when life gives you raindrops

Finally, a reason to be excited about all this rain!

A citizens' rainfall network! Buy a rain gauge for 8$ at the hardware store. Put it in the ground as far from trees as possible. Each day, read the measurement, then dump out the water. Email your results to Bill Danielson. Feel like both a Real Scientist, and an Active Citizen.

It's part of an exhibit happening this summer at the North Highlands Community Museum, called "Cape Breton Weather, Cape Breton Lives." If you live in Cape Breton and want to take part, email Bill - downspill@gmail.com.

spring greens

(Or, thoughts had while driving home at 11 pm on a foggy Sunday night, and written down and posted shortly thereafter.)

Spring is here. Leaves are out on the trees, and it's a relief. After fog and rain and cold, and feeling like our climate is changing, I'm so glad to see trees just bursting with new life, covered in lush greenness. A promise that there will be a summer, that there is some normalcy.

Well, I mean, OK, I'm not just feeling it, the climate is changing. We all know that by now, don't we? I mean, tornadoes, hurricanes, and scientific data that just won't quit? Can we all stop saying "well maybe it's something that is supposed to happen every 10,000 years by itself" - anyone who's ever had anything to do with alcoholism can tell you, that's denial, people.

I like a comic I saw recently somewhere online that was some scientists at a climate conference. There was a list on a whiteboard of "benefits of reducing our impact on the world" - things like "healthier kids" and "better food" and "stronger communities". One guy in the audience stood up and said "Yeah but what if it's all a hoax and we make a better world for NOTHING?"

That's pretty much how I feel.

Like, can't we stop arguing over whether or not it's a hoax, and just do the right thing already? Because even if somehow it is a big hoax, isn't reducing our voracious use of the planet's resources a really great thing?

Most of the time I feel like standing in the middle of a street, or a mall, or anywhere at all, and just yelling "Wake the fuck up everyone!" Just yelling it, over and over and over. Partly because I like saying the word "fuck". (If you thought I was only a "sweetheart" and that I never offend anyone, you were wrong. Sorry.) Partly because I want everyone to WAKE THE FUCK UP. And then DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT ALREADY.

But doing that makes you a social pariah and people don't listen anyway.

And besides, people wake up individually and unfortunately we do not, as a world, collectively make decisions.

So what to do?

Hunker down. Shop at the farmer's market (and get asparagus and greens in season, and eat the earth's rhythms to instill them in yourself). Laugh and dance to make yourself feel less crazy, and let the real feelings OUT. Talk to like-minded people, like I do with my friend Kate, with whom I try and walk once a week. We talk about this feeling of living in two worlds. One is the world of cars and TV shows and getting your food at the supermarket, frozen, in pretty packages, and being "normal", ordering things and talking about next year like the world we live in is never going to change. Like "positive growth always" is actually possible, like we live on a magic planet with infinite resources and a reset button. The other is the world of fear, of who knows what might happen, of eating dandelion greens and scrounged beans and needing to know how to shoot a gun because everything has collapsed due to Peak Oil. And these days? It feels like those two worlds are starting to merge. Like I said, tornadoes and hurricanes. Scientific data that just will not quit. That just keeps coming.

I gotta admit some stuff. I like driving. No, scratch that, I love it. I do. I'm an environmentalist (and sometimes just a mentalist - ask my family) and I love driving. I'm not saying I love what it does to the planet. Nor what it has done to cities and communities. But I do love it. I love doing it. I love the freedom. I love the speed. I love pressing on the gas and feeling my car speed up, go faster. I am in control, my hands are on the wheel. I can take myself there.

Also, today I shopped at WalMart. Not that I do this all the time, but it was kind of nice. There was so much stuff. It was abundant, and shiny, and well-ordered and cheap. I watched people and sort of took in how they pushed their carts and the neat stories of each person I didn't know. I actually enjoyed myself.

I think it's important to recognize these things about myself. About ourselves. That I am so NOT perfect. That I do not stand apart from the world, that I am part of it.

The other day at work some men were talking about how they're going to travel, whether they're going back to the US by plane or by car. One said, "We're flying, so I'm not sure when we'll get back." "No, no," said the other one. "Remember, for that leg we're driving." Then, sardonically, sarcastically, but (I got the sense) not as aware as I was of the full meaning of what he said, "We're controlling our own destiny."

Man, have we ever fooled ourselves. But it feels good, doesn't it?

(She said ironically, but also earnestly. Sadly. And in some weird way, because she's a sensitive one, with joy.)

it's what we do

How can I justify flying to New Jersey for a week? When I feel so strongly about oil, about climate change, about flying being bad?

I've been thinking about this a lot. I guess I justify it in the same way I justify doing things like driving a car, or eating cucumber out of season, or using Sunlight dish soap - although I feel badly about it, and wish I had whatever it took to find alternatives, I end up not thinking about it, too, sometimes, and I try and cut myself some slack. I also try to consider the good things that I DO do, as being meaningful, and I think about how it's pretty much impossible to escape the oil-driven and oil-dependent economy we live in.

Also I have been thinking - I can justify this trip this way: I love my Grandpa. He is nearly 90. I want to see him. And as irrational and perhaps selfish as it sounds, I guess I value seeing him, more than I do "not doing damage to the environment". That - is not great. I mean, I wish I could say that "not doing damage to the environment" meant the most to me. Certainly I feel incredibly sad sometimes about the damage we are doing to the planet, to the ways we have changed it and wrecked parts of it and the shit we're continuing to do. I feel downright overwhelmed by it, at times.

But I also love my Grandpa. He is the voice that read to me as a kid. He is my elder, my Dad's Dad, the man who built me a dollhouse when I was a little girl, who always told me that I can do incredible things with my life and my talents. And he doesn't tell me that because I'm necessarily a genius, but because I'm his granddaughter and he loves me. And it's been six years since I've seen him. And he's getting old. So I'm going to go see him. Yes, I'll feel guilt about the airplanes, the fuel spent. It's likely going to be a palpable sadness and guilt. But no doubt I'll also feel a rush as the plane pulls up into the sky, and likely I'll also feel like an adult, and capable and strong as I drive myself to the airport, park my car and go get my boarding pass.

Nothing is ever simple. Is ever black and white.

I leave tomorrow. I'll be back in a week. Also, I'm planning to see an opera in New York City! As well as generally have a really good trip. I'll share pictures upon my return!

***

Here's how the last week went.

Several days were just this: me on the couch with Kali the cat and bumming around on Pinterest. (It is seriously addictive.)

The chair I can see from the couch - and the reflection of a big spiky tropical-type plant, on it.

Chickens in their yard, the mountains behind, and the spring sun shining down.

After spending pretty much the entire day indoors, in my PJS and a hoodie, I went outside to tend to the chickens and take some pictures. I am quite happy here. In gumboots (longtime readers of this blog will know of my love for rubber boots!), on a farm. Life IS good.

This is right next to the front door. A little detail that I happened upon and really liked.

Leftover chicken soup and a toasted sandwich. My meals of the last several days.

Ferry scenes. St. Ann's Bay.

That's it for now! I hope you're well. I really do.

seeing/eyes

I've been thinking that it's time I write about The Oil Spill.

But then this week I got contacts for the first time ever, and so I want to write about THAT.

(These pictures, by the way, are from March 2008. My camera is still not fixed. Oh, well. My eyes still look much the same, however.)

Anyway, both of these things mish-mashed in my brain, The Oil Spill and my new contact lenses - and I realized that both of them are about SEEING. And in a way, they're also both about sensation, and how we get used to things.

