Alan Skeoch

Year: 2020

  • EPISODE 181 JOY! WE WON PRIZES AT THE ROYAL WINTER FAIR FOR OUR CHICKENS

    EPISODE 181    WE WON PRIZES AT THE ROYAL WINTER FAIR FOR OUR CHICKENS

                               (I was too dismissive in the earlier story about them.  Joy trumped disgust.)
    alan skeoch
    Dec. 2020

    Thanks for the responses to the chicken story.  I worried that the story was a little too
    dismissive of  our chicken raising days.  Also thought some of you would find it silly.
    Well the  reverse has  happened.   Lots of comments.  Russ Vanstone even sent a note
    in praise of  keeping a pet pig…big sow with piglets.  I think he is going to try to raise
    one at his home in Toronto.  

    When I wrote the chicken story I think some of the joy we experienced  raising chickens
    was  neglected.   To get up in the early morning knowing that Big Red and  his harem
    were waiting for us to lift the trap door was a joy.    Once lifted Big Red came out first
    and moved to the side.  He ‘serviced’ each hen at it popped  out the door.  He paid 
    attention to the whole harem.  None were left out.  And he could crow with joy day
    after day.   He made us all feel good about life.

    Each year we sent some of our hens to the Poultry exhibit at the Royal Winter Fair
    and we won prize ribbons which  Marjorie has  framed.   








    Tinware chickens are nice to look at but they do not lay eggs.



    MARJORIE believed  the children that could love animals would emerge as fine adults.  All kinds of animals…including puppies


    Our back yard  in the chicken keeping days had no room for grass…kids  and  chickens…dogs and cats.



    Remember I said backyard chickens attract kids.  Here is proof of the pudding.


    The day the fire truck was completed it was filled with kids.  That was why it was built.

    Another shot of Big Red. He is letting me know that he is  boss.

    Our ducks, ping and pong are amused to find Andrew in he cage while they peer in.



    Cats,dogs, chickens, ducks, turtles, frogs, …wonderful world.


    Andrew and  the duck called Ping are very alert.  Do they hear a coyote?

    Kevin and  our cat Tarnga are colour co ordinated.   Love the big smile.


    Not every chicken was a pet.

    alan skeoch
    Dec  2020

  • EPISODE 180 WINTER WONDERLAND IN MIDDLE OF COVIDD 19 PANDEMIC

    EPISODE 180    WINTER WONDERLAND IN MIDDLE  OF COVID 19 PANDEMIC


    alan skeoch
    Dec. 1, 2020

    When we awoke this morning our small world had been transformed.   The dark days
    of November were gone and everything was clothed  in snow.

    Even better we had  a visit by a joyful mailman who Woody greeted.  A few  days earlier
    another grouchy mailman refused to deliver the mail because of Woody and  his wagging 
    tail.

    Some years we do not get snow  until Christmas  or later so…at present…this is a joyful
    day.  Shovelling will come later.  Shovelling can be avoided by driving the truck  up and down
    the laneway but that packs  it into ice.  A year or so  ago I went ass over teakettle on the 
    ice and  knocked myself out.  So now I take short steps.

    Our living room seems more welcoming on  days like this.  Sad  to say there will be no visitors
    for we are in isolation.  Scrabble today….we are even at 2 games each.

    No doubt all of you are out taking pictures as well.  Use short steps so there will be no
    need of a 911 call.

    alan skeoch
    DEc. 1, 2020

    P.S.  MARIAN KUTARNA…thanks  for the nice note.  I will send details of the wood quilt now hanging in your library.  So nice
    to know  someone loves these folk art pieces.  

    p.p.w.  To John Ricker…Woody does not normally sit on  cold  snow but when  I said the picture was for you John he sat down.

  • EPISODE 179 KEEPING CHICKENS…THE UPS AND DOWNS.

    EPISODE 179     KEEPING URBAN CHICKENS…UPS AND DOWNS


    alan skeoch
    nov. 29, 2020



    THIS IS BIG RED…THE KING IN OUR CHICKEN COOP LONG AGO




    “Andy bought some chicks for us from the Fabers…mixed  breeds…plymouth rocks, new hampshires, leghorns…
    ”Any Silver Laced Wyandottes?
    “No, weren’t they beautiful when we raised them years ago…regal looking…rare breeds “
    “Neighbours loved seeing them…”

    “Not all the neighbours…someone reported us to the By Law Inspector, Remember?”

