I tried posting this the other evening and lost the whole post when my computer froze... so it is a few days late.

On Wednesday, Prime Minister Harper made a formal apology on behalf of the Canadian government, Parliament, and the Canadian people for the forced removal of Aboriginal children to Indian Residential Schools, and the attemps at forced assimilation through the schools.

Present on the floor of the House were representatives of the Indian, Metis, and Inuit peoples of Canada, as well as survivors of the Residential Schools. Amongst the survivors were Marguerite Wabano, (seen here in a video on her 103 birthday!) at 104 the oldest survivor, and Crystal Merasty, at 17, the youngest survivor.

Phil Fontaine, Grand Chief of the Assemblty of First Nations, himself a survivor of both the schools and sexual abuse at the school he attended, received the apology on behlaf of the Indians of Canada.


It makes me feel honoured and elated to have been part of the process of working towards compensating survivors of the schools, enabling them to have their cases heard, and to find, at least in some small measure, healing.

It will be interesting to see how the Truth and Reconciliation Commission unfolds.

This is an Easter egg I decorated a few years ago for a friend's daughter. I scratched the design into the surface of the egg using an Exacto knife.

My favorite method of colouring the eggs is to get brown or red onion skins from the grocery store. They are all too willing to get rid of them but they tend to treat you like you have just escaped from somewhere when they find you rooting through the boxes of oinion and stuffing bags full of the loose skins. These days they remove them from the boxes every day, so invariably I have to ask them if they have any. They may produce three skins and I have to explain... "No! I need as many as I can get.... All you have of them!" ("Surrrre, Lady! You colour your eggs with them....").

I take the skins and wrap them around the eggs (You can soak the skins in water to soften them before you do this step). In the days before pantihose, we used thread to wrap around them to hold the skins on. Now, I wrap them in the skins and drop them into a length of pantihose, making a knot in between each egg, or place them in one of those net bags that come with the oinions. Using thread as well as placing them in the pantihose usually makes interesting lines on them.

For brown and yellow eggs, use brown onion skins, for red use ...errr... Red onions. You can combine the two but I would boil them in a separate pot.

I drop them in a pot of sold water, bring it to a boil and boil them for 7 minutes and then let them soak until the water is cool enough to retreive them.

When you unwrap them, you will find the most amazing stained glass patterns on your egg.


My egg below was simply boiled using Variation 1, below.

To enhance the colour and pattern, wipe with a cloth and a drop of cooking oil.

Variations:

1. You can simply place the loose skins and eggs into a pot of cold water and boil them which gives the egg a more or less flat brown colour (or red, if you use the red skins). Nice, but the results using the other method is what I like. With the solid colour, you can do as I did below and scratch into the surface to make a picture.
2. You can also place flowers, bits of cedar greens, leaves or shaped stickers on the egg before wrapping the egg. This leaves either a stencil effect or a colored impression of the object you used. Just make sure you use leaves and flowers that are edible! (see image immediately below)

The other day, we noticed that the dishwasher didn't seem to be actually washing the dishes. The food particles might have been a little cleaner, but they were still stuck on the dishes.


Since we can't afford to have anyone in to repair it unless we really HAVE to, I decided to see what, if anything, I could do in order to prevent a repairman's visit.

Firstly, I looked at the lower spray arm to see if the supply tube was able to extend up to spray the middle of the machine. It was.

Then I noticed that the holes in the spray arm, itself were clogged with debris. With a pair of needle-nose pliers, I removed what I could from the holes themselves. It appears that there is more stuff stuck in there. I may have to replace the part itself.

Then I took a look in the back of the inside of the machine and saw that there was a lot of crud in behind filter housing and around the sump cover.

Since these were attached with bolts that I needed a ratchet set to remove, I borrowed one from my brother-in-law. Once I removed the filter housing, I removed a handful of what looked like handmade paper.... bits of paper, seeds, cat fur, and macerated bones. Ick....

