To all that celebrate Christmas, here is the sharing of my joy. To all that do not, I share my joy anyway. If some believe in other things, I respect your right to a free will. I do believe God gave us all that great gift of love, the free will.
Peace and joy,
--Dan
7 comments:
peace and joy to you to Dan......
Hi Dan,
Hope you have a Merry Christmas and a Rockin' New Year!
Hi Dan,
I hope you and your family have a very Merry Christmas.
If you're in the mood for a good movie, go see The Pursuit of Happiness with Wil Smith, you'll love it.
Hi Dan,
Here's wishing you and yours a very Merry Christmas and the happiest of Happy New Years.
Peace, love and light,
Ric
Thanks for really wise words Dan (sometimes I need someone to do that).
Merry Christmas to you too, and may 2007 bring you all the things that you need and like.
Hi Dan, thanks for dropping in. Yeah you’re right. It is a great river where people can hang out. It’s about as close to Huckleberry Finn as I can get. The Grand isn’t the Mississippi, but it’s big enough for me. You can always go to “Google Earth” and travel the river and probably even see the bridge in Caledonia. (It's a twenty-minute drive from my house to that bridge if I take the highway or thirty minutes if I drive the back roads. The back roads takes me past single family homes scattered here and there and farms with horses and cattle grazing in open fields. (I always take the back roads, unless I'm in a hurry.)
There are various places where you can put a canoe in the river and paddle downstream for the entire day and have your car or van waiting for you. All you need is: one buddy, one canoe, one cooler, two cars or vans and two paddles. Drop one van off downstream, drive 10 or 15 miles upstream toward the city of Brantford and launch the canoe. The trick is to remember where you dropped off the van downstream and don’t overshoot it. If you do overshoot it, you then have to paddle upstream until you find it! So lesson number one is: don’t lose the van – remember where you parked it.
There are other sections on the river where people water-ski and race in their speedboats. When I was a kid we swam in the river, but I don’t see many kids doing that anymore. Mostly what I see in the water, other than boats, are men and boys in waist-high boots fishing just below the little damn that is about a quarter mile up river from where I took this picture.
In the picture you will see a paved pathway along the northern bank of the river. This is for everyone! People on bikes, kids on skateboards, people walking or people jogging. I can see where this narrow pathway could cause a problem and accidents could happen, but I’m happy to report there has never been a serious accident that I’m aware of. The reason for this accident-free path is really quite simple – hardly anyone uses it. I might see two or three other people on the path or have a teenager skate by me, but often I don’t meet-up with anyone on the path. It’s as if I own it. Perfect eh?
The Six Nation’s Indian Reserve is about half a mile from this bridge. We still grow tobacco in this area, there are still a number of tobacco farms although not as many as there were in the past, and the Indians built a tobacco factory on the Reserve and they make their own brand of cigarettes. Technically, they’re not allowed to sell anything to me or to any other non-Indian because it’s all tax free, but they do sell cigarettes. Years ago they would sell you tax-free gas as well, so you made a weekly trip, gassed-up and bought a carton or two of their cigarettes.
But something changed a few years back, and now they will not sell gasoline to anyone that can’t produce an Indian Card – I don’t know the official name – but it’s a card that is issued proving you have Indian status AND live on the Reserve. Now their gas stations have 2 prices, a low price if you can produce The Card, and a higher (taxed) price if you don’t have a card – so I can’t buy tax-free gas anymore. There are times when life can be a bitch, eh? But seriously, when we look at other parts of this world, we quickly realize that we don’t have much to gripe about. I guess about all we peasants can do is enjoy this world for what it is and make the best of what we got. That ain’t proper English, but I think it’s good enough.
Merry Christmas,
Tommy D_____
Hi Dan!
Hope you had a lovely Christmas!
YOU bring lots of joy into this world, I can tell.
Glad you liked my pic!
HAPPY NEW YEAR TO YOU AND YOURS.
Take care,
Suexx
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