Annie Daredevil Woman

Image via Wikipedia

On her 63rd birthday Annie Edson Taylor went over Niagara Falls in a barrel.

Not your average birthday celebration - particularly when you consider the fact that she was the first human 'person' to try it.

(As opposed to a cat 'person', which I will explain shortly.)

She was the original 7th decade girl daredevil.

She didn't start off in life as a daredevil though. 

Born on Oct. 24, 1838 in New York, she grew up  rich, pampered and much loved.

She studied to be a teacher and married young.

Unfortuantely, when she was 25 her husband was killed in the American Civil War, her only child died and the wheels fell off her comfortable life.

Annie spent the rest of her days trying to put them back on.

She wandered North America, from Mexico City to Chicago  to Sioux Ste Marie  teaching dance and music.

 Somewhere along the line she came up with the idea of earning fame and fortune by going over Niagara Falls in a barrel.

 With this iidea in mind she accumulated a manager and a cat.

 She sent her cat over the Falls first to see if anything could survive such a trip.

 In light of what happened later she probably should have sent her manager over - in a cheaper barrel.

 Anyway the cat lived.

Two days later on Oct. 24, 1901, Annie was rowed out to the centre of the Niagara River, (see the picture above), helped into her sturdy oak barrel and set adrift.

Her manager, whose name was Frank Russell, made sure the stunt was well advertised and thousands came to watch as the barrel was tossed over the edge of the Falls and into the mist below.

 Annie survived her plunge over the Horseshoe Falls but it didn't bring her fame and fortune.

The scoundrel, Frank Russel, ran off with her barrel and most of her savings.

 Her final years were spent posing for photographs with her wonder cat  and selling souvenirs while she moonlighted as a clairvoyant, and unsuccessful novelist and filmmaker.

 And I have to tell you, that sounds like a lot more fun than the barrel over the Falls thing.

She died in Niagara County, New York on April 29, 1921 and is buried in the 'stunter's section' of Oakwood Cemetery, Niagara Falls, New York.


And, sorry, cat lovers, I don't know what happened to the fuzzy, fearless feline.

Next:  Ho for the Klondike

Related articles

• Daredevil bids to cross Niagara Falls on a tightrope (telegraph.co.uk)

Addie Christiansen

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Mrs. Addie Christiansen, age 22, died on August 22, 1898.

Mrs. Christiansen was a parachute performer.

That day, much to the delight of thousands who had gathered to watch, she had been performing on a trapeze that was attached to a hot air balloon above a resort at Jamaica Bay, near New York City.

Her husband was a balloonist but according to the news at the time, had tried to dissuade his young wife from such daredevil activities.

 Right.

 Anyway, it was reported that she constantly disobeyed him and had actually, over time, become his rival.

Families loved to come to the shore of Jamaica Bay and watch the aerial escapades of the pretty young woman in her colourful bodice and tights.

 Addie often threw kisses to the children in the crowd below before she ended her show by leaping into the air and parachuting to the ground.

But the last kiss was thrown on that fateful day in 1898 when the parachute became entangled in her costume and she fell 200 feet to her death.

I came across Addie Christiansen's story last week in an 1898 newspaper that was being catalogued at the St. Catharines Museum.

As we poured over the short report I think our main question was, "What was she thinking?"

 Someone said, "Maybe it was better than being in the kitchen with eight screaming kids."

We laughed but the truth is that we don't often think of the lives of women of that era as being much more than 'kinder küche kirche'.  (Home, children, church.)

However, the 'fin de cycle' was a time of great social change.

By 1893 women in New Zealand had won the right to vote and the movement was taking hold in other parts of the world.

It was also a time of economic struggle and the combination of hard times and liberation seems to have produced a number of unusual women.

A Niagara Falls story next time.

Strange Women Lying in Ponds

 

Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government?

Ha ha!

That would be as silly as someone winning a majority government in Canada having only received the votes of 25 % of the population.

Ha ha!

 

 

Leashing Sexual Predators

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Conservative Party leader, Tim Hudak, wants to put registered sex offenders on an 'electronic leash' if he is elected premier of Ontario.

That would mean 14,000 people walking around the province with ankle bracelets.

 It would cost $51 million.

When I first read about it, I snorted and thought, "What an election gimmick!"

I fired off a comment about how it would be cheaper just to pin a scarlet 'P' (P for pervert) on each of their toques.

 But it has bothered me ever since.

14,000 registered sex offenders in Ontario.

That is a lot of sick, dangerous people and my understanding is that at present we have no way of curing them.

They really do walk among us.

So how do we protect their rights and protect the citizens of Ontario at the same time?

I don't know about your common sense, but mine tells me that If sexual predators are dangerous and can't be cured, they shouldn't have the same rights as the rest of us.

An ankle bracelet isn't a cure or even a whole lot of protection.

