Arcol-o-Gist

Top Ten Things You Can Do for the Environment

2011-12-29T12:28:00.000-06:00

It's the time of year for top-ten lists. Here's mine:

Grow a garden. Yes, you. This has finally started to turn up on a few lists, long overdue, but it's usually way too far down the list. Don't have a bit of land? (Are you sure? Think small, even a planter or a window box.) Help a friend. Get a community garden plot, and again, maybe go together with a friend on this. The most important tip for a beginning gardener: start small. It might seem insignificant, but you will be surprised at what you can produce. And transportation of fresh produce is a big part of our ecological footprint, so a successful small beginning at gardening may have just as much impact as any other green project you could do.
Take up hunting or fishing. Yes, you. Yes, kill something. Do it close to home, and you will have to learn about the natural habitats of your own area, where they are, what sustains them, and what threatens them. They need you.
Eat what you kill.
Eat smaller portions of meat: a piece about the size of your palm and the thickness of your pinkie finger is plenty, even with all that vigorous gardening and hunting you will be doing.
If your hunting and fishing doesn't fill your reduced meat needs, look for domestic meats that are grown locally in harmony with the natural habitats you learned about in #2. In my area, that means range-fed beef, which uses self-guided cow-power to harvest and fertilize natural grassland instead of plowing it up and using fossil fuels to cultivate and fertilize grain crops.
If, after all this new recharge time you are spending in your garden, on the trail of a deer, or on the water with your fishing rod, you still feel the need for a holiday from your life, take it close to home. Check out nearby parks, festivals, galleries - try your local tourism agency if you need ideas. Try something different: a bike tour, or paddling lessons; a retreat to learn about the enneagram; a music camp where you can learn to play an instrument.
Buy less, but when you do buy, spend more. Buy quality, to last a lifetime. Help the economy shrink back so it fits within the biosphere instead of mining the Earth.
When giving gifts, show your caring through the time and thought you put in, instead of the dollars. In my family, for the last couple of years, CHRISTMAS stands for Consumeable (or Cookies), Homemade, Recycled (if you're not using it much but someone else would, why not?)... and I have been trying to extend the acronym to include Indirect (a gift to charity), and then the rest of the letters make an excuse for buying something Specific to that person and Terrifically Magically Awesomely Spectacular... such as the lightweight plastic trombone we found for my Mom to help her continue marching in parades well into her 70s.
Don't have time for all this? Do it anyway, and with the money you save, quit working. Give up that second income, or the overtime. Change jobs if you need to. Take back your life.
Tell your local political representatives what you are doing, and why. Destroy their argument that we can't make changes because the public won't change. Change, and show them.

Lake Arcola 2011

2011-04-25T11:56:00.003-06:00

My not-quite-annual picture of the "lake" in town, close to its peak (I believe) on April 12th, when I just happened to be in town to go with James to the music festival. He thoroughly impressed me at that, with a lively clarinet solo and a lilting duet with a flute player from the next town.

On the way home from the festival, we had to drive through water flowing over the highway between Arcola and Carlyle. I've never seen it flood there before.

The water in Arcola was very high as well, but I think it might have something to do with the new culvert they put in where there used to be a drainage ditch across a vacant lot. Now there is a very long culvert with a house on top, and that culvert just doesn't seem to be doing the same job that the ditch did.

Parsnip - unedited

2010-10-07T07:20:00.003-06:00

Remember "Rootabigga"? I think this root is actually bigger. Mom and Dad have a great garden on a spot where they used to feed cattle. That fertile soil combined with the non-stop rain this year produced some sensational parsnips (and carrots, and beets, and lettuce that kept producing all season instead of bolting in July).

The boy is definitely bigger. In about a year he went from shortest in the family to tallest. I don't think there was anything special about growing conditions that year; it was simply time to grow.

I don't find the Olympics hopeful...

2010-02-14T08:25:00.003-06:00

What if the athletes had to get to the games under their own power?

What if they played on whatever snowy slope or frozen lake was available?

What if people came to play instead of to watch?

In response to all this Olympic striving:

Life is not about being best.

It is about being you.

Daylight on the Bus Route

2010-01-13T13:37:00.002-06:00

When I was in high school, I played the clarinet in "Division Band," which was a wind ensemble composed of students from schools all across the Arcola School Division. Or was it the Arcola School Unit? I remember something about Unit 10, and the office was actually in Arcola, housed in the old Land Titles Office, a wonderfully solid brick building with a brass elevation marker in the yard. The building has since housed a museum and gift shop, and more recently the offices of a trucking company. The school division has become much larger. Back then, though, we would wait after school on Monday for a bus coming from Stoughton and picking us up on the way through to Carlyle for band rehearsal. To fill the time and tide us over, we always had a bit of allowance money to go downtown to Chan's Cafe for a chocolate bar or a little bag of chips. Chan's Cafe stands vacant now, and my daughter works next door in the new "Michael's Cafe and Bakery." She played in Division Band for a while, but the bus was no more, and my understanding is that the band itself fizzled out a few years ago.

Little snapshots of memory remain, not of the music itself, but of scenes: our instruments in their cases waiting on the sidewalk by the gym; an older student silhouetted oddly in the hallway during a break; my favourite conductor Mr. Patterson's smile. We did get a standing ovation at one concert, for our performance of the William Tell Overture. But what I remember most was that particular Monday each winter when we would come out of rehearsal for the bus trip home and find that it was not yet dark out.

Back then it took a week's change for it to be noticeable, but back then I wasn't the bus driver with the watch. These days on my morning run to the school, I notice the difference in the sky from one day to the next, as I turn south or east toward the sunrise: how much brighter it is than when I passed this spot the day before.

Earthiness

2010-01-08T13:17:00.002-06:00

I wonder if the acupuncture addiction treatment that Madcap was talking about could cure whatever keeps drawing me back to the ivory tower. She gave me a belly-laugh today, with a devilish edge to it. Please do go look at her definition of fundament. (Yes, before you read the rest of this.)

I just checked Merriam Webster online, and found her definition under #2, but #1 is intriguing: "an underlying ground, theory, or principle" - and oh, #3 could get me going: "the part of a land surface that has not been altered by human activities."

I am back home on the farm, for now at least, but my perceptual apparatus is tuned to the academic, the literary, the textual.

"Dirt is so 20th century," declares the slogan on the box Mom and Dad brought back from the city yesterday. I declared that I could write a deep analytical essay about all the societal attitudes and assumptions wrapped up in that slogan. Inside the box is Mom's Christmas present, an AeroGarden. I have been teasing her mercilessly, but I can appreciate her desire to have "her own" lettuce in February. And maybe the saving in trips to the grocery store in town would justify the spending on plastic baglet strips of precisely formed nutrient pellets. I just think I would rather use dirt, thanks.

Not that I have ever actually gotten around to it.

I was getting closer, when I (well, we) got those big windows put in. All I had to do was to get the construction debris out from under them and a shelf of pots in its place. Even one little shelf. Or table or stack of boxes or board on sawhorses or whatever. Something to hold the dear little green things (and their pots of dirt) up in the sunlight.

But now the sunny house is sheltering my kids and their father while I wander forth and not quite back, forth to further schooling, and now back to school-bus driving and seeking more lucrative short-term endeavours as a way of hovering nearby to be a little more present for those kids. Most dear, they are, and not nearly so little, but still needing me a bit closer for a while, or so I like to think.

I have been "home" since Christmas, all for the sake of the kids, but so far I have spent very little time with them. When I am not driving the school bus (cancelled for today because of the windchill), or chasing leads on employment and accommodations in town (closer to the kids), or attempting to impose some order on the debris of piles and boxes that one might (mistakenly) represent as my "roots" (though I would sure like to put them securely down somewhere), I am reading and musing and catching myself staring at some little phrase that captures my mind. Or sometimes I am just staring out the window at the sparkling frost on the winter-dried native grasses and wildflowers standing up through the snow. And thinking about something entirely different. I am sure it was a thesis topic, a fine one, but it's gone now.

There will be another. Or the same one disguised in another grand-sounding phrasing.

Yes, I am thinking theses. Further degrees. Yes, I am actually thinking about a PhD.

Of course, I am aware of the clever little wordplay that starts with a barnyard interpretation of the initials B.S. (ignoring the "c" in my B.Sc.), proceeds through M.S. (more, and never mind that mine was an M.A.) and concludes with the initials for "Pile Higher and Deeper."

Manure is good.

Although maybe not so good when too much of it is piled up in one place . . .

Not Forwarded but Shared

2009-06-24T20:48:00.002-06:00

...because I refuse to forward such things but the prayer speaks to me deeply right now. It's not so much a prayer as a benediction, I'm thinking...

Saint Theresa's Prayer

May today there be peace within.
May you trust God that you are exactly where you are meant to be.
May you not forget the infinite possibilities that are born of faith.
May you use those gifts that you have received, and pass on the love that has been given to you.
May you be confident knowing you are a child of God. Let this presence settle into your bones,
and allow your soul the freedom to sing, dance, praise and love.
It is there for each and every one of us.

Over to the Dark Side

2009-06-15T12:16:00.004-06:00

Confession time. Oh all you homeschooling hard working real living friends of mine, please forgive me. I have applied to go back to school (again) and study (still more) to be a high school science teacher.

I figure it this way: I dabbled in growing my own food and making my home less dependent on gas and electricity and so on, but I didn't go far enough, and I didn't succeed in bringing my family along with me. Our kids seem to want fairly conventional careers - although Ruth is fascinated with "tiny homes" and may study architectural technology - so it doesn't matter how many vegetables I can grow in the back yard, when they will be needing money for tuition and accommodations. The marriage breakdown adds another layer of formal obligation, too, since the legal people will be looking at whatever agreements we come up with to see whether the children are provided for adequately (and I am sure they will be looking at dollar signs, not bushels of food). This teaching program is the fastest way I can see to get back onto a fairly lucrative career track while still making use of my science background, being able to work in my home area, and being able to cultivate a little more ecological awareness. I know, walk the walk. Well, at least I will have late afternoons and July and August for gardening.

Bring It On

2009-05-19T10:27:00.001-06:00

Nobody ever told me that divorce is hell
until I made up my mind
and then I heard it twice in a week.

Well thanks for the advice but
how the hell do you know?

I have a saying for you too.

A change is as good as a rest.

The Path Leads On

2009-05-12T14:41:00.003-06:00

I'm trying another little step here, to see if this blogging path is still right for me. I have been keeping my head down for a while, wanting to sort things out for myself away from the din of other voices, other labels. That and being very busy with a bunch of business that is nobody else's business, thank you. Sure, I've still been up to lots of interesting remodeling and such, but that's not the stuff that rattles around my mind and demands to be written.

One thing that did get written was a song (surprise!), and in a circumspect way, it says something about where I've been.

The Path Leads On
© 2009 Laura Herman

Here's a hand
to help you back onto your feet.
Take my arm for awhile;
take my shoulder if you need it;
but once you're steady,
once you're ready,
the next step is yours...

The path leads on
from wherever you have fallen.
The path leads on;
it's a winding, narrow way.
There is no place
too far, too wrong:
starting just where you are,
the path leads on.

Here you are.
I know you think you should be there,
high above all of this,
and you're sinking in despair, oh,
but while you're hurting,
while you're searching,
you are on the way...

The path leads on
from wherever you have fallen.
The path leads on;
it's a winding, narrow way.
There is no place
too far, too wrong:
starting just where you are,
the path leads on.

Being "on the straight and narrow" -
what a sad, mistaken notion!
He said "strait is the gate" -
like Gibraltar to the ocean:
a narrow way that leads
to life
where your heart
and your horizons
open wide... open wide...

The path leads on
from wherever you have fallen.
The path leads on;
it's a winding, narrow way.
There is no place
too far, too wrong, too gone:
starting just where you are,
the path leads on.

Cultivating Our Roots

2009-05-11T16:40:00.004-06:00

My Mom has published a beautiful book:

She wrote it from the perspective of a retiring seed grower, which means it can give the impression of a technical manual for a very narrow audience, but don't be fooled. I say, if you live in my ecoregion, you need to see this book.

Even if you will never grow anything, you might want to get acquainted with these plants. Consider this: they're your neighbours. They were here before you were, and likely will be long after. They might all look like "just grass" to you, but once you take a closer look, you may be astounded at the diversity in a tiny patch of unbroken prairie.

But here's the tricky part. Have you ever looked at a grassland in early June or late August and tried to find pictures in a field guide to match what you are seeing on the ground? Good luck. If you or anyone you know wants to learn to recognize some of the most common grasses and wildflowers of the mixed-grass prairies in the northern plains of North America, I say: start with this book. There are excellent photographs of multiple life stages of each plant, so you stand a good chance of recognizing your leafy new friend throughout the growing season - even when it's not so leafy. You won't have to wade through pages of obscure plants that you will never see, because there are only 62 wildflowers and 22 grasses included - only the most common species plus a few uniquely interesting species like buffalograss (rare in our region but common farther south in the short-grass prairie). As you learn the plants, you can also learn to recognize similarities among species in the same plant family, since the book is organized by families and includes identifying characteristics for each. That way, when you meet a plant that isn't introduced in the book, you may well be able to say, "You look familiar - aren't you related to..." and all of a sudden you will have a nodding acquaintance with hundreds of species.

And of course, if you want to actually grow these plants, whether as a seed business or just as a minimal-input alternative to a thirsty hungry lawn, you could benefit from the tips on planning and preparing a site, the illustrations to show you how your plants will look (even as seedlings so you can tell what not to weed out of your plot), the germination information, and tips and pictures to help you collect your own seed to get started.

I used to do inventories of the plant life on proposed oil and gas well sites. I worked with numerous floras and field guides, and through struggle and persistence, reached a point where I can look at most common prairie plants and just know them, no matter how small or shrivelled. But when I first started, and even in recent years when I was working very early in the growing season, I wish I had had this book.

Oh and did I mention that it's beautiful? People here were buying copies as Mother's Day gifts, just for the pictures of the their mothers' favourite flowers.

Yes, I'm proud of my Mom.

The Solar Thaw

2009-03-05T19:52:00.002-06:00

I have been watching the south-facing snow banks along the street, wondering when the snow would begin to melt back wherever dust and dirt catches the sun. Today was the first sign of it this year. I think it takes a certain combination of sun angle, sunny days, and air temperature, so the date varies. I have a picture of an advanced stage of the thaw from March 15th, three years ago, here.

Winter Severe Weather

2008-12-16T14:25:00.003-06:00

I tap the digits of the long-distance number and wait, half listening, for the point in the menu where I can press 4 for our region and 3 for our forecast. My mind tunes out the random clip advertising other services, but the echo of that voice returns at moments through the day: "Winter Severe Weather..."

In this land, this week,
severe weather is a violent stillness
creeping inward to the places where life
huddles
curling protectively around its own spark
waiting, hoping to last
until rescue.

Lasting until rescue, and knowing some will not, is a grim reality of life in this land. Small wonder that Connie Kaldor sings, "I come from a land that is harsh and unforgiving..." and tells the story of one who "tried to walk and froze to death, fifty feet from town." Sometimes summer too drains life away: again Connie sings of those still standing, stony faced with survivor guilt, "hoping to hold on so you don't end up like the neighbours: him and her, they're weeping as the auctioneer yells."

In a gentler song of springtime, Ian Tyson recalls the names of his neighbours and their ranches, where each in turn is pictured "pulling calves," helping with the birthing and rejoicing that they "made it through another on the northern range." In the last line of the song, though, he brings to mind the name of one more rancher, one who has pulled calves for the last time: "Gid's in the country where the tall grass grows..."

Annie Gardenbed's Song

2008-10-28T10:42:00.004-06:00

Your world is good for me
and so I give you thanks
for soil and seasons, seeds and sun,
for water and wisdom and work to be done.
Your world is good for me
(Annie Gardenbed) -
Amen!

This work by Laura Herman is licensed under a Creative Commons
Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 2.5 Canada License.

Sorry about the Noncommercial break, but I wanted Disney's
legal hordes to know that I'm not trying to profit by this.

Your world.
I don't say who "you" is, but there is no need. I am singing to one who is present, listening; why use a name? It would only drag us off into arguments about the connotations of the name, and then about which gender of pronoun we should use when the name is too burdensome to speak in its entirety.

Isn't it rude to argue about someone when they are present?

Your world is good for me.
It is a whole world, and it is larger than my doubts and fears about what may be done to me specifically. It is a good place in which to choose my way.

I give you thanks . . .
and in so doing, I open my own eyes, and my whole being, to the wonder, blessings, and possibilities that are all around me, always, whether I remember to give thanks or not.

Soil.
Do I own it? Because I can surround it with survey stakes, do I really own the soil? If I turn and tear it with the movement of steel, driven by combustion commanded by cash, do I forget? It is much more ancient than I and my title. It is more fluid and changing than the lines on the deed. It anchors the roots of life, records the traces of centuries, and yet whole decades of its building can be swept away, to a new place and people, in a few windstorms or a single flood.

Is soil, all too often, taken as a given instead of as a gift?

Seasons.
Dave Sauchyn of Regina, trying to create the few bullet points asked of him to somehow sum up a 448-page report on the impacts of climate change in Canada, said this:

Canada is losing the competitive advantage of a cold winter.

Seeds, sun, and water . . .
the things we often remember in our thanks.

There is so much more.

Wisdom.
If you find a little here, I am thankful.

Work to be done!

In our modern world we only deem something a success if we can stand back idle and watch it work. If any physical effort is required, it is an outright failure. . . . The very first thing we do when seeing something so elegantly simple and useful as this pump is scheme to make it work while we just stand by and stare at it.
--Eleutheros

There is a pitfall in being thankful for things given to us. The story of Johnny Appleseed is inspiring, but the popular version, as summed up in the merry little verse, drifts toward a "big-rock-candy-mountain" vision of idyllic idleness achieved at last, as a result of someone else's generous hard work. That vision entices, seduces, and robs us of the wonderful gifts of our own work: tending; bringing forth; growing strong; growing wise; being present; finding meaning.

Through work we receive the ability to give.

Your world is good for me!

Amen.

Annie Gardenbed

2008-10-22T13:52:00.003-06:00

I aspire to be known as Annie Gardenbed someday - but I aspire to be and do many things, and I can work on only a few at a time, so if someone else earns the name first, I won't be disappointed. I hope this blog post might help that happen.

Why Annie Gardenbed? Well, it's a little play on the name Johnny Appleseed. I'd like to be like Johnny, except that instead of planting apples, I'd be digging new garden plots and getting new gardeners started.

The popular legend is that Johnny wandered all over planting apple seeds almost anywhere, so that whoever came along later could gather apples. As with any legend, the reality is similar but different: John Chapman was a wandering planter of apples, but he planted nurseries in areas where settlers would soon be arriving, and had the seedlings ready to sell to the settlers for their homestead orchards. Still, the legend captures some of the spirit of his life and legacy, in that he lived extremely simply; he was generous in his dealings; and his undertaking was remarkable enough to earn him the nickname "Johnny Appleseed" by about halfway through his long life. The real story, or what we think we know of it, is richer and stranger than the legend, and definitely worth a look.

When I came up with the idea of "Annie Gardenbed," I knew only the popular legend of Johnny, and a related little song that we often use as a mealtime grace:

Oh, the Lord is good to me,
and so I thank the Lord
for giving me the things I need:
the sun and the rain and the apple seed.
The Lord is good to me.
Alleluia, Amen!

Many people sing "Johnny Appleseed" instead of Alleluia in the last line. The song appears in many places unattributed, as if it were a folk tune going back to the days of Johnny himself, but thanks to Cathy's Grace Notes, and some further sleuthing, I learned that it is a verse from a song written by Kim Gannon and Walter Kent for the Walt Disney Music Company in 1946, and sung by Dennis Day in the animated short "Johnny Appleseed" (part of Disney's 1948 release "Melody Time"). The sheet music is still available.

I'm disappointed. Today while washing dishes I came up with a little verse for Annie Gardenbed, but I don't dare tell you what the tune is, or Disney might come after me. I'm not afraid of ordinary mice, but . . .

I think I'll see about a public domain license for my verse, before I post it. That way at least I'll have evidence that I'm not trying to profit from Disney's tune in any way.

Or should I just go ahead an post it anyway?

Healing

2008-10-17T14:45:00.003-06:00

I can sleep on my left side.

I hadn't been able to do that in years - so many years that I can't remember when the first year was, or how long it took to realize that I might never sleep on that side again. All I know is that I used to try to ignore the clicking in my sternum, or near it; and I used to shift around and try to find a position where I could breathe without that soft click-click, shift-release, on and off with each and every breath; and it didn't hurt, exactly, but it felt very wrong, like it would certainly be hurting later if I let it carry on.

My theory was that some cartilage had been damaged somehow, so my rib cage wasn't quite as solid as it should be. And I didn't think cartilage could heal. So I slept on my right side.

I have never been able to sleep on my belly. On my back, yes, long ago, and still sometimes when I let down my guard. You see, a long time ago I woke suddenly, frantically, sitting straight up in bed from a dream of falling backwards, backwards, into blackness. I think it happened more than once, and then I just didn't sleep on my back unless I rolled there in my sleep without noticing. These days it's not that dreadful dream that wakes me, but the sound of my snoring.

It troubled me a little, having only one position to sleep in, especially when a limb would sleep longer, numb and prickling. Still, I lived with it.

And then I made a change in my life, a change that had nothing to do with the clicking in my chest - at least not as far as I was aware.

And some months later (a year, maybe?) I noticed that I was lying on my left, and my chest wasn't clicking. The click came back sometimes, gently, and I was patient, just trying that side for a little while each evening, turning back if the click returned. Finally it stayed away.

What a sweet moment that was, when I woke and realized that I was lying on my left side.

Harvest Home

2008-10-11T20:58:00.003-06:00

Picture this (because I don't know where to find a camera with batteries charged up):

onions and beets spread to dry on newsprint
cardboard boxes brimming with carrots, potatoes, and squashes
bags of dry beans, with the sides rolled down to let the beans dry a little more

This week I'll be storing things away a little better: tucking the onions into old nylons and hanging them on nails on the floor joists in the basement; cleaning up some of the carrots and beets and finding some room for them in the fridge, freezing some others, and maybe drying some for soups, too; and clearing some room in a not-too-cool spot for the squashes to sit with some air spaces between them. The dry beans are experiments. I have been growing Windsor broad (or fava) beans for several years, but never understood what they should look like when mature. Finally I read somewhere that they can be picked when the pods start to turn black, and realized that this was not a sign of disease! I let them dry on the vines, and today we gathered them. Also, as a sort of accidental experiment, we gathered the dry wax beans that we didn't get eaten as fresh beans in the summer. We eat a lot of kidney beans and some chickpeas, lentils, and pinto beans, but all of these are tricky to grow in our short summers, so I want to experiment with some other dry legumes. We'll see!