    The by law inspector dropped by.  Reacting to 
    a complaint about our chickens.  Marjorie gathered  a bunch of supporting neighbours
    when he arrived.  I met him of the front lawn and asked, “Are you sure you want
    to go in there? MY wife has and army of supporters on the verge  of  war.”
     We were cleared as a non conforming property having chickens before
    the by  law was written.”  HE ESCAPED.

    SILVER LACED WYANDOTTE HEN…REGAL…AND ALONE.


    Points to remember about keeping urban  chickens

    1) Free range chickens lay wonderful eggs.  A thrill to reach
    in the nest and gather fresh eggs.  I am not sure the chickens
    liked that.  Must have damaged the psyche of those hens.

    2)  Backyards chickens attract kids.  If you do not want children
    around  then do  not keep chickens.


    3) Backyard chickens attract practical jokers like Kaye Donovan
    who sneaked into the coop one Easter and painted  all our eggs.

    4) Backyard chickens need lots of  care.  Chicken  dung can
    smell bad if allowed to pile up and get wet.  Believe it or not there
    are people who do not like the smell of  chicken manure.  I know
    that is hard to believe.  Chicken manure…with age…makes things grow.

    5) Backyard chickens get  lice.  Nasty little devils that can
    get out of control.  Control?  Yes, they have to be dusted with
    louse powder.  How?  Pick the chicken up by back legs and 
    dust its bare bum with the delousing stuff.  Not a nice job but
    necessary.   The key was a piece of string.

    6) Predators soon arrive to assess the availability of backyard
    chickens…foxes, coyotes, raccoons.   We  designed an ourdoor
    run with a cement floor and s heavy chain link fence that hung like
    a drawbridge door..   When loose in the backyard  the chickens were
    vulnerable.  One day a huge Osprey swooped down a picked up
    a one eyed hen.   How did the Osprey know that?  The odd skunk
    slipped around looking for the eggs.  Nice animals as long as they did
    not baptist you with fluid.


    7) Backyard chickens attract rats and mice since the chickens  like
    to throw their food around so traps small and  large are necessary.
    Enough  said  about that.
    8) Backyard  chickens  are beautiful to watch as  they wander around
    the yard cleaning up unwanted insects.   Friendly birds is well treated.

    9)  Backyard chickens to be avoided are the so called  ‘meat birds’/
    We accepted  10 or 12 of these from Vic Laing and  For Root and the
    Parkdale C. I. science department.  Dreadfull creatures bred  for fast
    growth in weeks rather than months or years.   They grow immense
    and ours had lots of genetic  defects…crooked  beaks  and feet…some  staggered.
    They ate fast.  They ate lots.  And they dropped turds lots.  When  I got rid
    of them to a farm friend they managed to make our van unlovable.  Chicken
    shit everywhere.

    10) Backyard  chickens are perfect right now as we are in a Covid 19
    Pandemic and urged  to stay home.  IN normal times, however, backyard
    chickens travelled with us in the truck..  We could not leave them alone.
    Farmers must stay close to their farm animals.

    11)  Backyard  chickens and backyard gardens are not harmonious.  Choose
    one or the other.  Or build extra fences.

    12)  Backyard chicken farmers  are credited  with saving some of the 
    breeds on the verge of extinction…such as those Silver Laced Wyandottes that’
    we grew to love.  We were never able to find a rooster of that breed  sadly.


    13)  If you do  not mind  me making a suggestion. Try backyard ducks after
    you tire of the chickens or after the predators have emptied your coop.  Get a couple
    of ducks.  Get them young.   They IMPRINT a couple of weeks after birth.  Imprint?
    They look around and  consider whoever they see on that particular day as their
    mother or father.  Our backyard pair of  ducks imprinted us as their parents.
    We just had to call them.  They would waddle over and up the ramp into the van
    or into the duck cage.   They got so familiar with human beings that occasionally
    they would go for a  walk around the neighbourhood gabbing away to each other.
    One day I caught them a block away…called them and they came chattering
    in a language  i did not completely understand.  I put one under each arm and
    hot footed home with them.  My camel hair suit coat was never quite the same.
    I went to school with duck shit streaks under each arm.   But we loved  them.
    They would  go  to the farm with us…swim all day in the swamps and ponds…then come
    when called.  What happened to them?  We were never sure but suspected a fox
    or coyote got them.   It was  easier to think they fell in love with wild ducks and
    flew away.  Easier, yes, but the problem was  they were to fat to fly.

