On (almost) on the Road Again 2012

I am packed!!!! Well not completely but as soon my laundry is dry – I could leave. Signs are made (including an extra long so that the words “Yellowknife” and “Edmonton” are large enough to be seen), sleeping bag and pad are rolled up, bivy tent, water filter and mini stove are ready to go and the assorted paraphernalia that I travel with are in their water proof bags.  The only things I need to buy are a new map, a small note book and a box of granola bars. Like I said - I could be gone in an hour.

Actually I am not leaving until a week this Saturday – but I thought I should practice getting ready.  Can you tell that I am getting excited? The house is littered with unspun wool - I am ignoring the 7 fleeces that are not even washed - weaving just off the loom that needs finishing and camping gear.  It is getting hard to find a place to sit down.

Still have piles of stuff to do around here including finishing that weaving, going to the dentist for a final fitting of my night mouth guard and figuring out what I should mail west for when I get there. This is a bit tricky as (1) the weather out west has been less than summery (just remembered I had forgotten to pack my rain jacket) and (2) if I am going to spend 3-4 days in Yellowknife – will I need more clothes? Naw…. 2 pairs of pants, socks, underwear, 2 t-shirts and a short and a long sleeve shirt will be fine. I will just wash my clothes in the bathroom sink. (For anyone who cares….. I wear one set of everything and therefore only have one set to change into.)

Yellowknife is going to be interesting as it would appear as if there are no cheap accommodations. I am sure there are campgrounds but they all look to be outside of town and I don’t have a tent. I don’t think that I will able to afford more than a few nights at some motel. Still I am really looking forward to seeing the sun out way past my bedtime and perhaps some wildlife. I have always been fascinated by the name “Great Slave Lake” and it will be neat just to see it. I am a wee bit nervous… it is a long way to travel almost 3,000 Km from Winnipeg to Yellowknife, (I am taking the train to Winnipeg- I am tired of Northern Ontario) and then a further 2,500 Km to Duncan. I have never hitchhiked that far before, It might be interesting.

Weaving

I want to be a weaver/spinner. I want to know if I have the self-discipline to do it full time. Could I work at it 40-50 hours a week and make enough product to support myself? Am I a good enough weaver/spinner so that what I produce, people will want? I think I need to find out. Last November I decided to find out, or at least to start the process of finding out. The next few blogs will talk about how successful my attempts to be more productive have been. Myy target for the winter semester was to produce nine 31inch x 40inch  throw rugs.

In the late fall I purchased five raw fleeces. That is a lot of wool. The fleeces are fresh from the farm and are incredibly dirty with clumps of mud and manure almost welded to the low hanging parts of the fleece. Even if one soaks these clumps in hot soapy water for 24 hours, the substance may not soften. As well depending upon where that particular sheep has wandered, the fleece may contained well embedded into the fibers a variety of seeds, twigs, burrs and unidentified vegetable matter.  Above all else the fleece is greasy. While various hand lotion advertisements may tell you about the advantages of natural lanolin, the fact of the matter is that it is sticky, gunky and on a raw fleece, dirty. If you play with a fleece for an hour, your hands are not soften – they are just sticky and dirty.

But the fleeces are also beautiful. They have this luxurious soft golden glow that makes me ache to play with it, to wash, card, dye, spin and weave with it. I sometimes wish there was a way of keeping that soft colour, but much of it disappears with washing.

The fleeces also smell which is why they are stored in garbage bags in some plastic bins out on my little balcony.

I buy my wool from Tom who lives out on the fourth concession. He is an interesting man. He is a professor of geography at Trent University. He is an environmentalist and has done much to create a culture of sustainability on that campus. He also has a rather eclectic flock of rare and perhaps even endangered domesticated fowl. Wandering around his house are varieties of turkeys and ducks that use to be common in the barnyards of settlers but are no longer used in commercial enterprises. Tom has for example these incredibly beautiful white turkeys. What makes them unique is that most turkeys can not breed naturally. (They have been breed to have such large chests that it is not possible for …use your imagination) These turkeys can breed naturally. When I saw the Tom turkey with all of his feathers arrayed it truly was a magnificent sight.

