Ready or Not

Use the front door these days, folks.

Sibling Friendliness: Only If You're a Plant

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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...

...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

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

More Mandalas

Warning: these can be very absorbing. There's something about those spirals and concentric rings, drawing you in . . .

Mandala Drawing/Painting/Collage Tools:
"Mandala" at www.freegames.hu
Kaleidoscope Painter at www.permadi.com
"Mandala Maker" at GirlsGoTech.org
UPDATE: Tutorial for making mandalas from digital photos, at Earth Mandalas

And for wandering widely across the threads of the web:
Mandala Links at Zodiac Arts

Mandalas

I remember a colouring book full of circular designs. When we ran out of pages to colour, we drew our own mandalas. I seem to recall drawing mandalas for some years afterwards.

More recently I heard about Tibetan monks visiting Regina and making a sand mandala at the library. It remained on display for a short while, and then all the coloured sands were swept together and the monks moved on.

I didn't go to see it.

It seemed as if mandalas were just a colourful moment in my memory, until Deb's dream sent me looking for a website to link as an explanation for my comment at her site.

And then I realized that I have built a mandala in my backyard.

And there are mandalas everywhere.

What's a Bonspiel?

I've been thinking it's time for a curling update, and Tim's question in the comments confirmed that. Bonspiel: a curling tournament. Tim made some shrewd guesses:

• A good time? Definitely.
• A good spin? As long as you put the correct turn on the rock as you release it.
• Perchance does it involve a lot of alcool? Frequently. This may interfere with correct turns on rocks.
  

I have heard that "bonspiel" is German for "good game," which is the phrase we curlers always say to one another as we shake hands with the opposing team before and after each game.

This year we have a three-generation family team in the mixed league here in town. The third-generation player is usually James, but sometimes Ruth takes a turn if she's not doing homework or babysitting. We also played in the Boxing Day Fun-spiel, and made it into the B final.

Recent curling news: just over a week ago, in our regular Tuesday night game, Dad (the skip) told me (the third) what shot he wanted, and then took off down the ice at a jog. About halfway down he was suddenly over backwards. I saw his head rebound about five or six inches off the ice surface, and the bang was so loud it brought all the curlers from all three sheets hurrying over and crowding around him. Jason was close, and steadied him as he tried to get up, then eased back down again, with several curlers' gloves quickly tossed onto the ice to cushion his head. In a few seconds he did get up, with helping arms all around. Jason, kneeling in front of him, held up a wide-spread hand and said, "How many fingers?"

Dad paused, grinned, and said firmly, "Four!"

"Well that's normal!" Jason grinned back, as relieved laughter rippled around.

We think the gripper must have come off his sliding shoe, giving him a banana-peel landing for his next jogging step. After retrieving the treacherous gripper, Dad went more slowly the rest of the way down to the hack, and I went back to the rings and tried to remember where he wanted the broom. He missed it badly anyway. His final shot for that end was better, but in the next end he confessed he was feeling woozy and had better go home. He had quite a headache for a couple of days, but the HealthLine nurse gave Mom lots of symptoms to watch for and nothing else appeared.

This Wednesday we were curling again, and we got clobbered. Dad joked that he has a good excuse now, but I think the rest of us needed excuses more than he did. Whenever the other team had last rock, they got three points; whenever we had last rock, we got one. In other words, we were generally outshot, but Dad kept salvaging ends by drawing to the button.

(If all this sounds like I'm mixing in snatches of some other language, you might want to watch the Canadian Curling Association's Flash animation about the sport of curling.)

One more thing: watching curling in Arcola just got better. There are cameras and monitors installed now so that you can sit in the lobby and have a top-down view of the rings at the far end of the ice. Come on out and have a look - maybe watch part of the Ladies' Bonspiel this weekend.

Some people figure that curling must be boring to watch, since there are so few spectators at the games, but I have a different theory: most people who come and watch are soon out on the ice themselves!