Whether or not we SEE or pay attention to the tragedy happening in the Gulf of Mexico, it's going on. The media is how we're seeing it up in Canada. (I haven't gone down to the shoreline in Louisiana and Florida and dipped my hands in the oil washing up on shore.) And if I choose not to SEE it, then to me, it's not happening. If I close my eyes, my actual eyes, as well as the screens and cameras that act as eyes around the world and relay images back to me, then I don't see it. I don't have to process the images. But they've gotten in anyway, they're eating their way into my soul. Turtles doing the dead-man's-float in oily water a caramel-mud color. Egrets long and limby like ballerinas, soapy and held by rescue workers.

When I sit and actually open up my eyes, and look at images, it's fucking sad. It's a fucking huge tragedy. I curse and use obscenities because it FUCKING CALLS FOR IT. There's a great big well SPEWING oil into the ocean, and no-one can stop it. Seriously? And everyone's just getting on with their lives? Because to me, this calls for a vigil and a public keening and crying on par with 9/11, on par with any huge loss of human life out there. I feel like I want to go down to some gateway, to some place where I can light candles and sit in stoned silence. And then I look away, I re-focus my eyes elsewhere and I CAN forget about it. I get distracted by my job, by my day-to-day life here in Cape Breton, by so many other things. By the men I have crushes on, by the projects I want to do. How is that?

That's because we get used to things. Sensation - we only feel it for a bit, then we get used to it. And if something isn't happening RIGHT HERE in front of me, I can forget about it, move on.

But then I start thinking - what if it WAS happening right here? People dump all kinds of crap into the Bras d'Or lakes, and it's only now, this year, that boaters have to have a holding tank on their boats. The lakes SEEM clean, but that's only because I'm taking them at face value. What all is in there that's clear, that's dissolved, but still in the water? All the plastics and cans and tiny bits of things that have broken down?

The point is - this kind of shit IS happening, all the time, in our backyards and front yards and everywhere, just not on the scale of a huge oil rig fucking spewing oil. And because we can't see it, we can pretend it's not happening. Ignore, refuse to acknowledge.

I can totally understand why we do this. To acknowledge it means to then come to terms with it, to go, "Holy shit, I gotta change something." And it's such a huge scale, what the F do we DO?

And then my thoughts fade into something else, like my appointment at the vision clinic yesterday morning to get taught how to put in my new contacts. I sat there and let a woman I don't know poke her finger into my right eye, me trying as hard as I could not to blink, but blinking like crazy just the same. Finally it worked - the little tiny slip of a contact stuck on. Now for the other one. Then that one worked. And suddenly, for the first time ever in my life, I could SEE without wearing glasses. I could see across the room. My own image in a mirror from ten feet away was CLEAR. And it is SO WEIRD.

I went back to work, giddy. "No-one should be this excited at work!" I exclaimed to my co-worker, who laughed good-naturedly at me like she usually does. My excitement was just a few notches below, say, girls squealing at the Beatles on the Ed Sullivan show. I was really! freaking! excited! And I had to kind of subdue it so I could focus on purchase orders and people's inquiries about summer wharfage. But the whole time I just wanted to walk around the store and LOOK AT STUFF. And touch my face - no glasses! Holy crap! CHECK THIS SHIT OUT!

And it feels weird in another way, too. You can feel they're there - I blink a tonne more. It's like there are little itchy bits in your eye, not so bad that you can't stand it, but just enough that you feel it. "It's going to feel like you've got something in your eye. Because, you know, you DO," my hairdresser told me last week. "But you'll get used to it. After a bit you won't even know they're there."

(Crazy that THAT can happen. That we can have this itchy sensation and then after a while it fades. Even though the item is still there, causing it.)

After four hours I took them out and put my glasses back on. Cinderella going back to the kitchen, glass slipper put away. (Funny - I made reference to Cinderella in my last post, too. Weird.) And my eyes feel tender, sore. Like I'm really tired, except I'm not. I'll be glad to sleep tonight, rest them. Poor things, they've been poked at far too much today!

So, SEEING. Sometimes I see The Oil Spill for what it is, and I want to cry my eyes out. And I don't. Sometimes I think we're all effing crazy, really. Then I get in my car to drive to work, or I order up some clearly toxic petrochemical-based bottom paint for a client's boat, and I feel a shred of guilt. Accompanied by a portion of rationalization. As in, "Oh, I have to drive to get to work, and I only drive a little bit, so it's OK." Or a dose of denial. There isn't even a sentence to go with denial, because that's all about NOT thinking.

What are you SEEING? What do you think when you see pictures of The Oil Spill? Or do you have thoughts on contact lenses?

slick

At the same time as I spend a long and lovely Saturday by the shore of the lake I love, other shores are being swamped with oil. How? How can this be?

I went to pick up the newspaper at a leisurely 5:30 PM (as opposed to the usual 6:30 am), pulling the rolled and bent newsprint from the red box. I unfolded it and started walking back up the driveway. I read: "'Colossal tragedy' foreseen as oil gushes ashore." A picture of two workers in blue scrubs tenderly holding a bird and holding a cloth to it. The caption: "Doctors try to wipe oil off a northern gannet in Fort Jackson, La., Friday."

All day, sitting by the lake, reading my book, I've casually watched geese, seagulls, crows, eagles, riding the invisible air. The clear, unblemished water slaps against the rocks, providing backdrop to my reading. Being by the water brings me peace, makes me calm. A muskrat swam by, looking like a stick floating on the current, except for the wake he was leaving behind him.

I read about this disaster and I want to cry. The word "disaster" means nothing to us anymore. We hear it on the news so much, it just means "happening". When it should really mean - cry your eyes out, because shit is hitting a fan. Someone's world is collapsing. Has broken apart, has become infested with black oil droplets. Is nothing like it was, and may never be again.

My heart is breaking and I don't know what to do about it. I want to wipe every northern gannet clean, set them free into the air, watch them fly away above a clear ocean. I don't even know where I would start.

twenty-six.

I was going to do a list of "twenty six awesome things about this week," but realized that not only would it get difficult to think up that many awesome things, but it might not be a realistic picture of life. I mean, things ARE pretty good, but life has lots of sides to it. So here goes: Twenty-six Things About This Week, Awesome and Otherwise.

1. It started with a rainy Sunday. One of the best bits of that day: watching this part of the "David Bowie" episode of Flight of the Conchords, on YouTube of course. "What are you doing in my room?" "It's all part of your freaky dream. Am I freaking you out?"

2. I started my new job at a marine supply and yacht maintenance facility, here in my village. My feet were sore on Monday night from walking around on a concrete floor looking for marine parts and standing behind the corner. But, I was proud of myself for going into something brand new, and facing all that newness. It felt like when you're in a foreign place with people you've just met, who all know each other. And they're having a conversation about stuff they all know really well, and you have to just listen, not having a clue really who they're talking about - only in this case, it's "fuel connectors" and "retainer rings".

3. I'm house-sitting and dog-caring for some people I've house-sat for before.

4. The house is comfortable, sensually-pleasing (art, books, nice furniture, lots of windows with beautiful views of the lake and Kidston Island) and for two weeks, my temporary home.

5. It has a big queen-size bed decked out with a pile of down-filled pillows.

6. The dog, Nell the border collie, is a sweet, loving, frisky, excitable, entertaining and smart companion. She tries to chew at water in the bathtub.

7. The last time I was house-sitting here, I was with my then-boyfriend. He is now my ex-boyfriend, and I miss him fiercely. Everything here reminds me of him - the same way that everything reminded me of him just after we broke up, which has now waned to nearly everything.

8. There is a fireplace (which - of course - reminds me of how he took care of it for me when we were here), and I love to come home from work and build up the embers back into a hot, rustling fire. On Sunday, when it was raining, and on Monday, when it was gloomy, the fire was especially comforting.

