John Oliver Smith
Bio
Baby, son, brother, child, pupil, athlete, collector, farmer, photographer, player, uncle, coach, husband, student, writer, teacher, father, science guy, fan, grandpa, comedian, traveler, chef, story-teller, driver, gardener, regular guy!!!
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Stories (126)
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Getting to the Point
As a father of teenage children who seem to be involved only in video games, marathon telephone calls, television and hanging out in the mall, it is refreshing to find that my son and daughter have become interested in the game of darts. That’s right, darts – the game that I once played with red and blue plastic-winged projectiles in pubs on Saturday nights. I have always imagined this as a past time reserved for big-bellied British sheep farmers and aging war veterans. However, the local Legion Hall has, on Sundays, become the venue for several of the local youth in our community to get together and compete in an afternoon of darts. Teenagers clad in non-traditional darts garb complete with low hanging, baggy blue jeans, backward baseball caps and long untucked sweaters and shirts have become uncharacteristically focused in their attempts to succeed at this centuries-old game. Occasionally, a mini-van full of school-aged children from a neighboring center will unload at the hall and the afternoon becomes flavored with town-to-town rivalry as the missiles take flight at those modern-day log-ends.
By John Oliver Smith5 years ago in Families
Stress Reduction Tips for Secondary School Teachers
My life in education began at the ripe old age of five. On a sunny, late-summer, prairie day in September, 1958 I was preparing to enter a school building for the very first time. As I recall, I was afraid for my life, but my mother assured me, as I climbed into the family Chevy, that this was something that everyone did and that it would be the first day of the greatest adventure on which I would ever embark. She held my hand as she pulled me out of the car and ushered me up the worn wooden steps into, what I later learned was, a vestibule – a word I have never forgotten and that is now as synonymous with education for me as any of the thousands of others I have studied in my decades in the business. Anyway, the vestibule spilled into my first ever classroom, which seemed like an airport hanger in size, covered with color and pictures and charts and blackboards and alphabets (though I didn’t know what an alphabet was at the time). I met new earth people like Wendy Gill and Jordy Merrick and Ivalee Nayko and Donnie Wilson. Donnie Wilson was on his second tour of duty in Grade One, so he was the go-to guy whenever I needed important information about what was going on. Anyway, I have been pretty much going to school ever since – almost 60 years – and my mother was right. It has been a most excellent adventure. I finished high school in 1970 and then went on to University where I obtained my B.S. (and everyone knows what B.S. stands for). I then left the school system for awhile and farmed but during that time, I took courses in coaching and in agricultural production so really, I was continuing a formal education as well as taking part in the whole experiential process of farming. After seven years on the farm, I returned to university a second time and I got another type of B.S. Many of my friends referred to it as simply a finer form of the original B.S. Feeling that regular B.S. was not enough, I went on to garner my M.S. which as you may or may not know, stands for More of the Same. Many years later I completed my PH.D. which stands for the fact that the B.S. was Piled Higher and Deeper!! Regardless, I was by now a true advocate of formal education at any level. I longed for school and the school environment whenever I was away from it. I yearned for the smell of classrooms and gymnasiums, the magic of the first day in autumn and the relief and sense of freedom that came with the last day in June. I have loved over 3500 Fridays and fought depression through nearly the same number of Mondays. School has become and always will remain a grand part of who I am. But, with all that wonder and amazement also comes a great deal of stress from time to time. The stress of heavy responsibility; the stress that comes when it is time for supervisory evaluation; the stress of job security; the stress of constantly managing student behavior as superiors and colleagues dictate it should be managed. It is difficult to control these stressors because they are often out of our control and within the pay-grades of some administrator or supervisor working great distances from the front lines of educational realism. The stress of marking student work and reporting student progress, however, may be within our wheelhouse of control, simply because we are often allowed to put a bit of our signature on these practices from time to time. And with these thoughts of teacher stress resulting from marking and reporting of student work and progress, I now address the causes and remedies of such in the essay that follows.
