I’m glad to see you go! 4 months of pain from a herniated disc and dealing with my father’s death at the same time is not something I enjoyed. I also didn’t do my yearly healthy living calendar this year and basically stopped meditating.
So I’ll buy a new calendar today, I’ll refocus my healthy living goals… and I’ll look forward to 2024.
2023 can kiss my derrière:)
I’m thinking positive thoughts and planning to have a healthy, productive year ahead. May 2024 be a great year for you too!
I grew up in a small Jewish community in Barbados. It seems like an odd place for Ashkenazi Jews to be located, but there is a Jewish cemetery on the island dating back to the 1400’s.
However we weren’t Jewish, we were Jew-ish. I shared this previously,
And as for being a Jew, I think most Jews would say that I am not Jewish. You see, Judiasim is a matriarchal religion and my Grandmother, my Mother’s Mother, is to this day a Catholic. She was happily married, a role model marriage like few I’ve seen, to my Jewish Grandfather until he died.
So my mom grew up with a Christmas tree and told my dad that having a Christmas tree was something she and her kids had to have. My dad, esoteric rather than religious, was fully on board. In my childhood there were a lot of jokes about our Hanukkah bush (Christmas tree), and my dad’s favourite joke, telling the more Jewish members of the family that they could eat the Christmas ham because the pig was circumcised.
No matter how I look at it, Christmas, Hanukkah, Pass-over, and Easter were no more religious than Thanksgiving. They were opportunities for family to gather and to celebrate each other’s company.
So no matter what your faith, or what holiday you celebrate this time of the year, have a wonderful time with family and friends.
Cheers to you!
Yesterday I went to two different social gatherings, a breakfast and an after work event. The day before I was at a big Christmas dinner. It’s that time of year when we get together to celebrate, socialize, and fill our bellies with food. This past weekend I wrapped presents and stockings. Although my daughters are in their 20’s, they still get stockings to open on Christmas Day.
It’s wonderful to gather and spend time with family and friends. It makes me feel blessed to work in an environment where I feel helpful, useful, and productive. I feel blessed to be in a loving family that actually likes spending time together. And I enjoy the festivities that we hold this time of year.
Gathering with people you care about and enjoy being with is special, and it reminds me how important it is to find the time to connect and to be social. It makes me wonder why I don’t make more of an effort to do so when it’s not for a special occasion. There are good reasons to connect all year, we don’t need to wait until a holiday, or year’s end to feel festive and to gather with friends… we can be festive any time of year.
I almost missed it. Even though it was in my calendar, I let it slip my mind and fortunately a friend called to see if I was there already. It was the district celebration of 25 years of service, and as soon as I got my friend’s call I left work and arrived at the event during the welcoming speeches.
I sat at a table with 4 other educators whom I started my teaching career with. We were 15 or 16 brand new teachers all teaching on a staff of 28 teachers. I have a post in my drafts titled “How lucky was I”, which will (when I finally finish writing it) share how awesome an experience it was starting at such a dynamic environment with so many of us being new at the same time. It was such a rich and rewarding time.
And here I am 25 years later. It’s hard to believe so much time has passed. It’s weird that the next big transition both in work and life will be retirement, and that this is something I actually discuss with my wife and friends. While it’s still a few years away at the earliest, it’s a big enough change that it becomes topical.
Besides my commitment to family and friends, there is nothing else that I’ve done for 25+ years. Looking back, I have to say that I’m really happy with my choice to go into education. My closest friends are people I’ve taught with, learned with, and learned from. They are a big part of the life I’ve built as I also built my career.
I tip my hat to the colleagues and students that I’ve crossed paths with in my 25 year journey as an educator. It has been an awesome ride… and it’s not over yet!
Today I went to my youngest daughter’s university graduation. Earlier this week I went to our Indigenous Grade 12 Honouring Ceremony, and in two weeks I have two more school grads to go to.
I am not big on pomp and ceremony, but I do like graduation celebrations. It’s a rite of passage, an honouring of the work a student has done, a recognition of accomplishment. It doesn’t matter if a student eked out a pass or graduated with honours and distinction, they did what they needed to do to cross the stage. They get to say, ‘This part of my journey is complete.” And family are there to join in the celebration. Their peers are there crossing the stage with them.
Speeches are often filled with cliches, even the good ones, but that ok. The event is not about the people who get to speak, it’s about honouring the people who completed a task they set out to do, and who are moving on to new adventures. But first they get to cross the stage, they get to shake some hands and be told ‘Congratulations’, and they get to be the center of positive attention.
If I could share one thing with grads, it’s to enjoy the moment. It’s just a single moment to celebrate a long journey, so enjoy it, and feel… actually feel the sense of accomplishment. You did it, and now you get to cross the stage. It doesn’t matter what’s next in that moment, it only matters that you set out to do something and you did it. You graduated!
A week ago we celebrated my daughter’s 21st birthday. This weekend we celebrated my father-in-law’s 90th birthday, and the engagement of my niece. It’s wonderful to gather and celebrate these milestones. Next month I will be travelling across the country to visit my parents and sisters. While we won’t be celebrating anything specific, we will have an opportunity to spend time together.
As a kid I spent almost every Friday night at my grandparents with aunts, uncles, and cousins. Now every gathering is planned weeks and even months in advance. The spaces in between visits, gatherings, and special events seem wide. Nobody ‘drops by’ to say ‘Hi’, there is no “I was in the neighbourhood’ visits, no last minute invites for dinner.
