I found my Grandfather's village in Taishan in Guangdong Province . My grandfather's house is still standing after 106 years. My grandfather built the four story house out of cement and it is still the largest house in the village.  Some one uses the house to store materials to make honey.   I  stood on the front balcony where my dad stood with his two brothers over a hundred years ago.  The house is derelict but has withstood the test of time.  

 I have not posted in quite some time since i have retired from teaching.  I have travelled a bit back to China.  The provinces of china are so different from one another in topography and culture.   In Fujian Province , I came upon a park  where  Lao Tzu is said to have retired to contemplate and meditate after he had written the 80 verses of  the Tao.   At the front entrance to the park is a stone sculpture of Lao Tzu that is 1200 years old and behind stone statue is the mountain valley.  On top of the mountain  is a restaurant from which you can see a panoramic view of the whole countryside.

THE HISTORICAL LEGACY OF OUR ELDERS

THE HISTORICAL LEGACY OF OUR ELDERS

I was able to complete my project on recording the digital history of over 40 seniors living in Alberta by March 20 /2018.  The age range of the participants were from 65 to 102.  I achieved my goal of preserving the historical legacy of these remarkable people for future generations. In trying to make this project intergenerational , I approached numerous other organizations looking for volunteers to participate particularly the youth.  What occurred was that many organizations I approached wanted to recruit me for their own projects.  I would say that my book was completed by the "Un-organization" that had  input from several organizations.   The historical legacy book includes biographies on  local residents of the Winston Heights Mountview Community,  Calgary's Chinatown seniors, the Filipino community, the Vietnamese community, Europeans, and Sikhs.  If one googles the  blurb.com website and type in "The Historical Legacy of our Elders",  one can preview the complete book.

NEW PROJECTS

I have not posted for ages. A year ago , I became interested in making jewellery and in particular Buddhist Malas that are used for chanting.  The malas have 108 beads. Each bead is used to visualize as one chants the individual mantra of a specific spiritual force such as Vajrasattva or Kuan Yin. I made so many malas that I went to craft fairs to recoup my costs. Here is a craft fair I attended last spring in Mckenzie that was held in the community centre hockey rink.  Last year I applied for a $25,000 dollar federal government grant to purchase a portable television and editing studio to record the digital history of immigrant seniors to record their stories as a legacy project for their children and future generations.  In March of 2017 , my funding proposal was approved  and I now have one year to record the digital history of 30 seniors who reside in Calgary. By mid June the studio should be up and running. People being interviewed are between the ages of 60 and 105.

I joined a Seniors project initiated by Calgary Family Services called the Elder Service Corps. The nine month course instructs Seniors on how to become community activists and leaders in the community.  A facilitator mentors the Seniors in role playing activities to show the members how to recruit members into forming a community project of their own choosing.

I became involved in the Elder Service Corps through our Winston Heights Community Centre last year when I joined the Winston Heights garden committee to help build the community garden. Here I am standing in front of my community garden bed in August. I found out their were therapeutic yoga classes being held at the community centre twice a week and it was at the yoga classes that I was approached to join the elder service corps project.  My project with another senior is to develop a historical digital history of the Filipino and Chinese Community in Calgary that will be multi-generational to preserve the cultural legacy of these communities with the emphasis on education of the ethnic communities and to disseminate the cultural history to the greater community to foster tolerance and understanding with respect to the Canadian mosaic.

Winston Heights Community Garden

Here is a fall picture of the Winston Heights Community Garden. The garden committee raised $170,000 and spent $160,000 dollars in building 52 four by eight community garden beds that were rented out for 50 dollars a year.  The city of Calgary installed a watering system with water spigots so water was available. The community members used their sweat equity to build all the beds. I myself rented a bed.  In my community bed 10 tomato plants produced over 450 cherry roma tomatoes.

As of August 15, 2015 here is my garden plot.  Sunflowers were seven feet tall. Other vegetables in the plot included carrots, lettuce, broccoli, beans, Chinese peas, collarabi , and tomatoes. Shortly after this photo was taken I pruned the majority of the tomato leaves from the tomato plants and just left the green tomatoes exposed. Green tomatoes photosynthesize like the green leaves. By trimming off the leaves more energy and nutrients flow into the tomatoes making them larger and since they are exposed to the sun they ripen on the vine.

My New Projects

It has been several months since I last blogged an item. I have become involved in several projects such doing a corporate video for Suncor in November of 2015 and then the oil patch crumbled so thus ended future projects.  I have become a Buddhist and a follower of the Pai Yuin True Buddha school who recognizes Sheng Len Lu as the true living Buddha.  The Buddhism that I follow is the tantric Buddhism that  follows a lineage of Padamakura. I am also on the Winston Heights community garden committee that created 52 organic gardening beds in the community centre. I am also a director on the Calgary Lees' Association and hoping to help revitalize the 100 year old benevolent association that still exists in Calgary's Chinatown. I have also been tutoring Buddhist monks in reading, writing and speaking English that will assist them in communication Buddhism in the English language. I have also joined a community group called the Elder Service corps dedicated to forming community projects to give back community service to the community. I still maintain my greenhouse that has expanded to include tropical fish, orchids, house plants and growing bedding plants for the summer. I have one of the few greenhouses that have fig trees that produce figs.