Eclipses and Earthquakes

Last weekend , there was a Ring of Fire (annular eclipse) across Western and Central Canada and the south-western United States.  I was talking to people about it on Yahoo that day when I saw the following post:

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You won't need to see the eclipse. just listen to the new [sic] for the next 48 hours.

There will be earthquakes and mega damages all around the world ... Cayce and Nostradamus have predicted this as well as the Mayans and other past civilizations [sic] for May 20-21, 2012. Prelude to the next 7 months and final Dec 21, 2012.

My reply (which had a number of people up in arms, as well as some supporters):

And just how would the next few days or months differ from the past 50 years (since those are the ones I remember)? These natural disasters go on all the time. But as soon as someone says that it was predicted, everyone starts paying attention for a change and they *think* it's true because they are actually watching the news. It's actually just a self-fulfilling prophecy.

* * *

Well, there were no earthquakes after the eclipse. There was one in Italy, but it was about 24 hours before, so I don’t think we can count it. Not only that, but it was in the interior and also in an area that rarely gets quakes.

Then I recalled hearing that eclipses can affect the tides and make them stronger, thereby triggering earthquakes. Well, never having lived near a body of water that had tides, I didn’t know very much about them ... only what I can recall from holidays to the seaside.

So, I started looking up information.

An earthquake is being predicted for Japan  this coming July. Different sites are claiming that it is being caused by a) the annular eclipse that we just had, and b) a lunar eclipse coming up on June 4^th. To me, they seem to be a trifle distant in time to be causing earthquakes.

But, hey, what do I know? So I went back to the recent tsunami disasters. (Well, recent to me.)

I started with the tsunami that hit Japan on March 11^th of last year. There was an eclipse on December 21, 2010 – over northern Canada. That’s two-and-a-half months before the tsunami hit.

Then I went back to Boxing Day, 2004, when about 350,000 people died in 14 countries around the Indian Ocean. There was an eclipse over two months before – but it crossed from Russia, across the Pacific to North America -- nowhere near the affected area.

Not convinced, I looked at the Haiti earthquake of January 12, 2010 – partly because I was personally acquainted with someone who died there. There was a partial lunar eclipse on December 31, 2009 – over northern Africa and across Asia. Am I being entirely too sceptical, thinking that it happened on the other side of the world? There was also an annular eclipse on January 15^th, 2010 – across Africa, Sri Lanka and central China.

Then I started looking up eclipses in general.

1)       There have been 26 lunar eclipses since the beginning of 2001. June 4, 2012 will be number 29. Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_lunar_eclipses

2)       There have also been 25 solar eclipses since the beginning of 2001. Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lists_of_solar_eclipses

That makes for a total of 51 so far this century. I haven’t been able to tie most of them to earthquakes or tsunamis at all. If there was a tie-in, I would have expected 51 disasters withing a few days of an eclipse. Not that I want disasters to happen. Far from it.

A huge amount of information is out there and it would take me weeks – if not months – to sift through it all. I found a number of blogs that claim that there is a correlation between eclipses and earthquakes, but no scientific sites.

Until I find such information from a reliable source, I will continue to be a doubting Thomasina, and assume that disasters of this nature happen when and where they happen. I will continue donating to the disaster relief funds, according to my means, and stay out of the way.

Signed, A Sceptic.

Uniquely Canadian Holiday

Victoria Day has a variety of names. May 24^th weekend. May two-four. The two-four weekend – as if it had been named for the number of beer bottles in the case.

My first trip to Europe was in May 1982 – the year of the Falklands War. I had booked my coach tour of the United Kingdom in January. The war started in April. Of course I didn’t have travel insurance. I couldn’t afford it.

Not that I would have cancelled anyway. I was finally going to see some of the places – and some of the things – I had studied in school. I had saved for a long time. Well, it seemed like a long time to me at the age of 25. Nothing was going to prevent me from going to Europe.

I arrived in London in mid-May and took off to see the country. May 24 was a Monday that year and, that day, I passed by a bank. It was a lovely day, warm and sunny, and the doors were propped open. I peered inside and it looked just like one of the sets from Mary Poppins. Feeling a trifle bemused, I wandered in. No customers were in line and the pleasant teller asked if she could help me.

“You’re open,” I said, gazing around at the most beautiful bank I’d ever seen.

“Yes,” she replied, appearing a trifle puzzled but smiling.

“But it’s Queen Victoria’s birthday!” I blurted.

“Is it really?” she asked. Another teller joined her, also smiling.

