Month: November 2011

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Are children worth $1/4 million?

Posted on by Nuntius

I ask you: is your child worth $226,920?

The US Department of Agriculture (don’t ask me why this particular Department) every year calculates the cost of raising a child from birth through its first 17 years. That’s up to age 18, if you’re not familiar with the American “through” instead of saying the British “..to 18 years of age”. OK, my American pals, I’m not really getting at you for not speaking Canadian, let alone English English.

In the year of 2010, the Department reports  the cost to raise a child through 17 years was $266,920. Hm! That doesn’t even include post-secondary education. We had (still have) five children. Are they worth $1,134,600? More than a trifle over ONE MILLION Dollars?

Darn right they were/are. In this day and age, to have five married families with eleven children – our grandchildren – with no divorces or separations is something of which a parent may be justly proud. Every hour we spent with them was worth more than money can represent.

We enjoyed every hour with our kids – well, almost every hour, except when they got to their teens and thought (nay, knew) they knew better than their parents. After their teens, that opinion modified somewhat, fortunately. Now, we and they just know that each has her or his own levels and individualised areas of knowledge and none of us knows everything.

When they were growing up, we did enjoy going to the Pan Am gamesin Winnipeg, when we lived there; sailing on Lake Winnipeg;

Gimli at Lake Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada
Image via Wikipedia

road trips and camping in the Rockies; a six-week tour in a small, but well-designed camper bus, in Europe; a Christmas and New Year in the Cayman Islands; mucking out stalls when we had a stables in Montreal; riding; going to their soccer, ringette and ice hockey games; watching their swimming events, both racing and synchronised; being proud parents when one of our tribe was tossing batons in the Grey Cup parade in Toronto; seeing them graduate from various schools, colleges and universities; watching their courtships and eventual marriages; and, finally, enjoying our grandchildren.

And after that, seeing pay-back for all we had done so lovingly in their struggles with their own children!

So, it really doesn’t matter from any point of view how much the average child costs to raise, for, no matter how much young people can be told that, they will still fall in love and they will still have their own children. Ad infinitem!

 

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What’s the word? Oh, I can’t think what it is!

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I was in my doctor’s office this morning and she asked me which drug store I used: was it Lawton’s downstairs or Sobey’s? No, I said it’s the one across the street. That one over across where your office used to be! Oh, you mean Shopper’s, she said.

While she was looking up some anomaly about my right foot,  we got on the subject of forgetfulness. I said I hated being unable to think of the right word at the right time and, of course, as we get older, she affirmed, it is usually names and nouns which are easily forgotten. She confessed such an occasion had happened to her last weekend, but before she could tell me what it was, I expressed mock surprise that someone as young as she could possibly forget words. Well, she said, then I will have forgotten many more words than you by the time I reach your age! Then she continued with her example.

It seems she had baked fish in the oven over the weekend for her family and had returned extra fish to the still warm oven in the event that someone wanted a second helping. In that event, her daughter asked if she could have some more and my doctor responded, certainly, it’s over there in the .. in the fridge..no, not the fridge, that other thing over there – the oven!

Forgetting names has been a real fault in my make-up and has been embarrassing on many an occasion. My Beloved and I ran our own Risk Management consulting business for several decades, but I always made sure that she came with me when visiting a new client. All of our clients were large corporations or governments and we would be assigned to report to a particular officer or manager of the client. She would remember that person’s name, his or her children’s names and how many children he or she had. This would prove very useful in future meetings with the client or our liaison. I was never able to achieve a memory such as hers.

Forgetting names is possibly the worst social gaff one can make, as people love to hear their own name, and can be embarrassing. But forgetting the correct word for the occasion, whether I am with people in conversation, or in writing this post is just darned (I’d like to use a stronger adjective, but I make it a personal rule not to swear) annoying. (It’s ironic that in a post about forgetting words when I know I have a broader vocabulary than many people, I choose not to use swear or blasphemous words for the reason that I believe it shows a lack of vocabulary! Oh, well, maybe that will be the subject of another post.)