We Have a Blizzard

This fanciful image appeared in the Environment Canada weather forecast summary this evening, to symbolize a blizzard. To me it suggests something more like pixie dust. Anyway, the forecast is for a low of -25ºC with winds of 40 km/h gusting to 60, producing a windchill of -35ºC. We're not quite there yet. Tomorrow is supposed to be even colder, but the snow is ending sometime overnight, and that will end the blizzard. There is actually very little snow with this system - a "dusting," they said in the blizzard warning - but it's certainly blowing around. If there was more snowfall, it might not be so cold. This is one of those unusual bits of weather when it's cold but not calm, snowing but not warm. (Well, warm is a relative term, don't you know?)

Garth expected to be on the road tonight, but his meeting was cancelled, so I trust that he is safe in Moosomin where he has been working this week. His brother Brian, on the other hand, drove to Weyburn for a bonspiel.

******

UPDATE - well, that was brief; right after I posted this, I looked again at the forecast and the blizzard warning was ended. I guess we didn't get the four hours of sustained low visibility and cold windchill required to make it an official blizzard.

"Mountain Hills to Prairie Flats"

...is the subtitle of the history book for our area: Arcola/Kisbey Golden Heritage. I know, some folks don't think they even count as hills, let alone "mountain hills," but it all depends on your point of view.

Check out the pictures on the website. Even if you're not planning on submitting an item, take a look at the submission guidelines page. If I'm not mistaken, that picture was taken a couple of years ago, around the same time that I was running from door to door telling people to look out at the sky. Ever heard of a zenith arc?

How Many Rock Pigeons on the Who-oops Saloon?

Coming soon: the Great Backyard Bird Count!

I've been idly wondering about taking part in a bird count for years, but only idly. I got almost serious about it when my work assignments had me learning bird calls and identifying the birds in an area by sound (as part of pre-development site assessments). The famous "Breeding Bird Survey," or BBS, is done by sound, and I dreamed that I might be getting good enough to volunteer, but never got up the nerve to put my skills to the test.

A Christmas Bird Count would be a much easier place to start, but somehow Christmas always seemed too busy already.

Now thanks to Clare, I've just learned about the perfect beginner bird count. It takes place February 16th to 19th, and you can do your count anywhere, for as little as 15 minutes, as long as it falls within those four days. All you do is count the maximum number of birds of each species that you see while you watch in one location. You report your counts online, and there are instructions and tips to get you started. If you really get into it, you don't have to stop on the 19th after all; you can report observations to eBird all year long. (Click here for eBird Canada.)

Don't know many birds? Well, in February in Saskatchewan, you don't need to know many! I got browsing through the eBird data and came up with a listing of 27 bird species that have been reported for Saskatchewan, in the Prairie Pothole Region, within the month of February. (Choose "All birds at a location," and then "Within Bird Conservation Regions that I choose in this state or province," then make your selections. Once you get a list, click on a month title to limit the list to species seen in that month.) Many of those species you might already know, and the rest you can check in a bird guide. (There are many well-known guides to North American birds, but Saskatchewan Birds is an excellent guide that won't drown you in information about birds never seen north of Texas.) For those of you in warmer climes, all I can say is "good luck"!

If you'd rather click than walk to a bookshelf or a bookstore, try the Cornell Online Bird Guide.

Uh-oh. I feel an idea coming on. Maybe I could volunteer to do a presentation at the school, to let kids know about this Great Backyard Bird Count and get them ready to take part. Most of the older kids will be off on a ski trip on the 16th, and school is closed for the week of the 19th, so a school outing to do the actual counts is probably out. But if they could go home and get their parents interested, so much the better.

Dear God, This Is Adam

© Laura Herman 2002

Dear God,
This is Adam.
Have you noticed us lately, six billion strong?
O God, hear your Adam.
We've been toiling, and toiling, and it's coming along.
You told us to fill all the earth, and subdue it.
When you gave that command, did you think we'd pursue it?
Did you ever imagine that we just might do it?
Are you proud of us now?
O God, are you proud of us now?

Dear God,
This is Adam.
Well, it's one of the voices that fill Adam's head.
O God, hear your Adam.
Can you hear this small voice, with so much being said?
We've got most of the planet pressed into service,
As donkeys with burdens of fuel for the worship
Ascend to the altar, not knowing the purpose.
Are you sure of us now?
O God, are you sure of us now?

