2010 Christmas Letter

Greetings to all our friends and relatives:

You know how kids say the darndest things? Here’s a few gems from our grandchildren (and their parents) from the past year . . .

Grampa Pete, “Erik, get your finger out of your mouth.”
Erik, 3, “It’s a thumb!”

Duke, 2, who is big for his age, proclaimed one day, “I’m big . . . and small!”

Duke’s sister, Kate, 4, “I’m shy and so is Duke”. (They might be shy but only until you get to know them.)

Molly, 4, “My best friend is Uncle Murray . . . he’s not a kid anymore because he had a baby.” (Murray, 44, and his wife Frances, recently had their first child.)

Julie, 8, “At recess today a boy ‘attackled’ me and ripped my ski suit.” Attackled - what a great word. Although you’ve never heard it before, you know exactly what it means.

Sid, 34, “I lose interest if it’s not interesting.” (Thank you Captain Obvious!)

Jill, 28, in an attempt to justify her actions at the breakfast table, “You don’t have to be sick to have a beer.” Say what?

With 12 grandchildren, and parents who share them freely, there is no shortage of life in our household. Tonight is a typical night, 3 grandchildren here for a sleepover while their parents are on a date. And the great thing is, they are all good kids. Not a rotten apple in the bunch.

This past year we erected a large treehouse for the young and young at heart. It gets a lot of use. The picture below was taken on the treehouse steps. (Click on the picture for a larger view.)



We enclosed a picture of the grandchildren in last year’s letter and several people wanted to know who was who so this time we’ve included the names (and who belongs to who). The names are in order from top to bottom, left to right. Siblings are in matching colours:

Julie, Carly, Kimberly,
Molly, Emily, Kate,
Peter, Erik, Ashley,
Alexander, Karl, Duke

Those in:
- black belong to son Greig and wife Carrie,
- red belong to son Sid and wife Scottie,
- blue belong to daughter Jody and husband Jeremy (Hilderman), and
- green belong to daughter Jill and husband Aaron (Sovdi).

Besides spending time with the family, what else have we been doing? Well once again we took a trip to Vegas just after New Years and had a great time. Bonnie’s sister Avis and husband Richard joined us. They made great travelling companions and the four of us are booked to do it again this year.

The first of May we travelled to Minneapolis to attend an event honoring Daniel Nelson, Pete’s great grandfather on his mother’s side. He was a prominent Chinese missionary of the early 1900’s. A number of other descendants showed up which turned it into an impromptu family reunion. We all went out for supper – about 50 of us. Pete met relatives he never knew he had. It was pretty cool!

On the way home from Minneapolis we stopped in on Elaine Chilson of Sisseton, SD. She’s the family historian for the Frostad clan. We have been corresponding with Elaine since we met at a Frostad reunion in Kincaid, Sask, about 16 years ago. We were able to collect a lot more information from Elaine about our interesting past; pictures, artifacts, and stories. Elaine is a fascinating person.

We did the Sturgis run on our motorcycle again this year. It was quite possibly the best run we’ve had so far. We count the days till we head out on the open road again. We really like our tours out to Vancouver Island which we haven’t done for a couple of years so we hope to make it this coming summer.

We did, however, make it as far west as Pentiction on the motorcycle this summer to attend a week long bicycle wine tour of the Penticton area organized by Jody. That’s right, we parked the motorcycle for a week while be peddled our buns on a tandem bicycle to a number of wineries in the Penticton area. This was the second time Jody has organized a family wine tour and it’s a blast. Thanks, Jody!

Well that pretty much wraps things up for another year. Pete is still enjoying his work at Magna IV Engineering and we are heading out to Alberta for the company Christmas party next week.

Hope this finds you all well and have a great 2011!

Pete and Bonnie

Mozart ripped off my song

So here we go. My long awaited thoughts on the global warming debate.

I must state at the outset that I think there is nothing more important than looking after our planet and it's inhabitants; human and otherwise. This includes things like reducing pollution, wise use of our resources, and the elimination of poverty, hunger, war . . . all the things that make this a better world for all to live in.

To help us in our quest, we can use our knowledge of the universe - our ever increasing knowledge of science, to guide our decisions.

On the subject of global warming, I think it is very important to get the science right and I want to enlist Mozart to help me with this discussion . . .

Suppose I write a song and then someone discovers that it's a rip off of something Mozart wrote.

Is there any possible way that I could convince you that I'm the original artist and that Mozart plagiarized me? (By the way, Mozart died 163 years before I was born.)

Of course the answer is no. Unless, of course, I could get in a time machine, travel back, and somehow put the tune in his head.

