A Call for Community Support

A prayer request

for a man named Fred Gamble

who lives in Amherst Head, Nova Scotia,

and is a member of the Northumberland Pastoral Charge.

An invitation has been issued for

Wednesday, September 30, at 7:30 pm, Atlantic time 

(6:30 pm Eastern time),

to harness the power of community prayer

for Fred, who is very ill but as yet undiagnosed.

Fred has been receiving blood transfusions since June,

and is no longer allowed to drive or work,

and yet no one knows what is wrong with him.

So, if you are willing, 

please take a moment on Wednesday evening

to think about Fred

and send healing energy,

encouraging thoughts,

and love

to him. 

xo

 

She Says Tomatoes

When my neighbour Rose phones and says, "Come get 'em," I go. She's very persuasive -- and perhaps she thinks I need some encouragement in the fine old arts of preserving what we can grow ourselves.
Because Rose grows.
Everything.
And there is nothing that can be grown that Rose can't preserve. She freezes. She bottles. She makes the best mustard pickles ever; made with zucchini because she ran out of cucumbers, I ate it right out of the bottle, right out of the fridge, with a spoon. Like candy.
So Rose called this morning and said she had tomatoes -- more tomatoes -- for me.
"The romas you gave me two weeks ago are ripe now," I told her.
"You haven't done anything with them yet?"
Poor Rose. I'm not much of a student.
When I arrived at Rose's house, she handed me her recipe for salsa and a bag of just-picked roma tomatoes, 11 pounds worth, then hauled two grocery bags of frozen romas out of her freezer.
She simply has so much produce, she can give it away to me. Unless you think I'm a total mooch, however, Rose no longer has chickens so I am able to repay her generosity by giving her eggs.
"I did you a favour," she added and peeled the lid off a 15 kg margarine bucket to reveal beefsteak tomatoes -- what I'd come to get -- already skinned and cored.
"I had time so I did them," Rose said. It had been two hours since she called me. She had nothing else to do so she did my tomatoes. I am in awe.
Tonight I stewed tomatoes. I would rather have canned but I don't have a big enough canner and for the same reason I haven't used the now-ripe romas, I don't have time.
Preserving is an essential art, it's the way to do food for the winter, but it takes organization and commitment in September. Baby steps this year: first, strawberry jam, now tomatoes.
And salsa on Saturday. I have 20 pounds of roma tomatoes to deal with.

Classroooms Shouldn't Be Battlefields

As published in The Citizen-Record newspaper on Wednesday, September 23, 2015, by Sara Jewell

When I lost my part-time job last spring, I decided to return to substitute teaching and had to update my file, dormant for more than three years. After glancing through all the forms I had to complete, I finished reading the accompanying cover letter.

            The last paragraph read, “All CCRSB employees who work with students are required to have watched the Severely Disruptive Behaviour videos prepared and provided by the Nova Scotia Department of Education.”

            I actually pushed my chair away from my desk when I read that, instinctively put space between me and the words “severely disruptive behaviour”. Those words made my entire body clench with anxiety.

            When I earned a Bachelor of Education degree in my early twenties, I didn’t feel ready to be in a classroom. I was qualified to teach high school English but didn’t yet feel mature or experienced enough so I went on to other work in radio and journalism.

            Moving to Nova Scotia in my late thirties, I felt ready to try substitute teaching. While I never felt unappreciated by the teachers or vice-principals (who hire subs), I was never sure of how to discipline the students. There were no instructions from administration; some VPs were fine with the troublemakers being sent to the office; others seem to expect me to deal with them.

            Some students once said to me, “What’s the point? You’re just going to send me to the office anyway,” while in another situation, others pointed out, “Miss, why don’t you just send them to the office?”

            Classroom management was challenging for me. My natural inclination is to not remove students from the learning environment but I never figured out how to control the disruptive kids.

Now I would have to deal with severely disruptive behaviour? No thank you.

            My best friend worked an Education Assistant in Ontario and spent a year assigned to an 11-year-old male student with severely disruptive behaviour.

