Chilblains

When I was a school-kid, we lived in a house trailer about 10' by 40' with an extra room built onto each entrance. There was a wood stove in one of these extensions, a propane stove in the kitchen in one end of the trailer, and a propane heater in the hallway towards the other end. None of these heat sources had any forced air circulation; the warmed air just spread where it would. The space under the trailer was closed in with plywood and straw bales to help keep the floor a little less icy, but that tactic only goes so far. Warm air rises. Arctic air masses are cold. I remember I used to sit on the kitchen table, with my feet on the seat of my chair, to get comfortable.

I don't know how many years we lived in the trailer - a couple of years at Saskairie, I guess, and then maybe four or five years at the present farm. My father was building a new house, with help from Mom and tool-fetching and board-holding by the rest of us. I think I was twelve when we moved out of the trailer. The new house was far from finished, but I had developed chilblains.

I don't remember whether my condition was really unmanageable, or whether it just convinced my parents that they had had enough of managing under conditions that were, shall we say, out of fashion. I do remember that when we first moved in, I rushed into my new all-to-myself bedroom and did a somersault on the bed, ending with my heels embedded in the wall. Fortunately the drywall hadn't been finished and painted yet.

All that was a long time ago. Still, when I felt the itch and saw the puffy redness in my toes a week or so ago, I knew exactly what it was.

Garth welcomed the excuse to turn the thermostat back up.

It has crept back downward, though, and he's away this weekend, so it's all the way back to about 17 Centegrade, and colder overnight. (C stands for Celsius, too, but as Dad always pointed out, Centegrade is much more meaningful.) My toes are complaining a little, so I'm working on self diagnosis.

Chilblains are usually caused by an abnormal reaction of the body to the cold. People who have poor circulation, an inadequate diet, or an allergic response to low temperatures are vulerable to chilblains.

An "allergic response to low temperatures"?? Yikes! I refuse to admit that I have that.

An "inadequate" diet - what does that mean? I know mine is not the best, but it's probably above average. Still, it won't hurt to work on the fruit and veggies angle.

Poor circulation. Yep. I spend way too much time on this computer chair. And while I'm here, I get so preoccupied, I don't even notice that my feet are cold. I've always had trouble with foot cramps, too - they're my nemesis while curling - so this looks like the first place to apply some effort.

What to do about it? Get out of this chair... do I have to? Okay, okay, I'll set some limits. But will that be enough?

Well, I could order a special formula of cayenne, ginger, garlic and ginkgo. Take a pill. Or I could just put more cayenne and garlic in everything, and maybe buy some seeds for the garden.

I could try some hot and cold treatments, but I'm not fond of water. Nice thought, but it just wouldn't happen. Unless I could just run around the outside of the house in bare feet and then stand on a register? Um, no. Garth's family does that for sport, and takes videos of all the screaming people in swimwear running through the snow. I watch through the window.

Nobody out there mentioned it, but I think my treatment of choice is going to be Tai Chi. Somehow I've let the Tai Chi slide over the last few years, but Garth and the folks at Pheasant Rump got me going again. I was there teaching the Tai Chi Chi Kung breathing form for almost two hours yesterday. After I left I had a bit of a headache, and then later a very hot face. I thought I was getting sick, but this morning I seem to be fine, and I'm thinking it might have been the breathing form. Got some stuff circulating, I suspect. I remember when I used to play Tai Chi a lot, there were several times while playing through the long form, I would notice one hand turning quite warm and the other icy cold. It worried me a little at the time, but I didn't notice any ill effects after that. I hope it will toughen me up so I can generate my own heat, or at least make me more aware of my body so that I notice when I need a blankie for my feet.

Of course, if I had a wood stove, I'd probably be so active cutting wood and gathering kindling that my circulation would be just fine. And the hot and cold treatments would be automatic.

But the wood stove awaits the renovations, which await the money, and I'm not sure yet where that's coming from. Meantime, more Tai Chi and less blogging.

Lessons learned on the ice

Sliding is fun.

Falling down hurts.

Sliding is fun.

Fast people are scary.

Still, sliding is fun.

"I can do cross-cuts!"

Throwing your arms in the air in jubilation may drive your picks into the ice.

Falling down really hard on both knees really hurts.

Sliding while falling makes it hurt less.

A diving slide is almost fun.

It is possible to take a chunk out of the ice with a knee.

Rink ice is not very thick.

When you see the wrinkles in the tape that marks the lines, the ice might not be thick enough.

The caretaker might not believe you.

When the ice starts breaking up in the middle of a hockey game that evening, he'll wish he'd listened.

Hockey is fun to watch, once you grow out of your fear of stray pucks.

To win at hockey, you have to play rough, and push the rules to the limits.

In curling, you have to follow the rules exactly, or else the game doesn't work.

I get to curl with some fine people.

Some nights I'd rather play hockey.

First I'd have to learn how to skate.

But walking home from the curling rink tonight, thinking about body checks into the boards, I looked up and saw a great bright ring around the moon.

There were just a few stars showing just inside the ring, like those curling stones that hang around the edges of the house and sometimes mean nothing, and sometimes make a big score all at once.

The ring was too big and subtle for a picture. Maybe someday you'll get to see one like it. I hope so.

Sliding is fun.

More about Earth Day

I sat down to write about bringing in a movie for Earth Day, and ended up ranting about believing in our girls and helping them do community service and help the environment year round. Read that first.

Now about that movie. Like I said, I want to stir things up a bit. Beware, o thou members of the Christian Education Committee. I stand nominated to replace your chairperson this fall. Here' s a foretaste.

I contacted the movie co-ordinator for the Optimists Club a while ago, suggesting that they bring in El Caballo for Earth Day. The decision was that it didn't fit their mandate.

I still want to see it done.

I'll be bringing the idea to the meeting this Wednesday. I will personally kick in part of the cost to bring in the movie. I want help with the rest, plus whatever the Optimists will need for the use of the theatre and the help of one of their projectionists (hopefully nothing). I will also look for support from the Earth and Sky Society and the Moose Mountain Wildlife Federation. Any other suggestions? Are you with me?

Earth Day

Here's a heads-up for folks around here: I want to stir things up a bit come Earth Day (April 22nd). The Girl Guides have been faithfully marking the day with their Recycling Drive and Cookie Sale, every year since I don't know when. And every year that I've been involved, I've grumbled my way through it. We idle our trucks all over town for hours. We collect beverage containers and cash them in for the deposit money, and say we're doing people a favour. Oh, sure, we collect their other recyclables while we're at it, so that's a service, and it's good for the environment. Well, wait a minute. We do this once a year. What about the other 51 weeks? How is this a service? And like I said, we idle our trucks all over town. I will boldly wager without even bothering to estimate anything, that we do substantially more damage by burning that gasoline than any benefit we do by gathering those recyclables. Well, er, isn't it educational? For both the girls and the community?

Oh please! What exactly are we teaching? We can do better than that.

Last year, I tried a small challenge to the tradition. I meekly brought Garth along to drive my little old pickup truck, but I also brought my bike and trailer. With another mom and a troop of girls, I walked around our assigned collection and sales route, pushing my bike and toting our cookies and bottles in the trailer. Garth kept the truck parked with the engine off, except for a few short hops to meet us at the end of a block and see if we needed to unload.

It worked fine. In fact, it worked great, because the bike and trailer could follow the girls more closely than any motor vehicle, and there was no awkwardness about who gets to ride and who has to walk, or whether the whole group should hop in for a ride now and then.

Now if the Girl Guides wanted to try some real service, here's a suggestion. We could build several bike trailers, or beat the bushes for existing trailers buried in back of garages or up in attics. For any girls who were keen to participate, we could fit their bikes with good trailer hitches (axle mounted - see a video demo at the Wike site). Then, for Earth Day, we could run the Drive with one truck, yes, I said ONE truck, plus a fleet of bikes and trailers, and cell phones. The truck would stay parked at the recycling bins until it was called for.

But that's not all. After the Drive, for the rest of the year, yes, I said YEAR, the more senior girls would be available to collect recyclables from anyone who has difficulty getting down to the bins themselves. Perhaps they could make an arrangement with the grocery stores to help with deliveries, too. That would teach about closing a loop, tying the grocery shopping trip to the recycling trip in a meaningful cycle that will settle into habit.

For those of you who are grumbling about practical details: a toboggan works great when there's too much snow and ice for the bicycle. And to keep the bananas and tomatoes from harm at 30 below, an insulated food cooler for summer picnics can do winter duty. And if you're thinking that those seniors still need to get out to the store to choose their groceries anyway, actually they don't. Some phone in their orders, and there is even an Internet catalog for shopping online from Chapman's (though Kelly tells me it has never been used, but it's there if you want to try it out). And there are probably some seniors who would welcome the chance to walk safely downtown and back, unburdened by recycling and groceries, knowing that their selections from the stores would be delivered later by a cheerful Girl Guide.