I am very tired, and very happy. I let myself be led away from the garden path for most of the summer and early fall, and when I heard the word "snow" in the forecast I feared I had left it too long, but the rain and snow held off and we got it all in.

Happy thanksgiving!

Square Wave Days

2008-09-23T14:20:00.001-06:00

The world sunlight map often shows a sort of sinuous curve along the boundary between light and darkness, but these days it has more of a binary look to it.

100 Species

2008-08-27T19:48:00.003-06:00

I got this idea from CG. How many people can list 100 species that are growing in the area where they live?

I'm sure I could, but I often get paid to list species, so I'm not typical. Mind you, I do remember a field trip when I was a new biology student in university, and my prof was wondering how I knew so many of the plants we were seeing. Well, I just always wanted to know, so I learned!

Anyway, I am curious now to see how many plants I can name just by picturing my surroundings and what is there - how far from home would I have to wander in my mind to reach 100?

1) quack grass (I'm starting in our yard)
2) dandelions
3) Kentucky bluegrass
4) clover - which one? It's a Trifolium species, a white one, but I'd have to look up the exact name
5) common plantain
6) annual sow thistle
7) perennial sow thistle
8) chickweed
9) wild buckwheat
10) lamb's-quarters
11) brome grass
12) red-root pigweed (and there's another kind of pigweed whose name I have forgotten)
13) garden atriplex
14) doorweed (sorry, I don't know which one it is)
15) purslane or wild portulaca
16) there's another grass that I pull out of the garden before it matures enough to positively identify without a great deal of unnecessary fuss - I think it's probably foxtail barley
17) green foxtail
18) creeping bellflower (this is one of the plants in the flowerbeds that came with the house, and I just learned its name because it's on the invasive plant species lists I'm working with - there are also some kind of lily, an iris, a daisy, and something with variegated foliage, and a very pretty thing that I did know the name of once but it escapes me now - maybe a columbine? I've just never taken much interest in the ornamentals)
19) lily-of-the-valley (I did know this ornamental somehow - maybe because it's poisonous)
20) Maltese cross (another ornamental that I know, because I came across the name and it intrigued me)
21) desert saltgrass
22) caragana
23) chokecherry
24) gooseberry
25) saskatoon
26) American elm
27) Manitoba maple
28) green ash
29) lilac
30) honeysuckle (though I'm not sure which one - those ornamentals again!)
31) peppers
32) tomatoes
33) onions, chives, and garlic - are some of these so closely related that they are counted as a single species? I don't remember
34) swiss chard, beets, and spinach - if I recall correctly, these are all close relatives too
35) parsley, parsnips, and carrots - another set of close relatives
36) lettuce
37) beans (wax and fava)
38) peas
39) lots of cucurbits - cucumbers, zucchinis, pumpkins, and spaghetti, acorn, and butternut squashes
40) potatoes (I'm out of my own yard now, across the street at Garth's brother's place, where we keep the other half of our garden)
41) dill
42) sweet corn
43) rutabagas
44) broccoli
45) raspberries
46) strawberries
47) spruce trees - I wonder exactly what kind?
48) ox-eye daisy
49) dame's-rocket - these last two are more ornamentals that I just learned because they are on the invasive species lists
50) Hmm - one more to hit 50 before I leave the two yards that we live in - there must be one more. Have I seen goat's-beard here? Or - yes! There is a cotoneaster bush, or there was, but they may have killed it when they ground the stump of the big elm in front of the house last month, but I'm going to count it.
51) blue grama grass (no, I haven't gone way out in the prairie yet; this is between the sidewalk and the street, just next door)
52) bastard toadflax (I hope I got that name right - it's another one I learned from the invasive species lists - this is growing wild at the edge of the pavement)
53) butterfly-weed or scarlet gaura - a farmer friend of mine found the scientific name titillating, but maybe I pronounced it wrong - go look it up if you're curious. (The PLANTS database is handy for that, and if I used it I could get all these names right, but I'm testing my mind here.)
54) weeping birch
55) poplars and/or cottonwoods - I don't know the horticultural species, but I know there are a bunch of them in various nearby yards, and I'll get to our native species later (if I don't hit 100 before I get out of town)
56) crabapple
57) rose (I do admire the white shrub roses in some yards nearby, so much so that I tried to root some cuttings last year, and just today I picked some of the dry hips to see if I would have more success with the seeds)
58) seaside arrowgrass (I'm away from the street now, wandering in my mind along the drainage ditch behind our yard)
59) cord grass (and I know there are two species here, and I know that one has awns and the other doesn't, and one of them is called alkali cord grass so maybe it's the one that grows in the saline ground along that ditch)
60) cattails (in the old brick ponds behind our yard)
61) wild licorice (just beyond the brick ponds)
62) kochia - I just remembered that one, it's in our yard too - and I thought I might like to work as a weed inspector! Ha! I'd have to clean up our own yard a bit first! But seriously, if I could work from the angle of helping people learn more about what's growing on their land, not just as the enforcer with the right to enter onto private property, I could enjoy that, and in some places I think the inspectors do work from that angle
63) oh, and I'm sure we must have some black medick in the garden too
64) and probably some yellow sweet-clover
65) alfalfa - now I'm beyond the railway, or I should say beyond the old railway grade, out looking over the hayfield towards the airstrip that some locals call the airport
66) willows - that's down beyond the airstrip, but there are some ornamental willows in town too - and don't ask me what kind of willows they are!
67) sedge - I'm sure I could find a sedge somewhere along the roadside where I walk south of town; for sure there must be some down by those willows - and again, don't ask me which sedge!
68) northern wheatgrass (okay, I gave up and went home in my mind to the farm five miles from town, where this challenge gets so much easier)
69) western wheatgrass
70) needle-and-thread grass
71) western porcupine grass
72) awned wheatgrass
73) western red lilies
74) smooth camas
75) wild blue flax
76) gaillardia or blanket-flower
77) black-eyed susan
78) prairie crocus
79) June grass
80) prairie cinquefoil
81) white cinquefoil
82) three-flowered avens
83) ground-plum
84) snowberry
85) silverberry or wolf willow
86) narrow-leaved meadowsweet
87) fringed loosestrife
88) pincherry
89) beaked hazelnut
90) high-bush cranberry (I want some hazelnut and high-bush cranberry bushes for the yard here)
91) paper birch
92) white poplar (told you I'd get to them) or trembling aspen
93) black or balsam poplar
94) Western Canada violet
95) poison ivy
96) stinging nettle
97) yellow avens
98) heart-leaved alexanders
99) alum root
100) Indian-pipe (a non-photosynthetic plant - I had to think of a distinctive one for my 100th)

And there are many more. But CG's list is much more impressive, because you can tell that she knows a lot more than just the names - she knows which ones to eat and which ones to use for healing and more.

And if you find all this overwhelming, there is a book I want you to meet. (I wish I had known about this book back when I knew mostly just the showy wildflowers that I had taught myself from the pictures in our field guides at home, and I was sent out with a few floras - floras are plant books with detailed botanical descriptions and sometimes no pictures at all - to see what I could find growing on proposed oil well sites, in case something rare was there.) Thomas J. Elpel's Botany in a Day gives you patterns to look for, just a few patterns to learn so that you will know the major plant families of the North American interior plains. That means you can jump to the right part of the flora or field guide right away, instead of struggling through a botanical key or flipping through the pictures. And you will have hooks to hang your knowledge on as you meet new plants, instead of just an endless parade of names and images to remember. And most importantly of all, if you learn from Mr. Elpel's book, you will be learning plant uses as you go, because he includes information about the properties shared by plants in each family.

And CG - thanks for getting me blogging again, if only for today. Tomorrow I will be back out in the farmland of southeast Saskatchewan, listing plants for pay, and reinforcing my conviction that I'd rather grow plants to eat and not need the pay so much . . .

From one cold corner of the Earth to another

2008-08-01T12:53:00.001-06:00

This is quite a find for an undergraduate student from North Dakota . . .

The Million-Dollar Rain

2008-05-27T10:32:00.002-06:00

At last. I haven't replaced my frost-cracked rain gauge yet, and I haven't found the charger for the camera batteries so I didn't get pictures of the puddles, but all three of my rain barrels overflowed, and that grim look on many faces has been replaced with quiet joy and relief. I heard that many places around here got well over an inch. That was the first significant rain we've had this spring, and coming after a winter with very little snow, and a dry fall before that, it was desperately needed. We had used the rototiller on the garden plot at Brian's, for the potatoes, but in my own garden I was careful not to turn the soil at all; I just knifed the shovel blade down in to lift and loosen where the beds had packed down too much. I could see a little bit of moisture in the deeper soil but the top few inches were hard clods and dust. Hoping still, I put all the early stuff in and right after I finished, it rained softly off and on all weekend. Beautiful. We won't get the eavestrough on the house for a while, but we propped up bits of it to catch some of the drips and filled two of our barrels with wonderfully clean water from that new steel roof.

I took a contract doing assessments of the health of native pasture and wetland areas this summer, so you probably won't be hearing much from me for a while yet.

Root Shift

2008-05-16T10:03:00.004-06:00

Wayne at Niches has another post up about the ongoing drought in the southeastern U.S., and some disturbing comments about the response (or lack thereof) from his students - and even from his biology students. I replied that I think the message about climate change and personal change has been watered down too much, in an attempt to make the necessary changes seem "easy." I suspect that many people equate "easy" with "unnecessary."

Then I found myself writing about my root shift idea. It's high time I mentioned it here. From my comment at Niches:

I am working on a concept called “root shift.” This stresses the fundamental change that needs to be made: to shift the roots of our living (our food, our shelter, our clothes, our entertainment, everything) away from fossil fuels and onto a sustainable base. This shift won’t happen if we wait for governments to force it or corporations to donate it; it must come from us, from the grassroots. What is stopping us from making the shift? What is stopping me, a person who knows far more than enough about the need for it? (Another root shift image: the branching tree of evolution, lopped off by our current extinction event, and future biodiversity starting over from just a few surviving roots...) What do I need to know about the roots of my own being, my attitudes, my habits, and so on, to make a real shift? I want to answer that, and more. I have bought a domain name (rootshift.org - sorry, right now it just directs to Garth’s website) and I’m waiting for “Wikis for Dummies” from the library. I want to build a collaborative website that will bring together tools for change. The “root shift” concept will be central, and all content will have to measure up. Being “good for the environment” is not enough. We’re not talking about tweaking trends, here, we’re talking about reversing them. If an action can’t contribute to the root shift, it’s a distraction. And I suspect that what’s more important than the actions is the spirit - finding enough peace with oneself and one’s neighbours to stop “needing” so much, to begin to love one’s own home place, to choose life.

UPDATE: I have created a web page outlining the root shift concept, which you can view at rootshift.org.

Chris Mooney's "Storm World"

2008-04-07T10:41:00.002-06:00

If you're perplexed by the conflict over global warming, wondering how to decide who to believe, or wondering how "the other guys" can be so earnestly stupid, you might find some food for thought in Chris Mooney's book, Storm World.

If you're thinking, aha, Mooney, that's the guy who wrote The Republican War on Science, so that's where Laura's coming from - think again. I haven't read that book and probably won't, since I have very little faith in politicians of any stripe, either as people to rely on or as people to blame. I have my own work to do, walking the walk.

I recommend Storm World not as support for a position, but as context for thinking about positions regarding global warming. Mooney does an admirable (and surprisingly entertaining) job of chronicling the scientific debate around hurricane formation, hurricane intensity, and how global warming could influence hurricanes. Without hiding his own opinions, he illuminates the perspectives of numerous hurricane researchers and the way those perspectives have changed through time with ongoing research and debate. Although he disagrees with Bill Gray, he is refreshingly sympathetic towards this prominent hurricane scientist, who has devoted his retirement to convincing people that there is no global warming-hurricane connection. Mooney is also refreshingly critical of environmental activists making claims that are not supported by current hurricane research.

Overall, Mooney reveals that much of the actual discussion among scientists is not nearly so polarized or conclusive as media coverage suggests. More importantly, he takes us inside the research processes of actual scientists and shows how their quite different perspectives legitimately emerge from their work. This book may not make you any more certain about who to believe. In fact, it may well make you less certain, and that could be a good thing.

Good News? Not Yet.

2008-03-26T19:49:00.000-06:00

Once in a while I see some talk about how increasing carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere cannot be causing any global warming, because carbon dioxide only absorbs infrared radiation in certain narrow bands, and all the radiation in those bands is already captured by the current level of carbon dioxide. Sounds like good news! But I've always seen this argument buried among numerous other good news arguments, and somehow as I checked out each one and wound up disappointed, I never quite made it down the list to check out the saturation argument.

Until now. Here's a fine summary, and a fine example of the work of Spencer Weart. He is the author of The Discovery of Global Warming: A hypertext history of how scientists came to (partly) understand what people are doing to cause climate change. If you haven't dipped into that website yet, well, I wish you would.

Nature Kind in Voice and Touch

2008-03-14T09:31:00.000-06:00

A beautiful story:
Dolphin Rescues Stranded Whales

It reminded me of another I had heard spoken about recently, and I found it for you, too:
Daring Rescue of Whale off Fallarones

Hearts Far from the Earth

2008-03-12T09:18:00.002-06:00

A nation is not conquered until the hearts of its women are on the ground. Then it is finished, no matter how brave its warriors or how strong their weapons.
Cheyenne Tsistsistas

Like many others on the Internet, I am repeating the above words without knowing much about their history. I first saw them on a poster about the "Sisters in Spirit" campaign to draw attention and response to the disappearance of hundreds of native women in Canada. The words have haunted me.

They came back to me this week, as I pondered a sad change in the hearts of women here. It goes along with a change in language, I think, where the terms "spring" and "thaw" and "runoff" are now heard less frequently than the term "breakup." What matters to people these days is not when the air is warm, or when the hills get bare, or when it's time to start garden plants, or when the pasture will green up, or how soon the fields might be tilled; instead, it's when the roads "break up" as the frost comes out, so that the heavy equipment in the oilfield grinds to a halt.

Twice in the last couple of weeks, I have heard young women rejoicing that breakup will be short this year. Both times I said I would rather see a couple of feet of new snow before then. In the past, almost anyone would have agreed that we need the moisture, but these women did not. One said she had to support her boyfriend during breakup, and the other said her boyfriend would be around the house too much.

The proverb talks about conquest, but conquest is not the only way for a nation to be finished. It can also be finished when the hearts of its women are too far from the earth.

That Time of Year

2008-03-01T07:18:00.002-06:00

These are the days when the temperature creeps up close to the melting point, and the strengthening sun pushes sand and dust particles up over that crucial point, thawing a honeycomb of brown-lined caves into the south sides of the snow ridges along the street. I noticed it beginning a week or so ago, when the air temperature was still staying well below zero, but the solar melt had begun.

Last week, too, I noticed my neighbour blowing the bank of snow away from the wall of his house. He piles it up there all winter, keeping the house warmer, and then when the thaw approaches, he clears it away and keeps the house dry. I wonder how he knows when to do it.

These are the days when the sun warms the pavement, and any snow that sifts across it in a breeze is apt to stick. On Monday I got out on the highway and found it a skating rink, so I crept along for two miles and then escaped to the safety of a gravel back road to finish the trip to Carlyle. On Thursday I went directly to the back road.

These are the days, some years, when I am starting to wonder where I will pile the snow if I have to shovel any more. This year, I am just wishing it would snow. I'd take a picture of the snow pile, to compare to other years, but there isn't one. Aside from clearing a bit away from the doorway, I haven't shovelled snow all winter. My neighbour's snow bank against his house was so small, I think he cleared it in one pass with the blower. Our snow is just packed on the driveway, because it never got deep enough to bother. Last winter I think we had more snow on the ground in November than we've had throughout this winter. And last winter there was almost no runoff.

These are the days when I notice horned larks again. I don't know if they've just returned, or if they've been here for a few weeks but I've finally returned to the back roads to see them. What wonderful symbols of hope they are, adapting to fallow field and gravel road side, returning to this snowy barren landscape before there is any sign of spring except the quick flash of their own tiny wings and black-edged tails.

Rare Good News

2008-02-14T11:52:00.000-06:00

Discovery News: Ocean Thermostat May Shield Reefs

In the wake of news that King Penguins have shown sharp declines in response to small changes in ocean temperature, and following the recent stream of evidence that changes are happening faster than climate models predict, it's good to hear about a natural process that may help some biodiversity squeeze through our grand extinction event. It's a glimmer of the hope I need to keep working at living more lightly on this Earth.

Where Credit Is Due

2008-02-14T09:40:00.003-06:00

Amtrak is careful with their disclaimers. I figured it was a long shot, but I inquired about compensation anyway, and they came through with a travel certificate for a little more than half the cost of my round trip. Looks like I may be riding again! Truth be told, I was prepared to give them another try anyway.

Any suggested destinations?

What More Could You Want?

2008-02-13T17:55:00.000-06:00

Here is a chance to help your favourite win a popularity contest, and get your name in a draw for a free book, and find out about something fun to do this coming weekend, anywhere in North America - even right here in Arcola. How can you miss?

While we're on that subject, here's a related link.

Chasing Happiness

2008-02-04T09:30:00.002-06:00

A couple of weeks ago, I overheard talk about the Whistlepigs having a CD release party on Groundhog Day. I was at a supper meeting to plan the 2008 Forget Summer Arts Festival (great supper, and I have a new resolve to get the Festival website updated, along with many other things to do, but first - first I have a story to tell). As you may have heard here, I am a great fan of the 'Pigs. Still, Minnesota is a fair distance away from here, even at the closest corner, and St. Paul is double that. I felt a brief twinge of envy towards the folks who were planning to go, and then I got on with my busy-ness.

Then came the cryptic two-line email from Fred, with the subject line "PS...", suggesting that if I caught a ride with the folks from Forget, I could stay at his place. Garth, who knew nothing about the CD release, and didn't remember a guy named Fred, found that an interesting email indeed! After we sorted that out, I got to thinking - I could meet Deb! A few messages and phone calls later, Deb was planning to come to the concert, I was scheming to get out of directing band rehearsal on the eve of Groundhog Day and playing the organ in church the morning after, Garth was resigned to his fate of taking the kids to all their activities for the weekend, and I was getting excited. I had left a somewhat awkward message on an answering machine in Forget, inviting myself to catch a ride, if that was okay . . .

Monday morning I found out that it was not. An extra passenger just didn't fit with the travel plans, and I admire those folks for saying so! I quickly withdrew my request and wished them a good holiday.

Still, there was no denying I was disappointed.

I may have a little stubborn streak somewhere.

Next thing you know, I'm checking bus schedules. I know there's a bus that runs south from Winnipeg - what was the company name, again? Found it, no, that bus gets in too late to catch the show. Maybe Greyhound? Ooh, closer, but still too late.

Train? I must be crazy. But there is that Amtrak line across North Dakota - yes, I must be insane, but, but . . .

Well, this will be a long story no matter how I tell it, so I'll cut to the chase and tell you I bought a train ticket. It was too late to have the ticket sent out to me, and the quiet little station I chose (Stanley, ND) doesn't have a ticket office, so I got a boarding code to let me buy my outbound ticket on board, and prepaid a return ticket which I would pick up in St. Paul.

Fred assured me that there would be concert tickets at the door.

Deb told me about some restaurants where we might meet.

I checked out St. Paul city bus schedules online, and printed off a map of downtown attractions like the Science Museum and the library. My train was scheduled to arrive early Saturday morning, giving me the whole day to poke around and then find my way to the vicinity of the concert. My return train departed late in the evening, so I wouldn't need to stay with Fred - I could just sleep on trains, both ways! Very efficient, I thought.

There were some minor worries, still, like whether I would have trouble at the border crossing with the brand new document requirements, and whether I could sleep sitting up, or whether I would snore. Still, things continued to come together for me. The weather forecasts for North Dakota were warmer than here, so my truck should start okay for the drive home. Ruth was willing to contort her weekend plans a bit so she could take my place as band director Friday night. Brian gave us a U.S. road atlas, which he had picked up for our summer trip planning, and I noticed the Lostwood National Wildlife Refuge, right next to my route to Stanley - maybe I could see some sharptail grouse on a lek!

Friday morning, things started to shift a bit. Ruth couldn't make it to the band rehearsal after all. Oh, well, they'd manage. I finished my packing, discovering a forgotten favourite T-shirt that would be perfect for comfort layering for my train-sleeping outfit, and remembering a wind-and-rain-proof shell that I could wear over top of my warmish coat if it was wet in St. Paul. I planned to leave my really warm clothes in the truck, and just carry a small backpack on the train, so when I reached the city, I could look like a local student instead of a vulnerable tourist. Which book to take for the train? I settled on Darwin, Divinity and the Dance of the Cosmos by Bruce Sanguin, with the striking cover design of a delicate frog, balanced on a stem, circumscribed by an expanding spiral. I had a library book I wanted to read, but having lost a library book on a plane once, I decided to leave it at home. It was James Bonnet's treatise on writing great stories, with the flaming pencil on the cover and the title Stealing Fire from the Gods. Little did I know, fire from the gods was already on its way: I would have no need to be stealing it.

Just a few things left to do - buy an inflatable neck pillow, and get some spare house keys made for Ruth and my parents.

Then came a call from Amtrak, saying there were avalanche conditions farther west, and my train had been turned back. The replacement was running about six hours late, estimated to depart from Stanley not at 8:11 p.m. as I had expected, but around 2:30 a.m. instead. Call for updates, they advised me - they didn't want me waiting in the cold.

Suddenly the thought of a quiet little station in a small town was not so appealing. Would they open it for an off-schedule train? Would there be anything open in Stanley at 2 a.m.?

A Google search for Stanley gave me a city website that was not responding, and a lot of these useless directory sites that list every named community in the nation and offer nothing but advertising. Paging through the Google results, I noticed a link for "Great American Stations." A great station? In Stanley? Intrigued, I clicked through and found a picture of a low wood-frame building beside the tracks, with a gravel parking lot in the foreground. Great, indeed. Perfect, as a simple, uncrowded place to catch a train in the daytime; but somewhat daunting as a place to wait in winter in the wee hours.

