A friend of mine died yesterday . Not a close friend - but a Facebook friend.
I have in the past wondered on this blog about the value of friendships as defined by Facebook. It has seemed to me that the millions of people who were on Facebook, seemingly competing to collect friends, had a poor definition of friendship . That if the only value of Facebook was to keep a marginal, superficial relationship alive - then the social platform was of little or no use at all. I may have to change my mind about at least part of that opinion.
Only twice in my teaching "career" did a student ask if we could be Facebook friends. While both students were in the same cohort, they asked me the question, at the end of term, separately. I don't think I was aware that they knew each other well. I suppose if I had thought about it, I would have said no to both of them. It would have seemed to me to be a bad idea for a teacher to share what few personal details I post on Facebook with students and I don't think I was particularly interested in the minutia of their lives. Both of the students were bright, contributed to the class discussions, handed their work on in time and in general were fun to teach. They were the kind of students who make teaching a joy; something that one wants to do again and again in the hopes that there are other students out there who will be equally as interesting and on occasion, challenging.
One of the students had a boyfriend who was enrolled in another program at the college. I would occasionally see them together in the halls and if we had time we would exchange a few comments about the weather or school work. The two of them helped me feel as if I had a connection with at least a few students outside of the classroom.
That student, after graduating went on to university and studied archaeology. She posted every once in a while and I read her brief notes. I have no idea if she read my occasional notes. I don't think we ever directly wrote to each other. In her third year she posted a note that she had been diagnosed with ALS. Shortly afterwards she and her boyfriend got married.
In the past seven years there have been some fairly cryptic comments as to the challenges that she was facing, with long periods of no comments at all. One of her relatives started a GOFund me account to help pay for her extra medical needs and I, a couple of times, made small donations anonymously, but I had no connection with her except this occasional lurking on Facebook. A few weeks ago she announced in a rather subtle way that she had decided to pass from this earth. Her condition had worsened to the point where she, I suspect, needed total care and could no longer live at home. I suspect she decided to use the option of assisted suicide while she still had the capacity to do so.
She died yesterday, back at home with her husband, her family and her friends at her side. In the past week there have been perhaps a hundred messages and comments posted from people who knew her, with lots of pictures of her and her friends doing fun things. People who could not be there, people who from their comments had lost touch with her or who had not seen her for awhile - got to say goodbye; got to reflect what knowing her meant.
I hope she had chance to read these messages - if so I hope that they made her feel good about who and what she had been; I hope the messages would have eased her passing. But I suspect that being able to post these messages on Facebook was far more beneficial to her friends. In a time when so many of us are physically separated from each other, divorced from the important social connections that should be sustaining us - her friends got to reach out and validate, at least for a little while, both themselves and their friend. They got to share that with other people who were doing the same thing.
Perhaps, in spite of the silly uselessness of pictures of cute dogs and orcas, in spite of the endless re-posting of facts that are neither newsworthy or true, in spite of countless pictures of what people ate or where - Facebook does, at its best, have a use. Like all things - when we share real feelings - connections, regardless of the medium, are made.
Saturday, July 7, 2018
Friday, July 6, 2018
2018 On the Road Again #11
I am sure that Morse, Saskatchewan is a lovely little town - most of the towns that I have visited just off of the Trans-Canada are. They have been charming. There have even been a few that I have fantasized about living there. But I, like so many of the towns along my route, never got to see it. In fact I only saw the hundred or so metres around the gas station owned by my previous driver. Morse, no matter how big or small it is, was just up over a low rise. A rise that I had no need to climb.
It was not a great place to stand. Across the road from where I was standing, there was Reed lake - It is one of those shallow lakes that are great for migrating birds and mosquitoes. Just beside me, running alongside the generous shoulder was a deep ditch - partially filled with water. It was the first time that day that I was glad of the wind - it kept the bugs away. Other than local traffic, there was no reason for cars to slow down when they saw me. Everyone seemed to be going a billion miles an hour, most of the cars seemed to have more than one person in them and almost no one even looked my way as they passed. There were the usual number of trucks on the road - but most of them were grain trucks - they all seemed to be in a rush as well. There was a fair amount of local traffic - folks who turned off to get gas and then went into town or else got back on the highway to go back to where ever they had come from. It was a frustrating few hours. I would have walked somewhere but there was nowhere to walk to.
As the sun began to set, the wind dropped, not completely but just enough so that the mosquitoes could find me, and land on me. The silly little buggers did not know that I had spent years living in Ontario and for the most part my skin is too thick for them - or something. I had a few bites, but very little itching. They were just bloody annoying.