9. Because I've been swimming in a pool (at a resort here in town - a month's pass is $56), I've had towels drying by the fireplace, draped over some of the dining room table chairs. They are summer's beach towels, and colored brightly, with stripes.

10. Although it's been a busy week, I've been able to get in some swim time. I get on my bathing suit (or "swimming costume" - which makes me feel British to say) and my swim cap (which makes me feel like a "real" swimmer) and shower quickly. Then I get into the pool, walking down the steps until the water is waist-high. I push off into the water. My stresses float away behind me.

11. The pool water is an artificial yet pretty, icy-glacier blue. However, it is not cold like a glacier, which is probably good. Its temperature is mild. Depending on the day, it can border on too warm, but mostly it's refreshing.

12. Words I've learned and/or used a lot, so far this week: anode, bilge pump, work orders, Mercury Marine, Stright-MacKay, rigging, teak, deck, anti-fouling, draft, charts, wharfage, mooring, spark plug, purchase orders, boom truck, accounts receivable, bolt, pitch... the list goes on, and on.

13. I drive around in my car, to get to work, to do groceries, to take the dog for a walk in the country. I've had my car now for two months. My dirty little secret - I really, really like driving. (I feel a lot of guilt about it, though. But I do really, really like driving. I'm thinking of doing a whole post on this at some point.)

14. I have a tentative plan to get some body work done on my car, by a guy who's known as one of the best body-workers in our area. I'll be getting some rusty spots sanded down, and the whole thing buffed to a nice sheen that might just restore her to her 1997 glory. Dealing with men in garages and talking about car things on my own car, and talking prices that I will pay, make me feel like I have truly become an adult. (Whether or not this is right, and/or is a symptom of our North American addiction to cars, is a whole other matter.)

15. For a similar reason, I am really liking this new job. I get to explore the masculine side of me - or at least, the part of me that likes to learn how things work, and work with actual physical things like machinery. I am feeling my brain expand, feeling it build new neurological connections as it takes in all this new knowledge.

16. Elise Blaha, of enJOY it, a blog I read pretty frequently, is getting married this coming weekend. She's documenting it on her blog - and she's a neat, crafty and designy gal, so it's an indulgent and pretty read.

17. It also happens to be Earth Week, and today is Earth Day.

18. My friend Bill Conall will be heading to Orillia pretty soon for the award ceremony. However, tomorrow night (Friday, April 23) he'll be here at the Baddeck Library, doing an event.

19. A man came into the library and said, "Do you have a humour section?" I said (without realizing I was making a pun), "Funny you should say that!" (I was in the middle of creating a display for books that had previously won the Stephen Leacock award.)

20. Burning papers in the fireplace instead of recycling them - makes you feel like you're REALLY getting rid of them. The to-do lists no longer exist. Or at least, they've become ash, which is impossible to read.

21. I have far more library books out than I can actually read. Thankfully, unlike agreeing to real-life events or actual responsibilities, with library books you can just return the ones you don't want anymore.

22. As impulse grabs go, library books are a good one. You see one on the shelf that strikes your fancy and you can just TAKE IT. No matter how much or how little money you make, you can go into a library and just take out books that make you go, "ooh!" And I don't pay fines any more because I'm library staff - but even if you did pay fines, they would be pretty minimal considering what you get from a library!

23. The week is not even over yet! On the weekend, I plan to go to a "feast" - a local chef who likes to branch out and try new things has these events where people he knows go to his house and sit down together for a meal. A six-course tasting menu all based on a theme, and using as many locally-sourced, organic ingredients as possible. Last month it was Alice in Wonderland. This month it is based on the 1922 novel, Enchanted April. It will be my first time attending one of these "feasts." No doubt I'll report back to you.

24. Today is a beautiful, sunny, sunny day. I have made a poster on the stand-up easel by the front of the library that says, "Happy Earth Day!" and have put a container of markers next to it, inviting patrons to add to it. So far we have gotten: a flower, "Happy Mirth Day," and "Happy Bearthday."

25. Making a list of things is fun, but can run out of steam too. Good thing this list is almost over.

26. Today is my twenty-sixth birthday! That's the reason this list has twenty-six items. My friend Mel left me a message with her singing "Happy Birthday," and my Mum and brother met me at the door at work, also in song. (And bearing a gift certificate to my new favorite restaurant, the Black Spoon. Hurray!)

Twenty-six. I feel both not-that-old-yet, and exactly-that-old. Funny how ages work - they're important to us, but we can definitely take them too seriously. How old did you feel when you were twenty-six? Or, if you're not that old yet, where you do see yourself when you're there?

...

real life vs. the movies

OK, how is this even possible?

At Christmas-time, I cut out George Clooney's head from a newspaper. I affixed it to paper with glue. Then I wrote on it, "Have a gorgeous holiday!" (See above.)

It's still up on the wall, underneath the Christmas wreath that is also still up. The other day someone pointed out to me - thinking it was already clear to me and done on purpose - that it's a pun. George + gorgeous = George-ous? BUT IT WAS NOT ON PURPOSE.

How did I MISS THAT? Oh Em Gee.

I'm torn between being impressed about my swift subconscious and embarrassed about my not-so-swift conscious mind. Oh dear.

***

We're still having seriously mild weather around here. And I'm still seriously interested in your thoughts and feelings on the issue. (See last post.)

Secondary roads are being closed early this year. They're closed in the spring to heavy trucks, and this year they're being closed three or four weeks earlier than they would normally be.

I'm enjoying the mild weather, somewhat. I'm not enjoying the feelings of "Oh dear god, is this how it starts?"

***

I've been sick all this week. And so I've been watching more movies than usual. It's making me think about real life vs. the movies. I jotted down some thoughts in my writing journal and I will share them with you here.

Scenes with music: In movies, most scenes have some sort of musical score. In real life, we have to play our own music. Sometimes the music is weirdly wrong. Have you ever started making out with someone only to realize that the music is ridiculous, or strange, or in some way detracting from your intimate moment? And you both lie there awkwardly until the person whose room it is gets up to change the music? We're so used to movies using music to "lubricate" a scene, as it were, that we supply it in our own lives. A lot of the time I feel dependent on the musical background. Go to my bedroom to hang out, and the first thing I do is pick music. Get in my car to go somewhere, same thing.

Happy endings: Or endings at all. In real life there are no endings. The credits never roll. If something does end, like a person's life or a phase of our lives, you're still in it, still in your own life. Exam time used to be so irritating this way. Nothing was ever finished. The end of term didn't end in a big bang, a finish worthy of a movie. It kind of petered out, faded slowly. Nothing conveniently wraps up, because even if one thing does, the "camera" of life keeps on rolling. Always. Constantly. This is why romantic comedies, for all their charm, drive me NUTS. Because romance and getting together with someone happens to be very little like the big-screen version.

Re-takes and awkwardness: There are no re-takes in real life! Sometimes I say something and wish fervently that I hadn't said it, that I could have a do-over. But no - I never get that chance and neither do you. Awkwardness's true home is in real life. Any bits of awkwardness in movies is actually a clever distraction, and not awkward at all. This is because we all get to share in it, laugh at it, and feel good about how other people can be as awkward as we can. Real awkwardness is nothing like this. It's, well, it's awkward.

Anyway - those are my thoughts on that, for now. Back to the soup, the Kleenex box, and the couch. Sniff.

Do you have any go-to cinematic classics and/or cheesy flix that make you feel better/distracted when you're home sick? Do share.

winter, weather and worries

We've been having a mild winter in Cape Breton, this year. At least, parts of the island are. People tell me that in the Highlands and the areas just on the edges of them, there is plenty of snow, and the snowmobilers are happy. But here in the lowlands, the temperature hovers around the freezing mark. Some days water is liquid, other days ice. Most days, slush. There is some snow in the woods, but not enough to make it worthwhile to put your snowshoes on (in other words, not over a foot). The ice on Baddeck Bay only goes partway out of the bay, enough that the ice fishermen have something to sit on, but not enough to fly a plane on, like last year.

