Advice to 13 year old girls

My advice for thirteen year old girls, The most important thing to remember is to work hard and study in school, because working hard now is how you can make sure that your future is full of good opportunities. You also can ask your parents for help and follow their advise because they lived long lives and know what is better for you at this age.

 It is important to have good friends that you can trust and who can help you and give you advice if you need them to.

 It is important not to waste your free time and to use it wisely , you can read literature, play music, or even go to the cinema with your friends. You should help you community and family by volunteering or helping your relatives. I used to help the lonely elderly people with cooking and cleaning.  Make the right decisions and choices. You can learn from and teach your siblings.

 When I was in grade eight or nine I used to volunteer and help the younger grades put on and prepare performances for their friends and family. I helped teach them stories, poems and songs and even some plays.

Norma Explains it All to You

Norma has experienced a lot of changes for women in her life.  Here she explains how she traversed the complications of cultural expectations and a desire for learning.  Enjoy!

Purpose Driven: Notes to my 13 year old Self.

By Amalia Tauber

This video was made in the blogging class with myself, some students and Mariette.   It came from the conversation I had with one of the young students about what I would tell my younger self.

The transcript, I started below, as well

The first  thing I  would tell myself at 13 is to study... not just for professional life but for learning about LIFE... about mankind, about how things came to be and where they could go.

In 1939 the war started, with that my life changed.  And my perspective about life was completely different then.

Before those days I knew there were rich people and poor people, people who would like to achieve thinking that they couldn't achieve in life but that life could be so hard and people could regress to acting like savages, that was something completely new to me.

War can change everybody.  BUT it is not just the war but it was the things that led up to the war... it was the unfinished work that lead up to the war, the treaties, the fallout from WW1 and the economic pressures, the changes in the country lines and the economic pressures that followed after the first ww - the consequences... in particular what happened in Germany.

How the National Socialist Party could take hold there was because the economic situation was so bad there.  There was inflation and unemployment.

If you know how people came to their circumstances, how they came to live you can understand and anticipate the future.   You can only do this if you LEARN about history, human behaviour, and life situations.  You can learn in many ways

You can learn from experience, from other in your surrounding and life, and you can learn from books and other resources.

Learning from life experience for me meant living in a concentration camp.   I was a teenager, I didn't anticipate this kind of cruelty and horror in what I and many other experienced.

You need to know what is happening in the world and if you want to change it you need to fight for better conditions for living, not just for yourself but for all people.

There are many distractions, especially now, for a young person.  There are many ways to get knocked of a helpful path.  Our cultures encourages us to be shallow.   I am not saying don't enjoy your life but a young person needs to have ideals, a purpose.  You may not know your purpose exactly, but if you read and you explore the failures of humanity through learning, (not through personal experience, I hope for you) and you can find your way to your purpose.  I

Its very important for younger people to go on the path of ideals, it is much harder to find as you get old.  When you are young you are more enthusiast and believe more in the goodness of others.  As you age you can become more cynical, so to capture you ideals and enthusiasm and hold onto it as you grow.

After all I have been through, and it has been much, I still believe in the goodness of mankind.  There are more good people than bad.

What would you tell yourself, leave it in the comments below

Our Launch

Our video launch was a tremendous success with a great showing of over 40 friends and family.   Our intrepid blogger Sandi was our host for the evening and she encouraged us all to have a great time.   We had folks from the Jewish Centre supporting us, The Calgary Jewish Academy came to celebrate with us and some representation from the fantastic youth that were part of the project.

So this week we want to feature the fantastic video made by Micah who asked Bob 5 questions.  These questions were based on conversations around "what stories would you want to share with younger people".

Stepping into becoming an Elder in your community and moving into a position of storyteller is an important part of the aging process.  Only you have the lived experience and understanding if you are ahead of someone.  It makes seniors leaders and we have some great leadership on this blog! 

Hope you stayed tuned for more stories, but for now, here's Bob!

Coming To Canada!

Well today is the day we launch our videos out to the universe!   We hope you will join us.   Here is another video by a good friend of the project:  Irina.    Irina looks at what it is like to come to Canada from a communist country and the nature of truth.

Hope you appreciate Irina's thoughtfulness and care as she sorts through what she was taught vs how it lines up with reality

Come view the rest of the videos tonight!

We invite you to join us at our: 

Video Premiere & Blog Celebration.   

April 30th at The Calgary Jewish Community Centre, in the Seniors Lounge from 6 - 7:30 

For a Dessert Reception.