Oh, but the work! Who would co-ordinate it all?

The girls.

Period.

Come on, people. Believe in them. If you won't, who will?

Thoughts while shovelling

When we lived in Regina, we said we would never again buy a house with a north-facing driveway.

Oops.

But for some reason, it doesn't seem so bad. My guess is that we don't drive as much, so we get it shovelled before we pack much onto it.

It's not a terribly long driveway. I only shovel the paved part, and let the loop around the other side of the house fill up with snow. That way the grader operator has enough frontage for dumping his windrow, so he doesn't slop it over the main driveway. This year, though, we had so little snow, they didn't even start grading until a week or so ago, and I guess they forgot which end of the driveway to bury. Not enough traffic to make it obvious.

Anyway, while I was shovelling the dearly welcomed four inches or so of fluffy white stuff Wednesday evening, I was thinking about doing a photo essay about the chore.

What would be the point of that? Evidence that I actually work sometimes? "See Laura work! Work, Laura, work!"

I was thinking I could make a "how-to" post out of it - "How to Move a Lot of Snow." I had worked out such a clever pattern to minimize the work. I pushed as much snow as possible on each journey down the driveway, and never wasted effort moving it back and forth while gathering it up. I had a path cleared, just the width of the shovel, all the way down the driveway. Starting at the far end, I'd push snow across the width of the driveway, and into the start of my path. Once more across to catch the stuff that fell off the side of the shovel, and I had a big pile in the start of the path. It was all I could push, but almost all of it went down the path, held in by the ridges left on previous trips. Working this way, I didn't need one of those great heavy snow scoops with sides on it. Just an ordinary wide-blade snow shovel.

As I cleared my way down the driveway, the path to the back yard got shorter and shorter, and shinier and shinier. I wish I could have got you a picture of the times when I misjudged and made the pile in the path too big for my snowboots' traction.

I worked out an extra trick for pushing a lot of snow without getting stalled by the extra resistance where it hasn't been moved yet. I'd section off an area of snow by pushing a cross-wise path through it, and then work back across, clearing the section into the path with that rhythmic scoop-and-toss pattern that most people use to just windrow the snow along the side of the driveway. Then I'd push my whole cross-wise windrow over to the main path and away I'd go.

Now, you might be wondering why I don't just do it the way most people do, and pile the snow along the side. Here we come to the rationalization I invented for calling this a "how-to" post. You see, a how-to article should really address something useful, or as Contrary Goddess puts it, something that contributes to the community. I figure my contribution is that I leave extra room in that narrow tree-row for the neighbour to pile her snow. Less work for her.

The beauty of it is that my technique involves almost no work at all. If I did that scoop-and-toss thing up into the tree row, that would involve a vertical displacement of the snow. My scoop-and-toss is really more of a push-swish thing, and as my engineer father loved to remind me when I was lugging hay bales, it doesn't matter how far you move something along, there's no work involved unless you move it up. Work is defined as, oh, I forget, something times height.

Yep, Dad. If I was a proper diligently efficient adult and just pitched that snow into the tree row, that would be work. When I cleverly channel-plow it all into the back yard, that's pure play.



I know, I know, there's some vertical displacement involved in making that pile. Believe me, I know.

Bits learned

I was browsing the Lee Valley catalog when I noticed a tip in the pruning section: when choosing a handsaw for a task, make sure the blade length is more than double the length of the cut you will be making. Otherwise the middle saw teeth will never clear the cut, and they will be clogged with sawdust that they can't drop.

Well. Why couldn't I have thought of that myself, when I was sawing away at something and wondering why I was so slow? (Don't answer that!)

It reminds me of last fall, when Garth's brother was helping me improvise an enclosure for the dog in the back yard. I was driving fence staples with a hammer, and I mentioned to him that I seem to lose all strength in my grip after maybe two or three staples. He said his father taught him to relax his grip on the hammer just at the instant that it strikes. That was the secret to being able to drive nails all day.

These are the sorts of things that you might figure out yourself, if it occurred to you to try; and you might find somewhere on the Internet, if it occurred to you to look; but on the other hand, you might just struggle and then decide to let a stronger, faster person do it for you.

Courage. Testosterone doesn't always win.

The last of the letters from Nepal

I've posted Garth's last three updates from Nepal on his webpage. It's sort of like the postcards that arrive after the traveller is already home. There's one more article to watch for in the Carlyle Observer (and on the webpage later) which he wrote in response to their questions after he got back. I expect we'll be adding some pictures to the webpage too - he has thousands.

March 1st in Arcola

This doesn't do it justice - it's really coming down. Thicker every time I look.

Worth the wait

Don't miss this new post from Eleutheros: The Oil Standard.

All the pieces fit.

You Already Hold the Truth

Well, here it is: You Already Hold the Truth, sung, in mp3 format, about 1.8 MB. I'm just itching to type a whole page of excuses and wishes to do better and all, but my sister says "Never apologize," and I almost always kind-of sort-of listen to my sister, so I'll just hush.

The lyrics are here.

A retrospective

This post is a guided tour through my blog posts since mid-October, intended to show the development of my new determination to live as lightly and locally as I can (within reason).

I'll throw in some links to posts on other blogs that have been a significant influence, as well.

Before I get to all that, I want to mention a couple of my favourite posts from my first few months of blogging. Shadow of a Butterfly was written before I started feeling guilty about the time invested in this hobby. Two posts that help to explain the depth of my concern for the environment are Ocean acidification and Rising CO2: more food, less nourishment?.

Now for the recent developments. At the beginning of November, I was becoming disillusioned with the usual conservation measures promoted by the government. At the end of that month, I started my Advent Calendar (never completed) with a bit of the joy and peace I still find in nature. Then I admitted my diminishing hope that anything significant can be done about human-induced climate change.

By Christmas, the influence of Eleutheros was showing through clearly. I highly recommend starting right at the beginning of his archives, patiently scrolling down to the first post in each month and then working back through them all (as I finally did at the end of January). If you don't have time for that, the selected articles that follow should give you a good summary of his influence on my thinking.
The Beginning of Wisdom
Back Off, Varmint!
Babylonian Implant
A Fortune in your Morsel
Craving a Boon
Therewith to Be Content
Rubik's Cube
Ptocheiopsis (Part 1)
Ptocheiopsis (Part 2)
Ptocheiopsis (Part 3)
Meat Offered to Idols (note the comments to this post as well)
Blogotopia (and note the comments)
If We Had Some Eggs (and note the comments here also)

Speaking of Christmas, here's another aside: on December 24th I made two sombre posts, and the responses were notable. The first post got no response at all in the comments, which I found odd. The second drew a rich warmth of shared feelings, and I was glad that we lonely folks were able to comfort one another a little.

And another aside - my Winter Botany series shows how persistent I can be, just because something is interesting. It also explains where some of my time went in January. Update - an afterthought - I may be persistent, at times, but I'm also aware of the fact that I didn't finish that series. I'm having trouble fitting my native plant enthusiasm into my new framework of priorities.

Some of my time in January went to reading other bloggers' discussions about self sufficiency. I summed up my thinking on these discussions in Regional Insufficiency.

Here at the end of the tour, I am surprised to see how little I have actually written in this blog, regarding the course of my thoughts. Although it might look like a big change to some, I would say that my interest in self sufficiency is really just a settling into place of a lot of pieces that were there all along:

1. my sense that environmental distress is much greater than just whatever topic is currently making the news, and that most of the old environmental topics are not resolved, just old;
2. my sense (from experience) that most environmental projects, campaigns, and measures are only slowing or shifting impacts and not eliminating the causes;
3. and my growing conviction that public education campaigns will never catch up to the growing pressures (and in fact, are often designed to fail by dodging the crucial issue of lifestyle choices, in order to protect revered economic growth).

Greater self sufficiency would accomplish at least three things:

1. It would reduce our direct contribution to the exploitation of the biosphere and of poor labourers around the world.
2. It would confront my neighbours with a more effective message than any amount of government advertising and educating about conservation. (If I, being educated about the issues, won't take these steps to conserve, who will?)
3. It would put us in a better position to weather a collapse in services, which seems increasingly likely as more and more systems are pushed towards their limits.

Finally, I would like to acknowledge the challenge and example of Contrary Goddess, the questing wisdom of Jim at Earth Home Garden, the sober reality (sweetened with relentless curiosity) of Wayne at Niches, and the honest day-to-day sharing from Madcap Mum and from Deb at Sand Creek Almanac. Their influence is not as sharply focussed as that of Eleutheros, so I have not attempted to select particular posts from their blogs, but undoubtedly their community has been vital to my growth. Thank you all.

