Category: Remembering

Qu’Appelle and ESL

Audio Recordings, Relationships, Remembering / tagged , , , , , , , / / by

This poem references the experience of First Nations children who were systematically stripped of their culture and language in Canada’s residential schools. Today is set aside in the spirit of Truth and Reconciliation and marked by the wearing of orange shirts in memory of one young girl’s experience.

https://www.orangeshirtday.org/phyllis-story.html

https://www.techlifetoday.ca/articles/2020/why-we-wear-orange-on-orange-shirt-day-nait

Home Made Ice Cream

Audio Recordings, Family, Farm, Nostalgia, Ranch Life, Remembering / tagged / / by
When I was five we lived on a ranch still forty miles and five years away from electric power We only got to eat ice cream when hail lay deep enough on the ground to be scooped into the old hand mixer Many a hot evening in August and July five of us sat on those hard ranch steps looking out at the Western sky Watching the black clouds and the grey building and rolling our way Silently praying our protestant Hail Marys four for and Dad against

This is the time in the life of the farm, between seeding and harvest, where all is in God’s hands. It will rain, or it won’t, it will hail, or it won’t. Might as well go fishing.
We will be honoring that tradition by taking a couple of weeks off to enjoy a little traveling.
Wishing you ease and grace as well. Neil and Patricia