This warm and mild weather worries me.

My brain wants to "figure it out," make a logical plan of steps to follow. Something like: 1) research climate studies of Maritimes. 2) Read studies to determine if this IS an anomaly, or if mild winters come along every so often in Maritime weather history. If it is an anomaly, determine what is causing this weather. 3) Solve worries in my head; know what to do.

But then real life takes over and I get distracted. It's time to make my lunch for work tomorrow, or to plan the weekend, or talk to one of my best friends or my boyfriend. Or figure out my finances and figure out where all my money's going to go this week. Or it's time to go to work. But it seems you can't completely ignore the weather, because it will always crop up again - I'll be at work, sitting at the circulation desk, talking to patrons, and someone will mention the weather. It happens once an hour on average, I'd guess.

Most of the people I talk to are happy about how mild and snowless it's been. I go back and forth on how I respond to that - some days I want to say, "Are you crazy? Doesn't it kind of take the fun out of wearing a lighter jacket to think that this might be climate change and our world might be about to change in ways we don't even know about?" And when I'm feeling like this I'll make some comment about how I miss winter, how much I love snowshoeing and the cold weather. Other times I'm not up for the effort of disagreeing, however politely and non-confrontationally I do so, and I'll smile, nod, and agree that it is certainly nice to have this mild weather. Aren't we lucky. Oh my goodness.

Then I get distracted again, and several days will go by, and then I'll be reminded of it again, of my worries about what this weather might mean. Distraction, reminder, distraction, reminder. Frustration and worry.


The problem - of climate change - is so big that it feels absolutely overwhelming. And yet our rational minds want to "figure it out," solve the problem. There's got to be a logical plan of steps to follow! (Right??!) Yet all the "little things" that various articles and activists tell us to do, which we would put in such a plan, don't fare well in a cause-and-effect experiment. Turn off the lights when you leave a room, save the world. However, I've been turning off the lights like an electricity evangelist and the world is nowhere near saved. Does this mean the little things don't work?

I don't know. I wish I could end this on a positive note and say, "Well, we've got to do those little things anyway, because we'll never know, and these things could have an effect." They certainly could. They're definitely having an effect on something, like my house's energy bill, and the amount of electricity this one household draws from NS Power on a given day. NS Power gets its energy mostly from coal-fired plants, so my turning a light switch on or off does make an impact on those plants. How big that impact is, or how small, is impossible to know, especially when factoring in all the other houses and businesses and how much or little they're drawing.

Having a talk about this with a friend usually ends up here: the point where we both agree that climate change is huge, and that we feel powerless to do anything about it. That we do what we can, but we live in this society and it's impossible to completely change everything about our consumptive lives. Some days you feel great because you eat a totally-locally grown meal. Other days you're stressed and out of time and you buy a fast food meal on the run, which you eat in your car as you drive somewhere.

Some days you think about the worrying mild weather, and other days you don't because there are 632 other things to think about in the run of a day. (Exact amount unknown, but you get my drift.)

Rational, logical-plan brain won't give up. "OK," it says, "We've come this far. We've got the problem and we just haven't found a solution yet." So I take my brain for a walk. I lace up my hiking boots (made in China, shipped across the oceans, trucked to my town - but bought in a local shop, even though it's more expensive, because I want to support local businesses and not big-box stores) and head out. It's a mild evening. There's a feeling of spring in the air. (It's Cape Breton in February, there shouldn't be a feeling of spring in the air. But still, it feels nice.) Part of the road is slushy snow, and other patches and dark brown, bare earth. The air is slightly misty and the sky is pinky blue.

I walk and I think: Here I am, here, now. In this time, this day, this minute, unable to jump twenty years ahead or go twenty years backward. Weighted down and held in place by limitations beyond my control. For a while, the last three years, one of those limitations was not having a vehicle of my own. Plenty of times that was frustrating, so irritating that I'd take myself for a walk. Get my head out, away from the problem, walk and realize that it was OK to have this limitation, because I could still walk. Still breathe outside air, still vent my frustrations to the snowbanks and trees.

Coming to terms with those limitations isn't the same thing as finding a solution. But in a weird, roundabout, emotional and not-quantifiable way, it IS the necessary step before finding your way to a place where you can figure out how to live with the limitations, and still get around them. At least, I think so.

Beyond that? I don't know.

It goes without saying, really, but it's true each time I post. And especially for this one: I'd really like to hear your thoughts.

blog action day 2009: climate change

So today is Blog Action Day. This is the third year I've taken part, but I have to say my feelings about it have cooled somewhat, and they were only tepid to begin with. I wonder what it really accomplishes, all of these blogs writing about the same thing for one day of the year. On the one hand, you could say that it raises awareness, and that's a good thing. But on the other, it's all just talk, which doesn't necessarily amount to anything.

I suppose that I feel the same way about public awareness of climate change. Climate change, as you can see from the above image, is this year's Blog Action Day topic. Yes, climate change is on the public radar more so than it was ten years ago, but on the flip side, there is so much greenwashing out there - products that have "eco," "bio," "earth" or "green" on their well-designed logo, claiming in a calming tone or font to be friendly to the environment while having no actual credentials. We all talk about the environment but for a variety of reasons things haven't reached their tipping point and it feels like society is carrying on, business as usual. At least, that's how it feels some of the time. We North Americans still have so many cars on the road and so much food being trucked in to our mega grocery stores. Sometimes a woman wonders if people are doing anything different, at all? As a society we're not walking our talk.

It's ironic that I was going to talk about how I do my dishes, and then yesterday while I was in the middle of a big kitchen project - making a bit pot of roast-vegetable-soup and two chocolate cheesecakes - the tap broke. No water! Cold or hot! I had to go to the upstairs bathroom to fill pots and buckets, bring them downstairs, and heat the water up on the stove to do dishes. And there was a considerable amount of dishes, most of them greasy with cheesecake ingredients. As I was doing all this schlepping, I was thinking about this post, about how I would be taking part in Blog Action Day, and what I might say about Climate Change. I came up with three things.

1. Do dishes to save the world.

Well, maybe this won't save the world. But, if climate change is about emissions, and electricity creates emissions (especially here in Nova Scotia where so much of our power is still made by burning coal), and heating water uses electricity, I've revolutionized how I do dishes. It's pretty simple, really.

I start out by organizing my dishes. This doesn't take any fossil fuels! Just my own time and energy. I get the least dirty dishes together, next dirtiest, and so on. Then I take the least dirty ones, plug up the sink with the stopper - the sink which is still empty - and squirt some dish soap on the scrub pad. (The least dirtiest are usually glasses, interestingly enough.) Then I use hot water to wash and rinse the dish. I continue this way, switching to cold water for the rinse when I see I'm nearing the end of my dish stack. (If I'm not too cold myself, or if the dishes aren't very greasy, I'll use cold water to wash them, too.)

This dish-doing method saves a lot of water on the old-school method of filling the sink first, and then putting the dishes in. And, it doesn't compromise on cleanliness!

2. Get outside and hang out with nature.

Here's something easy we can all do to alleviate climate change anxiety. I find when I'm getting stressed out, what calms me down best is a walk down a dirt road. If you haven't got dirt roads where you live, try a park, or a patch of grass. Wherever you can go that gets your near nature will soothe you and ease your stress. A little backyard you have with some plants and a patch of afternoon sunlight. A city park with benches where you can sit in silence and watch the wind blow the branches of a tree around. Even a concrete lot with grass and flowers stubbornly coming up through the cracks will serve the purpose.