Please RSVP to Shula Banchik at  403 537 8596

Our First Video Blog

Here at Bubbies & Zaidas Blogging we have been working with the youth at Calgary Jewish Academy and we have been inspired to make videos.    We have been working with this new concept to tell stories and overcome some inhibitions.   

Here is a preview of one of our videos by Manny called:   

From the Good Old Encyclopedia Days to the Google Days

click on it to view it:

Come view the rest of the videos!

We invite you to join us at our: 

Video Premiere & Blog Celebration.   

April 30th at The Calgary Jewish Community Centre, in the Seniors Lounge from 6 - 7:30 

For a Dessert Reception.

Please RSVP to Shula Banchik at  403 537 8596

Gratitude: How to Recieve.

By Bob Peterson

Amalia's lovely story of Westjet kindness reminded me of blessings I received a few weeks ago.  Friends from Vancouver Island had visited me over the holiday and their daughter, Teresa, at some point in our conversation had heard me tell my friends about difficulties I have with my computer and a recently purchased Ipad. I can now remember Theresa saying "my husband Tom can help you and I'll have him contact you".

Friday Jan 3, 2014 was a cold day, and I knew that I would have to brush the snow off my car so I could drive to my 9:45 ultra sound appointment. At breakfast my table mate Phil said he would brush the snow off the car for me. I knew that would be a real plus for me. Then when I returned to my room, a call came in from Theresa asking what I was doing that day, and when I told her, she said "Tom & I will drive you to your appointment, & we’ll wait for you and bring you back to your seniors residence, and then Tom will help you with your computer while I go and pick up food for lunch.  I was delighted, and things went as planned. 

Tom & Theresa were both a great help to me. Before leaving, Theresa said "We’ll also shovel the snow from both sides of your car so you'll be able to drive out of the parking lot easier".   They were cheerful, encouraging and just bubbling with kindness.  

As we age, our pace slows down and we require more time to complete our tasks.  When faced with our limitations it is often difficult to remember to be grateful for the support or help that often comes from the most unexpected sources. The help I received was a wonderful act of kindness, and it reminded me that there have been many times when I have just taken these things so much for granted.   Amalia's story is another example of a situation that will remind me to focus on being grateful for the many blessings I receive, to be thankful & appreciate each day the Lord gives me, and not to focus so much on my difficulties & losses.

A Joyful Experience

Monday, February 3, 2014, the celebration of my departed Mother's 97th birthday brought me a the gift of meeting Lauren, a student from the Calgary Jewish Academy.

 Our unique "older" students’ blogging group met a second unique group...students from the Jewish Academy in a small meeting room in their school. Our inspiring and motivational leader, Mariette, initiated introductions by commencing a game. Mariette introduced herself and then stated "I bet you never" and followed that with something unique she had done in her life.  If no one could say I've have done this, the person next to Mariette followed the routine. Eventually we knew each other’s name and a minimal amount of information about each other.

Initially, I was nervous and concerned about meeting up with the students because I felt I  had nothing to share...I didn't experience the hard times that most of our group had experienced...in fact I was thinking about backing out and not attending. However, once the introductions and the game commenced I was at ease.

When it came to me to introduce myself I stated my name and said, "I bet you 
haven't rappelled down the outside of a small building "Aussiestyle". I was asked what this meant and followed with an explanation. 

After the introductions and lunch, the "younger" students were advised to chose one of  us "older" students to partner up for our commencement of "fun" in the computer lab. Lauren chose me. We walked down the hall from the room we met in, entered into the computer lab, and sat waiting eagerly for our instructions from Mariette.

We were instructed to go to the Bubbies and Zaidas blogging site to view the various blogs...now the laughter begins. I didn't know what the link was for the blog and therefore located it in a long about way. Mariette came to where Lauren and I were sitting and told us the link was and Lauren typed it in... Lauren then stated something like "you're slow" I started to laugh.

When we finally got to the blog page....I advised Lauren to scroll down to see the various blogs and then suggested she read Bruce's...she found it very interesting, especially reading about how huge the computers and servers use to be "in the day". There is a lot more to this story, however, I will only point out a couple of highlights.

One of the highlights was when Lauren said to me I bet you type by using only two fingers and showed me what she meant...I started laughing again. I told her that when I was employed that my job involved using a computer every day. I jokingly put my hands on my hips and said "I bet you don't know what an ergonomic key board is"  Lauren said no and asked what it was...I explained in detail what it was and its purpose.

A thought that came to my mind when Lauren inferred I used only two fingers to type was to challenge her to see who is the fastest and most accurate, what a blast this would have been.