The Right to Offend

Kate has stirred up a lot of discussion with a post about comments from Australia and from the Vatican regarding the conflict between Muslim religious values and Western values of freedom. She criticized Cardinal Angelo Sodano's comment:

"If we tell our people they have no right to offend, we have to tell the others they have no right to destroy us."

Many seemed surprised that she would criticize this remark. In the comments, Kate clarified her point:

In a liberal democracy, no one has the authority to tell others "they do not have a right to offend".

Aside, I ask (because I don't know): Is the Vatican a liberal democracy?

As to the statement itself, I would argue that we routinely grant authority to our courts to limit the "right to offend." You might ask, "What right to offend? Is there any such right?" and I would answer that freedom of expression could be interpreted as a right to offend. However, there are obvious limitations on freedom of expression, such as parts of the Criminal Code dealing with public indecency (this part specifically mentions the intent "to offend") and with incitement or promotion of hatred.

These limitations are controversial, and rightly so. There is not, and cannot be, a natural place to draw the line limiting the freedom. From our Constitution:

1. The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms guarantees the rights and freedoms set out in it subject only to such reasonable limits prescribed by law as can be demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society.

The enduring question is: what are "reasonable limits"? This is why we have an elected Parliament to create and review the laws that prescribe the limits. This is why we have debates in Parliament, in the press, in our communities, and in our homes, about where the limits should be.

It would be convenient to have a tidy statement of the proper relationship between authority and rights, but I don't believe it can ever be effective. I have this image of a child (like one of those who used to call me "Stewpot") telling his teacher, "This is a liberal democracy! I have a right to offend! You have no authority!" Actually, the reality was pretty close to that, simply because the teacher had no idea what was going on.

It's an interesting train of thought. My schoolmates had a right to offend me by taunting, or putting salt in my milk, or knocking me down and kicking snow in my face. I had a right to offend them by fighting back, or by taking it up with the teacher. Could anyone limit my schoolmates' "right to offend" without also limiting mine?

Where is the reasonable limit?

Speaking of the weather...

Please don't drive your car to Regina just to see this, but if you're there anyway, you might want to have a look. I've been longing to spend a whole day at the Royal Saskatchewan Museum ever since the new Life Sciences Gallery opened, but I haven't, and the gallery isn't that new anymore.

I worked on the Learning Centres for that gallery, for eight months, and just the other day I saw my former boss at the airport. I don't think I've ever been to the airport without seeing someone I know (in addition to the person I'm meeting). I find that observation vaguely disturbing.

Moderate Muslims

From the ongoing discussions at Small Dead Animals, a link to a Globe & Mail book review: "The Battle for the Soul of Islam."

Words Meme

Before I left for that songwriting workshop, I was thinking about a post like this. It had faded from my intentions, but then Kate linked to a curling article on Ed Willett's blog. Ed Willett! I remember him talking science on CBC radio in Mom's kitchen. (Er, was it that long ago? I haven't listened to CBC much since.) I was browsing down his wonderfully eclectic blog, and came upon another curling article. Like me, he had people from down south wondering what curling is. And he quipped: "Wait'll I write about sippin' Vi-Co down by the slough, in the shade of a poplar bluff."

At the songwriting workshop, they told us that the craft of songwriting is universal, but when you change genres or markets or even singers, you have to learn a new vocabulary.

I got much of my vocabulary through my voracious teenage reading habit, guessing meanings by context and pronunciations by sheer guts. My meme idea came to me when I was writing "misled," and doubting my spelling because I was hearing in my mind a different word - the one I used to hear whenever I saw that spelling: "MY-zuhld." To me it meant something like "bamboozled" (whatever that means!).

So here's the meme challenge (my answers are below):

Words Meme
1. Some reading pronunciations you've had.
2. Some words you've used wrong (and the consequences!).
3. Favourite obscure words.
4. Words with local meanings that confuse them outsiders.

My answers:

1. Some reading pronunciations you've had.

misled = MY-zuhld
awry = AH-ree
(I still like these better than the correct ones.)

2. Some words you've used wrong (and the consequences!).

(Blush) There was this word that I had heard applied affectionately to a woman's male companion of choice. I was in university, going steady with my first-ever boyfriend. I still remember the raised eyebrow I got when I referred to him as my "hubby."

3. Favourite obscure words.

infructescence
nugatory: of no consequence whatsoever

4. Words with local meanings that confuse them outsiders.

See the quote from Ed Willett above. My Mom used to tell the story of her parents' first visit to the prairies from Toronto. Mom was playing tour guide on the drive home to the farm, pointing out all the things to see. There was something "over by that bluff," but her father just couldn't see any bluffs at all.

If you've got a word in your mind right now - Tag! You're it. The object of the game is to post your own answers on your own blog and then run back here and post a comment that you've done it. See if you can be the first one back (but make it good!).

By request...

...the lyrics to my latest more-or-less complete song. I hesitate, because I'm sure it's still a work in progress, but I decided it's time for some fresh ears.

It's meant to be sung by a man.

You Already Hold the Truth
© Laura Herman 2006

I looked up from an autograph
and nearly fell into her eyes.
It happens every now and then
and still it gets me by surprise.
I don't want to take it lightly
or tell her how to feel
'cause I've hung my hopes on heroes,
and I know her love is real,
but it's bigger than she's dreaming
and there's more it's meant to be.
I said, "Don't let yourself get hung up
on hanging on to me

'cause you . . .
you already hold the truth.
You hold a little piece of heaven.
Yes, you hold something new -
something no other heart is holding,
something God is still unfolding
and the one who holds that truth
is you."

She looked up from my autograph
and gave a shaky little smile.
It took me back to 'ninety-one,
back when I was still a child,
when I got to meet my hero.
I got to shake his hand,
and he listened to my story,
and he seemed to understand.
I was gonna be just like him.
Could he tell me where to start?
He said, "Don't look to me for answers -
your own are in your heart

'cause you . . .
you already hold the truth.
You hold a little piece of heaven.
Yes, you hold something new -
something no other heart is holding,
something God is still unfolding

in you . . .

you already hold the truth.
You hold a little piece of heaven.
Yes, you hold something new -
something no other heart is holding,
something God is still unfolding
and the one who holds that truth
is you."

Risk and perspective

My Dad taught me, through quiet repetition, about risk. If there was one thing he brought home to me, it was how so many risks pale in comparison to the dangers of one ride in a car. Yet we all ride.

That came to mind as I was reading a journal of a motorcycle ride through the area around Chernobyl. I haven't finished it yet, but it fascinates me. Thanks to Margaret for the link.

He's home.

I'll talk to you all, oh, next week maybe...

Leave no stone unturned

I have a hunch that some of you may wonder why I link to Kate at SDA. Well, please read this.

My favourite people don't have all the answers. That's why I keep trying to read a little wider than where I'm comfortable.

"The Land of Bloggerie"

With thanks to Madcap Mum for the title.

A couple of things have got me thinking about the nature of blogging communities. One was the surprising experience of being put on the spot as a sort of "blogging expert" (which I certainly am not, but everything is relative) at the conference I attended last weekend. I found myself describing blogging, not so much from a mechanical how-to angle, but in the sense of the circles of people that develop, and how these circles grow and ebb, intersect and aggregate.

Then there was Madcap Mum's recent post of her fantasies about blog authors being totally different from the personas we see on their blogs.

Finally there was Mary Ann's post, saying she was honoured to see her blog remaining in my sidebar under "Folks with something in common." I was a bit startled, and honoured myself, just to think that having "something in common" with me would be considered an honour! Part of my surprise, though, was due to the fact that Mary Ann and I have not commented back and forth much, so I didn't have any sense that my blog was important to her. How many others read and appreciate it, and never comment? It is a strange feeling. It reminds me of a song I wrote a couple of years ago, when I was asked to sing at the funeral of a woman I scarcely knew.

We gather here:
your family;
neighbours and friends;
community.
Some knew you well;
some said "Hello."
What you meant to them,
you may not know.

For here am I,
a girl from town.
I did not know
you loved my song.

We gather here:
your family;
neighbours and friends;
community.
In thanks and praise,
some heads held high;
some eyes cast down;
we say goodbye.

The life you sang:
the love goes on.
We come to say
we loved your song.