And, the more time we spend in nature, the more we care about it. I don't have a study to back this up, although I feel like if I spent enough time I could dig up one. But it's common sense, really. That which you appreciate and connect to, you care for and will protect.

And, there's another benefit. I feel that after I've taken a walk in the woods or been outside to "refresh" my head, climate change doesn't seem as scary. Well, yes, it is still DAMN SCARY. But when I get a chance to get out there and see the living system around me, I feel that there is hope. Perhaps catastrophic change will happen. We don't know yet how bad it could be. But once you've seen how the system you live in deals with a major storm or a bark beetle infestation, or some other big change, you see that nature's got a lot of tricks up her sleeve. You see that the living things around you adapt.

3. Face what scares you.

OK, so even though you went outside, breathed the fresh fall air, and calmed down a bit, climate change still looms over you like, well, unknown global catastrophes just waiting to happen.

I think my best advice is to face what scares the crap out of you. This applies to climate change the way it applies to anything else scary in your life. Get more information about what it is that is scaring you. Deal with it in a way that allows you to feel the feeling - be angry, be sad, be confused, be whatever you need to be - and then process it. For me, it's writing. For you, it might be another creative outlet like painting or drawing, or it might be getting active - organizing people, making new choices, or talking about the issue more.

As a matter of fact, I do think that talking about the issue is helpful. I think that all these blogs getting together today will make a difference. It's just that there is no way to measure the total amount of change these blogs will bring about, and the timeframe in which they'll do so. That's what's so immobilizing about a global climate threat - it's happening on a global scale, while we humans exist, each in our own bodies, on a small, local scale. Part of coming to terms with climate change and the unknown is recognizing that, and recognizing that we won't see a direct correlation between our actions and the globe. But, processing our feelings and acting on them will make a difference to ourselves and our local communities.

***

What do you think? Do you think I'm crazier than a bag of hammers, or making sense, or somewhere in between?

I'd love to know what you think about climate change, and about how we're dealing with it as individual people and as a society. Click on "comments" to let me know.

snow going on

Having a car, a TV, a computer, and electric heat, as well as indoor plumbing, helps me ignore the snow outside. I don't mean that I've completely forgotten it's winter, but since the season really only changes my clothes and maybe a few travel plans, it's relatively easy to just not think about what's going on outside the house. In other words, I know that yeah, there's snow, and it's pretty when I look out the window and when I take my walks, but for the most part I don't have to think about it beyond that.

But today, as I walked the dirt roads, it hit me - there's a lot of snow going on! The snowbanks are narrowing the roadway to one lane as their bases fatten, and the snow covering our lawn (and the rest of our immediate world like the woods and the fields) really does blanket the ground. And right now we're in the middle of a "weather system", as they say, which is warming things up and bringing rain. The ditches, full of snow, now have water too, pooling and puddling. However, the forecast is for cold, and as early as tonight the mercury will dip back down below zero, and won't stop until it hits minus ten or colder. So that means that all the water and slush of the present moment will turn to ice!

This is what happened last winter too: a lot of up-and-down weather. All the water on our roads and driveways would change from ice to liquid and then back again, with some in the form of snow, in between. This sort of weather is hard on the body, but harder on the head. It's discouraging when I think about global warming and how climate change means more precipitation in bigger loads, and less predictable warming and cooling for our region. And it's simply frustrating when you have a steep driveway like we do.

Life gets back to normal after the holidays, and at least my internal "weather" isn't as unpredictable as that outside. I have an appointment to get my hair trimmed later in the week, which I'm excited about. If I had to make a top ten list of life's simple pleasures, I think one of them would be getting a haircut. It's pretty simple, just getting rid of split ends, and getting some of the bulk of my thick hair taken off, but it always makes me feel like a bit of a new person. Sloughing off, I guess: getting rid of the dead ends, of what's no longer needed.

I'd like to know if you have a preference for the topic of my next blog post. What are you interested in hearing about? I could write about...


A. eating locally and how we're doing it in the depths of winter

B. my writer's group and how that's going

C. fitness and exercise, and what we do in winter to keep active

D. my relationship with writing and creativity, in general and lately

E. something else?


I'd love to hear from you. Leave it in the comments box.

book review #1

Book review: The World Without Us, by Alan Weisman.

Canadian edition. Toronto: HarperCollins, 2007.




"Without us, Earth will abide and endure; without her, however, we could not even be."




In "A World Without Us", Alan Weisman imagines the kind of grand scenario that I used to dream about when I was around 13. Bullied and unhappy, my 13-year-old self would daydream about a world where everyone — or at least, a large percentage of the population — just disappeared. Poof! Gone. Since it was my daydream, I got to choose who would and wouldn't go, but it wasn't as easy as the people I liked staying and the people I didn't like going. My imagination being what it was, and still is, I went further to imagine what our village, and the world beyond it, would look like with people gone but all the remnants of human life left behind: cars, electric power plants, stores. How would I — and the band of people I allowed to remain in my depopulated dream world — live? I imagined us first caching all the food we could find, then going on to appropriate neighbors' houses, getting to choose which domicile we wanted to live in. But we'd still have to haul wood and keep our food from going bad in a world without power. I was as realistic about it as fantasy would allow, and my so-called dream world ended up pretty drab. Well, maybe that's not the right word, but "challenging" might begin to cover it.

Weisman's fantasy doesn't even let the 13-year-olds stay. Everyone goes. He asks the question: what would happen to this old earth if every last human were suddenly gone? The project was born from his agent asking him that very question, after she re-read an article Weisman wrote about Chernobyl after the meltdown, which described the way "nature rushed in to fill our void". After reading about birds and beasts repopulating the area around the Chernobyl site, she asked him: what would become of the Earth after we left, but left our messes behind? Weisman writes,

"It was a deceptively simple question that, I came to understand, lets us view our Earth's current myriad stresses from the disarming vantage of a fantasy in which we supposedly no longer exist, yet somehow we get to watch what unfolds next. Watch, and maybe learn."


*


I first heard Weisman talking about his book on CBC's Sounds Like Canada, in autumn, and thought it sounded interesting. The next time the book popped up in my life was at Christmas, when my brother bought it for himself with gift money. (Thanks, Granny and Grandpa!) I didn't get a chance to read it, however, before he left to go back to school, so I requested it from the library. And from the moment I opened to the first page, I couldn't stop reading — and imagining.

Weisman went a lot farther with his scenario than I did at 13, and that's an understatement. The view of this book, if you can imagine his descriptions coming at you through a camera's lens, starts in the Ecuadoran Amazon, then flies to the Poland-Belarus border, then to North America to begin "unbuilding" the modern home, and that's just for a start. The first stop, to see the Zápara people, introduces the idea of life during and after immense trauma both to the environment and to the people who live in it. The Zápara are now driven to eating the very spider monkeys they once revered as their ancestors; will we in the so-called "developed world" be driven to similar choices soon, given the strain to which we've subjected all natural systems? Instead of postulating an answer similar to those given by other authors before him, an answer based in reality, Weisman takes his into the realm of imagination, asking the reader to dream of everyone just ... disappearing. Doesn't matter why, it just matters that we all go. And now. And ironically, as a device, this works.

To see the world without people with the mind's eye actually brought me to realize how there is no such thing as the world without people. I don't mean the obvious — that the whole thing is a flight of imagination. I mean that even if our human bodies were gone, our legacy, meaning every single thing made by human hands or invented by human minds, every house and road and skyscraper and bridge and car and so on, would still be here. And there would no longer be humans to paint or scrape or re-pave these items. Natural forces like wind, rain, erosion or animals, to name just a few, would continue to have their way with our stuff. What would happen? Where would all our stuff go, and what would the planet look like in 50 or 100 years? How about 50,000 to 1 million years, and beyond? What state were things in before we came along with all this stuff? And what relation might the future world bear to this earlier state?