Of course, for my purposes, what Tom has that I want is a flock of Cotswold sheep. Cotswold are one of the original breeds of England. It was this breed that allowed Britain to become the world’s leading producer and distributer of woolen cloth. It was this breed of sheep that for generations drove much of Britain’s economic growth. They were equally as popular and successful in North America. According to an internet site (http://museum.gov.ns.ca/rfm/en/home/whattoseedo/animals/sheep.aspx) by the end of the last century there were 75,000 purebred Cotswold sheep in the Americas. However by the 1980s there were approximately only 35 ewes in Canada. People no longer raising sheep primarily to produce wool, but to produce meat.

 I first used a Cotswold fleece when I was living in Victoria. One of the professors in the Sociology department had some fleeces that she didn’t want. She gave me a few fleeces to play with. She had got her breeding stock from Tom who I didn't meet until I came back to Ontario. My life is full of those strange inter-connections.

 I think Tom would admit that he does not worry about the fleeces as much as perhaps he could. Farmers who are in the business of producing sheep that have great fleeces spend a lot of time making sure that their fields are clear of briars etc. Some even keep the blankets or coats on their sheep all year around so that their wool doesn’t get affected by the sun on by whatever is in the fields. Their fleeces, while they are less work, are four to five times more expensive. Tom's fleeces are very reasonable, but their is a bit more work to them and a lot more waste.

The first step is to lay out the fleece and see what I have purchased. I use an old sheet The darkest wool of the left side of the fleece as shown in the above picture is probably so dirty that I just threw those sections away.

The next step is washing.....

I don’t like to complain….

I don’t like to complain…. Well actually I suppose I do on occasion complain a fair amount. I, like most Canadians, like to complain about the weather. But of course Canadians are not unique in the area. Yesterday while I was shopping someone said to me “This is Canada – if you don’t like the weather, wait five minutes and it will change”. I had always thought that an uniquely Canadian comment until last year in Washington State, I heard someone say exactly the same thing- “This is Washington – if you don’t like the weather, wait five minutes and it will change.” So I guess all humans complain about the weather. But I am not sure if commenting about the weather is really complaining.

I also, as the occasional reader will know, complain every once in a while about our politicians. Lord knows there is a lot to complain about. In fact I think I am surprisingly reserved in my comments. Like talking about the weather, complaining about our, at best, seemingly incompetent politicians would seem to be our civic duty. But generally I really don’t complain a lot about my personal life – but today I will.

I have had every tooth in my head filled not once but twice. There are a few that have been repaired at least three times. The teeth were first filled over a the years by a number of dentist, most of whom seem to take great delight in excavating as much as they possible could from the center of my teeth and then filling the hole with metal fillings. As a consequence, I had very little original enamel left. So the teeth broke, got repaired and the broke again. My present dentist decided a few years ago that all of my teeth needed to be rebuilt from the ground up. I had the last tooth done about a year ago in a six hour session. I knew I need to get them crowned but I thought I had a year or two before problems started to arise.

WRONG!!! A month ago I developed some problems and needed to get a root canal done and two crowns installed. On the weekend I developed “some soreness” on the other side. I was told yesterday that I had an abscess and will need another root canal, and then have to go through the process of getting crowns for three more teeth. When I told the receptionist and then the dentist that I just wanted a whole new head – they thought I was joking…. I am not. I am tired of not only being “uncomfortable” because my at any given time at least on tooth hurts, I am also tired of dreading going to the dentist. While he is a great dentist and very solicitous about any discomfort, I am really getting tired of contributing to his grandchildren’s’ university fund (I have already paid for his kids to go to six years of post secondary education).

Perhaps this will be my last visit for a while but there is something wrong when I see my dentist, within a eight week period, almost more times than I have seen my grandkids in a 12 month period. So I am complaining!!

