intermission - Shark Fin Soup

As someone who has not eaten red or white meat for well over 35 years and has not eaten fish for close to ten - I am always glad when I hear about people deciding not to kill animals for food.

I am just not too sure about the right of Toronto City councilors to make a municipal law banning shark fin soup. Really people - you are OK with people living on the streets in winter or when it is mind numbing hot - facing death by freezing or heat exposure; it is OK when children do not have enough to eat and it appears to be just fine to cut services when people need those supports just to stay alive and perhaps to stay sane, but it is not OK to kill a shark. 

I have to wonder how many of the councilors  who voted for that bill actually have eaten shark fin soup. Are they themselves giving anything up? Or was it just an easy vote that made them look like they cared about the world?  I also wonder how many of those same people have eaten veal, or perhaps beef or chicken or pork from a factory farm? How do they get to decide what is moral behavior or not? The word  “sanctimonious” pops into my mind.

 Perhaps one day someone will ban the eating of all animal matter (including sharks) for the simple reason that there is no "humane" method of killing an animal. But until then, can you please get off your collective high horses and deal with what is happening to people outside your office doors.

On the Road Again 2011 #35

There are a number of ways of getting from Vancouver Island to the interior of BC and further east. I know of three ways to do it but I am sure there are more. None of them are particularly smooth or easy. All require the use of public transit in some fashion or another. The first route is to go to Victoria, take a long bus ride to the ferry terminal, catch the ferry to Vancouver, and then take a couple of buses and the Sky Train and then another bus to get to start my off point just outside of Langley. To the best of my knowledge this spot is the only place where the city buses cross over Highway #1.  It is a great spot with good sightlines and lots of room for cars to pull over. The traffic volume is reasonable and consistent. At the very least, I usually can get a ride from this spot to Chilliwack which gets me well out of Vancouver. Unfortunately  it can take four or five hours to travel this route.

The second way is to take the ferry from Nanaimo (which gets one to a different ferry terminal on the mainland), and then take fewer buses etc. to get to the same great spot to hitch out of Vancouver. The advantage of this route is that one can be on the road with your thumb out and hour or so earlier that the former method. Both ways require staying in a hostel overnight and getting up really early in the morning.

The third method is to leave from Nanaimo take the ferry to Horseshoe Bay and then the Greyhound bus to Whistler. This route works well except one can't get to Whistler until after 12:00 and then one either needs to get through town - which means it is quite late to start travelling or stay in a hostel in Whistler so that you can get an early start the next day. The method is the most expensive option and feels as if it is the slowest to get going.

I chose this time to take the second option. It worked out great. I took a taxi to the terminal - I could have walked the 40 minute walk, but it was too early, it was still dark and it was starting to rain. The ferry ride was fine if a bit stormy, the bus connections were perfect and I was at my spot by 11:00. Except my spot was not there! It was totally destroyed. They were creating a new on-ramp and it was absolute chaos. Half the cars were going the new way and the other half were going the old way. It was muddy, there were lots of construction vehicles buzzing around and it was raining. It was raining hard. I had my pack covered with its special bright orange poncho type thing and I had on my even brighter orange rain jacket. But I got wet. The rain was dripping off my Australian drizabone hat in a constant stream; my quick dry pants had no chance to dry quickly or any other way and every step I took squeezed water out of my socks. I walked to a number of spots, dodging cars and back hoes and dump trucks. None of them felt safe for me or the drivers. It was depressing.

I have been lucky in my travels. I have been caught in a number a downpours and storms over the past year. But either I have been able to find a place to get shelter or the rain has not lasted very long. This time there was to where to hide from the constant day long rain. It may of stopped or at least slowed down for the occasional minute, but if so I don’t remember. I was so wet that the money in my wallet was soaking wet. I don't think I have ever been so wet in my life except when swimming and even then I don't think I had been any wetter than I was that afternoon. It was not just that I minded being wet, but I knew that the wetter I looked, the less likely it would be that I would get a ride. No one wants a wet passenger in their car. I could not blame them.

