Knowing by Heart
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These columns were originally published in the Kings County Record between 1984 and 2016.
The illustrations are by Alice, most of the photographs are by Lee

Happy Birthday Johann Sebastian Bach

21/3/2019

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Easter being very late in 2019, my wife's birthday fell in lent, along with mine.  But there have been years when she got to celebrate her birthday with a lot more fanfare.  This column reflects back on one of those years.   

Some people have all the luck. Take my wife and me now. This year, again, she has her birthday in Easter season while mine came along in Lent.

It's been a problem of long-standing, this question of her birthday and mine. When I was a young sprout I do not remember birthdays being a problem. As a matter of fact, my birthday had some status in the world, and was a subject of comment, since the first day of spring and I came into the world together. (Well, not actually, since the first day of spring has been around a lot longer than I have, incredible as that may seem to the young. But the day on which I first presented 

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Sinister types turn out to be auspicious!

14/3/2019

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PictureArtwork ©Alice Whitney 2019
We heard an interesting piece on the CBC the other day about the increasing rarity of cursive writing. There is an exhibit at the New Brunswick Museum running through the first of May 0f 2019 asking whether writing is still relevant to you? Please enjoy this column that was originally published in the Kings County Record on March 8th of 2005.

I had occasion, the other day, to take up a writing imple­ment which does not plug into the electrical service, and an innocent bystander, observing the whole operation said, “How can you write like that?” Of course, I knew right away that the questioner was right-handed. And of course, I as a lefty, also realized that I had unconsciously gone back to holding the paper the way I had been taught in grade school.
 
In our day, the approved method of making marks on the page was something called “Palmer penman­ship.” I don’t know who Mr. Palmer was, but as far as I was concerned, he certainly had it in for kids. I have a little book on Slant Gothic (1918) that brings it all back. Consider the first page: “What is to be desired is quality not quantity… Do not leave a single poor letter on your Exercise sheet if you can improve it in any way. Therefore, make each letter so lightly that it can be erased with two or three strokes of an eraser.”


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The down side of progress

1/3/2019

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PictureArtwork © Alice Whitney 2019
This column – originally published in the Kings County Record on February 23rd, 1999 – seems appropriate given the long, cold, wet winter that we have been experiencing. As always, please enjoy!

The upheavals in the postal system that had people practically in tears in Sussex a while back have not yet penetrated to these distant outposts of civilization. But we are already seeing signs and portents, and must assume that what the prophets of the Old Testament were fond of calling "the Last Days" are soon to appear over the horizon.
 
We have had our emergency services numbers for quite a while now and are pleased to think that, if need be, the emergency services can find us. In fact, they have already found us. One of NB Tel's service men had come out here to explore an odd glitch in the line and the next thing either of us knew, first one, then two, police cars steamed up the driveway and wanted to know why we had called 911. It was gratifying to know that the response was so prompt, only neither the telephone repairman nor I had felt the need of reinforcements at that particular moment. And when I called 911 back as requested, it turned out that our street number on record with 911 was different from the street number we had been given as our very own, and no-one else's. That raised the question as to how the two police cars had found us so quickly, but it didn’t seem that just then was a good time to explore the matter.


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    Words & Images

    We moved to our farm in Sussex, New Brunswick from Toronto in 1977, only moving away in 2014. 

    For over 30 years of our life there, I wrote a weekly column for the Kings County Record in Sussex chronicling the little events that are the heart of ‘daily life’ in a small place in the country.  These blog posts are drawn from those columns.

    The weekly column became, over the years, a series of bench-marks or surveyor’s stakes to record the contours of the place we lived, its dreaming hills and fertile valleys, icy chasms and swift-flowing streams. 

    While I no longer live on the farm, we continue to share the columns from time to time on this blog.  And very soon you will be able to read my book!  To be published in December 2019.  

    ----
    Images on the blog are drawn from my own photography,  and my wife Alice's artwork.  We occasionally resort to other people's images when nothing we have on hand suits the content of the post.  

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