Mirror mirror on the wall...

At 4.30am today I was staring in the mirror trying to decide what to do. The mirror was not being helpful. I hate that. Going back to bed didn't seem like an option, it was hot and still and my pillow felt like a pincushion full of hot needles. So I tried the coffee and toast option, maybe I could just start the day a little early.

Coffee was nice but the pincushion effect was still there, even without the pillow. I won't even tell you what the mirror made me look like. Reluctantly I called the 811 public health nurse, which is really really not a useful thing to do, they only have one thing to say. Go to Emergency.

I am sure the government could save a lot of money replacing those live nurses who answer the phone with a simple recorded message (Go To Emergency), and then after a while people would stop calling and they could dispense with the phone line altogether.

Not only did she tell me to go to Emerge, she also said Do not eat (I had just made a bowl of strawberries and cereal) and Do not drive.

She asked, Is there anyone who can drive you? Anyone you can call?

I said, At 6.00am on a Saturday morning?

So $20 for a taxi to the hospital. At least, I thought, I'd be there early and beat the rush.

Silly me.

Wouldn't you know it the ambulances were very busy today, there was a nonstop stream of them all night and all morning, and ambulances ALWAYS have priority over walk-ins. The waiting room was relatively empty at 7.00am, but that meant nothing. And it was freezing! They had the air-conditioning cranked up something fierce. One of the nurses later told me that they are so busy they hardly notice, it's we folk sitting for hours on end in the waiting room that get to take notice. Thinking that it was going to be a hot day I didn't bother with a jacket, and so apparently did every other person in that waiting room.

Several of us chatted to while away the time and not wallow in our various pains. The woman next to me started by apologizing for being so grumpy, she was normally a very patient person. She had set out in the wee hours of the morning from her home town halfway down the Valley and arrived to the nearest hospital only to find the Emergency shut down. So she continued on up the Valley to the next hospital and arrived here at 4.00am. She thought that at least she'd be in and out at that hour. Hah. She had found a position she could sit in that was not too painful but daren't move from it. She had had surgery and was quite certain her incision was infected, and had been for quite a while. At her followup with the surgeon he said, Give it a bit more time. Last night was the last straw for her.

The next lady was in for a bee sting, a couple of days old and swelling steadily. She also had decided that she couldn't give it any more time. Another woman never spoke at all, we think she had some kind of migraine or such, she looked pretty terrible. As the morning progressed we watched the new people arrive, speculating on their triage position. It isn't in order of arrival, it's in order of how bad off you are, so the fact that you've been there since 4.00am means nothing if they think you're not as bad off as the little old guy clutching his chest at 9.30am.

I said to the lady with the incision, Couldn't you just tell them it is chest pain? I mean it was, kind of.

The waiting room filled up. The most crowded part was the waiting area for the Triage Nurse, they just kept coming and coming. We scrutinized everyone passing through that door to determine if they were better or worse off than we were.

At one point we were watching the little old guy tottering out of the car that was dropping him off, and the incision lady muttered, Please don't let him clutch his chest, please!

Then the little kids and their parents started arriving. One kid ran around until he found a light switch and started flashing the overhead lights. I wished he would find the thermostat and play with that. The nurse gave the incision lady a blanket because she was freezing and the bee sting lady a cushion and an icepack for her stung foot. She told us that there was a Non-Emergency Emergency Room, but it wouldn't open until 11.00am. So those of us who were low priority (basically all of us) might get some attention once they opened that.

I debated whether to just go home. I checked bus schedules and the local health clinic hours as an alternative to Emergency. My local health clinic is closed on Saturday (today) but open on Sunday; if I thought I could make it through one more night I might not feel quite so frustrated there. But the nurse pointed out that the clinic was closed on Saturdays and holidays, and Sunday being July 1st may or may not be considered a holiday. She said that the federal government considered Monday July 2nd as the official holiday, but whether the clinic agreed was anyone's guess. I might not get into the clinic till Tuesday, and did I really want to take that chance? Sigh...

I went around to the main door of the hospital looking for the cafeteria to buy something to eat: being cold and sick and hungry too was just over the top. Outdoors was pleasantly warm at 9.30am. I got a sticky sweet muffin and enough change in case I needed it for the bus.

At 10.20 the bus I might have taken home came and went, I stayed put. Good thing, for not 10 minutes later incision lady and I got called into the Non-Emergency Emergency Room, the first two in line for non-emergency emergency service. Yay! By 11.00am we had both been seen by the doc, she was given a bunch of antibiotics to take home with her and I was instructed to stay for an IV antibiotic. Another hour in the waiting room but at least I felt like I was doing something.

Nurse had a bit of a time inserting the IV needle, on the third try she threatened me, This is the last time.

She got it in and grinned, Apparently threats work with you.

I told her that come to think of it, the last time I had an IV the doc threatened me and it worked then too.

She said, You should have told me, I would have threatened you sooner!

Afterward she left the IV needle in my arm and wrapped it up in lots of gauze. I told her my dog was going to jump all over me when I got home so it needed to be really secure.

Anyway, what I have is periorbital cellulitis, and I have to go back two more times for IV antibiotics. The doc thinks it may have been caused by a mosquito bite on my temple.

My neighbour kindly came to pick me up at 12.30pm and offered to drive me back tomorrow since the injection is scheduled for 11.00am (when Non-Emergency Emergency reopens). Depending on how I feel tomorrow, I may just drive myself.

I don't know what happened to the bee sting lady, I hope she was well out of there before I was. A little girl with an earache was not so lucky, just as her turn to see the doc came up he got called away to an ambulance patient. She was still sitting in her Daddy's lap with tears streaming down her face when I left. Sometimes triage sucks.

My Kindle and Active Hope

I have started loading books on my Kindle and attempting to read them. I have to say that the experience of reading a book on a Kindle is not the same---for me---as reading a paper book. I am trying to figure out why that is.

One thing is the background colour of the page: it's an off-white colour, a kind of grey. That does not seem to be modifiable. I did modify the text to a sans serif which so far is a bit of an improvement, but the greyness of the page gets to me, it's depressing.

Another thing is that I find reading on a Kindle limiting. I am the kind of person who just cannot read in a linear manner from start to finish. I always read the end of a mystery before the middle. Likewise for most books, fiction or otherwise. I like to skim. With nonfiction I like scanning the subheadings and illustrations in as I go along, I jump around. The Kindle is just not set up for that kind of reading, it is best suited for linear reading. I chafe at that.

Nevertheless I am really trying to get over it, I really am. I have put a few things on my Kindle that I really want to read, and am hoping that the enjoyment of those books will overcome my objections. I do see the advantages of a Kindle, particularly for travelling or for sitting in wait rooms. So I recently bought a couple of Kindle books that I want to read and cannot get through the library, or at least not in a timely manner, nor find cheap used copies on Amazon or elsewhere.

The first is Active Hope: How to Face the Mess We're In Without Going Crazy, by Joanna Macy and Chris Johnstone (2012). I don't know much about Johnstone, but Macy is a longtime engaged Buddhist and activist that I admire. I have read a couple of books by her, including an autobiography and The Work that Reconnects. She deals with the depression and despair that many environmental and social justice activists feel over their apparent lack of success. Active Hope addresses these concerns. I am only a chapter or two into the book, and the Kindle does not really allow me to scan ahead, so the impressions I describe here are limited to what I have read so far.

We see the world today through lenses that are in part of our own invention and in part provided to us by our society and culture. We are so used to these lenses we do not even see them as such, we think we are seeing reality in the raw, the world as it "really" is. Macy and Johnstone say that there are three major prevalent stories that provide the lenses most of us are familiar with.

The first story is Business As Usual, that our society is on the right track and we can continue with business as usual. Most of our media provide and reinforce this story, most of our daily lives are based on the assumption that this story is reality. Our culture is inherently stable and good, there may be a few perturbances but nothing our politicians, economists and other experts can't handle. And while the experts deal with the big problems, we deal with the small ones, getting and keeping jobs, raising kids, maintaining a home, friends and community.

