DIARY
Oh, the excitement here never ends
by Robert LaFrance
Believe it or
not, there are people who think New Brunswick is not an exciting place to live,
but on September 27 we showed the world where it’s at.
I’m talking about
the Red Super Blood Moon eclipse that my wife and I watched for a long time. We
sat out on the porch and sipped hot chocolate (lemonade would have impaired my
vision) and watched the shadow of the earth gradually cover the moon and turn
it red for some reason. Once, when I was about nine, I got hit in the face with
a rock and my face turned red but I don’t think that was the same thing.
We watched the
eclipse for well over an hour, so don’t tell me New Brunswick isn’t exciting.
I’ve been to curling matches, I’ve watched poker games on TV, I’ve fished where
no fish ever bit a hook, and I’ve watched my wife paint the shed. This all took
place in New Brunswick. Just thinking about it I get all a-twitter.
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Another exciting
event took place in New Brunswick last Wednesday morning. I was in a public (no
need to be more specific) building where custodians had just scrubbed the
floor. They had put up one of those yellow signs that read: “Caution: Wet
floor” but they evidently didn’t also warn that because the floor was wet, that
made it slippery.
The custodians or
janitors also did not put up this sign: “Do not trip over this sign”. Maybe
they could also have placed an exclamation mark at the end and capitalized the
letters: “DO NOT TRIP OVER THIS SIGN!”
You may have
guessed by now what happened. In a word coined by the old baseball announcer
Dizzy Dean, I “slud” across the slippery floor, and then I collided,
nose-first, against a very unforgiving wall. I wouldn’t have believed that
sheet-rock could be so hard.
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While I miss a
lot of the information I hear, see and read every day, I occasionally find that
some sinks in. Listening to the CBC Radio program ‘As It Happens’ one day in
late September, I heard that the guy who had invented a way of mass-producing
bagels also invented the folding ping-pong table.
This is
information that is vital to our very existence. Daniel Thompson of New York
City (he was born in Winnipeg) invented the bagel making machine that allowed
tens of thousands of bagels to be baked in one day, compared to about 500 when
made by hand.
He also invented
the folding ping-pong table (patented in 1953) that allowed the Tilley
Reindeers of 1964 (my team) to win the Southwestern Victoria County Table
Tennis Championship that year. Before there were folding tables, we all had to
play our matches in a factory in Bairdsville because nobody could get the
regular tables out the doorway. You could look it up.
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Here are some
snippets gathered during the summer and plunked into the notebook I always
carry:
A recent
‘trending’ news story has informed us that Fredericton police chief Leanne
Fitch thinks that she should be able to suspend police officers without pay. I
can’t go along with that, especially given the length of time that cases take
to get to court. Whatever happened to the concept that citizens are innocent
until proven guilty? If she gets her way someday, then there should be a
guarantee that the suspended officer gets his or her trial within one month.
Picture if an officer had to wait four years and three months to go to court.
Not mentioning any names.
I wonder how many
years people have been talking about getting hydroelectric power from the Fundy
tides? Unlike nuclear power, or damming rivers and streams, it seems obvious
that the tides offer a ‘green’ solution and always have. If we had never built
Point Lepreau nuclear plant, we could have harnessed (twice a day) all that
tidal power for less money.
Last month, as I
mentioned here before, I purchased a smartphone and have been struggling ever
since to understand its operation. The young ladies at Telus in Grand Falls
have been very patient with me and I want to say thanks. I do say thanks.
Thanks. I have found that women have a lot of patience dealing with men
because…well, they’re dealing with men and deserve all our admiration.
My former friend
Flug was asking me recently if I were bipolar because when he came over for
breakfast one morning I had Johnny Cash music playing, but the next morning I
was listening to George Frideric Handel’s Water Music, which, by the way, is
not classical but baroque. I knew you were wondering.
According to the
Tory campaign ads, Justin Trudeau is ‘just not ready’, but the ironic thing is
that those ads started so long ago that by this time he surely is ready. (I am
not supporting any particular political party, just making a comment.)
-end-
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