*


In order to answer these questions — which he does with aplomb — Weisman takes the reader on a trip. Beginning in North America, and de-constructing the modern house much as Nature would do if we weren't here to stop it, he takes a walk down Manhattan's future streets (which would actually be rivers, with trees growing along the banks, in only about 30 years), then takes off to East Africa's Lake Tanganyika to look at human origins and the possibilities of future ice ages and climate changes. From there it's back to Arizona for a lesson in paleo-ecology, then to Kenya for a visit to Africa's national parks, and the animals and humans who live there in precarious balance.

Part II starts in war-torn Cyprus, to visit abandoned hotels, and then a stop in Turkey, to check out the underground cities of Cappadocia, which have to be read about to be believed. Our human legacy begins to turn the stomach in Chapter 9, "Polymers are Forever", when Weisman goes to the Plym River estuary, in England, to see what happens to all that plastic we use every day (and it ain't pretty). Then it's off to the petroleum patch along the Texan coast to imagine what might happen to catalytic cracking towers if people weren't around to let the pressure off and shut down the alchemical reactions, which takes the feeling of "Oh, my god — this is real?!?!" from the previous chapter and twists it just a bit more. (And if you think that's bad, wait until Part III, when Weisman takes you to the nuclear zone.)

Moving along, we fly from the Chunnel to the Great Wall of China, then from the Panama Canal to Mount Rushmore, to see about the fate of our modern Wonders. Then to the Demilitarized Zone between North and South Korea to see what happens when people go, leaving behind land mines, as well as untouched habitat for endangered red-crowned cranes. Next it's a look at birds around the world, which, like most of the answers Weisman finds, both is and isn't hopeful. Birds are heavily affected by human activity, and it's uncertain what would happen to them in a post-human future. But they have come back in Chernobyl: "Yet skylarks perch on th[e] hot steel arms [of abandoned, radioactive machinery], singing." Considering the nuclear legacy we're burying and leaving behind in barrels, this is positively amazing.


*


Besides all that, there's more. But I'll leave that for you to read in the book itself. There's no way to encompass the whole book in this review, and I suppose that's why Weisman wrote the book, in the first place. But for all that it contains, it's a relatively quick read: at 324 pages (Index and Reading List included), with sporadic photographs and a beautiful design, as well as a narrative that hums right along, The World Without Us kept me hooked through every chapter and paragraph. It puts all that stuff we have, and all that stuff we do, in a whole new light. Much like when you move house, really; you see it all as if for the first time.

"I still have that awful dress from the late-90s? And these cartons of books I never read?"

Only in this case, it's: "I have all this plastic around me? What will happen to the things that fill my house, whether I'm here or not? And speaking of that, what will happen to nuclear power plants?" You get the idea.

Rather than leave the reader with the idea that we're all going to go in the end, anyway, and nature will take care of it, which would be the ultimate cop-out, Alan Weisman's book left this reader with a realistic — which means slightly scary — sense of what we're up against, and a realistic hope that with intelligence and patience, we might be able to mitigate some of it.

The bottom line? We're not going anywhere. But if you want to imagine what it would be like if we did, and get a whole new perspective on the world we live in, read this book. I'm betting you won't regret it.


*


The Official website.
The California Literary Review (more in-depth).


*

the ghost of winter past

The snow fell last night, or rather, it swirled down out of the sky onto us. It laces the edges of spruce trees and transforms the landscape, so that instead of looking out onto a dreary gray November day, it's a December one, white and blue and green. The white makes all the difference. Thin patches of ice, a shade lighter than the steel-blue water, marble the surface of the bay. Making a cup of tea and sitting inside is cozier, because outside is suddenly covered in cold fluff. Cold fluff that requires gear, new gear, boots and mittens and coat and hat and scarf, before venturing out for anything.

For some reason, the snow looks like it's been there for a while, even though it just fell last night. All snow coverings are created equal? Or, when I look at the snow covering the ground, in between all the trees in the woods, do I see all the winters past? Do I generalize, combining the twenty-three winters I've lived, and stop looking for the little details of this particular winter, this particular moment?

I'd rather look and see exactly what is: the new snow, the blond grass by the roadside sticking up out of the snow, the crunchy slush on the road. And a lot of the time, I do see like that, seeing the snow of the moment rather than just "snowy woods". This year, winter is different for me. A lot of things are different, since my illness, since I have had to take time off and slow down. I have the time to look around, and I notice the weather more, the make-up of a day. And when a particular day is starting to feel routine, as if there is nothing that will distinguish it from the day before, I make myself do something different. Maybe I'll hike across a field that I've always liked looking at, and accidentally get my sneaker wet. Maybe I'll go peer, up close, at a patch of vibrant green moss on a tree. Maybe I'll make a meal I haven't made in a while, like chili with turtle beans I made from scratch.