The second story is The Great Unraveling. Our economy is at risk, our politics are deteriorating, our environment is being degraded and destroyed, our climate is on track for major disaster, social justice atrocities abound, our access to cheap energy is disappearing, ...I am sure you can add to the list, you don't need me to provide the details. In short, we are doomed.

This story is also promoted in the media, although more so in the alternative media than in the mainstream. For those who are sounding the alarm on these issues, and/or attempting to fight them, despair and cynicism about our future is rampant. For many of us, this story is too grim to contemplate personally, so we resort to distraction or attempt to focus on the small delights of daily life as the only defense against this rather overwhelming general nastiness.

The third story gets little coverage in the media, it is not particularly newsworthy, it is so big that it is hard to get a good viewpoint on it. This story is what Macy and Johnstone refer to as The Great Turning.

As a species we have gone through a few major cultural shifts---revolutions as it were---and we are going through one now. The Agricultural and Industrial Revolutions are examples of previous shifts. The current shift might be called the Ecological Revolution, or perhaps the Sustainability Revolution. It is the transition from a doomed economy to a life-sustaining society. In its early stages, such a major transition appears to exist only on the fringes, but as it develops it spreads and becomes the new mainstream. We are on the cusp of something we have never seen before, a way for all of us to occupy this planet in peace and security, while preserving our natural world and promoting the highest social and spiritual values.

This third story sounds a bit airy-fairyish, but Macy and Johnstone provide evidence and arguments to support it as a valid view of reality. They suggest reading Blessed Unrest by Paul Hawken as further support for this story.

Many people are already involved in this third story, you may be yourself. Macy and Johnstone list three major ways that people are involved or could become involved. They seem to have an affinity for things in threes. Possibly because it is the first number after two, which is the number of duality, either-or, black-and-white. The world may be considerably more complicated than either-or. Anyway, the three major ways they describe are Holding Actions, Life-sustaining Systems and Practices, and Shift in Consciousness.

Holding Actions aim to hold back and slow down the damage caused by Business as Usual. Protest movements, raising awareness of social injustice and environmental damage, caring for the victims and vulnerable, safeguarding communities against exploitation and war; these are the nature of holding actions. Saving the bits of society and culture worth hanging onto, saving as much of our beleaguered natural environment as we can. These actions are taking place at every level, from local actions against fracking, mountain-leveling, and protesting the closure of a local school, to international movements to curtail whaling or the building of bitumen pipelines or going after multinational corporations for environmental damages or corrupt practices harming vulnerable people. These are essential actions but they are not enough.

Life-sustaining Systems and Practices are the concrete building blocks of an alternative way of life. Many people, including entrepreneurs, corporations and even financial institutions, are working at creating positive alternatives to Business As Usual. If you look for it, the internet abounds in examples. Local farm markets, ecologically sound farming practices, research and investment in alternative energy, opportunities to become involved in alternative communities, colleges, ways of living and earning a living that are both satisfying and sustainable. These things are happening all over the world, and multiplying rapidly. They provide ways of being involved that are inspiring and give positive reinforcement to the activity. Small success stories abound, and provide inspiration for further action in those directions.

The Shift in Consciousness is about connection, compassion and caring. Macy and Johnstone cite the Apollo 8 spaceflight of December 1968 as a significant turning point in this shift, this was the mission that provided the first photos of the Earth as seen from the moon.

As astronaut Bill Anders said, We came all this way to explore the moon and the most important thing is that we discovered the Earth.

It is only recently that we have come to see the world as limited, and all of us in the same boat. Everything is connected, you cannot mess with one small or distant part of the world without significant impact on all parts any more. This awareness is growing exponentially, and every new disaster of The Great Unraveling only serves to amplify and spread this new consciousness. The very fact that we lament environmental degradation, wartime atrocities, abuse of children/animals/women and a host of other evils is some indication of the Shift in Consciousness we are participating in. There is a growing understanding that we cannot survive at the expense of others, we are too connected, our fates too entwined.

Macy and Johnstone point out that for individuals involved in these dimensions of The Great Turning, failure and despair is a constant threat. Not all holding actions are successful, and successful actions are often only partially so. Nevertheless, in the long view and the "grand scheme of things", there is a kind of relentless progress. One action may be unsuccessful but the movement as a whole gains ground, regardless of failure or success.

And that's just the first chapter, as far as I've gotten so far. I'll let you know how it goes.

As one example though of that last idea, I was listening to Thomas Mulcair (new leader of the NDP, official leader of the Opposition) being interviewed on CBC's The Sunday Edition, and he was asked about Harper's recent success in ramming through the omnibus Bill C-38 this month. Mulcair's response was that the Conservatives wanted to put that bill through in secret, to not have everyone know how it would gut our environmental and social legislation, changing Canada for the worse in a huge way, all behind the scenes. The Opposition was successful in revealing the extent of the awfulness, it is no longer a secret. Yes, they did not have the numbers or the time to thwart this bill or even to amend it, but they did put it into the open for all to see. This is important, and not a total defeat or failure by any means. In every defeat there is something to take away for future action. It ain't over.

The Peony Rule and a Host of other things

Last night I went to a friend's place to play Carcassonne, I took a couple of peony flowers from my garden with me. I don't have my peonies properly propped up and I am told that the Rule of Peonies is, don't let them touch the ground, cut them and bring them indoors. I have four blooms in my living room that smell up the whole house, I can't bring any more in or I will have to say "stink up" the whole house. I love flower scents, but I find them a bit overwhelming indoors, so I am happy to leave them outdoors. But I was informed by a friend of the Peony Rule, so I am trying to conform.

My friend won the game, a first for her. It was getting boring always winning and a bit of a change to get soundly trounced. My excuse is that it was well past my usual bedtime. I like Carcassonne, and I am not usually a fan of board games. But "the board" in Carcassonne is always different, and you never really know who wins until you count up the points at the end. My friend was sure that I had won yet again until we actually counted up all our points. She left me in the dust.

Hapi and I were in the Kentville Ravine yesterday morning, she had such a great time. We ran into a young yellow lab who wanted to romp with Hapi in the brook, and then later two more labs, a yellow and a chocolate, showed up to join the fun. It was a lab fest. The four dogs, Hapi as honourary lab, ran in circles in and out of the water and around our legs. There are fish in the brook, they stayed clear of all the doglegs.

Hapi and I go "fishing" almost every evening at the goldfish pond in the nearby woods. I think the fish see Hapi better than she sees them, at least they always manage to be on the opposite side of the pond from her. She can see them if they move suddenly close to the surface, but if they move slowly or sink to the bottom she has a hard time finding them.

There are a tonne of trout in the old Wolfville reservoir, and they seem to be quite tame. I stand in an opening in the trees near the bank and when one swims by, it pauses to look at me, often swimming in closer for a better look. Is someone feeding them? I've even seen them approach Hapi, although they think better of that soon enough.

On Tuesday I went into the city with a friend to have lunch with another friend who lives there. Our City Friend is in declining health, she moved to the city for medical care and does not know many people there. She lives a rather isolated life as she has mobility issues. If not for the phone she would be very isolated indeed.

We picked her up at her apartment building and drove to an upscale Italian restaurant well beyond the budget of the two of us from the country, and way too noisy to carry on conversation. But City Friend doesn't get out much and we could hardly say No to her request. So for two hours we yelled at each other across the table. Not quite two hours, the din did die down in the last half hour or so.

It was kind of funny, both of my friends are blind and I serve as their seeing eye dog and chauffeur, but I do not know the city that well so I have to ask directions from my blind companions. They rely on their memories to tell me where to go, and sometimes their memories do not quite match up with current realities of road repair, relocated businesses, newly created one way streets, disappeared parking lots. Plus I have a disability of my own, I cannot tell left from right. Shouting Turn Right! in my ear does little more than put me into a panic.