    14)  The same applies to a crippled  Canada  Goose we adopted  when it
    was  a gosling.  Imprinted.  Thought it was human.  Then one day it was gone.
    We think it could fly.  Happy ending.



    Baby Canada Geese are hatched and  raised every year on our big pond.  Once
    mobile the parents take them away because  your Big Snapping Turtle is a threat.
    Nature ‘red in tooth and claw’.

    alan  skeoch
    Nov. 29,2020

    Post Script

    One day I gave Marjorie a nicely  carved  wooden pig.

    “Does this mean we are going to try to raise a baby pig?”
    “Not a chance.”



  • EPISODE 179 CONCLUSION OF REAPER STORIES: GRANDFATHR SKEOCH ON REAPER N 1932

    EPISODE 179         


    alan skeoch
    Nov. 2020



    CONCLUSION  OF REAPER STORIES:  JAMES SKEOCH  ON  REAPER IN 1932.


    SERENDIPITY:   SURPRISING WHEN SEEMINGLY RANDOM EVENTS  COME TOGETHER IN A MEANINGFUL WAY

    This final  Episode on the history of  reapers is special to me.  In  1932, the Fergus  News Record published a picture of  my grandfather
    James Skeoch reaping his grain field with an old but still operational reaping machine which owed its existence to the Cyrus MCCormick
    invention a century earlier in 1831.  The copy of the Fergus  News Record is dated  November 10, 1932, and  had  been mailed to his eldest son,
    John Skeoch, who was farming near Keeler, Saskatchewan.  Eventually this  farm covered  3,200 acres.

    W



    Can you read the stencilled name on this aged IHC W6  tractor.?” McCormick” !   The International Harvester Company made a large  assortment of machines for
    farming.   That began with the McCormick Reaper but did not stop there.  They eventually made tractors…good tractors… short turning featured for small fields.

     This International Harvester Tractor , IHC W6, was built in 1953.   Cost $400 at Mr. Smith’s auction
    near Guelph and drove it cross country to our Erin township farm.  I will never forget that trip
    on cold November day.   exhilarating.   Proud owner of one of the great machines of agriculture. A McCormick W6 tractor.
    The road trip was  long  and detour laden.  I thought I was absolutely alone.  Then,  En route, I met our horse,
    Spartacus, running towards me hell ben for election…saddled but no rider.  He was heading to his first home
    and away from ours.   He had a length of rusty barbed wire attached to his tail.  Terrified.  What should I do?  I kept 
    driving  and eventually met Marjorie who had been thrown. She corralled  Spartacus eventually.   Why tell you this? Because we
    had continuous rural adventures.  (Spartacus was the son of an estrogen mare whose story will eventually
    become an Episode.)



    That’s Kevin on my shoulders.  Marjorie made us duplicate clothes.  Behind the tractor is a
    seed drill which is there jus for show.  Like most of my farm machines, it was no longer functional.

    AN APOLOGY TO CYRUS MCCORMICK:

    Let me start by apologizing to Cryus McCormick and  his corporation.  Remember that lawsuit where Cyrus
    felt he was overcharged  $8.75 for his wife’s baggage on the New York Railroad.   The lawsuit lasted 20
    years.   Made Cyrus look cheap and bull headed.  Perhaps wrongly so.  I did not mention the value
    of $8.75 in today’s cash.  Turns out to be over $300.  Is the collection of that amount worth a  20 year lawsuit?

    IN my presentation of Cyrus McCormick I may  have miscast him.  For 20 years he fought a court battle
    charging the New York Railroad had overcharged his wife by $8.75.  Today,  November 1920, that amount
    of  money will get you a hamburger, chips and a soft drink.  In short it will get very little.  Hardly worth 
    a 20 year court battle.  Right?   Maybe.   But $8.75 in 1850 had over $300 in purchasing power.  ($10 in 1850
    was  worth $333.83 in today’s purchasing power).   I would  still argue the court battle was not worth
    the cost and the energy.