Ironically, these are probably the kinds of impromptu, interesting things I did as a child, that made each day different, which blurred into "times past," that bank of memories from which, if I'm not careful, I will draw the woods of today.

~~~

I also wanted to mention a new site I have started frequenting. It is called I Love Typography, and it is addictive, pleasing to the eye, and very fun, at least if you're a type nerd like I have recently realized I am.

It's run by a guy who lives in Japan, originally from England, John Boardley. And there are plenty of readers, running the gamut from type designers like Erik Spiekermann and Jean Porchez, to complete type novices like myself. After every article, readers rush in to comment, and the conversations are quite long and varied. This site has only been up since August, and already it's quite popular (again, amongst the type-nerd set), which I think is attributable to the friendliness both of the host and of all the readers, the beauty of the page design, and of course, all that interesting stuff about typefaces.

herons and seals and geese, oh my!

the heron

A few nights ago, Mum and I were driving home from North Sydney. Rain had started around Boularderie, and came in heavy fits, sometimes drenching the roadside, sometimes scarce. We were coming up to the turnoff for our road, which is by the swampy head of a bay, when Mum squinted ahead through the rain. "What is that?" She said, and I looked, but couldn't see anything.

Then we got a little closer, and Mum slowed down and pulled over. There in the middle of the road was a blue heron, a tall, graceful bird, here standing in the middle of the road, reeling from one lane to the other like a drunk, and sometimes crouching with its wings stretched out, like it was trying to protect non-existent babies. The rain was falling so hard that it bounced off the bird's wings, and the pavement around it. We looked at it, puzzled. Was it OK? What do we do?

Then we saw the lights of another car coming in the opposite direction, and I thought: "Oh no, it's going to be hit!" Well, I didn't think that exactly, but I felt that gut-wrench that you get in such situations. But the car slowed and then stopped, pulled over. The heron was slow to respond, moving in a pantomime of a drunk, only feet away from the car. The rain was falling even harder and Mum and I looked at the other car, from which a person was emerging. Mum put on my rain jacket and went over to see what was going on. The other driver, by luck an ex-vet technician, had collected the scared blue heron into her arms, tucking its long beak under her own head, and was going to take it to the vet clinic, to see if it had been already hit,and what could be done for it. The drunk taken care of by her friends. We drove home, a little more thankful.



the seals

Yesterday, we went out on Monty's boat. It's late November, so this means flurries in the forecast and often, in the air. As we drove into town to meet him at the dock, it looked like we were in a snow globe: the chilly air filled with a literal flurry of snowflakes. Then it passed and the sun was again shining on the lake. As we motored out in Monty's converted lobster-fishing boat onto the Bras d'Or lake, we could see hazy clouds on the horizon, which made the low hills a soft white underneath. Snow clouds. We kept close to the shoreline, checking out summer houses in winter, noticing where the last storm had knocked over trees. Every now and again we'd pass through a snow cloud, and all around us snow would be falling silently into the dark lake.

We puttered quietly along, and then -- "Seals!?" Mum pointed. We looked through the windows of the cabin to a clot of sleek black bodies by the edge of the bay, 200 m away. Monty slowed the boat and took out the binoculars, and we all looked. Seals! Monty put the boat in neutral, and we went out to the back of the boat, and watched as the clot broke up, and some of the seals swam a few feet away, ducking under, then coming up again, looking at us. Two of them were brave and went back to the shallow spot to wallow together, showing us their plump, blubbery bodies. A small flurry started to fall, so the horizon disappeared. Then it was just us on the boat, on the quiet, dark water, watching the small dog-like heads above the water, which were coming in and out of view. We stood on the back of the boat, looking out at them, our breath in white puffs in front of us, a moment just waiting for illustration for a Christmas card. And I mean that in the best way.



the geese

I took my usual power walk today, pounding the dirt road in frustration, channeling the kind of anger that rises up in me every 28 days or so. Some months are worse than others, and this month is like that. I just need to be alone because any interaction seems to beg for a cranky comment, and I know that's not really appreciated. So off I went with my water bottles, wearing my sneakers, my exercise clothes, and my open-tipped bike gloves (it's getting that cold!). I steamed up the hills and then on the way back down, a vicious, biting wind came up and I kept steaming into it, stamping each footstep to a word in "I - will - NOT - give - up! I - will - NOT - give - up!" Finally the wind died down. I was near home, and I slowed a bit. Suddenly an awkward honking got my attention. I looked up, all around, but couldn't see where it was coming from. Then I saw them, a ragged V of geese, and quickly counted in threes: 18, 21, 24, 27! Twenty-seven geese, honking and flapping and moving quickly southward. I stood still, looking up, then realized a vehicle was coming.

It was a golf cart. A neighbor on the hill has a fairly large compound, not big enough for a golf cart, but large nonetheless. I've never met this man, but I do admire his two yearlings who graze in a paddock by the house. And his daughter lives up the hill, so he goes to visit her in his golf cart. Here he was, coming back down, catching me standing still, staring up at the sky. He slowed and I thought he might stop. We waved to each other, and I said, "Geese!" He wasn't stopping, I realized a second later. He gave me a puzzled look, and said, "Geese?" "I saw geese!" I said, pointing upwards, and then he was past me and gone. I laughed to myself, thinking of him wondering about my motivation to tell him this nugget of information.

Whether it was the exercise, the geese, or making a foolish impression on my neighbor, I wasn't as angry going home as when I left.


~

power down, part III

Tuesday morning we woke up with no power. Third day in a row.

By now it was starting to get irritating, and restrictive. The house was largely quiet -- no radio programming, no CDs, no movies. I have realized as a result of this temporary deprivation how much I love to listen to music, and need it, really. Also, the house was chilly except when the sun shone, as Mum didn't want to use the wood stove in case it heated up the freezers.

The house was quiet, the computer didn't work, and doing what used to be simple and easy tasks like flushing the toilet, washing dishes or doing much of anything after dark now came with associated work: hauling buckets of water upstairs, maneuvering around the buckets while in the bathroom, heating water, etc. My initial feeling on Sunday of "This power outage is kind of good in a sense, because it shows us all how vulnerable we are when we lose our electricity," had given way, or worn away, really, to a sense of frustration. Also, I had the sense of being a lot more reliant than usual on sunlight. Until this power outage, I hadn't realized how great a sunlit house really is, until I couldn't cheer up a cloudy day just by flicking a switch.

But at least Tuesday was sunny. I went for my power-walk, which made me feel somewhat normal, and when I got back there was that telltale rough hum coming from behind the house, and Monty's truck in the driveway. The power was still off, but the generator was going full tilt. Monty reported that the crew from New England was working hard, but it looked like it would be late tonight before the power was restored. Mum, tired, translated: "So that means tomorrow, at noon." The original worst-case scenario had come true, day by day: 72 hours without power. Of course, by now there was no longer any trace of the storm, and the sun was shining bright among the leafless trees, but the effects of Post-Tropical Storm Noel lingered on, becoming normal as we did our best to carry on with our lives despite the lack of electricity.

Lunch was, again, potatoes with onions, and again, delicious. I had sliced a few ripe tomatoes and seasoned them liberally with salt and pepper, and had some sharp cheddar on the side. The balsamic vinaigrette on the potatoes gave it all a light kick. I was going to do the dishes after, but decided that I'd rather spend what few hours of sunlight remained, outside, knitting on the deck. After I'd had enough of that, I came inside and started writing out what would become these blog posts, by hand on scrap paper, with the steady, one-note hum of the generator behind me. The rest of the house was quiet. Every now and again a crow would fly silently by the window. I wrote as the sun sank lower and lower in the sky, and until it set behind the mountain around 5.

This power outage has certainly got me thinking. We rely on electricity for so many things, and as a result of it, have lost touch, somewhat, with the world outside our houses. This is the kind of phrase you often hear, condemning modern society, but in this case it's my first-hand experience. Not only that, but I've realized that it doesn't really matter whether you consider yourself an environmentalist or not -- having electric lights that you can turn on at night, and that you become used to, will by virtue of their existence cause you to pay less attention to when the sun sets. Similarly, if you have electric heat, you'll get used to that, and won't pay as much attention to wearing wool socks and sweaters, or to designing houses to face the south so the windows capture solar heat.

This unplanned experiment in "off the grid" living, now wearing on into the third day, was certainly showing us the wide use of and dependence on electric power in this community, and the simple power of habit keeping it that way.

(Of course, if you were truly living "off the grid", you would have chosen to do so, and not only that, but you would likely have alternative power sources in place -- small-scale solar, wind or hydro power for necessary appliances. And there'd be plenty of other aspects of your life running on human or animal power, like food production, bringing wood in, transportation, etc.)

For the rest of the evening I puttered quietly: I did the dishes by lamp again, which was, to be fair, very cozy. I played Solitaire and read. Around 7 I heard the fridge trying to start, as the power flickered, then turned off again, flickered, then went off. I realized that when we could turn on the electric lights, I would really miss the coziness of the kerosene lamp! Then, at 7:30, the fridge sputtered to life. "Hurrah!" Mum exclaimed. I flicked a light switch, experimentally. On came the light! Miracle! Mum was excited: "I can warm up a bean bag in the microwave again! I can turn the heaters on!" Having electricity again was luxury. Having become used to not having it, it felt like too much, suddenly. We could flush the toilet, and turn on the hot water tap, and heat the rooms! All using electric current. Amazing! I found, as well, that having electric lights on at night, lighting the whole house if we wanted to, felt a bit garish.

