Thoughts that didn't make it

Here are a couple of letters I sent to 'The Globe and Mail' that didn't get in:

"Dear Editor,

"In the late sixties, I dated two professional NHL hockey players.  Both Bryan Watson and Brian Smith, may they rest in peace, were perfect gentlemen and both had advanced through the hockey ranks to achieve places in the NHL.  In fact, they were the kind of young men mothers love – mine included!

"I have no idea what happened to that civil culture, but I suspect the stardom status young players in their early teens are now accorded has something to do with the entitlement, privilege and lack of consequences they “enjoy”.  Oh yes, and money.  Lots of it."

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"Dear Editor,

"Wait a minute, hockey parents are mad?  The young and talented teenaged hockey players accused of sexual assault were reared by the same parents who are now “mad as H-E-double hockey sticks”.  Yes, they sacrificed a lot to get their sons to the “maybe”-NHL level, but this does not give them a pass when it comes to the behaviour of their offspring.  What did the kids learn? 

"Did the entitlement and lure of mega bucks cancel out the teaching of gentlemanly values, respect, restraint and integrity?  Those are values you learn at your mother’s knee, as the expression goes.  Time for hockey parents to take responsibility for their sons’ behaviour and step up."

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This next one is true and refers to when I ran the Problem Resolution Program at the Canada Revenue Agency and developed a case management system.  I discovered a minor glitch and asked for a quick meeting to jig it.  When I walked into the room, 19 IT people were sitting and standing around a huge board table!!!!!  I was floored!  I had expected one programmer, but no, 19 "experts" appeared.  

This was all orchestrated by Frank Sexton, may he rest in peace.  To this day, I never understood one word Frank said at any meeting I ever had with him.  It was all complete techie gibberish and beyond me!  The other thing about Frank that drove me insane was he was always talking about some new system that he'd heard of that would be online "soon" and would be better than what we were working on.  "But Frank, I need this system now -- not next year!"  If I had waited for Frank to solve the problem, it would never have been solved.

Appeals Branch had the same problem with Frank, so they just went out and contracted their own case management system outside of IT.  When I heard about it, I cloned theirs and that was the one we went with, leaving Frank and IT to continue pondering their technical navels into infinity. 

But I digress.....here's that letter, which went into 'The Globe and Mail' today, after I had written this blog:

"Dear Editor,

 "Years ago, I ran a simple case-management system in a large federal government department.  While developing it with the IT people, I asked for a meeting to iron out a minor flaw.  When I walked into the meeting, there sat 19, highly-paid people from IT!  That’s how costs balloon in federal IT."

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I blog these because I want my grandkids to have a legacy -- even if they weren't published.  It would be nice if they discovered after my death all nine volumes of my printed blog and said, "Gee, Grandma wasn't just some old lady who baked muffins."

That's my goal.