-------

As a side note: the song was warmly received at the funeral - people asked for the music - but the day took a turn to the surreal when I overheard a conversation at the luncheon about how "she loved Laurie's singing." My immediate suspicion was confirmed as the conversation continued: I had been invited to sing by mistake. The beloved singer was Laurie Schmidt, not me. And I love Laurie's singing, too. And I loved my song, but I felt like a fake exposed. Except that I wasn't faking, just misled, and I was only partly exposed, naked to some, and still draped in false honour by others. I couldn't set things straight without spreading embarrassment around. I wanted to sink through the floor. Now in hindsight, I still love the song. It brings to mind that phrase, "God moves in mysterious ways." But it rings a little hollow for me, because I suspect that Laurie really did know that her singing was loved.

I've been writing and writing, and still haven't gotten near the point. I think I want to say something uncomfortable. I want to say that I fear making too many friends out there in the "land of Bloggerie." I fear making new friendships, because, well, how will I let some of the old ones go? In real life there are always excuses to explain the thinning phone calls, the lack of a visit. People move and make new friends closer to home. People take on new activities and don't have time for the old ones, so they don't see the same people anymore. In blogging, the constraints of location and schedule are mostly eliminated. If I stop reading a blog, but I'm still actively posting and commenting elsewhere, my absence might be noticed, and felt.

This probably sounds bizarre to some. I know that many blogs have a rough-and-tumble atmosphere where the message is basically, if you want to keep your feelings safe from hurt, don't comment, or better yet, don't read. I do read and comment on some of those blogs, and I have learned to get along fine, remembering that most of the blows are not aimed personally, or if they are, I can let them go by, knowing that "personally" is a rather distorted construct in a comment thread anyway.

In that rough-and-tumble context, it sounds very odd to be rationing my reading of new blogs for fear of neglecting old friends. Probably I am worrying too much (as usual). I've seen my own blog disappear off a sidebar, and if there was any feeling there at all, it just felt appropriate. I tried imagining how it would feel if a favourite commenter drifted away, and I had the sudden realization that I could probably quit blogging altogether, today, and not be devastated. (Good news, that.) But there are certainly some bloggers I would dearly miss, if they no longer had time for me. There is one right now who has been quiet for a few days, and I don't feel left out, I just quietly wonder if everything is okay.

Ah, community. I think it's time to go and pay some attention to my kids.

Catching up on the Nepal stories

I've posted several more of Garth's weekly articles on his Nepal web page (Weeks 10, 14, and 15 - there was a gap in there when we were waiting for the newspaper to catch up on the publishing, so he didn't write any new articles for awhile). That still leaves you about three weeks behind the present, at his cliff-hanger article just before the municipal elections.

To give you a sneak peek at the present: Garth has finished his work with the credit unions, with a few days left over before his scheduled return flight. He is spending the time by visiting Pokhara, the usual jumping-off point for the mountain hiking circuit. More later.

Back in the land of the almost alive

I was looking at a blog I often read, and thinking it's time for another post there. Then I came back to my own blog and realized it's much longer since I posted myself. I was away at a conference in Yorkton (I know, Eleutheros - a bunch of people in a stuffy room tossing bags of air to each other), and then church and catching up at home, and then Monday night I went down with the flu. Ohh, I was out of practise. Kids handle it so much better. Dry heaves were getting me up every hour until I finally sought the Internet's advice, got past all the suggestions that involved doctors and pharmacists, and found out I should be sipping water. Sleep at last. Nothing but water all the next morning, and then a stagger downtown for some apple juice. This morning I tried a little toast. I'm hoping that the lingering headache is just a side effect of fasting.

The conference was fun, anyway. It's a chance to catch up on friendships with like-minded people - "plant nerds," as the seed-testing guy called us. He described himself and his coworkers as "the lab geeks of the plant nerds." He gave a talk on seed testing procedures and regulations, and how native plant seed just doesn't fit the system. Boring? Not at all! He was so warmly engaging and self-deprecating, and he showed up the ironies of his work so well. Seed testing is done with reference to grade tables, which list particular crops and the standards for each. Crested wheat grass, an introduced species that invades native grassland and excludes other species, gradually simplifying the vegetation and reducing the depth and fertility of the soil profile, is a recognized crop species included in the grade tables. It's a crop, but definitely not something that you want to be planting in a native prairie reclamation project. Green needle grass, a native species widely used in seed mixes for reclamation, is not in the grade tables. So, if you send a sample of a native species - say, northern wheatgrass - for testing, the standard procedure would treat any crested wheat grass in the sample as "other crop," and any green needle grass as a "weed."

He got a good laugh with that example. He also described ways that his company will try to work within the grade tables, using alternative procedures, to give the best representation of native seed. For example, if that northern wheatgrass sample has a lot of green needle grass in it, he will look at grading it as a mix, instead of as northern wheatgrass. His name is Morgan Webb, and the company is Seed Check Technologies Inc., in Leduc, Alberta. The website gives a sense of that same warm-hearted, fun-loving spirit that Morgan showed in person. (A tip for navigating the website: no scroll bars appeared in my browser, but I found that I could just click somewhere in the text and then use the up and down arrows to scroll.)

I showed some of my winter botany photos at the members' slide night, but when Morgan mentioned that seed testers have to take 16-hour government exams and be able to identify roughly 2000 species by seed characteristics alone, well, I was humbled.

Speaking of winter, we've had a bit of snow here (just in time to give us some whiteouts and icy snowpack on the drive to Yorkton), but already the fields and ditches are going brown again. We're supposed to get a high of -18°C and a low of -33°C on Friday, but then right back up to near normal temperatures on the weekend. Normal would be a high of -7°C, but for most of this winter, it's been warmer than that. Darn, I'd take a week of -40°C nights, just to kill off some insects, but I'm afraid we aren't going to get it.

Well, if I can sit up and write this long, I must be feeling better. Time to get on with ordering garden seed. Yes, it's a little late, but not as bad as you might think. I see that our southern friends are already well into growing things, but we really shouldn't start here until around March 1st.

Six days till Garth gets home! I owe him another posting on his website, and I really need to clean up my clutter before I have to share the bedroom again. Okay. One feeble step at a time.

Camping Stories

I came across some camping stories, and a memory came back.

It was our honeymoon, over sixteen years ago. We didn't have a plan. No exotic hideaway for us, just a room at Kenosee for one night, and after that, the road. Funny, Kenosee is a very short way up the road from my hometown, but we didn't see any Arcola folks there. Instead, when we stumbled over to the Moosehead for some food, we encountered a fellow we both knew vaguely from the dorm at Luther College, U of R. He reminded himself of our names, found out why we were there, and sang out, "So, what did you guys do last night?"

When we packed up the debris from the motel room, we discovered some things missing, and some things extraneous, so we went back to the farm, where the relatives cooed over us and pressed lots of leftover food upon us. Then we made our escape for the second time, and drove from the Moose Mountains to Duck Mountain. We have lots of Mountains in Saskatchewan. I've noticed, though, that if you're not from Saskatchewan, you can't see them.

They assigned us to the overflow camping, which was a lovely meadow in the forest, and if I remember rightly, we had it to ourselves. We walked on the shore by the campground, swam at the main beach, and then decided to hike the trail between the two areas. It was nothing daunting; you might want to bring a water bottle. It roughly paralleled the road, but kept its distance, off in the woods. There was a movement up ahead - another hiker intruding on our idyllic wanderings? No, a bear. It jogged across our path and away toward the lake. I had never seen one at large, but this one didn't seem too terribly large; probably a young one. We consulted and hesitated and worried about mother bears before finally deciding that no more bears seemed to be coming along, so we could probably safely continue across the bear's back trail. Later at the main beach, I found a map that showed all the facilities, including the garbage dump. Aha.

After Duck Mountain, we picked another green spot on the map, Greenwater Lake, but I don't remember our stop there. I remember the narrow iron bridge at St. Louis, but I had to do some Googling just now to find the name of the town, and thus I discovered that a major archeological find was made just a few years ago during assessments related to replacing that bridge. Well, the find is exciting, I'm sure, but I'm sad about the bridge. Safety, convenience, progress. Sigh.

During my Google tangent, I also found a St. Louis ghost story.

But sixteen-plus years ago, we knew none of this; we just drove across the bridge, admiring the broad river below, and continued on our way to Waskesiu.

The overflow camping there was a totally different scene. Again, it was a grassy meadow, but this time jammed with camper trailers and tents so close together that their guy strings overlapped. We hadn't been keeping track of days, let alone noticing the impending August long weekend. How it occurred to us, I don't recall, but we came up with a solution: the backcountry.

We rented an aluminum canoe, and signed up for a campsite out on the west shore of Crean Lake. They warned us that the sites would be primitive, but we were delighted. We piled our car-camping gear and several grocery bags of foodstuffs into the canoe and set forth. It was about four in the afternoon.

