Netflix and Disaster Relief

It is perhaps unfair to blame my non-responsiveness to the needs of Haitians after the most recent natural disaster on Netflix. But the fact that I have access to Netflix has much to do with my lack of enthusiasm  to contribute to Doctors without Borders or some similar group that is providing disaster relief.

As I have neither cable nor a satellite dish on my roof, I no longer have access to television news. I get my near nightly entertainment/mind numbing from watching Netflix or occasionally Ted talks. Of course I am aware that a hurricane passed over that troubled isle and what little infrastructure had been built since the earthquake in 2001 has been destroyed. I am aware of these facts because every morning I scan CBC, the Globe and Mail, CTV and  the Al-jazeera English web-sites on my tablet. But unlike a television newscast, if I don't want to read an article I can just scroll past it. I must confess I do so quite often especially when it is clear that there is no new information. Unlike watching a newscast where they can endlessly show the same thirty second video of flooding, downed trees, houses without roofs (or walls) or some person hunched over crying for their loses to the point where those images are embedded upon my brain, I can ignore it all just with a flick of my finger. I don't have to watch the efforts of relief workers or to listen to commentators discussing the need for financial aid for those relief workers. I don't have a telephone number flashing at the bottom of my television screen to nag me or add to my guilt of being a member of the elite living in a charmed land. So I have done nothing.

It is not that I can't afford to send some money, nor am I upset that it appears as if much of the money that was contributed to fix the last Haiti disaster appears to have been at best, poorly spent. I just have not been motivated to donate money. A poor excuse but none-the-less it is true. I feel no particular attachment to the people of Haiti and because I have not seen their faces shaped by despair and yet another disaster, it is easy to stay disconnected from them.

While there is no way to confirm it, I wonder if donations for the various disaster relief funds have decreased proportionally to number of people who have disconnected themselves from cable and satellite services. I surely can't be the only one who is inclined to give less because he is not being reminded as frequently as he use to be. Or have the donation levels remained about the same because some of the social media sites have become the modern equivalent of the 10:00 evening news? Or have those donation rates remained the same because those who are inclined to give do so without the endless nagging?

In the meantime, I guess I had better get on line and donate some money. I am a member of the elite and I do live in a blessed country. Folks like me need to share what wealth (no matter how little) we have with those who have even less.

Thanksgiving 2016

It seems to be one of the things that people do these days for Thanksgiving..... saying what they are thankful for on Facebook. It seems a rather strange almost anonymous way of expressing gratitude for what is, for most of us, as pretty damn fine life.  It is not that our lives are perfect or that there are not numerous bumps on the road of life, but those of us in Canada have it pretty good. There is virtually no social unrest, our court/legal system while continuing to demonstrate significant biases gets it right much of the time; our politicians while some may be a bit bent in terms of what they chose to focus on - none are blatantly  corrupt; our natural disasters are mild, generally short lived with lots of support to deal with them and the last time a foreign country invaded us was just over two hundred years ago. While there is a lot of work to do to make our country more accepting and inclusive both in terms of both our First Nations and our newest arrivals - most of us are at least aware that we need to do something. We have a lot to be thankful for. Not just today but every day. We need to be celebrating and telling each other why - not just on one Monday a year.

I am having supper with my son and his family at his father-in-law. It will be fun and I am grateful that I was invited. But I suppose that it is the nature of human beings to while being grateful about some things, to be aware of missing other things.

This is the first Thanksgiving weekend in a few years that I have not driven up to Sudbury. Which means that this is the first year in a long time that I will not see the hills that surround highway 11 just ablaze with the glorious colour of an Ontario fall. I will miss that view and of course the folks in Sudbury.

Comments on Farmers' Markets

While there are a number of farmers' markets in the general area  of Duncan- most of them are rather small as compared to the one I am use to attending. Even if there are 80-90 stalls - the volume of traffic is substantially less than was in Peterborough. Which is to be expected as there are so many more people in that fair city than in this area.  At this time of year the local markets are getting smaller and smaller as both the weather gets worse and the number of farmer with produce to sell becomes less. All of the markets in the area seem to have the rule that the produce has to be grown locally. That means that with the exception of some foods like kale, carrots and squashes - the season is pretty much ended for most farmers. Not surprisingly the selection of food is much larger in Peterborough not only because there are more farmers and shoppers in the area but also the vendors are allowed to sell vegetables etc from other areas. For example one can buy green peppers at the beginning of May when the frost locally has barely left the ground.