After our leisurely bank-breaking lunch I asked City Friend if she had had enough and she said Not, I asked if there was anything else she wanted to do and she had no suggestions.

I said, Then in that case I would like to go to the Lebanese Bakery to buy some pistachio halvah, and she quickly agreed that that would be fun.

The Lebanese Bakery is truly a lot of fun, so much to look at, so many things to sample, and the staff are very friendly and funny. One young man had a smile to die for, we vied with each other to make him laugh and smile some more.

We bought pistachio halvah and chocolate halvah, grenadine molasses, pita bread, Bulgarian sheep feta, I forget what kind of olives, several different kinds of some savoury pastry (fatayer?), and a small container of tabouli. The young man with the smile gave us samples of the different fetas, in the process managed to hit his funny bone and danced around for a few minutes shaking his arm and grinning painfully.

Afterward we crossed the street (I took the arms of my two blind friends and we strode across waving white canes at the cars) to the Mexican grocery store. The lady who runs that tiny shop is the personality opposite of the Lebanese Bakery people, she sits behind the counter looking very bored and impatient with her gringo customers.

We oohed and ahhed over the many kinds of mole and salsa, I don't know if she actually rolled her eyes but I imagine that she wanted to. A few purchases there and then we crossed back to our parked car with more cane waving at the cars.

By this time rush hour was beginning so our drive back to City Friend's apartment was slow and tortuous, due to traffic and to my unfamiliarity with the city and frequent panics (Turn Right! Turn Left! No you're going the wrong way!).

We had a half hour to kill before picking Country Friend's Husband up at his place of work, so we went to the Black Market. Hardly had I parked when I heard a thump and looked up to see a young skateboarder grinning down at me. He ran into our parked car! No harm done, his board hit the tire.

He skated off and we headed into Market. It's a throwback to hippie days, incense wafting out and bright coloured intricate paint designs all over. Inside creaking old wooden floors, and tonnes and tonnes of beads and multi-coloured skirts and silver jewelry. I don't know what the music was that was playing, but it was quite pleasant. I mused about making Country Friend's Husband walk over so we could stay a little longer.

Note to self, longer visit to the Black Market next time.

Country Friend bought a freshwater pearl mala (a kind of bracelet) and I contemplated genie pants made from a recycled sari.

After picking up Husband we stopped at Costco on the way out of the city, I bought dogfood and they bought pizzas and Clif bars. We were in and out in less than half an hour, the quickest visit to Costco I've ever been on.

Punitive and fearful

The last couple of weeks have been extremely stressful for me so I have not been inclined to post. Since the source of stress is ongoing I am faced with never posting again or somehow getting past the very strong link between stress and not writing here.

I am reluctant to go into the details, suffice to say it involves an encounter with "the Law" which leaves me rather depressed and pessimistic about what a society based on the Rule of Law is really all about.

The last time I went through this was to do with the Leaky Condo issue in Vancouver. Basically my attitude of being confident that how we run our society is Basically Good (if a Little Rough around the edges) turned to its opposite: "They" are out to get Me (you, me, all of us). I relate very much to the George Carlin video Ronni posted on her blog this past Saturday. I know it to be true in a very visceral way.

I spent four years dealing with that situation (the leaky condo) and the fallout from it. Including six months of fairly severe illness due directly to the situation (i.e., not stress-induced). When it was over, I felt I had learned a very hard lesson and just wanted to move on in life, walk away. I did. As a result it is not something I talk about much, I don't care to revive those awful days, months, years.

However. Life catches up with one, doesn't it?

The latest incident might appear relatively benign in comparison, that I am perhaps catastrophizing a minor misfortune. Having had one bad experience it is certainly an easy trap to fall into. And it may apply here, I am not sufficiently objective or distant from the experience to say.

I read the municipal by-law that applies, and it was quite frightening. I was assured that the by-law was not applied in the way that it is worded, but nevertheless the words are quite dire. I have spent the last couple of weeks "laying low" so to speak, and thinking about it. What will I do if...? What recourse do I have? Is there any way to fight this without making matters worse? I will tell you that I have no answers to any of those questions, hence the ongoing stress.

Here's the thing. The by-law is worded to instill fear and to be quite punitive in intent. It offers no recourse, no grounds or method for contesting, and in its worse case scenario, requires the killing of the subject without trial, warrant or even notification. Private property is not respected in this particular by-law. Police powers are invoked, without the need for consultation, notification, court warrant, anything at all.

It occurs to me that this is the mentality of the formulators of this by-law, fearful and punitive. And these are just ordinary people, this is just an ordinary by-law with its similarly worded counterpart in probably most jurisdictions in the country. We write our by-laws to be punitive and fearful. What does that say about our society, about us?

And that's all I have to say, because my answer to that last question is more negative than I care to repeat here.

Casseroles (pots and pans)

Montreal, May 26 ...



Song translation:

You tell them
You tell them
That it was instinct that
Drove you up to here.

You tell them
You tell them
That your senses were screaming
Deeply driven
By a strange force
Let it be your base camp.
Let it be your base camp.

You tell them
You tell them
That it was intuition that
Drove you up to here
A carelessness
So necessary every now and then
Let it be your base camp.
Let it be your base camp.

Source: here

Queen Victoria does it again, hip hip hurrah

Ah Victoria Day, glorious Victoria Day! Apparently a Canadian tradition since before there was such a thing as a Canadian tradition.

Here in Nova Scotia the Victoria Day weekend is notorious for rotten weather, but this year it fails to live up to its reputation. Warm, sunny, even hot. My lawn is overgrown again, the chestnut is in full bloom, the entire town redolent of lilac and cherry blossom. And the mosquitoes are just starting.

The heat is too much for Hapi, she is very grumpy with every dog she meets. In a couple of days though she goes to the groomer to lose as much of her fur coat as possible without turning into a whippet. Hopefully her mood will improve. 

The garden is mostly planted, I put my transplants into the ground before the Victoria Day weekend, which is verging on sacrilegious but they were getting awfully leggy, I had to do something. So I am past the hard work part of spring gardening. I could be doing more, but I won't. Most of the transplants are OK, a couple of tomatilloes keeled over. I am now trying to start some morning glories and climbing nasturtiums to grow around the garden fence.

On Friday we went to the Kentville Ravine just in time to meet up with 4 or 5 dog walkers and their dogs, the dog pack romped through the brook and the trees and had a lovely time. One walker who lived nearby talked about how he thought about forming a group to take care of this lovely spot, but then he thought about all the people who would be attracted to the ravine if it was cleaner and safer, and how they would not be happy about all the off-leash dogs, and how they would insist on the enforcement of dog leash bylaws, at which point he abandoned the idea.

Later in the day I went to see the movie The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, which I loved. The music and cinematography were quite wonderful and the story lovely. Actually several stories but all linked. You probably have to be over 50 to appreciate it though.

On Saturday we went up the Gaspereau River. The mosquitoes were out in force. I brought along Off Botanical repellent---it is supposed to be based on an extract of lemon eucalyptus rather than DEET---and tried it out. I got one mosquito bite before putting it on, and none after. It is supposed to be only good for a couple of hours and that was how long our walk was, so I pleased with that. The woods of course were lovely, the ostrich ferns (that's the fiddlehead fern that you can eat) were almost fully unfurled and quite pretty. The trilliums are done but the trees are all leafed out now and we walked through a kind of meadow along the river that was so full of violets that I could not step anywhere without crushing one or two.