The Hanging Heart Lakes were lovely, and Crean Lake was like glass stretching away out of sight. We paddled through the deep green reflection of the shadowy trees and easily found our campsite: three sites together, but we had the place to ourselves. The "primitive" facilities included an outhouse, a nice firepit with a grill, a supply of firewood, and my nemesis: a platform high on some trees, for storing food out of reach of bears.

It's not like I fell off it.

It's just that the tin wrapped around the tree trunks had deep grooves scratched in it.

And the place was so beautifully private.

We drove each other crazy with our half-remembered wisdoms about how to avoid leaving attractive smells around your campsite. If I recall correctly, Garth was fairly unconcerned, but I heard every little sound in that terribly beautiful silence, and the next day, the setting was somewhat less appealing to him because of the bear in his tent (me).

Sometime during our stay there, we took the canoe out on the lake in the moonlight, but all I remember of that jaunt was the mosquitoes. That and wondering if the bears would come to visit our site while we were away, and wondering if bears are fond of swimming.

That must have been the first evening. I don't think we would have stayed a second night willingly.

But in the morning, there were waves crashing onto the shore. We spent the day puttering around the campsite, watching the occasional motorboat as it bounced across the lake and sent up a burst of spray at each wave. That night I couldn't hear the little forest sounds over the roaring from the lake and the trees. I wasn't reassured.

Was it two nights, or three? All I remember is that Garth got anxious about being stranded by the wind for another few days, and being late getting back to work. He decided we should get up before dawn, when the wind should be at its lowest, and paddle out.

The wind was still high when we arose, but Garth was determined, and I was becoming panicky about the imaginary dark forms among the dark trunks of the great dark forest. Again we threw our hodge-podge of gear and groceries in loose bags into the canoe. We very briefly discussed a strategy for orienting the canoe relative to the waves, then dug in our paddles and went.

It wasn't a direct headwind, but we couldn't run with it, either, at least not until we cleared a rocky point perhaps a half mile off. Garth has always been strong for his size, and he's not small, either. I was perhaps a little more experienced than he with paddling, but he managed quite well in the stern, and the first little distance seemed mostly okay. There were moments when he felt he needed to reassure me, though. He told me, "Don't worry; if we capsize, I'll dive down and get some of our stuff."

I just kept paddling. The near-misses with oversized waves wore on my already frazzled nerves, and the shore seemed to be approaching faster than that point where we could clear the rocks and turn down the wind. Garth quit talking and paddled. And we paddled.

And we paddled.

And we made it.

The Hanging Heart Lakes were oh-so lovely.

We returned the canoe and signed out of the backcountry register, and headed for Prince Albert and a hotel.

When we recovered, we realized that we had quite a bit of our vacation time left over, so we turned away from our homeward track and went to surprise the relatives who, by this time, were gathered at Kananaskis in southwest Alberta for a family reunion. We made a stop in Calgary so that Garth could show me the wave pool.

Garth loves water. He once spent several hours swimming across a crater lake in Australia, and back, all by himself. I, on the other hand, had struggled to teach myself to swim during my years at university. The only time in my life that I ever loved water was yet to come, a few years later, when I discovered that pregnancy made me buoyant.

Anyway, the wave pool looked like fun. Garth took me in the shallow end, coaxing me deeper into the waves, and showing me how to drownproof. Then we went to the other pool, where you could sit on a ball suspended from a rope and swing out over the water and then let yourself drop in. That was fun too. Garth, bursting with the joy of water and the pleasure of sharing it with me, led me back toward the wave pool. "Let's go in the deep end," he cried, and off we went.

He went down the ladder first. I had got about halfway down when a wave caught me. Garth must have been closely watching my descending form, because it didn't take him long to get hold of me. I climbed on his head.

I had never felt that way before, and never again since. I knew I was panicking, and I knew it was pointless, but there was not a thing I could do about it.

Like I said, Garth is strong. He put me back on the ladder, climbed out after me, and calmed me down.

Then he stood back, looked at me, and said, "I guess if we'd capsized, I might not have been going after our stuff!"

Letting Kids Be

Madcap Mum has a post up about her frustration in trying to find local children's programs that aren't infested with nastiness among the children. AnvilCloud commented:

Those kids can be depressing. They are trying so hard to be something, but they're nothing at this point. It's so sad.

I think he nailed it. They are "trying so hard to be something."

At bible study this morning we were talking about changes in the church, and wondering what has changed in the community and the world, that it has become so difficult to get people involved. A couple of things came out:
1) people no longer think that God is taking care of their lives; they make their own lives
2) family life revolves around an exhausting round of kids' activities
3) the time for an individual to take a place in the community has been pushed later and later in life. Whereas a child used to begin to find a place and a role as soon as he or she could lift a basket or a hoe, that time gradually moved to sometime when the child started thinking "I've had enough school, I'm ready to work." Around that time, they would begin to try to impress the elders of the community with their strength or their smarts. Now it's pushed off even farther, and community involvement is just another thing to add to a resume to try to get a scholarship. Everything is focussed on getting into college, and few students even begin to think about their place in a community until they're suddenly convocated and job-hunting and trying to learn to "network." (The effect on the church is that there is no continuity, from Sunday School through confirmation class to a valued role in the church community. After confirmation, the young people leave, and maybe, maybe, they come back to bring their own kids to Sunday School.)

With all the focus on "what will you be when you grow up?", there is a backlash saying "let kids be kids," which translates into a lot of entertainment and recreational events. But there is very little acknowledgement that kids want to be something, now, today. They want to be listened to, and they want to contribute. That is the great gaping hole in their lives, and sadly, many of them don't even know it's there.

And more of Garth's view

His Week 7 article is up at A Flatland View of Kathmandu. Week 7 was the last week of November.

Another view of Nepal

Sometimes I take a quick peek at one or two of Blogger's featured blogs. Today I discovered Kaura Travels. Normally I wouldn't be much interested in a musical group's tour blog, but this is a little different. For one thing, these musicians seem to be listening and exploring as much or more than they are touting their own stuff. But what really caught my attention was the mention of Nepal. Their posts from December 11th through January 12th, including numerous videos and slideshows set to their own music, describe their journey by bus to Pokhara; their hike on the Annapurna Circuit; and their time in Pokhara and Kathmandu.

I have only watched a couple of the videos. I am ambivalent about world travel. Yes, I'm ambivalent about Garth's travel. It's an ongoing point of strain between us; he wants to see far more of the world than he has to date, and he wants to see Australia again, but I feel almost no desire to see it even for the first time.

I believe there is far more travel going on than there should be, but I'm grateful when those who do travel take the time and effort to share the beauty and the realities of their experience with others. Thanks, Kaura.

A little discussion has developed on the topic of nitrogen fertilizers, in the comments to my January 25th post "Reason Unbound." Back40 has given a quite detailed comment, and I thought it worth bringing up here so it won't be missed.

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Update - don't miss Eleutheros' comments to this post, either. This is getting too easy - the commenters are doing all the work! Thanks, everyone.

It's dark in here

If you're reading this post, you're having better luck than I am. I can't view my own blog. Please leave a comment for me - it will be forwarded to my email (if the forwarding is still working!) and then I'll know... something.

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Update - well, whaddya know? The lights are back on in my little blog world. Why, I don't know.

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Update #2 - and poof! The door slams shut and it's dark in here again. Two minutes later. Please do let me know whether you're having any trouble reading my blog, or not.

What is "selfish"? - Part 2

Part 1 is here.

I recall my sister musing that, with all the modest lifestyles among her relatives, she might be the only one on either side of her extended family who was paying enough taxes to support the basic services relied upon by said family. Services like roads and schools.

She implied that we were all being selfish.

To avoid being selfish, then, we should all go out and earn more income (to pay more income tax) and buy more goods (to pay more sales tax).

That way there would be more money for schools to teach our children how to clean up the environmental messes we created while earning more income, buying more goods, and driving more often because we'd have such wonderful roads.

I guess it's clear that I don't think we're being selfish by living modestly. My point of view should come as no surprise.

Still, I wonder where the line is. I want to live in a society that maintains sufficient technological and industrial capacity to have dentists, steel roofs, and maybe even satellite imagery. I find it difficult to believe that I must eat takeout pizza rather than homegrown food in order to maintain that society, but I don't know where the balance point might be.

Obviously there won't be a simple answer. Yet as I think about it, I wonder if the answer at the individual level really is fairly simple. There are those who want us all to trust in economic growth as the answer, and they keep pointing out how effectively market forces balance supply and demand. If that's the case, then all an individual needs to worry about is choosing to demand the things that are really needed for life, and refusing to demand things that aren't. The market will take care of the rest.

What is "selfish"?