On the Road Again 2011 #34

I had, perhaps somewhat foolishly, planned to go to Salt Spring the next day (the wedding was on a Friday). I wanted to have my daughter and two grandkids see the island that I have called my home for these past few summers, to experience the Saturday Market and most importantly to meet Sally. My daughter has heard so much about Sally and Sally has heard so much about my daughter and the kids. I wanted all of my family to get to know each other, and to see why they were all so important to me. It was of course a silly wish. Not only did the hall need to get cleaned up before noon but I was just too tired to think about doing any travelling or visiting. It would have been nice but I just did not have the energy.

None-the-less it was a nice day with the families working together to do the cleanup at the hall. In the afternoon after I returned the rental car my brother and sister-in-law dropped by for a visit and brought some food. It was a nice relaxing day - exactly what we all needed. Later the whole family had supper together and the happy couple opened their presents. It was a nice gentle end to the wedding.

However there was a sense of sadness with me all that day. I knew I needed to be heading east. I had been gone for over nine weeks. I needed to get back to the apartment and get ready for school, the fall and my weaving.  It was time to go home. But I did not want to go. It would have taken very little to convince me to stay.  Every year it feels as if it gets harder and harder to pack my stuff and leave.

On Sunday I did a laundry, packed up my unneeded clothes and took the box down to the Greyhound Station. Greyhound appears to be cheaper than Canada Post in terms of shipping stuff back and forth. They seem to be just as reliable and certainly it is not any slower. I packed and repacked my pack (with the help of my grandson who delights in playing with my stuff, although he does occasionally forget where he has put it) trying to make it as small and as functional as possible. For awhile it looked as if I was going to get a ride to Kamloops but that didn’t work out, so late Sunday afternoon I got my son to drive me to Nanaimo where I had booked a room at the hostel. I needed to be in Nanaimo so I could catch the ferry out first thing Monday morning.

My son and I do not say goodbye easily or well. I am not too sure why. We have lots of time to talk and we do talk about all kinds of things. We even have talked about that fact that we don’t say goodbye very well. But we just don’t seem to get any better at saying it. Maybe it is the distance or the length of time between visits, or maybe it is because we are both men and are therefore not really in touch with our feelings. But I think it might be because we are in touch with our feeling. We know that we will miss each other and there is not a damn thing that we can do about it. So all there was was a quick hug outside of the hostel and then I was on my own. Once again I was alone, the single traveler ready the next day to start looking for a ride. To once again “hit the road” with that inherent feeling of excitement, anticipation and apprehension.

On the Road Again 2011 # 33

 In spite of it have been already a pretty exciting summer, the biggest event was yet to come. My son was getting married! And I got to be around for it all.

The three of us (my grandson, my son and I) went out shopping for clothes. It would not surprise anyone who knows him, but my son knew what he wanted and nothing less would do for his wedding clothes. It took us a couple of days but finally he put together his outfit and he looked great. (as did his bride and his son). Perhaps the best purchase was a pair of dress shoes that we found in a second hand store for $2.00. They were perhaps the buy of the year.

At some point in one of our shopping trips it struck me that it was the first time in perhaps a hundred years that there had been three generations of Woodall males in the same place. My paternal grandfather had died before I was born and my father had never known his grandfather either. It was an extraordinary realization and feeling. To be so connected to the past and to the future was, for a brief moment, almost so breath taking that I did not want to do anything except bask in the moment. The pleasure was almost paralyzing. The joy and yes the pride was almost palpable.  I truly felt blessed. But there was more to come.

I had been excited about the wedding for months - not just because they were finally getting hitched, but also because it meant that I would get to see my son and my daughter and all three of my grandchildren in the same room at the same time. There have been many times in the past ten years when I had just accepted that my children would always live in different parts of the country and that I would never get to see them together.  I could have (almost) quite happily gone home after I saw them all together. The fact that my brother and his wife were also there made it even more special. As my son said at one point , he had already got his wedding present from his family. I too got every present that I will ever need for the rest of my life on that day.

