading other posts: I am an introvert, and a Sagittarius.

Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside awakes. - Carl Jung

I love Carl Jung, but I'm not sure about this one. It would seem that “inside” would need adjectives. I found a great image though. I visited the Book of Kells in May.

My grandfather used to play “Beautiful Dreamer” for grandma on the mandolin. “Beautiful dreamer, wake unto me, Starlight and dewdrops are awaiting thee . . . ” Stephen Foster

Prompt #2 - My Birth

Prompt #2 (September 10, 2013) - My Birth


I was born in Rivers. I have always loved the sound of that. Borne in rivers. But Rivers is a town ten miles from our farm, which was five miles from our home town, Oak River, in Manitoba, Canada. I was born in Rivers, in Mrs. Madden's "nursing home" which meant a private home where pregnant women went to deliver. This was before the age of rural hospitals. I always knew that Donnie M was born there at the same time, and my Mum and his mother remembered each other. I did not know until more than 60 years later that the mother of another friend worked at that nursing home, possibly as a midwife, and thus was present at my birth. I wrote about this "coincidence" in my Dancing With Ghosts: A Cross-Cultural Education. http://www.dancingwithghostsaneducation.blogspot.ca/

I was born on December 16 and ever since, 16 has been my lucky number. I do believe that my first memory is of a field of sparkling white snow (over which we would have driven to get to the farm, possibly in a horse-drawn wagon because the snow made the route for the car impassable.) The lane into the house was not built until the year I started school.

There are photos of me swaddled and in my parents arms, with a winter woodpile and axe in the background, and more from about six months of age, by the time it got warm enough to take babe in highchair outside. This was before the age of flash.

I was lucky last Christmas when my cousin Carol from Toronto forwarded me two pieces of paper she had gleaned while sorting through some trunks belonging to our mutual maternal grandmother. My birth announcement: a small card, a circular globe with a babe bursting through, like a chick hatching. Inside, my names Joan Margaret (after my godmother, my grandmother, and my mother), the date, time 11:30 pm, and weight which I cannot decipher, perhaps 5 or 7 and three-quarters pounds? And a letter inside a birthday card sent to my Grandmother (whose birthday was May 16) written by my mother, thanking her for gifts of a baby kimono and diapers and telling her about hand-me down bonnets and dresses from my cousin, and a wee wee pot. Mum describes how I was already sleeping through the night and how I "sure was good." I joke to friends how she never in my memory said such things to me.

I don't know whether I had hair. I know my brother was bald for his first eighteen months. My eyes are green and I believe have always been, like my Mum's.

Twins: I've always felt like a twin, although technically, not. My brother next to me is only eleven months younger. Donnie M had a sister born the same year as he was, and cousin Carol is also only less than a year older than her brother. It was after the war and people were making up for lost time, for the families they had postponed while the world was at war. I also have a twin cousin, Lew, born the morning of the very same day and year. He's the smart one. I don't think there was any collusion. I was born in Manitoba nine months after my parents were married in Kettle Valley, BC, with Uncle Tom the only relative of Dad's who was able to attend. Lew was born in Peace River, Uncle Jim and Aunt Dot's second child. Also, our best friends and next door neighbours for the first ten years of my life were twins, Linda and Leila, who were born in April, between my birthday and my brother's. I think being the oldest, and the only girl, have both had more impact.

Prompt #3 - My Physical Self

Prompt #3 (September 14, 2013) My Physical Self

This is a topic I do not like. My appearance is not something I care to spend much time on, beyond basic cleanliness. I have a broad back and very square shoulders. I carry my excess weight mostly in front, below the waist. I'm never happy with my hair. I like it--still brown, chin-length bob, wavy, but super sensitive to humidity, and hot, hot, hot, in this hot summer we've had. But I don't want to cut it short. It curls, and short hair, especially bangs, remind me too much of being a kid. I'm glad to be past that stage. I like hats, especially a beige cotton one I wear all the time to keep off sun and rain. Bought it at a garage sale years ago. Just toss it into the tub, it's wash and wear.

I never wear earrings and do not have pierced ears. I'm glad that I inherited from my mother a lack of interest in such things. I never wear lipstick either, mainly because I do not wish to draw attention to my mouth. I was young before the days of "braces" and thus my teeth are farther apart than the standard American chicklet smile. Lipstick always wears half-off. I have a few fillings but not many. I dread getting older and losing teeth which I will not be able to afford to get replaced.

I'm Caucasian female, 5'3" tall, 30 pounds overweight, size fluctuates, with brown hair, a small bit of grey at temples, and green eyes. I've worn glasses since Grade One (for almost 60 years) and expect to do so forever (astigmatism). Plus, I feel naked without them. I have two small scars. No, maybe three. One from exploratory laparoscopy through my belly button. (Fibroids, not serious.) One on my left breast, for a biopsy which I was later told had been unnecessary. And one on my forehead where I was hit by a stone at recess in the schoolyard in Grade 3. That time, there was lots of blood. A boy named Mervin was blamed. He was big, older, but already behind in school. The story was that boys were competing to see who could throw a stone the highest, and I happened to be standing where one of those stones came down. I always suspected that my brother knew something that he did not confess about this incident. He was there.

My hands are large, I think. With long fingers. Glove size 7. I love rings but often forget to don them before leaving the house. For everyday I prefer silver, and semi precious stones, smokey quartz, rose quartz, garnet, jade, moonstone, amethyst. This is connected to my passion for geology, mica, obsidian, tourmaline. The diamonds I have to keep in the vault so I seldom see them let alone wear them. My prize ring is a diamond band made from half the diamonds in an old cocktail ring that belonged to my grandmother. Mum had the ring taken apart--the prongs (claws?) were too worn to wear it safely--and had two rings made, one for her and one for me. Now, of course, I have hers too, which features a large solitaire with two other diamonds on each shoulder. I cannot remember if my fingerprints are loops or whorls. I was fingerprinted twice, both for the purposes of employment as a peace officer in the federal penitentiary system. I've only had a good manicure once in my life, and one other time when it got messed up as I was getting into my car. What a waste. And I probably only got the manicure because it came with the pedicure. I do like my feet. Size 6.5 or 7. Long toes. I love wearing thongs (flipflops) and slides. Maybe I should take a selfie of my feet.

Anderson Cooper, eat your heart out.