Author Archives: Thelma

Recall

I heard on the news this morning that some plant based beverages have been recalled across Canada due to possible listeria contamination. When I later walked by the empty cooler shelves at a local store, this yellow-and-red tag was next to all the price labels where the recalled products usually sit.

I know the tag must have something to do with the recall, but what is it supposed to be telling me? There was no information posted about the recall or what to do if I had already purchased product, which luckily I hadn’t. Is the tag telling me to call someone? Is it a re-call? Colour me perplexed.

“This is a recording”

We started getting early morning spam phone calls on our landlines a few years ago (our house has an apartment for my mother). Early as in 6:30 a.m. early. My mother was not usually out of bed or, if she was, she was getting dressed or in the bathroom, and she would rush to answer the phone. As her mobility decreased, I was afraid this would all end in a fall.

To prevent a possible tumble, I started taking her kitchen phone off the hook every morning when I got up. I’d hear a dial tone followed by a ring noise and then a voice telling me to hang up and try my call again (apparently known as an intercept message). After the message was repeated twice, a rapid busy signal would start and eventually would go dead after a long period.

My mother would replace the handset when she was in the kitchen and ready for her day, and if someone called to tell her that her Windows machine was acting up or she had won a cruise, she was awake and ready to hang up on them. This was an easy solution to an annoying problem.

We have two phone lines in our house. Our copper line was replaced in 2021 by a fibre optic cable that gives us internet, television and telephone. As my mother doesn’t use the internet, and we are able to wirelessly bounce a television signal from the Bell Home Hub modem to give her television, we decided at that time to leave her copper telephone line as it was.

Until Bell Aliant sent out letters earlier this year. The first informed us that if my mother’s copper line broke, they wouldn’t fix it and my mother would have to get a fibre line, which was fair enough, I suppose. That was followed a month later by another letter saying they would be cancelling her phone service by August if she didn’t switch to their fibre service. A classic Bell passive-aggressive move.

As we already had the fibre line and Home Hub in our house, it was an easy matter of some magic person left over from Island Tel days doing some programming at the Bell Aliant office in Charlottetown and rerouting my mother’s phone number to our modem (each of the Home Hubs has room for two phone lines). We lucked out again and had a tech come to our house (another Island Tel vet nearing retirement) who was able to make things work in our basement to easily route from our modem to my mother’s phone.

The morning following the switch, I picked up my mother’s handset expecting to hear the regular pattern. As I moved around her kitchen, I heard the dial tone followed by the signal to warn that the phone was off the hook, but no gentle, helpful voice.

I thought that was the end of the voice, but a couple of weeks later I was looking after a friend’s house while she was away and remembered she still had her copper line service, so I had one last visit with the Bell Aliant voice:

Anyone know who recorded this message? It certainly sounds like an Atlantic Canadian voice, maybe PEI but could be Newfoundland or Cape Breton, too. Recorded on tape? A copy of a copy of a copy? Let me know what you know, and please try your call again.

Canso

When I heard that a restored Canso airplane was going to be visiting the former air force base in Summerside, I switched a few things around so I could take my mother to see it.

My mother was a clerk in the Royal Canadian Air Force (Women’s Division) during the Second World War, serving from April 1943 to January 1945. She was posted to the RCAF base at Torbay, Newfoundland for 13 months and would have been there at this exact time 80 years ago.

Seeing a Canso, loaded with bombs and depth charges to hunt German U-boats, would have been an everyday thing for her then, nothing special, but today was certainly remarkable. She was interested to see one again, and thought it was smaller than she remembered. This Canso looked very different as it was painted as a water bomber, which was its last role as a working aircraft, and not as a military plane. She found it difficult to believe that 80 years had passed, thought a lot about all the friends she had made, now all gone.

It was windy with rain threatening as I pushed her wheelchair across the tarmac towards the plane. She learned to march on a similar runway in Ottawa, marching back and forth, back and forth. They issued the women shoes that were one size too big because all the marching would swell even the daintiest of WD feet.

It was to that very Summerside runway that she had been headed one day, probably also in 1944, when the plane she had hitched a ride from Torbay to visit her family on PEI spotted a U-boat surface in the Gulf of Saint Lawrence. They scrambled to get out of the area and radio the submarine’s position so bombers could be dispatched. She had been sitting in the co-pilot’s seat, so hopped out pretty quickly and the plane returned to Torbay. She never heard, or has forgotten, if that U-boat was sunk.

The Canso we saw today is one of only 13 remaining of the 3,600 built. My mother, once one of 17,000 WDs, is probably one of only a few still alive. Possibly one of the last people who saw a U-boat. My mother is still very much who she has always been – independent, generous, jolly, disciplined – but she has also morphed into being a living historical artefact, still able to tell her story at nearly 102. Rare birds indeed.