A couple of years ago, I tried to make an informed decision about whether to give consent for organ donation. There was information available, certainly. It came in the form of pamphlets telling me about the benefits to those who received transplants, and the steps taken to maximize transplant success.

What they didn't tell me was the cost.

Why should I care? We have Medicare, and even if we didn't, obviously my estate wouldn't be picking up the tab for my generous act.

I care because a cost to the health system is a cost to my neighbours, my community, and my world.

Yes, but it saves a life!

Sorry, that's not a good enough argument. Fixing a highway embankment saves lives too, and if it does so at a lower cost, then it should have priority over the transplant program.

Well, okay, but that's easy to say if you're not the one on the waiting list for the transplant.

True, and I don't know how I would act in that situation. But I kept looking for information on costs and benefits of transplants, and as I looked, my thinking evolved. The more I looked (without success), the more convinced I became that I wanted healthcare cost information so that I could make advance decisions and directives, not for the fate of my organs after my death, but for the responsible treatment of my body while I live.

For example, I couldn't find any straightforward information on the full cost of having a kidney transplant, versus managing the disease in other ways, or accepting an earlier death. I did find out that transplant patients would face ongoing health costs associated with immune suppression to prevent rejection of the transplanted organ.

Now in case you're thinking I'm being incredibly callous, remember, I was thinking about what I would want to have happen if I myself should develop kidney disease.

I told Garth about these thoughts, and the idea of refusing a kidney transplant because the long-term cost of such medical intervention seemed irresponsibly high.

He told me I was being selfish.

I mentioned the discussion to a friend, and he agreed with Garth.

I don't.

Here is an analogy. Suppose I was adrift in a lifeboat with two plump people. I myself am on the scrawny side. We have a water purifier, but a limited supply of food. Our best estimate is that there is not enough food for all three of us to last until we reach land. My suspicion is that the two of them could survive together, but there is only enough food for one of me.

Now let's say that all three of us have spouses and children waiting back home.

If I don't drown those other two people to make sure I get home to my family, am I being selfish?

Environmental Scare-Mongering . . .

. . . from a Kyoto critic.

Licia Corbella's doom-and-gloom article appeared in the Calgary Sun on December 11, 2005. She stated that in order to meet our obligations under the Kyoto Protocol, Canada has to reduce its greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by 270 megatonnes (mt). She then reviewed figures from Environment Canada, presenting them as evidence that the target is impossible to reach.

In 2002, Canada's entire manufacturing sector spewed out 62.9 megatonnes.

Then comes the transportation sector, which includes all those planes, trains and automobiles, pipelines and Paul Martin's tax-exempt Canada Steamship Lines freighters.

Ground, park and dock them all and we would remove 190 mt of GHGs.

Combine those two sectors -- manufacturing and transportation -- and that adds up to 252.9 megatonnes, leaving us short by 17.1 megatonnes.

She goes on to raise the specter of billions of Canadian tax dollars flowing to Russia to buy emissions credits, because, she implies, it's obvious that we can't shut down our entire manufacturing and transportation sectors.

Let's back up to 1990. That's the base year for Canada's Kyoto commitment. Our target is to reduce our emissions to 6% below 1990 levels. Correct me if I'm wrong, but the way I remember it, Canada did have a manufacturing sector in 1990. Canada also had a transportation sector. If these sectors are the big baddies, obviously we shouldn't need to totally eliminate them to achieve a 6% reduction.

Check the Environment Canada figures for yourself, and see how cleverly Corbella has chosen her sectors. Obviously transportation has to be included, because everybody knows it's the other guy's SUV that's the problem. At 180 mt for 2002, transportation is a big part of the 719 mt total. A big part, yes, but where's the other 539 mt? Clearly it's not all in the manufacturing sector. But manufacturing is the perfect contentious target, vilified by those eager to assign blame for environmental problems, and defended by their opponents as the engine of our economy. Corbella knew exactly what she was doing.

She was scaring people into assuming that they must watch helplessly as government either turns Canada into a have-not country, or backs out of its Kyoto commitment.

In reality, where is the rest of the 539 mt total? For starters, it's in "Electricity and Heat Generation" at 129 mt. That refers to "thermal combustion-derived electricity" - such as the electricity that is powering my computer right now, that runs my refrigerator and my freezer and my washer and dryer and my Christmas lights and the lights that get left on when no-one is in the room. If I reduce my use of this electricity, it won't cripple the economy.

Where else? How about Residential [Energy Use], which refers to fuel combustion in homes, at 44 mt. Turn down your thermostat at night (I have to remember to put some slippers on when blogging after bedtime), invest in some weatherstripping and insulation, maybe upgrade some windows. How will that hurt the economy? Sure, if everybody did enough of it, maybe the demand for natural gas would level off. Drilling in southwest Saskatchewan might slow down a bit.

What about agriculture? We hear so much about belching cows. This appears in the table as "Enteric Fermentation," and it amounts to only 22 mt. Another 8 mt are attributed to "Manure Management." Meeting the targets doesn't mean giving up all our steak and milk. We might do well to look at our crop production practices, though. "Agricultural Soils" refers to emissions of nitrous oxide; this happens when nitrogen from fertilizers of various kinds goes partly into the air instead of the plants. The figures are estimated, with large uncertainties, but the value given is 29 mt. Then you have to consider emissions associated with fertilizer and pesticide production, and fuel combustion to run the tillage and harvest equipment; these figures are hidden in other categories, such as "Industrial Processes" and the already-mentioned "Transportation."

If you're running a total in your head, you know there's still a big chunk missing. The "Industrial Processes" that I just mentioned account for 51 mt. (How many of Corbella's readers would realize that there was an entire category separate from "Manufacturing," called "Industrial Processes"?) "Waste," mostly solid waste disposal on land, gives another 25 mt.

Of particular significance to southeast Saskatchewan, given our economic dependence on the oilfield and on coal-fired power generation, are the categories of "Fossil Fuel Industries" at 73 mt and "Fugitive Emissions" at 55 mt. Not only do we release GHGs when we generate power or drive our cars, we also release them when we produce the fuels in the first place. (In case you're wondering, "Fugitive Emissions" refers to things like spills, leaks, venting and flaring during oil and gas production, plus a much smaller amount of methane released from coal deposits during mining.)

I haven't covered all the categories. Most of the rest are relatively small; "Land Use, Land-Use Change" actually has a negative figure to allow for CO2 uptake during plant growth. As you can plainly see, there are a lot more areas to work on than just transportation and manufacturing. By choosing these two sectors, Corbella skilfully directed attention away from the areas where our own individual initiative could most quickly and painlessly make a difference. If we're merely trying to meet Kyoto targets, the picture is not nearly so bleak as Corbella paints it.

A much more serious criticism of the Kyoto Protocol is that it will merely slow the accumulation of greenhouse gases. Even if all the targets were met around the world, greenhouse gases would continue to rise. And even if we could somehow reverse that trend, and begin to reduce the levels of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, we would still have a long way to go just to bring them back within the range where these gases have fluctuated over the last 650,000 years. We have already drastically altered the chemistry of our atmosphere, and as I have noted previously, climate change may be the least of our problems.

Not-so-news from Nepal

Long frustrating debates, filled with silences and clicks as the communications system drops whole sections of our rebuttals into some sort of electronic limbo. In between the phone calls, imaginary conversations going sideways into meaningless bitterness. Emails sent, and days spent wondering how they were received, and then another debate about one little aspect of one email, and only occasionally a connection, an understanding.

We are both longing for him to be home.

At the same time, we are both fearing it. We will have to work this stuff out. Not that we have built up enormous differences, but just that we have each found a comfortable way of existing over these last few months, and the reunion will require some adjustment. I've found my own way of relating to the kids. Sometimes Garth gets glimpses of it during a phone call, and sometimes he has a good suggestion, but other times I just suggest that if he wants to do the parenting, he can hurry up and come home!

For now, I am preparing by gently shifting my focus. Perhaps out of self-preservation, I had turned my focus away from him for a while just so I wouldn't miss him so much. I know he did the same with me; he told me he tried not to think about home too much, or look at pictures of us, or that sort of thing.

Now it is time to start including him in our plans again. Not only that, but to make him a part of my thinking as I go through each day. Right away I notice that I have let myself get far behind on posting his weekly columns on his web site. At first I was waiting for the newspaper to publish them, but then a whole month went by when I could have posted some, but didn't get to it. My apologies to his Mom and others who have been waiting.

No time like the present. That's a phrase that has been making me a lot more effective lately (thanks mum!). Today I posted Garth's Week 6 article, from way back in November, which appeared in the Carlyle Observer at the end of December. I plan to keep them coming every couple of days until we are caught up.