But it might be a step, (sorry for the pun), in the right direction.

Interesting, Mr. Hudak, but where would you get $51 million?

Related articles

• Ontario's sex offenders to wear GPS if Tories elected (thestar.com)

Lemmings, Line up In Niagara

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In 1988 the road to Oberammergau was quiet.

It wasn't one of the Passion Play years.

As we bicycled through the bucolic countryside I remember thinking how much more isolated it was than most of the other Bavarian villages.

The people of Oberammergau are convinced that their village was spared from the plague in the Middle Ages because God chose not to send them His punishing pestilence for some reason.

I suspect it is more likely that the village was so far out of the way that anyone who was sick died long before they arrived and the villagers themselves must have been self sufficient enough that they didn't need to travel elsewhere.

Which brings me, oddly enough, to the Niagara Health Care system.

We have a problem here. 

People are still dying of C. difficile and as of today two health care workers have also gotten sick.

Worse still a new superbug has appeared.

This year, the Niagara Health Care shut down the emergency trauma centres in the smaller communities. 

The will of politicians on a cost cutting mission, not the people.

A giant new hospital is set to open in Niagara in 2012.

We're going big instead of small.

And that worries me.

I have a feeling that if we don't get the lesson of Oberammergau, we're going to see more and more of these outbreaks and not just in Niagara.


Race you to the cliff?

Related articles

• C. difficile superbug tied to 17th Niagara death (cbc.ca)
• Frustrated Niagara residents speak out about C.difficile concerns (theglobeandmail.com)
• Niagara-area hospital worker infected with C. difficile (theglobeandmail.com)

Sweet Rudy

This is Rudy.

He lives next door.

When his master was dying of cancer last year, 

Rudy stayed on his bed constantly during the last few difficult weeks,

so protective he even growled at the nurse.

He's just that kind of a guy.

He's staying with me this week because his mistress is away.

My neighbour gave Rudy one of her husband's sweaters to lie on

because he seemed very depressed after the death.

She said it really helped.

This is Rudy today, running towards me when I call his name.

I love this valiant little dog.

Today Flynn and I are taking him to the stinky horse barn.

Then after supper maybe we'll go to the North Pelham

ball park and sniff around the garbage cans.

I ask you,

could life possibly get any better than that?

Segregating the Menstruating

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The Ku Klux Klan believes in the supremacy of the white race and would like to see our society move back to a time when "niggers" had to sit at the back of the bus.

...

Imagine that 80% of the student population of a certain school in Toronto is racist.

 Should the Toronto School Board allow weekly 'Klan' meetings in that school during school hours in order to meet the needs of those  students?

No answer is necessary.

The idea is ludicrous. 

And yet, there is a group that believes in the supremacy of one group of students over another and they really do have the permission of the Toronto School Board to hold weekly meetings at a Toronto School during school hours.

 A group that considers some Canadian children 'unclean', segregates them and forces
them to be non-participants at the back of the room.

The Board says that due to the large number of  students at the school who belong to this group, the meetings are necessary.

...

At Valley Park Middle School every Friday afternoon, a conservative Imam, (an Islamic religious leader), meets with Muslim students in the school cafeteria for a prayer service.

The young men are in front, the young women kept behind them and any menstruating young women, (the unclean), are at the very back, allowed to attend but not take part.

It is important to note that the Canadian Muslim Congress is against this.

 “We believe Islam does not make (Friday prayers) compulsory ... they can be postponed until later in the day," Terek Fatah, founder of the Canadian Muslim Congress said, adding his group is also opposed to the treatment of the girls.

I agree with the Muslim Congress.

Canadian Public Schools must uphold and be seen to uphold the basic rights of all students.

In my opinion the Toronto School Board needs to rethink its policy.

Grave Faces VII

I'm always shocked by the number of slovenly child angels.

Doesn't anyone check them on the way out the door in the morning?



This one has pulled on a robe about four sizes too big.

Not that he is concerned.

Like most small boys he's more interested in what he is doing than in how he looks.


And by the way, he is writing something.


But whatever he had to tell us is long gone, the granite slate brushed clean

by decades of wind, snow and ice.

I mentioned in my last Grave Faces post that faeries are far less common than angels

in graveyards.

They do, however, dress more modestly.


Faeries are mischievous sprites, not always on the side of good,

and they predate Christianity.

I often wonder about the beliefs of the families that leave a faery in

charge of a burial site.


How deeply would you have to scratch some Christians to find a pagan?


Anyway, this one is pretending to be asleep.

Like the child who is buried under her.

Toddler angels often set out on their daily mission naked. 

At least this little fellow who is playing his fiddle so merrily, was able to grab a loin cloth.


Clothed or not, he seems to be saying that death is nothing to be sad about.


Easy enough for angels to say, I suppose.

