Happy Thanksgiving 2024 ladies

Dear I, E and L, It is Thanksgiving Monday 2024 and we all have much to be grateful for. Here are a few things I have learned of late. Some the hard way (at the School of Hard Knocks) and others from an unlikely guru named the late Charlie Munger. Munger's musings are entertaining and also enlightening. First of all, you have his advice on how to ensure that you live a miserable life. It is surprising just how many people opt to follow that path. See: https://jamesclear.com/great-speeches/how-to-guarantee-a-life-of-misery-by-charlie-munger Reading or listening to Munger's wisdom is something I have enjoyed imbibing this year. It is simple, straightforward advice that I believe we can all learn from. And, it would seeem, a great many men and women around the world have turned to this great, late man's reationalist wisdom for solace and guidance. Another interesting person, a discipline of Munger, is the founder of the Dakshana (Infinite Good) NGO. I love the structure of Dakshana. It is a charitable org that I have personally supported for three years running. It reminds me of the time a sibling was without work for over three years and job searching fromm the living room. Finally, I offered to pay him his old salary for one month if he commutted from Rockland into downtown Ottawa with me five days a week for at least one month. Wew would arrive downtown at 9:00 am and he would sit in a BridgeHead coffee shop near Parliament Hill all day job searching on his computer. After work we would meet up at that coffee shop near Sparks St and head back home. "But I can do this same job search from the comfort of my sofa at home," he would note. "Why not pay me my salary and let me job search from home". Because you must come to downtown Ottawa five days days a week," I explained. "That is the one condition". I still recall the day - about two weeks into the four week stint - when he had settled into his favorite table in the busy BridgeHead, had opened up his laptop and was scrolling the job postings. "But I have already checked out all of these new job offers", he said, scrolling quickly down the list. I was about to turn towards the exit door and head to work when he stopped on one new job posting and said "... except for this one... from a drone company in Orleans." That day, he applied for the position. Within two days, he had interviewed for the job and was offered it. He has been there ever since. The experience was not unlike the experience Monish Pabrai had when his family asked him to help a young relative get a job. Monish asked a small IT company in India to hire the relative for one year. Monish said he would pay the young man's salary if the company agreed to hire him. The IT company asked only that Monish provide a desk, a chair and a computer for his nephew to use. In that way, the small company could lend out the chair, desk and computer to another overnight employee. The nephew learned a lot during his stint at the small company. Before the year's end, the young man had the skills and confidence to apply elsewhere. The small IT company kept the man's desk and chair but the man kept his computer. This experience opened Monish's eyes and inspired his creation of the Dakshana Foundation. I., E., and L., you can learn about Pabrai's foundational story at: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/mohnish-pabrais-talk-at-pan-iit-conference-toronto/id1494251347?i=1000470134799 This year, I found a new sense of post-retirement purpose thanks to: https://bpcrpl.ca/programs/english-as-a-second-language-workshop/ I love this little ESL Workshop. Your late Canadian grandfather got the Rockland Help Centre off the ground when he retired. The "fripperie" funds the food bank in a virtuous circle, feedback loop. It is a beautiful thing. When I first retired I considered leveraging my Hill experience and wanted to help folks with problems similar to those that I worked on as a MP's assistant (case worker). As a co-dependent, I enjoy helping others. At first I considered hanging up my shingle at Rockland Library in the same way as Saigon's last public writer did for many, many years. Mr. Dương Văn Ngộ was a Vietnamese postal worker and polyglot public letter writer known for being the longest-serving and last public letter writer and translator in Vietnam. During his three decades of work as a letter-writer, Ngộ wrote thousands of letters. He became my inspiration. Until I realized that, unlike the large, busy post office he worked at in Vietnam, Rockland Post Office is a dreary, quiet place with little thru-traffic. That is when I came up with the idea of setting up shop outside of Clarence-Rockland Public Library. Housed inside the same building as the local YMCA and my old H.S., it seemed like a great location to set up shop each morning. It was at that point that I decided to research Dad's Help Centre model and see if I could somehow add value to it by perhaps adding a public writer / advocate dept. tl its list of services. So I looked at the Northumberland Help Centre model and stumbled upon the fascinating life story of CEO Patricia Kamphorst. Patricia Orantes was her name when I first came across her involvement with the Port Hope "Help and Legal Centre": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BCipmnfu7UI When I noted that The Help Centre in Port Hope offers free ESL to newcomers, that sparked an idea. I had loved teaching English in Japan in my mid-20s and so I wondered if there might be a need for free ESL in Rockland. This City has seen an influx of francophone newcomers (mainly from Haiti, the D.R. of the Congo and Cameroon) post-pandemic. All speak French yet few have mastered English. Yet English is essential for many if not most local employers. And so the Library's ESL Workshop was born. It brings me great joy to have such an interesting, useful and rewarding post-retirement project to work on Some of my 30 ESL students include: S. (a Cameroonian working days at A&W and evenings at teacher's college), J-R. (a Hatian doc preparing to get his Master's at Ottawa U in Sept in Public Health), Frank of Cameroon, Marie Catherine ("call me Catherine") a retired customs officer from Haii), Georgette (mother to many including Patrick) from the D.R. of the Congo, and Naceur of Kibilya How has your past year gone, I., E. and L. All three of you have tremendous talent and have already achieved considerable success professionally. Be it at the GoC's T.B., at a prominent law firm, or Lu and the Bally Bunch. Your collective talent and intelligence is something you can be proud of. Your heart and caring spirit for others also. To those to whom much is given, much is expected. And so, on this Thanksgiving 2024, let us all unite in spirit if not in person and see if we cannot help make this world a slightly better place than it was in 2023. Make that your Thanksgiving 2024. That the four of us shall leave this planet in slightly better condition than when we first entered it. I love you all and hope you each have a good Thanksgiving Day no matter where you are in the world. Regards, Bernie the Monkey