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.

Sometimes you have to search to find out who you are!

By Bruce Eekma

My name is Bruce Eekma and I was born in the Netherlands in 1939 and immigrated to Calgary, Canada in 1958 at the age of nineteen. I met Margaret, who had emigrated as a young girl also from the Netherlands, a few years later and we were married in 1962. A year ago we celebrated our fiftieth anniversary with our two Sons, two Granddaughters and two Great-Grandchildren and lots of other Family and friends. We still live in Calgary where I have a full time job here at the Calgary Jewish Center as a Maintenance worker and Margaret keeps busy baby-sitting her Great-grandchildren. If we had known how great these Great-grandchildren are when we got married we would have had them first.

My proudest accomplishment was when I published my first book “A Daughter’s Search for her Father” a true story about what happened to Margaret’s biological Father. I wrote this book to help Margaret, who spent most of her life searching, understand what really happened to her Father whom nobody wanted to talk about. Margaret was born in Amsterdam on the 31 of August 1943 in the middle of World War II the result of a loving relationship between a young Dutch lady and a German man. Her Father being German, the enemy of the Dutch people, was the reason nobody wanted to talk about her birth. The shame of being a German baby was why we were only given small bits of information. Her Mother only gave us his name as Wilhelm Bauer and after that, she nor any other family members, were unwilling to talk about this subject anymore.

Then on a trip to Amsterdam in 2008 I was able to obtain Margaret’s original birth certificate which had some dates that really interested me so started to write this book. With the help of the computer, searching the internet, I was able to trace the Wilhelm Bauer family history and discovered that Margaret’s Grandfather Gustav Bauer became the 11th Chancellor of Germany in 1919. Then in 1933, the year the Nazi came in power, he was accused and arrested by Hitler for stealing 30,000,000 RM from the German people. However after a week in jail they had to release him from jail because there was not enough evidence to substantiate the claim. Because of these accusations the Bauer family decided to send their only son Wilhelm Bauer, now a successful German economist, to the Netherlands where he meets a beautiful Dutch girl, they fall in love and nine months later Margaret is born. Shortly after her birth, through jealousy, it was reported to the Nazi Authorities that Margaret’s father was a Jew and for him to have had a sexual relation with someone of the Aryan race was against the Nazi anti-Semitic law’s and punishable with death. So he is arrested and transported to Thereseinstadt concentration camp where his identity is stolen by Anton Burger the SS Camp Commander who after the war assumes Wilhelm Bauer’s name and lived out the rest of his life in Essen Germany a free man. Burger’s true identity wasn’t revealed until 1994, three years after his dead at age 80.         

The History of getting to 83: Prairie in my bones

By Manny

Naturally, I was born...  in Calgary.  Lived here until I was 10 and then moved to Lethbridge.   Went through the school system and ended up at the University of Oklahoma as there was a big oil push in 1948 in Leduc and U of O was the school to go to.  

I was there with lots of Veteran who were taking geology courses, like myself.

Our father was an entrepreneur, but in those days your business was tied to the land and agriculture.

One day I was called back to help my father.  We were shipping wool and it was being loaded by on rail cars for the east.   He was getting impatient with how long it was taking so he  left us young fellows to load and said "I will see you in Lethbridge, going to the cow auction"

On his way to  Lethbridge my father was hit by a train & injured.   My educational career ended abruptly and I stayed to help with the business. My father was an agriculturalist in Cattle, Sheep and Land, I became a sheep herder.  My father’s specialty was buying and selling ranches & livestock  in Saskatchewan and Alberta but his hobby was race horses!  

courtesy of Wikipedia

At 21 I had my own airplane because the roads in Alberta were impassible in the winter.   I had a 4 passenger piper pacer which was equipped with skis for the winter.   We would do food drops for ranchers from Saskatchewan to Alberta, who may not be able to get to a store for supplies for months due to the snows.

In the winter I had more time on skis (of the plane) then in cars.

Being so mobile I never had a steady gal! 

I remember one old rancher up in the NE of the province was so grateful for our consistent help he gave me a 1928 Model A Ford convertible which I still have to this day!