However, as icky as that was, I had an ickier surprise waiting under the sump cover! The sump cover is held on with two long bolts. Once I got it off and flipped it over I was horrified by what it looked like. The entire underside (I really wish I had thought to take a few photos...) was coated with what looked like earwax... About a cup and a half of sticky, slimy, gummy, waxy crud --- and mold!

It took me about 20 minutes to clean the cover which has a grille around the sides and several baffles on the underside. I ended up resorting to using an old toothbrush and Ajax cleaner.

Before putting it back on, I used a big sponge to soak up the water that was in the bottom of the sump reservoir and then felt around to see if there was anything sitting in the bottom of it.

I extracted about 20 pumpkin seeds, a piece of vine (?), more of the papery residue, a bunch of labels - paper and plastic, what appears to be either a chopper blade (probably belonging to the dishwasher... I have to find out where from and if I can replace it) or a motor blade (again from the dishwasher --it resembles both items in the catalogue I posted the link to), and a bunch of the plastic backings from my mother's Nitroglycerin patches*

So, now all I have to do is try the dishwasher out and see if the cleaning helps. I think I am going to try and suction out the sump (gotta have some use for the turkey baster) first and then give it a go. If it doesn't... Time to get a :


The earliest dishwashing machines involved a dish rack on a spindle with a basin of water underneath. A hand crank rotated the dish rack, splashing it through the water [ref]. This was not an efficient or effective way of washing dishes.


A safety tip: Never, ever... EVER... put a sharp knife pointed upwards in the dishwasher. If you should slip while loading or unloading the dishwasher, you could land on the knife. It has happened, with fatal results**.

* I wish they would make these shocking pink or orange or something. She is constantly leaving these on plates, dropping them on the floor, or on the counters. Since they are clear plastic she can't see them. I am constantly finding them sticking to my feet, getting stuck in the vacuum cleaner, finding them blocking the kitchen drain and, now, gumming up the works in the dishwasher....

Worse, I find the actual patches scrunched up on plates or stuck to the carpet. I am afraid one of the cats is going to eat one. It would kill them! One day, she dropped one in a bowl we use to drop burning matches in in the bathroom. I just about set fire to the house when it caught fire and I couldn't put it out.

** On 22 January 2003, a five-year-old Kentucky girl died of wounds received when she fell onto a knife exposed in an open dishwasher. The fatal accident befell Payton Michael McElroy during a visit at her grandparents' house in the company of her mother and brother. The two children were playing while the grandmother was unloading the dishwasher, and somehow during this play session the girl tripped and fell onto a knife housed on the open dishwasher's door. The blade punctured the child's heart and left lung.

I should put some of the birdseed we have hanging about in the house out for them.

Some time ago, I posted a video on both my channel here, and on my YouTube account, featuring some of my "driving around" footage and a version of "Roll Over Beethoven" done by my cousin, Danny Matousek and his band, The Velaires.

I was very pleased when several former bandmates, including some still performing as The Flairs (the band was The Flaris until they discovered another band was using that name, so the changed to The Velaires), left comments on the video and shared some of their memories of Danny.

Having grown up without my birth-father in my life, I had little knowledge of his family. Even after he reappeared in my life, apart from putting my half-brother and sister and I in contact with each other, he "refrained" from giving us any information which would allow us to contact his sisters in Iowa. I had always missed out on the experience of knowing my extended family.

After his death, I took it upon myself to look for his family. Unfortunately, both his sisters had died, one just 6 months before I tracked the family down.

However, it was the remaining family - many (MANY) cousins, my uncle's wife, and friends - who were able to give me the connectin to all those I never would know in person.

I had been looking forward to meeting my cousin Danny during my seecond visit to Iowa. Unfortunately, he passed away just after my first visit and I was unable to do so. His brother, though, has given me mementos and memories to fill him out for me. Now, through the reminiscences of his musician friends, I know more about him. It has been terrific.

One of the unintended but wonderful things that putting the video up has done is put some of these terrific musicians in touch with each other after many decades.