By John Oliver Smith5 years ago in Education
Time to Act
With news of the effects of second and third and even fourth waves of the COVID-19 virus and probable variant strains becoming more and more alarming everyday, there should be now no doubt that all of us live on one planet. We live on a planet that no longer has political borders. We are not citizens of this country or that country or this state or that state. We are indeed global citizens whether we want that or not. The Corona virus will not pull over for the guards at any national border-crossing to have its belongings checked or to have its intentions weighed carefully by some officious immigration officer. No, it will blow right on by and keep going until it has achieved its biological mission of infecting a host and splicing itself into the genetic material of that host’s cells so that it can keep on reproducing. This virus depends on all the negative human traits and characteristics that we can muster in order to survive and to continue being productive and successful with respect to its own simple definition of success and productivity. This virus depends on human pride and greed and stupidity in order to keep going. This virus will win this war if we continue to act like the proud, greedy and stupid humans we are so good at being. In order to win this “war” we have to stop acting like we have acted for so long now and start acting like cooperative, kind, helpful and caring human beings. We have to think and act intelligently. We have to be smarter than the virus which is depending on us not to be smart. We have to think and act at least as well as the virus itself. No more blaming, nor more finger-pointing, no more scape-goating. This is not the Wuhan virus or the Chinese virus or the Italian virus or the New York virus. It is the 2020 COVID-19 WORLD virus. If we think about it in any other way or if we think suspiciously about our Asian and/or world neighbours or if we fail to act more intelligently than the virus itself, we are only going to see things get worse. It is indeed time to act. And, here is my plan:
By John Oliver Smith5 years ago in Longevity
Pulling the Plug on a Mislocated Toe
When atmospheric pressure drops quickly before a summer storm, a number of interesting things happen. For one, dish-rags used in the kitchen sink, take on a rather putrid odor. Apparently, the bacteria living in the cloth, have a very small window of tolerance for sudden changes in air pressure, so when the pressure drops by more than a couple of mm-Hg, they collectively die and their dead and decaying bodies start to smell. Another trivial tidbit has it that certain body parts – especially those already compromised, will expand slightly in lower pressures, thus impinging on neighboring nerves and pain receptors. For example, people suffering from an inflamed bursa in the knee (bursitis) will complain more about pain prior to a storm where abrupt drops in pressure occur. As further testament to this, if you severely stub a toe or bruise a fingertip with a hammer, such an injury will be just a little more painful in times of quick shifts to lower atmospheric pressure.
By John Oliver Smith5 years ago in Confessions
Life In the Green House
I closed the greenhouse after an arduous day of picking tomatoes and cucumbers. I had impure thoughts today as I picked cucumbers. Each cucumber was so long and massive and firm – obscene really. I couldn’t even imagine having a member that size. What would I do with it when I wasn’t using it? Where would I put it? I wouldn’t be able to buy jeans that would fit. I’d have to wear a kilt, a long kilt. Women would love me though – at least, I think they would love me. I feel quite undersized and inadequate when I am around cucumbers. What guy wouldn’t feel inadequate? Nobody could measure up to even the smaller ones that aren’t ready to pick. They just hang there. They have to hang there I suppose, because that’s gravity man.
By John Oliver Smith5 years ago in Filthy
One Tough Woman
Dear Auntie Jean, How have you been? Sorry I haven’t written before now but I got busy with life after you left. I thought I should sit down and catch you up with a few of the thoughts that I have had about you over the last 60 years or so. I don’t exactly know where to start so, I will just jump right in – sort of like you would do.
By John Oliver Smith5 years ago in Families
Yes, I Know - But Will It Kill You?
Australia is a land of rare and immense beauty – rugged most of the time, and unique all of it. It is also a land of unexpected treasures. At times one can look out from a moving train window or hop out of a car at a petrol station (and they are called petrol stations as opposed to gas stations or service stations) or take a walk along a beach or a hiking trail and see nothing in nature that looks the least little bit familiar to that to which we have become accustomed.