I had already chosen my spot to sleep. There was a nice big sign just off the road welcoming me to Morse, Saskatchewan. It had a few shrubs around it and flags flying from a tall flag pole. It was on a wee hill so that I knew it would be dry and it looked as if there was enough of a flat space for me and my little bivy sack.
I tried to hitch well past dusk - I know better. In spite of a street light at the corner, there was no way anyone could see me in time to slow down. But there was nothing else to do and so I stayed. Eventually I admitted defeat for the day and after using the gas station's bathroom and buying something to drink, I went up to my little mound to set up the bivy sack. Of course by that time it was dark and as I had not set it up for a year, I took me longer than it should have to get everything in the right place. I was tempted not to bother with the tent but there will still a few bugs around - nothing interrupts my sleep more than a mosquito taking too long looking for just the right place to get some blood. I also did not want to get wet. The sky was clear but that did not mean that it would stay clear all night.
The ground was hard. Most ground, unless it is soggy is, but this dirt had no give in it at all. It was not the most comfortable night's sleep that I had ever had, but on the other hand - it wasn't raining, I had met some interesting people and if I wasn't where I hoped I would be - I was on the road again - proving at least to myself that hitchhiking is still the best was to travel.
It was not a great place to stand. Across the road from where I was standing, there was Reed lake - It is one of those shallow lakes that are great for migrating birds and mosquitoes. Just beside me, running alongside the generous shoulder was a deep ditch - partially filled with water. It was the first time that day that I was glad of the wind - it kept the bugs away. Other than local traffic, there was no reason for cars to slow down when they saw me. Everyone seemed to be going a billion miles an hour, most of the cars seemed to have more than one person in them and almost no one even looked my way as they passed. There were the usual number of trucks on the road - but most of them were grain trucks - they all seemed to be in a rush as well. There was a fair amount of local traffic - folks who turned off to get gas and then went into town or else got back on the highway to go back to where ever they had come from. It was a frustrating few hours. I would have walked somewhere but there was nowhere to walk to.
As the sun began to set, the wind dropped, not completely but just enough so that the mosquitoes could find me, and land on me. The silly little buggers did not know that I had spent years living in Ontario and for the most part my skin is too thick for them - or something. I had a few bites, but very little itching. They were just bloody annoying.
I had already chosen my spot to sleep. There was a nice big sign just off the road welcoming me to Morse, Saskatchewan. It had a few shrubs around it and flags flying from a tall flag pole. It was on a wee hill so that I knew it would be dry and it looked as if there was enough of a flat space for me and my little bivy sack.
I tried to hitch well past dusk - I know better. In spite of a street light at the corner, there was no way anyone could see me in time to slow down. But there was nothing else to do and so I stayed. Eventually I admitted defeat for the day and after using the gas station's bathroom and buying something to drink, I went up to my little mound to set up the bivy sack. Of course by that time it was dark and as I had not set it up for a year, I took me longer than it should have to get everything in the right place. I was tempted not to bother with the tent but there will still a few bugs around - nothing interrupts my sleep more than a mosquito taking too long looking for just the right place to get some blood. I also did not want to get wet. The sky was clear but that did not mean that it would stay clear all night.
The ground was hard. Most ground, unless it is soggy is, but this dirt had no give in it at all. It was not the most comfortable night's sleep that I had ever had, but on the other hand - it wasn't raining, I had met some interesting people and if I wasn't where I hoped I would be - I was on the road again - proving at least to myself that hitchhiking is still the best was to travel.
Tuesday, July 3, 2018
2018 On the Road Again #10
It turned out that my slightly fond memories of this particular corner in Saskatchewan were somewhat idealized. The wind, if anything, had gotten worse than it had been outside of Portage or Brandon, the dust devils were certainly worse and it was exhausting holding my body upright against the wind. The scenery was not that visually attractive - there was nothing to look at. It was in fact a boring place to stand for an hour or so. There seemed to be a reasonable number of cars going my way but of course I had no way of knowing how many of them were just going a few miles down the road or who was heading across country. I was more than delighted when a car finally stopped.
My driver was originally from Pakistan. His first comments to me other than to say where he was going, was to point out the number of cars that had only one person in it and yet they had not stopped for me. He sounded angry about this. While I may, on occasion, get frustrated at the number of cars that pass me by, usually (if I am lucky) with no more than a passing glimpse out of the corner of their eye and more usually a studied indifference of me, I never get angry at those drivers. It is their right to stop or not stop. I have no right, nor is it very useful, to get angry at them. My driver on the other hand expressed enough frustration for both of us. He was a Muslim - the only Muslim in perhaps hundreds of square miles. He believed that it was his duty, as a Muslim, to help people. He wondered why the other people on the road (he assumed they were Christians) did not follow the teaching of their beliefs. I could not give him an answer.