The Ontario markets that I know about start fairly early (Peterborough opened at 7:00) whereas the one in Duncan opens at 9:00 and the one just outside of Nanaimo opens at 10:00.

The shoppers are a bit different too. Like in Peterborough, those shoppers who arrive as soon as the market opens are primarily interested in only food. They are focused; they seldom cast their eyes on anything other than the food booths. However, once the more casual shoppers start to appear, I have, in spite of the smaller number of shoppers, had far more interest in what I am doing than in Peterborough. Not only are small children curious but their parents seem to be as interested. It feels as if there are fewer times when (see my post Weaving #3 - At the Market from 5/5/15) parents drag their kids away when quite clearly they want to see what is happening. It feels as if I am also having longer conversations about weaving etc than I use to have.

Unfortunately, those longer conversations are not translating into more sales. In fact I have only sold about half of what I had sold this time last year. Part of that is that I did not get accepted into the Duncan Market as an occasional drop-in until mid August - before that I was participating in even smaller Farmers' Markets, and part of it may be due to the fact that it will take some time before people come to the market just to see me. There is also the weather......

People have suggested to me that it is silly to try to sell wool products in the summer time - they might be right. And then there is the rain. It has rained the last two Saturdays. Yesterday it rained none stop for the almost eight hours I was there. Not a gentle occasional drizzle but frequently a serious rain that caused the gutters to run like small rivers. I did not know until yesterday that my tent leaks. Stuff had gotten wet the previous week but I had thought that it was because the wind had blown the rain in. Not so. Yesterday within 30-40 minutes of being set up everything was covered with moisture - but I could not figure out why or how. There were no huge drops coming through specific holes in the ceiling - I could have fix that. But rather the water appeared to ooze through the fabric, turning into a fine mist that covered all of my weaving. I quickly drove to the dollar store and bought some plastic that would cover the roof. While it did stop the rain from coming in - the damage was done. I was quite wet and all of my stuff had a damp feeling to it.

The most remarkable difference in the shoppers between Duncan and Peterborough is how they cope with the weather. In Peterborough if it was raining, the shoppers would frequently huddle in a vendor's tent until the storm blew over or else they would leave. In Duncan it seems as if they are so use to the rain that they just continue to stroll along. I was shivering but there were some with shorts on -shopping. No one showed any sign of rushing to get their weekly shopping done. There were certainly far fewer shoppers than normal - but the weather did not seem to bother them. Younger kids had one piece wet suits on, adults had their water proof jackets and many had their rubber boots on. All just strolled along at their usual pace.

I think it is all too easy to assume that people on the west coast are sort of wimps because they do not have to endure the harsh winter weather of much of Canada. But I have to say - it takes a certain kind of toughness to shop at a farmers' market in the pouring rain, in shorts and not look as if you are in a rush to get out of the rain.

Drugs, Death and Responsibility

I have been thinking a lot about drugs (illegal) the past few days..... not that I am planning on taking anything any time soon but rather I have been thinking about how the conversation about them has changed. With the rise in awareness of how addictive opioids are ( or at least an increased media awareness of how newsworthy it is) plus the ever increasing number of people who are over-dosing on fentanyl, it feels as if the responsibility  (or blame) for the addiction has perhaps shifted.

Canadian psychologist Bruce K. Alexander and his colleagues at Simon Fraser University in the late 1970s developed a convincing argument  (that was ignored by almost everyone) that heroin use had far more to do with social conditions then the addictive attributes of the drug. In the last decade or two Dr Gabor Maté of Vancouver had argued that a child's early environment, specifically how abusive it was, has a direct impact on why an individual becomes addicted. Neither of these two positions, backed by scientific data have ever received much public or political support. We have continued to outlaw and blame the users while ignoring the social causes for the addictions.

However within the past few months - if one only reads main stream media, the fault for the increase in opioid use and the alarming number of people who have died from a fentanyl over-dose is the fault of the doctors  for over prescribing a drug and the lack of treatment programs to help people with the addiction. I am sure that some doctors (perhaps most) have on occasion been careless about monitoring how their patients are using the pain medications. It is conceivable that there are numerous doctors who are either unaware that opioids can be highly addictive or who just don't care. But it is not conceivable that the majority of doctors are so incompetent. Similarly for patients talking such medications, they and their families would need to have their heads in the sands for extended periods of time to not be aware of the dangers of pain medications. Clearly doctors and pharmacists have some responsibilities for monitoring their patients medication, but the patients also have some responsibility to be aware of the dangers. However, I suspect that the vast majority of opioid users are people who have come to their addictions through some other process than their doctor over prescribing a specific medication. We ignore (as we have for the past forty or so years) the social causes of addiction at our society's peril.