I have endeavoured to find a word, a definition, of forgetting words or names, but the best I could find was in Wikipedia, which defined such as “tip of the tongue phenomenon“. But perhaps I should not be concerned or even annoyed at forgetting the right word in the right place or at the right time or, as my blog says, From time to time… In researching this subject, I found an interesting BBC article* and I quote two short parts:

Such forgetting is an important component of healthy memory: without some filtering mechanism, our memory would soon become overwhelmed by the details of every piece of information ever experienced, minute by minute. How would you ever remember where you left your keys?

Forgetting is almost as vital as remembering. In fact without the one, we’d have even more trouble than we do with the other. Latest research suggests that some people may have an inability to forget traumatic events and this is what is partially responsible for conditions like depression and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). If we’re unable to let memories of terrible events fade naturally, how can we move on with our lives?

One article I found on Google was, naturally, related to dementia and Altzheimers. It listed the top ten symptoms and a short paragraph on each. However, following each paragraph was a title, What is normal, and so, in a lighter vein, I was happy to discover that I fitted into all ten normals, such as occasionally forgetting why I left the room and what I meant to get.

*BBC article site http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/memory/understand/forgetting.shtml

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Computers evolve – and data does have weight!

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The very first computer we bought in 1982 was a Xerox 820-II, which Xerox had just brought out.Together with a Diablo printer, it cost the enormous sum of  $11,000. Our Risk Management company, which we had started four years earlier, was in full swing and could afford it.

In actual fact, I bought it while the Treasurer, my wife Beryl, was in England at her stepmother’s funeral. Our third daughter had just graduated from secretarial college (as such was called then), La Salle College, Montreal, www.lasallecollege.com/  and she helped me decide which computer to buy. When she got used to the 820-II, she repeatedly made it go berserk, because she had, and, as far as I know, still does hold, the record for accurate speed typing at La Salle. Today, it is in our basement gathering dust.

Xerox 820-II

And what could it do? Well, to start with, you had to insert a 5.25-inch disc with the CP/M operating system on it. It was a brilliant OS and I know at least one person today who uses it in preference to Mr. Gates’ Windows. After it booted up, you removed the OS and inserted your program disk. We used both Wordstar for word processing and Supercalc for our numerical and financial entries.

The 820-II had two 5.25 slots (not shown in the photograph) and the second was used as your data disk, onto which you saved your data. When writing in Wordstar, if a word had to be italicised, you entered a certain code, then, when you were printing, the Diablo printer stopped, you had to remove the, say, Times New Roman daisy wheel, insert the Times New Roman ‘italic‘ wheel, press print and, after it had printed the one word, it would stop. You then had to reverse the process by removing the italic wheel and re-inserting the normal font wheel. Ah! As you can imagine, we used italics sparingly. But it worked. Mind you, the screen was only 11 inches diagonally and showed 24 lines with 80 characters per line white on black.

And what can we do now with computers and how fast are they evolving? We all say, if you buy a computer today, it is out-of-date tomorrow. Not literally true, but it is true, figuratively speaking. And the power of today’s computers is amazing. What I hold in my hand today is far superior to the main frames of even ten years ago.

But, here’s an interesting point: did you know that the data you enter actually weighs a part of a gram? I was reading an article from the New York Times, which had been re-printed in our local Halifax “The Chronicle Herald” about the whether an e-reader gains weight as you add books to it. Only the most sensitive scales can record weights as small as 10 to the -9, so it is not quite possible to weigh data yet, but, theoretically, is in the order of an atogram, or 0.000,000,000,000,000,001 grams. Now these numbers are getting beyond my ken, but the article said that that weight is one-millionth of the increase in weight when the e-reader’s battery is charged from empty to full.

That should allow you to sleep tonight!

Dormez bien! Schlaf gut! Duerme bien!

