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IN THIS ISSUE

• Geoff Goodship goes on a sailing holiday
• Dixie Augusteijn writes to say thank you
• Don Henderson sends examples of conversations on help lines
• Barbara Wear sends a road rage story
• Bruce Galway tells about one living will´s result
• Catherine Green sends a story about sorting job applicants

On June 26 Geoff Goodship started a story about his adventures while

SAILING THE INSIDE PASSAGE

Yesterday we visited Robbers´ Nob. It´s about a mile and a half up the channel from Port Neville. Port Neville, with its once-a-week mail plane, occasionally-open one-room store, is a short quarter mile off the main channel of Johnstone Strait. Johnstone Strait lies between the coast of B.C. and Northern Vancouver Island. To get to Port Neville you go by small boat or float plane.

Robbers´ Nob holds great interest for me. It is an incredibly beautiful 8-9 acres below a mountain half way along a 12-mile coastal inlet. Among the second-growth cedar trees and tall grasses lies a vacant camp with two summer homes, a large shed, and several pieces of long-abandoned logging machinery. Salal and salmonberries reach six feet to the cab of the old log loader. The forest is reclaiming its own in defiance of man´s machinery.

One of the petroglyphs on the beach

It´s the beach which draws me, for there on a large and sloping rock lie the petroglyphs. I´ve learned a thing or two about petroglyphs, the hard way. First, these primitive granite carvings are very old and certainly predate European contact. Next, they are evidence of an ancient settlement with a good food and water supply. Another thing: it took a long time to make a petroglyph. They were probably made by more than one person as they waited for a favourable tide. There must be 10-20 petroglyphs on that beach rock at Robbers´ Nob. Many have been damaged over time by beach logs and pounding winter storms. This large number of petroglyphs indicates something of the size of the village that was so obviously located on this beautiful promontory. I would estimate there were between 20 and 50 people living here. I can imagine several people working together here as they waited for the tide.

Closeup of a petroglyph

Try this: take any piece of granite and pound it against an equally hard piece of granite until you´ve made a groove two inches long, a quarter inch deep, and as wide as your thumb. Six to eight hours a day for a month should do it. Expect blisters on your palms and sore arms as byproducts. Petroglyph images took much time to emerge.

I´m not a church goer and my friends would not likely describe me as a spiritual person, but in this place the presence of coastal first nations people is quite inescapable. In the shadows of the tall cedars I see them move about quietly at their daily routines. I see the women cooking, with their children nearby. Men are talking quietly as they repair fishing gear. Although their clothes appear primitive to my eye, there is no evidence of hunger or need here. There´s a longhouse facing south to the sea, and three large canoes rest on a clamshell beach.

You need light at the right low angle and intensity to find petroglyphs. It´s the shadow that reveals their design. As I run my finger carefully along the groove, the design becomes clearer. I must be kneeling precisely where the carvers knelt, perhaps ten thousand years ago. I feel their presence profoundly. They lean over me smiling as I admire their work. They are as close to me as the petroglyphs themselves.

Robbers´ Nob and its petroglyphs are reassuring. They remind us we that we stand on the shoulders of others, and that our work endures.

Ed. Note: To see photos of the petroglyphs, go to http:// members.shaw.ca/vjsansum/ or

http://www.nw-seniorsonline.org/stories.html

Dixie Augusteijn writes:

IT IS SO NICE TO BE REMEMBERED

Thanks to all those who sent me birthday greetings - I feel I don´t deserve it since it is so long since I have been a Spinner contributor. I had a lovely birthday.

I don´t know if I had written that my daughter and her husband had sold their home and bought a boat, intending - eventually - to sail around the world. At the present it is down in Georgia, but she was up for my birthday, and my granddaughter Sarah who, after getting her PhD, has taken a position in Afghanistan, was still in Guelph, so I had all the girls - except the one chasing spotted owls in B.C. - here for the day.

We had lunch at a very good restaurant which the children also liked and it went well. My birthday present was a trip to Stratford to see The Music Man. We had seen it years ago when it opened in New York and it is one that you can hear again with pleasure. Stratford did a good job, though I think the New York one slightly had the edge, or maybe it is just my old memory that makes things past so much brighter.

On our way to Stratford we stopped in Kitchener to visit with an old friend in a retirement home there - really lovely place - who had broken her hip, so we combined much into one day.

I slept in the next morning.

Elizabeth left this week for the boat, dropping Sarah off at the airport on her way. It was the day they had such a heavy storm here and she was glad she was in the airport when it happened and not on the road. We are looking forward to hearing from Sarah. She is to be based in Kabul which - until this week - was considered a reasonably safe place, but this bombing has changed the picture. She seems to want to be where the action is. For her masters she worked in the drug area of Colombia and survived, though was mugged once. I was able to be present when she defended her thesis for her doctorate, and her professor told me she could have one of the top jobs in one of the foundations in Africa, but a high-paying job for distributing aid didn´t seem right to her, so she is off to Afghanistan instead. Maybe the Taliban had better watch their step.

I am really enjoying Kate´s account of their life in Taiwan. What an opportunity to live and work in a place, so different from going as a tourist. And the jokes in the Spinner make the rounds here so you have no idea how many lives you brighten every week.

Thanks again to everyone, and greetings. I must try to write more often.