On Sunday I went to see the Anne of Green Gables musical playing at the ATF. My friend Carolyn had a starring role as Mirella. She's been involved in local theatre on a very amateur basis up until recently, this year she is taking on more challenging roles and is just fabulous. She had one song in Anne that brought tears to my eyes, and I am not a terribly sentimental type. There were five performances over the weekend and they sold out every one, which is excellent. Even so they probably only broke even, the costs of mounting such a production are quite high. Carolyn said it was such a privilege to be in this production, she was so impressed by the talent surrounding her. 

Today Hapi and I walked over to Carolyn's via the reservoir to congratulate her on her performance, on the way I met up with another dog walker and we chatted our way around the reservoir. I mentioned that I was going to get Hapi a wading pool and she told me she had one in her basement she'd like to get rid of so would I please come by on my way home.

At Carolyn's Hapi stayed in the fenced backyard with Carolyn's dog Ava. Ava has had the experience of Hapi digging up one of her bones so she kept a very close eye on Hapi, following her all around the yard. If Hapi squatted to pee, then Ava moved in to do the same. Hapi did check all the places Ava usually buries bones, but did not find any.

Carolyn's backyard is full of forget-me-nots, one of my favourite wildflowers. We sat in the sun and admired the flowers. She won't mow her lawn until they are done flowering so the grass is pretty high. fortunately the forget-me-nots are higher, the backyard is a sea of blue with ribbons of green and dots of yellow (dandelions).

I had a significant computer mishap this past week, I won't go into the details suffice to say that I am quite annoyed with Microsoft and the store I bought the computer at. Carolyn's son is enough of a geek that he thinks he might be able to come up with a partial fix, even though I have been categorically told by Those In The Know that it is not possible. Well, at this point the computer and its contents are a write-off so anything he can do will be a bonus and if he fails I am no deeper in trouble than I am already. My one dilemma is that I probably need to buy another computer and there aren't a lot of choices here of places to do that. I may be forced to deal with people I really don't want to. We shall see.

I am sitting on my back deck gazing at blue sky and flowering chestnut, it's hot but I am in the shade and there is a breeze and the scent of lilac. Hapi is under the deck lying on the cool earth there. A little female goldfinch just flew onto my deck looking for food, it left again after a few moments. The birdfeeder is out front.

It is just a gorgeous day.

Which I am soon going to disrupt with my lawnmower. the one downside of great spring weather, it necessitates lawnmowing.

May be...

The kayak trip was scheduled for this week, from Tuesday to Saturday. I bowed out, I did not want to leave Hapi for that long. This would be the first time, and I just felt it was too long for a first time. However, I was not the only one who could not manage 5 days, only two women went. Looks like they are getting good weather for the trip.

Instead, I am planning to go on an all-day trip with a couple of the women who could not make it for the 5 day trip. We intend to cover the same route, but much faster obviously. And, as luck would have it, we might get some rain. I have a dogsitter lined up for Hapi, she will take Hapi for a full day and one night as a trial run. Michelle runs a doggy daycare and also keeps dogs overnight as needed. She does not have a kennel, she just keeps the dogs in the house with her own dogs. Some friends of mine use her doggy daycare service and are quite happy with it. I am kind of looking forward to this, I am hoping it works out and I can do it again sometime.

The route we are kayaking will be about 16-18 km, paddling with the current along a canal and through two lakes. One lake is long and narrow and we might encounter wind in the wrong direction there, but hopefully not. We will leave one car at the end so that we can drive back to the start to pick up the other car. The black flies are just starting to make their presence known, but not too bad yet. I was walking in the woods with Hapi near where we will be kayaking the other day and I did not encounter any.

One of the places we walk regularly, the Acadia woods, has a small pond with four goldfish in it. The pond is actually an old well, so it is steep-sided and you can't wade into it. Hapi is totally fixated on those fish. Whenever we go to the woods she has to go to the pond, and when I get bored of watching her pacing around the pond staring at the fish, I have to drag her away. I think she hopes that if she waits long enough one day a fish will jump right into her mouth.

Hapi...

The fish...

The garden is now fenced and the paths between the raised beds mulched with the remains of the spruce trees.I had to fence because Hapi likes to dig, and she thinks the manure in the garden is tasty. She was already digging up the peas before I got this fence up. It takes up a lot of space, it seems to dominate my backyard now. But of course, besides the grass the other plants are only beginning to emerge.

Speaking of, I have to mow today, the grass is getting quite long. I seem to have done something to my ankle, I think I have tendinitis in it. Which is bad, with a big dog I can't stay off of it and of course that is how you treat such things. Also fence-building, mulching and mowing are not things I should be doing either.

Kayaking should be good for it though.

April flies by...

Wow, time flies when you're busy!

Have not had a lot of time to sit down and blog, I have been busy doing stuff around the house.

I built my garden frames, hauled a whole lot of horse manure and filled the frames up. That was two days of back-breaking labour over Easter. I had to get it done in two days because a snowstorm was forecast and I wasn't looking forward to hauling wet manure.



I did a bit of planting, some indoor transplants and peas, greens, onions and garlic outdoors. Three of the eight garden frames are mostly done.

I had the spruce trees cut down. That was a bit traumatic, I miss the trees. I have to keep reminding myself of the benefits of their absence, but still, I miss them. A lot. I am hoping that as everything else greens up I will get over it, and I will be grateful for the sunshine in the winter. But in the meantime I try not to look at where they used to be. My neighbours think it's great that they're gone.


The black dot at the top of one of the trees on the left (below) is a crow. Wouldn't you know it, a pair of crows started building a nest in the trees the week before they were felled. I hope they didn't lay any eggs.


Two left (the crows' nest is about 10 ft down from the top of the tree on the right)...


...and all gone (this pic conveys very well how bleak it looks without them).


I started digging up the grass overgrowing the slate pathway to the front door. More back-breaking labour, and I am maybe half done. I think it will look good when it is done but it sure is hard. The slate path in the back yard is in a little better shape, but part of it will need digging up too.

All the grass sod that I am digging up I am transplanting under the pine trees on the north side of the house. I don't really expect it to survive there, but one can hope.

The boys that cut down the spruce trees turned the branches into mulch. They took most of it away but I kept a pile that I have used to mulch around the garden frames. There is about 30-35 wheel barrow loads that I kept, I used around 25 barrow loads around the garden frames and am stockpiling the rest. There was close to two cord of firewood when they were done, but I let them haul it away because I am reluctant to burn softwood in my woodstove. In any case, I still have more than two cord of hardwood firewood left over from the last two winters.


The fellow who owns the field behind my back yard mowed it the other day for the first time; after he was done I raided his pile of clippings to use as mulch on the garden. I figure that an April mowing is not going to have much in the way of grass or weed seeds in it. Some of his clippings from last year are well on their way to being compost, I took some of that as well.

Hapi and I have explored some new walking places:

- the gravel pit on the dykes in New Minas

- the Gaspereau River west of White Rock

- the dykes between Wolfville and Port Williams

- a trail through the woods up Gaspereau mountain to the new Wolfville reservoir (the old one is in town, just down the way from my house).

Hapi loves the Gaspereau River, I am pretty fond of it too. I don't know how far the trail goes, after an hour I turn back. I suspect that it goes a lot further and maybe one day I'll pack a lunch and see just how far. On the return walk Hapi crisscrosses the river because it is shallow enough for her to wade across. By the time we get back to the road where we started, she's on an island in the middle of the river at a point where it is too deep to wade to shore.

The first time she stood in the middle of the river waiting for me to rescue her; when that didn't happen she returned to the island and proceeded to hunt for critters. I guess she figured she'd just have to make the best of it. I walked up river to the back end of the island and called her to a point where she could wade across. Twice now she's done that, you'd think she'd learn.




Hapi also loves the muddy ditches out on the dykes; she goes down into them to hunt for critters and comes out absolutely covered in black stinky mud. She even buries her snout in the mud. All her white fur turns black. It's a good thing she doesn't come indoors is all I can say.

Today we went out on the dykes and she didn't get quite so muddy. Then we went up to the Acadia woods and she romped in the brook to shed what little mud she had picked up.