    So this is  a good time to put all these events together.  The result makes the Skeoch connection seem larger 
    than is  warranted.  Way larger.  Keep that in mind.

    1)  The ‘goddamn’ rock ruined  Uncle Norman’s Massey Harris combine harvester.  Combine Harvesters remain the
    pinnacle of  grain harvesting technology.  
    2) I researched and wrote a 300 page manuscript on machine designs in agriculture, particularly from 1850 to 1891.  M.A., U. of T., 1975
    3) phone  call from Mellon Bank of New York asking us to restore a (replica)  1832  McCormick Reaper
    4) Many trips to the Ford  Museum in Dearborn, Michigan, where Peter Cousins  was collections curator
    5) Began to research  Patrick Bell, Scottish  inventor of an earlier grain  reaper that was  never patented
    and remained on the Bell farm until purchased by the Science Museum in London, England.  (In storage
    at present but may  be on display in the future)…visit to London, England, to see the Bell Reaper when  it
    was a feature display.
    6) Restoration of the replica  model of the McCormick Reaper with was crated  and  sent air freight
    to the Ulster Folk Museum in Northern Ireland where McCormick was born.
    7) Along the way, I discovered that Patrick  Bell travelled to Fergus, Upper Canada, in 1851 where
    the two Skeoch boys, James and John, (migrated in 1846) were farm boys. I speculated that they may have seen
    each other in Fergus…but never knew each other.  Patrick Bell, by then, was a Christian minister
    and  also a  teacher of children of Adam Ferguson, founder of Fergus.
    8) The Patrick  Bell diaries and notes exist in Scotland but have not been published to my knowledge.
    9) Copy of Fergus  News Record, Nov. 10,1932, features  James Skeoch (my grandfather) using a reaper
    to cut grain.  The machine was considered obsolete by then which made a  news story.

     Through the years Marjorie and I have purchased and  stored dozens of machines relevant to
    the history of  agriculture.   We developed a  particular interest in fanning mills because those
    machines could easily fit inside our Ford  Van.   Fascinating history of these machines to come in later episode.
    Fascinating to whom?  Good questio.
     Around 1990 the North American movie industry became very active in the Toronto
    and region.  Our collection of 19th and 20th century artifacts  began to be demanded which
    led to the incorporation of Skeoch Enterprises Limited.

    LET US NOT GET SILLY

    But let us not get silly  The connection  between the great inventors of the 19th 
    century like Patrick  Bell and Cyrus McCormick and the Skeoch  farmers is not even
    tenuous.  The connections is as thin as one strand of a spiders web.  
     We were the users of  machines  like the reaper and the combine harvester.
    We were not the makers.   And  there is one hell  of a difference between inventing and 
    making a machine as opposed to buying and using a machine.  Keep that in mind, Alan.


     JUST imagine if  your student turned in a 300 page essay for you to mark?   A  copy of my thesis in hand…as bound via Jim Hunter.

    SOME ILLUSTRATED  COMMENTS 





    THE PATRICK BELL REAPER




    THE BIG THREE REAPER INVENTORS






    At a farm sale outside Milton I was able to buy this “SAIL” reaper.  It worked. But is now a pile of scrap iron.

    It looked better with Kevin sitting on the drivers seat.   Adding a seat to the replica reaper was one improvement.
    This was called a ‘sail reaper’ because the reel was removed and a sweeping toothed sail of four wooden rakes added.




    When Cyus McClintick lost his patent monopoly a great man reaper began to appear.  All of them improved as above



    This will give you some  idea of the variety of reaper manufacturers that appeared in Ontario after the McCormick patent ended.

    alan skeoch
    Nov. 2020

  • Fwd: Canada Letter: Ontario announces more measures to keep schools open during lockdown

    EPISODE 178     WHAT IS HAPPENING AT ONTARIO SCHOOLS DURING COVID  19 LOCKDOWN?


    alan skeoch
    Nov.  28, 2020

    As a former teacher of  history I have wondered how teaching has adjusted to the pandemic.  For a
    while schools were closed across the province.  It took time to adjust to the new reality.  What is  this
    new reality?   Journalist Catherine Porter has written an  excellent ‘Canada  Letter’ published in 
    the New York Times.  She mentions that Toronto and New York City have approached  the Covid  19
    threat differently.  Toronto keeps  schools open while closing bars and restaurants.  New York closes
    schools  while keeping bars  and restaurants  open.   The argument presented by Toronto is the
    kids are safer in schools than roaming the streets  and playgrounds.  Masked  students  in school
    are less likely to spread the virus.  