I recalculated my departure time, and called my parents to say I would come to band rehearsal after all, at least for the first part. I finished the last of my preparations, finding a neck pillow and also a slim wallet that would fit in the zippered breast pocket of my fleece jacket. I figured a person couldn't grope around there without waking me.

It occurred to me that I should clean my truck, to make sure there weren't any hayseeds for the border officials to object to. But first, since I was feeling weary enough, I lay down to get some of the rest that I had planned to get on the train.

I couldn't sleep, but I stayed flat on my bed and rested, stubbornly.

Just before dark, I cleaned the truck as well as I could without washing it and having the doors freeze shut. I checked the train status again. Now the estimate was 3:13 a.m.

At band practice, Lorraine heard my plans and declared that she hadn't been that young in a very long time. She said she knew where her prayers would be directed that night. We had a fine rehearsal, and I was given the leftover cookies to take with me. (We always have cookies at band rehearsal. If you live anywhere near here, you should come.)

When I got home, I found out the train was running even later. How could this be? Shouldn't it be making up time? With a three-hour drive between me and the station, there were too many uncertainties - road conditions, problems at the border, and always, the status of the train - and yet, I didn't want to end up shivering for hours by the tracks in Stanley.

I knew I should get some more sleep before leaving. Could I trust my alarm? I remembered a friend who is always up late. His phone was busy - tied up with his dial-up Internet connection, no doubt. I sent him an email asking him to call me at 11:30, and went to bed.

At 11:30, the estimate for the train had moved even later. My friend listened to my worries, told me I was the craziest friend he had, and agreed to call me again at 12:15.

When I answered, he said "You didn't sleep, did you." He offered to drive me down to Stanley. And pick me up again. No, said I, firmly - two trips in your gas hog instead of one in my little truck? No. We talked about places he had seen in North Dakota, like Lake Sakakawea that winds all the way from Williston to south of Minot. Finally I decided the train status seemed to have stabilized: it was time to go.

I sent an email to Deb, letting her know my train was much delayed, but since this whole thing was a crazy jaunt anyway, I was going through with it.

I left Arcola at about 1:30 a.m., feeling oddly alert. My friend had told a warning story about falling asleep behind the wheel, but I was pleasantly surprised to find that my sleepless resting had done me good. I was growing excited again, although I did calculate mileages in my head and figure out that this joyride - just the driving part of it - was equivalent to five weeks' worth of my trips to Carlyle for the kids' usual activities. Could it be worth the cost?

I took the shortest route, on the smaller roads, and I had them to myself. I didn't see another vehicle until I reached the highway near Bienfait, where the clouds from the coal-fired power plant loomed high in the darkness, lit from below. Before I pulled onto the highway, I used my cell phone to check the train status once more. It hadn't changed. I hoped that would hold, since my phone wouldn't work once I crossed the line.

I had no trouble at the border. The officer's voice had a hint of incredulity as he asked me, "Where're ya coming from?" and "Where're ya going?," but maybe it was just his way of amusing himself through the long and mostly empty hours of the night.

Speed limit 25. Oh, yes, that's like 40 where I come from. All my worrying had cost me some sleep, but it had sure etched the route map into my mind. I found my turns just like I'd been there before, and often. South of Bowbells, I noticed grassy ditches: there was almost no snow at all. A little further, the land began to roll a little and the lights of farmsteads thinned out to nothing on the west. That must be the Missouri Coteau, I thought, and Lostwood N.W.R. Not much farther now.

After a while I began to wonder where Stanley had got to. Shouldn't I see lights ahead?

It took longer than I expected, but Stanley did come into view at last. I passed an imposing brick building that must be the county seat, and then the street plunged into a railway underpass. Glancing quickly off to the sides before they rose out of view, I caught no glimpse of a station. When I emerged on the other side, I stopped right there on the empty street and craned my neck each way.

After a moment of doubt, I spotted it, just like in the picture on the Internet, except half shrouded in darkness. There were a couple of trucks parked by its wall, looking like work trucks that stayed there a lot. Other than that, the parking lot was empty.

A pay phone? Nothing obvious in view, so I pulled into the parking lot to take a look around.

I had never been at a train station before, except once in the vast marble hall of the VIA rail station in Regina, where I found out that I had misunderstood the departure time of 12-something a.m., and come to catch the train a day late. That was years ago. VIA doesn't run through Regina anymore, and that great station is a casino now.

Next to the parking lot, chained off from it, was a lighted area of concrete level with the tracks. I guessed that might be the place to board. From there I followed a narrow gravel walkway between the tracks and the station building. There were some lights in an office, but no-one inside; and beyond that, a door, through which I saw a lighted waiting area.

The door was open, and the interior was warm. With rising confidence, I strode past empty ancient benches of wrought iron and green-painted wood, around a corner and down a silent hallway, following the signs to the ladies' room. Reckless, maybe, for a woman alone, but I needed that room.

Later I explored the waiting area. There was a bit of literature and signage, but not so much as a note to tell me the status of my train. I found some baggage tags and learned that even my carry-on bag should have one. I made a trip out to my truck for a pen. Still there was no-one around.

Walking back to the building, I heard a whistle off to the east, and saw lights begin to gleam along the rails. I had barely stepped inside the waiting room when the freight roared by, shaking the walls and the ground, cars flashing and gone again at the window. Catching my breath, I realized that I had never been so close to a moving train. Well, sure, I'd ridden antique steam trains at low speeds in heritage parks, a couple of times. This was as different as my truck from a tricycle.

When I got bored and walked outside again, there was a car in the lot, and I could see a woman around my age, talking on her cell phone. I longed to ask her whether the train status had changed in the last few hours, but I thought she might be frightened if I approached her car. I walked past, nodded at her, and she smiled. I continued onto the bridge over the underpass, so I could look down the street. What would a pay phone look like, here in North Dakota?

Back in the waiting room, I tried out the benches, and let my gaze wander over the details of the room. It was old, and worn in places, but not uncared for, painted a neutral shade on the wallboard panels (asbestos?) and green on the wood trim. Outside I had noticed neat and solid modern metal roofing. Still, there were signs of frustration, literally: the office door had stick-on lettering that said "SECTION HEADQUARTERS / IF THERE EVER WAS," and above that someone had added with a marker the prefix "EX." There was a piece of equipment on a counter, with lights to indicate "charging," "fully charged," and "defective." That last one was the one that was lit.

I noticed a dark beige plastic box high on the wall, with a slim cable coming to it, and below it, a rectangular section of wall that had missed out on the most recent coat of paint. I had found my pay phone, or the traces that were left of it.

A woman stepped into the waiting room, saw me, and asked "Do we know the time yet?" I assured her of my ignorance. She told me she was going for a large coffee - would I like one? - and not to let the train leave.

I was outside again when she returned, and we could hear a whistle in the distance, this time from the west. She and her daughter went inside, while I waited and watched. The whistle came closer; light gleamed along the rails, and then the triangle of headlights came into view. At first I imagined the train was slowing, but then suddenly it was blazing at me. A freight! The thought hardly formed in my head before the wind blasted in my face and the engines roared by. I stepped a little further from the tracks, fearing flying objects, and marvelling at the enormous momentum of the train.

"You survived that!" she grinned at me, when I stepped back into the waiting room. I found a bench and let her conversation with her daughter wash over me. She was going to Minneapolis, picking up a brother-in-law along the way, and staying for a while to help him find his way in the big city. He had been a farm boy all his life, she said, and didn't know how to be safe in such a place. Now his wife was in hospital there.

I wondered if I knew how to be safe in St. Paul.

Our train came at last, a great tall silvery thing, with windows far above us. The conductor sorted out which three of the four women before him were boarding, and sent us on. Every bit of it was new to me: the vestibule with racks for baggage, and nearly hidden in a corner, the narrowest stairway I had ever seen, but quite comfortable to climb, turning twice and bringing us out on a dimly lit aisle above, where there was seating just like on a Greyhound bus, only far roomier. Hesitantly, I chose a seat rather close to the woman who had waited in her car, but not too near, so as not to seem pushy. The other woman had disappeared somewhere behind me.

The train was rolling. The conductor appeared and started the paperwork for the woman near me. I dug out my boarding code and ID and waited. Another man spoke to me from behind, asking if I was buying my ticket on board, and turned away, saying he would let the conductor take care of that. I didn't get a good look at him, but he was one of those people who just feels comfortable and reassuring - not too tall, wearing some sort of uniform, but instead of the fancy hat that the conductor wore, this man had a toque.

I signed for my ticket, took my receipt, and settled in. The woman near me appeared to be a seasoned traveller, pulling out a blanket and getting comfortable, but I was happy with my own preparations. My loose-fitting cotton clothes were perfect, my neck pillow yielded gently with the rocking of the train, and my fleece jacket kept me cozy while my warmish outer jacket covered my legs. The other passengers were quiet, the lights were dim, and I slept.

I was vaguely aware of a couple of stops, but I knew we had a long way to go before I should worry about missing mine. I did take notice when a young man took the seat across the aisle from me. He deposited his things and went off somewhere, leaving me to observe with fascination his bundle of diamond-willow walking sticks, some beautifully finished, others in various stages of carving. A dream-catcher dangled from the bundle.

He returned, arranged a couple of pillows that he got from the train car attendant, and went to sleep.

Somewhere along the way, I went for breakfast. In the dining car, I was seated with two men, one a nervous-looking man about my age, the other older, personable, questioning the first about his journey through the mountains to get to this train. When avalanche conditions had stopped his train at Whitefish, the passengers had been loaded onto buses - three buses, full - and driven around to Havre, to meet the train we now rode towards the east. As his story unfolded, I learned why our departure time had grown steadily later. The buses were caught in a snowstorm on mountain roads. To make matters worse, in the bus our dining partner rode, the defrost was not working, and he and other passengers stood up next to the driver and wiped the window with whatever cloths they could find. He saw the driver talking on a cell phone, trying to find out how to fix the defrost, holding a flashlight and looking down at the controls while discussing the problem, and still driving all the while through the storm. At one point, the driver gripped the wheel and said, "Oh my God, I can't see!" They stopped briefly, and when they tried to start again, the bus slipped sideways. Backing up cautiously, the driver got them back on the road.

The older man beside me laughed, gently, shaking his head. "So that's where you were when we were sitting in Havre, wondering 'Where are those buses?'!"

Mountains seemed unreal from where we sat, swaying above gently rolling fields and pastures indistinguishable from the landscape of home. The man who had survived them excused himself to retreat again to his sleeper. A woman took his place, and the man beside me quizzed her. He guessed - correctly - that she was a teacher, but he didn't get the details quite right. She taught English as a second language. We talked about the places we came from, the frustrations of politics, and the populations of hares on the prairies. Lingering over coffee after the teacher left, the older man offered advice about riding city buses in St. Paul. He thought I should take a cab rather than walking from the train station to the nearest bus stop. "How much luggage do you have?" he asked. Just a backback, I told him. "Oh, you're fine. For the daytime. But at night, after the concert, you should catch a ride or get a cab."

I paid for my breakfast, trying not to look puzzled over the all-green American money, with its one-dollar bill looking hardly any different from the five, the ten, or the twenty. Back at my seat, I discovered that I could zip the hood off my coat and use it to cover my eyes and leave my nose clear for a very comfortable doze.

The train was motionless when I heard the announcement. "Ladies and gentlemen, we have had a crossing accident. There were no fatalities, but we have to wait until the police come so the engineer can give his statement." Gradually, over the succeeding hours of our journey, I heard bits and pieces about what may have happened. A man driving a pickup truck had not noticed the train. He would have driven right in front of it, except that he heard the whistle and turned aside a little, hitting the side of the train instead of having it hit him. No-one was hurt. The train had taken a full two miles to come to a stop.

Later, as we passengers got to know each other, we started wondering if we recalled a bit of a bump or a lurch, one that stood out from the rest of the little bumps and lurches along the way. I remembered a couple, but I couldn't be sure that either of them was the one.

The young fellow across the aisle hadn't even heard the announcement, so the whole thing was news to him when people started discussing it again. Again the train had stopped, and not at a station. The Grand Forks station was just a few hundred yards behind us, and we were enjoying a view of impossibly flat bare fields and an industrial park. Why had we stopped this time? Why was the power going on and off? Had the accident damaged the train?

Eventually they told us that the air brakes were locked up, and they were working on the engine to fix the problem, and they had to turn off the power at times in order to do that.

Bored and restless, passengers drifted into the sightseeing lounge, and traded stories. Some went downstairs to see what they could find in the snack bar. "Sorry folks," said the attendant there. "I'm shut down while the power is off."

Where I come from, nobody would turn away customers over a little problem like a power outage. That's what a pad of paper is for.

We gazed at the industrial park, and introduced ourselves to our neighbours, and shared little pieces of our lives. The dining car was serving lunch, and we wondered how they were doing it, when the snack car couldn't sell us a bag of chips. Another announcement came: they were unable to repair the engine, so they were going to change that unit out, but they had to find a place to leave it. We wouldn't be rolling again for a while yet.

The young man across the aisle from me began to realize that he wouldn't be home in time for the SuperBowl. I repeated a joke I'd heard in the sightseeing lounge: we wouldn't be home in time for the election. The woman in the seat ahead, the one who had smiled at me from the parking lot in Stanley, turned around and joined the conversation. Slowly, bit by bit, the young man's story emerged.

He had boarded the train in Rugby, a couple of stations after us. He used to ride the Greyhound, but having had enough of that, he had decided to try the train. They told him to come pick up his ticket before the station closed at 2 p.m. He had a friend drop him off, got his ticket, and settled down to wait for the scheduled departure of 10:30 p.m.

I wonder, now, why they didn't tell him when he picked up his ticket, that the train was late. Hadn't they known by then? Hadn't they phoned me around noon?

Locked out of the station, he waited in the cold. He was headed back to his home in Ohio, not just to see the football game, but to stay until winter was over and the weather warmed up. He was a painter, accustomed to spending the winters doing interior finishes on mansions in Florida. He had a girlfriend now at Turtle Mountain, and he had been content there, except that this cold was too much for him.

At 10:30 p.m. he had learned that his train wouldn't be coming until early morning. He found a bar and closed it down, but back outside in subzero temperatures, the buzz didn't last long. He considered going to the police, because he thought he was going to die.

It was mid-morning when our train finally picked him up in Rugby. Now we were sitting at Grand Forks, less than 150 miles from where he had boarded, and something like 12 hours behind schedule. The woman from the seat in front offered him a cell phone to call his family and tell them not to set out to meet his train just yet. Then she loaned him a book, one of those positive-thinking books that tend to arouse my suspicion.

Presently they backed us up slowly, past the station, across a roadway, and past a fork in the rails. Then we were still again, with the power off.

I borrowed the cell phone, too, and got only answering machines. I left a message for Garth to consider whether I could stay over an extra day, to make my trip worthwhile.

A chill began to creep inward from the windows.

Somebody said, "Hey, look, maybe that's our engine." Off to one side, we could see two train engines moving slowly, presumably the pair from our train, one dead and the other pushing it to its resting place.

Sometime later there was a little bump, and another wait, and then the power came back on. The man I'd met at breakfast, with the advice about St. Paul, sought me out, cell phone in hand. He wanted to help me. He was sure I wouldn't make it to my concert, but I was still hoping I might get there partway through and say hello. He found a printed train schedule for me, and I pored over the numbers, comparing the scheduled time for Grand Forks to the actual time now, and adding the difference to the scheduled arrival for St. Paul. Yes, I might still make it before the show ended.

As we rolled along again, an atmosphere of wry merriment rippled down the train. People traded stories of all the things they were missing - supper dates, parties, the Saturday chores the wife had planned back home. Many plans were already ruined, but at least we were rolling again.

Not for long. The train slowed, and stopped. We looked left and right, craning to see forward or back along the tracks, but saw nothing but a highway and open fields. There was a highway sign, and someone noted that we were only thirty-seven miles out of Grand Forks. What now?

From the sightseeing lounge, we watched someone walking along beside the train, duffel bag over his shoulder, just walking.

An attendant rushed through the lounge, flinging her announcement at us as she went: the operating crew had put in their maximum ten hours, and now we would have to wait about 45 minutes while they brought in a replacement crew from St. Cloud.

In response to our startled looks, she said, "You saw that man walking along the tracks? That's our engineer, walking out on us." And she disappeared into the next car.

I never found out where that engineer was going, walking away from a train on a siding between two fields. I suppose there may have been a car waiting for him, but you can't see ahead or backward from a train car, just miles and miles out to the sides of exactly where you're at.

Some of us started joking about driving the train ourselves. I got in touch with Deb, and suggested that she might meet me at the station to have a drink before I got on my return train and went home again.

We passengers traded more stories, and loaned each other books. Kari, the woman with the cell phone, exclaimed over my book, saying "Frogs come into my life," and writing down the title. I don't remember when it was, but the three of us, Kari and I and the young man across the aisle, got talking philosophy. Kari mentioned a woman from First Class who had ranted over breakfast about how the seven hour delay was preposterous, and more or less complained through the whole meal before retreating to her sleeper again. Kari noted how her own tendencies had changed over time, and now instead of taking a sleeper, she liked to ride in coach and meet people. She tried not to complain, but to be positive, thus bringing more positive into her own life. The young man dug into the book she had loaned him, trying to find where it had said something just like that. I sat back quietly and wondered why those ideas bother me. True, there is power in positive thinking, but isn't there also a need for willingness to face the suffering of others, other humans and other living things? Isn't that what Christ was teaching - a willingness to go where the suffering is worst, and walk right into it if necessary? When does positive thinking cross the line into denial?

Bit by bit, the young man across the aisle told more of his life story, full of betrayal and loss, of suffering on the part of those who have no say, of demands placed on those who have no responsibility, and yet there is no-one else to serve. It was much too personal to repeat the details without his permission.

I never learned his name.

Kari and I listened with growing sympathy and concern. There was really nothing we could do but listen; there was no help or advice to give, just momentous choices that he must face alone.

Finally Kari said, softly, "And I thought you were just a guy going home to watch a football game."

And I thought I had troubles, missing everything I'd come for. It was only a weekend, after all.

The 45 minutes stretched out to something more like an hour and a half. I had to admit that my growing fear was correct: I might not reach St. Paul before my return train left.

Finally our train started moving, and then the announcements started flying. The new conductor would be walking through the train, answering questions. A special Amtrak team would be boarding the train in St. Paul to help sort out connections. Meanwhile, they were calling the First Class passengers to the dining car, and soon they would be calling the rest of us, car by car, for a complimentary supper. Before they finished speaking, the train was rocking hard, making up time.

We were sixteen hours behind schedule.

I borrowed the cell phone again, talking to "Julie," Amtrak's automated agent, trying to find out what I should do. I wanted to take charge of my situation, to do what I had to, to be sure I got on my train for home. The previous conductor had advised me not to get off this train early, because none of the stations would be open. But there was no question now about catching my train in St. Paul: it was impossible.

I got past Julie to a human, and tried to get her to help me. My ticket was waiting in St. Paul, but I needed it a station ahead, in St. Cloud. By this time, our car had been called for supper. I was seated across from the other woman from Stanley and her brother-in-law with the wife in hospital. I apologized for talking on the phone over dinner, and she assured me that I should do what I had to do. She turned to her brother-in-law, telling him I was the one she had told him about, the one who had missed everything.

I broke down. Tears streaming, I argued with the hapless Amtrak agent, gradually realizing that there really was nothing she could do to help me, and she was right - I needed to talk to someone on board. A delicious supper of stew and mashed potatoes had appeared in front of me, and I was struggling to eat it between questions and answers and sniffles and quiet sobs. At another table, I could see Kari, conversing cheerfully, and I felt awful for my little scene. Everyone else was in the same boat, or worse; why was I so upset?

My dining partners left, apologetically, but they were finished and there were others waiting to dine. I hung up the phone and finished my meal, and then set out to find the conductor.

He was a slim, quiet man with eyes partly hidden by his shiny hat brim and glasses. I told him my trouble, and at first he reassured me that the Amtrak team would be boarding in St. Paul, but he stayed attentive as I calmly informed him that I would have missed my return train by then. He promised to write me out a ticket so I could catch it in St. Cloud instead.

Once more I borrowed the phone, and left a message for Deb saying I was sorry for dragging her out of the woods and not showing up myself. I asked her to say "Hi" to Fred and the Whistlepigs for me.

I had a passing train car attendant change my seat check tag from "St. Paul" to "St. Cloud," so they would know to alert me for my stop. Then I slumped in my seat to wrestle with my hurt feelings. I didn't want to be like this. Others were cheerful. I wanted to be strong and gracious.

The young man across the aisle offered that if he were me, he'd blow a gasket. He'd demand his money back.

I didn't know what to say.

As we rolled into St. Cloud, I tried to be in the moment, to just appreciate whatever was in front of me right then. Out the window arose a mountain of logs, higher than a house and longer than a city block. Behind it was another one, and then another. Neat stacks of tree corpses.

Next came a vast and reeking mill, blocking all the light with its steel wall towering right against the tracks, a blank of darkness that dragged on for many seconds, only to be followed by an eerie yellow-lit alley crossed by huge pipes.

And then they were telling us to prepare for our stop, and that there would actually be two stops, because it was a briefing point for the new crew, even though they were already on the train. If we walked ahead in the train, we could get off at the first stop, or if we waited in the rear it would be another ten minutes. I decided to walk ahead.

As I packed up my things, I noticed the CD I had brought for Deb - a Fire Lily CD from way back in 2001, not good enough for my ears anymore, but I had thought she might enjoy a few of my songs anyway. Suddenly I wanted Kari to have it, as a small token of appreciation for all her help with the cell phone, her gentle listening, her sharing about her family and her interest in environment, all the things we had in common. But Kari was asleep.

She was curled up across two seats, peaceful. I could see her bag open in front of the window seat. Could I lean over and drop the CD into it? What if she wakened, startled, suspicious?

The young man was sleeping, too, but he stirred and opened his eyes. I started to ask if he could give it to her, but no, I realized, he was going on to Chicago, and he might be sleeping when she got off. Never mind, take care, I waved at him, wretched. I wished I could give him something, too - something much more than an out-of-date CD of clumsy folk songs. He would be needing more than that.

