Monthly Archives: November 2022

Snow dump

It amazes me how a big snowfall can shut down the Vancouver Lower Mainland. My parents were visiting and returning to Toronto last night, and while many flights were cancelled, theirs was just delayed an hour. That meant that last night after shovelling my driveway for an hour I got to sit in traffic all the way to the airport and back.

I saw cars parked sideways, stuck on medians, and stuck on hills. I was detoured by a fireman then followed a set of cars into an alley that was too steep for the car 3 ahead of me and had to reverse into another snow-filled alley. And I also ended up waiting 6 lights to turn left at an intersection on the way home.

It’s not like the weather was unexpected, yet it seems local drivers were caught unprepared. It happens at least once every year here. This region never seems prepared for large volumes of snow. Drivers seem to think they are better in the snow than they are, and people get stranded and cause major delays. It’s a winter ritual, and while I usually avoid most of it, being fortunate to live very close to my work, last night I got to see the chaos of ill-equipped cars without snow tires, and ill-experienced drivers without common sense first hand.

Hopefully most of the roads are clear this morning, and people take it easy on their way to work and schools. Be safe out there!

Anglicizing names

When my father’s father escaped the Ukraine and found his way to British Guyana he changed his last name from Trusu to Truss. When my mother was born in Barbados, her Polish last name was Birsztajn. But before her older twin sisters started school their parents, my grandparents, changed their name to Bernstein. Birsztajn was too hard to spell and pronounce. My grandmother on my dad’s side had her name changed by her parents from Ng Fong Hing to just Hing.

I grew up only knowing Truss, Bernstein and Hing. It wasn’t about trying to hide anything, it’s just what was adopted and accepted. None of these families tried to hide their heritage, they just wanted their names to fit more easily in the new countries they found themselves in.

I’m not sure that would happen as often today? Many people still change their first name to fit in, but few change their last name. It was just something that was done back then, and it speaks to the eclectic nature of my heritage that 3 of my 4 grandparents had anglicized last names.

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My 4th grandparent’s last name, my mother’s mom, was Gonsalves.

Closing night

My youngest daughter just had her last performance as Viola disguised as Cesario in Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night. I got to see 3 of her 5 performances and this was easily the best one. All the performers were having fun with their roles and the audience was lively and enjoyed the show.

Stage performances are something I’ve grown to love ever since meeting my wife, and I truly enjoy seeing my daughter on stage. But the show itself is such a small part of what goes into a play. Three months of rehearsals with full weekends given up, and arriving home after 10pm four days during the week led to these performances. My daughter said after the show, “I have no idea what I’m going to do with all this time now that I’m done.”

Live performances are like that: Hours and hours of work leading to a series of shows, and then it’s over. Getting to be on stage in front of an audience is the reward, but alas it is fleeting, and the show comes to an end.

An artist finishes with an art piece that lives on. A performer presents their art work on stage and then it is over, and only memories remain. The performance must come to an end, a closing night, a last time to share what hours of preparation went into. The play starts with the well known verse, “If music be the food of love, play on.” But for the stage performer there comes a closing night, and the music comes to an end.

Obligation to fight evil

I re-watched Everything Everywhere All At Once with my parents last night. A quick synopsis is:
A woman who has a bad relationship with her husband, dad, and daughter, and who owns a laundromat that is being audited by the IRS finds out:
• She lives in a multiverse.
• It’s up to her to save it.
• And she’s living the worst of all her possible lives.

It’s a very clever movie with some completely ridiculous (and hilarious) subplots, but ultimately it’s a battle between good and evil.

Afterwards, my dad brought up the point that evil exists and we have an obligation to fight it. A simple example would be the obligation to hide Anne Frank and her family during the German occupation of Amsterdam. It was dangerous, but it was the right thing to do.

We can not be bystanders as evil acts are committed. We have an obligation to act, to resist, and to be part of the solution. Any act against evil is a heroic act. The challenge today seems to be that evil people seem to converge, collaborate, and cooperate far more fervently than those fighting them. Lies, conspiracies, misinformation, and propaganda spread faster than reason and factual information. Social media magnifies the disparity between these.

We have an obligation to recognize and fight evil. Left alone it spreads far too easily.

Days without scripts

One of my favourite quotes about school leadership comes from Gary, a VP that I had early in my career. He shared this with me after a typically crazy day at our middle school, “Being a Vice Principal is only a 3 to 4 hour a day job… the problem is that you get almost none of it done between 8:30am and 4pm.”

Yesterday afternoon was like that. The over-the-top moment came when someone driving out of the side street, across from our school parking lot, missed her turn, drove into our parking lot, and collided with 2 parked cars. Then she tried to leave the scene yelling that we had a picture of her license plate and no, we didn’t need to see her driver’s license or insurance. After she couldn’t get her car off the curb, she left on foot.

Fortunately that’s when the police arrived and she was apprehended. Speculating, based on how fast she was going, how far off of her intended direction she ended up, trying to leave the scene, and her irate behavior, I think she was was probably inebriated.

Just another normal day at school. No, I’m not saying bizarre parking lot accidents happen all the time, but rather the totally unexpected does. One minute you are working on a task and your day feels quite typical, and the next your entire day is turned upside down by an unexpected issue or event.