Lauren is a "hoot", a lot of fun and funny.  My thoughts are that we have the same type of humour.  I had forgotten how much I enjoy being around children, well really, young adults.

The time zipped by and we were back in the original room saying our goodbyes until the following week.

As I left for the day two other students pointed to me and said, "You are the one who rappelled Aussie style".  I said yes and told them quickly and briefly about my experience as a civilian officer with an Air Cadet squadron. I stated that the cadets did the rappel, however none of the male Officers did, therefore, I had to prove to the cadets, the male Officers and myself that I could be the "little engine that could" and the rest is history.  

It was great to be a part of my history, not just the assumptions people make about me now.   It made my day so much better. 

Wisdom

Pursuing Wisdom is a lifelong journey.   In this video Amalia shares what she has learned about pursuing wisdom.   She considers what she learned to make it possible to be a life long learner and the challenges along the way.  Please enjoy and don't forget to post a comment at the bottom of this post for Amalia & the rest of the Bubbies & Zaidas blogging who are bravely entering the world of Digital Eldering!

Oh how I miss my Abacus

Bruce Eekma

I was born in the good old days, well I don't know if it was always good, but a lot simpler. I started school in 1947, two years after the second World War, outfitted with an abacus to do math plus a small slate the size of a sheet of paper including a chalk pencil, for writing things down.  We did all our math and written task, which the teacher had written on the blackboard the evening before, on our slate and when completed we would show them our completed work. At the end of the day we would just wipe of all this information, so we had a"clean slate" to start the next morning, and the only memory we had to worry about was in our head.

In the seventies I was involved in building large temperature controlled buildings where contractors would install large cabinets called computers. We were told that these large cabinets could remember more then a human and could solve math problems in a second. We were entering the paperless society and there would be less people employed for filing.

Later when I worked downtown for  AGT now TELUS, we had three floors with these large computers, and I was told they were rented out to large oil companies to store all their data. On the main floor we had what was called the Museum of the Future filled with all kinds of gadgets to be use for communication in the future and my favorite was a robot that would walk around and talked to people, the other was a display of phones where one could see the person you were talking to. In my own office I also had an computer with my own Profs id. Plus I was sent on numerous computer courses just so they could steal me away from my abacus and slate.

 

Ever since, my days with the telephone company, I have owned a computer at home and would do office work from home or Google the world. I was very impressed with this new invention because this was my window into the world. And until this last weekend everything was going great, sometimes I would make mistakes or lose something, but there was always a way to retrieve my data without much problem.

Then my week in hell started, I run Microsoft 8, and accepted the free upgrade to Microsoft 8.1. This went without a hint of problems however then it prompted me to refresh my computer to make it run better and this would not harm my files, because they would be set aside, so I gave it a try. Big Mistake because when I got my files back they were unreadable, written in some computer code, which I could not decipher. There was one file, the book that I'm in the process of rewriting, that I couldn't access because it was password protected and even though I had given it this password it still would not let me open it.

At first I panicked thinking that maybe David L Smith had given me his Melissa virus, or Bradley Manning had sent it to Wikileaks. My book A Daughter's Search for her Father has a Nazi link, this is the one I'm rewriting, so maybe some old Nazi War Criminal was afraid that I'm getting too close to the truth. All kinds of crazy thing's go through one's head and nowadays everything is possible.

I finally got in touch with someone from Microsoft who spent three hours trying to solve my problem to no avail. However he claimed that it was not Microsoft that caused the problem but an old word processor that I had used long ago. This did not make me feel any better because the Microsoft word processer had worked for a long time and now all of a sudden it is not compatible. Anyway he did find and loaded this old word processer onto my computer so I could try to repair them myself. I spent numerous hours getting more and more frustrated and finally dumped the whole mess in my garbage can. So I lost a lot of work, it put me six months behind republishing a new version of my book, but I like to thank Microsoft for helping me for three hours and for being very patiently with an old man and next time I will not try to get something that does not have all the kinks ironed out.  

Blogging & Seniors: How did that Happen?

How have we changed?

Mariette Sluyter

We thought we would take a moment to share with you how this project has changed folks.   I would like to provide some perspective and then Bob will take over and share the changes he has seen.   Our group came together with a mix of hesitant interest and skepticism.   When I told folks that I believed people would be interested in their stories they hardly believed me. As the post grew and our team saw the stats they started to understand that maybe, just maybe younger people were interested in what they had to say.  Over 2000 individual blog views in just 3 months has reassured them that their voice is welcomed in the blogosphere.