    That seems to make sense to me.

    What makes me wonder is how teaching can  happen.  Some school boards have students  
    attend three hour classes where the curriculum is compressed  no doubt..   I cannot imagine
    high school students enjoying three hour classes.  Nor can I  imagine teachers enjoying trying
    to prepare three our classes.  At some point the students  will have to read.  That might work.

    A  lot of  parents, 33% or more, have opted for at home teaching.  That is even harder
    for me to understand..   Seems  like boredom will erode any joy in education.  But I  could be
    wrong.  Just a  gut reaction.  When I taught history I tried to make my 40 or 80 minute
    lessons interesting…sometimes funny, sometimes serious, sometimes irrelevant, sometimes
    current.  I cannot imagine doing this for three hours.   Years ago I also did short five to ten
    minute radio stories  on CBC.  After my third  or fourth story, my producer called  me aside 
    and said  “Alan, those stories are great….”  When someone prefaces a remark by flattery
    what do you think the next word would be?   Right the next word is always  ‘BUT’ . I remember
    his comment so well.

    “Alan, those stories  are great BUT remember the radio audience attention span
    is one minute.  If you don’t get them in  the first minute, then they are gone.”
    That comment by  Doug Koupar years  ago  changed my whole approach to teaching.
    I began to cut the lead  in guff and tried to find the urgent question…the reason for the lesson.

    Personally, I cannot imagine doing that in a three hour lesson.
    If  adult attention span is one minute…then how can we expect the poor kids
    to have an 180 minute  or three hour attention span?

    Covid 19 has not made schooling better.  Or,  if I might use a baseball comment…”there is no joy in mudville” classoomsl.
    No doubt I will be  criticized by some educators.  Creative teachers will find  a way.  Of that I have no 
    doubt.  Maybe I should try to prepare a three hour lesson for a class of  15 students.  Talk is  cheap.


    alan skeoch


    Begin forwarded message:


    From: The New York Times <nytdirect@nytimes.com>
    Subject: Canada Letter: Ontario announces more measures to keep schools open during lockdown
    Date: November 28, 2020 at 6:00:02 AM EST


    TORONTO — On Monday, as I was writing a news article about Canada’s enthusiasm for keeping schools open during the second wave of the coronavirus, an email arrived from my daughter’s high school alerting me that a student had tested positive and a grade-12 class had been asked to self-isolate.

    It was the first time this happened since Toronto public schools finally reopened in mid-September.
    A school in Scarborough, an inner suburb of Toronto, in September. Despite Toronto’s new coronavirus restrictions, classes have remained open.Carlos Osorio/Reuters

    I had expected such news much earlier. Like many parents, I had feared schools would be petri dishes of the coronavirus. I predicted they would stay open no later than Canadian Thanksgiving and that my two children would be trapped once again at home with me and my husband — all of us driving one another nuts.

    That, most happily, has not been the case.

    There have been outbreaks in 83 Toronto schools, each with an average of five cases, according to Dr. Vinita Dubey, associate medical officer of health for Toronto. That is out of some 1,200 schools in the city — so about 7 percent.

    But, unlike New York City, which responded to rising rates of community transmission by shutting down schools while keeping bars and restaurants open, the Ontario government has made the opposite decision: It shut down bars and restaurants in Toronto and two of its sprawling suburbs, but kept schools open.

    ADVERTISEMENT

    “Ontario schools remain safe,” said Stephen Lecce, the education minister for the province, at a news conference on Thursday. “They remain safe even while we face increasing rates of community-based transmission.”

    He vowed to “make sure we do whatever it takes to keep schools safe and to keep them open, which I think is an overwhelming societal imperative in this province and in this country.”

    To that end, he announced more funding for school boards in hot spots and a program of testing asymptomatic students and staff in schools in four of the province’s hardest-hit areas — something his government first promised in the summer, and critics have been demanding for months.

    “That’s great news but we heard the same thing in August,” said Ryan Imgrund, a high school science teacher and biostatistician in Newmarket, just north of Toronto. “I’ll believe it when I see it.”