We decided to play one more game of cribbage, to carry on the tradition. I insisted on using the kerosene lamp.

***

It's now been a little over a week since the power came back on. The shock of having power again has worn off, as of course it would, since we've lived much longer with electricity than without it. But writing these blog posts about our 72 hours powerless allows me to remember it in detail, and be that much more thankful for the computer I'm writing on, the music I'm listening to, and the electric light bulb I'm writing by.

There are also the "It Could Be Worse" questions, like: "What if it had been the middle of winter?" Or, "What if there had been no fossil fuels, either, so we couldn't run generators or cars?" These are the kinds of questions I think a lot more people need to be talking about, because there is a very good chance that our worldwide, abundant energy resources will stop peaking and start running out, in this century to be sure. And maybe experiencing power outages for 72 hours would get people thinking?

How about a lighter question -- in the event of a power outage, and assuming you're relatively comfortable like we were, what would you do to pass the time?

the rapture of st. ginger

It is getting colder now. The air on my daily walks is like cool, clear water on my cheeks, like drinking a perfect glass of water when you're so thirsty. I have to wear a hoodie on the walks now, even when I heat up, and I start out with an orange hat on. Hunters are in the woods.

The leaves have fallen off most of the trees, and they collect in the ditches and color the ditch-water tannin brown. My little tomato plant has had its seeds harvested and saved, and soon I'll take the plant out of the pot and leave it on the compost heap. Time passes and we move with it, although we hardly realize we do at the time. It will be 2008 in a little more than 2 months! Crazy.

The picture is of Ginger, one of our three cats. Janice took the photo on her last visit. I'm cuddling up with the cats often these days. Cassis, black and shiny, loves to sit on paper, so she'll curl up beside me here in the "office", on a stack of wrinkled papers I keep there just for her. Bubbinette, the little calico, loves to sit on anyone's lap, provided that person doesn't actually want her there. But she's cute nonetheless. And Ginger loves to writhe on his back in the middle of the garden on a warm sunny day, rapturous. Or in the living room, while I'm petting him, like pictured above.

I'm not sure what else to say about cold weather or cats right now -- maybe that's November having its way with my mind the way it does every year -- except to say, I hope you've got a cat to cuddle, or whatever makes you feel cozy on these darkening, coldening days, heading into November. What are the particular pleasures for you?

And yes, I realize "coldening" is not a word. But maybe it should be?

"ma vie en vert"

I’ve been thinking about what to write for this Blog Action Day on the Environment for a little while now. It’s a mighty big subject, the environment. Saying you’re for the environment is basically saying, “I’m supportive of the health of the entire planet,” which is a sensible position to take when you consider that your own health, and that of your family, and friends, and actually, the entire global population of humans, completely and utterly depends on the health of the planet. And it’s a pretty big world, comprised of ecosystems large and small, plant and animal and fungal life, as well as all those micro-organisms, bacteria, viral life forms and things hard to classify like crazy ol’ lichen. Not to mention all the people – six billion of us and rising, quite quickly. And all of us billions of people living all over the world have an impact on the places we live in, on, with and over. Moreover, all these parts of the world (rivers, lakes, oceans, mountains, plains, forests, cities, roadways, etc) connect and touch at least one other part of the world. The word “interconnected” came into common use in 1865, according to my dictionary, but the planet Earth invented it long before.

So environmentalism is a comprehensive subject, to say the least. And lately, meaning the last 10 or so years, the environmental crisis we’re in globally has finally been making the news, which is heartening to plenty of environmentalists of various stripes who’ve been saying the same thing for a lot longer than 10 years: there are a lot of problems with the place we live, these problems are of our own making, and if we don’t fix them we are going to find ourselves forcibly evicted by the domicile itself, or at least living in a very different, much less comfortable, way.

Maybe “heartening” is not the right word. That’s not exactly great news. But what is heartening is how it’s more common now to overhear an “environmental” conversation, and how, even in the face of a sometimes-hopeless diagnosis, a lot of people are finding a way to hope, and learning how to make some changes. But despite all the recent press and celebrity sponsorship, environmentalism is still sort of shunted aside, made into a cause or an “ism” apart, when in reality it’s the health of the entire planet, which means you and me and every other person, place or thing dependent on having a healthy place to live, breathe, eat and play. I personally don’t know anyone that doesn’t fall under that description, no matter what party they vote for.

For me, environmentalism is everywhere. I don’t say this because I’m some kind of eco-heroine who lives her entire life in a completely sustainable way. I say this because whether I like it or not, I think about the environment a lot (unless, of course, I’m thinking about Coronation Street). Ever since I was a little kid and I found out my birthday coincided with Earth Day, and learned the reasons for such a day of remembrance, the Earth has been on my mind.

This isn’t a comprehensive list, but I think it’s a good sample to show what I mean. The Earth is on my mind…

…when I’m taking a walk through my neighborhood, breathing the fall air and noticing the plant life in the ditches. I walk by the property of a local businessman who is going to put up condos and a new marina, I wonder to myself what that’s going to do the birds that nest by the water’s edge. I have no idea what the new development is going to do, but I wonder at a community that could care so little about these sorts of damages that no-one, not even our elected officials, is looking into it. I wonder at my own apathy, too – how afraid I am to start something.

…when I take an airplane somewhere, and before we take off I look out over the airfield and see all the other planes taking off, landing or just hanging out, and I realize that this is going on every hour of every day, not just here but every major city. Or when I sit on the deck outside at night, looking at the stars, and see several airplanes in the space of 5 minutes pass over our Eastern island. It’s on my mind when I ride in a car, which is a speedy and mostly convenient way to get around, but uses fossil fuels to do it. It’s on my mind when I ride my bike, or walk, or take a city bus.

…I’m using electricity – plugging in a lamp, listening to the radio, writing on the computer, refrigerating goods, running the vacuum cleaner, using the clothes dryer on a wet day. Electricity in my province comes mainly from coal-burning power plants, which is highly polluting and completely un-sustainable, yet there is no sign of this from the silent power outlet.

…I’m in a grocery store of a large chain and reading labels that claim the product is eco-friendly and organic, while coming from thousands of kilometers away. I read these labels and think about the power these words have over us, and how they help a lot of people feel better about their choices, buying these products. I weigh the importance of individual consumer awareness against the complexity of the truth and come up short, unsure.

…When I’m thinking about food in general – where to shop, what to buy, who to support, how local the food is. When I sit down for a meal, sometimes I think about where it came from, the people known and unknown who did the work to help this food make it to my plate, and become my nourishment. Food is a beautiful, delicious and immediate way to be an environmentalist – my lunch today looked picture perfect, tasted amazing, and about 90% of its ingredients came from Cape Breton Island.

…When I think about my future – what can I expect from the next 20 years? And of course it’s always impossible to know the future, but these days I frequently consider that fact. Will global warming have wreaked havoc on food systems, and societal infrastructure? Should I focus on what kind of job I can get, or on how best to survive in the chaos of societal collapse? So far I do a bit of both. Also, I consider the environment, and my passion for its continued health, when I consider what to do with my time, my energy, my life, down the road. I want to contribute with my life somehow, knowing little about how my contribution will affect change to come, but feeling nonetheless that things must change, starting with our personal lives, starting now.

I’m telling you this not because I’m expecting eco-points for how virtuous I am, thinking about the environment all day long. In fact, most of the time when I’m reflecting on things “eco”, I’m feeling pretty hopeless, or guilty for not doing more! But I’m showing you the range of my thoughts on the matter because to me, environmentalism is not just an “ism” separate from daily reality. For me, this so-called “one issue” impacts on everything we do, so we ought to be talking about that fact – how our lives are so connected to the environment we live in, and how the crises within that environment therefore connect us all to each other – even if we have little idea how to address the increasingly intertwined issues. Talking is the first step.

Some other steps:

1. Check out the Blog Action Day website or blog. Look around the links to check out other blogs' contributions.
2. Educate yourself further!
   
3. Make some noise to your elected officials.
   
4. Go outside frequently. Maintain your connection to the earth.
   

When and where did you think about the environment today? There are no wrong answers. Don’t be ashamed if you didn’t, or if you’re unsure what to do about the guilt you might be feeling. Leave a “sustainable” comment in my “biodegradable” comment box, and we’ll talk the talk, and hopefully walk that talk, too.

Also, just out of my own curiosity, if you read this post, would you mind leaving a comment, even if all you say is "Hi"? I'd like to know how many people this reached. Thanks!

(Photo courtesy of Space Today Online. And yes, it is a bit of a cliche, but a useful one.)