Adult angels take their work, and their wardrobe much more seriously.


This fully clothed and lovely young angel's job isn't to tell us anything about heaven.

She is telling us about earth and mourning.

And we instictively recognize the path she is on.


This is the necessary time before 'the letting go'.

At first glance these two appear far too young to be employed in a cemetery. 



But consider this, they are still with the child they were called to watch over

 long after her grave has been abandoned by all who knew her in life.


Not so young after, all.

This isn't a very good photograph but I just had to include it because he looks so guilty.

He's obviously just returned from a dip in a nearby puddle.

And he wasn't expecting me.


But then I wasn't expecting him either.




A lovely end to my walk.

C. difficile in Niagara

Image via Wikipedia

I'm ashamed of myself for not paying closer attention when the wheels first started to fall off the Niagara Health Care System.

For years I've been reading letters to the editor in the St. Catharines Standard about how dirty the St. Catharines General Hospital is.

To tell you the truth, some of the letters were so unbelievable they caused me to think the writers were exaggerating.

I remember one letter in particular that described blood being left on the floor of a patient's room for days before the overworked cleaning staff got around to mopping it up.

Now I have to accept the fact that those letters might have been true - because Niagara is in the midst of a frightening C. difficile outbreak even though

a)  C. difficile isn't contagious. It is caused by fecal matter being transferred from one person or surface to another.   

 b) a person can get it only if antibiotics he/she is taking have killed off another kind of bacteria in his/her intestines.

Hmmm.

It doesn't sound as if it should be a great problem.

But it has killed at least 17 people in area hospitals since the end of May and many more are sick.

The situation reminds me of the Listeria outbreak in Ontario in 2008. 

That deadly bacteria was hiding so deep inside the meat cutting machines at Maple Leaf Foods it was almost impossible for the company to find it.

I wonder if C difficile is like Listeria, left unchecked for so long, it now lurks in dark, hidden  places, impossible to find and remove even with the most stringent of cleaning programmes.

I don't know the answer to that but I do know that I'll agree to more cut backs

in health care as long as they only involve the folks at the top.

Then there will at least be some justice for the dying and the dead.

Bare Naked Old White Women

I'm not easily shocked.

 

Just kidding.

Most of my waking hours are spent being shocked by one thing or another. 

That's why I blog as often as I do.

I don't like to suffer alone.

But I have to tell you that I was more shocked than usual  when I found that some people

 have been going to my Authentic Old White Woman art blog site hoping to see pictures of

naked old white ladies.   (http://authenticoldwhitewoman.blogspot.com)

You see, I made the mistake of calling one of the blogs 'Bare Naked Stress'. 

I thought it was a pretty good title for a blog about teaching.

But when the Google search engine crawled through AOWW it saw the words,

Old, White, Woman, Bare, Naked, and because Bob's your perverted uncle,

 it immediately sent every weirdo with the hots for droopy boobs and saggy buns to  my site.

Jeesh.

Just when I thought it was finally safe to leave the curtains open.

The Heart of a Nation - a Commentary

Image via Wikipedia

For a second day the duke and duchess have been wrapped

in a warm Canadian embrace in a country celebrating

 its 144th birthday and which has the British/Canadian crown at its heart.   

 Peter Hunt, BBC

 

I'm glad they are having a nice time but I find this statement arrogant.

It is as if the Brits lost interest in us when silk hats replaced hats made with beaver fur in the 1800s and haven't bothered to learn any of our history since then.

I could list a few of the millions of people and things that are at the heart of Canada, i.e., Terry Fox, the Unknown Soldier, Dieppe, Vimy Ridge, Poundmaker, Molly Brant, Lucy Maud Montgomery, Louis Riel, Champlain, Laura Secord, Tommy Douglas, Rocket Richard, Margaret Lawrence, the Rocky Mountains, the Chilcoot Pass, the Plains of Abraham, etc.,

but I wouldn't put the crown of England there.

Tradition, for better or for worse, has placed it at the head of our parliamentary system.

The heart of our country is a different matter.

 

Related articles

• Canada Day Trivia (wdfyfe.wordpress.com)
• Terry Fox legacy lives on three decades after death (ctv.ca)

What A Day!

 How to wear your underwear patriotically!


Canada Day in Pelham.

When Americans Make Fun of Canadians

Happy Canada Day, Everyone!

Suck It Up, Mr. Mayor

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I haven't been a fan of Toronto's mayor, Mr. Rob Ford since I heard that he planned to balance his big city budget by  squeezing money out of the province.

I've been casting a wary eye across Lake Ontario ever since.

But it turns out it isn't his spending of my tax dollars that has me blogging about him,  it's the fact that so far he has refused to attend the Gay Pride Parade.

Now don't get me wrong, I think the Toronto Gay Pride Parade is way too raunchy.