Nuntius

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Remembrance Day

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Remembrance Day - Lest We Forget
Image by Enokson via Flickr

Yesterday was Remembrance Day (Armistice Day in the UK; Veteran’s Day in the USA; 11-11-11 everywhere), which is a wonderful day and fittingly a post under the blog name of From time to time…

It was pouring rain here – a tropical storm passing through Nova Scotia and joining up with a low which had been crossing Canada to make a deluge and gale – and I was concerned for those who were in downtown Halifax for the memorial parade and service at the Cenotaph. Beryl and I watched the national Remembrance Day ceremonies in Ottawa, where it was cold, but dry, from the comfort of our chairs. One of the veterans, who was interviewed on the local Halifax TV station, on being asked about the pouring rain and wind, replied that those whom they were commemorating at the service served in rain, mud, wind, snow and desert heat, so the least he could do to honour their memories was to stand in the rotten weather for a brief hour or so.

Such a thought from a veteran made me wonder if this commemoration could continue for years to come, or would the tradition become stale as the memories and the veterans faded away and the past was dimmed. But then I saw another clip later in the day, which told the story of how our teachers in our schools are devoting as much as a week to the facts of the various wars and the whys of the wars, instead of the old, perhaps, one hour which used to be given to talking about Remembrance Day. And yet another clip said that over the past few years, the celebrations have been growing in numbers and that on Parliament Hill in Ottawa this year, the crowd was very likely a record with over fifteen thousand present.

I am glad that people are remembering, for, although I never saw combat, many people I have known have died in actual combat. And why did they die? For the most part to ensure that all of us in many countries have the freedom to speak out, to proselytise, to protest, to celebrate, to not fear secret police. I say, for the most part, for there are those of us who ponder over the reason we went into Iraq or Afghanistan. Yet, having gone there at our government’s behest and orders, our fighting services tried their best – and did well – at the task with which they were presented, upholding and distinguishing their and their countries’ honour.

My memories of World War II are childlike, for I was six years old when the war started in September 1939. I had a large map on the wall of my bedroom on which I stuck pins: “The RAF bombed Dresden last night and suffered minor losses of aircraft….” the BBC would report  and I would stick a pin in Dresden. Or, later in the war: “The British 8th army has advanced toward Tobruk amidst heavy resistance…” and so I would stick a pin in Tobruk.  [Just en passant, Wikipedia says: The siege of Tobruk was a confrontation that lasted 240 days between Axis and Allied forces in North Africa during the Western Desert Campaign of the Second World War. The siege started on 11 April 1941, when Tobruk was attacked by an Italian–German force under Lieutenant General Erwin Rommel, and continued for 240 days up to 27 November 1941, when it was relieved by the Allied 8th Army during Operation Crusader.]

My mother and I were evacuated from Southampton as the bombing of the docks worsened, simultaneously with my father, a teacher of a certain age, thereby excused military service, being evacuated with his entire school to a rural town. Dad was not that distant from Mum and me, being able to cycle home to us on some weekends. Mum and I were about thirty miles from Southampton, so on some really bad blitz nights, we could see the glare of fires. But, mostly, for me, the war was something happening far away. Sure, there were lots of convoys of army trucks and the train I had to take daily to Queen Elizabeth Grammar School in Wimborne was frequently held up at a station while a troop train would go through, it being only single track outside of the stations, but even the rationing was not as severe in the rural areas – if you got to know and help a local farmer or two. And my best friend, David Pattle, and I would play “army” with our wooden rifles in the woods, or play with our toy army trucks, soldiers and airplanes in the sandy cliffs of the abandoned brickyard behind our house. In the summer, we would sail a lovely steel-hulled model sail boat my parents had given me for a birthday in one of the ponds in the brickyard. Or, at harvest, I was allowed to drive a horse pulling a rake and had to make rows of the cut grain, so it could be stooked. Yes, well before the days of combine harvesters in our part of England. Besides, there was no petrol for machines such as they.

So went the war with me. But every Remembrance Day since, I have remembered those who gave their lives in order that I could live a somewhat carefree life as a child and to be entitled to grow up and live in countries where my rights are protected.

We will remember them!

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Delectable dinner with delightful guests

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The sun was setting when the guests arrived, all four in one car. One was cold, so, after all had admired nature, a doe and a fawn on the lawn along with the beautiful, fiery sunset, she sat on the hearth right in front of the roaring fire. Her husband, though, immediately took command of the punch bowl. To the pleasure of all.