O, Dear God,
This is Adam.
Well, a small part of Adam that keeps looking back.
O God, hear your Adam.
Are we fit for your kingdom, trailing the pack?
But God, look at your biosphere, stretched on the altar,
All the wonder of life, the hope of the future,
Lying quiet like Isaac, bound by his father.
Are you watching us now?
O, Dear God, are you watching us now?

Where is the ram?
Our knife is falling!
Surely, God, surely
there is a ram?

Best Snowmobile Rally Yet

Prairie Place Hall was packed when I left around 4 p.m. More tables were being squeezed in for riders coming in off the trail. I heard that there were 500 riders registered - the largest turnout yet. Grace told me the snow was good and deep, even out on the fields where some has blown off, and the sloughs have nice deep powder. All in all, the Arcola Optimists' Snowmobile Rally looked like a great success compared to last year.

I was at the hall to clear tables on behalf of the Girl Guides (since my daughter is a Pathfinder). We parents donate our time clearing tables, and the Girl Guide organization gets bags and bags of empty beer cans to turn in for the refund money. It's their biggest fundraiser, and it also looks good for the Girl Guides to be doing a recycling project.

But for me, it always rankles a bit. This time I was determined to enjoy it as best I could, so I looked for familiar faces and went visiting in between my rounds of the tables. Having some fun helped me ignore the loud music and the great show of consumption in all those shiny helmets on the tables and gaudy single-purpose jackets draped on the chairs.

When I got home though, I went looking for information about snowmobile fuel consumption. I learned something: those figures are hard to find. Of the four major manufacturers, only one bothered to back up their claims of "solid" or "excellent" fuel economy with an actual figure. Bombardier (Ski-Doo), headquartered in Canada, offered a comparison chart showing its 600 cc class engines (the smallest engines offered) on par with a Yamaha model at about 22 or 23 mpg, while Arctic Cat and Polaris models in the same class trailed behind at 18 mpg or less. Of course, for the larger engines, there were no numbers given, just claims of "outstanding" or "incredible" fuel economy. The general silence is not surprising, I suppose; when your smallest, newest, most fuel-efficient snow machine carries a single rider less than half as many miles per gallon as our ten-year-old four-passenger car, you don't have much to brag about.

Now for some rough estimates. Five hundred riders - I wonder if that means 500 sleds, or were some people riding double? Sixty-eight miles of trail - did they all do the full 68 miles, or were there shorter loops as options? Well, I'll be friendly and assume that 400 sleds travelled an average of 50 miles each. That's - gulp - 20,000 sled miles. Even with a ridiculously friendly estimate of 20 miles per gallon on average, that's 1000 gallons of gas. And then there's all the fuel used hauling those sleds and riders into Arcola from far and wide.

Well, if they're buying some of that gas at the Co-op, it means membership dividend money in my own pocket. The event brings in funds for the hall, and the local grocery stores get to supply food for it, and I suppose business picks up around town over the weekend. Do I dare complain?

On the other hand, isn't it a bit ironic that the Arcola Girl Guides pride themselves on the environmental benefits of their recycling program, when this gas-guzzling event is such a big part of it?

I wonder. Could we take all the effort that goes into this event, and spread it over the year, providing small entertainment events to help keep Arcola residents here in town, weekend after weekend? As it is, dozens of people go off to the cities for entertainment every weekend, and do their shopping while they're there. Then our service clubs and businesses get together and try to draw a big crowd out here for one weekend to compensate. Is this the best we can do for our town, and for our world?

Solving the World's Problems

James and I have been spending one half day a week with my parents, learning from their life experience. The first week, we looked at slides from their trip to Mexico, where they had visited Mayan ruins and floated down an underground river through the limestone landscape. Then Dad took James out to the workshop to examine a removable stair railing that Dad was designing for the curling rink. There was a problem with the initial design, and James came up with a solution. Last week Dad brought his transit to town and helped James measure angles from our house to trees and other sun obstacles around the yard, so that we can estimate how much solar gain we would get from a greenhouse addition.