I closed my eyes when the realisation struck me. How stupid could I be? Of course Britons wouldn’t celebrate the birthdays of dead monarchs. They would end up with over 40 holidays a year – and that’s just since 1066! That’s when I realised why Canada celebrates Victoria Day. Queen Victoria was the monarch on the throne during all the years of negotiations leading up to when we actually became a country.

The differences between, say, Canada and the United States? I was already accustomed to those. I lived an hour’s drive from a bridge to the U.S., after all. They made sense to me. But I guess that, being part of the Commonwealth, it hadn’t occurred to me that Victoria Day wasn’t celebrated in other areas. Duh!

Just call me a stupid colonial. (I’m smarter now.)

It's Mother's Day

My mother died over 25 years ago, after two and a half years of battling cancer. She had been due to retire later that month.

I could write about how we rarely saw eye-to-eye, or how we fought on a regular basis, because that is what I remember most about her. Instead, I have recently come to realise how much of a pioneer my mother was. Indeed, all of the women on my mother’s side of the family were strong women who worked hard all their lives.

Let’s start with my maternal grandmother. Grandma Campbell was a teacher. Many people would consider this a suitably feminine role to play in the late 1910’s. In fact, it was a job that was later known as ‘pink collar’ work – women’s work outside the home. What was unusual about Grandma? At a time when female teachers were fired by school boards as soon as they were wed, she was one of the first women in Ontario to teach after she was married.

In the late 1930’s, my grandfather who was a veteran of WWI, had been offered the job of Post Master in eastern Ontario. My grandparents sold their farm on highway 43, and moved into the village of Avonmore. In 1952, my grandfather died and my grandmother was offered the position. Again, it was unusual for women to hold that job – but not unheard of. There were sacks of mail to be hauled around and dealt with. My grandmother would have been 53 at the time and, according to her, had very little trouble lugging the mail. The only time she had difficulty was each December, with the Christmas rush.

Meanwhile, my mother had also become a teacher in the late 1940’s. She married in 1952. Fortunately for her, teachers were allowed to stay on at their jobs after they were married. It was almost expected by this point.

I was born in early May in the mid-50’s. During these years there was no such thing as maternity leave -- and very little sick leave. It was also the time when Grade 8 students had to write entrance exams at the end of June in order to be allowed into high school. My mother was concerned about her students (in a one room school) and the reviews she wanted to cover with them before the exams. At the beginning of June, she was back at school – taking me with her. I’m told she put a blanket on the floor and set me on it – as farm wives had done for centuries to keep an eye on their infants while going about their kitchen chores.

So, at the tender age of one month, I went to school. I’m not sure how much I could possibly have absorbed, but I was later considered one of the ‘bright brats’, as we were sometimes termed, and put into an accelerated program. But I’m no pioneer, so enough of me ...

In 1962, we moved to Ottawa. My father had been working for TCA (Trans Canada Airlines), the precursor of Air Canada, and was commuting an hour each way. My mother got a job in the Nepean Township School Board. In the interview, she was promised a salary of $4,000 per year. When she arrived to teach there, having given up her previous job in Long Sault, she was informed that she would be earning $3,600 per year instead.

Later that year, my grandmother called us and said she was lonely and could she come and live with us? I was ecstatic because I missed Grandma terribly. That was when she gave up her job as Post Mistress, at the age of 63, and moved to Ottawa. She started supply teaching with the Ottawa Public School Board in order to augment her pension.

I remember playing with other kids my age in our neighbourhood and hearing their mothers make pitying remarks to me about the fact that my mother worked. I couldn’t understand why the comments were being made. Everyone worked, didn’t they? I also couldn’t understand what these women did all day. As far as I could see, they met for coffee, went shopping, and watched the soaps. They certainly didn’t do arithmetic flash cards with their kids, as my parents did with me, and then had the temerity to wonder out loud why I was doing so well in school.

In the mid-1960’s, my mother realised that it wouldn’t be long before all teachers in Ontario would be required to have a university degree – and that no one would be exempt. So, a couple of years before the ruling came down that they had to start taking courses, she signed up for a university course during the summer. My grandmother was given the job of keeping me quiet and, preferably, out of the house.

I realise now how scared my mother must have been. She had been out of school for over 15 years at that point and the prospect of studying and developing good study habits must have been terrifying – especially when you consider that her continued employment hinged on getting grades good enough to graduate.


By the mid-1970's my mother had her BA and her Master's degree in Education. She was qualified to teach every option available from Kindergarten through to grade 8 -- including woodwork and metalwork. Her favourite position, though, was a the school librarian.

Flash forward to my first job and filing my first income tax.

