Alan Skeoch

Blog

  • EPISODE 271 FOLK ART by FRANK FREEMAN (MOM’S BROTHER)


    EPISODE 271     FOLK ART by my Uncle Frank Freeman

    alan skeoch
    Mach  2021

    There is a deep desire in many probably most human beings to create something 
    with their own hands and minds.   Some human beings follow the fine art tradition
    that involves  training…creating artistic objects in a sophisticated manner.

    Folk artists on the other hand do  not worry about fine art, sophisticated art.
    Folk artists do not worry about fine lines.   Often folk artists use items of  everyday
    life and do not particularly care about accuracy  of line and shape.  Nor do they
    worry about critical comments.  Utilitarian art in this instance…to be handled.

    My Uncle Frank Freeman created two early example of folk art that intrigued
    me.   He seems to have made both piece in March  1942.   And  they are objects  made
    as  toys for his six or seven year old  son Ted.   The objects  are not made
    to be submitted  for comment by a jury of accomplished lovers of fine art.
    They are made to be used.  They are made from scrap materials found here and there on 
    the farm.   They are imaginative.  Unique.  Tangible.  Unsophisticated.  Joyful.




    Uncle Frank loved to talk to people.   He was tall but not silent.  Warm hearted.  Certainly not wealthy in the monetary sense
    but rich in other things particularly the natural world  around him.  He always had time for other people.  He loved  his very difficult farm
    composed  of glacial till …rocks, boulders, sand and soil…piled up forming fields that slanted in such a way that little pockets retained pools of water
    that some call  swamps.  And all these pools drained into a big swamp in the centre of the farm.  The farm owned by Lucinda
    and Frank Freeman would be 100 acres of headaches to most farmers.  To Frank, his farm was a wonder of creation.

    How do I describe him best?   I can do that with a short comment he made to me decades ago.

    “Alan, I love farming with horses rather than tractors.  Do you want to know why?”
    “Why?”
    “A tractor never stops working.  Now horses, on the other hand, must take a rest part way
    through a job.  And when the team rest I get to rest and consider the world around me.”

    Another anecdote:     One year Uncle Frank thought he was about to die from cancer.  He was not…but
    he did  not  know that.  “Alan, I took my last walk around the farm today.  Every trail, field, swamp and forest.
    Just to say good bye.”  (These are my words but they accurately cover what he said to me.)  He lived for many
    more years.  I expect he took that walk again.

    Made with these hands…for a reason.  Made from things cast aside.   Made to be touched and handled.   Made to be useful, to entertain, to be;



    alan skeoch
    FEb. 2021

    (Fifth Line, Erin Township, Wellington County)

  • Man copy EPISODE 269 WATER DIVINING — FINDING UNDERGROUND WATER WITH A FORKED STICK (BELIEVE IT?)





    EPISODE 269   WATER DIVINING — CAN YOU FIND UNDERGROUND WATER WITH A FORKED STICK?  (BELIEVE IT?)

    alan  skeoch
    March 2021



    Winter will end.  Spring will come.  And the water witching rods will begin their
    mysterious behaviour once again.  Witching rods only work in the hands of TRUE BELIVERS.

    Take a look at picture below.  There are two creatures  looking for underground water. 

    1) The man
    in the red  shirt is Bradley Schneller who believes that forked stick in his hand will forcefully turn
    down pointing to an underground water source where we can  dig a  new well.   Believe it?
    Lots of people do believe in water witching.

    2) The second creature was our dog “Tikha” whose full name is Oronhyatekha named after 
    the famous Mohawk doctor of that name.  Name means Burning Cloud.   Look at
    our old dog Tikha closely.   She is using her nose in the search for water.  

    Where would you put your faith?  The forked stick or the dog’s nose.?



    “Alan, come over here.  My forked stick says there is  a strong underground
    stream right here.  Get the well driller and his truck right now.  We have found 
    your new well.”  said true believer Bradley Clarence Schneller, agronomist and reader of 
    crystal balls.


    “Alan, something is happening … powerful source of water right here…!”
    We had the driller do his work on this sport…hit water at 40 feet.



    “There is something right here”, said Marjorie


    (Note the dog Tikha is laughing at marjorie and going the other way.)


    “Why are the rods pointing to the sky?”
    “Looks like rain…as good a reason as any.”



    Sandra  Schneller is  also a believer…unless she is faking her belief in water divining just to please her husband.