Now, about half of our team came on board having little or no computer skills whatsoever, and no experience blogging at all.  Through a process of in class lessons, peer tutoring and online cheerleading and support all of our group have gained the necessary computer skills, have started honing their storytelling capacities and are transitioning to moderating the blog themselves. 

As for myself I have been thrilled to see how quickly this team from 66 - 87 have taken to their individual roles as needed.  Moving from tutor to student to cheerleader they are willing to do whatever it takes to support each other.   It is moving to watch people continue to push and learn a very challenging skill in their lives at a time when many would be choosing to not participate.   Thank you Bubbies & Zaidas for reminding me to always keep learning.

Now for Bob's perspective on the changes he has seen in our group.

How Blogging Has Affected People in the Class

By

Bob Peterson

1) It has allowed seniors an opportunity to reflect on topics presented by our instructor and encouraged seniors to share how their own lives were lived or shaped dealing with that particular situation.

2) Recently Blogging web site contacts have chose to make comments about the seniors stories, and we have instantly become part of a much greater community.

 3) It is interesting to read about the paths that others have walked before us and it broadens our knowledge of history that was often overlooked in earlier times.

4) Blogging has encouraged us to learn computer skills which have opened up so many opportunities for us to access information instantly




5) it has made us realize how mind boggling technology has been progressing from year to year, and we wonder what the possibilities are waiting for us in the future.

Remembering more than Sacrifice

Ways to remember, reading & learning.

Irine Remembers
By Irina

It is important to remember the men and women who fought in the wars and sacrificed their lives to save their families and country.

It is important to give and show appreciation and thanks to these men and women who fought in the wars. Because of these people, we are privileged to live a good life in the safe country we are living in.

We do not want to experience what I experienced as a child.

When I was five years old, my mother, two brothers and I had to leave our home because the Germans were bombing  the area.

My dad, who was a teacher and a translator, knew many languages. When the war started, he was recruited as an officer by the government. His job was to recruit young men to become soldiers and send them to the front to fight in the war.

What I remember is very painful. Dad put our family on a train. We travelled to Kiev, the capital city of Ukraine. The Germans bombed the train and many people were killed. As the bombs were coming down around us, my mother covered us three children with her body to protect us. Those of us who survived the bombing ran into the forests…we were very scared.

Our soldiers made it through the forests as well. We to came to a village. I asked if anyone had seen my dad…finally we saw each other. My dad gave me a hug and a kiss and then swiftly had to leave for the front to fight.

This is only part of the terrible and devastating experience I encountered in my young life.

This brief story mentioned is why it is important for the youth to remember we do not want to experience this again. We want our country to always be safe from war.

What to Remember

By Amalia

It is very important to remember what has gone on in the past, especially for the younger generations that haven't lived through the horrors of war.

They have to know what happened in the past and not repeat the same mistake.

They have to know fight hatred because it is one of the biggest ills of humanity.

They have to promote understanding and friendship amoung people of all races, to learn about other cultures.

We come from different parts of the world but that doesn't mean that we can't strive to live together in peace.

Why Remember

By Bob

In the past, and yet even today, Governments, politicians and leaders around the world succumb to greed, power and strategically arrange to put their selfish plans into place to acquire land, money and possessions at the expense of ordinary citizens who want to live happily in a peaceful environment.

They are willing to sacrifice human life of anyone who stands in their way.  Beginning with indignities of fear, humiliation, lies and corruption, they work away at deceiving the innocent by depriving them of their basic freedoms.

The resulting confrontrations, invasions and previous World Wars prove there are no limits to their actions or intentions.

Yes, it is important to remember the past.

On Remembrance Day around the world we pause to think of the millions of men, women and children who were killed, disabled or suffered physically or mentally.

Men & Women who fought against oppressors to reclaim this freedom and it's important to particularly remind our educators and government leaders to continue to inform everyone of the events of the past so that this unacceptable situation will not continue.  Peace will not happen if we individually do not take a stand when we notice our rights being violated.

It is important for the youth of today to be knowledgeable of CURRENT WORLD EVENTS.

"Never Again"

This is a question to you, our readers:  "What is our individual responsibility to that phrase?"  Irina points out the personal ravages of these large scale failures of humanity.   Amalia suggests we need to remember how we got to the point of large scale failures of humanity.   Bob points us to ongoing learning, not necessarily celebration but CONSIDERATION of ALL that went into sending troops into dangerous situations.    How do you strive to be a part of the "Never Again" story.   How can we do better?   Leave your comments below.