Christmas is over. And we all survived. We now have a balmy 21*, and six inches of new snow. The East Coast of the USA just got hammered. We seem to have been spared.
News of the great tidal wave has reached us. We hear of close to 50,000 dead. It is beyond my imagination. I have been sending out emails trying to find out if anyone has heard from or about the former priest at Eastmain, Nirmal — who is from Sri Lanka. No word yet on him or on his family.
I sent off my Passport along with fotos of JBE to Canadian Immigration yesterday . Evidently this is near the end of the process I initiated in March of 2002.
This morning dawned with a chilly 35* below zero — Fahrenheit. Everybody is complaining. It’s not supposed to get this cold until February. Some cars wouldn’t start this morning. The Church Van DID start, but it has been making nasty smells and noises all day.
There is a GREAT DEBATE going on now in high gear: whether to hold Christmas Eve Services in the Little Church (smaller & warmer) or in the Old Church (bigger & c older). The reasons for the Old/Big Church are: Tradition! AND, there are too many of us for the Little Church. The reasons for the Little Church: We’ll save at least $600 on the heat, and while we’ll be crowded at 7 PM, there should be just the right number of us at the late Service. Tuesday night brings a Vestry Meeting. I already know what we are going to be talking about.
This morning the kids did their annual Sunday School Concert in the Parish Hall. Multiple generations enjoyed the event. Dale Broadworth from the Canadian Bible Society was also there — with lots of Bibles. The kids sang; Dale sold Bibles. We munched out on cookies and sandwiches.
I heard that the taxis (4 wheeled variety) were out on the ice yesterday. In the few years I have been here this is the earliest and fastest that freeze-up has occurred. The other two freeze ups were not complete until early or mid January.
The temperature climbed to 27* today. That’s warmer than the Northeast Kingdom. However, there were small trucks on The River today — unofficially. The Expressway is still closed.
Temp this morning (7 AM) is -15*. Last night I heard that yesterday (or the day before) there WAS a car out on the ice. That’s early — and risky. BUT, The River Is freezing up — just like it’s supposed to.
I’m told there also has been skidoo traffic for a week any way — between Moosonee and Albany & Kashechewan.
I have come upon and have been playing with a number of digital toys. Probably, they are old to you. They are new to me, however, and I have been having FUN — figuring out (or tryingto) how they work. Maybe some day one or a number of them will prove useful. They’re all on my website — somewhere on the site. They tend to move around, so whatever I tell you here will probably be not quite right by the time you read it.
1.
I got the CBC to display some of its headlines on my home page. This is for all you Americans out there who hunger for news — about the world, the north, and maybe even the USA.
2.
I put together a Guest Book. This is something you can sign. And you can see other people’s signings-in. No matter that no one has signed it to date. It’s fun.
3.
The ‘Bulletin Board’ — generically known as a ‘BLOG’. Peter & Marnie weighed in on that one just after I got it going. One can post messages or notices for everybody (who reads the Bulletin Board). It’s tucked away in the Paddling Section. I don’t know that it will have much use for a while
4.
The ‘Moose Factory Journal’ now, as I get to it, I’ll post in a ‘blog’. When there’s enough material, then, I’ll bundle it up in a downloadable file. The pdf format seems to be best for the most people.
To go to the page directly — not thru my website:
http://moosonee.typepad.com/moose_factory_journal/
—very, very cool….. You can have my very most personal and inmost THOUGHTS right while I am having them — delivered directly and immediately to your desktop. I think I will never have to write another letter again.
5.
Calendar… This presently includes the activity (or some of it) at St. Thomas’. Whatever I type in to my desktop calendar appears in a facsimile posted on The web.
Whether any of that stuff ever becomes particularly useful at my Site, I don’t know. (I tend to doubt it.) But it may be useful in church work. So, I’m learning how to make the stuff work.
Temp is -11* at 7 AM. We get dawn around 8 AM. If these temps hold firm (and they won’t) we would get our highway by Christmas.
I’ve had a rather half-hearted but persistent cold for a week now. Every time I think I have shaken it, it reappears. Colds here are weird. For one thing, they are common. For another, they act a lot like allergies. I’m not so sure but that half of us suffer from the dust and/or mold. There’s a lot of both — until everything freezes solid for a while. Then, of course, however, all the houses are sealed up tight, so any kind of dust inside STAYS inside.
Some of the locals are not happy with the Train. It was reported to me that this last Monday a switch froze in the Yard in Cochrane. Nobody, it seems, had checked for frozen switches. The train derailed.
The Train was supposed to leave Cochrane around 10:30/11 AM — sort of, more or less, this is The North. Arrival time at Moosonee, theoretically, is 4:30 PM — just after the choppers stop flying. This time The Train didn’t leave Cochrane until around 6 PM — with an ETA of 10 or 11 PM. People were not happy.
The Archbishop of Canterbury sent out a ‘Pastoral Advent’ letter a few days ago. There’s quite a bit on ‘repentance.’ For what?