Lydia Schoch

Here is this week’s list of blog posts, charts and other tidbits from my favourite corners of the web.

Functional. Imagine an entire television channel devoted to emotionally healthy, loving and accepting families. It might look a little something like this.

Kittens and Death. How to say hello knowing you will one day say goodbye. Thanks to Daphne for sharing this link!

Success. Most of us think of it as a straight line. Start here, end there. This picture shows how it actually happens.

Texas Drought Exposes African American Burial Site. This article is a few weeks old but I just recently stumbled across it. Once again I’m torn – while I completely understand why archeologists and historians would want to study the bodies buried in this long-forgotten cemetery I would be pretty angry if these were my ancestors being dug up (unless I was contacted first and had final say in how they were treated.)

The World’s Rudest Hand Gestures. I accept no responsibility for how you use this information. 😛

The Stoning of Soraya M is the sobering true story of an innocent woman’s death in Iran in the early 1980s.

What have you been reading?

Forgotten Heroes is a series of posts about extraordinary men and women who are (probably) not remembered by the average person.  Previous heroes include Josephine Butler,  John Howard and Alvin Ratz Kaufman. 

If you know of a forgotten hero who should be included in this series let me know about him or her in the comment section or via my contact form. 

Forgotten Heroes: Fred and Cela Sloman

Time: September 20, 1926

Place: Northern Ontario

Fred Sloman was worried.

A dedicated teacher, Sloman knew that there were many children in Northern Ontario who did not have the opportunity to go to school because they lived in such isolated communities.

Photo by Addy Cameron-Huff

Winters in this region are long and bitterly cold. The climate is sub-arctic and there is usually some sort of snow cover between October and May. Even in 2011 travel can be dicey at certain times of the year.

Sloman approached the Ontario Department of Education. They partnered with the CN rail, converted a train car into a portable school (and home for Fred and Cela) and in September of 1926 they began travelling in Northern Ontario.

The Slomans stayed at each stop between 3 and 6 days, teaching their students English and giving them school work for the month. Most of the kids spoke little to no English and had never been to school before.

It was only in the last ten years of their service that Fred and Cela had a bathtub onboard. The space they lived in was cramped (especially once their fifth child was born), bitterly cold in the winter and covered in black flies in the summer. There were far more physically comfortable ways to earn a living at the time.

As I researched Fred and Cela for this post I wondered, “what is it that compels some people to take jobs or pursue goals that most people would find unsustainable over the long haul?”

Maybe part of the answer to that question can be found in this: parents loved the travelling school and appreciated all of the work Fred and Cela poured into it. Not only were the kids educated without having to live away from home for months or years at a boarding school, other free services like meals, medical care, bingo games, sewing classes, and lessons on hygiene and childcare were provided as well.

It can be immensely satisfying to not only help other people but to see the positive impact you’ve had on them in tangible ways every single day.

The experiment was so successful that six more travelling school cars were soon created and a thousand students graduated from the Sloman’s travelling school alone over the next forty years, including Cela and Fred’s daughters.

By the 1950s and 60s the demand for this form of education began to wane. More people were moving up north and with improved roads and larger settlements came the opportunity to build permanent schools in more communities.

Fred and Cela retired in 1965 and he lived out the rest of his days in their hometown of Clinton, Ontario.

I’ll end this post with a quote from Fred himself:

If by chance I get to heaven after I put my chalk away, I will have only one request to make. Two cheerful toots on an engine whistle please, when each old CN engineer comes through the gates after his final run.

Fred, I sincerely hope you heard those toots.

Here is this week’s list of blog posts and other tidbits from my favourite corners of the web.

The squirrel photo is courtesy of Drew.

Death of Dreams. What happens when you defer your dreams.

This is the first time music has ever made logical sense to me.

Recently at a coffee shop I overheard two women talking about the future. One was trying to figure out if she should go to graduate school to earn an advanced degree. (Photo by lucidish.)

“What would you do if you didn’t have to worry about money?” asked the friend. I didn’t hear her response but this is how I’d answer the question:

• Write.
• Read.
• Travel around North America and Europe.
• Visit my side of the family at least two or three times more often.
• Move to an apartment or condo that included space for a garden.
• Provide seed money for other people’s dreams.
• Volunteer somewhere that would allow me to organize stuff. It wouldn’t matter if I was working with books, files, a kitchen full of dirty dishes, food/clothing donations or something else entirely.

That’s about it. My needs and desires are simple.

Some of the items on this list are easy to accomplish. Others require more money or time than I can afford to spare at the moment.

What I like most about this exercise is that it boils down your life to what really matters. My definition of the good life isn’t going to be the same as someone else’s.

Respond

What would you do if money wasn’t an issue? How many of those dreams can you accomplish right now?

If you like my book suggestions sign up for the mailing list in the box on the upper right hand side of this site.  After today book recommendations will only be shared through email (other than the occasional review).

Here is this week’s list of blog posts, charts, poetry and other tidbits from my favourite corners of the web.

The No B.S. Truth About Popups. Popups are those annoying ads that suddenly appear in front of whatever it is you’re reading on some websites. I’m taking Karol Gadja’s challenge: I will never direct you to sites that use this kind of marketing.

Revisiting My Childhood Library. This makes me wonder about my childhood haunts. Are they as glorious as I remember them? One day I’ll take a road trip through South Carolina, Wyoming and Ohio to find out!

How to Focus in the Age of Distraction. Timeless advice for all of us.

Striking Graphics Make Philosophy Easy to Understand. There’s not much else I can add to this one. The title says it all.

The Names. In honour of the 10th anniversary of September 11. The names of those who died that day lie behind and beyond all of the politics and rhetoric that have been woven into it.

Good stuff:

When I was a kid my ears always perked up when a pastor told stories during his or her sermon.  It was even better when he or she let the audience figure out the meaning of the story for ourselves. Who Ordered This Truckload of Dung is an entire book of traditional Buddhist stories about love, forgiveness, suffering and joy.

I grinned my way through it, cover to cover!

What have you been reading?