The one main difference between opioids such as oxycontin and fentanyl as compared to more traditional street drugs such as heroin is that it appears to be far more addictive, far faster. Opioids are cheaper to manufacture, easier to smuggle, and dosages are far more inconsistent and therefore potentially more potent and dangerous.  This has resulted in the drug being more easily available to the "recreational" drug user who uses drugs less frequently and therefore his or her system is less able to cope with inconsistent or hidden dosages. Again, it is difficult to believe that these individuals are not aware at some level of the increased dangers of taking manufactured chemicals into their bodies. However, young adults have a strong sense of invincibility, of believing that something bad could not ever happen to them.  We might need to look at other methods of having  a dialogue with young people. Clearly the threat of punishment or death is not effective.

Traditional treatment programs dealing with addictions are in part based on changing lifestyles that have been warped by decades of addiction supportive behaviours. Those strategies may not be effective in dealing with addictions that happen so quickly and so powerfully. But I am not too sure if blaming the government for the lack of treatment programs is particularly useful. We ( the public and the government) could agree to fund more programs, but that would only be useful if we knew what would work. Clearly there needs to be an immediate investment into determining what would work. I suspect that such an investigation would suggest that, as in most treatment programs, it is not the short term intervention but rather the long term investment in supportive services that would provide the "cure". I am unconvinced that the public has any interest in providing long term support for anyone. We just want the quick fix so that we are free to go to resolve the next crisis.

Or we could look at the work of doctors Maté and Alexander and see if there is some correlation between their work and the apparent increase of middle class people becoming addictive to a new type of drugs. But that too might require a long term solution..........

Being Intellectual Absent

I am feeling somewhat guilty (although to whom and why I am not clear) as I realize that I have not posted anything for a few weeks. It is not as if there is nothing to write about.....

I suppose this latest attack of the "guilts" derives from my unwillingness to engage in the debate about the American presidency. This feeling was further exacerbated by me consciously deciding to not watch  the American presidential debate last night. My convenient excuse was that I have neither cable nor a satellite dish. I was conveniently ignoring the fact that I do have a computer and access to the internet. I am sure that there were all kinds of ways to watch the debate if I had wanted to. The fact is that I don't care.

In fact, I am slowly coming to the realization that I don't care about a lot of things. When I was actively engaged in the community either as someone who worked in social services or taught at a community college - there was a reason to stay informed/aware and involved. I needed to spend time thinking about the state of my world and the infinite complexities and therefore opinions within that world. Certainly in the last six or seven years of my "professional" life, I think, or at least I choose to believe that I was expected to demonstrate some capacity for critical thinking. Now... not so much.

In terms of social connections, I now spend more time with other people than I have in the past few years. Throughout the summer I have attended a number of farmers' markets, sometimes on both Saturday and Sunday. I have talked to hundreds of people, sometimes for 10-15 minutes at a time. I have spent even longer talking to the vendors on either side of me. I have met some really nice people. Being at the various markets has been fun and I have learned a fair amount about selling etc.

I also have neighbours. For the first time in probably 30 years I actually have people on either side of me and across the street. I don't have to drive anywhere to see someone. And I do see someone every day.  They too are very nice people who are caring and would help if I needed something.  As well I spend three hours on Mondays at  Providence Farm (a therapeutic community) as a volunteer with other spinners to spin wool for their weaving program.  While I have had the chance to help some weavers even more inexperienced than I, I am also getting the chance to observe and talk to spinners who know so much more than me.

It is all quite delightful. On the surface I have more social contact with more people that I have had for years. But it is all rather superficial. Without disparaging my fellow vendors, my potential customers or my neighbours - it is all rather unstimulating intellectually. There is no need to get myself all fired up about some issue when there will be no one to talk to about it. In fact getting all fired up may not even be healthy as all it does is cause that issue to fester inside my brain. As I weave or spin I end up having endless conversations with myself about whatever issue. So perhaps it is not that I don't care but rather that I am tired of winning all of my arguments.

Or perhaps I am just being lazy and what I need to do is to get off of my butt and start writing and then find people to argue with.