Mom helped me understand how to read government forms – and how to call and ask for clarification if I was puzzled by what was written. She could have done it for me – after all, she did the books for my father’s business which he had started in the early 1970’s – but she wanted me to learn to do it myself. After a couple of years, she and I would sit down together and, starting with the same information, see who could do it the fastest. Then we would compare results. If we got the same number, I copied it out in good and my taxes were done – usually in under an hour.

It was also in the 1970’s that I realised that farming doesn’t pay the bills – at least, dairy farming in eastern Ontario didn’t pay enough to live on. This was one reason why all my female cousins worked outside the home – aside from wanting to prevent a stagnation of the brain.

I hadn’t realised until, a few years ago, that these women in my family were the grassroots of the Feminist Movement of the 1960’s and 1970’s. I’m proud to be related to them.

I'm concerned

Last August, my doctor had me go for an ultrasound because, given my age and weight, she wanted to check for a fatty liver. There appeared to be a cyst attached to one of the kidneys, so she arranged for some more tests (a CT scan and an MRI) packed me off to an appointment with a urologist. Those tests showed that it was not on the kidney, but attached to the outside of the adrenal gland.

I was packed off to a surgeon. This surgeon (I saw him just before Christmas) had me do some tests. To prepare for the test, I had to give up caffeine (including chocolate, of course), pain killers (including my arthritis medicine), and fruit -- for three days! Strangely enough, it was the fruit that was the most difficult for me. When I get up in the morning, I immediately have a glass of juice. Breakfast is usually an apple. My favourite bagels have raisins in them. You are probably seeing a pattern here. If I could live on fruit, I would. After two failed attempts, I finally managed the test.

When the results of that test came in, I was informed that I would have an appointment with an endocrinologist.  Turns out, it's not a cyst. It's a tumour. I have a condition called pheochromocytoma. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmedhealth/PMH0001380/

Tumours of this type are fairly rare and almost never outside the gland. Mine is. They are rarely malignant. Given that I'm bucking the odds on this, I'm a little scared right now. I'm the same age my mother was when she was diagnosed with ovarian cancer. I know that ovarian cancer is not hereditary, but the parallels have me spooked.

Anyway, among other questions, the doctor asked if I had experienced high blood pressure recently. I told him yes. He put the cuff on me and checked. Normal reading. I had to explain to him that it's only in the last few years that I could get up without feeling dizzy. I've always had a problem with low blood pressure. High is a relative term. Then he asked if I'd had hand tremors or a racing pulse. I replied yes, but only when reading a letter from my ex's lawyer. He ducked his head to hide the smile, but I could see his shoulders shaking. Maybe, at our next appointment, he'll realise that I am using humour to cope with the stress.

One of the problems with removing this tumour is that, when it is removed from the adrenal gland, the gland sometimes goes into overdrive. This can boost the blood pressure off the charts. So, on top of having it removed, I will probably be in the hospital for a few days. I'm so glad I live in Canada.

To be absolutely certain that he knows as much as possible before arranging for the surgery, I have to do the  same tests again to verify the results from the first test. Bummer. I'll have to prepare for it over the weekend and do it on Monday because my birthday is next Thursday. I'm having meals with several friends towards the end of the week and don't want to limit what I can eat.

The good news is ... my liver is just fine.

National Job Fair

The National Job Fair, in Toronto, wasn't as bad as I thought it would be.

After I got the insert from The Sunday Sun, I found the list of companies that would be attending, along with the floor plan. I put a tick mark next to the names of all the companies I was interested in -- including the ones I'd never heard of.

Then, I spent the better part of Monday googling them. I whittled the initial list of 43 companies down to 8. This included 5 high tech companies and 3 placement agencies.

I spent the whole of the next day updating my résumé, printing out enough copies, and developing a covering flyer. Yes, a covering flyer -- not a covering letter. I would write a covering letter if I were applying for a specific job but, with this situation, I thought I needed something more generic. After all, I wasn't even sure that they needed technical writers or editors. I ended up with:

*

Hi,

I am a writer and editor with over twenty years’ experience, including:

· computer manuals (especially for novice users)

· software changes

· telecommunications

· user manuals for manufacturing equipment

· ISO 9000 documents

· newsletters

· publicity

My specialty is helping small to medium sized companies with documentation problems. I work at your site or mine, for anywhere from a few weeks to a few months – depending on the project.

I’ve attached my résumé so, even if you don’t need a writer or editor now, you’ll have it if you need one in the future. Should that day come, I hope you’ll think of me.

*

Wednesday morning was cool, windy, and sunny. I parked my car at the TTC lot and took the subway downtown to Union Station on Front Street. I decided to take the indoor route because of the wind tunnel effect of all the office towers. What a mistake! I think I walked to Mississauga and back by the time I found the right place. Fortunately, I had worn comfortable shoes.