In fact, there's a general rule we can use for all such questions. When event A occurs before event B, there is no way event B can cause event A.

What does this have to do with global warming?

There is a field of study that you may have heard about. It's the analysis of ice core samples. They find a very old and deep deposit of ice; popular sites include the Antarctic and Greenland, and they drill out a core and analyse it. They can determine all kinds of things dating back hundred's of thousands of years. In particular, as it relates to this article, they can determine earth's temperature in relation to atmospheric concentrations of CO₂.

Over the last several years I have tracked down as many scientific ice core studies as I can find. The abstracts are freely available on the Internet and, in some cases, so is the entire study. In other cases, to read the entire study, you have to pay a subscription to the scientific journal that published the study. Since these are scientific papers, they are quite technical and I don't claim to understand all the science being discussed but it's not hard to get the drift, especially from the abstract.

One of the more famous studies on the subject was conducted in 2003 by Caillon et al. It's only three pages long and, as scientific papers go, comparatively easy to understand. I encourage you to read it. Caillon et al concluded that changes in global temperatures occur 600 years before changes in CO₂ concentrations (with a statistical accuracy of plus or minus 200 years).

All of the other studies I have found have come to the same general conclusion although the study periods vary as do the time between atmospheric changes and CO₂ concentrations. The shortest time lag is 800 years plus or minus 200 years (the study mentioned above). Others list a longer time lag, some as much as 5000 years.

Simply stated, they all found that changes in temperature occur before changes in CO₂!

Until someone proves that there has been a systematic mistake in all these studies, which could happen, the case for CO₂ being the driving factor for changes in global temperatures is not possible.

It's not possible for the same reason that Mozart could not have ripped off a song that wasn't written till at least a century and a half after his death.

Obviously there's lots more to say about all of this. But I'm going to just let what I've raised sit with you for a while.

Check out the studies. See if you can find anyone who has successfully disputed them. As I said, I've been looking for a while now and haven't found anybody that's successfully challenged them.
There was one study, which I can't seem to lay my fingers on right now, that was actually initiated to disprove the notion that CO₂ changes occur after temperature changes. But once the scientific team had done their own analysis of the data, they came to the same conclusion as everyone else. Their final report actually supported and endorsed the other studies. They ended up converts! I gotta see if I can find that study, it was quite interesting.

As always, please feel free to provide your comments or ask questions. I'll try to answer them.

How do you hold a moonbeam in your hand.

In many respects I have always felt like Maria.

Shuddup. I don't mean I want to be a girl. I mean, for most of my life I have felt like a round peg in a square hole.

It is never more evident than when I try to write an article about my opinion on just about anything. For example, I've been trying to write a blog about my opinion on climate change for months. It has gone through dozens of revisions and I'm just not happy with it.

What I'm starting to realize is that writing blogs about opinions is very hard, at least it is for me.

Problem #1 - my opinion on global warming, or any other subject for that matter, is a fluid thing; it keeps changing.

Problem #2 - opinions, by definition, are controversial. I've PO'd enough people in my life already, I'm not particularly fond of adding to the list.

Problem #3 - it takes a lot of words to formulate and defend an opinion. Blog entries seem like such small containers for such large objects.

So instead I'm just going to write down my thoughts and observations in manageable chunks. Points to ponder, if you will.

I'm just going to be like Maria. I'm just going to be me.

The great left shoe mystery

I've never said this to anyone before, but I have a problem with my left shoe. And it's been bothering me for years, maybe decades.

No matter how hard I try, I can't seem to avoid getting scuff marks on the top front of my left shoe. I'll get a brand new pair of shoes and, in what seems likes minutes, I'll have a scuff or soil mark on the top front of my left shoe. It's not on the very front of my shoe like I'm stubbing my toe on things, it's higher, on the top front of the shoe.

Here, I'll go take a picture of my shoes right now. Guaranteed there's a scuff or a dust mark on my left shoe.



See I told you so. And as God is my witness, I did not set this picture up. I didn't have to. It's always there like a curse.

I never get marks on my right shoe. Not like this. Not ever.

Now, for many of you who know me and also ride motorcycles, solving this mystery seems like child's play. The scuff marks are from the gear shifter on the motorcycle. (You operate a motorcycle shifter with your left foot. You tuck your toe under the shifter and pull up to shift up and push down to shift down.) And for the longest time, I had assumed that was the cause. And, indeed, when you ride, you do get scuff marks on the top of your shoe, just exactly like the ones I get. I've had plenty of scuff marks from the shifter on my bike.

But I get these marks in the winter. Today is March 26th. I haven't been on my bike for months.