Tough Sledding

At the turning of the year, I wrote about the lack of snowmobiling action around here over the Christmas holidays. At that time, I reviewed the climate data from various stations nearby and concluded that a brown New Year's wasn't that extraordinary. Now here we are a month later, and still virtually no snow. The annual Snowmobile Rally organized by the Arcola Optimists went ahead last weekend, with posters proclaiming "We Have Snow!", but they had to trailer the sleds up into the hills where there actually was a bit of snow on the bush trails. There were only about a quarter as many riders as last year, from what I hear.

I'm also hearing comments from bloggers all over the continent about the mild conditions. Deb in Minnesota saw pussy willows in mid-January! Wondering what happened to our usual arctic high pressure systems, I thought to myself that maybe we've had them and just not noticed, because the arctic air is so warm.

Not so, according to this story from Yahoo News:

It's not like winter evaporated. It has just skirted the world's second largest country and focused its fury on other parts of the globe.

Arctic weather masses have left parts of Europe encased in ice. Greece has endured its heaviest snowfall in a decade. And an extreme cold snap across Russia sent temperatures plummeting to -40C and left dozens dead.

Oh dear. I hadn't heard anything about that. I did hear that there have been big disruptions in natural gas supply in parts of eastern Europe. That combination spells misery or worse.

Yet we go complacently along. I know that our home's heating system is doubly vulnerable, because the furnace won't run unless it has both natural gas and electricity. I've wondered about rigging up some sort of pedal-powered alternate drive for the fan, and a backup electrical supply if needed for the valve controls, so that we could at least have some heat as long as the gas supply was on. Then I get thinking that it might be simpler and better to just add a woodstove. I'd really like to rearrange the whole floor plan so that we don't have picture windows facing north and west, and most of the south wall taken up by an unheated porch. It just doesn't make sense for solar gain.

Then again, with the cloudy winter we've had so far, there wasn't much solar gain to miss.

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Update - Wayne has more about mild weather in North America, and the long-term context.

Regional insufficiency

I've been musing about self-sufficiency, following some eager and at times heated discussions about it at maison madcap and Eleutheros' place many miles from Babylon. It strikes me that many people are working on growing more of their own food, and some are attempting their own supply of heat, water, and a bit of electricity to power their blogging habit. Not many are attempting their own automotive fuel, but many are reducing their dependence on cars, partly by not needing to shop as much, and partly simply by choosing to travel less. From my own direct observations of various back-to-the-landers and other conservation-minded people, I would note many of the same initiatives going on, plus a great interest in alternative building materials (particularly plastered straw bales, in recent years).

I realize that complete self-sufficiency is not necessarily of interest to anyone. You can make a great contribution to conservation without going anywhere nearly that far. You can make yourself much less dependent on the system, without cutting yourself off from it. Remaining somewhat connected, you can keep more involved in your community, and perhaps avoid drawing scorn or negative press for yourself and other self-sufficers by seeming too extreme. Perhaps most importantly, that last bit of change to become completely self-sufficient would presumably take much more effort than many of the larger changes you made more easily at the beginning. You may have better uses for that extra effort.

Having said that, it seems valuable to have the know-how for complete self-sufficiency preserved in living form across the wider community of self-sufficers. Maybe not everyone needs to be a blacksmith, but it would be good to know that there was a blacksmith around, not too far away, in case that skill ever became needed.

Thinking along that line, I noted that there seem to be several areas where self-sufficiency enthusiasts fairly consistently opt for manufactured items. I'm thinking of clothing (or at least cloth, needles, and thread), tools, and roofing. There are probably more, but those are the areas that come to my mind.

Does this bother anyone else? I love to sew, but I rarely bother because I can have second-hand or even new clothing for much less cost than the cloth to make my own. I guess between my Dad and my sister, there is probably enough skill and equipment to make a lot of tools, but again, the raw materials probably cost more than the ready-made tools. There are warning bells going off in my mind here, saying there has got to be some serious exploitation going on somewhere, for the finished goods to be cheaper than the raw materials. And if so, maybe these areas should be a higher priority in a self-sufficiency project than simple cost-saving per unit effort would suggest.

What would happen if there was a major collapse in the global economy, or some kind of trade shutdown for our country, so that we were forced to become more self-reliant? Obviously food would be an immediate issue. In the chaos, maybe the utilities that supply gas and electricity to homes would collapse too. So far, the popular self-sufficiency projects would be paying off. But what if the changes were more gradual, with changes in world trade patterns making all imports less and less accessible? Everybody would be scrambling to grow more food, but to do so, they would be needing tools. Everybody would be working a lot harder, and needing good practical clothes, and wearing them out in a hurry. How quickly would our domestic capacity to produce tools and textiles catch up with the demand?

I get the impression that tools and textiles are unpopular do-it-yourself projects because they take a lot of effort and skill. I've never given more than a passing thought to tackling either one, except that I'm curious about how my Scottish forebears used nettles for fibre for fine cloth. As for roofing, I think there are some accessible do-it-yourself alternatives available, but a good steel roof is worth it for the protection to your investment in the building structure, and for the clean water you can collect from it. Still, at times I've wanted to experiment with other roofing materials just to keep the options open.

All this time spent musing, when I could have been plotting the obvious steps to grow more of our own food this coming season, and make our house more energy-efficient right now. I think I've let my son fall asleep untended again, too. If you don't hear from me for a couple of days, let's hope it's because I've decided to actually get something done.

Where to begin?

(scroll down for an update)

A few months ago a brother-in-law sent me something about a highly efficient small wood stove that gasifies the wood before burning the gases. I didn't get around to looking at it in detail, but it looked promising. Now via Kate, I find this article on using pelletized grass fuels, from R.E.A.P.-Canada (Resource Efficient Agricultural Production).

The grass part caught my attention. Just last night, I was thinking that my push toward self-sufficiency will have to incorporate some form of grass-eating livestock, because grass is what grows here. Then I got thinking some more, and realized that pelletized aspen wood fuel is another thing to look at.

Of course, the first thing to do is to fix up the weather seals around this house. No time like the present. Er, except I really have to plow through some piles of paper - arrgh! Well, while I'm sorting paper, I'll make a plan to reduce the amount that comes in here, and prevent it piling up. I wonder if I could pelletize it?

Update - I did some more reading on the R.E.A.P. site and found that the pelletizing process is just the familiar, large-scale, rather energy-intensive process that's used to produce feed pellets for livestock. It can also be done at a small scale, but with the energy involved, why bother? I also discovered on the R.E.A.P. site, the Mayon Turbo Stove, which uses rice hulls or other crop residues directly as fuel. That makes a lot more sense. I'll be reading some more. A plain old woodstove would be fine, but I'm interested in this gasification process that (according to the reports I've seen) burns the fuel more completely, getting more heat with less smoke. If you're using local fuels sustainably, your greenhouse gas emissions are balanced by new fuel growth regardless of the efficiency of combustion. But more heat with less smoke could help to keep the neighbours friendly, and it would also mean less work gathering fuel!

Reason unbound

Via Kate at SDA: a study that sheds some light down the communication chasm between left and right.

The blog where Kate found reference to this study, Crumb Trail, looks intriguing. From what I've read so far, this author seems to be making an effort to keep reason free of the fetters of emotion. I could feel my own emotional reactions kicking in as I read the post about fertilizer and organic farming, but the exercise in patient listening was rewarding.

Another busy day for me: no more blogging until . . . until . . . tomorrow.

I Got Out Alive

"Mu-umm??"

Did you miss me?

It wasn't that bad, really. I would have been back sooner, but the job just didn't seem complete until I'd washed all the newly liberated storage containers.

Election/Curling Report

I got a call a couple of days ago, asking if I could spare for curling at 9 p.m. on Election night. Then yesterday, Election day, I got a call late in the afternoon from another member of the same curling team, asking if my brother-in-law could spare for him. Then early in the evening I got a call from the skip's wife, saying that a third team member was out with a bad back, but what's more, the skip was a deputy returning officer over in the next town, and hadn't said anything to his dear wife about whether HE had a spare. (If you're counting, at this point you've noticed that all four of the original team members are gone or at least very doubtful.) We called another guy to spare but he said he wanted to watch the election results. (Why?? You can't change them by watching them! He passed up curling with us for THAT!!) So we clawed back one of the real team members from his drama rehearsal and made him the skip, with bro-in-law and I as spares (throwing three rocks each and doing LOTS of sweeping) and won the game for the absent skip/deputy returning officer.

I can see forgetting to vote because you're curling, but forgetting to curl because you're counting votes?! What's this country coming to?

****

p.s. I've been having too much fun lately. No more blogging until I clean out the fridge.