Downstairs in the vestibule, the man I'd met at breakfast caught my eye across the knot of passengers waiting to detrain, and gave me a startled look. Outside, he learned of my decision, and shook his head. "You didn't even get to meet your friend," he said, and I told him, no, and I didn't get to give her this, either - do you want it? "What is it?" he asked, and took the CD, seeming delighted, giving me his card in return. Then he asked if I drank wine - no - or beer? He had his car, he could take me just around the corner and bring me back in ten minutes. It was just that he was sorry I'd missed my concert.

I thanked him but told him I wanted to just go in the station and sit. And I did.

The building was much like the one in Stanley, but instead of wooden benches there were molded fiberglass seats, each one with its own separate arms, all mounted in rows on steel frames. Nothing you could lie down on. I noticed that some of the seats were up against a wall, where I might lean my head back, but those seats faced away from the front of the station, so I couldn't watch for my train.

I realized that if I had waited in the rear of the train, I would have had ten more minutes to sit in comfort, ten fewer minutes to sit in this place.

It was now about 10 p.m., and my train would be coming at 12:40. Had I ever been so tired? How would I endure the hours of waiting? How would I stay awake? There was another couple waiting, but they were waiting for their son to pick them up. There was a man working in the office, but he soon closed up and walked outside. I followed him to ask whether someone would be coming inside when the next train came. If I fell asleep waiting, would someone wake me?

He assured me that, since this was a crew change point, the new engineers and conductors would be here well ahead of the train, and they would notice me and wake me if I were sleeping.

The other couple waiting talked with me a little. Their son wasn't answering his phone. "He lives on his phone," said the father, perplexed. The son had said something about leaving a car for them, but they had been dubious about that, because it wasn't a very good part of town. They peered out windows, checked around outside, sat and talked some more. Now that everyone had left, they couldn't use the phone in the office anymore. Suddenly the man jumped up. "Why does that say 'Phone'?" I swivelled to see what he was looking at, and realized that the magazine rack behind me was formerly a pay phone cabinet, now just a shelf with the phone gone, but the lettering still there.

I couldn't converse anymore. I crossed to the small area of thin, hard carpet by the doors, and stretched out on it, with my back against a wall, my head close to an office door, my backpack protecting my head, and my feet stretched out beyond the carpet onto the cold concrete. The carpet and the wall weren't much warmer. I spread my coat over my legs, but soon shifted it to cover my trunk, to keep from shivering. I laid my glasses in front of my face, put my zipped-off coat hood over my eyes, and dozed.

The doors opened and two young men strode by me, glancing down with surprise, but moving on into the station where the couple welcomed them. All of them left together, and I dozed some more.

Again the doors opened, and a voice said, "Look what we have here," as slim uniformed legs disappeared into the office.

Once more the doors opened, and a tumult of young men poured through. Were they a bunch of friends? A team? Alumni of a team? The room was suddenly boisterous with testosterone. I stood myself up, rearranging my glasses and coat to their proper places, blinking and leaning against the wall, straightening up since it wasn't a good place to lean, with a framed poster behind me, leaning again, straightening again.

One of the men said something about "seven of us" going to Devil's Lake. I counted, slowly, confirming my suspicion that there were more than seven in the room.

The office door opened again. The uniformed man had shed his warm coat. Very tall and slender in a well-fitting black uniform, with curly black hair and dark eyes, he moved briskly and boldly out among the young men, who now looked short and drab in their casual clothes. I was half dead, and still I was stunned.

He sorted out boarding arrangements for the group. They wanted to remove one name and add another. I watched, blankly. The conductor turned slightly and said, "Are you the one going to Stanley?" I stared, blankly. "Stanley?" he said again.

I may have mumbled something as I moved forward and took the blue seat check tag he held out. I turned it over, curiously, realizing that it was just like the one the conductor on my last train had given me to use as a ticket. Like that one, this was marked "STN" for Stanley, except that the writing on this one was more elegant.

The young men were taking their first ever ride on the train, and they plied the conductor with questions. He explained what to do, where to have their luggage, what would happen when the train came in, and how he would call them to board. I listened in, knowing most of it already, but comforted to hear it laid out.

As the train came in, one of the men turned to me and asked if it was my first time too. I said yes, but then he asked where I was going and I explained that I was going back home. "Oh!" he said, "you lied to us!" I laughed a little, shaking my head. It was all one trip now.

I might have been feeling a little more confident than I had been at 5 a.m. the previous morning, except that this time the train was on the far side of a set of three tracks. I watched closely as the conductor crossed to it, talked to someone, and then turned back towards us. "Board!" he called, beckoning, and we trailed out across all the pavement and rails. His voice followed us inside the car, telling us about the luggage racks and the stairs to our left. The young men wondered if they should keep their bags with them, and I was too tired to explain that it was up to them, whether to leave some on the racks below or not. They dragged everything with them, following me up the stairs, spreading out in the nearly empty car, each of us taking two seats. I had turned toward the rear of the car, knowing that in the cars I'd seen on the other train, the forward seats had been reserved for groups and couples. Not that it had mattered; I had chosen a "parties of two" seat in my uncertainty in the dim aisle at 5 a.m., and no-one had objected. Anyway, the young men took seats all around me, and started talking about their classic car restoration projects and their parties. I heard beers popping. Someone snored in the seat in front of me.

The train started moving. A smell arose and strengthened in the car. "It reeks," said one of the men. "The thing's on fire!" I was thinking the same thing, sitting straight up, wondering where to go, what to do. The conductor had not appeared, and there was no attendant in sight. The smell stayed, but didn't seem to strengthen anymore, and I remembered the reeking mill. Maybe that was all it was. The mill came in sight.

The train slowed, and stopped.

I wondered if this was just another check, related to the crew change.

The power shut off, leaving only the glow from the battery lights in the stairway.

"Oh, sh*t!" I said, audibly.

"This isn't good," said one of the young men, but I was thinking: not again. Not this train too. It's me. I'm sorry!!

It didn't matter. I was on a train facing west. I'd get to Stanley sooner or later. I curled up across the two seats, tucking my coat around me, arranging my seat check tag in my hand where the conductor would surely see it, and closed my eyes.

Later, rocking along again, I heard an announcement that we were about an hour behind schedule, since they'd had to work on the air brakes at St. Cloud.

The seat check tag was still in my hand. I could see one dangling from the luggage rack above me, and I silently thanked whoever had written a new one rather than disturb me by drawing the tag from my fingers.

Later still, stirring around to find a new sleeping position sitting up, I noticed the conductor coming along the aisle with his flashlight, saying "Devil's Lake, five to seven minutes." Just past my seat, he turned back and repeated this. "Did you hear me?" Then his hand was on my shoulder, shaking me gently. "Devil's Lake."

I guess I was more forgettable than he was.

"I'm at Stanley," I called feebly to his retreating back, but he was waking more of the young men, my voice lost among their questions.

I waited for them to leave. I had hatched a little plan to tuck my "STN" tag up in place of the erroneous one for Devil's Lake. As the tumult of testosterone faded down the stairs, an attendant swept by, clearing the Devil's Lake tags. I waited for quiet in the car, then tucked my elegantly written tag in place, wondering if I had it right, since it didn't seem to hold very well. No matter, I still had a spare one in my pocket. Dragging my fingers through my hair, I set off toward the dining car for breakfast.

I dined with a couple from Williston, on their way home from visiting a sister in some place I didn't recognize or remember. We talked about the lack of snow, and how they had a four-wheeler derby at Williston instead of a snowmobile derby. He knew of the Moose Mountains.

Back at my seat, I daydreamed about the conductor coming by and recognizing me, realizing his mistake at Devil's Lake. I imagined him apologizing, asking about my turn around in St. Cloud, sitting down beside me to listen.

His voice came over the speakers, announcing a crew change in Minot. He told us about the extended stop for a scheduled check of the train, and how they would try to get it done more quickly to make up some time. He told us there were soda machines in the station, and pay phones.

I wondered about going to a pay phone, to tell Garth what had happened, since my last message to him had been about whether I might stay over an extra day. Had he tried calling Deb to find out? Was he worrying about me? But I didn't know what change the phones would take, or where I might get it. Still, if I went into the station, I might get to see that conductor one more time.

I stayed on the train.

I heard someone asking a family member whether he had had a chance to get cleaned up a little. It occurred to me that I might do that, too. Exploring a little on my last trip to the bathrooms, I had discovered a bathroom labelled "changing room," with an extra space with a little bench in it, and another room labelled "dressing room," with two stools before a counter with two sinks. There I sat and brushed my teeth in comfort, secure on the stool instead of bracing against the rocking of the train. In the changing room, I traded the comfortable clothes I had dozed and lived in for the past day and a half for a slightly less comfortable but much better smelling outfit.

As I came back upstairs, I saw steep banks next to the tracks. More sandhills? I had been delighted with a glimpse of sandhills somewhere farther east, but these turned out to be cut banks where the tracks crossed through the upper reaches of a coulee before emerging onto the plains above.

Out on the plains, the view stretched only a little way, before it was swallowed in fog.

An attendant stopped in the aisle, looked at my seat tag, and asked if anyone had come for my ticket. I gazed at him, mouth open, fearing for a moment that after all this way, I was going to have trouble about my right to be there. Awkwardly, prompted by his questions, I explained what had happened, and that I had never actually had my ticket, since it had been waiting for me in St. Paul. Understanding, nodding, he finished my explanation for me: "So they just told you to get on, and let's go," and then he was walking away up the aisle.

Not long after, a uniformed man - a conductor, perhaps? - in a toque, not too tall, stood before me and told me we would be in Stanley in a few moments. I gathered my things, accustomed to the drill now, and went downstairs.

In the vestibule, the attendant who had asked about my ticket was waiting to one side, and the man in the toque was at the doorway on the other, with the window open, watching for something as we rolled into the station. The attendant looked at me suddenly and said, "Sorry about your weekend!" I smiled wryly and said, "Well, I got to find out what it's like to ride the train."

"Yes," he said, "and ride it, and ride it . . ."

"And sleep on the station floor for a few hours, and ride it some more," I finished, laughing.

Out of the corner of my eye, I could see the conductor, if that's what he was, slowly turning away from the window to look at me.

Then there was a voice from outside the train, saying "You don't have any on here," as we rolled to a stop. "Yes, but I have one off," said the conductor. I felt sorry that they had to stop just for me.

Then the door was open, and the little yellow stool was placed on the ground in front of it, and the conductor was telling me to watch my step. "Thank you," I said, planting one foot on the stool and the next well beyond it, striding away, past the caretaker on the platform, around the end of the chain and into the parking lot, heading for my truck. The caretaker asked if someone was meeting me or if I had a vehicle, and I pointed ahead, not looking around. But as I opened the door, I saw the train rolling away, with a window still open, and the conductor in the toque, watching me.

The tall dark one I may remember for a while.

The not-too-tall one in the toque, I will hope to meet again.

I started the truck immediately, and then turned to the task of scraping thick frost off the windows. Suddenly I turned and waved at the caretaker. He waved back, then understood and stopped his truck.

"Can you tell me where there is a pay phone?" I asked.

He looked at me significantly, and gesturing with his hands for emphasis, declared, "There is not a pay phone in this whole town."

I drove around looking for gas, and found some down towards the south end of town. Coming back north, as I emerged from the railway underpass, I noticed a phone-shaped symbol on top of a wooden booth with glass panes. I craned to look at it. I couldn't be sure, but from the shadowless outlines of the glass, I'd have to guess that the booth was empty, its phone long gone.

Driving north in the fog, I thought about Lostwood. If I saw a sign, I decided, I would stop.

I saw several signs, but mostly they were just signs in the corners of fences, with no access trails, or if there was a trail, it was gated and locked. I was struck, though not surprised, by the the thick stand of smooth brome grass (an invasive introduced species) that spread behind the first sign. Idled land, I thought. The worst thing you could do to it.

Later I saw another "Lostwood" sign in front of an area of extremely short grass. Well, that's more like it, I thought. They must be grazing that parcel.

Then, off in the fog, I saw an observation tower. A trail led towards it, but I could see that it was gated off, less than halfway to the tower. I backed the truck onto the highway again, and carried on.

Just a bit farther, I saw one more "Lostwood" sign, this one more imposing than the rest, with an open gravel road next to it. I drove in, and found a small office/public building, and the start of the auto-tour trail, marked "Open May to September." Next to the trail was a large display board, with information about prescribed burning, and racks of brochures. I read about the burning, looking past the display to the hills draped with smooth brome, and wondered how much success they were having with it. I wondered if that very short grass area I'd seen was actually a recent burn. I remembered a conference presentation by a man from North Dakota, about successes with brome grass control on public lands, but that had been using grazing, hadn't it?

I turned my truck around and drove away from Lostwood, drove on towards Bowbells and lunch. But at Bowbells, I didn't feel hungry yet, and there didn't appear to be much of a place to eat, anyway. I munched a package of M&Ms and sipped at a Pepsi I'd bought on the train. Caffeine and sugar, to keep me awake. At the border, the officer looked at my ID, and asked "Any purchases?"

"Half a can of Pepsi?" I offered.

"Have a good day," he said, walking away.

At the first high ground, I tried the cell phone. Garth asked where I was, and asked if I would be stopping to see anything. "What's to see?" I asked, puzzled. He hadn't realized that "north of Northgate" meant I was already in Canada, almost home. He said they would wait lunch for me.

Near Alameda, I watched a golden eagle take flight when I slowed for a better look at him, feeding on something out in the field. It was the best sight of my whole trip.

I came into the house, and Ruth was talking, eagerly, telling me all about their curling competition from the day before. James was in the bathroom. Rather than waiting, I decided to go across the street to Brian's to use his bathroom. My own family hadn't asked for my story yet, but I told it to Brian. When I returned, lunch was still waiting, because James was still in the bathroom and Garth was finishing changing the oil in the car before we ate. Ruth talked curling all through the wait and into lunch. I heard every detail, how they beat out a good team, and an excellent team, and then lost to a team of people that had never curled before. How the games developed, how the deciding shots went, what nicknames their skip earned with his frenetic sweeping of opposing rocks as soon as they crossed the tee line, right out the back of the house, again and again. Garth watched me, quietly, and still Ruth talked. James chimed in occasionally from behind the bathroom door.

Finally Garth asked me how my trip went. I suggested that my story should wait until everyone came to the table.

Somewhere during the telling, I found out that Garth had not checked his voice mail at all. It was perhaps an hour after I got home, as my story unfolded, that he first learned that I had not even set foot in St. Paul.

He was apologetic, disappointed, wishing he had known, because he would have encouraged me to stay over.

Who knows? Maybe Amtrak would have put me up in a hotel. Maybe Fred and the Whistlepigs would have had time to see me on Sunday. Or maybe I could have caught a ride with Deb out to her place, and then maybe there would have been a bus back into St. Paul on Sunday.

Or maybe not.

I was happy to be home.

Update: Where Credit Is Due

Shirtsleeve Weather

2008-01-31T18:06:00.000-06:00

We're just coming off a few days of the kind of cold that makes me think about survival. It was a bit unusual because there was wind as well as cold, with wind chill values around -40 to -50ºC. Today I was out running errands around noon, and it was only about -20º, and by late afternoon it was maybe -10.

Working in the sunroom this afternoon, Dad and I took off our jackets because it got too warm. There is some heat that leaks into that space from the rest of the house, but we keep the doors closed, and the one heating duct that feeds into it is closed off. Mostly the space is heated by the sun through the windows. Even during the extreme cold over the past few days, the sunroom has been cooling to only a couple of degrees below freezing over night, and warming nicely during the days. Today the heat flow was reversed: Garth opened up the doors into the rest of the house and turned the furnace off for a couple of hours.

The thermal performance of the new space has been improving bit by bit as we insulated the outside walls, closed in the gaps where warm air could rise right into the attic and away (big improvement there!), and finally started sealing all the walls up with vapour barrier. Today we were applying the last big sheets of poly and finishing the seams around windows. As we got down to the last little details, I noticed the sound of a big truck, engine braking somewhere nearby, and realized that the sound was much fainter than usual. With that thought, I also realized that the room had been feeling different over the last few hours. If someone had asked me, I might have said that I sensed it becoming more airtight, but in reality, what I sensed was probably just the gradual reduction in sound.

We are very pleased with the sunroom so far. Over the next couple of years, I hope to add a rock wall or perhaps water containers as thermal mass, to smooth out the heating and cooling cycle a bit. Insulated blinds or shutters are a big priority, too. If we can slow the heat loss overnight, I am hoping the room may become a significant heat source for the rest of the house.

And if you're wondering what it will be like in July, check out my post from 2006 about designing window overhangs. From what I saw of the rafter shadows on the window framing last summer, it looks like this is going to work, folks!

Back to the Mountain

2008-01-19T08:34:00.000-06:00

Eleutheros is posting again. If you've been thinking that "every little bit helps," he has news for you. And if you wonder why people cling to that kind of thinking (and yes, even I do, at times), you might want to consider whether there is a Faustian bargain behind it.

Divergence

2008-01-13T01:00:00.000-06:00

I picture somebody asking me, "Is there anything you don't do?"

"Focus."

Was that Only Last Summer?

2007-12-23T21:33:00.000-06:00

I've been promising pictures of the sunroom building project for several moons now. Tonight, on the full moon just after the winter solstice, many are gathered under old family roofs, but I stay on alone under my own roof. I am waiting until my church duties are completed before I too gather to the chosen family roof of this fast-passing year, and meanwhile, I am enjoying some quiet and tidying up some loose ends. Thanks to a nudge from Jim, I got browsing through pictures from the days when the newest part of our roof was only an idea awaiting a foundation.

It feels like these must have been taken more than just moons ago - feels more like several turns around the sun ago.

It was June 23rd. Garth and James were off in Calgary, having gathered with family by chartered coach to help celebrate his aunt and uncle's 50th wedding anniversary. I woke to the siren of the town fire truck, cheerily summoning the folk to the pancake breakfast. It was Fair Day in Arcola.

I burrowed back into my pillow, but something nagged at me. I tried to deny it, to pretend it could be something other than what I knew it must be, but finally I sprang from the bed with the mental admission that I was hearing thunder. Fair Day, indeed.

There was a huge round tarp in the garage, left by my Dad in case of just this circumstance. I dragged a rickety wooden ladder from behind the garage and propped it against the eave of the house where the porch used to be, forming a ridge pole for a makeshift tent over the exposed basement stairs. Then I looked at the partly rotted ladder rails, considered trusting them for a climb, but decided a sturdier second ladder was in order.

As I placed it, the thunder was getting louder, and I could see that the black cloud to the southwest was right on track for a direct hit.

Hammer, spikes, and tarp edges in hand, I started the climb.

The higher I climbed, the more weight of the tarp came up off the ground and into reaction against my effort.

Raindrops started slicking the aluminum ladder rungs. Lightning flashed closer.

I pounded on the wall and yelled at my sleeping daughter to come help. With the hammer and nails out of my hands, and both of us tugging, the tarp finally relented and rose the last few feet I needed. I spiked the top in place under the eave, added some spikes lower on the wall to hold the tarp out to the sides, weighted down the bottom edges with concrete blocks borrowed from the nearby fire pit, and retreated inside.

Then I looked out to see how the tarp was doing, and saw all the water from the garage roof pouring, not into the rain barrel that used to sit behind the garage, but instead into the gravel-filled base we had excavated for a new concrete slab there.

It's amazing what functional structures a person can concoct under pressure. That's a sawhorse supporting a piece of plywood, with various bits of recently removed eavestrough and downspout and connectors balanced and wedged until they conducted the bulk of the water away from the slab base... and into the hole where the chokecherry bush (seen lying in the background) had been removed to make way for the coming concrete truck. I bailed that hole out later. More than once.

The garden sure needed the rain. My kitchen floor didn't. (Well, maybe it did.) The porch removal had inadvertently pulled the eavestrough slightly out of position, not enough so you would notice and remember to fix it on a sunny day, but enough so that the roof runoff from a thunderstorm came sheeting down over the kitchen doorway.

Looking out and down from my kitchen doorway, June 23rd.
The black tarp covers the basement stairs.

If there was any south wind with a storm, the water came sheeting into the doorway, and pushing in under the rubber sweep I had added to the bottom of the door, which was only an interior door after all, and was never intended for keeping out such elements. More than once a hapless family member shuffled into the kitchen during or after such a weather event and found the river with their feet. It crossed the whole kitchen and disappeared under the electric stove, but nothing electrifying happened. We tried to remember to keep some rags tucked up against the door when weather threatened, but that was about as successful as our remembering to fix the eavestrough. It did get done, several storms later.

The tarp did remarkably well at keeping the basement dry. Everyone wondered, though, why I had chosen to drag two tarp edges up the ladder, line up the grommets, and spike both edges in place, instead of unfolding the tarp and leaving more of it on the ground. Everyone wondered, including me. I guess I just had it in my head that a half-moon-shaped tarp would be perfect for the job, and didn't realize that a circle would do just as well, with the other half of the moon spread on the ground. Hey, I was about to climb an aluminum ladder in a thunderstorm. I was actively setting aside my intelligence for a while.

It worked, and I got back inside, safe and soggy. I dried myself off and got into my marching band uniform. By the time Ruth and I were on our way to the parade marshalling grounds, maybe six blocks away at the south end of Main Street, the storm was a distant bank of fluffy white in the east, and the sun was softening the pavement. We survived the march to the fairgrounds in our bright blue polyester jackets and felt-look western-style hats, as we always do. This time someone had arranged to have water waiting for us!

Ah, water. We do need it.

And the garage slab base was none the worse for waterlogging. As my Mom said, it's a good thing concrete likes water.

To be continued...

Of Form and Substance

2007-12-11T17:14:00.000-06:00

Dad and I are building again, after a couple of weeks off for other things. Dad had to put in some ductwork in his house to get his ground-source heat pump working properly, and I had to catch up on neglected stuff like housecleaning and rest. I focussed on the second one.

Today as I surveyed the interior of the new walls, plump with yellow fiberglass insulation, and mentally reviewed the tasks yet undone, I realized how different this project is from much of my activities. This project involves substance. Often my creations are only form, only words or musical phrases, passing things that take shape only for a moment in the mind of a reader or listener and then pass away again. I can work away at the shaping and polishing of these forms, and if I never present them to anyone, they simply cease to be.

But when I stop working on this building project, it still sits there, substantial, unfinished, real.

I like this.

********

Speaking of the building, it's high time I posted some more pictures. Nudge me if I don't get some up soon.