Today we had a lengthy discussion about energy in our lives: food energy and where it comes from; electricity and the whole chain back through coal and plants to the sun again; kinetic and potential energy and how the water gets up there behind the hydroelectric dams; heat energy and all the different ways it moves; renewable and non-renewable energy sources, and the way that distinction blurs when you consider different time scales and rates of use. James and Dad toured around my parents' house and examined the many different energy sources and forms in play there (active and passive solar, wood stove, propane backup heater, and the recently added ground-source heat pump - just to name a few) while Mom and I sat reading MacLean's and Jared Diamond's Collapse, respectively. Not surprisingly, when James and Dad returned from their explorations, we got talking about solving the world's problems.

We got wondering about the lack of individual action, and speculated that many people just don't want to face the realities. Why?

• They are afraid that the world situation is terrible, and rather than face that fear, they just turn their attention somewhere else.
• They don't want to know how much their own lifestyle would have to change to make a difference.
• They are afraid that changing their own lifestyle would have little or no influence on others and on the overall picture, so rather than risking that disappointment, they just carry on as they are.

Some of these were hitting close to home; "they" was turning into "we." Mom thinks their house is too big; Dad notes that Mom doesn't want to leave part of it unheated. We got talking about how easily they could do that, and how easily I could save more energy around our own house here without going into the whole greenhouse renovation project.

Then we took in some food energy together, and James and I drove the four-wheel-drive pickup back to town.

*****

Later I got to thinking that all three of the above probably apply to me to some extent, and maybe there are some other categories that fit me too.

• I am afraid that political action can do very little unless the public support is there (at which point individual action should suffice), and rather than risking that disappointment, I retreat to my own little lifestyle improvements.
• I am afraid that calling for change would bring criticism of my own imperfect life, so I keep quiet.

Now the lights are burning and the computer is churning late into the night. If only I could offset that energy use by capturing some of the wind energy that's making things rattle. Come to think of it, what is that creaking sound - so familiar that it's beneath my usual notice - and is there heat energy flowing out where the sound is coming in?

My Clicking Grounds

How do you like this blog:

• earthy?
• watery?
• fiery?

I hope you don't mind when it gets a little airy.
I used to try to post at least once every couple of days. I enjoyed the reward of clicking onto someone's blog and finding a new post, maybe not every time, but often, and I tried to offer that same satisfaction to others.

All that changed when I started subscribing to blog feeds. Now I just click onto Google Reader, and I know right away which blogs have new morsels for me. I can have my reward right away, or save it for later. No more hours of hungry clicking and gnawing on old bones.

Google Reader has taken most of the compulsion out of my blog reading. That's a good change. There are some costs, though.

I don't follow comments as much now. A few blogs have comment feeds enabled, and if there is a particularly provocative post I will subscribe to its comment feed and follow that for awhile. Mostly, though, I rely on my memory of promising spots to return to in my clicking grounds. Sometimes I have a vague suspicion that I asked a question somewhere, but I can't remember where it was, and I just don't take (or have) the time to click around and sniff out my buried bones to chew.

A curious thing: now that I know whether posts are waiting, I quite often leave them for later, and later, and still later. My former clicking habit would have brought me around to those same posts much sooner.

On the other hand, I pounce on new posts from the less active blogs. I used to get impatient with blogs that rarely rewarded my click. Now there is just pure delight and anticipation when those infrequent posts appear in my reader.

All this means that I can be more honest with myself about which blogs I really enjoy. I enjoy them for the content, not for the click rewards. That sounds like a good thing, but at the same time, am I becoming even more selective? How often do I read outside my comfort zone? How often do I even read the news? (I could subscribe to some news feeds, but they clutter up the reader too much.)

Google Reader has affected not only my reading, but also my own writing. I confess, now that frequent posting is no longer important to me in others' blogs, I am less inclined to strive for it in my own. (If you're not using blog feeds, sorry about that.) What's more, it seems that part of my inspiration arose from the time spent idly clicking through blogs. Seeing the same old post titles over again, interspersed with new posts, and enlivened by comment threads, somehow stirred up new ideas for me. Perhaps it jogged memories of dishpan musings.