Corporal Vivian B. Phillips W312667

Unsweetened chocolate for the fail

I’ve been making David Lebovitz’s brownies for years, and it’s a reliable and delicious recipe that just happens to be gluten free. I made them a few years ago for my pal, Emily, who is a chef, and she now sells them at her restaurant takeout counter, they are that good.

I always try to use Fair Trade chocolate and cocoa, but I needed a contribution to a meal for after a wake and didn’t have any chocolate on hand, so I raided my mother’s pantry. All my life she has had two boxes of Baker’s Chocolate on hand, a blue box of unsweetened and a red box of semi-sweet, but there was only the blue box, so I grabbed it and started baking.

Unsweetened chocolate is 100% cacao. It did not work. The chocolate Lebovitz suggested (bittersweet or semisweet) contain cocoa butter and sugar, which must have been what was missing.

Do make these brownies, and learn from my chocolate ignorance.

Am I a musician?

So, my trumpet and I made it to the Meet and Squeak on January 31. I only knew one person when I got there, another trumpeter I had played in a marching band with in the early 1980s. It was thrillingly scary to be sight reading again after 40 years, feeling the locked doors in my brain click open with every passing bar – that’s a crescendo, count four bars, mezzo piano, staccato. Breathe, take a breath, you’re running out of breath! Squeak!

I grinned through the entire evening, amazed to be once again surrounded by the blending of instruments, turning little dots on paper into coherent and lyrical sound, back in a place of comfort and belonging with all the band kids!

I wondered if I would be able to commit to the weekly rehearsals, but somehow my family and I made it work and I only missed a couple of nights due to having COVID-19 for the first time (and nursing my mother, also a first-timer, through it at the same time, which was interesting).

We are called the East Prince Community Band. It’s a lovely group of people, some extremely talented folks and others like me who are trying to find their way back through the music maze. Our conductor, Tristan Fox, is totally committed to the idea of life-long music making, encouraging and funny, everything you could want in a band leader.

We ended the first season this past Wednesday with a concert at the school where we had been rehearsing, Summerside Intermediate. We played seven songs including a Beatles medley, a snappy march, Bohemian Rhapsody and a zydeco number. It was so much fun, we sounded pretty good, and I’m looking forward to rehearsals starting again in the fall.

I’ve been practicing a half hour most days of the week and guess what I discovered? Practicing consistently improves your playing. Who knew? Oh right, all my music teachers. I wouldn’t say I’m 100% back to where I was when I last played in June 1984, but I’m not far off. My range is slowly increasing, and I can hit a clean high F most of the time. I can quickly play almost-flawless chromatic scales. My breath control is so much better, and my tone is getting cleaner.

I felt that my skills were strong enough that I volunteered to play The Last Post at a Legion funeral service today in Tyne Valley. I have vague memories of playing at outdoor Remembrance Day services, so I know I had done it before and hoped I could do it again. It was for an old family friend, a veteran and dedicated Legion member, our families woven together in a million different ways, and I wanted to honour his long life of service.

The first person I encountered when I entered the funeral home this afternoon was a man who moved to our area a few years ago. He looked quizzically at my instrument case and I told him I was going to be the bugler, and he said “Oh, I didn’t know you were a musician.” “Yes, I am,” was my immediate reply, which didn’t seem to surprise him, but certainly surprised me.

Am I a musician? Was I a musician these past 40 years, just one who didn’t play music? My rapid reentry into that identity feels natural, like I had never stopped playing. I started to read music and play piano when I was six, so I had learned another language that settled deep into my brain. I’ve always loved listening to music, singing along, dancing, but I had stopped playing, and now I had stopped stopped playing.

I made it through The Last Post, the minute of silence and Reveille without too many flubs. People were moved and appreciative of the live performance of that meaningful sequence. I was relieved to have that first behind me.

I seem to be a musician.

Bird Notes (tweets, I guess)

A Northern Flicker, a ground-foraging brown woodpecker with a lovely red cap, just landed in our yard and dug around for ants and worms. Earlier today I saw something new: an American Goldfinch drinking from a hummingbird feeder, with a friend sitting on a branch nearby until a feisty hummer ran them both off.

After a couple of years without any Great Blue Herons living and feeding on our river, which they have always have done in my lifetime, there are now two and sometimes three. All three flew together over our yard the other day and I felt like I was in Fred Flintstone’s backyard, their huge wingspan and loud rusty-hinge squawking casting ancient shadows as I looked up (mouth closed…always close your mouth when birds are flying over. You’re welcome.).