The wedding went without an obvious hitch, the weather was great, the bride beautiful, the ring bearer did get (eventually) up to the front to be with his parents, people got their pictures taken, there was piles of food, people had fun and all got home safely. What else could you ask for? There is far more to the wedding story than that, but it is not my story to tell. It is my son’s and my daughter-in-law’s story and hopefully one day, one of them will do their own blog about the happy day.

There is something to be said for low budget weddings. For both of my kids, we have decorated the halls ourselves. For the most recent wedding I even made some of the decorations. For both weddings helping out the day before meant that I got to hang out with my children’s in-laws. To get to know them and to learn about their family.  Everybody should do this way.

Thanks kids.

intermission - Occupying Public Spaces

There is, according to all of the political pundits and social commentators on Canadian news and public affair programming, a new social movement developing before our very eyes.  People, mainly young people, are gathering in front of stock exchanges or other public representations of the power elite to protest the obvious imbalances between the very rich and everyone else. It is happening throughout the USA, in a number of countries in Europe and this weekend in Canada. If one listens carefully to the sociologist and other political and social affair experts, they are declaring that this is a new sociological phenomenon. I am not too sure it is a new sociological phenomenon or at least if it is, if it has any staying power. I also think that it is a bit of a stretch to find direct links between what happened in Egypt seven months ago to what is happening on Wall Street today. I think it is far too early to make such a judgment.

More interestingly as a Canadian, I wonder if the complaints that people legitimately have in the USA are valid in Canada. I suspect that many Canadians will assume that the political and financial situations are identical. They are not. The US protesters are rightly angry that their government bailed out major banks who in fact caused the financial problems in the first place – no Canadian bank needed to be bailed out; the protesters are legitimately concerned that big business can and does invest large sums of money in ensuring that the “right” people get elected – in Canada our laws forbid such direct infusions of cash into campaign coffers; and finally the protesters are concerned that the cost of these bailouts and tax cuts to the very rich means that health care and education spending will be cut – no government in Canada whether provincial or federal has raise such a possibility.

There are issues in Canada that need to be resolved. We have a neo-conservative government in Ottawa that is systematically destroying many of the rights and protections we all assumed to be enshrined in law. Labour laws, privacy laws, access to information, and the right to be an equal participant in legal issues have been either violated or taken away completely. There is a clear agenda that supports not only the international/globalized business sector, but more importantly that does not support those who need our help.

There are issues in common between those who protest in the USA and those who may protest in Canada. Neither government is anyway addressing the issue of the environment, neither country has been able to develop a consensus as to how social programs should be paid for; both countries have far too high unemployment rates (it is difficult to get consistent, comparable statistical information – but it appears as if youth unemployment rates are somewhere between 15% and 19% in Canada and the US respectively); and unless there is a profound shift in how we elect and access our politicians, the young will continue not too vote.

It is worth noting a couple of additional facts.

1)      there have been seven federal and provincial elections in Canada in the past year. All of the elections resulted in the previous government being returned to office; all of the elections had reduced voter turn-out.

2)       while the Tea Party is in decline – last year a full 40% of the American voters thought it was a good thing, this year it is 20%

 It is exciting that people, especially young people are interested and passionate enough to get involved. For those of us of a certain age it is somewhat reassuring that those interests and those passions that energized us 35-40 years ago are still alive and vital in the hearts of others. It gives me hope for the future. But we need to be very clear as to who the enemy is. We need to be focused on changing how our political institutions are run and by whom. Banks or corporate elite are not the enemy – the enemy are those who let them do whatever they want.

on the road again 2011 #32

I had known since the beginning of June that there was going to be a BC Regional Gathering at some point around the second week of August. I didn't know if I would go given how busy the summer had been for me. But it had been a few years since I had been able to go to one. I had been missing that feeling of being at home, that sense of belonging that sweeps me away when I am at a BC Gathering. As much as I enjoy attending and participating at the big National Gatherings in the USA, BC is where my family lives and it will always be my the centre of my Rainbow home.