Lately the kids have been doing more dishpan musing than I have. Perhaps it's not all the fault of Google Reader, after all!

Overall, is Google Reader a good thing? Well, it has probably cut my computer time by three quarters, and brought my life into better balance. Now I have the time and the attentiveness to get the kids doing dishes! No, wait, that was the four-place-setting effect.

Do I need to get out more?

Inspiration

Something sparked, and a little circuit of memory flashed, and I went looking for a comment from Wayne that I had never followed up. My first hunch was right - it was attached to my introductory post for an ambitious series: "Chained to a Tree: the Powerless Environmentalist." I have yet to deliver a single installment. I have bundles of ideas, a few notes, and a draft of the first post, but I think the scale of the thing has overwhelmed my ambition.

That's okay. Perhaps someday it will come to flower. In the meantime, there's Wayne's link to a post by Phila at Bouphonia: "That Which Surrounds Us." I'm glad I remembered to look for it.

Just Air

I'm no expert in the kitchen, but as I've spent more time there, learning by doing, reading, or phoning Mom, I've realized that my skills are greater than I thought. While Mom was feeding and calving out cows, melting snow for wash water, helping put up hay and build a house, and shooing the three of us kids outside, she still managed to teach me some fundamentals.

One of these is the power of air.

There are very few cleaning products in my kitchen. Strictly for cleaning, there are just two: dish detergent and hand soap. For both cooking and cleaning, of course, there's baking soda and there's vinegar. I don't use anything labelled "anti-bacterial" or "kills 99% of household germs." For disinfection, I rely on a few simple habits and the power of air.

Bacteria and other maligned and mistrusted microbes are living things. They need food, and they need water. Take away one of these needful things, and they won't grow.

Simple washing takes care of the bulk of it, by removing most of the material that could be food for microbes, and sending many of the microbes themselves down the drain at the same time. Still, there are undoubtedly a few microbes left clinging to dish and sink and counter surfaces, no matter how clean those surfaces look.

It only takes one bacterium, lingering on a surface when the next round of food arrives, to grow and multiply into a problem. It might be a smelly problem, or it might be an invisible, scentless, tasteless, toxic problem. How do I dare live without powerful disinfectants?

I don't. There is a very powerful disinfectant all through my kitchen, all the time: air.

All I need to do is make sure it has a chance to work.

When I wash dishes, I set them in a rack to dry, and make sure they are not nested closely or holding any puddles. When I put them away, I check to be sure they really are dry - no films of water get trapped in the stack of plates.

When I store jars and water bottles, I leave the lids loose. If you tighten them, you may trap just enough moisture in there to keep some microbes alive, and when you open the lid weeks or months later, there will be an odor. (I'm lucky to live in a dry climate - I don't know if this trick would work where it's humid.)

I launder the dishcloths often, but if I'm going to reuse one before laundering it, I rinse it (to take away the microbes' food) and spread it out over the faucet so it will dry quickly. Watching how others treat the dishcloth made me recognize my own habit of pursuing dryness. Sometimes they would leave it in a damp mound in the bottom of the sink; once someone hung it with its edge trailing in dishwater left to soak! Didn't they know it would never dry out that way? Did they even know the reason for letting it dry?

My mom got us through years with no running water and no refrigerator, with never a single case of food poisoning. She was careful with leftovers, holding them in a somewhat cooler spot in the house or sometimes in a pail dug into the ground outside and covered with an insulated lid, and using them up quickly. She did her canning in a pressure cooker, following instructions to the letter, and never used any canned food that seemed even slightly off. But there were subtle things she did, too. Without even realizing it, I picked up her habits of keeping things reasonably clean and getting them thoroughly dry between uses.

I can never remember how to make a white sauce, though she recited the three ingredients to me often, but that's okay, it's in the book she gave me for our wedding. What's more important is the stuff I didn't even know she was teaching me, the stuff I will never forget.

Taking a Lower Profile

Tim's discussion of unthinkable thoughts stirred up my courage to post the unpostable.