    After six or seven diviners worked over this field  looking for water,  we called a well driller to get us  a new well.  The old well had been

    hand dug and was only 20 feet deep with various creatures living in the water.  One day I slid the wooden lid free and look down and there
    was a big snake looking up at me from the water below.  I thought the poor thing had fallen in the well and rescued it by lowering a pail on
    a rope then told the snake…”Get in the pail before you drown”.  The snake did so.  We pulled  up the pail and the snake slithered  away
    to our farm house field stone foundation which must have been its home.   The old well had other problems as well.  In summer months
    the water was full of hundreds of little bugs.  Grandmother Freeman advised we “close our eyes and drink the water” which we did
    sparingly.  Grandma and grandpa lived into their 90’s so the water could not have been that bad.

    All the same we got a new well.   

    “Where do you want me to dig?”
    “Right here where most of the water diviners say there is water.”
    “Good…I’ll bring in the truck and drill.”
    “What do you think of this spot!” , I asked him.
    “Seems  good to me.” he responded
    “Why?”  I persisted.
    “No overhanging branches.” he looked up…not down.

    “There…water…strong stream”  he announced  after drilling 40 feet down.
    “Great.”
    “I could go deeper…maybe hit big aquifer at 100 feet.”
    :No…that’s fine…we have water.”

    In retrospect we should have kept drilling.  The 40 foot deep well is  loaded
    with iron…hard water…other dissolved stuff.  Marjorie insists we buy bottled water
    from the Acton hardware store.  Big bottles …hard to lift on the dispenser.
    I have no idea where that water comes from.

    A very wise man told me “Alan, you can dig pretty well anywhere in Southern Ontario
    and hit water.  Pick  a  spot blind if you will.  But the advice of the well driller should be
    kept in mind.  “What advice?”

    “Do not drill where there are overhanging branches.  The branches and the drill tower are enemies.



    We are using a forked stick as a diving rod.  There are other instruments such as two heavy gauge wires with ‘L’ shape held loosely
    in hands,  one diviner that Bob Root and I met even used a can of insecticide hanging on a string.

    ALAN skeoch
    March 2021






    POST SCRIPT FROM INTERNET

    Does divining actually work?

    Scottish Water © 2004,
    a hydrogeologist having a go
    at divining

    Divining is the method by which some people claim to be able to locate water by walking over an area until they observe a response with an apparatus such as a forked stick, bent rods or a pendulum, usually held in front of them. It is difficult to objectively determine whether divining actually works.

    There is at present no scientific explanation as to why it should work and when it has been tested impartially it has been no more successful than would be expected by chance (M. Price 1985. Introducing Groundwater, George Allen & Unwin Ltd.). A water diviner can walk over an aquifer such as the Chalk and predict that water will be found at a certain location; a hydrogeologist knows that a well drilled almost anywhere on the Chalk will encounter some water. The expense is not in finding the water but constructing a borehole to allow it to be pumped out.

    However it is not possible to completely discard the subject of water divining. Some people seem to be able to locate buried pipes with the aid of rods or twigs. One theory for this is that the muscles in the body react to some electromagnetic effect caused by the presence of the metal or the water flowing through the pipe; the rods then amplify this effect so that the searcher becomes aware of them. Another theory is that some diviners know from their experience and local knowledge where groundwater is likely to be located and subconsciously cause the reaction.

    Whether or not divining actually works is a matter of debate. Even if the electromagnetic theory works for pipes, there is no reason why it should detect the slow, diffuse movement of groundwater. 


  • EPISODE 270 WHY ARE THERE FOSSILS ON TOP OF THE ROCKY MOUNTAINS? SKEOCH FAMILY CLIMBED TO DISCOVER WY

    EPISODE 270   WHY ARE THERE FOSSILS ON TOP OF THE ROCKY MOUNTAINS?   SKEOCH FAMILY CLIMBED TO DISCOVER WHY


    alan skeoch
    march 2021




    IN 1981 WE CLIMBED THE ROCKY MOUNTAINS…AND FOUND A MYSTERY

    In the year of our Lord, 1981, Marjorie and I packed up a second hand pop up trailer and drove west so that our
    boys would get to know the magnificent country in which they lived.    The previous summer we drove east to Newfoundland.
    In those two summer trips the boys got to know Canada.  Sometimes they asked  bewildering questions.  