Meet kmoo

2007-12-08T20:59:00.000-06:00

Or is it k moo? Anyway, he left this poetic gem tucked away in the comments on "Mindful Milking," and I didn't want you to miss it. Check out his blog, too, there's lots more...

A wise old sage once told k moo
you can be a swami too
this is what you have to do

Books and workshops can clutter the mind
and shackle the conscious to space and time
empty the vessel and you will find

Boredom rears it's ugly head
loneliness leaves a sense of dread
ignore these feelings they'll soon be dead

The answers you seek are deeply hid
noise and activity must be rid
I guess that's why gurus don't have kids :)

There's a funny thing, though, kmoo -
I think most of my gurus do.

Mindful Milking

2007-11-21T10:20:00.001-06:00

I have never been responsible for the milking of a cow. I think I may have had a little try at milking, once or twice in the dimly remembered past, but it was never one of my daily chores.

I find myself thinking about the task of milking (or should I call it an art?) as I begin to explore the idea of mindfulness. Oh, sure, I've had a little try at mindfulness now and then, too, but recently I have decided that it is a key to my growth and to the healing of some troublesome patterns in my life. I have finally faced the fact that my daydreams are damaging me. Around the same time, perhaps as a cause or perhaps as a result, several experiences have pointed towards the need and the path for change.

At a retreat I attended in October, I somehow got the idea to be wordless as I went for a walk on a winding trail up the steep side of a coulee. It was native vegetation, bush and prairie grass, rich with species that I could name, but I chose not to. Taking that idea further, I chose again and again not to analyse what I was seeing, or even to narrate it in my mind, but simply to receive. No imagining how I would describe the experience later, no toying with expressive phrases, no words at all.

Paradoxically, later I found myself able to bring the entire experience vividly back to mind, and thus to describe it in as much expressive detail as I might desire, precisely because I had not been distracted during the experience by the imagined retelling of it.

It occurred to me that I smear my past, present, and future together by constantly planning and rehashing instead of being present. Nothing gets my full attention. How much benefit do I get by all this absent thought? Could I just re-assort my mind-time so that most of it was focussed on the now? If I practise being present, will that be just as good preparation for future present moments as if I imagine them and try to plan for them?

Another thought occurred to me, that if I spend most of my time being present, I will need to take some time being totally present to activities like planning, and thinking of people far away, and so on. I worry that I won't have time for that sort of focus, if I stop doing it while in the midst of something else. But maybe I will.

When I returned from the retreat, I was determined to find some books I had stashed away, books about the Enneagram, to further my self discovery. I had assumed that they would be hard to find, but they were near the top of the first box I checked. Then I heard about an Enneagram workshop, and found some online resources, and noticed that some Enneagram teachers recommended the works of Eckhart Tolle.

That same day, visiting across the street, I noticed a book by Eckhart Tolle called "The Power of Now." I borrowed it.

Meanwhile the busyness of life continued, and living from deadline to deadline, I struggled with increasing domestic chaos. I know I need a routine, but I fear imposing a routine on myself, and missing out on some important direction that I would take if I just went with the flow. Finally I decided that I must make a plan. In fact, that is the plan: to make a plan. It still hasn't happened, but like a seed invisibly changing under the soil, there is movement and new energy in my life. Lying in bed one morning, noticing how often I lie idly planning and rehashing and daydreaming in the early morning, I decided on just two things as the beginning of a plan. I gave them alliterative names to keep them in mind: Mindful Mornings, and Being in the Bathroom.

No, no, I don't mean spending a lot of time in the bathroom! I mean really Being there when I am there. And leaving when I'm finished! Otherwise I can linger on the throne of thought until my legs go numb.

I am resisting these ideas, fearing the change, fearing the loss of something, but I haven't given up on them yet.

Last night I started reading "The Power of Now." I was delighted to find a bit about being present while washing hands, noticing the slipperiness of the soap. This morning I am a flurry of activity with facing what's really in front of me, and making lists of all the things I can't fix all at once, and worrying that I will do the easy things first and not have time for the rest but finding that I am really getting a lot done. Folding clothes, I caught myself thinking about something else and realized that, in the midst of some other train of thought, I could easily fold and shelve things without even noticing that they need mending. I am about to start the dishes, and waffling. Shall I focus on the soapy water and the surfaces coming clean, or shall I use this time for some reflection on other things?

I've heard that when you milk a cow, you may have to quiet your mind before she will let down the milk. And so I bring a question for my elders on the path of right living. (Eleutheros and Contrary Goddess and Madcap Mum and Jim at Earth Home Garden, I'm thinking of you.) Do you milk (or quilt or gather eggs) mindfully? Or to put it another way, when you ponder the questions of the universe, do you keep your hands busy?

********

Maybe Eckhart Tolle will have some answers for me. I'm sure life will. I'll let you know. Right now, though, I'm running out of time to get those dishes done.

An Idea whose Time Has Come

2007-11-20T12:02:00.000-06:00

Have you noticed that some of the powers seem to have warmed to the idea of a global warming threat?

Could it be that they're finally ready to take advantage of it?

INSIGHTS: Carbon Sequestration

Permanence

2007-11-14T09:25:00.000-06:00

A glacier and a group of polar bears - those are the two remaining images on my sheet of "Permanent" postage stamps.

The irony is not lost on me.

The glacier stamp will travel with my registration for an event at the Calling Lakes Centre, almost 125 miles away. When we travel by car (1996 Geo Metro) to that event and back, the car will release about 100 pounds of carbon dioxide. It will release water vapour, too, but the carbon dioxide is more important as a greenhouse gas. The reason? Water condenses out of the atmosphere as rain or snow, whereas carbon dioxide is a more permanent addition, building up and driving change.

The event is an Enneagram workshop at the Calling Lakes Centre. Perhaps I will learn how to transform my preoccupation with environmental information into real action (or non-action - staying home with even greater resolve than I do now). Perhaps Garth will gain some insight into his frustration with all that.

Will the 100 pounds of carbon dioxide from our travel to this event be offset by future changes in our lives?

Health Globally, Health Locally

2007-11-12T12:13:00.000-06:00

There's talk of promoting the "co-benefits" from using one's own energy to get to school or work:
direct health benefits through the physical exercise, and indirect health benefits through reducing greenhouse gas emissions, smog, vehicular accidents, and so on.

I'm all for it.

Of course, it's a bit sad that such an obvious connection needs a public education campaign.

And when they get talking about co-benefits from reduced meat consumption, I have to raise my usual qualification about the local (and global) benefits of consuming range-fed beef where the land is marginal for crop production.

But this story also brings to mind a caution I raised last summer. When human bodies lose weight, where does the carbon go?

Something I Didn't Learn in School

2007-11-07T10:26:00.000-06:00

I never watch hockey anywhere except the local rink. Maybe if I did, I would hear our national anthem sung in French. Instead, it was my sister's karaoke machine that drew my attention to the French lyrics.

Have you ever seen a literal translation of our national anthem from the French version? Sometime in school, you probably learned that it was originally written in French, but did you learn what the French lyrics mean?

From the Canadian Heritage webpage about the anthem:

O Canada! Land of our forefathers
Thy brow is wreathed with a glorious garland of flowers.
As in thy arm ready to wield the sword,
So also is it ready to carry the cross.
Thy history is an epic of the most brilliant exploits.
Ch.
Thy valour steeped in faith
Will protect our homes and our rights
Will protect our homes and our rights.

And a slightly different, perhaps even more literal, no, make that a more insightful translation, from Wikisource:

O Canada! Home of our ancestors,
Your forehead is wreathed with glorious garlands.
Because your arm knows the bearing of the sword,
It knows the bearing of the cross;
Your history is an epic
Of the most brilliant feats;
And your valour steeped in faith
Will protect our homes and our rights.

I guess I shouldn't be surprised that we sing such different visions of Canada, but I think we should know about it.

"Standing on guard for Canada" leaps to mind from the English version, but there is nothing of that here, at least not in an individual sense. Instead there is a vision of Canada itself wielding the sword; in singing the anthem, the individual is caught up within that vision. A subtle difference, perhaps, but I suspect that it's a powerful difference, too.

What about Canada "carrying the cross?" In the current official English version there is also a religious reference - the petition that "God keep our land glorious and free," but for me it does not convey the same sense of duty to that higher power. To me, carrying the cross means following the way of Jesus, willingly bearing the burden of the cross. Furthermore, to me the cross is a symbol of the place where spirit and matter intersect, and thus represents the lifelong struggle and blessing of being in the world. That's a powerful, humbling image when applied to a nation. Of course, others may hear "carrying the cross" to mean simply preaching conversion. Not many years ago, I too would have heard it that way. I wonder what it means to those who sing it in our national anthem?

When I saw the French lyrics on the karaoke screen, I didn't catch a lot of the meaning. It's twenty years or more since I studied French. The references to flowers and sword and cross all went by me. Still, one phrase leapt out at me from the chorus: "nos droits" - our rights.

I balked at this, as I do at most references to rights, because I think most of us have lost the sense of rights as something to be tended. If we think of rights only as something owed to us, we give up our own power and responsibility to protect, nurture, and even choose our rights. There are many "rights" being trumpeted in this world that I would gladly give up, in order to leave more room for the rights of other peoples, other generations, and other creatures.

I wonder. How differently would we English-speaking Canadians think, if instead of singing about standing on guard for our country, we sang about our country defending our rights?

I wonder. If I had not grown up with the English version of O Canada, what words and phrases in it would sound disturbing or challenging to me?

Falling Faster

2007-11-02T17:03:00.000-06:00

A couple of weeks ago, I suggested that climate change might happen too slowly for humanity to experience much conscious suffering because of it. The losses would be real, and enormous, but spread over several generations so that rosy stories of the old days would be dismissed as exaggeration or fairy tales.

Then Tim sent me an article about the arctic meltdown happening far faster than the climate models have predicted. That's an ironic twist. For years, the willfully ignorant would trot out old stories about early models overstating global warming predictions because they didn't account for clouds. Well, who knew? Errors can occur in more than one direction!

Sorry for my bitter sarcasm. I usually try to tone it down, but I'm past the point of patience.

My children have started bringing me news stories about greenhouse gas emissions and climate change. James brought me this one, about carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere rising faster than expected. That could cause problems for the models, eh?

Wayne, at Niches, has been writing about drought in the southeast U.S., and when he looks at a period longer than just this year, he sees that they are in their worst drought in 100 years. In his October 26th post, he has a whole round-up of news about things worsening faster than expected.

And today, I hear that the the domino effect is underway in the Canadian boreal forest. It used to be counted as a carbon sink, with tree growth removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Climate change was supposed to make it an even better sink, by accelerating tree growth. Instead, with less snow and hotter summers, there are more forest fires, so the forest has become a carbon source.

I guess it's encouraging that my kids are bringing up the subject now.

I'll feel better when they start suggesting that we walk.

It's Back!

2007-10-29T10:25:00.000-06:00

Blogger has restored one of my favourite features from its earlier days. Check your Blogger profile (or mine, or anyone's) and you will find that the listed interests, favourite books, etc. are all hyperlinks. Each link takes you to a list of all the other Blogger users who named that same interest or book or whatever. Each name on that list is a link to another profile with a blog or more of its own, plus all its own hyperlinks to more lists . . .

So long . . . I hope you make it back someday . . .

Non-negotiables

2007-10-19T14:07:00.000-06:00

CG and Madcap Mum have taken up a meme, to list ten things that are non-negotiable for you. I have been mulling it over, but like MCM, I'm not coming up with much. I think that might have something to do with the couple of non-negotiables that I did come up with.

1. Never give up on anyone.

I think I might be able to shorten this one to "Never give up," which is good too, but it might miss the point. If somebody else has as one of their non-negotiables something like "the American way of life," well, I disagree, but I still can't give up on that person. And that makes it difficult for me to say that anything is non-negotiable, because I want to leave myself room to negotiate.

2. Reality.

You know, things like gravity and friction and weather. I won't plan my life on the assumption that there's some fabulous breakthrough energy source to be found, if only I will just be a good consumer and stimulate our energy-guzzling economy to race even faster to fill the R&D coffers to bring on that breakthrough before there's nothing left to consume. I won't daydream about climate change expanding agriculture northward onto thin forest soils, peatland, and bare rock. It doesn't matter what I declare to be non-negotiable in my life, if reality won't negotiate either. Reality wins.

The Encyclopedia of Saskatchewan

2007-10-19T11:54:00.000-06:00

How did I miss this?!

I took note of the early planning discussions, but after that, the first I heard of The Encyclopedia of Saskatchewan was when I saw a copy on the end table in someone's home.

I was entranced.

But it's a very heavy book to hold on your lap.

Now (well, actually, ever since April), you can read it online! The whole thing! And it's not just dry little snippets; it has 21 major theme essays; the 2300 hundred entries include fascinating stories of individuals and their lives; there are photos by Courtney Milne; oh, don't take my word for it, just go read it.

Falling Slowly

2007-10-17T11:40:00.000-06:00

Does it matter? Sometimes I picture a future world where there are debates about whether the rich farmland, large cities, and rainforests seen in a few old pictures ever really existed, or whether they were imagined by prophets dreaming of heaven.

Via Contrary Goddess and Sharon (jewishfarmer):

ENVIRONMENT: Warming May Trigger Agricultural Collapse

The study referred to in the above article is reported in detail in William Cline's new book, Global Warming and Agriculture: Impact Estimates by Country. A look at the Peterson Institute's "In Brief" overview of the book shows that the more optimistic estimates of future agricultural production rely heavily on carbon fertilisation offsetting the negative effects of high temperatures (not to mention a fortuitous escape from all sorts of other harmful effects such as water shortages and severe weather events). Carbon fertilisation? I must look for an update on the dark side of that issue: hidden hunger.

Yes, the fall may be too slow for many to notice. And if so, the emotional suffering may be much less that we would expect, because few will know what has been lost. Even as they starve, people may not know that there was ever much hope of anything else.

Two Fables

2007-10-08T10:24:00.000-06:00

There is a story of a man passing by a building site, and asking one of the workers what he was doing. "I am laying bricks," the worker replied, without looking up from his monotonous task. The passerby walked on and asked a second worker what he was doing. "I am building a wall," he replied, with a wave of his trowel as if to say the answer was obvious. The passerby continued a few more steps, and asked a third worker what he was doing. This man straightened up, gazed into the air above the growing foundation, spread his arms wide and declared, "I am building a great cathedral!"

When I was young and ambitious, eager to mold the world to my beneficent dreams, I heard that story with delight.

Later, weary with searching, I heard another story less frequently told. I wish I could remember who told it, or tell it as richly as they did.

There was a long road through wild and desert land. One night a small band of travellers came trudging, their waterskins empty, their lips cracked and dry. As darkness came upon them with nothing but dust and dry rocks in sight, they sank down by the side of the road in despair. But one of their number walked apart, unwilling to simply watch and endure this suffering.

After a time, as the shadows deepened, one stone seemed to draw him. He crossed to it, touching its rough surface, stretching out his arms to encircle it, and finally tugging on it, harder and harder. "I am mad with thirst," he thought. "Even if I move it, what will I find but more dust? Perhaps when it yields, it will roll and crush me." And still he tugged, and at last it seemed to him that the rock had shifted. He braced himself better, and with a mighty effort, he rolled back the stone and revealed a spring of water.

As the years passed, many travellers stopped at that spring to cool their throats and fill their waterskins. Some stayed a while to clean it and build a stone basin where water could be gathered without muddying the source. Others gave thanks and passed quickly on.

Later, as fears darkened the minds of men, some thought that the spring was too precious a thing to be left so open to the sky, to the wild, and to all manner of people who passed by there. And so they built a shrine to shelter and protect it, and a dwelling nearby for those who would tend it. And they welcomed travellers, holding out a cup to them and filling their wineskins with a dipper.

Years passed, and the shrine was expanded and refined. Travellers gathered inside, bowing in gratitude and praise, listening to the sound of the water somewhere deep within, and finally taking a little sip before they journeyed on.

At last a great cathedral stood upon that spot, and those passing on the road would tell the story of how a spring of water once rose up from the stones in that place. Sometimes one of them would venture inside, and in the dying echoes at the end of a great hymn, he might catch his breath in wonder, imagining that he heard again the trickle of clear water.

If a tree falls in the forest...

2007-09-26T14:45:00.000-06:00

...you can listen attentively to its sound, without standing in its path and letting it crush you.

Speaking of PVC . . .

2007-09-21T13:50:00.000-06:00

. . . I was impressed by Mountain Equipment Coop's work on alternatives to PVC-foam in flotation vests. I particularly like their willingness to share.

The first MEC-brand PFD that uses PVC-free foam took a year and a half to reach production. As the first PFD manufacturer to use cross-linked PE (polyethylene) foam, we invested considerable time and money to get it approved for use. The foam meets all UL and ULC testing standards and exceeds many of them. It's lighter, more buoyant, better aging, and, best of all, doesn't require the same problematic chemicals in manufacture, produces no dioxins if burnt, and is easier to recycle than PVC foams. We think the benefits are such a good thing that we've made it available to any other manufacturer who wants to use it.

Taking a Side on Siding

2007-09-21T12:06:00.000-06:00

This is one of those long wandering posts where I am writing mostly for my own benefit, for the discipline of stating things clearly, which requires me to think clearly.

Did I say that clearly?

I finally woke up to the folly of slapping vinyl siding on our house. My Dad told me about a catastrophic fire in Edmonton that is believed to have spread through the vinyl exteriors of the houses. (For a discussion of this and other similar fires, see this editorial.) Around the same time I stumbled across an old discussion with CG where she called some houses "plastic monstrosities." Now you might think I am overreacting to a couple of people's comments, but what was my basis for choosing vinyl in the first place? Somebody's comments about "low maintenance," and somebody else's comment that steel siding makes a house look like a shed.

Why would steel siding make a house look like a shed? Because everybody's always done sheds that way, and houses a different way? I have to wonder. Industrial and agricultural buildings around here are overwhelmingly steel clad. In these utilitarian buildings, I would assume that they use steel because it works. So why not on a house? Don't we want houses that work?

But as I started overlaying blocks of colour on digital photos of our house, my resolve began to waver. What if I create a metal monstrosity? The colours look too strong. Is it worth the hours of fiddling to try to come up with a realistic image that includes shadows and different light levels and so on, to see what it will really look like? On the other hand, how do I know that vinyl would look any better?

The present siding on the original part of the house is concrete shingles in need of repair. Repair is a neglected "R." I came across a very interesting article discussing the environmental, economic, and aesthetic merits of repair for traditional house materials such as wood siding and slate roofs, but I don't think that would apply to these shingles. They are quite unattractive to my eyes, sort of halfway pretending to look like wood. I think they'd look better if they didn't even try to look like anything other than thin flat slabs. Complicating the issue of repair is the possibility that these may contain asbestos. They have been painted, and the paint is peeling, but I don't want to start scraping them. So instead, we are planning to entomb the concrete shingles inside a thickened wall, thus turning them into a bit of thermal mass and giving us an opportunity to add more insulation outside them before adding the new siding.

And here I am back at the question of new siding. Shall I blaze a new trail, challenging the notion that steel siding is not for houses? At this point in the writing of this post, I turned aside to browse more sites about steel siding, since I had seen one for a U.S. company making steel siding that looks like clapboard - and I found a Canadian company making similar steel siding that is PVC coated. If you're choosing steel to avoid the toxic chemicals involved in vinyl production, you might want to know about that. Now I wonder. I don't even know what type of coating is on the steel we bought for the roof. So many questions! If I made sure to ask them all, I'd never get the house finished. Heck, I'd never even have got it started.

Deep breath. Why should steel siding be made to look like clapboard. It isn't clapboard, it's steel. Why shouldn't it look like itself?

And what about clapboard? Who says maintenance is evil? As that article I mentioned above points out, a zero-maintenance product is one that cannot be maintained, but must eventually be replaced. Which work and expense do you prefer, maintenance or replacement?

And then I get thinking about local materials. There's aspen. Does anyone make siding out of it? Perhaps they should. Perhaps we should. Somebody around here must have a sawmill. But would we also need to find a kiln?

I recall that the wood panelling in the Mother Theresa Centre at Kenosee is aspen. Where did they get it?

All these questions make me tired. Maybe I'll fall back on the idea that came to me in the midst of all this: this house would look great covered in cedar shakes.

I mentioned the idea to my Dad, and we were right back to the beginning of all this: the fire hazard. But as Dad says, the house is fairly well separated from its neighbours. And then there are those concrete shingles in the wall, which would tend to keep a fire from going deeper.

Well now. Did I decide anything?

I could get all worked up about the ill-informed decisions I've been making all the way through this project, but instead I'll put it back in perspective. It seems hugely significant, and certainly there is a lot of work and expense and energy and environmental impact involved, but it doesn't happen every day. Things that do happen every day, like eating, might seem insignificant, but they're not. So if I fail to find the best information about building because I'm too busy learning to garden by gardening, well, so be it.

And I'm learning to build by building. When I finish learning this way, I'll have a finished house.

Seen on our street

2007-09-15T13:32:00.000-06:00

That Chill in the Air . . .

2007-09-12T07:16:00.000-06:00

. . . and that smell of heated dust as the furnace starts up for the first time this season. I put it off as long as I could, and we're leaving the thermostat low, even though it makes for somewhat clumsy typing fingers. The original house is still closed in, but it's not quite as weather resistant as it used to be. And once we get the new part closed in, there will be a spell when I don't want it heating much, until we get the vapour barrier in to prevent condensation in the walls. Eek. 'Tis the season of desperately hard work before freeze-up.

Speaking of weather, I found a new source of online weather forecasts. I have used Environment Canada for years now, but in these days of eyes on the sky, I grew envious when I heard talk of a 14-day forecast. The Weather Network clearly uses the same observation stations, but they seem much more willing to go out on a limb with more detailed and extended forecasts. So far, I think the Environment Canada temperature predictions are closer to the mark, and the 14-day predictions are only a rough guide, but still useful.

If you're marveling at the temperature differences showing up between Moose Mountain Park in the hills and Carlyle on the flats nearby, look closer. The actual observations come from Broadview and Estevan respectively.

That brings up another issue. I have a CD of weather data for western Canada, and browsing through that, my impression is that the number of stations collecting weather information has declined steeply in recent decades. Does that seem odd to you? Here we are, all concerned about rapid climate change and perturbed regional weather patterns and more erratic weather events, and at the same time, we are relying on an increasingly sparse net of stations to tell us what is actually happening on the ground.