A juvenile American Robin, nearly as big as its parents and almost the same colour except for the speckled breast, bounced across the lawn at about 5:30 this morning, capably finding its own food, but still quietly calling for its parents to share what they were finding. Soon the youngster will be on its own, and the parents could easily set some more eggs this summer. It’s a dangerous world for baby birds, so this little family is a great success story.

My life list on the Merlin app sits at 36, all viewed from my yard. Such richness, the morning chorus this time of year filled with joyous conversations and hope.

I wonder what my chickens think of the sparrows who sometimes forage in their run, or the flocks of geese that honk overhead, or the noisy, feisty Blue Jays that rattle the mornings. My guess is that they don’t really pay any attention to other birds unless a danger call is broadcast, a warning that a hawk or eagle is in the area, and they take cover.

Otherwise, they are just busy being chickens, and that seems to be sound advice. Just be the bird you are meant to be.

Invasion of the worm snatchers

Blind luck

I am certainly not the first person on the internet to share the hack of using old window blind slats for garden plant markers, but here’s my preferred method for cutting them so the marker has one pointy end for sticking in soil and one square end where the plant information can be written:

I think I’ve only seen them squared off on both ends, but sometimes it’s nice to be able to shove a marker in next to something you would like to remember to move when the time is right (and that time isn’t right then) and the soil is perhaps a bit hard and unyielding.

I was lucky to get metal blinds from a friend who was replacing hers, giving me what I imagine will be a lifetime supply. I only cut a few at a time as needed as I find them easier to store in their original length; I put a shower curtain hook through the holes at one end and hang them on the wall.

Bonus content: I’ve found dozens of uses for metal shower curtain hooks in the garden. They are cheap, reusable light-duty hooks; buy a package and you will be hooked.

BirdCast

There are many websites for people to submit sightings of different migrating birds and monarch butterflies as they travel across North America, but BirdCast uses weather radar to produce live bird migration maps for the continental United States, as well as nightly forecasts.

The map for the entire United States at 11:30 pm Atlantic Time May 23, 2024.

I’m watching the live data for Washington County, Maine, and at 11:45 pm when I’m writing this, BirdCast estimates there are over 430,000 birds in flight over that one county right now heading north east in the direction of PEI. The dashboard estimates average flight speed, altitude and even provides estimates of which species are most likely to be on the move tonight, many of them tiny summer visitors who nest near our house like the Common Yellowthroat, Ovenbird, Northern Parula and and Blackburnian Warbler.

I have spent a lot of time wondering what the landscape around me looked like before European invasion, how it would have felt to wander through the ancient forest that was felled to build sailing ships and fine furniture. Until someone invents a virtual reality program to allow me to walk through an approximation of what had been here, the next best thing is to stand outside with my eyes closed each morning at this time of year during the dawn chorus and listen as each newly-returned little songbird offers up its timeless song, creating an ancient aural landscape. My heart is beating as fast as their little wings right now in anticipation of their arrival.

Celestial Awe

A total solar eclipse last month and a spectacular aurora borealis show on the night of May 10th have both luckily occurred during that sweet spot on PEI when the snow has disappeared but the biting insects haven’t yet emerged, when being outside is a pleasure.

I have seen the aurora on the northern horizon before, but between 11pm and midnight they danced and flickered dimly overhead and all around, something I’ve never experienced. We don’t live in a completely dark-sky environment, as there are a few yard and street lights dotted around, and the glow from the lights in the town of Alberton to the north can sometimes be detected, but it’s pretty close, and I got some nice photos.

To the south
To the north

It was only 4C on Friday night and I hadn’t dressed appropriately for the cold, damp weather, but I stretched out on the grass anyway to watch the show. Last night I was better prepared for another cool night, donning long underwear, heavy sweater, gloves, hat, winter boots and splash pants.

Alas, the northern lights stayed undetectable except in long exposure photos, just a glow on the horizon. So my careful preparation wouldn’t totally have been in vain, I recruited Steven to join me in a gimmicky shot to commemorate our month of celestial awe, but now looking at it, I think it also captured how we have moved through our life together over these past 25 years: arm in arm, heads up, finding each other in an infinite and beautiful universe, walking through the darkness toward the light.

Behind The Scenes at Eurovision 2024

It’s the Eurovision final tomorrow, one of my favourite days of the year! I was #teamspain up until the last act of the second semi-final last night and now I’m also #teamnetherlands. I’m not sure I’ve ever been able to pick a Eurovision winner, being incurably North American, but I love the energy of the performers, the cheesy jokes, and the slick television production. Here’s a look behind the well-oiled machine that has been built in Malmö over the past few weeks. What they pull off so seamlessly is nothing short of miraculous. Douze points!