Although my driver, who had been in Canada for 6-7 years spoke grammatically correct English, his accent still made it occasionally difficult to catch all of his words. But we had an interesting conversation about what it was like to be the only Muslim in his town and the frustrations of working with Canadian Immigration. My driver's family still lived in Pakistan. He was not allowed to bring over either of his two wives. When he said that - I asked him to repeat what he had just said. He explained that his faith allowed him to have two wives but that Canada did not recognize that and therefore he was not allowed to have either wife join him. His "number one" wife had fairly recently just died and I think he was trying to determine if he was allowed to have his second wife join him. He did not seem optimistic. The cynic in me wondered if he was happier living alone and therefore was not trying too hard to have his wife move here. I didn't ask him.
My driver was, like so many first generation immigrants, an extraordinarily hard worker. He told me that he had fairly recently just bought a gas station. He also told me that local people kept on asking him how he could afford to buy a gas station. His answer was clear - work hard and save your money. I suspect that a few of the local people were unhappy that a "foreigner" had bought their local gas station.
My driver had twice told me where he was going. But because I had never heard the name before, or even noticed a sign along the highway, I could not quite understand what he was saying. Again, if I had realized that we were only going 115 kilometres, perhaps I would have stayed just outside of Moose Jaw. However where I got off was Morse, Saskatchewan. The gas station my driver owned was a big Esso with a bathroom and a convenience store attached. As I was there for some time, it became obvious to me that it was the only gas station for some miles and therefore it was a busy place.
My driver has a lot to teach other Canadians. Not only was he a hard worker who understood that sometimes one just needs to stay focused on a goal and ignore the smaller issues, but he also demonstrated that one's faith is not just something to celebrate one morning a week, but a lifestyle to live every day. While I don't usually pay much attention t it, it seemed to me that this trip I had meet at least two drivers who gave me a ride because their faith said that they should help people. Neither of them preached at me - they just demonstrated their faith through action. Nice!
My driver was originally from Pakistan. His first comments to me other than to say where he was going, was to point out the number of cars that had only one person in it and yet they had not stopped for me. He sounded angry about this. While I may, on occasion, get frustrated at the number of cars that pass me by, usually (if I am lucky) with no more than a passing glimpse out of the corner of their eye and more usually a studied indifference of me, I never get angry at those drivers. It is their right to stop or not stop. I have no right, nor is it very useful, to get angry at them. My driver on the other hand expressed enough frustration for both of us. He was a Muslim - the only Muslim in perhaps hundreds of square miles. He believed that it was his duty, as a Muslim, to help people. He wondered why the other people on the road (he assumed they were Christians) did not follow the teaching of their beliefs. I could not give him an answer.
Although my driver, who had been in Canada for 6-7 years spoke grammatically correct English, his accent still made it occasionally difficult to catch all of his words. But we had an interesting conversation about what it was like to be the only Muslim in his town and the frustrations of working with Canadian Immigration. My driver's family still lived in Pakistan. He was not allowed to bring over either of his two wives. When he said that - I asked him to repeat what he had just said. He explained that his faith allowed him to have two wives but that Canada did not recognize that and therefore he was not allowed to have either wife join him. His "number one" wife had fairly recently just died and I think he was trying to determine if he was allowed to have his second wife join him. He did not seem optimistic. The cynic in me wondered if he was happier living alone and therefore was not trying too hard to have his wife move here. I didn't ask him.
My driver was, like so many first generation immigrants, an extraordinarily hard worker. He told me that he had fairly recently just bought a gas station. He also told me that local people kept on asking him how he could afford to buy a gas station. His answer was clear - work hard and save your money. I suspect that a few of the local people were unhappy that a "foreigner" had bought their local gas station.
My driver had twice told me where he was going. But because I had never heard the name before, or even noticed a sign along the highway, I could not quite understand what he was saying. Again, if I had realized that we were only going 115 kilometres, perhaps I would have stayed just outside of Moose Jaw. However where I got off was Morse, Saskatchewan. The gas station my driver owned was a big Esso with a bathroom and a convenience store attached. As I was there for some time, it became obvious to me that it was the only gas station for some miles and therefore it was a busy place.
My driver has a lot to teach other Canadians. Not only was he a hard worker who understood that sometimes one just needs to stay focused on a goal and ignore the smaller issues, but he also demonstrated that one's faith is not just something to celebrate one morning a week, but a lifestyle to live every day. While I don't usually pay much attention t it, it seemed to me that this trip I had meet at least two drivers who gave me a ride because their faith said that they should help people. Neither of them preached at me - they just demonstrated their faith through action. Nice!
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