Here's a picture I took of some posts out on the salt grass. You can just make them out, they stand about two feet above the mud (you may have to click on the pic to see a larger version).


There used to be a lot more of them all along the dyke, they were for drying hay. Back in the day farmers harvested the salt grass out on the tidal marsh beyond the dyke, they put it up on the posts to dry and I guess they fed it to livestock. I don't think they've done that in at least 40 years, probably longer. I remember seeing the posts when I first arrived here in the early '70s, but they weren't being used then. Some people around here still use the salt grass as mulch in their gardens.

We go walking in the Acadia woods several times a week. We check on the fish in the pond at the south end. They've been there for several years and all four of them made it through this past winter. Hapi caught a glimpse of them last fall and has been keen to look for them ever since. But since she can't wade into this pond the fish are safe.

Some time this spring some students at the university started building a structure in the woods under a fallen tree. Every weekend they do a bit of work on it, so it is fun to go down on Monday to see what they have added.



We had one last April snow storm on Easter Sunday, but it was pretty much gone by Monday night.

(my lettuce in the snow)

Since then it has been quite dry and warm, people are actually looking forward to a good week of rain that is supposed to start today. I've had to water my seeds outdoors.

Tomorrow we are having a meeting to discuss the annual spring kayak-camping trip. I am not sure if I will go or not. We shall see.

Weaving, women and history

The last couple of weeks I have been immersed in reading a couple of books by Elizabeth Wayland Barber. Dr. Barber is a professor emerita in archaeology and linguistics at Occidental College in California, and also a weaver since childhood. She has written a number of books, the two that I have been reading are The Mummies of Urumchi and Women's Work: the First 20,000 Years.

In The Mummies book Dr. Barber uses her knowledge of archaeology, linguistics and the craft of weaving to draw out some amazing information from her study of a set of mummies found in central Asia. The mummies were found in the 1980s and turned out to be several thousand years old. Due to the extremely dry conditions where they were dug up they were well preserved, the colours of their clothing as bright as anything you could buy new today. Dr. Barber could piece together interesting facts about how these people lived and where they came from just from the details of the construction of their clothing.

One of the interesting things about the mummies is that they are Caucasian, not Mongoloid. Their hair is brown and they have the big noses typical of Caucasians. Some of them are well over six feet tall. Urumchi is located in western China, an area now inhabited by Uighurs, who are also Caucasian in origin. It is quite possible that they are direct descendants of the people who left the mummies there. The mummies were collected from ancient cemeteries in the region, in particular from the Tarim Basin which is one of the bleakest deserts in the world.

Among other things Dr. Barber says that these were Indo-Iranian people who kept sheep and wove textiles from their wool. They also made felt products. One mummy had brightly coloured felt leggings, an infant wore a beautiful blue felt bonnet.

The Silk Road, the route taken by merchants and traders between the far east and the near east, passes through the Tarim Basin. One branch follows the northern edge of the desert, another follows the southern edge. Ancient documents describe some of the people living along that route, and between those documents and what can be gleaned from the mummified remains, it is probable that these were people who moved westward into that bleak part of the world in order to live in relative peace. They were not warriors.

The infant with the blue bonnet was buried close to another grave containing a man and two women. The infant was buried with a "baby bottle" fashioned from a sheep's udder. Dr. Barber guesses that one of the women in the other grave was its mother; someone tried to keep the infant alive with sheep's milk and a baby bottle but failed.

I am halfway through the other book, Women's Work. This book focuses on the ancient history of textile making, in particular spinning and weaving. It is rare to find textiles in very old archaeological sites, they simply don't survive. The mummies of Urumchi are very unusual in that regard. However, the imprint of textiles are sometimes found on clay objects, and sometimes clay or stone objects associated with spinning (spindle whorls) and weaving (warp weights) can be found. Also there are depictions of textile making in some ancient ceramics and wall paintings.

Ancient peoples were not particularly modest, they wore clothing for warmth and/or decoration, but not to hide "private" body parts. Also, they were more tolerant of cooler temperatures than many of us moderns are, going naked or near naked in temperatures most of us would prefer to be clothed in. Woven textiles were probably preceded by belts and string skirts. In fact Dr. Barber talks of a "string revolution", how a whole new dimension of tool making was opened with the invention of string. Think of all the things you can do with a bit of string.

Dr. Barber thinks that string skirts were probably the first bit of non-essential clothing invented. They would have been specifically intended to draw attention to a woman's fertility. Of course, you need something to attach the strings to, this would have been a kind of belt or strap, or girdle. The first fibres used in the making of these strings and belts would have been plant fibres like hemp or flax. These plants provide long strong and flexible fibres to work with. In those days wool was not yet available because sheep were not yet woolly. The first domesticated sheep would have been more hairy than woolly, and they would have been kept only for their meat. But along the way woolly sheep were bred and the multiple uses that sheep could be put to---meat, milk, wool---was recognized.

Wool is quite different from hemp or linen (flax). It takes a dye better and it is more stretchy. It is also a relatively short fibre. Yarn spun from wool is not as strong as the longer-fibred hemp and linen yarn. For this reason somewhat different weaving techniques were developed to handle it, in particular twill instead of plain weave, which put less tension on the warp threads.

In Egypt wool was rare, most clothing was constructed from linen. Since it does not dye well ancient Egyptian clothing was plain white. Instead of coloured textiles Egyptians adorned themselves with jewelry. In other areas where wool was more available people generally wore two or more layers of clothing, an inner plant-based layer and an outer wool-based layer. The wool layer could be brightly coloured and woven in interesting designs. Wool was scratchy so it was nice to have softer plant-fibres against one's skin. The French term "lingerie" derives ultimately from the term "linen".

Looms used for weaving were of several types. Egyptians used a horizontal loom staked out on the ground. This would have been very appropriate in a warm dry climate where you could set up outdoors where there is lots of space.

Another type was semi-vertical, the warp (the long direction of the textile) hung from a horizontal bar and was held in place by clay weights tied to the bottom end of the warp. This was the warp-weighted loom. This type of loom could be used indoors because it took up less floor space, it was better suited to cooler and wetter climates than a horizontal loom. But since it was set up to lean against another vertical surface, it could be moved around, indoors and outdoors if needs be. Warp weights have been found in many locations in Europe, it is safe to assume that this was the main type of loom used there.

The third major type was a vertical loom without weights, instead the warp was attached to both an upper and a lower horizontal bar. This type of loom was usually anchored to the floor by two vertical poles inserted in holes. It is thought that this was the main type of loom east of Europe since no warp weights have been found east of Kiev or south of the Black Sea.

Textile making was largely a women's activity. It was highly compatible with minding children and could be done in the home or nearby. Dr. Barber says that textile making was a hugely time consuming activity, more time consuming than anything else that humans did. Men also wove, but it was predominantly women's work.

Once invented, textiles became very popular and were in great demand. The earliest trade caravans packed tin for bronze making and textiles. Graves were filled with piles of clothing. It was also a prized item for theft; the word "robber" has the same root as the word "robe". Women in every culture spun and wove, it was probably considered as important if not more important than childrearing. Only highborn women did not, instead they were responsible for overseeing other women in those activities.

When industrialization got started in Europe, the first industry to be mechanized was textile making. This necessitated moving the activity out of the home and into the factory. Yanking women out of their homes and into factories was probably the single most disruptive aspect of industrialization.

Dr. Barber shows how the movement of peoples around Eurasia can be traced through the different styles and designs of textiles they left behind. The Celts of Europe are probably distantly related to the people of the Tarim Basin, as shown by their common use of twills and plaids, and also by some linguistic commonalities. Dr. Barber wrote these books in the 1990s when the use of DNA evidence for tracing human movements was still in its infancy; she looked forward to a time when that could be used to contradict or to corroborate her ideas about those movements based on her own studies of textiles and linguistics.