Distances apart play a role in this distancing between gatherings, but so do changing norms. Maybe it’s time to rethink the way things have changed. A spontaneous dinner invite, a visit between meals that requires no extra work. A phone call to say, “what are you doing for the next couple hours’ followed by a visit.
Gathering with family and friends could be done far more often, with far less work and preparation. It just takes a little spontaneity, and an attitude that time spent together is too valuable to wait for special occasions.
Last night we had a school dance. I’m at a school with only 87 students, over 50 students came. The whole thing was organized by students, there was a student DJ, and the atmosphere was as alive as if there were 250 students there.
Most kids dressed up really fancy, some were in clothes they wore at school. Most danced, some sat in small groups and talked. Very few spent time on their phones. Everyone seemed to have fun.
This is a crazy time of year. My days involve a constant flow of overlapping demands. I had a Principal’s Christmas dinner on Monday night, I had my daughter’s university showcase performance Tuesday night, and I was at the school yesterday for close to 14 hours, only leaving after helping our custodian and locking up after the last students left… but it was totally worth it to see kids being kids.
Tonight I’m off to Victoria for my daughter’s university convocation tomorrow. Then on Wednesday evening my high school graduation ceremony is combined with our school award ceremony in an event we call iHub Annual (named so by a former student). Being a small school, we started this tradition in order to create a bigger audience for our grads, but this year we are only inviting grads and their families and we are hosting a YouTube Live event for the rest of the students. This might become our new way of running the event from now on.
Graduation is a special event for students. However, I didn’t go to my first two graduations. I was undergoing nose surgery for my high school grad, straightening a break that happened in a water polo game. Then my first university graduation happened almost 3 years after it should have and I decided not to go because I literally would have known no one else in the grad class. I hadn’t even set foot on the campus for two years at that point. Oddly enough, this delay was also for water polo, I took my final courses at a different university so that I could play varsity water polo for a year, then I ended up not applying for graduation… not knowing that this was necessary.
The first time I crossed the stage was for my UBC education degree with my new wife in the audience. Then she was there again with me when I crossed the stage in Eugene Oregon for my Masters. When I got my first university degree I shared, “I’m done with school, never again.” When I finished my Education degree, I declared again to anyone who would listen, “I’m done with school, never again.” Since finishing my masters, I haven’t said it… because that phrase doesn’t seem to be something I follow through with as intended. 🤣
Despite missing my first two grads, I understand the significance of the celebration. I know that for students it’s an important day. The end of high school, the end of a hard earned degree, these are big transition moments in a students life, a time to both look forward and back. It’s a time of trepidation and of excitement. It’s as right of passage ceremony that signifies the end of one part of a student’s life and the start of a new adventure.
One thing about being in education that’s different than many other jobs is that when Halloween arrives, it’s time to dress up. Every. Single. Year. Costumes are not something you do for that occasional party, it’s a yearly event. 22 years in education, 22 Halloweens in a row dressing up on the school day closest to this special day.
I’m not a huge fan of dressing up, but I jump in and participate. For the second year in a row I’ll incorporate a fun mask into my makeup, so that my safety measures are part of the costume rather than something over top of it. I bought a jagged toothed black mask and I’m going for a creepy black and white theme this year, but just 30 minutes before I start my makeup, I’m still not sure of the exact look I’m going for?
The thing about being an educator and celebrating on the Friday before Halloween is that when you finish work and you are covered in makeup, you look ridiculous doing things like going to the bank, or in my case today, going on a popular hike after school. I’ll probably be the only one with makeup on my face and without the mask, with only my upper half of my face painted, it will look even more silly. But I won’t have time to go home and get the paint off my ears and eyes, and I’d look even worse trying to get most of it off.
Another year, another costume. I might sound like I’m complaining, but I know it’s an event kids love, and I’m happy to join in on the celebration. Happy Halloween, a couple days early!
Happy Summer Solstice! It’s hard to believe that today is the longest day of the year.
When the shortest day comes on December 21st, I’m ready for the days to get longer. It’s dark early and it feels like the right time to swing the pendulum back, and to start seeing more daylight. But June 21st seems too early in the summer to be at the maximum daylight length.
It's not only #FathersDay in the U.S., but it's also the #SummerSolstice in the Northern Hemisphere!
This #GOESEast loop was made from images collected each day at 1400 UTC from Dec. 21, 2020 – June 18, 2021. It shows the change from winter to summer due to the #Earth's tilt. pic.twitter.com/Gcleg2sqPw
— NOAA Satellites (@NOAASatellites) June 20, 2021
School is still in session, and the entire summer holiday is ahead of us. In my head the long, bright days of summer are just approaching. But every day from now until next December will get a little shorter.
There are reasons why the dead of winter is delayed until after the shortest day of the year, and why summer is hottest after the longest day… but intuitively it doesn’t make a lot of sense. This day just seems to come too early in the year. This timing does explain why the summer solstice was such an important event to pre-industrial humans. This is the day that leads to a bountiful summer, when the sun provides the greatest rewards. It’s a time when all crops have been planted and many early crops will already be ready, and ripe for picking. And so there is enough food for a feast, and the hard work of caring for crops and harvesting are ahead.
Now, the solstice is just an interesting fact, rather than a big celebration. But I always look forward to the summer and winter solstice. The winter solstice because it’s nice to think of each day getting longer as the winter approaches. The summer solstice because the whole summer lies ahead. So, while many don’t think of this day as special, I do.