    ADVERTISEMENT

    Toronto is the biggest city in Canada and, in fact, its schools have among the strictest coronavirus safety rules in the country. All children are required to wear masks in school, including the young ones — which is not the case in most Canadian school boards. And class size for high school kids is capped around 15 — which in the case of my daughter means she takes most of her classes online and is in the physical school only a quarter of the time.
    Preparations for students at a school in Scarborough, part of the Toronto District School Board. Toronto’s schools have among the strictest coronavirus safety rules in the country.Pool photo by Nathan Danette

    Each morning that my daughter and my son, who is in Grade 7, do physically go to school, they complete an online Covid-19 screening, verifying that they don’t have any coronavirus symptoms before arriving. If they do have symptoms, they are expected to stay home and, in most cases, get tested. Whenever a student tests positive, the public health unit swoops into the school to both contain the virus and investigate its spread, through testing and contact tracing, according to Dr. Dubey.

    So far, she said, her office’s data shows that most children are infected at home, not at school.

    “Schools are actually still a safer place for children to be,” Dr. Dubey said, noting that the positivity rate among Toronto’s teenagers is 7.5 percent — higher than the rate seen in schools.

    ADVERTISEMENT

    She added: “If kids are not in school, they are going to be in the community more — at play dates, or the like, where Covid spreads. That’s part of the balance. At least in a school setting, they are socializing and getting an education, and it’s ‘controlled.’”

    Many parents are not convinced. In Toronto, the percentage of children opting for online learning jumped to 33 percent in late October from 26 percent at the beginning of the school year, according to figures from the Toronto District School Board. In the suburbs of Mississauga and Brampton, the shift was even more pronounced, with nearly half of public elementary school students now attending classes virtually, according to the Canadian Press wire service.

    “Many, many, many families don’t have confidence in the plan put in place by this government,” said Kelly Iggers, a mother and teacher at an elementary school in Toronto who amassed more than 270,000 signatures on a petitiondemanding that the government reduce class sizes, which did not happen. “At this point, only a very small proportion of children are getting tested. We just don’t know how many cases are out there.”

    She added, “The provincial government is claiming success based on an absence of data.”

    Studies show about 30 percent of children with coronavirus are asymptomatic, said Dr. Dubey. So, the new testing in schools where there are no outbreaks should be revealing. It could confirm what public health officials and politicians have been saying — that schools are relatively safe, compared with Covid-19 spread in the community. But it could also confirm parents’ fears — that the virus is circulating more widely in schools than has been reported.

    Staff at the Ministry of Education said that the information from the new testing would be publicly shared.

    “It’s a promising development, and I am really looking forward to seeing some clearer data to show us what is happening in our schools,” Ms. Iggers said. “But the success of this measure will really depend on whether it is rolled out effectively, results are shared transparently and the government is willing to implement appropriate actions in response to the findings.”

    Meanwhile, I have not heard anything more from my daughter’s school, which I’m assuming is good news. So she left for school again this morning — which made both of us really happy.

    Trans Canada
    A moose licking a visitor’s car last month in Jasper National Park, in Alberta, Canada.Elizabeth Wishart
    • Digital signs set up in Alberta’s Jasper National Park set the internet on fire this week. They instructed drivers, “Do not let moose lick your car.” Yes, that is a thing.
    • The Times’s art critic Jason Farago gives readers an incredible, intimate tour of an iconic painting that hangs in the National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa. Anyone who has studied the Battle of the Plains of Abraham, in Quebec City, will recognize “The Death of General Wolfe,” by Benjamin West. Jason calls the work the “origin story” of “Canadian history and American painting.”

    Catherine Porter is the Canada bureau chief, based in Toronto. Before she joined The Times in 2017, she was a columnist and feature writer for The Toronto Star, Canada’s largest-circulation newspaper. @porterthereport

    How are we doing?

    We’re eager to have your thoughts about this newsletter and events in Canada in general. Please send them to nytcanada@nytimes.com.

    Like this email?

    Forward it to your friends, and let them know they can sign up here

    Need help? Review our newsletter help page or contact us for assistance.

    You received this email because you signed up for Canada Letter from The New York Times.

    To stop receiving these emails, unsubscribe or manage your email preferences.
    Connect with us on:
    		 facebook twitter instagram
    The New York Times Company. 620 Eighth Avenue New York, NY 10018