Other than Egypt Dr. Barber does not discuss the history of textile making in Africa, nor in the Americas. She touches only briefly on south and east Asia. Silk textiles were important in east Asia and cotton in south Asia and the Americas. Each of these types of fibres are quite different and require different techniques and tools for manipulating.

A very busy morning

Busy morning today. Got up early to go to the sawmill, I had called them a couple of weeks ago about getting lumber for new garden frames and was told that the guys are in the woods all day and if I want to talk to them I have to come early. I hate early. So today, two weeks later, I finally drag myself out there at 8am. Took Hapi with me so she wouldn't howl while I was gone, but had to put her in the front of the truck so there'd be room for the lumber in the back. And I couldn't let her out once we got to the sawmill due to the big black sawmill dog and the mud. Even if she managed not to get into a fight with the sawmill dog she would still have tracked mud into the truck cab. Mud in the back is one thing, mud in the front quite another.

They cut up some boards for me and loaded them into the truck. While that was happening the sawmill owner senior enquired as to my marital status, he opined that it was good for a single woman to have a Big Dog. I wondered if the big black sawmill dog was a statement about his own marital status or what.

I was home by 8.30am and Hapi never got out of the truck until then, I don't think she was impressed. After unloading the boards into the shed I put her back in the truck, this time in the back, and headed off to New Minas for errands and the Kentville Ravine for her walk.

The first stop was to pick up duck eggs for Easter Egg painting. Duck eggs are very good for this purpose because they are much smoother than chicken eggs. White chicken eggs are hard to come by these days, the ones in the grocery stores are all stamped and people who sell farm eggs these days only sell brown eggs.

The duck egg lady also sells dog food, she came out to give Hapi treats. Hapi busted the screen on one of the truck cap windows last year so she can poke her head out, I haven't bothered to repair it. So, the duck egg lady hands Hapi a dog treat and Hapi takes it delicately in her mouth and pulls her head in and deposits the treat on the floor and sticks her head out again for more. In this way she soon had a pile of almost a dozen dog treats before the duck lady stopped handing them out.

Next stop was Sobey's, where I hoped to use a raincheque to purchase my favourite chocolate bar but they still don't have them in yet. Then on to Cleve's to exchange a defective pair of hiking shoes for new ones, and Staples to get instructions for a screen kit I bought there a couple of weeks ago. The kit comes from Quebec and the installation instructions, four pages of them, are only in French. I can sort of read them, but I figured with four pages I should probably try to get the English instructions because somehow a four-page instruction set sounds complicated to me.

The Customer Service lady is amazed at the lack of English instructions. They have one more kit still on the shelf and it only has French instructions too. Customer Service lady calls someone from out back who is also amazed, but she goes on the internet and finds English instructions on the manufacturer's website. She prints off a copy for me. It is one page long, the actual instructions taking up less than half a page. We are all amazed. This kit is easier to install in English than in French?

After that my errands are done, so we head to the ravine. I let Hapi out and another truck pulls up too. Hapi and I head to the trail down into the ravine and I look back to see if I recognize the people in the other truck. It appears to be a couple without a dog, a third person is running to catch up with them. We head into the ravine and at the bottom of the hill I give Hapi one of her treats. She buries it by the brook.

Shortly we meet a lady with a young Nova Scotia Duck Toller, the duck toller is keen to play but Hapi does her usual growly aloof thing and walks away. The duck toller's owner asks if my dog dislikes puppies and I say No, she actually likes to play with young dogs but it takes her a long time to warm up. Hardly the words were out of my mouth and Hapi makes a liar of me, she turns and immediately starts chasing the young toller.

I used to have a duck toller so I am familiar with the breed, for those of you who are not they kind of look like a small golden retriever but are a little more hyper. Mine had white markings on his feet, face, chest and tail tip, but this one is all red.

The couple I had seen earlier catch up and I realize that the third person I thought I saw with them was actually their dog, a big black Great Dane. The Great Dane joins Hapi and the toller in play, but now the little toller is kind of freaked out at being chased by two very large dogs. He immediately lies down belly up. The two big dogs sniff him and back away. They stand there waiting, and eventually the toller gets up and runs off, the two big dogs in pursuit once again. They repeat this routine a couple of times and then the toller is more at ease and they just chase each other all around in circles.

Eventually we part company and I follow the folks with the Great Dane to the end of the ravine and then up through a junk yard and loop back down into the ravine on the other side. Hapi and the Great Dane are content just to explore and sniff things, although Hapi manages to chase a couple of squirrels. By the time we return to our trucks the two dogs are quite muddy.

While walking we were chatting about this that and t'other thing, and something they told me is that the coyotes around here were actually introduced by the provincial government. Apparently they introduced them to control the rabbits! That sounds beyond stupid. Don't know how one would check it out though.

I was going to stop at the hardware store to pick up hardware for the garden frames but by the time I was halfway home I decided I had done enough and it could wait for another day. Hapi and I got home again shortly after noon and that was a busy enough day for me!

Early spring playtime

This past week has been record-breaking warm here, downright hot (break out the shorts and T's time) on Thursday. Silly Nova Scotians who went south this week regretted it, the best of Florida was no better than here. Although I bet you could go swimming at the beach there; I don't think I would have chanced it here. We are almost back to "seasonable" now though, big high of +8C today ("seasonable" is +5C). For a couple of days it was cooler indoors than outdoors, I didn't run the furnace or light the fire for several days because the house never cooled off overnight.

I've been getting estimates on cutting down some trees on my property, a line of spruces along the south side, because they block the sun. It turns out that my neighbour on that side is very keen to see those trees gone and has gone so far as to offer to pay part of the cost. However most of the work will have to be done on their property, it is harder to get at those trees from my side than their side, so I am giving them a few days to think about that.

I am actually sitting on the fence on this issue, I like the trees and like the sound of the wind in them and the way that birds can hide in them. I have a feeling that if I cut them down I will discover that they contribute unforeseen benefits by their presence. Will I miss their shade? But having uninterrupted sun all summer long on my garden area would be nice. Presently no part of the back yard qualifies as "in full sun". I wish I could just trim those trees down to half-size, but that is just not doable. In the summer they provide shade for my house during the first half of the morning, I don't know how much of a difference that makes to the heating up of the house then. They don't provide any privacy.

Last night four of us went out for dinner and local theatre: a lovely little restaurant called Pizzazz Bistro and then on to Centrestage Theatre to see "Twelve Angry Jurors", a take-off on Twelve Angry Men. They had a mixed-gender jury.

The restaurant was truly excellent, we all ordered different things and we were all pleased with our food, we would have ordered different wines but ended up drinking the same wine, an Argentinian Malbec. For dessert two of us had cheesecake and two of us had apple cake. The desserts were all circular, and you could order a half-piece and get a semi-circular dessert instead. So many times I have split a dessert with someone that it is kind of nice that the restaurant provides half desserts.

The play was great, they did a great job of adapting it I thought. But I am not one to judge, having never seen the original. The theatre is tiny, I don't think it seats more than 80 or 90 patrons. It is very much a local theatre operation, the theatre staff, actors and many of the audience know each other and joke around (the instructions in case of fire were half serious half silly). All in all it was a most pleasant evening out: good company, good food, good theatre.

Earlier in the day I took Hapi out on the dikes and we met a lady walking her golden retriever. The retriever was young and wanted to play with Hapi, but she was all aloof and growly with the young dog. The woman recognized Hapi and told me her dog's name, Duncan. I remembered meeting her and her dog in the Kentville Ravine several months ago, before winter. Duncan was smaller then, not quite his full size. But I remembered that Duncan and Hapi had very much enjoyed each other, in fact it was the best dogplay Hapi had had since Hiro left.