My unpostable, unspeakable, unthinkable thought for the week: going bra free.

Tell me: has anyone ever dared to whisper to you in a dark closet, that bra wearers have an increased incidence of breast cancer? That in cultures where bras are not worn, women have the same rates of breast cancer as men?

I did not know this.

In fact, I discovered it just the other day, when I came home miserable from a demeaning encounter with a doctor, and decided to find out some facts for myself.

Tell me something more, ladies: when you think about keeping your breasts healthy, what comes to mind? BSE? (No, I'm not talking about mad cows - say, have you heard the one about why they called it PMS? Never mind...) No, really, what comes to mind? Do you even think about breast health, or do you frame it more like "avoiding breast cancer" and "avoiding sagging"? Do you shy away from even thinking about your breasts? Do you dutifully do your round of BSE when you think of it, anxiously searching those scary chest appendages for the dreaded lurking lumps, hoping to achieve the ultimate in breast care: "early detection"?

This week I noticed that one of my breasts had sprouted a double chin. My native intelligence said, "I've gained some weight, and the extra tissue was looking for a place to go, found a gap under the bra band, and made a break for it." My learned fear said, "Go to the doctor. If you see any changes in your breasts, go to the doctor. Oh no, oh no, oh no..."

That day I made an appointment - for the cat to get his annual vaccinations.

The next day, after asking spouse and mother for opinions, and for news of what sort of doctor might be waiting behind the office door in Arcola these days, and after much imagined dialogue and much foot dragging, I made an appointment for myself.

The imagined dialogue continued off and on through the next few days. There were dreams of the cat looking like he had been through chemo, and of myself being pinned against a wall by some sort of farm equipment, right at chest level.

On a good day, the waiting room has only two or three people in it, but there were already a few more than that when I arrived. By the time I was called in, the place was full, and the working men who had come in after me for end-of-the-day appointments were saying they should have brought lunches.

I sat for a while in the narrow examining room, looking around at posters of inner workings. Earlier in the week, I had imagined a flippant little speech about the double chin, but today I felt like just saying it as plain as I could.

The door behind me opened. "How are you, Laura?" said the stranger.

"Fine, how are you?" said I.

"If you're fine, why are you here?" If there was a smile or a twinkling eye with that, I missed it.

So I told him, and he frowned and questioned my terminology and asked, "Do you want to show me what you're describing?"

If I'd answered that one literally, I'd have walked out.

He did the examination, told me it was nothing to worry about, and gave me a little lecture about how a tight-fitting piece of clothing can leave a line in the flesh under it. (No, really? Okay, Doc, I get it. Sorry I didn't use just the right words when I told you I suspected exactly that.) Not a typical breast mass, he said, but for my peace of mind, he would request an ultrasound.

And off he went, leaving me sitting there with my bra unhooked and crumpled under my sweater, and the examining room door open.

If you're thinking that all of this is shockingly personal revelation, perhaps this will put it in perspective. On my way out of the office, I checked with the receptionist about the ultrasound appointment - she's also the church secretary, and we often chat on the phone about details for the church bulletin. When I phoned back to the office later, the other receptionist gave me the appointment details - the one who sometimes gives James a ride to Scout meetings.

Don't get me wrong - I trust that these women keep confidences appropriately. In a small town, most people are really quite careful about privacy. But there are definite limits to the privacy here, and you get used to it. It won't bother me if I get some intense looks when people ask, "How are you, Laura?"

Fine. Really.

My breast seems to be recovering nicely on its own.

But for your peace of mind, I will go to Regina for the ultrasound - and to shop for some camisoles and sturdy sweaters and shirts with big patch pockets on the front. I may be bra free, but I'm not culture free. "Nobody wants to know that you're cold, dear" rings in my ears.

And if I get some intense chest-level looks from folks on the street, I'll just smile.

---

• History of the Research on Bras and Breast Disease
• The Self Study Center (from Singer and Grismaijer, who did the major study reported in their book, Dressed to Kill) - lots of links
• Bras and Breast Cancer (a quick overview of Singer and Grismaijer's findings)
• Aren't bras GOOD for my breasts?
• Self Care for Your Breasts (massage: instead of searching for illness, how about nurturing health?)

