Youth

This morning I was starting to put together my latest newsletter (you can subscribe here), and I was going to use the words above as my lead in as it’s an expression that I have been using for a great many years. Then I thought about it and decided that I would write a blog post with those words as the title.

Just for interest, I then Googled them. The first things that came up were a 1992 song from 4 Non Blondes called What’s Up? and a 1966 song from Buffalo Springfield called For What It’s Worth (Stop, Hey What’s That Sound).

As it turns out, as an old fart, both of these songs are quite familiar to me, and both have developed a large following, being considered as either a protest or an type of anthem by those at the time.

For myself, I feel that both could be entirely applicable to events of the current times.

That being said, these songs were not what generated the thought process for this blog post.

Rather, it was a bit of contemplation of recent personal happenings.

Top of mind, yesterday, along with several Kiwanis colleagues, I attended a memorial service for a friend and long time club member. Ed Bean was a member of the Kiwanis Club of South Edmonton for sixty-five years, caring deeply about anything which would benefit young people. More than that, he was a pillar of the Edmonton community. He helped create and maintain Crystal Kids, an organization teaching, mentoring and nurturing at-risk, inner city kids, named after Crystal Glass, a company he formed in 1949. He was involved, over the years, in a great many community positive happenings as well as being a member of the Edmonton Investors Group which owned the Edmonton Oilers of the National Hockey League from 1998 to 2008. A true people person, Ed will be sorely missed, however his heritage will live long.

I recently set up and started a private family Facebook group, designed to introduce and acquaint diverse family members with each other. Like many families, as time has passed many of us are not familiar with distant cousins, and even may not actually know that we have these cousins. (And no, I’m not providing a link for this blog post, that’s what private is all about.)

As I’m working on this group, I have been delving more and more into our family history. It keeps getting more interesting, and, perhaps unsurprisingly, the odd time someone shows up that I knew about, but didn’t know we were related. I do imagine there are many families which may be like that. Check into yours, never know what you’ll find.

Another thing going on, there is a chance that I may actually have my hip replacement surgery on the horizon. As a result, I’m once again going through a battery of tests, procedures and activities in preparation. Perhaps this time it will actually happen. Fingers crossed.

There are a few other things going on that I won’t bore you with. Be it known however, that snow, ice and cold weather are still “in vogue” here in Edmonton and as such the trike and SLK are still ensconced in the garage. (Now I’m making a sad face.)

Bottom line… life is proceeding in it’s unique fashion and our job is to do our best to adapt to it’s flow. It seems to last longer that way.

My last post was the beginning of January and so much has happened in the past few months.

I have thought many times about doing a post, however it is obvious that thinking and doing are vastly different.

The spark for this blog post was rain, or more accurately, the smell of approaching rain.

As a youngster growing up in the rural countryside of central Alberta, just northeast of Edmonton, one of my fond memories was the smell of a pending spring rain, bringing with it life and freshness to wash away the final vestiges of winter. Sitting in my home office yesterday afternoon that delightful smell entered my window and once again touched my olfactory receptors. The rains came after and continued in a steady fashion for just over twelve hours. Overnight the lawn across from us has changed from brown to green.

Methinks I will need to type a blog post or two in the next while to catch up on the events of the past few months, both local and international, along with their effect on us. For now though, I will just concentrate, and enjoy, the fresh smell of a spring rain.