When I finally got into the right building, I had a view of the show from the level above. It was a seething mass of humanity, and I nearly turned around and went home right then. I hate crowds. I truly do. But having spent almost 3 days getting ready, plus the gas to drive in to Toronto, I thought I'd better give it a try.

I was daunted by the line up just to pay to get in to the show, but it moved fairly quickly. At $4.95, the advertised cost of entry to the show included tax -- a pleasant change. Inside the Job Fair itself, it didn't seem so bad. People bumped, of course, but everyone was very polite and civilised.

I went to all eight booths, and talked to people at each one. A couple of them have no need for technical writers or editors, which was fine. I just kept going.

In less than an hour, I was done.

The covering flyer had worked, too. I had two companies show an interest in me -- one of them quite keen on the fact that I had worked with the ISO 9000 standard.

Now to see if this effort translates into a job offer.

I bought a copy of the Toronto Sun

Normally, I don't read The Toronto Sun. In fact, I can't stand its fascist diatribes. But I don't mind other people reading The Sun at work. In fact, I think it's rather amusing that the guys I work with seem to think I'm bothered by something as tame as the Sunshine Girl.

But when I was working on Saturday night / Sunday morning, I ended up with nothing to read ... except The Sun from the previous Wednesday. I flipped through it quickly, trying not to let my fingers touch too much of it, only to discover that the National Job Fair will be held in Toronto this Wednesday and Thursday. The advertisement also mentioned that there would be a 20 page insert about the Fair in the Sunday Sun.

Oh, great. Just great. I hadn't seen any advertisements about the Job Fair in either the Globe and Mail or the Toronto Star. Now, in all fairness, I didn't read both papers every day last week, so I might have missed something. But neither paper mentioned it in the Saturday editions, either, that I saw.

So, I went into the convenience store Sunday morning on my way home from work. I approached the newspaper rack and, automatically, my hand reached out for the Globe and Mail ... but the Globe doesn't publish on Sundays and I'd already read the Saturday edition! My stomach churned with embarrassment as I reached down for a copy of The Toronto Sun -- on which I had (years before) bestowed the cognomen The Toronto Stunned. I felt like I was betraying literate people everywhere.

I grabbed it and went to the cash ... better to get out of here quickly before someone I knew saw me with this rag in my hand. Why, oh why didn't I think to go out of town to buy this?

Gritting my teeth, I got to the cash.

"Pearl," piped up the cashier, accepting my money, "why aren't you getting the Star or the Globe?" (Just my luck that I get the one clerk who knows my buying habits.) Then I flipped through the pages, grabbed the insert about the Job Fair, and asked the cashier to throw the rest in the garbage.

The paper had, finally, been marginally useful.

Last course

I've finally signed up for my last course at UofT. Well, the last one for my Certificate in Creative Writing. There will be others if I can afford them.

The thing is, I've tweaked the first hundred pages so much, that I'm not sure what it says anymore! I need to settle down and review those pages one more time before sending them off to my faculty advisor.

Story

I am currently working through comments on my novel from my proofreader. There are a number of things to be dealt with.

And I thought I was doing so well!

It's allergy season

Yes, it's allergy season for me. As a result, I'm struggling to stay awake for more than 12 hours a day ... and struggling, during those few hours, to think coherently. It also seems to affect my ability to spell. While I was typing out the last sentence, I spelled 'during' as 'juring'. Hey, that's how it's pronounced, right? Then I stared at it. I knew it was wrong, but couldn't think of the correct spelling for a minute.

Sure, I could use the online spellchecker, but I think you'll agree with me that it has -- at best -- a limited vocabulary. The online spellchecker doesn't correct words that are words, but not the word that's wanted for that particular space, grammatically speaking (or, in this case, writing). No, my beef with spellcheckers lies in the fact that they inform me that I should be using some other word -- completely unsuited to the context -- because it does not recognise the word I've chosen.

Anyway, I'm off to sleep some more so that -- with luck -- I'll stay awake at work later.

I thought I was the last ...

For those of you who have never heard of him, Rick Mercer is a Canadian comedian and pundit with a television show. He has a quintessentially Canadian view of politics (if we don't laugh about it, we'll cry). But more than that, he interviews people from all over Canada about all sorts of things, from their interesting jobs, to their unusual celebrations or hobbies, to the teams taking part in various sports. His website, with selected pieces archived from his show, is here:

http://rickmercer.com/

I just found this skit about the last person to start a blog in North America:

http://www.youtube.com/mercerreport#p/c/20D68A4847393FEF/24/5p7K0LvK_fk

(Darn - I thought I was the last!)