How to Get the Dishes Done

Remember the Voyage of the Dawn Treader, and the Monopods? Remember how they did the dishes?

Sadly, our dish-washing system has often resembled that of the Monopods: wash the dishes before dinner, to save time afterwards. Actually we tended to wash them before dinner because of all the time we had already saved after lunch, breakfast, and yesterday's dinner by just piling dishes on the counter, until there were no clean dishes left.

We adults also saved time (and peace and quiet) by just washing the dishes ourselves instead of arguing with children about the importance of the task. But like the old line my Dad used to sing in auction-sale season - "We'll save a lot of money saving money we ain't got" - we just couldn't seem to save enough time for the work by working. So, time after time, the dishes piled up until they spilled over into other parts of our lives. Then something after dinner would get cancelled and the counter would get cleared off - for an evening.

This Christmas we finally stumbled on the simple, elegant solution. It arrived in the form of a four-place setting of simple, elegant (to my eyes) Corelle Sandstone dishes. I found the set in the Sears Bargain Centre, missing one dinner plate, and thought I'd give it to a relative who didn't have enough dishes for serving meals to guests. Then I took a peek inside the box and coveted those dishes for myself.

So I bought the four-place setting (rounded out with a replacement plate from open stock), brought it home, set the plates and cups out on the table and admired them . . . and gave away our twelve-place setting of white-with-blue-clip-art Corelle instead. It's a bit chipped and stained from fifteen or so years of daily use, but the gift was graciously received. Meanwhile, back at our house, the miracle appeared: a clean counter.

Twice a day.

I was planning to buy a couple more sets of Sandstone, to get life back to twelve-of-everything normal, but life-with-only-four is much better than normal. Maybe we'll even start getting out the real china (found at a garage sale before we were married) if we have to set the table for more than four. Or we could always borrow our old Corelle back for parties . . .

Should I Go?

Homes on the Range: Conservation in Working Prairie Landscapes
is the theme of the 8th Prairie Conservation and Endangered Species Conference and Workshop. This event is held only every third year, and the location roams around the prairies, so this is the first time since 1989 that it has been held in Regina. The theme sounds great - I've been suggesting something along those lines for our Native Plant Society of Saskatchewan workshop for years - and it's only two hours' drive away, but hang it all, now that it's here, I just don't want to go. I get sort of drawn in looking at the program, but at the same time part of me starts gagging on all the big stuffy words. Oh, I understand them all right, but I can feel that stale conference air already, and smell the exhaust in the parking lot, and I just can't shake the feeling that I've got enough in my head already, and better things to do.

Or not do.

Flora of Saskatchewan Project

... has a new home on the Web. There you can download Vern Harms' Annotated Catalogue of Saskatchewan Vascular Plants, check on the status of the project, or sign up to help.

Toughness

We start homeschooling with James on Monday.

I've been putting off getting organized for that by trying to organize my entire life, or at least the tottering piles of boxes in the bedroom. Thus I've been encountering all the debris of unfinished business and unmade decisions and unmanageable aspirations.

Meanwhile my head is ringing with echoes of dissonant holiday conversations. Thanks for all the advice, folks. Why didn't you offer it a month or a year ago, when I could have made use of it?

Every once in a while I think about blogging, and the only topic that really entices me is some variation on "Going Offline." "How to Quit Blogging." (Just do it.) That or a post about "Ice as Geography," but that's just another reaction to Kate. Too much reacting, not enough knowing where I'm going and walking on by.

All this has got me thinking about toughness. I need some.

What is emotional toughness?

Where does it come from? Do I need to get out there and collect scars? Is it something I can cultivate? Or is it something you have to get before you turn six? Or are some lucky folks born with it?

And if I can cultivate it, then there's the big question.

Can I get tough without getting mean?

January 2nd? Oh, yeah, now I remember. I guess I'm too late for any resolutions.

Oh well.

I cleaned off my dresser, though! Aren't you proud of me?

Now I have the stuff spread all over the bed.

Umm, gotta go . . .