We’ve called both city police and city engineering departments about the consistently and dangerously fast flow of traffic past our home. The police tend to say it’s an engineering problem. Engineering says they’re working on a plan.

This isn’t a great consolation when we’re afraid to walk on the sidewalk or ride out bikes out of our driveway.

Engineering changes are being made all over town (ours and other cities everywhere) to slow down the flow of traffic.

Publicly voiced sentiment seems to be predominantly that these changes are nonsense, designed to convince people to give up their cars. An evil plot by the forces of evil who are out to destroy all that we hold near and dear.

But I understand why these speed limits make sense, and I don’t understand why I am apparently alone.

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I found some cool free tools that let me put together kind of a cool web app starting with no web infrastructure.

https://sites.google.com/view/cedar-shores-social/social-room

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(I wrote this two years ago, but didn’t know what to do with it. It’s more of a “testimony” than a book review, I guess. But now I’ve got this blog, so here you go.)

I have a suggestion for anyone looking for something to do in observance of our first National Day for Truth and Reconciliation. I read a book this summer that opened my eyes, and washed them with tears. It is called “Five Little Indians” and it was written by Michelle Good. I cried publicly on multiple occasions whilst listening to this audiobook on my morning walk/jogs.

It’s a novel about five people imprisoned as children in a northern Vancouver Island residential school and how their lives subsequently played out after they escaped or aged out, and eventually ended up in the East Hastings area of Vancouver. There are tales of happy reunions that crumble into relapses into addiction and self-destructive behaviour.

I’ve heard the facts and recognized the tragedy, but this book helped me understand what happened to individual people and to their culture. I learned how Canada’s official program of cultural engineering, carried out over multiple generations, essentially destroyed not only their cultures but the families and the personalities of the individuals.

This book helped me see how multiple generations of real individual people, their families, and their culture, were profoundly damaged, leaving a legacy of mental illness, addiction, and hopelessness. The essential support of family and culture was methodically removed and replaced by inadequate bureaucracy. We not only hurt these children but made sure they could not be healed.

I’m starting to understand the answer to the question people used to ask, but don’t any more: “Why can’t they just get over it?” The events described in this book happened during my own lifetime. I grew up thinking there was something wrong with “Indians”. It turns out there was, and this is how it happened. In fact, it was happening right in front of me.

Ok, I’ve gotten all preachy and political, but it’s actually a good story. You should read it.

Sometime before my full retirement, I saw a big fat black hardcover blank book in a store. (It may have been a dollar store).

I thought a good retirement project would be to fill up a book like that with detailed written instructions for doing various things that I know how to do.

I would also include various thoughts and observations which may or may not be of interest to anyone but me. Writing such things in a big black book kept on a shelf would allow me to unburden myself of unexpressed thoughts without burdening others with listening.

I would call this book “A Chronicle of My Decline: With Instructions for My Replacement“.

Fast-Forward to the present, approaching the fourth anniversary of my retirement. I’m putting together some introductory articles concerning personal finance, for my kids. It occurred to me that posting these articles to a website would probably be the best way to share them.

Also: I enjoy posting occasional interesting links and observations to our family message chat group, but I don’t like making their phones ping just because I saw an interesting story in the paper. A quiet unassuming big black book of a blog sitting on an e-shelf in a quiet corner of the internet is a better place for that sort of thing, I think.

I am quite attached to the title “Chronicle of My Decline.” I don’t intend for this blog to be dark, but I’m certainly motivated by awareness of my mortality. Almost four years have passed since I fully retired (November 14, 2019) after two years of part-time semi-retirement. Four years is a pretty big chunk of the 20-odd years of retirement that I can reasonably expect. Those 20-odd years will entail progressive reduction in physical (and probably mental) capacity, so that’s my four most productive years already gone without my having gotten organized enough to start any Retirement Projects. Time to get at it.