            “I never, ever knew what I was coming in to,” she told me. “Every day was like going to war.”

            She called the classroom a disaster, saying the teacher couldn’t teach with that student in the room.

            “Here’s the other issue,” she added. “He was just one kid in that class of 21. There were seven other kids who had problems at home, learning issues, emotional distress who didn’t get any resources.”

            I doubt it’s any different here in Nova Scotia.

Asking any teacher to deal with severely disruptive behaviour is wrong. Allowing that particular student in a classroom is putting the rights of one individual above the rights of the group.

            A classroom is a work environment for teachers, students and educational assistants; all of them are entitled to be safe in that environment, to be able to work without distraction or anxiety. Severely disruptive behaviour goes beyond what teachers should be expected to deal with, and students cannot learn in the midst of that chaos.

            School is a place of learning for everyone but one student and his or her parents/legal guardians shouldn’t be allowed to turn a classroom into a battlefield. 

Glamourous Life of a Country Girl

Five of the six winners and three of the six judges.

We were in Halifax today for the awards presentation of the Atlantic Writing Competition, at the absolutely gorgeous, light-filled, book-filled new Halifax Public Library (how many years until we stop calling it "new"?!).
We checked out the Word On The Street vendors then cruised around Spring Garden Road, ate at a Turkish restaurant for lunch then shopped for shoes and sweaters and dresses.
The Nova Scotia Country Boy was very amiable about it all, mostly because he had a nice steak and fries for lunch, and he knew he was stopping at the Masstown Market for a big scoop of chocolate ice cream.
When we arrived home, finally, at five o'clock, I changed out of my skirt and blouse, put on shorts and a T-shirt, my Bog boots and gloves, and headed outside to clean the hen pen.
The glamourous life of a country writer!

Overwhelmed With Words

See my name in the column on the right.

This is one of the reasons my photo-a-day (ish) has fallen off the rails recently. Writing! 'Cause it's what I do best.
Each evening I think, "I will write on the blog first thing, before any other work gets done," because that's when the day and my brain are fresh, when my ideas are plump and my words ripe.
But between the sun coming up later, delaying my morning walk, and the large pot of coffee waiting for me when I get back, I don't seem to get upstairs to my office as early as I expect. Best intentions: 9 a.m. Reality: 10:15 a.m.
Sometimes I am even distracted by chores. Which reminds me, I have to bring in a load of laundry from the clotheline! Now that the sunshine has returned, so too has the process of creating clean clothes.
But what comes first is the writing. I write church messages then I write my bi-weekly Field Notes column. I'm editing essays for a book collection and I wrote a children's book that won a contest.
This is my version of farming: I've planted seeds and I've weeded and watered and now I'm poking around the fields to see what is ready to harvest. Hard work and hope - what farmers and writers have in common.

*I posted a small excerpt from the opening of my winning manuscript on my Facebook page along with a couple of photos that illustrate a couple of things mention on the section. Check it out via this link:
https://www.facebook.com/sarajewellmattinson/posts/746205785526081

Chase the Ace

A guy from town brought his pet crow down to his trailer by the river so now we are enjoying the very vocal company of Ace the Crow. We hope he's a frequent visitor to our abode.
It's kind of neat, actually, to get so close to a crow. Every noticed how many are around yet we never get very close? They are a smart, wily bird -- a corvid, I've learned -- that represents creation and magic.
These two fellows are soon to be best friends. If it didn't seem so awful to steal babies from a nest, I'd suggest we kidnap -- er, adopt -- a baby crow next spring.

The Story of A Man Who Made Violins

The current issue of Saltscapes magazine includes an article I wrote about a local man who taught math, ran cadets and made award-winning violins. 

“I think the fiddle maker puts his whole self into that violin and if you know the person, it’s even nicer because you know how that person is going to express himself through a violin," Ivan Hicks told me during an interview. Hicks, a master fiddler from New Brunswick, enjoys playing a couple of MacCleave fiddles.