Next time you are left on hold for an hour or so, remember there is sometimes another side to the story, as illustrated by these examples from Don Henderson:

ACTUAL CALL CENTRE CONVERSATIONS

Customer: "I´ve been ringing 0700 2300 for two days and can´t get through to enquiries."
Operator: "Where did you get that number from, sir?"
Customer: "It was on the door to the Travel Centre."
Operator: "Sir, they are our opening hours".

Samsung Electronics
Caller: "Can you give me the telephone number for Jack?"
Operator: "I´m sorry, sir, I don´t understand who you are talking about".
Caller: "On page 1, section 5, of the user guide it clearly states that I need to unplug the fax machine from the AC wall socket and telephone Jack before cleaning. Now, can you give me the number for
Jack?"
Operator: "I think it means the telephone outlet on the wall".

RAC Motoring Services
Caller: "Does your European Breakdown Policy cover me when I am travelling in Australia?"
Operator: Doesn´t the product name give you a clue?"

Caller (enquiring about legal requirements while travelling in
France): "If I register my car in France, do I have to change the
steering wheel to the other side of the car?"

Directory Enquiries
Caller: "I´d like the number of the Argoed Fish Bar in Cardiff, please".
Operator: "I´m sorry, there´s no listing. Is the spelling correct?"
Caller: "Well, it used to be called the Bargoed Fish Bar but the ´B´ fell off".

Then there was the caller who asked for a knitwear company in Woven.
Operator: "Woven? Are you sure?"
Caller: "Yes. That´s what it says on the label: Woven in Scotland."

On another occasion, a man making heavy breathing sounds from a phone box told a worried operator: "I haven´t got a pen, so I´m steaming up the window to write the number on."

Tech Support: "I need you to right-click on the Open Desktop."
Customer: "OK."
Tech Support: "Did you get a pop-up menu?"
Customer: "No."
Tech Support: "OK. Right-click again. Do you see a pop-up menu?"
Customer: "No."
Tech Support: "OK, sir. Can you tell me what you have done up until this point?"
Customer: "Sure. You told me to write ´click´ and I wrote ´click´."

Tech Support: "In the bottom left hand side of the screen, can you see the ´OK´ button displayed?"
Customer: "Wow! How can you see my screen from there?"

The next supposedly true story is an urban legend, and Snopes´ story about it is even more entertaining than the joke. Go here: http://www.snopes.com/humor/business/wordperfect.asp

Barbara Wear forwards

THE BEST ROAD-RAGE STORY

A man was being tailgated by a stressed-out woman on a busy boulevard. Suddenly, the light turned yellow just in front of him. He did the right thing, stopping at the crosswalk, even though he could have beaten the red light by accelerating through the intersection.

The tailgating woman hit the roof - and the horn - screaming in frustration as she missed her chance to get through the intersection. As she was still in mid-rant, she heard a tap on her window and looked up into the face of a very serious police officer. The officer ordered her to exit her car with her hands up. He took her to the police station where she was searched, finger printed, photographed, and placed in a holding cell.

After a couple of hours, a policeman approached the cell and opened the door. She was escorted back to the booking desk where the arresting officer was waiting with her personal effects.

He said, "I´m very sorry for this mistake. You see, I pulled up behind your car while you were blowing your horn, flipping off the guy in front of you, and cussing a blue streak at him. I noticed the ´Choose Life´ license plate holder, the ´What Would Jesus Do´ bumper sticker, the ´Follow Me to Sunday School´ bumper sticker, and the chrome-plated ´Christian Fish´ emblem on the trunk. Naturally, I assumed you had stolen the car."

Bruce Galway and many others forwarded this:

LIVING WILL

A man and his wife were sitting in the living room and he said to her, "Just so you know, I never want to live in a vegetative state, dependent on some machine and fluids from a bottle. If that ever happens, just pull the plug."

His wife got up, unplugged the TV, and threw out all his beer.

Catherine Green sends these helpful hints on how to match job applicants to appropriate positions:

JOB MATCHING

Put about 100 bricks in some particular order in a closed room with an open window, then send two or three candidates into the room and close the door. Leave them alone and come back after six hours. Then analyze the situation:

1. If they are counting the bricks, put them in the accounting department.

2. If they are recounting them, put them in auditing.

3. If they have messed up the whole place with the bricks, put them in engineering.

4. If they are arranging the bricks in some strange order, put them in planning.

5. If they are throwing the bricks at each other, put them in operations.

6. If they are sleeping, put them in security.

7. If they have broken the bricks into pieces, put them in information technology.

8. If they are sitting idle, put them in human resources.

9. If they say they have tried different combinations, yet not a brick has been moved, put them in sales.

10. If they have already left for the day, put them in marketing.

11. If they are staring out of the window, put them in strategic planning.

12. If they are talking to each other, and not a single brick has been moved, congratulate them and put them in top management.

13. Finally, if they have surrounded themselves with bricks in such a way that they can neither be seen nor heard from, put them in Parliament.

Ladies, do you need a jump start for your day?

MORNING FLATTERY

Click on the link below and then type in your first name:

http://www.cse.unsw.edu.au/~geoffo/humour/flattery.html

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I do precision guesswork based on vague assumptions and unreliable data of dubious accuracy provided by persons of questionable intellectual capacity. - Sign in a notary public´s office

I do precision guesswork based on vague assumptions and unreliable data of dubious accuracy provided by persons of questionable intellectual capacity. - Sign in a notary public´s office