The dinner was a Caribbean dinner, so the punch was a Planter’s Punch. Not having made any punches for years, since the heyday of punches way back in the seventies, I had to look up recipes. I thought that Planter’s Punch would be the most appropriate for our Caribbean dinner party. You cannot believe how many recipes for Planter’s Punch there are. However, I came across a little West Indies rhyme, which goes:
One of sour,
Two of sweet,
Three of strong,
Four of weak.

Apparently, as long as you follow that recipe, you can call whatever you have made a Planter’s Punch. So, into the punch bowl went

500 ml of lime  juice. Then, 1000 ml of a combination of mango and pomegranate juices. 750 ml of dark rum and 750 ml of coconut rum for a total of 1500 ml equalling three of strong. Topping off four of weak were a 635 ml concentrate of passion juice plus two of water – it was supposed to be diluted with three containers of water, but 500 ml of Nestlé‘s Iced Tea with Lemon worked as the fourth part of weak. I could have used another water, but I thought some other type of flavour would work and the iced tea was the first can I came across in the downstairs fridge. And yes, you mathematicians, I know 3 x 635 = 1905 + 500 = 2405, which is almost ‘five’, but, in our house, even the best printed or on-line recipes can be varied according to our will or taste. In any case, the punch must have been deemed good, for we all had several glasses of it.

And we all sat around the fire, sipping punch and nibbling on almonds, wasabi peas, two dips, one of spicy guacamole, one of puréed white beans and roasted garlic, with lentil chips, and the topper, salt cod balls with Barbadian Hot Yellow Sauce.  Mmmm! Before we knew it, over an hour had passed and we called our guests to the dinner table for grace and then soup made from butternut squash, apples and onions with a mixture of maple sugar and light soy sauce (50-50) poured over it.

Differences between Carménère and Merlot grapes
Image via Wikipedia

The two guests who asked for white, were poured a Sauvignon Blanc. However, the four who had

asked for red got my home-made Carmenere, which I thought did not taste quite as good as another of the same batch, but My Beloved deemed it just as good. Must have been the influence of the punch and hot sauces.

As the main course, My Beloved had marinated boneless, skinless chicken thighs (much tastier, we think, than breasts) in jerk spices, and these were cooked just before we had the soup, giving them time to rest. I’m never sure why we use the term ‘rest’ for dead meat: can dead meat really rest? Along with the jerk chicken, we had a slaw with red cabbage, green cabbage, apple, onion and a few othe

r ingredients, and a sweet potato salad with cucumber, green onions, olive oil, cilantro and lime juice.  No potato, but spinach roti on the side was a fair, if not good, substitute.

As for dessert, the host prepared, and was watched intently by his guests, bananas flambé. In one cast iron fry pan, halved bananas were sautéed in butter and a little olive oil for about three minutes per side. After removing the bananas and setting them on a plate (actually Spanish earthenware dishes) along with a scoop of vanilla ice cream, a quantity of pomegranate juice was poured into the butter and oil mixture along with a teaspoon or a little more of corn starch, which was whisked into the sauce to thicken it. Meanwhile, in a second small cast iron fry pan, a quantity of dark rum and coconut rum was heated with several guests ready to use the fire extinguisher!! Oh, ye of little faith! Then a match was set to the liquor.

Only, it didn’t catch fire. Oh, the shame of it! I had let all the alcohol evaporate while whisking the sauce and pouring it over the bananas. Not dismayed, I grabbed a bottle of my favourite Spanish brandy, Fundador, and poured a good quantity into the liquor in the fry pan. Well, the lighted match really did the trick this time and, no, the fire extinguisher was not required, so the flaming sauce was poured over the bananas. The final touch was to grate dark chocolate over the ice cream. Everyone enjoyed. Someone remarked that it was the quietest time of the dinner.

Tea and coffee with more Carmenere for one, Drambuie for one and Fundador for me.
The driver and a couple of other guests declined.

We moved back to the more comfortable seats around the fire and for the next hour and a half we sorted out the world’s problems.

A delectable dinner with delightful guests, who are always welcome at our house!