And in these days of increasing emphasis on "citizen science," I couldn't find anything on the Environment Canada website about opportunities for citizens to make weather observations, except the Skywatchers program for schools. I know Garth's uncle submits weather observations. I'll ask him.

But I won't be volunteering this fall!

Glow worms

2007-09-06T10:19:00.000-06:00

Glow little glow-worm, fly of fire
Glow like an incandescent wire
Glow for the female of the species,
 turn on the AC and the DC.
This night could use a little brightnin'
Light up you little ol' bug of lightnin'
When you gotta glow, you gotta glow--
 glow little glow-worm, glow.

I was reminiscing recently about the glow worms on the shore at Saskairie. Someone looked doubtful: "I don't think we have glow worms here."

And I doubted. Was it something I imagined as a child? Did I only wish to see them?

I remember the song my mother enjoyed.

But I remember those crawling creatures among the leaves, lighting up the shadows along the edge of the sand.

*********

Today, in the Missouri Calendar via Pablo:
"Watch for lightning bug larvae (glowworms) in low water."

Eureka! We have lightning bugs, at least I think that's just another name for what we call fire flies, and if we have the bugs, we must have the larvae!

And so I was off on another search, and I learned that fire flies are neither bugs nor flies but beetles, and their larvae do glow, and so do the wingless worm-like females, and both of these get called glow worms even though they are not worms . . . and I doubted no more. I did so see glow worms on the shore at Saskairie.

What kind exactly, I don't know. All the sites I found were very general in their discussions, rarely mentioning individual species. None told me what species we might see here in Saskatchewan.

But I've seen those twinkling lights over the brick ponds and right up into our yard, floating over the lawn. Maybe I'll wander down into the long grass and the cattails some night and see if I can see some little glows on the ground.

*********

Do you remember the song? Check out the lyrics - did you know there's a word in there from the ancient Iranian language of Avestan?

Juxtapositions

2007-09-05T22:04:00.000-06:00

Last night, via SimplyTim, I discovered this essay which nicely sums up many of the main currents of my thinking on ecology and our part in it: How To Save Civilization.

Then this morning I was startled by a new voice taking up the thread of an old conversation from my own blog, exploring the deeper currents of tragedy and hope.

And somehow it reminded me of all those moments over the last few weeks when things connected across time and space.

Many arose in Regina as I came and went to and from the hospital. There was the moment when I walked confidently along the now-familiar way from the doors toward the elevators, but suddenly the place turned strange as I noticed a small procession dominating the corridor ahead. There came a very tall lean young man, dressed entirely in bright yellow, shuffling but stiffly erect, his eyes straight ahead as though he did not even see this tiled hallway, those glass doors, these people drawing back against the walls. Close behind and beside him paced two very different men, much heavier, dressed entirely in dark stiff uniforms, their eyes sharply focussed on the here and now, on the yellow-draped man who shuffled before them. With a start I noticed the chain clinking between his ankles.

I had slowed my pace. The procession came on, and I realized that we would be meeting just at the point where the wide new corridor was constricted by a stone archway preserved from the old hospital entrance. I stood aside, just outside the arch, and waited while they passed through. As I stood there, I remembered how the arch used to be, with a glass door in its midst and a concrete step in front where my mother slipped and fell, trying to open that door for me as I tried to quell my nausea, tried to breathe through the contractions, tried to convince her and myself that I was still okay to make my way to the labour and delivery unit under my own power. I cried out when she fell, but she bounced back up again and hurried us on . . . and that's a whole other story, a beautiful story that continues right up to this day in the person of my daughter. But the tumultuous opening chapter was all right there, for a moment, as I stood by that old stone arch and watched a prisoner shuffle by.

Then there was that moment in the car somewhere in Regina, running some errand while waiting for something to happen, finding a small pleasure in listening to a favourite radio station that I can't tune in out here, when a Rodney Atkins song brought CG's difficult journey to the centre of my heart. And I wondered if it meant anything, changed anything, to have it there, but I hoped so.

And there was some moment somewhere, I don't remember what it was now, but something brought to mind all the beautiful men I have met since that morning when we woke early to "fire the grid." I don't think that was the purpose, to start me seeing beautiful men, but they have been everywhere since then. And come to think of it, the women and children are beautiful too.

YouTube - Raymond Crowe - A Wonderful World

2007-09-02T20:13:00.000-06:00

As I carry on with my own projects
and take on stuff that Garth can't do right now
and help Garth with the extra stuff he needs to do right now:

life is a bit hectic.

Too hectic to write much of a blog post.
But at the same time:

life is wonderful.

YouTube - Raymond Crowe - A Wonderful World

Filmmaker confronts mortality with "Diving Bell" - Yahoo! Canada News

2007-08-30T08:29:00.000-06:00

Timely. I think I will keep the garden at the top of my to do list, and I will move a little slowly through it, just to marvel at the shape and heft of a squash, at the silky texture of an onion scape, at life.

the Contrary Goddess: LOOK!

2007-08-30T08:11:00.000-06:00

CG is seeing black helicopters. Well, one in particular. You can too.

Meanwhile, here in Arcola, life is much more ordinary. Chock full of ordinary, in fact. No news - well I guess there was word yesterday that the guy would be coming to measure Garth for his brace the next day, but we've heard that before. Oh, and this time they mentioned that it takes a week for the brace to come from Toronto. That's a different story from the "couple of days" that he initially expected to be in hospital.

So his sisters are trying to keep him stocked up with books and snacks, while I try to find some focus in the great sea of things to do back here. Laundry, garden harvest, furnace tune-up, phone calls, and oh, I really must mend that dangling 2x4 so I don't have to see it every time I open the kitchen door.

I realize now what happened there: it wasn't properly nailed, because it was never meant to carry load on its own - we were going to build another wall frame directly underneath it. But that was postponed because we were still using that space as a temporary passage to the kitchen door - and I still am, walking under that reminder every time. Must fix that.

Back

2007-08-28T08:21:00.000-06:00

I'd like to say I'm back, but I'm not.

First it was the Kenosee Lake Kitchen Party. To my astonishment, it was even more fun than last year. And this time I don't have to feel guilty about having fun by getting away from my family: I had James along, taking fiddle classes as a beginner, and we had a great time together.

Then I did get home for a while, just over a week in fact, but it took me most of that week to get my clothes unpacked. As fall looms, Dad and I are pushing hard on our construction project, anxious to get past the part where we have holes in the roof.

But there has been another interruption since Sunday night. Let me say first of all: Garth is okay. He will need to wear a brace for a few months while his back heals from a fall off that roof. Actually it wasn't from the roof so much as a small platform eight feet above the concrete slab. The platform is intended to be a sleeping loft, and it is only four feet wide, so its deck is only 2x4 framing. I got joist hangers for it, but I hadn't put them in yet; it was just another thing to do, since the nails were holding fine. Dad and I had been walking around on that platform for days, but maybe not balancing on that last 2x4. Garth came along at the end of the day and decided to help out. As he reached up to help hold a board for Dad, the nails in the 2x4 let go. Dad looked over and saw "somersaulting happening," and for a fraction of a second Garth was falling head first, but he somehow managed to land flat, with the wind knocked out of him.

I had been working outside, so I didn't see any of it, just heard a very loud and long clatter that had to be more serious than a dropped tool or board. When I got to Garth, he was crawling, struggling to breathe, but of course he refused the idea of calling 9-1-1, so we got the car in close and let him crawl in. At the hospital, after some codeine, he started to relax and feel better, but during the course of the X-rays the tech became reluctant to let him move around. The doctor arrived and asked if he had any history of back injuries: they were seeing something on the X-ray but weren't sure if it was a new fracture or something old.

So then we were waiting for a call back from a neurologist, and there was talk of bed rest. But the next thing we heard was that an ambulance transfer had been ordered. Garth grumbled about the cost and the possibility that this was all a lot of bother about nothing; I rushed home and packed a change of clothes for each of us, reassured the kids, thanked Mom and Dad for taking care of things there, and got back to the hospital just after the ambulance had left. When I got to Regina, I found Garth waiting on the back board, wryly commenting that if there really had been something wrong with his back, it would have been better to ride in the car than to bounce along in the back of the ambulance. When the neurologist finally arrived, he had Garth unstrap from the board and roll onto his side - how odd! - and started checking his back for pain. "Does this hurt? Does this?" Soon he was pounding up and down Garth's back: "Does this hurt? No? Then why are you in the hospital?" I wanted to pound the doctor, and not on his back, but Garth found that comment funny.

That joking tone persisted through most of the next day. Garth was to have a nuclear scan, to find out if it really was just an old injury. It turned into two and three tests, each time with four nurses carefully sliding Garth from bed to stretcher and back, each time with Garth's wry commentary about how it would all prove unnecessary. And then we waited. And waited.

At supper time I asked Garth if it was time to throw a fit. If he was to be discharged, it would be really nice to know before it got any later and I was too exhausted to face the two-hour drive home.

But there was another worry, one that I kept to myself: why the extra tests, with no word of results? Had they found something?

I kept thinking the doctor would be coming any minute, but finally Garth sent me to his sister's place to get some rest. I arrived just in time for supper, and then crawled into a bed, expecting to be out like a light.

Between my restless thoughts and the phone call, I guess I probably did get a short nap. Then it was back to the hospital to comfort Garth's new worry, and update all the waiting relatives. Last night I got a better sleep, knowing, but now I should be leaving my sister's peaceful home and getting back to the hospital to ask all the new questions. How long will it take to get the brace? Can I go home and get my kids ready for school, or should I wait one more day here? Will he be able to move around, sit for a car ride, carry things? What should I tell his boss?

Porch Tales

2007-08-12T18:51:00.000-06:00

I've been promising some pictures of the house addition in progress. Trouble is, if I'm not out there running one of my dad's power tools (which I use because he has them, and he buys because I can use them . . . sigh), I'm in here doing the bare minimum to keep folks fed and clean-ish, or maybe flitting through the garden pulling the biggest of the big weeds and making mental notes (soon to be forgotten) about what needs harvesting. Oh, I'll confess there are other times, too, times when I just sag into a chair, or rare times when I get out my bike and try to get as far away from work as possible. And yes, I must confess that I still spend a fair amount of time at this computer screen, but something seems to stop me from working on those pictures - ah, working - that must be it. Work aversion again. If I told myself I'd be "playing with" the pictures, perhaps I'd get at it.

Where to begin? Good thing I have Dad working with me, because he doesn't waste much time worrying about that. I could spend the whole summer trying to plan the exact sequence of every task, and never get started at all, but Dad asks a few questions, makes sure he won't be doing harm, and starts.

The porch had to come off. While I fussed and fiddled about, rerouting the electrical wiring that ran through it, Dad took out the door and windows, broke away the tiles and pavement around the base of the walls, and started in with his chain saw. He left the corners intact until last, and broke them with a sledge hammer. With some jacking and prying, the whole thing started to come away from the house, but not without some binding at the eaves.

Nothing some timbers, a chain, and a truck couldn't fix.

With some old round fence posts underneath the side walls as rollers, we got it moving. The walls were quite solidly built, with ship-lap inside and out, but it was never intended to serve as a rolling surface. Dad kept nailing and re-nailing heavier lumber on the sides, but it kept twisting off and then the rollers would cut into the shiplap and an edge would meet the ground and the whole thing would come to a swift and sometimes alarming halt. We wanted to move the porch to the side of the yard where it could serve as temporary shelter for salvaged bits of building materials, but after a full day of intermittent dragging, we decided we had moved it far enough to get on with other things.

So we started digging to make way for some new concrete slabs, and Dad, always looking for a faster way, brought his tractor into town. Somebody got the bright idea that there might be a faster way to move that porch.

Yes, this might work.

So far, so good . . .

Oops.

Well, it's nothing a front-end loader can't fix.

There! Good as new, right?

Well, maybe she looks a little rough around the edges.

That bright strip in the shadows inside is the reflector on my bike trailer, originally purchased for hauling small children on joy rides, but still in service a decade later as a grocery hauler. The trees make a nice back wall for our new shed.

All this happened back in June. Yesterday I rescued a charming wild kitten from the roof of that porch. The little one was mewing up and down, back and forth, while mama yelled encouragement from the ground. When I approached, the kitten hid in the hole at the right, between the two layers of the roof. I put a ladder up against the wall, and mama kept up a low growl in the background. Once I backed off, though, that kitten didn't hesitate. I wish I could come off a roof onto a ladder so boldly - though the change of speed and direction at ground level looked a little sharper than I would like, if it were me. But the subsequent run across the yard to mama with tail straight skyward told me that the kitten was quite content.

Much has changed where the porch formerly sat, but that will have to wait for another day . . .

The Thought that Counts

2007-08-10T07:55:00.000-06:00

Anthony was scornful of this article, but I found it fascinating. Of course my training in biology probably predisposes me to give credence to ideas coming out of evolutionary biology. But I find those ideas profoundly useful in noticing my own predispositions, the ones that run so deep I feel offended at having to justify them, the ones that run back through thousands and millions of years: the ones that I should be most careful to either justify or reject.

I hope you'll read the article, but the gist of it is that human males are genetically predisposed toward conspicuous consumption as a means of showing females that they are good mating prospects: they can provide the stream of material goods required to raise the offspring. Females, meanwhile, are predisposed towards volunteering as a means of showing males that they will do the self-sacrifice necessary, again, to raise the offspring.

Volunteering, huh? Can you hear my balloon deflating? Now I will have to re-examine everything.

As I was washing dishes yesterday, mulling this discussion of altruism and evolution, I remembered one of Garth's favourite sayings from the Dalai Lama: practise altruism, study wisdom. Doing altruism without wisdom is like seeking vengeance without knowing what will truly hurt your target. You might try to hurt them and find out later that your act didn't bother them at all! Likewise, if you want to help someone, first find out what will truly help.

Through my rather dismal experience of trying to help the world through environmental consulting, I can certainly see the wisdom in the Dalai Lama's words. Remember the truck song?

And so, as I continued with the unambiguously helpful task of dishwashing, I realized the deeper wisdom in the saying, "It's the thought that counts."

If you're doing a kindness to a close friend or relative, then surely (most times) the thought will be noticed and appreciated, even if the action is a little off the mark. But when you start do-gooding towards nameless, faceless members of needy groups you've identified (or had identified for you), there is more and more danger of missing the mark (and quite possibly doing more harm than good). At the same time, there is less and less chance that the thought will count for anything at all - if anything, the recipient of the do-gooding may well become bitter and cynical because of the do-gooder's obvious ignorance and indifference.

But here's the deeper wisdom. Consider a woman who is unconsciously carrying out her genetic orders, trying to appear selfless and thus attractive to prospective mates. Her genes compel her to think of others, and to be seen thinking of others. Whether there is any ultimate benefit to those others doesn't matter, as long as she is seen to be acting out of concern for them. It's the thought that counts.

And there is deeper wisdom still. A woman who becomes aware of this drive can reconsider her compulsion, and examine it from all angles, tracing out the consequences at different scales of time and place. She can think less defensively and more deeply. Hopefully, with time and patience, she can come up with a line of thought (and action) that truly counts.

Rolling Stone on How to Keep Rolling

2007-08-07T16:01:00.000-06:00

Read this first.
Ethanol Scam: Ethanol Hurts the Environment And Is One of America's Biggest Political Boondoggles : Rolling Stone

Then browse the links here, and tell me - does it not sound a bit like a celebration of the many benefits of starvation as compared to poisoning and heatstroke?

Ah, but the money is in the answer to the question: who starves?

Future and Past

2007-08-06T22:11:00.000-06:00

My days are full of newness: planning, figuring, shaping, and raising the walls of the greenhouse/sunroom/passive solar heat source that we are adding to our house.

Sometimes I still open the kitchen door and stop myself abruptly, before I step into the open air expecting the steps that aren't there anymore.

(To reassure the safety conscious, I'll mention that there is a scaffold right in front of the doorway at chest level, so I'd have to be almost comatose to actually walk out and hurt myself.)

These last few days there are more confused moments, as we have compressed all the living room and office furniture into half of the living/office room, and added a bedroom of sorts into the other half. We had to move out of our old bedroom before the plaster dust got too bad - that room is becoming the living room eventually, but right now it is a construction zone. Still, sometimes when I am on a mission to find a certain object, I open the old bedroom door and step halfway into the empty, plaster-strewn, open-air room before I realize that my bedroom is elsewhere now. Stranger still is the sensation of sitting at this computer (now facing east in the northeast corner of the living room instead of facing west in the southwest corner) with my perceptual world shrunk to the glowing screen and the keys, and then hearing a noise outside. Who is thumping in my back yard? No, wait, I'm facing east; that sound is coming from the street out front.

Confusing though it may be, I am thriving on the change, the puzzling out of how best to shape our lives in this space, and the sheer thrill of making something - something lasting and big.

So I find it very hard to shift gears and tackle the pile of dusty old cardboard boxes that couldn't sit in the back of my closet anymore. I now have no room for this stuff. None. Well, there are places where some of it can be tucked in - the bits that actually belong in my life today and tomorrow and next year. But that tucking will require more culling: a few inches of bookshelf cleared here, a bit of file cabinet emptied there.

And I don't want to do it.

I want to build the new, not deal with the old.

It is so tempting to just tip it all into the garbage.

But as I start poking through it, I find family photos, and letters from old friends I should contact before I lose touch with them completely, and oh, the piles of good stuff to read. But there is always more good stuff to read. Should I just let this stuff go?

And so I flounder, and set the boxes aside again.

I wonder. This house I am building - will I someday be struggling, waffling, wondering whether to let it go?

Canada Day Morning, 2007

2007-07-31T15:00:00.000-06:00

Ruth took this photo of me in the early morning fog, near the mouth of a drowned coulee along the east shore of the Alameda Reservoir, south of the Moose Creek boat launch. Even after the fog lifted, it was a beautiful place, with native grassland cloaking the banks almost to the water's edge.

Who says you have to drive halfway across a province (or a country) before you can enjoy a spirit-lifting paddle?

Anatopism II

2007-07-30T16:32:00.000-06:00

House on Highway 9, south of Carlyle, SK

What caught my eye here?

No, it's not the resemblance to a face.

It's that rectangle of plywood with the weathered paint, in the upper middle of the wall, looking like a nose.

What does that boarded-over doorway look like from the inside?

I'll admit, my own house has a door that opens into a bit too much air at the moment, but nothing like this one.

I have seen another doorway like this, though. It was on a house right here in Arcola, across the street from the schoolyard.

Why would anyone want a door opening off the second story into empty space?

Anatopism

2007-07-29T16:18:00.000-06:00

Looks like moose country, don't you think?

Not.

But I've seen them out there - not right along this highway south of Stoughton, but not far from it, near Lampman. And I've seen them in similar country south of Willmar.

I've heard that they have been seen on that vast bald expanse in southeast Alberta. Why are they venturing afield?

Here on the edge of the Moose Mountains, I hear talk about the timber they are cutting in the Park to try to get the forest to regenerate, and speculation that wildlife is on the move because of that. But moose would appreciate the regrowth in those cutblocks.

I also hear some talk about the old days, when anything leaving the sanctuary of the Park forest would be quickly diverted to somebody's freezer.

Is this sign another side effect of the gun registry?

If You're Asked to Play the Vice Regal Salute . . .

2007-07-23T10:24:00.001-06:00

. . . you'll be glad to know that there is downloadable sheet music, including ensemble parts for C, Bb, Eb and F instruments, at the website of the Lieutenant Governor of Saskatchewan.

The Arcola Community Band will play the salute at a dedication in Alameda on August 4th, as well as marching in the parade that morning. Wish us well, or dust off your horn and join us!

The Whistlepigs

2007-07-23T08:32:00.000-06:00

Fred, Joel, Chris, and Ross: thank you!

These guys are the Whistlepigs, and they are four of the most generous spirits I've ever had the privilege to meet. They drove a full turn of the clock to return to the Forget Summer Arts Festival this past weekend, came out and led a fine jam into the wee hours at the campfire Friday night, and then hit the main stage at 10 a.m. the next morning for workshops and played in every one. Then when those workshops were over, they came over to the songwriter circle and did a great job offering a listening ear to budding songwriters, sharing encouragement, experience, and inspiration. I was hosting the circle, but I mostly sat back and let the 'Pigs and the Frontier Gals do all the work. Thanks again, everyone: you made the "Two Ears, One Mouth" workshop everything I had hoped it would be and more.

But wait, that's only the beginning. Saturday evening, when it was thirty-some degrees in the shade (that's ninety for you southerners), these guys got up in the floodlights for an hour and a half and gave their all. I had spent ten minutes on that stage earlier in the afternoon, and it was like a sauna already - I'm sure it had only got hotter since then. But there's no stopping the 'Pigs! I don't know how anybody sat still through that show - I found a spot (in the shade!) at the side of the crowd where I could stamp my feet and clap along, and oh, I wanted to sing. If my dancing partner hadn't been working at the festival gate, I bet we'd'a been up in front of the stage. Hey, Fred, when is the next CD coming out? I have lots of memories of building fences with my dad - I want to hear some more of that fenceline song. And more of all the rest, too!

After all that, Fred and Chris still made it down to the campfire after midnight for a few songs. They finally gave up when they were just about falling asleep sitting up with a tune in their hands. Thanks again, guys. I can only dream of ever playing like you, but I hope and pray that I can learn to welcome a neighbour like you do.

Home from the Festival . . .

2007-07-22T20:21:00.000-06:00

. . . and all that went before. Music, music, for days it has been music, but it is the faces that come back to me, and I try to sort them out. The kindly eyes of a man telling me to think of Tai Chi as a meal - where, when, whom? Tim! At the Calling Lakes Workshop, "Sing and Worship with John Bell," that was Tim speaking, when I told him that I don't practice Tai Chi regularly anymore, but only when I desperately need it.

You're right, Tim. When I desperately needed it the very next day, to settle me down before I headed for the stage, the Tai Chi didn't come like breathing, no, nowhere near like breathing, and so it didn't calm my breathing, and when I saw another friendly face approaching, I gave it up. (For the time being. Tomorrow, it will be like breakfast.)

Heather. Thank you, Heather, for sharing your nerves and easing mine. Every time I saw your eager anxious pretty face, I just felt better, just like that. And laughing with you about bouncing for a minute to improve your memory for the lyrics, or doing the lion pose as first aid for a sore throat - yes, I still see your face, and you are pretty - don't you forget that.

Kathy - so good to see you again, like no time had passed at all since that midnight run to Humpty's - how we ended up there, I have no idea, but it doesn't matter. I'll see you again, somewhere, sometime.