 

Westjet's Real Miracle

By Amalia 

The recent Westjet Video of the Christmas Miracle  has inspired me to write this story about my flight from Mexico to Calgary I still can't believe how far human kindness can reach.  A person could easily be cynical and say that the video was simply a tool for selling their products but my experience, I hope, will show you that for this company, kindness is a corporate quality, not a marketing tool.

A few weeks after my husband passed away my daughter and son in law had to go on a previously planned trip to Mexico and insisted that I come with them.  My daughter insisted she couldn't leave me alone in this circumstance.

I think that anyone can understand how you are hit when you lose your partner after almost 62 years of marriage.  I wanted to be left alone in my home with my thoughts and feelings.  My daughter was heartbroken.   They needed this trip and I didn't want her to stay at home because of me.   So I agreed to join them but for only the first of the two weeks.

I was so happy and relieved when my grandson offered to fly down to Mexico to pick me up and bring me back to Calgary.   He arrive in Mexico without incident but the flight back to Calgary was sold out but he hoped to make it stand-by.  One passenger with a ticket didn't  show up so my grandson was allowed to load the plane with me.  That didn't last long as the passenger showed up and my grandson had to leave the plane.


My happiness to have my grandson with me ended because he had to leave the plane.  I was very sad.  I wasn't afraid to fly alone but at the idea of arriving home, to my house alone.  I always traveled together with my husband and dreaded the moment when I unlocked the door and saw myself alone.

A flight attendant saw the tears in my eyes.  She asked me what happened and I told her my story.  She was so compassionate as I told her my story, she hugged me and tried to console me.  Then all the flight attendants came and offered to make things easier for me.

Many kindnesses happened on that flight but one of the most powerful was when I was told that the pilot arranged for somebody to call a taxi to pick up my luggage and a person from their staff would accompany me home upon arrival.  

The lady was so nice and warm towards me.  She unlocked the door, came inside with me and sat with me while I got used to being in my home without my husband.  She asked if I needed something and if I could manage being alone.  She stayed as long as I needed and when she left she gave me her phone number.   I assured her that I was ok and had to promise that I would phone if I needed something  or felt uncomfortable.

I was overwhelmed.  Even today I can't believe how strangers could show me so much companionship and kindness.   It is encounters like these, filled with kindness and wonderful people that make me strive to be a better human being. 

Traditions!

It is my great pleasure to introduce you to one of our great supporters here at Bubbies & Zaidas Blogging.    To chat with Fania Wedro is to sit with the community.  As we sat to talk, people would come up and pay their respects. It was clear that she is well loved. Fania is not simply the one woman but she embodies her community.   When I point this out to her, she laughs and reminds me that she always says: “JCC is the living room for the Jewish People in Calgary.”

Fanny is well known for her presentations at the Speak every year at the Holocaust Education Symposium, now in it’s 30th year.    She is clear that only through education, through storytelling and sharing can we get to the promise of  “never again”.   “When I was a child I was afraid to go out at Easter because of the oppression of the Jews… things change” she reflects. 

At the 25th anniversary of symposium, a teacher from Strathmore spoke about being at the symposium when she was 17 and hearing Fanny speak about hiding in the forest,  this changed the course of her life.  That is the fuel that keeps Fanny going, telling her stories and keeping traditions.

“I am not religious but I am think traditional” says Bubby Fanny “traditions help us remember who we are, not just as individuals or families but as whole communities.   They are important.  It is what keeps the Jewish culture together.  If we didn’t have tradition we wouldn’t have survived Holocaust and the persecution all those years.”

“There are so many things that get in the way of our traditions.  Remembrance day has become a day at the mall.   We should take the time to reflect on our history and how we got here as a society, how we got our freedom."

She sees the danger in not passing on our history when these children, who will become the future decision makers do not know the stories of the past and then “history will repeat” itself.

She goes on to remind us that “Culture can maintain traditions and support the education of our history so that we can try to learn from our traditions.”

The key here is taking the best of what we have learned, and learning from the worst of what we have experienced.  When I asked her how we would know what was good her life experience made the answer spring from her lips, as though this common sense answer would be easy if you simply gave it some thought:  the best “traditions are respectful of humanity as a whole”.

She reminds us that it is unhelpful to ghetto yourself.  The world is a wider scope than the four walls of your house.  If we keep our traditions we are able to move from our families, to our communities and to humanity.