After 20 minutes of ignoring Duncan Hapi suddenly decided she was ready to play with him, I think she even took Duncan by surprise since he had kind of given up on her by then. But they took off, chasing each other and running through the mud of the tidal flats and drainage ditches. It was a pleasure to watch, although Duncan's owner was concerned about having to load the muddy stinky dog into her car afterward. I suggested we take them to the "Duck Pond" in a nearby park to wash off. The pond is posted with No Dogs Allowed signs, but at this time of year I doubted anyone would accost us.

We got the dogs to the park and they leaped into the pond and had great fun play fighting in the water. They got so hyper that it was near impossible to recapture them and get them leashed up to go our separate ways. Afterward I realized I should have got contact info to organize future play dates for the dogs. Oh well, hopefully another time. At his full adult size Duncan looks smaller than Hapi but he weighs as much as she does. His coat is not nearly as fluffy as hers.

In spite of the wash in the pond, Hapi still stunk of the dike mud. It's not as bad as rolling in manure, but close. Good thing she is an outdoors dog.

More Baxter's Harbour photos

More photos of our walk on Paddy's beach over at the Baxter's Harbour blog. In particular a fabulous photo of Hapi.

Beachcomber asked me to post some of my photos on that blog, but as you will see her photos are so much better than mine that I feel quite inferior in that regard. She has an amazing talent for photography, not to mention a way better camera than mine.

Dog walk on the beach

Went for a walk on Paddy's Beach in the Harbour with beachcomber, who by the way won picture of the month over at Saltscapes Magazine. Not as warm as Thursday butstill sunny and bright. All the snow is gone but as you can see in one or two of these pics there is still a bit of ice.

Phoebe and Hapi chased each other around while Sheila and I clicked away with our cameras. She's expecting me to post some of my photos over at the Baxter's Harbour blog, but she is a way better picture-taker than I am so I think I will just post mine here.

We had a bit of a race with the tide, we knew it was coming in and parts of the beach disappear altogether at high tide so we had to be mindful of that. We timed it perfectly, with a foot or two of beach still left when we headed back.

The Harbour

Beachcomber photographing Hapi

The Harbour waterfall

Rock "drawings"

Beachcomber at work

Paddy's beach

Frozen waterfall

Waves on the cliff

...and the snow geese are flying

I saw snow geese the other day, another sign of spring. They say spring here is 2-3 weeks early. They've started sugaring off already. And all the snow around my place melted yesterday, I see bulbs sprouting. Somehow they got dug up last year and are sitting on the ground surface, not sure what they are yet but they're too big for crocuses or snowdrops.

I went to the Harbour because it was such a gorgeous day, sunny and warm. Ruth is off work for a week after surgery (good news surgery) and Nancy had the day off too (she does shiftwork). We sat on Nancy's deck, Val came by and we walked the dogs. Val's dog Phoebe narrowly missed getting a snout full of quills when she discovered a porcupine under a tree. The porcupine slowly climbed up the tree and I desperately started calling Hapi because she was off in the woods somewhere and I did not want her discovering that porcupine when it was right about her nose-height up that tree. We avoided disaster.

Last year when the time changed it felt way too early, still winter. But the clocks change this weekend and I don't think it will be too early.

Rainy and windy today but tomorrow will be sunny again and wHapi and I are going back to the Harbour for a walk on the beach with beachcomber. Also, the Women's Day Cafe is tonight, local musical women performing, a bunch of us are going to that.

The smelt are running

Today I was shopping at Sobey's, I went because they had my favourite chocolate bar on sale but I also checked out their seafood counter. They had smelt. I asked about them, the fish lady said this was their first batch, the run has just started. Smelt from Sobey's is not quite the same thing as eating them fresh from the river, but still, I asked for one meal's worth.

The best way to eat smelt is right by the river, fresh caught and fried up in butter. They are small enough that you pick one up by the tail and just eat it from your fingers. There are hardly any bones. When they are running, there are so many of them in the river that you can catch them in baskets.

Sunday night we were supposed we were supposed to get 5 cm of snow, but by morning it was obviously a bit more than that. More like 15 cm. It looked beautiful, light and fluffy, piled up on all the tree branches. Monday afternoon we got another 10 cm. but it didn't get much deeper because it was fairly warm and the snow was damp and packing down.

Today I took Hapi down to the Kentville ravine. We haven't been down there very much lately because the one public trail in has been a sheet of ice. It is so steep that it is impassable when it is icy. There is another trail, an 'authorized-personnel-only' trail which is not so steep or icy, but on weekdays the authorized personnel are out in force. I've gone down that trail on weekends with good luck.

Anyway, today the ravine was beautiful in the snow. Hapi ran through the snow looking very happy. She does figure eights around me and I swing my walking poles at her; she ducks and swerves and disappears into the woods, reappearing suddenly a few minutes later running straight at me.

A young couple with three pre-school-aged kids followed us down the trail into the ravine. The oldest girl was nervous of Hapi and kept her mother between her and the dog, but the littlest boy, just barely walking, marched up to Hapi and said, Woof! Woof! Hapi backed up and looked at me, uncertain whether she should be scared of him or not.

After the walk in the ravine and shopping at Sobey's I took Hapi to visit her little admirer, Sidney the King Charles Cavalier spaniel. Sidney is so funny, he really is completely enamored of Hapi and Hapi hardly knows he exists. Today Hapi was lying on the floor and Sidney came up and was sniffing her ear. He was literally blowing in her ear and she kept shaking her head and looking at him, What are you doing!?! She can't figure him out.

I've been having trouble with my knee lately. It started some time ago, I noticed that my knee hurt going up the basement stairs with a load of firewood. Then a couple of weeks ago it got worse, a really sharp pain that was there all the time. So reluctantly I went to the doctor. She thought it might be a meniscal tear and ordered X-rays, although she said if it was a meniscal tear it would not show up in the X-ray. However the X-ray showed significant arthritic deterioration which probably better explains the pain. So I've been on anti-inflammatories to bring down the inflammation and I am now on a wait list to see a physiotherapist. I don't know how long that will take.

The anti-inflammatories are tricky, either they are too weak to have any effect or they are strong enough to make the pain go away but they give me heartburn. There doesn't seem to be a happy medium. The latest anti-inflammatory I am barely tolerating, I will take it until the end of the week and then stop; hopefully the pain will too. At least it does not interfere with walking too much, climbing the basement stairs is the main problem. I've decided that it is because the stair risers are too steep and the treads too narrow. There's really not enough room to redesign them, more shallow stairs would just bring my head closer to the edge of the ceiling going down.

Really the only way to fix the problem is to put the stairs back where they were originally, but that's a major renovation I don't want to do. The only other alternative is to not put firewood in the basement. Have to think about that.

But the main thing is, the smelt are running, spring is just around the corner.

Four Brownbagger talks

Over the past few weeks I've been going to the Brownbagger's Lunch, a one-hour lunchtime free lecture sponsored by Acadia Lifelong Learning (ALL). I get regular notifications for this lecture series and for the most part have not seen anything that really grabbed me, but this month there were four lectures in a row that I wanted to hear.

The first was Marilyn Manzer's "In Search of a Moral Economy", the second Uwe Kaufman's "Kluscap, Blomidon and Wabanaki Mythology", the third Chris Mansky's "Blue Beach---Evolution's Greatest Mystery in Our Backyard", and the fourth Bill Zimmerman's "Finally, Free to Be!" The lecture this week is of less interest to me so I will happily take a break.

Of the four, Marilyn's was most inspiring and Chris's the most interesting (to me). Bill's was also interesting, his message was that as seniors/elders we are in a unique position to participate effectively in political life and have some impact on social justice issues. Uwe has done considerable research on Miqm'ah/Wabenaki mythology surrounding the character of Kluskap (Glooscap) and told a number of the stories he has gathered over the years about Kluscap. The Kluscap stories are interesting, they are not about a god but a being with supernatural powers in a time when supernatural was natural. Animals spoke, rocks moved. Each story is about some dilemma solved and the ramifications of that long ago solution. Kluscap is compassionate and caring but also just. He once had an evil twin, Malsum, but he killed Malsum in a kind of duel and regretted it ever after. One version of the story that I read was that Kluscap and Malsum lived in what is now Newfoundland, but after Kluscap killed Malsum he had to move away, to what is now Nova Scotia.