It’s the small part of your contract that this falls under: “Other duties as assigned.” Except these emergent issues aren’t really assigned as much as thrust upon you. It’s the leaky pipe sending water gushing down a wall. It’s the messy clean up during the hours in the day when you don’t have a custodian in the building. It’s the student missing from a class. It’s just about anything except the thing you thought you were going to do. Plans go out the window, you go off your planned script, and the issue in front of you builds a new agenda.

…and the days ends with you either staying later than you had hoped, taking work home with you, and/or moving things from today’s ‘To Do’ list to tomorrow’s.

“The best laid plans of mice and men often go awry.” ~Robert Burns

8 billion realities

With 8 billion people on this planet, we have 8 billion different ways to see the world. Not even conjoined twins see the same reality.

Is my experience of the colour blue the same as yours? Do I taste chocolate like you do? Are our wishes and desires the same? No.

We find our tribes that like similar things: sports, hobbies, food, music, pets, occupations, and anything that allows us to see others in a similar light. But no matter how similar, we still have a different slant on reality.

You are uniquely you. I am uniquely me. Our realities may collide, but what we observe is only for us to interpret and experience. Our interpretations and experiences will never match another’s. We live a singular reality.

That is why a tragedy for one is a lesson for another. An unforgivable act for one is the reason for forgiveness for another. A moment of peaceful solitude for one is a slow, uncomfortable moment of boredom for another. Here is where our life experiences are created, where we control our own narrative, create our own destiny… design our very own reality like no other.

Get stuff done mode

I must admit that I was lucky. Having been away and needing to do some catch up yesterday, I was working in my office with my door closed. And as it turned out, it was an unusually uninterrupted kind of day. Normally interruptions are what my day is mostly about. But yesterday was quiet and I was in a a real ‘get stuff done’ mode.

It’s not like things didn’t come up that needed my attention, and I had over 3 hours of online meetings that I actually had to pay attention in. But every moment before, after, and between these meetings was dealing with one task at a time.

If I was interrupted, I dealt with the interruption immediately, then went right back into what I was doing beforehand. No squirrel-brain bouncing around and forgetting what I was doing. No email rabbit hole of distractions. It was go-go-go.

Coming off of being sick and taking more days off in a week than I took in the last 2 years, I needed a day like yesterday. I wish every day could be like that… but as I said, I was lucky. Things don’t always run that smooth, and I’m not a hide in my closed office kind of principal. Sometimes the job is mostly about interruptions that can not be easily solved. But I’ll worry about that another day. For now I’m just going to celebrate having a great ‘get stuff done’ kind of day yesterday.

Not all cylinders firing

It has been well over a week since I was hit with this cough and it is still wiping me out. I went home at lunch yesterday and slept for over an hour before I could do anything remotely productive. This morning my cough isn’t sounding a whole lot better. I’m reminded of the chronic fatigue that hit me a few years ago.

I wrote We are One recently, about the interconnectedness of our minds and bodies. It only takes an experience like this to understand how our brains are affected by the wellness of our bodies. It’s not just that I’m coughing, it’s that my whole body is working to get better.

I’ve heard a number of people tell me they’ve had similar coughs and it took two weeks before they started to recover. I’ll keep going to bed early, drink a lot of fluids, and keep the Tylenol flu medicine flowing to prevent a sinus infection that I tend to be prone to… and hopefully my body (and mind) will be running on all cylinders soon.

8 billion people

The world has surpassed 8 billion people. 25 years ago it was less than 6 billion and overpopulation was a major concern for our planet. It isn’t so much anymore. Populations in many countries is decreasing with the average age of people being greater than the childbearing age. Older populations don’t have kids. People living in expensive urban cities, where more people live than ever before, have less kids.

The population of the earth is still going to grow from here, but the exponential growth we’ve seen is slowing down. This is a good thing because our earth couldn’t withstand continued growth like we saw in the 60’s, 70’s, and 80’s.

The interesting thing to come with respect to population growth will be the uneven distribution of the population. How will this affect countries? Work forces? Urbanization? Immigration? It’s not the growing numbers that we will be worried about, it’s the geography of the population that will be the population concern of the future.

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Note: Going from 6 billion to 8 billion in 25 years is a 33% jump in population… I didn’t mention that above, but it’s worth noting because if that pattern continued we’d be over 10.6 billion in another 25 years, and then just the numbers alone would have been the greatest concern.

20,090 days

Today I turn 20,090 days old. There are not many things certain in life, but one thing can be certain… I won’t be living another 20,000 days. That’s not depressing, it’s just simple math. It’s highly unlikely I’ll live to approach my 110th time around the the sun.

There are different kinds of age. There’s the ache in my back that tells my I’m getting old. There’s the level of fitness that makes me feel young. There’s the imposter syndrome that tells me I’m still just a kid and can’t believe that I’ve got work and family responsibilities when I still feel like I have some growing up to do. And then there is the number.

20,090 days, 660 months, or 55 years. No matter how I break it down, I’ve been fortunate to have had the time I’ve had, and while I won’t double that time, I look forward to some wonderful days, months, and years ahead.

Time is precious, make the most of it.