    “Dad, why are these fossils up here on top of the Rocky Mountains?”
    “Seems strange…did  someone carry them up here for us to find?”
    “Don’t be silly.”
    “Easier to believe that than to believe the other story.”
    “What ‘other story’?
    “The tectonic plates story…idea that we are floating on huge plates of
    rock sitting on top of a molten mass of stuff called magma..  And that millions of years ago
    two of the big plates collided with each other…hit so hard and for
    such a long time that the edges were pushed up to form the Rocky Mountains. like a big
     accident when two transport trucks hit dead on ”
    “Now who in their right mind would believe that floating rock idea…pure poppycock.”
    “Yes, must be nonsense.”
    “That Plate Tectonics thesis even goes further to offer proof…uses the
    fossils as evidence.  The collsioins of plates of rock theory says that the fossils are proof
    of the collision.””
    “Get away with you.  More nonsense.”
    “Right.  Imagine saying that these fossils were once the bottom of a great
    shallow sea that was full of life some 500 million years ago…and that the collision
    of the Tectonic plates pushed that sea thousands of feet into the air.”
    “Nonsense I still say.”
    “Even worse.  The stupid idea of the tectonic plates came from T. Tuzo Wilson, a Canadian
    geophysicist.   Idea  has been accepted by scientists around the world.”
    “Just goes to show you about scientists…they are guessers…and your guess is
    as good as mine.  I prefer authorities.”
    “Authorities?  What authority?”
    “Well, for a start I would like to know what Donald Trump thinks about the Tectonic Plate
    theory.”
    “Now there’s a well informed man…a deep reader….a thinker even though some call him
    a stinker and  worse.”
    “He knows something about the collision of fact and fiction and how that can stir up
    humanity.  Maybe he understands the collision of huge plates of  rock floating on
    a sea of molten magma.”
    “Not sure he’s thought that deeply.  
    “How would he explain the presence of these fossils on top of the Rocky Mountains?”
    “I think he  would prefer the idea  that someone carried them up here just to
    make fools of scientists…and make fools of us.”



    QUESTION:   Does  anyone reading this dialogue know what these fossils  may have
    been 500 million years ago.?   Crinoids?  Not sure.   I really  do not know.  As for
    the conversation you have just read,  I  think the collision theory is better than
    the “I carried the fossils up the Rocky Mountains just to fool the Skeoch family” theory.
    Where do you stand?

    HONEST QUESTION:   What living things were these fossils?


    “Daddy, can you explain how fossils at the bottom of the sea became the tops of the Rocky Mountains?”

    “Yes, I can boys.  Two ideas.  First idea is that two gigantic floating continents on a sea of molten lava
    collided so hard that they pushed the bottom of the sea to the top of the Rockies.”

    “Sounds a little far fetched , Dad, what’s the other idea?”

    “Far simpeler.  Somebody carried the fossils up here.”

    “Why would  someone do that?”

    “There are lots of strange people in the world boys.  I  do not know what motivates them all.”



    Here we are in the summer of 1981, climbing the Rocky Mountains.


    All kinds of loose rock…



    Then we eventually reached the line where snow and rock meet.  Great to slide down a mountain clad in snow
    that never melts.



    Among the high altitude flowers and the snow were great chunks of ancient fossils.  


    With a false step we could slide down the mountain along with these chunks of sedimentary rock
    heading down to the valley below.



    “Dad, tell me that stupid story again about the big dinner plates colliding and making the rocky Mountains.”



    alan skeoch
    March 2021

  • EPISODE 270 WHY ARE THERE FOSSILS ON TOP OF THE ROCKY MOUNTAINS? SKEOCH FAMILY CLIMBED TO DISCOVER WY

    EPISODE 270   WHY ARE THERE FOSSILS ON TOP OF THE ROCKY MOUNTAINS?   SKEOCH FAMILY CLIMBED TO DISCOVER WHY


    alan skeoch
    march 2021




    IN 1981 WE CLIMBED THE ROCKY MOUNTAINS…AND FOUND A MYSTERY

    In the year of our Lord, 1981, Marjorie and I packed up a second hand pop up trailer and drove west so that our
    boys would get to know the magnificent country in which they lived.    The previous summer we drove east to Newfoundland.
    In those two summer trips the boys got to know Canada.  Sometimes they asked  bewildering questions.  