Locally, Cape Split is considered to be Kluscap's stone canoe, forever beached at the head of the Bay of Fundy. One day Kluscap will return.

Chris has created a museum of fossils he has found at Blue Beach and has done considerable research on these and related fossils. Blue Beach rocks date from the Carboniferous era, a time when vertebrates were first emerging from the water onto land. The "Greatest Mystery" that he refers to is about how that happened, there are large gaps in the fossil record that evoke a large amount of speculation as to how exactly the evolution from water-adapted to dry land-adapted vertebrates occurred. Blue Beach is a tidal beach of sedimentary rocks (mostly slate, some shale), and depending on the strength of the tides and the amount of mud, what is hidden or exposed on the beach changes daily.

I have an old photo from when my youngest son was about 3 years old; I was in first year university and enrolled in a Geology 101 course. A field trip to Blue Beach was organized by a couple of the Geology Dept profs one weekend, and I took my kids along. We got to see several sets of tracks in the exposed slate rocks, of early "tetrapods". One set of tracks was large enough for my youngest son to stand inside a single footprint while I photographed him. As I recall it looked like it had three toes.

The Geology profs said that they could tell by the positioning of each footprint in relation to the others in the track how the legs were attached to the body, a significant piece of evidence in determining whether one is looking at an amphibian or a reptile, and how developed or primitive it might be. I just thought that it was amazing to be looking at footprints created hundreds of millions of years ago, well before even the dinosaurs lived. Some living creature walked across the mud and left a permanent, almost eternal, record of its passing.

Marilyn's talk was more personal, she kind of told her autobiography and the development of her own thinking about the state of the world and her life in it. She referred to God a lot, and right at the start of her talk gave her personal definition of that word so as to avoid mistaken impressions of what she was talking about: "the spirit of love and connection between all living beings and the natural world."

Towards the end of her talk she recounted hearing a CBC radio show that really brought together her sense of what life was about. It put into words what she had been feeling and struggling with over most of her life. I had heard that same radio program and I remember that my own reaction to it was that it was revelatory, I had not thought of things in those terms before, but it made a lot of sense.

The program was "Beauty Will Save the World", an episode of CBC Ideas in June 2010. Marilyn took some notes of what was said in that program, and she does a remarkable job of capturing the essence of what was discussed, so I am going to repeat them here. The title of the program is a quote from Fyodor Dostoyevsky's "The Idiot" that Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn used in his Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech. Here are Marilyn's notes.

Plato argued that beauty was the revelation of God in the here and now.

John Keats wrote, "Beauty is truth, truth beauty, that is all you know on earth and all you need to know." (Ode to a Grecian Urn)

Beauty has the power to redeem desperate and tragic situations. Beauty saves us from acts against humanity, against ourselves.

If I didn't sing, I'd have to take drugs, because drugs kill the pain but beauty is bigger than pain. (a recovering drug addict)

Transcendent beauty---a spiritual beauty---can come in the most obscene places. People searching for dignity and human respect is a beautiful thing. Anyone can exhibit immense grace.

Beauty brings you joy. Beauty dwells with wisdom and wisdom dwells with joy. People who have beauty and wisdom and joy are capable of enduring the most terrible things.

Acting out survival of the fittest diminishes us as human beings and we know it. We need transcendent beauty to save us.

People are afraid of beauty like they are afraid of real freedom. The price of real freedom is security. Beauty is like that too. You can't hang onto it or possess it. It opens your heart and soul and makes you vulnerable. It is scary. You are not in control.

The fate of the world depends on unleashing the beauty that will save the world.

Marilyn's talk has been published and is available on the Argenta Friends Press website (Canadian Quaker Pamphlet No. 71). Look for "In Search of a Moral Economy" by Marilyn Manzer, in the pamphlet section.

Don't know much about history...

Doing a lot of reading, books about slow cookers (I just got one), weaving, climate change and history. While I sit in my comfy chair waiting for this cold to go away and not come back...

Climate change: this one is kind of interesting but you might not agree with it. Cool It by Bjorn Lomborg (the Sceptical Environmentalist). He feels that climate change has been vastly overrated, in the sense that people have become downright hysterical about it. Not that he denies its existence or even that it is at least in part human-caused. But. His point is that rather than worry about future generations who may or may not be affected to a greater or lesser degree, it would be far better to worry about and spend our money on people alive today who are at risk due to lack of clean water, AIDS, malaria, social issues, malnutrition, etc etc etc.

Lomborg says that for a fraction of what it might cost to lower our carbon emissions to whatever level they are currently saying is acceptable, we could eliminate malaria, treat all HIV-infected people, provide clean water to everyone on the planet and a host of other lifesaving projects. And further, that the potential threat of climate change (flooding, drought, species extinctions, etc etc) might be better addressed directly rather than indirectly via reduced carbon emissions. For example, better to build better levees and dykes and protect crucial wetlands to protect vulnerable river and seaside areas than to impose exorbidant carbon taxes. And it would be far more doable politically than trying to convince every government and corporate polluter to change their ways. In fact, if we were successful in reducing carbon emissions around the world the effect would actually be devastating for poor people everywhere. The economic effect would be severe and mostly borne by those who can least afford it.

Lomborg provides evidence to support his position which I won't get into here. I am not expert enough to refute his arguments or supporting evidence, but perhaps you are; in which case I urge you to read the book. I thought that what he had to say made a lot of sense to me.

History: I just read Debt: the First 5,000 Years by David Graeber (one of the first "organizers" of the Occupy Wall Street event in NYC last summer and fall) and am about halfway through The Origins of Political Order by Francis Fukuyama. They are both sweeping surveys of about the last 5,000 years, give or take. Fukuyama ends his book with the French Revolution, promising a sequel to follow addressing developments since that time. Graeber's book is shorter and ploughs on through to the financial crisis of 2008.

Fukuyama is or was famous for his previous book called The End of History and the Last Man. It all sounded kind of presumptuous and beyond me anyway so I did not read that book, but now I think I might go back and try it, I am curious as to how he came to that conclusion at the time. He is very readable although he does use some technical language I've never heard of ("enfeoffed"?) to describe particular historical situations.

Graeber is a little tougher, probably because of his subject matter. But the major difference I notice is that Graeber definitely has an opinion---an axe to grind---while Fukuyama is decidedly more objective and emotionally removed from his subject. So they tend to cover the same periods and events in very different ways. Not that they are necessarily opposed or that one is better than the other, just different. With both writers I feel like I am learning a lot and learning from perspectives I never would have dreamed of. Graeber definitely makes you think. And Fukuyama presents theories that sound very plausible, very explanatory and leave you thinking, "oh, so that's why...!"

I guess the big caution I would have is that Fukuyama makes it very clear when he is theorizing and Graeber doesn't. So with Graeber you're not quite sure how much of it is his opinion and how much is just accepted fact. However his footnotes and references take up a quarter of the book so if you are diligent you can check it all for yourself.

Slow cookers: Well, I borrowed a whole bunch of slow cooker cookbooks from the library in hopes of finding one that I liked and could buy (cookbook that is). So far I have been able to rule out a few pretty quickly, but I am down to three that I can't decide between and I still have a couple of holds pending for more cookbooks. So I don't know what I will end up doing.

I recently bought a book about the Middle Ages by Henri Pirenne; haven't read it yet but I had read on the internet somewhere that he is a recognized authority on that time period. And the book was cheap: $0.01 plus shipping. As soon as I get through the library books... I really must slow down with putting holds on stuff...