For a while I had this theory that I was tucking my left foot under the brake pedal of the car and getting the mark from the back of the brake pedal, but I've never caught myself doing that. I even tried putting my foot behind the brake pedal to see if it feels at all familiar. Nope. Nothing.

Now I know you are thinking I'm just a little touched. After dealing with this subtle little problem, you can bet your life I'm a little touched. In fact I'm starting to get a LOT touched.

Another theory I had was maybe it's the way I walk. Maybe when I walk my right foot somehow scuffs the top of my left foot. Well, I've never caught myself doing that either. (OK, fine, I tried that too. It also did not feel at all familiar.)

Most of the time it's not a big deal. A little dust or scuff on my left shoe . . . who cares. But lots of times I'll be going out somewhere special and I decide to polish my shoes. It never fails that when I get there I have to wipe off my left shoe.

Today, quite by accident, I caught myself doing something that causes the scuff marks! I'm so happy! I can now move on to bigger and better things!

Cheers.

P.S. You want to know what is causing my scuff marks? Post a freak'n comment and I'll tell you. I never get comments :(

Hands up, all those who hate barbershop music

I wouldn't say I hate barbershop music but it's just that it all seems to sound the same.

Then along comes the Cottontown Chorus from Great Britain. You might hate barbershop music but I challenge anyone who watches this to say they didn't enjoy this particular performance.

But you have to play fair. To take up my challenge you have to watch this to the end because it's a three song set and the last one is the best: 'Fat Bottomed Girls'.

Thanks to my friend, Doug Schmidt, for bringing these guys to my attention.

Here they are at the final concert of the 2009 European Barbershop Convention where they placed second. I'd like to hear who came in first . . .

So you think you're tuff . . .

Meet the water bear (or tardigrade for all you biologists out there).



Cuddily little fellow, isn't he? Water bears have 8 little legs and range in size from 0.1 mm to 1.5 mm.

But appearances can be deceiving. Water bears are perhaps the toughest creatures on the planet. Check out this entry from Wikipedia:

Tardigrades . . . are able to survive in extreme environments that would kill almost any other animal. Some can survive temperatures of -273°C, close to absolute zero, temperatures as high as 151 °C (303 °F), 1,000 times more radiation than other animals such as humans, almost a decade without water, and even the vacuum of space. In September 2007, tardigrades were taken into low Earth orbit on the FOTON-M3 mission and for 10 days were exposed to the vacuum (and extreme sterilizing UV radiation) of space. After they were returned to Earth, it was discovered that many of them survived and laid eggs that hatched normally, making these the only animals shown to be able to survive the vacuum of space.

So I was just thinking . . .

Suppose a few water bears are hang'n out having a few pints and one of them says, "hold my beer and watch this". What exactly would it take to impress the other water bears! Hitch a ride on the outside of the spaceshuttle for a week long rip into outer space? Nope, too easy. Never mind jumping into a frozen lake after being in a sauna like the Swedes. How about floating around in a pot of boiling water and then taking a swan dive into a vat of liquid nitrogen! Yawn, been there, done that.

I got it! What could be more excruciating than watching a weekend marathon of this:

Wanna make me cry?

Just play this . . .



It's my favourite song. Every time I hear it, I crash . . . hard. And Celine Dion probably sings it better than any other current singer (Kate Smith, of course, was the master).

And ya, I know, it's about the US but they don't actually say 'United States of America', they just say 'American', so I imagine this includes Canada. I don't think I'm the only Canadian who loves this song. Kate used to sing it before the start of Flyer home games. One night when the Flyers travelled to Montreal for a playoff game she went along and sang it in the Forum. The video is not very good but listen to that crowd, and when she sings, I'm a blubbering mess . . .



Here's another one - 'A Mighty Fortress is Our God'. Dumb hey?

The first time it messed me up was at Pastor Wayne Berg's funeral in Estevan. There had to be a hundred Pastors there; all sitting together. When the song began, they all stood up en masse with the rest of the congregation and belted it out. It was powerful. It had the sound of a huge male voice choir singing in unison. (Male voice choirs are the best, sorry ladies, and unision singing is the most powerful of all.) I was a wreck. It brought back memories of my Dad's funeral.

You see, when a Pastor dies, pretty much all the Pastors he ever knew, and a few more for good measure, come to pay their last respects. It's just something they do.

I don't even try to sing this song in church. I just listen . . .



I'll wrap this post up with one final song that got the tears streaming; Nikki Yanofsky's rendition of our national anthem at the 2010 Olympic opening ceremonies. Would I prefer this version all the time? Nope. But Nikki is a jazz singer so the Olympic committee, I think wisely, turned her loose and let her fly. And did she ever fly. Go, Nikki, Go!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oc1_vfBfLxI