    “Dad, why are these fossils up here on top of the Rocky Mountains?”
    “Seems strange…did  someone carry them up here for us to find?”
    “Don’t be silly.”
    “Easier to believe that than to believe the other story.”
    “What ‘other story’?
    “The tectonic plates story…idea that we are floating on huge plates of
    rock sitting on top of a molten mass of stuff called magma..  And that millions of years ago
    two of the big plates collided with each other…hit so hard and for
    such a long time that the edges were pushed up to form the Rocky Mountains. like a big
     accident when two transport trucks hit dead on ”
    “Now who in their right mind would believe that floating rock idea…pure poppycock.”
    “Yes, must be nonsense.”
    “That Plate Tectonics thesis even goes further to offer proof…uses the
    fossils as evidence.  The collsioins of plates of rock theory says that the fossils are proof
    of the collision.””
    “Get away with you.  More nonsense.”
    “Right.  Imagine saying that these fossils were once the bottom of a great
    shallow sea that was full of life some 500 million years ago…and that the collision
    of the Tectonic plates pushed that sea thousands of feet into the air.”
    “Nonsense I still say.”
    “Even worse.  The stupid idea of the tectonic plates came from T. Tuzo Wilson, a Canadian
    geophysicist.   Idea  has been accepted by scientists around the world.”
    “Just goes to show you about scientists…they are guessers…and your guess is
    as good as mine.  I prefer authorities.”
    “Authorities?  What authority?”
    “Well, for a start I would like to know what Donald Trump thinks about the Tectonic Plate
    theory.”
    “Now there’s a well informed man…a deep reader….a thinker even though some call him
    a stinker and  worse.”
    “He knows something about the collision of fact and fiction and how that can stir up
    humanity.  Maybe he understands the collision of huge plates of  rock floating on
    a sea of molten magma.”
    “Not sure he’s thought that deeply.  
    “How would he explain the presence of these fossils on top of the Rocky Mountains?”
    “I think he  would prefer the idea  that someone carried them up here just to
    make fools of scientists…and make fools of us.”



    QUESTION:   Does  anyone reading this dialogue know what these fossils  may have
    been 500 million years ago.?   Crinoids?  Not sure.   I really  do not know.  As for
    the conversation you have just read,  I  think the collision theory is better than
    the “I carried the fossils up the Rocky Mountains just to fool the Skeoch family” theory.
    Where do you stand?

    HONEST QUESTION:   What living things were these fossils?


    “Daddy, can you explain how fossils at the bottom of the sea became the tops of the Rocky Mountains?”

    “Yes, I can boys.  Two ideas.  First idea is that two gigantic floating continents on a sea of molten lava
    collided so hard that they pushed the bottom of the sea to the top of the Rockies.”

    “Sounds a little far fetched , Dad, what’s the other idea?”

    “Far simpeler.  Somebody carried the fossils up here.”

    “Why would  someone do that?”

    “There are lots of strange people in the world boys.  I  do not know what motivates them all.”



    Here we are in the summer of 1981, climbing the Rocky Mountains.


    All kinds of loose rock…



    Then we eventually reached the line where snow and rock meet.  Great to slide down a mountain clad in snow
    that never melts.



    Among the high altitude flowers and the snow were great chunks of ancient fossils.  


    With a false step we could slide down the mountain along with these chunks of sedimentary rock
    heading down to the valley below.



    “Dad, tell me that stupid story again about the big dinner plates colliding and making the rocky Mountains.”



    alan skeoch
    March 2021

  • EPISODE 268 LORNE SAUNDERS WINTER SLEIGH RIDE

    EPISODE 268      LORNE SAUNDERS AND FAMILY :  WINTER SLEIGH RIDE  1975


    alan skeoch
    Feb. 2021

    A team of horses on a farm in Southern Ontario was as common as hen’s teeth even as late as  the 1940’s. 
    But tractors were doing most of the farm labour by then.  By the 1970’s most of those teams
    were gone.   Their harness may be hanging on big pegs where the horse  stalls might remain but
    the horses were gone.

    There were exceptions, farmers who kept a team and used them for winter work like logging
    …horses did  far less damage to a forest than tractors and bulldozers.  Marjorie’s guardian once
    took us into that kind of lumber camp near North Bay.   Horses were used to fish new cut
    logs out of the forest without pulling down and smashing new growth.  Deep snow was no problem.

    Other farmers found horses were especially useful hauling manure to the back fields
    when the snow was deep.  

    Lorne Saunders and his team made Saturday afternoon sleigh rides into a family outing.
    In the picture below Lorne is standing on the pile of manure talking to his team while
    his wife Carole and their first born boy Alfie are resting at the back on an old stuffed
    cushion.   

    Their are three pitch forks.   I think there was method to Lorne’s madness when
    he asked us to tag along.  

    Site: Fifth Line, Erin Township, Wellington County, date 1975 or thereabouts