And Michelle, you precious girl, with that searching, welcoming look that makes me the most important, no, the only person in the world - thank you for being.

Lloyd, too: you didn't know it, but it was you who finally settled me for the stage. Heather made me realize that what I needed was not solitude but more company, fun company - the opposite of focus, because focus only sharpened the fear. With company I forgot the fear and remembered what I love: faces turned to me, and that feeling that I am right where I need to be, giving what I came to give.

Lloyd and I talked about grasses.

Speaking of grasses, there was Jeff, too, Jeff at Calling Lakes: I knew his face from somewhere, and then when he showed up the next morning wearing a T-shirt that said "Stipa happens," I had to ask. "Where do I know you from?" And it took us a while to work it out, because each of us knew a different person from the botany crew that came up with that T-shirt, and our direct connection went back much further to my undergrad days and Luther College residence. Jeff didn't realize just exactly how Stipa happens, so I climbed the hill behind the Calling Lakes building and found him a speargrass seed, with the sharp barbed tip that happens to your socks and ankles.

Before Calling Lakes, there was Moose Jaw, and Murray McLauchlan's face, but only from the poster for his workshop (Creativity in Music) because he missed his plane, and I couldn't wait around for the rescheduled workshop next day. So I spent a good chunk of the afternoon slaving my way through the boutiques instead, until I finally found a top to go with the skirt that Garth bought me because Ruth had told him that I looked at it every time I went into King's in Carlyle. I'm wearing it now, and feeling so uncharacteristically lovely, I'm not sure when I will use it. But tonight most everything else is in the laundry. Honestly, now, I'll probably wear it almost every Sunday until it is so threadbare that I'm the only one who knows how pretty it is.

Anyway, after all that hard work in the fitting rooms, I went back to CW StringWorks and listened to Chris sing his fine new song about John Rae. Ah, Chris, it is a fine song, but sadly, after all the other music I heard this week, I can't bring much of it back to mind. But I see your face as clear as if I were back there in your shop. Is there anything greater in this world than the welcome of an old friend?

And thank you, thank you for fixing that buzz. Oh, my guitar was sweet to play this weekend.

Maybe I could remember more of Chris's song if I weren't listening to the Whistlepigs as I write. If my writing has gone downhill in the last few paragraphs, it's because I remembered the CD and had to play it, right now. No more focus. Amazing, I've had this CD for over a year, and I don't think I'd listened to it yet. How does stupid stuff like that happen? I remember starting to listen, and loving it, and getting called away to something, but why didn't I come back to it? How did Unjugged get tucked away in the rack on the wall behind all the mess of living? Well, enough of that - I'm listening now.

Fred, Joel, Chris, Ross - what can I say? I'll try to say it tomorrow. My six or seven hours of sleep since the festival started was not nearly enough for clear thought. I woke in my tent with the light and the birds again this morning, and tried to make myself sleep some more, but then I started hearing a new tune in a bluegrass feel - just look what you've done! I hope your twelve hours of homeward road rolled swiftly, unless the scenery was good. "Y'all come see us now and then!"

My homeward road was a blur. I wish I could remember something, anything, from the miles between the sagging bridge on Moose Mountain Creek and that nice new turn lane for Arcola. Well, I'm here, and the police aren't, so I guess I managed the drive alright.

I made that turn into Arcola, and saw the foxtail barley and the kochia dwarfing the wildflowers at the Who Has Seen the Wind sign. I pulled into my yard and saw the garden looking wilted and the lawn standing tall. Messages on the machine. Exhausted, but some of the stuff must come in from the truck - my guitar, at the very least. Hungry. What will I find in the fridge? Why didn't I stay in Forget for lunch? When will I ever learn to just ask - am I invited? I never have trouble inviting myself to Mom's. And suddenly I am on the phone to her, hurting, weeping, in spite of all the wonder of this week, all the things that went so well: suddenly everything is wrong.

She tells me: you're exhausted. Get some food into you and go to bed. And a few hours later I hear her voice on the answering machine - oh, yes, I should turn the ringer back on. She is inviting me out to the farm for supper.

So I got dressed up in my lovely new skirt and top, and drove my dusty ol' truck out to the hills, and pulled up at the wire gate. Oops. Forgot that the cows were in the home pasture these days.

Found out that I actually can close the gate from the inside, leaning and reaching past the railroad-tie gate post, even in a skirt. It's a funny gate, so awkward to close from the inside that I usually just stay on the outside, and then climb through.

Supper was delicious. Plain brown rice tasted so good, I had to ask what was in it. Just the rice. We had a bit of tasty pork, and peas in the pod, and fresh raspberries with milk for dessert. We lingered a little, but I kept catching myself nodding at Mom as she spoke, and then realizing that she was coming up to a question and I had not the vaguest idea what she had been talking about. Dad rode with me down to the gate so I didn't have to open it again.

And then I was driving south from the hills, and there was a doe in the rich green crop just outside the ditch, with the late-day sun glowing red-gold on the supple curves of her neck and flanks. Her huge dark eyes followed me past.

Later, on the outskirts of town, I caught a glimpse of red-gold again, and slowed the truck as the little fox came bounding over the crop rows, right up to the edge of the road. He stopped, and I stopped, and we gazed at each other a moment. Then his ear flicked back and he looked sharply over his shoulder at another vehicle approaching, turned with a bound into the shelterbelt and was gone.

And I am remembering one more face: the incredible intense blue-eyed gaze of John Bell as he tells his stories seemingly just for me. I wonder if everyone in that room felt that gaze the same way. And Anita's face, too - thank you, Anita, for coaxing me to squeeze in a bit of singing and worshipping with John Bell before Forget. I fear it will all be lost to me, lost in the midst of everything else that has happened too fast for my conscious grasp. But then I remember John teaching us the three parts of the Duncan Alleluia, and then telling us to forget it, so that we would know it.

He told a story then, and at the end of the story, we sang the Alleluia as if we had known it forever.

The Flutter of a Swallow's Wing

2007-07-17T12:24:00.000-06:00

So-o-o . . .

I got up early this morning to send my loving energy and do my part in the healing of the planet.

Then I went out to the farm to air out the house trailer we used to live in, in preparation for a prospective buyer's visit, and found inside: nineteen dead tree swallows.

A-a-aaaogh.

The impending arrival of the buyer kept me moving, running up the hill to the farmyard and rounding up cleaning supplies, and then Mom came with me so it wasn't so bad. We gathered the bodies, and swept and mopped and wiped droppings off the fridge, the floor, the counters, the walls. Mom said it was a good thing it was a guy coming, and I agreed, as long as he didn't bring a fiancé along. Could be a life-direction-changing experience, you know. "Oh, honey, we can fix it up, can't we?" (Door slams, his truck tears off with him staring after it.)

But the guy came alone, and he was quite a good sport about the little feathered bodies scattered on the grass and the pails of mucky water that he helped us dump out. I hope the trailer serves him well.

Remember Forget!

2007-07-17T08:01:00.000-06:00

This Friday-Saturday in Forget: the Forget Summer Arts Festival. The posters mention folks like Brad Johner and Johnny Cajun and Deb's friends, the Whistlepigs; but I'm going to mention:

the Arcola Community Band marching into the grounds to open the festival;
the "Two Ears, One Mouth" songwriters' circle where we will deliberately listen to those whose songs have not been heard before;
and a certain "tweener" act on the main stage at 4:15 p.m. Saturday. Right now I'm trying to decide whether to change my guitar strings for that lively sound, or stick with the old ones and play in tune . . .

Two Pet Peeves

2007-07-12T12:01:00.001-06:00

I'm sure others might draw a very different web; I know there are places where the arrows go both ways, and there are numerous other influences and outcomes. But this highlights my own pet peeves about the way the world is.

And for all you quick-on-your-feet bloggers who attended the SaskBloggers BBQ/picnic, this is what I wanted to say when I had all your attention and then had to say I lost my train of thought.

Now that I look at it, I guess I've probably said it before.

Googling the Vestibule

2007-07-11T11:55:00.000-06:00

Now that the dimensions of the building addition are cast in concrete, I am getting down to the design details. A little late, no? Yep. Trying to make a vestibule fit in the corner, and still have room between it and the basement stairs for a utility sink, I got looking on the 'Net for ideas about minimum dimensions for the vestibule.

"Vestibule dimensions" turns up some interesting international building code stuff, but that's aimed at public buildings with high traffic. Then there are a couple of scientific articles, one having to do with ions and mouse lymphocytes (cool, but I don't have time to begin to understand it) and another with floral morphology and pollination (oh, yes, I vaguely remember something about a "vestibule" in a flower - again, no time for that). Scrolling on down, I find more building design stuff, but I also start to see product specs and reviews for backpacker's tents. Nope, no time for backpacking, definitely not.

Soon I start to see more scientific articles, this time about the inner ear. Makes sense. Scroll on, scroll on.

The link that startles me is "Ezekiel 40." Well, sure, now that I think of it, there are some vestibule dimensions in there.

Okay, I think I've pursued this wild google chase long enough. Time for common sense. Make the doors swing out of the vestibule, not into it, and remember to leave enough room for all four of us bending over to take boots off all at once. Then again, we could take turns...

Clearing the Air

2007-07-04T00:41:00.000-06:00

I've often wondered about Dr. Tim Ball. What exactly is his background, and how did he end up with such a radically different perspective on climate change than other climatologists?

From some legal documents published on DeSmogBlog, it appears that he uses a radically different definition of climatology.

Ah.

Blogwriting Analysis

2007-06-26T22:52:00.000-06:00

What does your handwriting say about YOU?

The results of your analysis say:

You plan ahead, and are interested in beauty, design, outward appearance, and symmetry.
You are a social person who likes to talk and meet others.
You are affectionate, passionate, expressive, and future-oriented.
You are a talkative person, maybe even a busybody!
You enjoy life in your own way and do not depend on the opinions of others.

Well, Madcap, I got the "busybody" thing too. And I am definitely not talkative; ask anyone I know - they'll tell you all about how I just sit back and blend into the furnishings at a party (if I even go), and they might mention how they haven't seen me in ages, and then when I did show up at a church event I kept babbling on about all sorts of trivial things that happen in my daily life . . .

Hmm. Maybe I've changed. Or maybe I need to get out more.

That first item in the results actually struck me as pretty accurate, but hehehe, look at my hasty, unplanned, asymmetrical scribble there. Seems pretty clear to me that you could take the handwriting test without even doing the writing part - just answer the questions according to your dream vision of your own handwriting, and away you go.

Now for the more interesting analysis. The data: I got up shortly after 5:30 a.m. this morning, hurried through some breakfast and then worked fast and hard all day (well, I did pause to eat a sandwich, while standing in the yard beside the concrete forms and wondering if we would have everything ready before the ready-mix truck showed up), finally sat down to some pizza (kindly ordered in by my brother-in-law) sometime after 7:30 p.m., creaked my way back up out of the chair and went back out to tidy up in the yard and make sure all the freshly troweled concrete was covered up to keep it wet, came in, went to bed, got up thirsty, asked why the computer was still on, and wound up here in the midst of this blog post at 11 p.m. What does all this say about me?

Illich and My Garden

2007-06-22T22:47:00.001-06:00

I found an archive of writing by Ivan Illich. I love his analysis of the number of hours put into owning and operating a car in a year, and the mileage gotten out of it. Divide the miles by the hours and you get about five miles per hour. Might as well walk!

This summer I have been resorting to a lot of powered and packaged conveniences in hopes of completing a renovation project quickly, before winter comes swirling in through the gaping hole that will soon be cut in the house wall. Ultimately that hole should let in a lot of sunlight and help keep the house warm, but only after a lot of framing and roofing and installing of windows and such. I'm in a hurry, and Dad has the tools, so I'm using them.

But I couldn't give up my garden, not even for one season. This winter I tried out the Ecological Footprint Calculator and realized that the environmental impact of food transportation is even larger than I thought. So I garden, stubbornly. There are some pictures over at my garden blog. I used to call it The Daily Bed, but now it's The Occasional Bed - still just as many beds, but less time talking.

Persistence

2007-06-22T15:52:00.000-06:00

On the part of the tree, that is.

Here you see Dad in his tractor, pushing at the roots of our chokecherry tree from yet another angle. He has already chewed a pair of six- or eight-inch deep tire holes in the lawn near the centre of the picture, and another pair off to the left out of sight. He stopped several times to cut roots with his chain saw.

It was big for a chokecherry, but chokecherries don't usually even qualify as trees; they're more of a shrub. I couldn't find a good photo of the tree before our onslaught, but this photo gives an idea.

Such a tree-killer I am. We could have just trimmed it back, to get the trucks past it to dump gravel and pour concrete behind the garage, but once I started looking at it closely, I realized that a good pruning to take off all the black knot wouldn't have left much tree. Maybe I'll replace it with an Evans cherry in the next year or two.

So now I look at all that blue sky, and the corpse of the tree shoved over against the garden, and I wonder.

How many gigantic Carboniferous trees went into the fuel for the chainsaw and tractor to take down one Holocene chokecherry?

(Oh, I know, they say the Carboniferous trees went mostly to coal, and the petroleum came mostly from sea creatures, Foraminifera or something. But you get my drift . . . oh, never mind. I'm in a bad mood.)

Ready or Not

2007-06-19T09:00:00.001-06:00

Use the front door these days, folks.

Sibling Friendliness: Only If You're a Plant

2007-06-14T08:58:00.000-06:00

Experiments at McMaster University have turned up evidence that plants are more friendly toward their siblings than toward unrelated plants. Fascinating stuff, but I'm not sure I agree with the comments in the article about implications for gardening. If growing near strangers causes plants to grow more root mass, is that a bad thing? I'm thinking a little bit of competition early on (maybe eased by thinning a bit later), might make all the plants more vigorous underground, so they would be better prepared to deal with drought.

You would think, after all these weeks trying to garden in sticky mud, I would quit worrying about drought.

Nope. I'm from Saskatchewan.

The Science Commons

2007-06-07T09:28:00.000-06:00

Oh, at last! When I was a biology student, online publishing of scientific literature was just hitting the mainstream. I was excited to think that, in a few years when I was out in the world somewhere away from a university library, I would be able to browse through all this vast array of scientific knowledge and delve deeper into anything that intrigued me.

But even before I left the sheltered wonder of the university, I was quickly losing sight of my dream behind a wall of insurmountable subscription fees. No individual of modest means could possibly aspire to maintain subscriptions to more than a handful of journals. Yet important research papers are scattered across literally hundreds of journals, making it virtually impossible to stay broadly informed without membership in an institution that can afford the subscriptions. And where do those fees go? How could it possibly cost the publishers that much to put a journal online? There must be some enormous profits involved here.

Today, as I dreamed, I can browse through the entire vast array of newly published scientific literature right here at my computer in small-town Saskatchewan. But as soon as an article catches my interest, I come up against that subscription wall. Sometimes Google can find me something similar, but if I want the real thing, I have a choice between an absurd per-article download fee and a two-hour drive to Regina to read it at the university library.

Now, at last, there is an effort to change that. The Public Library of Science is offering a new model that makes scientific literature freely available to all. The Creative Commons website has an interview with one of its founders, Berkeley biologist Michael Eisen, that lays out the rich potential and urgent need for this approach.

I almost want to be a scientist again.

UPDATE: SimplyTim has suggested another repository of free literature, in the medical and life sciences: PubMed Central. I took a quick glance down the first page of the journal title list, and decided I don't dare dig deeper there until the snow flies. Thanks Tim!

The Latest from Percy Schmeiser

2007-06-06T12:05:00.000-06:00

Through the Environment News Service (see sidebar), I just happened upon an intriguing new video:

Soil: The Secret Solution to Global Warming

from an intriguing new (to me) website:

Quantum Shift TV

In fact, Internet TV is new to me, and I haven't been able to get past a download hitch at about 10 minutes into the video. The first nine minutes had some frustrating questionable generalizations, and some familiar faces whose pronouncements I take with a few grains of salt, but the overall direction seemed plausible and I wanted to hear some more. Any tips on getting the entire video to download?

Frost and Drought

2007-05-25T10:54:00.000-06:00

I may have lost some tomato plants last night, even though I had them covered. No big problem - I knew it was a gamble, and I went ahead and set some out because I had lots of extra transplants to keep as replacements. But it got me thinking about last frost dates.

We had some very early warmth this spring. Farmers were out seeding in late April, and I would say that's about a month ahead of the traditional seeding time for this area. The ground dried out, and I got worried about drought. Then it started to rain, and I don't trust my cracked gauge, but Mom says they have had 5 inches in the hills since May 9th, while the average for the whole month is only 2. But before all that happened, at the end of April, I was gardening with drought in mind. I refused Garth's offer of rototilling and in fact refrained from digging the beds at all, to conserve moisture. As I started planting early vegetables, I went to fetch water from the ditch near our yard and found that it was already dry. I took my bike and trailer and hauled a tub of water from a vernal pool over on the east side of the 604. I was worried, but full of hopes that my earliest-ever garden planting might help get plants well established before a summer drought hit hard.

Last year I talked to many people in this area who said the crops turned out better than they expected, considering how dry it was in the latter part of the summer. One farmer friend agreed with my speculation that the early spring and early planting had allowed the crops to get a better root system established, so they weathered the drought better than in former years.

But as my tomatoes show, early planting is a gamble. I don't know much about frost tolerance of the common field crops in this area, but I know there are times when fields have to be reseeded because an early crop was killed by frost. As our springs get warmer, and droughts become more frequent (as predicted due to climate change), farmers may try to adapt by planting earlier. But what about frost? How are the last frost dates changing?

I pulled out my CD of climate data for Western Canada and checked what was available for our area. Carlyle had max/min temperature data from 1922 to 1996 (with one year missing, 1962). I plotted last spring dates with temperatures less than or equal to 0ºC.

Now, where is my old statistics text book? I vaguely remember a lot of cautions about interpretation and testing where time series are concerned, but to me this graph seems to confirm my suspicion that last spring frost dates have not simply moved earlier. They have become more variable, with earlier dates contributing almost all the new variation, but late dates still occurring frequently.

What does that mean for adaptation? In my garden, I can plant things in succession, I can hold back extra transplants as replacements, and so on. But in a farm operation with thousands of acres under cultivation, what is to be done? Can farmers absorb the costs of having to reseed fields one year in six, say, or one year in four? Can they choose their planting dates strategically and be prepared for reseeding operations, or do they have to get it all in as quickly as possible and get back to their off-farm jobs? I wonder.

I also wonder about spring weather patterns in terms of soil temperatures and growing degree days and the overall shape of the warming. My second planting of peas has not appeared yet, and I think it's been ten days. Did the recent cold and cloudy spell chill the soil and rot the seed? How does this spring compare to the springs we used to get? Was a steady warming more the norm? I will have to ponder how to analyse my climate data for that.

UPDATE: Oh, yeah, and speaking of adaptation, I forgot to mention that whole area of adaptation that most people never think about, where there will definitely be problems: adaptation by every other species except human beings and their little collection of manipulated plants and animals. Are we already seeing the effects? What about that die-off of poplar in the hills in the '80s? The experts blame insects, but the locals say it was a combination of drought stress and a late frost. What about the decline in bees across North America? Insects can adapt fairly quickly because of their short generation time, but pollinators are closely co-evolved with plants, and some plants take a long time to reproduce. These changes are happening incredibly rapidly when compared to previous evolutionary history. Can genetic adaptation keep up?

Putting Names to Voices

2007-05-18T07:16:00.000-06:00

It is morning: after the first stir, before the second alarm. The window is open. I have been reading, but now I lie still, wondering at the chorus of voices from those whose work begins much earlier than mine.

I sort out the many separate songs and wait for the names to come, but there are few. The clay-coloured sparrow, of course: an un-birdlike buzz, so much less musical than the rest, and yet I cherish that voice as one that I can always name. There are several lovely melodies, captivating while I listen, but indescribable and even beyond recollection just a few moments later. One keeps ending with a suspiciously familiar chirp, and I wrestle with the startling idea that it might be the voice of a plain old house sparrow. There is a yellow warbler - "sweet, sweet, sweet, please some more sweet" - that one I know. Up front and insistent, over and over, there is an emphatic little song that rises repeatedly to a higher and louder tone. I want to picture the bird stamping his tiny foot as he sings, but that would make him tippy, so instead I imagine him beating his wings against his body in time with his tirade. There comes a snatch of familiar tones - is that a robin? Out beyond it all, when I listen for it, I hear the beloved tune of a meadowlark, the song that everyone knows.

Why that song? Why, with so many songs rippling by unnamed, why do we know that one?

I suppose it returns to us early in the spring, before the chorus becomes overwhelming. And it rings out to us often from a fence post or a power pole, out in the wide fields where the songs are fewer.

I hope someone can tell me who that emphatic little singer might be. If I could learn just one more name today...

Real Gardening

2007-05-10T09:52:00.000-06:00

There's a fine new reality-check blog post about gardening over at the Free Man's Garden. If you haven't met Eleutheros yet, oh, you should. Check out his advice on eating, too, at the Free Man's Table, and if you get to wondering how far removed he is from the dominant society, the archives of his original blog will tell you just How Many Miles from Babylon. A few hours at his place might shake you up. They might give you some real hope, too: not a vague hope for greater equity and unity and efficiency and all that, but a clear path to actually reverse your own share of the worrisome world trends. No more hand-wringing, friends; let's roll!

**********

Yes, I'll admit I'm a fan. And I'll admit that I've been spending too much money on garden gadgets and supplies. And as I ate my packaged breakfast cereal this morning, I thought about how I've backslid from eating mostly bulk-purchased whole foods. Right now, though, my focus is getting the garden in so we don't backslide too much in that endeavour. Next comes the renovation for a greenhouse area and passive solar heat - a step forward. "When the work's all done this fall," as they say, there will be time for more conscious cooking and eating.

One small triumph: today I am slow-cooking the last buttercup squash of our crop from last year. All I did with the squashes was to bring them into the porch, which gradually cooled through the fall to about 5-10 degrees C. All winter they decorated the steps in there, and most of them kept beautifully. And now we will be losing the porch to make way for our sunroom. I hope the new cold room that we tucked into the design will work as well.

The Turkeys

2007-05-08T19:01:00.000-06:00

March 25th 2007, right here in Arcola. Congrats to Madcap Mum for solving the puzzle on the first guess.