By John Oliver Smith5 years ago in Humans
In the Line of Duty
Red exit-sign ribbons shimmering the lengths of freshly-polished linoleum floors in darkened hallways with locked passages waiting for the jingling of rings of keys to give them a purpose and the promise of a daily life. Soldier-like Coke machines alongside transparent condiment vendors, all with “OUT OF ORDER” proclamations scotch-taped between their eyes, advertising their most-recent injury in an ongoing battle – a battle that has rendered them again, space-occupying, lethargic and useless ornaments of the catacomb landscapes that will soon bustle with the sounds and various fragrances of a needy and youthful humanity – and propped in varying degrees of lifelessness against barren, inert and sterile walls in a hostile foreign land.
By John Oliver Smith5 years ago in Journal
You Win the Goblets, I'll Steal the Merlot
Mom and Dad were no sooner out the door, when I began fumbling with the bobby pin in the lock on the liquor cabinet. I had managed only once in my lack-luster liquor-lifting career to successfully bypass the security on the cabinet door. Unfortunately, that instance was a time when neither experience nor wisdom were on my side, and my parents were only as far away as the basement. I ended up having to flee the scene of the crime before taking so much as a mental picture of what booze lay hidden away. The telephone had rung and my father had bolted up the stairs, through the dining room and into the kitchen to answer it. “Why didn’t you get that?”, he inquired as he hurried past. I didn’t think I should tell him the truth – you know, like, “Well Dad, you see it’s like this – I was in the middle of making off with your Jack Daniels and some twenty-year-old Scotch, and I was pouring it into this little mason jar when the phone rang and I didn’t really have time to put everything away and get the call so I thought I would just wait for you to get it, since it was probably for you anyway.” Instead, I answered that I was looking for some wrapping paper to put on a birthday present for grandma. “Grandma’s birthday isn’t for another six months, and besides there’s no wrapping paper in there . . . get outta there and don’t go into that cabinet – that’s not yours.” Anyway, that was the only other time that I defeated the non-high-tech system safeguarding the liquor storage. This time, I was more savvy – smart enough to make sure that Mom and Dad were not on the premises and to make sure that I would have ample time to examine my choices carefully and select the spirits best suited for my upcoming weekend adventure.
By John Oliver Smith5 years ago in Humans
Beats me . . . what do YOU want to watch?
PREAMBLE In 1965, Shirley Ellis released a hit single on the pop music charts, called “The Name Game”. I was in Grade Six at the time. I loved the song. In fact, everyone I knew, loved the song. I recall huddling together in classroom nooks and around water fountains in the hallway or on benches in the school playground to sing with my classmates, using the names that Shirley Ellis herself, used in that magical little number. Names like ‘Lincoln’, ‘Marsha’ and ‘Nick’ and ‘Tony’ – a person was fortunate to have one of those names – so as to simply imitate what she had done with it in the song. Most of us though, were not included in her list so, we had to listen closely to the ‘formula’ she espoused, and then substitute our names into it. As much as I enjoyed her catchy melody, even more so, I was enamored with that formula. I was also intrigued by her pedagogical approach in casually manipulating the formula, which qualified her to boast in the lyrics that she could, "make a rhyme out of anybody’s name!” Years later, while teaching cooking and high-school mathematics in China, I sometimes called on her song to enhance English usage in my classroom. On occasion, when the technical language seemed to be getting the better of my students, we would take a break from graphing periodic functions or decorating cheesecakes and sing a round or two of “The Name Game” . The effectiveness of Shirley’s jingle held up well even for Chinese names like Yuting and Peipei and Xiayan. Analogous to Stephen Hawking’s quest for a single formula that explains everything in the universe, that musical algorithm stood the test of time in a similar, but no less significant quest for, and explanation of, the rhyming of names.
By John Oliver Smith5 years ago in Geeks