I - hate - Mondays;
Mondays I - hate!
I'm just a little grumpy,
and plus I'm gonna be late!

That's Ruth at lunch time - more or less a direct quote. I think I tucked the last line into place from something she had said a few minutes before. Poor kids can't even express their sheer grumpiness without getting their words turned into doggerel.

But I told her I was posting it, and she said "Awesome!" as she raced out the door for the afternoon at school. Today she won't have to go to Carlyle after school for band practice (that's "Division Band," made up of students from Stoughton to Redvers and north to Wawota). It was cancelled due to exams. Instead she has a practice with the Pathfinders, of a special, surprise dance number for Robert Burns night (Wednesday at the Legion Hall), and then a bit of time to do any homework and make sure her boots and uniform are ready for Cadets this evening. Most of her Mondays are marathons. I keep urging her to ask her teacher for the Monday assignments in advance, so she can get ahead on the weekend. But I have to admit, if it were me, I'd probably quit something.

You know the stereotype about mothers reminding their children to do their homework, bring home notes from the teacher, take their mittens, and so on and on? With Ruth and me, it's just about reversed. She's always checking ahead to make sure I'll leave room in the schedule for the homework, sign and return the school notes, buy the mittens, and so on. If I were inclined to be smug about my adulthood, that kid would cure me quickly.

Winter Botany #6

Just a tidbit before I go off to vote. I discovered a new word over at Wayne's: an infructescence is the fruiting stage of an inflorescence (which you've heard about, if you've been following this series). A very handy word for winter botany, in spite of my reluctance to use jargon.

I'm so conflicted. I just love words.

"Things are heating up in Nepal..."

That's what my Dad observed the other day. I wonder if he has been seeking out news, or if Nepal is finally getting some attention from the major news outlets.

Garth confirmed Dad's observation. He phoned to reassure me that he was okay, safe in his hotel for the time being, in case I had seen news of the day-long curfew imposed to thwart a mass demonstration against the king.

A fine time for things to heat up, just when we've started counting down the days to Garth's return. He assured me that he can get special police permission to travel if there's a curfew when he needs to get to the airport!

I can't begin to imagine how it would feel to watch the conflict escalate, if Nepal was the only home you had ever known.

Navigable waters

In a recent post by Kate at the CBC Election Roundtable, Conservative candidate Brad Farquhar comes across as a strong contender for what has been the outpost Liberal seat in Saskatchewan (Wascana; incumbent Ralph Goodale, Finance Minister). He seems to have a good sense of the issues that are most important to the constituents. Unfortunately, I think he is correct when he says:

People in Saskatchewan . . . . particularly scoff at the idea of Fisheries and Oceans having jurisdiction over some drainage ditch just because a canoe could navigate it for two days each spring.

On the face of it, yes, it's scoffable. However, I have no problem with a department called Fisheries having jurisdiction over a creek that is vital spawning habitat for the fish that my neighbours like to catch down in the Alameda Reservoir. Moose Mountain Creek is navigable by canoe for a few days in spring, if you're not afraid of riding the current right into a barbed wire fence. In a wet year, you can navigate sections of it right through the summer, although you may do a fair bit of wading and leave some of your craft's gel coat on the rocks. I need to get my own canoe, a cheap rugged one, to keep on exercising my navigation rights.

I'm not surprised that people turn away and scoff as soon as they encounter "Oceans" and "navigable." We tend to look at our little creeks and sloughs and assume that they are insignificant little runts, compared with the beautiful Columbia, the magnificent Mackenzie, the crucial St. Lawrence, or even the smaller rivers that grace our prairie cities. And yet, when you think of it, our little creeks and sloughs are the only surface water we have. In our dryland climate, where the farmers say we are never more than two weeks away from a drought, these tiny ribbons and potholes of moisture are vital to nearly all our wildlife. Nevertheless, most of us seem to have dismissed them from our minds and from our attention ever since we finished being curious children, and as a result, they are profoundly misunderstood.

Last season, I discovered the lure of the creek crossings, something I had missed as a child growing up back in the hills. I began spending quite a bit of time down there with my kids. One day my daughter and I were enjoying the shallow spill of water over the concrete crossing, a mile east of the 604. There are culverts through the crossing, but when the water is high, the current is too much for them, and some of the water flows over top. We were standing at its edge, watching the froth and the reflections of the sunset, when a neighbour came along with her sandwich and beer for a picnic supper. She and I got chatting, while Ruth continued to watch the creek. Suddenly she squealed with alarm.

Something was writhing in the edge of the water. Ruth's gut reaction was that it was some kind of octopus, just in front of her toes (hence her shriek); but it turned out to be a bunch of suckers stranded in the rocks against the downstream side of the crossing, right next to the powerful outflow from one of the culverts. The neighbour reached into the foaming water and caught one to show us up close. She talked about how much fun it is to fish, and invited us to come along when the local chapter of the Wildlife Federation organized a trip to the reservoir on "free fishing day." Then to my amazement, she commented about the "stupid fish, trying to go upstream." She seemed to think that the good big water was downstream, so of course these big fish should be trying to get there.

I explained that the fish come upstream to spawn, way up into the Tecumseh pasture and beyond. The fry find plenty of food and shelter all along the shallows of the creek banks, and gradually work their way back down to the reservoir as the water drops later in the season. During the spawning run, when the adult fish coming upstream reach the crossing, their way is barred if the flow through the culverts is too strong to swim against, and the flow overtop is too swift and shallow.

Photo by Ruth, April 2005

The neighbour was intrigued, and we decided to help the fish she had caught, by releasing it on the upstream side. It darted off toward the depths, got caught in the vortex over the culvert intake, and went downstream. Stupid fish. Mind you, I imagine that if a fish caught me, held me underwater for a while and examined my form, and then released me on the opposite bank, I just might stumble back into the drink.

If you have read about our canoe adventures on the creek last season (see links above), or if you've spent any time studying the creek yourself, you'll know that there's more than suckers living in it. I still remember those quiet young pike, and the painted turtle hurtling away like a thrown discus. That little creek just down the road is important for fish and wildlife, which in turn are important for many people in this area. To my mind, the question is not whether the creek should be protected, but how.

Fisheries and Oceans might be the wrong department; perhaps they should focus on the big waters with commercial significance, and let the Environment Department take care of the watersheds that feed those big waters. That's okay with me as long as the different departments recognize and value their interdependence.

Perhaps both these departments are at the wrong level of government to be protecting our creek. Personally, I would really like to see our Rural Municipal Council take an active interest in managing and protecting our surface waters, rather than being in conflict with the environmental regulators. I think it could happen, but it would take initiative from local people, deciding to learn more, talk to their neighbours, look for new solutions, and work with other government bodies to get support and cooperation instead of resistance and top-down across-the-board rules.

This brings to mind an ironic case I saw, on an oil flowline project, where the planners made it a priority to choose the best site for a river crossing and thus avoid trouble with Fisheries and Oceans. As a result, they became inflexible about the rest of the project, and refused to consider changing the route to skirt a large tract of native prairie on the valley slopes above.

It's easy to talk about what would be the best way to organize our government responsibilities, but the reality is that they are shaped by a long history of incremental change. Government terms of office are usually too short to make big changes. There is a legitimate push to minimize new legislation by finding ways to adjust existing programs instead of adding new ones. Unfortunately the end result is a complex web of regulations and programs which may work fairly well, except that at face value they can appear absurd and inspire scornful hostility from the people they were originally intended to serve. Then elitism sets in, with those who understand the workings and the history becoming dismissive or adversarial towards those who just want to make things work here on the ground.

Water issues are confounded by the fact that water pays no heed to boundaries and property lines. In the U.S., the Supreme Court is considering the jurisdictional reach of the Clean Water Act. From the Environment News Service:

In October, the Supreme Court agreed to hear these two cases challenging the definition of federally protected waters. In both cases, the developers are arguing that they can pollute - even destroy - the waters at issue without a Clean Water Act permit. They argue that their right to pollute is protected by the U.S. Constitution.

[. . .]

Protection of tributaries was fundamental federal law long before the 1972 Clean Water Act, dating back at least to the 1899 Refuse Act, which barred discharge “into any navigable water of the United States, or into any tributary of any navigable water from which the same shall float or be washed into such navigable water.”

"Navigable waters" is an old, old phrase. It has a long and wide history of use as an organizing concept, to decide which waters are significant beyond the property within which they lie. We need concepts like that as baselines, as starting points for common understanding. We also need willingness and initiative to go beyond the baselines to protect the landscapes and living things that we hold dear.

Sadly, right now it seems that we don't even recognize the treasure winding through the pastures and fields just outside of town.