Titanic - what is all the fuss about

I must confess I don’t understand all of the fuss about the Titanic. I, like most Canadians have no direct ties to that disaster. Or at least I don’t think I do. Thirty odd years ago, my grandmother in one of her apparent lucid moments the summer before she died, told me that she had been on a ship that had rescued survivors when the Titanic sank. The topic came up in our conversation one day because she asked me to mail a letter to the Toronto Star. I had asked why she was writing to the Star and she responded by saying that she had been travelling from England and her ship had picked up some survivors. I never asked her what the name of her ship was, which is a pity because I have never been able to confirm her story. It seems far fetched and to the best of my knowledge it is not something that she talked about to a lot of people. Regardless of whether I have a tenuous connection to the sinking of the Titanic or not, I still do not understand what all the excitement is about.

I was listening to some news program the other day which provided a partial explanation for why so many people talk about the Titanic. It was suggest that it is now one of this culture’s points of reference. Some of the language (“going down with the ship” or “rearranging the deckchairs”) related to the story are now used to explain other events or at least to act as a form of short hand. Northrop Frye made the argument that 50 years ago almost all of our cultural references were related to the Bible. Everyone understood such statements as “walking on water” or perhaps even “road to Damascus”. That is no longer true. Our culture needs therefore to create other events that we can use as reference points. Hence the excitement over the Titanic.

This is not a complaint or a wish that we should go back to the good old days – I have never been convinced that those days were that good. But it is comment on society and its changing values and perspectives. If people were really interested in the class system of Britain that contributed to the disaster that would be perhaps useful place to start a discussion. I fear however that far too many people are drawing their knowledge from a Hollywood love story. One that could never have happened as my grandmother cross the ocean almost a century ago.

Year End

I am almost finished for another year. Within another ten days or so I will be done teaching until next September (on the assumption that I get my contract renewed). It has felt like a long semester for no particular reason, or at least no reason related to school. Of course the fact that our first taste of spring came so early has made it especially difficult to focus on the tasks at hand. Spring fever can be a debilitating condition. And so I am glad that it is almost over. Almost over that is except for the marking. This, for what it is worth, is not nearly as an onerous task as some would have you believe.

Four months off – it sounds like an eternity, an almost unimaginable amount of time off to do whatever I want to do. I suspect my father or some other men of his generation would have been in awe of having that much time off and perhaps even confused by the concept that the time was theirs to do what they wanted with it. Of course it is not entirely free. I have a few medical appointments, a couple of birthday parties to attend, a pile of wool washing, spinning and weaving to do, and of course I have to pack. Because it is travelling time again!!!

For the last four or five weeks my thumb once again has started (metaphorically) to itch – just begging to be out on the highway. Every transport truck that I pass or every car on the highway that passes me has become a potential ride. I sometimes feel like some sort of ravenous vegetarian beast lying in the jungle waiting to pounce upon the unsuspecting drivers. I slow to check out crossroads to see where would be a good place to stand; along lonely stretches of highway I look just beyond the shoulder and wonder if there is a bit of flat ground to sleep that night. I swear this need; this compulsion to travel is a disease. It is a disease that I embrace and welcome. I can’t wait to go.

This year is going to be special. I am going to Yellowknife before going to the west coast. For years I have thought about going north. It is the only direction I have not travelled in Canada. I know that I am getting a bit older. I know that I won’t be able to travel this way forever. Every year I feel the wear and tear on my body just a little bit more. The long hills I have to walk up seem to get a bit higher, and when I sleep outside the ground seems a bit harder. So for a few days I want to spend time in a place where the sun stays visible all of the time, I want to know what it feels like to be out at midnight and still see the sun. But also want to see some new highways; to talk to people who live a different life than those of us who live in the south; I want to see a different kind of land. I am excited about the possibilities.


But then I suspect if I was going anywhere – I would still be excited. I am almost on the road again.

The budget(s) and the environment

There are times when I just get tired of being angry/upset at politicians who seem to delight at being either incompetent or so narrow minded that they can’t see the damage they are doing. And while it might appear to the casual reader that I unfairly “pick” upon the Conservatives in office in Ottawa ( it is not unfair if they are the ones making all of the mistakes), the Liberals in Queen’s Park are not doing much better. Specifically both of the recent budgets that have been delivered by the respective finance ministers have dealt a potential blow to Canada’s already inadequate environmental protection law. I just can't stop myself from wanting to scream at someone.