Is there something about that yard across the street, where you can see the wild turkeys just rounding the corner of the hedge? Somewhere I have a picture of the wing-tip marks in the snow where a ring-necked pheasant jumped out of that same hedge last fall. This spring I was visiting over there, and as I walked back, I noticed movement on a spruce branch just above the walk. There was a woodpecker, and to my delight, she continued to peck at the bark just six feet or so away, giving me a great chance to look for all the marks that distinguish between downy and hairy woodpeckers. I couldn't figure her out at all. The field guide confirmed that she was neither; instead she was a black-backed woodpecker - the first one I had ever seen. True to the typical behaviour of her species, she was stripping bark off the smaller branches of a conifer.

I wonder if the remarkable bird sightings in that yard have something to do with the density and age of the trees there. There is a nearly complete border of trees and hedge, plus more trees inside. I hadn't noticed how aged those trees were until I happened upon an old aerial photo in the Arcola-Kisbey history book, showing the yard thickly treed back in 1954, while the yard that we now own was still essentially bald.

A Letter to Our MP

2007-05-08T17:15:00.000-06:00

Dear Sir,
We drive a 1996 Geo Metro. We decided to buy a newer, more fuel-efficient vehicle, and then found out that there is no such thing. The hybrids might get slightly better gas mileage, but not enough to offset the energy used in manufacturing a new car. We are appalled.
Sincerely,
Laura Herman

One Wild Weekend

2007-04-23T14:53:00.000-06:00

March 25th and 26th of this year were startlingly warm days. Garth and I had the place to ourselves, since the kids had gone to stay with their cousins. We decided to cut down a tree that leans over our house. (Don't you think that's a great way for a couple to spend a Saturday morning?) I kept getting distracted by bird calls and raptor shadows, as all sorts of birds arrived back from the south in one breathtaking rush. Garth kept getting more and more frustrated and worried by the project, and finally we gave it up until the ice ridge should melt off the unused side of the driveway loop so we could get a rented knuckleboom in there for a good high reach.

We went back inside and settled down to play a fierce contest on the "Age of Empires" computer game. Partway through, I glanced up at a movement out the window, then jumped up yelling.

What do you suppose I saw?

Words from Last Night

2007-04-18T08:17:00.000-06:00

Sorry for all the sadness here, folks. I have some happier themes to get to: odd birds I've seen, reconciliation with my garden, the renovation of our home for passive solar heating. But first, a goodbye poem that I wrote last night.

Ah, Pumpkin.
It's been a long day.
Seems like a week ago,
but it was only this morning
and already halfway to noon
when we walked to the car, the vet and I,
I with your familiar carrier under my arm
and she with that unfamiliar little box.
"Oh, that wind's got up!" she said.
"It wasn't like this when I was out before."
So strange, that little box on the floor
as I drove and tried to keep my teary eyes on the road
with your so-familiar carrier on the seat
and the shape of you showing between its bars
until I glanced at you
and you weren't there.
Of course.

At home you were everywhere -
the food bags in the porch,
the dishes on the kitchen floor,
the leash on the fridge,
the litter box in the hall;
and after I tidied so many things away,
there was the scratch on the back of my hand,
the kitten photo on Ruth's bedroom wall -
my fingers interlacing
'round the then-tiny body that
yesterday could stretch tall enough
for a survey of the dining table -
and oh, several times, as never before,
that wild wind making the sound of your meow.

But I think I missed you most
when I had just got busy
making salad for the supper
not that I was up to any potluck supper
but it was on the calendar
and it occupied my mind:
a head of broccoli, a scoop of raisins, a tin of peaches;
nothing there to warn, to brace me,
and so I squeezed the can opener
and twisted the handle
and at the sound of the yielding lid
nobody came.

Nobody Gets Nine Lives Here

2007-04-16T18:44:00.000-06:00

Pumpkin is sitting in the sun now, gazing quietly out the window. These last few days he's been gentle, friendly, almost like a normal cat.

Nothing like himself.

Nearly three hundred dollars in vet bills later, we still don't know what's wrong, beyond the side issue that he has a bladder infection and crystals in his urine. That is in spite of the fact that throughout his short life he has had food specially formulated to maintain a healthy urinary tract.

Now he has new "dissolution formula" food, and a course of antibiotics, which we might actually succeed in administering if he stays this quiet. Neither of these are likely to do anything about his vomiting. In fact, if he keeps vomiting, neither are likely to do anything at all.

It could be a foreign body - surely it could, seeing how he has always loved to chew on things (even though he has never bothered to chew his food at all) - but the vet was puzzled by the lack of any signs of internal bleeding other than the low platelet count. She said another possible explanation for that low count was a type of cancer.

Not again.

Marshmallow, the sweetest cat in the world, had cancer. Hers was obvious, as lumps on her belly, though we didn't notice them until she got sick with a sore throat and bladder infection. I didn't spend nearly as much on vet bills with her, even though she was much dearer to us. When the first round of antibiotics didn't clear up the infection, I decided I didn't want to struggle along, trying to keep her health up, knowing that the cancer was slowly killing her anyway.

She was a beautiful cat, short-haired, white with orange tips, just like a lightly toasted marshmallow; and her eyes were blue. Even more beautiful than all that, though, was her personality. She charmed everyone who encountered her. When Garth was away (which was a lot that winter, as he stayed several nights a week at his apartment near his work in Moosomin), she slept on our bed, curled softly against my ankles. She seemed to love everyone she met - even the vet.

I remember rushing out of there, the decision made; no, I didn't want to be with her at the end.

Pumpkin is so very different. He certainly cleared up any delusions I had about taking credit for Marshmallow's sweetness. He came to us younger, probably only a month old, instead of six weeks. Maybe the early separation from his mother and siblings made him incurably belligerent. At any rate, our influence didn't make him sweet.

He seems fond of people, in his own cold and prickly way. Once, during his first year with us, we had a large group of people over to try some music. I was astounded to see Pumpkin walk right into the middle of the circle and flop down on the floor, totally unconcerned with all these strangers. Some cats would have disappeared for hours after an invasion like that, but not him. If a person is in the house, he will come and lie down nearby. He won't rub up against them, and if they try to pet him, he will probably leave, or lay back his ears, or swat, or do all three in reverse order; but if they leave him alone, he will stay close.

What should I have done today? I agreed to his sedation and testing, partly just so they could give him the full checkup that he had never had. At his last two visits for vaccinations, they had to wrap him in towels because they couldn't stuff the blur of teeth and claws into a cat bag. This way he would get his checkup, and we would get some information to go on.

What should I do now? Keep his box clean, so we can tell whether he is passing anything - but if not, then what? Would I pay for surgery? Could we keep him comfortable while letting nature take its course? He doesn't seem to be in much pain now, but what if that changes? The decision with Marshmallow was wrenching, but there was almost no struggle; just a word to the waiting vet, and a quick turn out the examining room door.

And a bill.

Over the last year or so, I've had a growing sense that a housecat is an absurd luxury, at least the way we've been keeping this one. Sure, we live on the edge of town, right up against the old "brick ponds" with their rank grass providing lots of cover for mice and rats, so a cat is a nice protection against rodent damage. I've never seen any sign of rodents in the house, or even in the sheds, but the cat could be a deterrent. Then again, there are so many wild cats around the neighbourhood, I doubt that any rodent would survive the trek across the lawn. Anyway, when I think about ways we could live with less, spend less money, work less for money, and have more time to grow or make the things we need, one of the first unnecessary expenditures that comes to mind is the keeping of this cat.

I was the one who insisted on the expensive cat food. I'd seen too many neutered male cats spend their last hours in agony from urinary blockages. And now I find out he has crystals anyway.

I was the one who insisted on keeping him inside. I had read the studies about housecat predation on songbirds, and I didn't want to contribute to that. Of course, there are plenty of wild cats out there catching the songbirds anyway. Meanwhile, our cat has been eating expensive food instead of free mice; and out of boredom, he may have eaten a twist tie or something. He loves to play with twist ties. We take them away from him, but he comes up with new ones so quickly that Ruth suspects him of conjuring them out of thin air.

Right now, though, I don't know if he would even look at a twist tie. He has spent the whole day either curled in his carrier (his favourite daytime sleeping spot) or lying by the window, gazing outside. He hasn't kept any food down, and except for a single meow at lunch time, he hasn't asked for any.

If he would just quietly get quieter, I think I could let him go that way. If he should start to purr in pain - I don't know.

A Three-Year Bible Reading Plan

2007-04-07T15:07:00.000-06:00

I found a good one!

A few years ago I went looking for a plan to read the bible all the way through. I know, there are many, and I had already followed one of them. It gave me a very different perspective on the body of religious and spiritual literature that undergirds so much of our Western culture. Some time had passed, though, and I wanted to go through it again and see what else I might learn. This time I was looking for a plan with a difference: I wanted the reading to be spread over three years instead of one, and to loosely follow the Revised Common Lectionary which prescribes the Sunday scripture passages used in many churches. Since the last time I read the bible through, my scripture reading had been mostly limited to the Sunday passages plus a bit of browsing and cross-referencing when pondering some idea or preparing the odd sermon. Again and again I noticed how the Sunday passages omit context. I wanted something to take me a bit deeper, to fill in those gaps, and why not combine that with my impulse to read the whole collection of books again?

Aside: If you're wondering why I keep talking about a "body of literature" and a "collection of books," it's just that the term "bible" comes from a word meaning "little books," and I like to keep that in mind. Whatever holy inspiration may have worked to bring those books together, the bible still originated as a compilation.

Anyway, when I first looked a couple of years ago, I did find a plan similar to what I had in mind, but as I recall, the connection with the Sunday passages was looser than what I had envisioned. I let the matter drop. It came back to mind recently when I realized that we are working through "Year C" of the lectionary right now, and a new cycle will begin next Advent. I thought I might have to get started making my own plan, but it looks like somebody named Gloria has already done it. Thank you Gloria!

Arcola Homes, New and Old

2007-04-04T14:45:00.000-06:00

Remember that backwards house I talked about last fall? Here's an updated view of the dark-side bay windows.

Across the street from this sadly ill-placed recycled house, there is a brand new one with a fair-sized window facing south. It even has a good long overhang on that window, to keep it cooler when the summer sun is high.

Even so, it still has a lot of glass facing north. Sigh.

Now here's a new Arcola house with some serious southern exposure! I am truly impressed. Although I have to ask, why so little overhang on the upper level windows?

And why so much house? If I'm not mistaken, there will be a grand total of two people living in it.

I wonder how many people used to live in this one?

Log house at Arcola Museum

Lake Arcola 2007

2007-04-01T16:31:00.000-06:00

Lake Arcola near the peak of spring runoff, March 27, 2007

After all the excitement about the snow this year, the runoff was a bit of a disappointment. I was not too surprised. I had been murmuring all winter that it really wasn't that much snow; the ditches were full, but a good deal of that snow had blown off the fields way back in November, and the snowfall for the rest of the winter was nothing spectacular. On top of that (or rather, underneath), the soil was very dry, so most of the melt water just sank straight down.

Lake Arcola put in a modest appearance, less than 2005 but higher than last year. I wonder if it would have been higher, had they not plowed out the drainage ditches before the thaw. I don't recall them doing that other years.

The Snow Pile Dwindles

2007-04-01T16:16:00.000-06:00

I don't like the looks of that brown strip to the left of the pile. I had a suspicion that the grass might not do so well under my snow-push path.

My (Melting) Glacier

2007-03-23T13:50:00.000-06:00

Kind of like posing with the big fish you caught. Obviously the shovel is just a prop in this photo, but it's the same one I used to collect most of that snow off the driveway (off the photo to the left of the garage in the background) through this winter. The pile had already shrunk quite a bit by the time this was taken (March 13th). It sure beat last year! At its peak, it was as tall as I could reasonably throw the shovelfuls, almost as high as my head, all the way to the right of the picture. The path I am standing in leads nowhere; I just used it to push the snow along to new, lower sections of the ridge as I was building it. My plan was also to keep that path clear as a spillway for meltwater in the spring, and it looks like it worked. The area between the garage and the house has been a big puddle in other years, but this year the runoff is draining away nicely.

I had a bit of help from time to time. Sometimes Garth would stride up the driveway and back to clear two wheel tracks before driving out in the morning. One day Dad and James helped me remove the usual drift from just in front of the garage door, and Dad was gleefully flipping the snow clear over my ridge at its tallest point. Mostly, though, this glacier-building project was a slow and steady, meditative, muscle-building pastime just for me.

Maybe a north-facing driveway is not so bad. I've had an ice-free path for the bike for about a week now.

Garden Planning and Unconscious Competence

2007-03-05T14:16:00.000-06:00

My uncle out in B.C. moved from his acreage to a care home over a year ago, but he still got this season's Lindenberg seed catalogue in the mail. Mom and Dad were out to visit him this winter, and brought the catalogue home as an extra for me. It sat out in the living room for a few days, and then moved into one of my stacks where it was in danger of lurking until sometime after the growing season. Noticing this hazard, I fished it out, and while pondering where to put it for timely attention, I started leafing through it. A pencil came to hand, and I put marks by the vegetable varieties that looked good at first glance - mostly the same ones I recalled using last year, and a couple of the new ones, and one or two daring different things.

Then I balanced the catalogue on top of a stack of unfiled band music, partly under a leather wrist strap designed to hold a flutists' music lyre for marching, all of which rested on an assortment of clarinets (in disassembled form inside their cases, of course).

I had a reason. All this stuff was on the kitchen floor, mostly in the way of our usual path of travel through the kitchen, waiting to be delivered or handed to my parents for return to their collection of band instruments and music out at the farm. It was right there in plain view, and when I walked past it, seeing the catalogue there would remind me to carry on out to the shed and look at my leftover seed packets from last year to confirm my choices and choose my quantities. If my parents showed up, I would do all that in a great rush and hand them the seed order to send in with theirs. All very logical, you see.

Perhaps something else got balanced on top of that stack.

Perhaps the bright green of the catalogue cover became part of my normal expectation of the view in the kitchen.

At any rate, I must have stepped around that stack of stuff many times over the next little while. I remember having a nagging feeling that I should do something about it before it became a major irritant to my spouse.

Then one day the whole stack was gone. I was vaguely uneasy, but mostly just grateful that responsible parties had sent it on its way. I dashed through the pleasantly clear kitchen space on my way to somewhere else, and that was that.

Last weekend I was in Estevan for a Presbytery meeting, and getting a new muffler and tailpipe installed while I was there. Once the truck sounded like her old self again, I spent the remaining time before the meeting drifting through some big-box stores in search of items that my children desperately and very specifically desired. Neither of these items was anywhere to be found, not even in the brand-new 110,000-square-foot Wal-Mart. I know the square footage because the city manager addressed our meeting and proudly described this new store, fully double the size of its previous incarnation in the mall just up the street. He suggested several times during his talk that we could do some shopping while in Estevan. After he left, there was some discussion about changes to the agenda due to the cancellation of an evening presentation, and someone called out that we could have a video presentation instead: "Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Prices." I confessed to someone that I had been to Wal-Mart that morning - and had come out empty handed. I'd also been to Canadian Tire (where it is now a challenge to find the tire section way back behind all the household, hardware, and recreational departments), and there, as I wandered the aisles fruitlessly, I paused to peruse a rack of "Heritage" brand garden seeds. I was surprised to discover that the company was headquartered just over in Brandon, Manitoba, the same place as our trusted Lindenberg. The varieties were familiar standards; many were my own favourites. It occurred to me that I really should get at the garden planning and seed ordering. I was tempted to just gather up an assortment of seeds right then and there, but the prices looked a little high, and I decided that if I was going to just buy off a rack, I'd prefer the rack in our own local grocery store.

What with the meeting Friday and Saturday, and potluck lunch at church on Sunday, and a little talk to give there about my idea for a Lenten fundraiser, the weekend didn't give me much time to regroup. Weekdays used to be my quiet time for taking my own directions, but not so now, with James being homeschooled. Sometime during the scramble of the following week, the phone rang, and Mom said she wanted to confirm some details about my seed order.

I was baffled.

I stammered something, and she insisted that she had a seed order from me. It was in that green catalogue from Uncle Frank.

Well, bless you, Mom. She had found my little pencil scratches scattered through the margins of the vegetable section, decided on quantities, chosen for me where I had put a question mark, and made up the order.

I guess I've done my garden planning for this year.

The Bin at the Back of Beyond

2007-02-26T22:37:00.000-06:00

While I was thigh-deep in those snowbanks, it occurred to me that I could try vermicomposting.

I recovered my senses during the trudge back out.

ReLent: New Life Instead of Guilt

2007-02-19T10:11:00.000-06:00

Upcoming: Ash Wednesday Worship, Feb. 21st, 7:30 p.m. at St. Andrew's United Church in Arcola.

From our church bulletin:

Ash Wednesday marks the beginning of Lent. Its roots lie in the ancient Jewish festival of Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement. Atonement means "at-one-ment." If we are to be at one with God, with creation, with each other, we must face honestly who we are, make our confession, and open ourselves to the supportive power of God and our faith community in the Lenten struggle for new life. So Ash Wednesday is a day of honest confession and of commitment to the Lenten journey.

In the service on Sunday, Anita reminded us of a Mission and Service fundraiser our congregation did during Lent a couple of years ago. We had a calendar of the days of Lent, and for each day, we would make a contribution as specified on the calendar. One day might specify counting the number of light bulbs in your home, and paying so many cents per light bulb. Another day might ask how many pairs of shoes in your closet, and so on.

Anita wondered if we might try that fundraiser again, or if there were other ideas.

Here's mine.

Instead of feeling guilty about our stuff and our energy use and so on, why not find out what we can do about it, and what would do the most good? We'd save money at the same time, and then we could put some of that money towards the M&S fund.

I tried the Ecological Footprint calculator, mostly so that I would know what to tell others to expect, but I myself was surprised at the results. Here in the cold, sparsely populated northern prairies, we tend to think that a large part of our footprint comes from heating and travel - things that are difficult to change much (without moving south). Surprise: according to the quiz, a large part of my footprint comes from food. This was not entirely news to me, but the magnitude was a shock. Of my total footprint of 5.3 hectares, food contributed 3.5 hectares. Shelter came out at only 0.7 hectares, and travel at 0.3. Goods and services made up the remaining 0.8 hectares of my footprint.

On with garden planning! Next year, grass-fed beef, or venison, and maybe some chickens! And for a more immediate impact, how about porridge or cold cereal made from local grains, instead of breakfast cereal shipped in from Ontario?

This year, instead of a time of guilty brooding on the darkness of this world, Lent could be about learning a better way.

It's opening day...

2007-02-16T09:10:00.000-06:00

...of the Great Backyard Bird Count! (Previous...)

I've been searching for images of Saskatchewan birds, and found some fine collections of bird photographs from our vicinity. The most striking is a blog by Saskatoon-based Nick Saunders. You may have to wade a bit if you search for a specific bird, but browsing is a delight.

Here are some others:

Saskatchewan:
Saskatchewan Ecosystem Image Information System
Gallery: Birds of Saskatchewan by Rick Carlson

Manitoba:
Manitoba Naturalists Society - Miscellaneous Images
Christian Artuso's Wildlife Photography
The Birds of Manitoba Online

North Dakota: from the Northern Prairie Wildlife Research Center:
Songbirds of North Dakota
Sparrows of North Dakota
Marshbirds and Shorebirds of North Dakota
Hawks, Eagles and Falcons of North Dakota
The Owls of North Dakota

Montana:
Birds - Montana Animal Field Guide

South Dakota:
South Dakota Birds and Birding
Doug Backlund Photography

Candy Poisoning

2007-02-15T13:15:00.000-06:00

My theory: the invention of cinnamon hearts was an evil scheme to create a painful deterrent to kissing. The deterrent effect also extends to long talks, or brief talks, or eating Valentine's chocolates, or chewing any sort of dinner, no matter how romantic the menu pricing. Surely the inventor overshot his anti-intimacy goals, though, when even drinking pure water became laced with agony.

Cinnamon is one of the known causes of canker sores.

Known, to me, as of this week.

It all started with a nice friendly gesture from Ruth, when she brought a small cup of those enticing little candies over to the table where James and I were reading.

I knew they were potent, but I didn't mind nibbling a few. The sharp cinnamon flavour made a fine present-moment counterpoint to the short story that was carrying my mind far away.

The second nibble didn't seem quite so potent. Of course, my taste buds had habituated a little.

More nibbles followed. Nibble is probably the wrong word. They weren't handfuls, since the cup was too small to dig my hand in that way, but certainly I was taking several cinnamon hearts at a time.

Gradually the counterpoint began to intrude on the story as a sensation of mild discomfort.

The story was potent, too, though, and the oral sensation had advanced to the point of pain before I became attentive enough to put some distance between myself and the small cup of fire. If I'd stayed within arm's reach of it, well . . . I don't like to think about that.

When I mentioned my discomfort, Ruth admitted that she herself had ceased eating those minute flavour bombs when her face turned red. Her gift to me and James was not entirely out of generosity.

The cinnamon hearts were originally a gift to her, as part of another dubious scheme: the "Secret Pal" event at school. A student who signs up for it is assigned a "secret pal," and proceeds to leave anonymous gifts in that student's locker each day of the week surrounding Valentine's Day. By the end of the week, most of the secrets have been revealed, much cash has been spent on fake-fur-facsimiles of bears and such, and the students are thoroughly dosed with sugar, caffeine, red food colouring, and of course, cinnamaldehyde.

You might be thinking that my theory is a mild paranoia. Really, even if there were some antisocial inventor behind cinnamon hearts, surely they would never have become popular if they were so directly bad for us?

Well, here is the rest of the story. James, sitting there at the same table, reading and chewing, didn't get any sores.

Canker sores are twice as common in women as in men.

What a deliciously evil scheme! Just buy a 99 cent pouch of cinnamon hearts, and sometime around the 12th of February, pour them into that heart-shaped candy bowl you bought her last year. Place it at an appealing angle on the coffee table. If you don't have a coffee table, try the end table, the kitchen table, the bedside table, or the side of the tub. It really doesn't matter, as long as it's a horizontal surface within arm's reach of a spot where she sits often.

Then wait. Chances are, she'll soon be saying, "No chocolates this year, dear; sweets hurt my mouth too much." And then, "Honey, leth nah bother going ou' for dhinner; I'll juth make mythelf thomething I can drink through a thtraw."

And later, "Sweetheart, let's skip this part."

Ah, sweet victory.

The Rose of Winter

2007-02-09T01:59:00.000-06:00