“It is not just my tradition, it is our tradition, I also love other traditions like Christmas - I love it.   I have Christmas dinner with my friends that celebrate Christmas.  American thanksgiving, I respect other traditions. Its a bringing together.   And if we all supported each other’s beliefs and traditions we would have fewer troubles in the world.”

What Christmas Does Mean?

By Sandi

Christmas does not mean, buy, buy, buy…spend a lot of money.

Christmas should not mean loneliness, being on the streets and being without food. There are

Statistics show Christmas is the time of year where many people commit suicide. There is pressure of the following:

thousands of people in the world who are in this situation. Would it not be a joyful experience if we felt safe enough to invite a lonely person or a homeless person into our home during the Christmas season to share some food with and make them aware they are special in his or her own way? This in itself is a gift.

(1) “spend time with your family”

(2) “spend time with your friends”
(3) “cook a turkey dinner with the fixings”

(4) “put up a tree with all the trimmings”

(5) “buy gifts for those people in your life that you love etc. 

There are many people in the world that are not fortunate to be able to do any of the above as they don’t have family, don’t have friends, can’t afford to buy a turkey etc. Through all the hype, loneliness becomes more prominent during the Christmas season. Some people find the pain so unbearable that they just want to avoid the hurt.

The problem with the pressure to buy, buy, buy is that there are people who do not have self-discipline and cannot afford to spend a lot of money on gifts, however, because it is Christmas will go into extreme debt. People believe they will pay this debt off later; however, this does not appear to happen. Unfortunately, some of these people are shopaholics. The sponsors of the numerous advertisements pressuring people to buy are feeding this addiction.

Years ago there were numerous advertisements to purchase cigarettes…this has now ceased. Scientists and doctors have proven that smoking is harmful to a person’s health. Over spending is also hazardous to a person’s health. Extreme debt and finding a solution causes stress that causes numerous health problems. Valuable relationships have almost been destroyed for the wrong reasons…materialism. I suspect we will see the need for the same kind of interventions for consumerism as we did for smoking cessation in the future.  Thousands of children know Christmas as only being the time of year they are going to receive numerous gifts and grow up with with this mind set.

Another scenario occurs during Christmas. Numerous charities are asking for money. There are people who want to give to the charities that mean the most to them, however, unfortunately they cannot, as they themselves do not have the money to give and put themselves on a guilt trip because they care so much.

Last, but not least, winter holiday traditions are different for all cultures and beliefs. The Christian world celebrates the birth of Jesus Christ during the Christmas season. Therefore, speaking as a Christian, I wish you a Merry Christmas, welcoming you into my tradition of celebration, not consumerism.  I welcome you into my celebration, as other faith traditions welcome me.

Not married? No Children! Oh My!

By Norma

When I was a teenager the expectation was that it was alright to get an education but this was to occur while you were waiting to get married.  The marriages and engagements started by the end of high school and later, most of the women in my nursing class were engaged by the time we graduated.  I came close! My fiancé wanted to get married right away, but I wanted to get my degree. Since he did not want to wait, we parted.

I was a enthusiastic pupil and had always been encouraged by my parents to study. This was not the norm amongst my peers! My relatives continued to ask about boyfriends, engagement parties and weddings were a nightmare of veiled looks and questions.
   

The next big question was - didn't I want children?  This did have me questioning my own motivation.  But...  I guessed that if I did marry, children would likely follow.  But... did I really want that?  I have felt judged, particularly as time went on and I didn't marry or have children. I could sense that behind the questions looks there were other thoughts- is there something wrong with her since she can't get a man?  Is she just too picky?       

Feminism, MS magazine,and the "the pill", were front and center during my 20's and 30's.  In some ways that made my situation more tenable. At least there were discussions and forums on marriage and motherhood and I didn't have to feel so alone being single and childless.  There were other women out other women like me!  There were even women brave enough to admit that motherhood was not for them.
       

I have had my share of relationships, some brief, some long term. My common law marriage has lasted 25 years.  Marriage was not an issue for either of us and we were beyond the parenthood age when we met. My career in Nursing has spanned 46  satisfying years. I have reached the age of 70 sans marriage or offspring.

Oh my!