I have to assume that neither Dwight Duncan from Ontario nor Jim Flaherty from Ottawa had a conversation last week with each other before they tabled their budgets. However it would appear that they, in spite of the fact that are from different political parties and would argue that they are light years apart, had exactly the same message. Quite simply, according to both Finance Ministers, the environmental review process is too slow, unwieldy, cumbersome and expensive. It needs to be streamline, shortened and made both simpler and faster. Both parties swear that the proposed changes will not have any effect upon the environment. They all promise that that they will ensure that our environment will continue to be protected (italic are mine).

What is remarkable is that both governments announced the changes by including the announcement in the budget! This is a rather clever strategy both because they will be less noticed and more importantly that there will be virtually no discussion or input from the public as to what the changes are, who is going to design the new system, or the potential impact upon the environment.

To be fair, the Conservatives were far less sneaky about wanting these changes. But then they have a majority and apparently that means that they can do what they want. In fact that have been very blatant about what they want – it is clear that they would prefer to have no environmental reviews at all. It would appear that they believe what is good for the oil companies’ (and other resource extractors) is good for Canada. To ensure that this happens they are about to make it very difficult for not-for-profit environmental agencies to advocate politically for their causes – but the obscenity of that is fodder for another blog.

I can appreciate that environmental reviews are expensive and time consuming for companies. I can understand that they have millions of dollars tied up while they go through the various processes. If I were a major resource developer I would want to have easy and quick access to the raw materials in the ground. I would also, I suspect, do all that I could to influence the government to make my life easier. That is all understandable. I don’t agree with that perspective that says we humans have dominion over the earth and therefore we can rape it at will. But I understand it.

I can even understand people who are in office wanting to stay in office. I know of  the importance of finding a balance between people’s values. But for the life of me, I can’t understand anyone being prepared to allow things to happen, knowing the danger to the people and to the land. (Does anyone really believe that the newest proposed pipeline won’t at some point develop a problem and spill raw crude on the ground?) It is a fundamental betrayal of the people who elected them and the land that supports them.

You might want to read this book

I seldom recommend books for others to read. There are just too many of them out there for me to ever say “this is the best book ever”, or “you have to read this book!” Books are almost always a matter of personal taste both in terms of style and content. There are a few authors that I would occasionally recommend to a friend but generally speaking I avoid any suggestion that my personal taste in anything is sufficiently well enough developed that someone else should listen to me. But today I am making an exception to this rule …..

I have just finished reading Dr. Suzanne Nutt’s book entitled Damned Nations: Greed, Guns, Armies, and Aid. It is a stunning and compelling discussion on the failure of aid from the developed world to the developing world. Dr. Nutt has a M.Sc in Public Health as well as being a doctor of medicine. As an advocate for children’s’ right she has, for the past 15 years, been to all of those places that are on the 10:00 news so often because of what seems like an endless cycle of natural disasters and war. Dr. Nutt’s concern and outrage at the ineffectiveness of many of the most visible aid agencies is supported by both well researched facts and personal stories. In her far too short book she talks about the women that she has met, and of how some of them have been killed for speaking out and of the extraordinary courage of those women who have survived and continue to fight. Dr. Nutt’s message is powerful and depressingly clear. Both individuals and as a government Canadians are not only not doing enough, but what we are doing may be ineffective.

While I knew some of the information and in fact talk about it in one of my classes, there was much that I did not know or understand. I think what was most depressing was the fact that many of the aid agencies are not listening to, or engaging as equal colleagues the people who live in the affected areas. It would appear as if we are still performing charitable acts; that is we are doing something that we think will help someone because it makes us feel righteous, kind and noble. That has to be the wrong reason to help someone. And sometimes I think, that when you do things for the wrong reasons – no matter how right the act seems – it is fated to go wrong.

Read the book. Perhaps a few people will change how they give support and to whom. Perhaps some of us will work harder at trying to convince our government to think about why they give money to countries and how. Perhaps they, rather than decreasing the amount that we give (in terms of the GDP), they will work on giving something close to what such countries as Demark, Sweden and Norway give. Perhaps by helping others, we will rediscover what the word aid means.