And I don't think it does anything to unmarginalize, (if there is such a word), gays and lesbians.

Which is too bad, but it is what it is and my little blog won't change anything.

However I believe there is a lot more at stake than my embarrassment or Rob Ford's moral disapproval.

He is the mayor of Toronto, Canada's largest city.

A leader.

A symbol.

He doesn't need to march in the parade and look as if he approves of what is going on around him.

He needs to be there to show the world that the rights of all Canadians are protected regardless of their race, religion, gender, sexual orientation or their ability to act silly in public.

So suck it up, Mr. Mayor.

This one's important.

Related articles

• What Rob Ford's attendance at Gay Pride would bring (theglobeandmail.com)
• Ford sticks to decision not to attend Pride parade (theglobeandmail.com)

Girl Talk

Look Who's Votin' Green

So who is voting Green?



Some people answer 'it's not your grandmother's party'.

And I have to admit that there is some truth in that. 


My grandmother was not a Green Party member.


This photo of the registration table for last week's Niagara West - Glanbrook BBQ gives you a pretty good idea of the kinds of people who vote Green.

The young, the old, the in between.

Green Party people want to ensure that the next generation survives and thrives.

We're your neighbours.

Your children.

The guy next door.

Our provincial candidates, like Meredith Cross, seen here on the left,  are the best!



Our agenda?

1. creating jobs

2. ensuring safe, affordable energy

3. providing quality, sustainable health care

4. championing the move to have local food feed local communities

5. electing a government that works for the people


Join us

Cougars Just Wanna Have Fun

                                                          Image via Wikipedia


Are there cougars in Pelham?

Ha!

If you google that question you will find out that not only are there cougars in Pelham, there are cougars everywhere.

 And they are all looking for a date.

It used to be that you only had to worry about cougars jumping on your back and ripping your jugular open.

Now they want a bit of fun first.

I was walking on one of the trails in the Short Hills Provincial Park yesterday.

The Park is made up of many short, steep forested hills that were gouged out during the last ice age.  

 Flynn the dog was off her leash and trotting along in front of me.

I stopped when I saw something streak down one of the hills and disappear into the bush on my left. 

Short Hills is normally populated by white-tailed deer and coyotes.

This was different.

From a distance of maybe a hundred feet, the animal appeared about the height of an Irish wolfhound but sleeker and heavier.

Its speed was astonishing.

I have never seen an animal move that fast and my impression was that I had seen a dark shadowy premonition, a phantom, something not real, perhaps a Dean Koontz character that had escaped from one of his books.

It was an unnerving experience.

A twig snapped as Flynn and I stood there.

I did a full turn but we were alone in the forest.

 

Now that I have read about cougars, I wonder if I should have looked up into the trees.

Eek.

Some people believe there is enough evidence to prove that cougars have returned to southern Ontario.

That is good news.


 But, jeesh, I hope their dinner dates all order the venison.

Related articles

• Aggressive cougar follows 2 men near Hoquiam (seattletimes.nwsource.com)
• More cougars sighted, this time in Deschutes River Woods (bendbulletin.com)
• Squamish mountain-biker weary after brush with big cat (theprovince.com)

A Story Without Words

Uncouth in the Country

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This morning I was trying to get my elderly father out the door and to the dentist's office to get his few remaining choppers cleaned.

Going to town is a change in his routine, and therefore an occasion of great distress for him.

His  life is generally very quiet.

Oh we get visits from neighbours and relatives and the odd politician happens by during an election - but very few strangers turn up on our doorstep.  We don't even get Hallowe'en candy seekers.

So it was a surprise to hear a knock at about 9:30 this morning.

I was in the bathroom but I heard Flynn the dog start her 'stranger danger' barking and her  'stranger danger' house cat chasing.

I emerged from the bathroom with a mouthful of toothpaste and bumped noses with Dad who was waiting for me to come out and deal with the crisis.

Wielding my electric toothbrush with the extra soft bristles as a weapon, I headed for the front door. 

Struggling to keep Flynn back with one hand  I lurched through the door and found two righteous looking ladies standing on my porch.

One of the women waved a pamphlet under my nose that bore the words, "Are Humans Destroying the World" printed against a background of Hellish looking flames.

"Why yes," I put a hand on one hip and tapped my chin thoughtfully with my toothbrush.

 "I believe they are." 


I leaned over and studied the pamphlet  to make sure they weren't from the Green Party and accidentally drooled toothpaste on it.

Just then my father who was wearing his boxers but wasn't wearing his false teeth, started banging at the window, shaking his cane and gumming at me to hurry.

Without saying a single word, the Righteous nervously retreated from the porch and down the driveway.

"Thanks for dropping by," I called out to them.

But they never even turned around.

Jeesh.

Only the couth get saved I guess.