I could have hitchhiked there, but I only had a few days to spare and I didn't want to waste them on the road so I rented a little car and headed north. I didn't tell car rental place that I would be traveling along logging roads.  They (the rental places) don’t like those roads. It is too risky in terms of stone chips and broken axels.

It was an easy five or so hour drive to where the Gathering was suppose to be held. The scouts had told everyone that it was a glorious spot just a few 100 metres off the logging road, with a lake and a large meadow for people to camp in. There was even a flat level bit of land that we could use for a parking lot. It sounded ideal. When I got to the parking lot, there were only a few cars there, and much to my surprise there were tents there. I sort of assumed that the tent were for the three or four folks who were there to welcome people - but no, there were only eight or nine people had made it to the Gathering. I knew only knew two of the people.

Gatherings are a strange business. Because the Family resists any temptation or encouragement to be organized, it frequently presents an image of profound disorganization. People say they are planning on coming and then don't. No one knows why. We all accept that life occasionally gets in the way and are grateful and delighted with who ever does appear. So one can never tell if a regional or a national Gathering will be large or small.

People were camped in the campsite because the main site appeared to be a bit swampy and buggy. There was a fairly large creek (or small river) that needing crossing and there was not sufficient manpower to build a bridge. So folks just hung out in this over grown parking lot, surrounded by glorious trees. Other than a pick up truck or two that went by once or twice a day we saw no one. It does not sound very nice but it was a great day and a half for me. And I don't know if I can explain why.

My brothers and sisters were beautiful. While I was the oldest for at least the first day or so, the youngest was less than 2 years old. There were a couple a people in their 30s and the rest were in their mid 20s. People went for walks to look for crystals, we sat around and talked about art and politics and music and the Family and …. and ….. and …….about everything under the sun. And we ate. My heavens there was great food!

We had all brought food to share and so there were blueberry pancakes and scrambled eggs, there were smoothies made in a blender attached to a bicycle wheel, there was rice pudding, and a pasta dish as fine as any restaurant’s. All of it cooked without a lot of planning, with people contributing their food, their thoughts and their work, all without one harsh word or without anyone ever telling someone what to do. It was magical. A true family, most of whom had never met each other before they had gotten there, but a family none-the-less who seemed to instinctively know how to work together, how to share and how to just enjoy each other. Meals of course didn’t happen on time. That is - breakfast was more like brunch and supper barely got done before the sun set. But it did not matter. We were Family and we were at home.

The morning before I left we had a little council meeting and one by one as the feather was passed from person to person we listened to each other and in turn we spoke our thoughts about the future and what plans should be made for that evening (the full moon which is a traditional night of celebrations) and for the following year. For the Family, around the world, council should be held on the land in full view of everything and everyone so all can participate. So all can share their vision until a true consensus can be reached.

I was sad to leave but so glad that I had been able to at least for a few hours, share in belonging to this marvelous, vagabond-like group of eclectic travelers. We will meet again.

intermission - Dogs

Lots of dogs don't know they are dogs. In fact this confusion is not unusual in dogs that are raised in families. Because the dogs live with humans, they assume that they too are human with all of the privileges that the two legged beings have. This weekend however, I met a dog who has taken species confusion to a whole new level.

She thinks that we are dogs! I don't think she has a clue that she is different from us, but it is not that she is like us, but rather we are like her. When she wants to play, she barks and gently chews on the wrist of the human. When she wants to show affection, she grooms (licks) the person's hand (or any other part of the body that she can reach) for hours on end. You can't get mad at her because yelling at her or chasing her is exactly what another dog would do in response to her barking or the gentle chewing on some extremity. If you take your wrist away because the licking is getting annoying, she just sees that as another way of playing and she works all the harder at finding another body part to lick.

I noticed that she demonstrated the exact same behaviours when she played with another dog in the park. She barked, chewed and teased the other dog until it chased her. Quite remarkable. I don't have a clue how they are going to train her out of her false assumption.

Of course it may just be that my hairy appearance confused her and now that I have left - she is back to normal.