It's still February, and today I went for the first ride of the season! Yesterday, Lorenz and I went to one of the many agreement forests around here for an afternoon walk, and on the way there we passed a cyclist. It made me long for my bike, so this morning, I pulled mine out and spent a few minutes lubing and pumping, and then headed out into the rolling hills of the escarpment.
I'd like to say the 22 km felt fabulous, but really, they reminded me that your butt does indeed have to get used to the bike seat again - even if it is a great seat. I was ecstatic to be outside, on dry roads, in the sun, exploring new to me roads (I live in a much better bike neighbourhood now), though. I saw one other person on a bike, but it was still early - when I got back, the driveway was just starting to turn into the mud and slush pit that it is now, and an avalanche thundered off the heritage building and scared the dog out of his wits.
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I love my bike. The summer I bought it, it was the theme of the summer - I didn't take a vacation, and living alone - and somehow, I don't remember having a lot of friends around. The ones I did have probably went away on weekends. This was during the years I couldn't afford to have the rabbit on the road, so I was car-less and couldn't fly the coop on weekends too. I did spend every Saturday and Sunday on that bike - my nubby tires and I would routinely cover >100 km in a day, about a third to half that on trails. I systematically explored the roads around Guelph - and the ones I liked I visited over and over again. Once, it was a beautiful but too hot day, and I drank all of my water and didn't take a snack. I made it home after about 120 km with my vision closing in - my one and only experience with the famous bonking phenomenon.
I stopped biking a lot for many reasons - one of them being that, as I got older, my body was not as forgiving of the bruises I inevitably got when I fell off all the time. It wasn't until I decided to ride in the RLCT two years ago that I discovered that taking the nubbys off and riding mainly on roads could be as fun as it is. And now that I live on the edge of the escarpment and have some fantastic hills to cruise down and then grunt my way back up, it's going to be more fun than ever.
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Most people around here think of horses when they hear the word riding. Today, the yard is full of cars. One of the boarder's horses has a brain tumour, and it will be put down soon. So the horse barn crowd had a wake. A living wake, because the date of death is not for another six days (unless of course it decides to join the dearly departed before then, which will lead to a gruesome sight since getting a dead horse out of a stall here is perhaps not something that can be done without a chainsaw).
I have no idea what they did at the wake. But then, I don't understand the horsey world. I was not one of those girls who longed for a horse. I'd been on a couple of rides at a girlfriend's house, she had horses. Then another girlfriend got a horse, but he wasn't used to being ridden - we tried. I got thrown off, hit a picnic table, and had terrible bruises for a long time. I never got back on another horse (and that horse never did get ridden), and I never longed for my own pony or any other large animal after that. Yesterday we met former boarders, from years back, in the agreement forest. I had to listen to at least 10 minutes of a particular part of the conversation before I realized that the Pete whose passing was being discussed was equine, not human.
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I spent my early childhood on a farm. I watched my father use a captive bolt to kill cattle, I watched a pig being butchered, I saw chickens have their heads chopped off. For a few years, we got a kid goat every spring, played with it all summer, and then ate the sausage in the winter. Our cats were barn cats, and they routinely got run over on the road (so often that we called all of them by the same name). None of that disturbed me, or my siblings, save one instance: one of the heifers, without my father knowing, conceived and was sent to summer pasture. This happened from time to time, and the calf was usually discovered by my father long before a predator had a chance. This cow, though, had difficulty giving birth. This was not uncommon either, often I stood in the barn and watched my father reach into a cow's uterus and pull out the calf's feet. Then, he'd attach a rope to the feet and use a winch contraption to pull it out. So not all cows can give birth unassisted, and the heifer (though technically she wasn't one any more that summer) couldn't do it. The calf died in her, and by the time it was noticed, the calf was in an advanced stage of decomposition. I was around when my father reached insider her, and his gloved hand came out with a handful of the calf's teeth. The stench was the worst Ive ever encountered. The cadavers - the cow, with the calf's still inside her - went to the glue factory. That one gave me nightmares for a while.
Generally, though, my childhood was full of all sorts of rhythms - the cycle of cows giving birth, being milked, being dried out, bred and repeat. Cycles of grass growing and cutting, goats fattening, fruit ripening... It sounds a bit too much like a picture book, doesn't it?
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I've never been a big fan of eating meat. It came down to this: in our house, if you started it, you had to finish it. If there was a cut of meat and it included fat and gristle, you had to eat that as well as the part you wanted. My mother was fond of putting a breading coating on meat - and that made every cut suspect. I didn't know what I'd be committing to, so I didn't always eat it.
I've never, though, had ethical issues with eating meat. I don't know very many farm kids - especially not livestock farmers' kids - who did. To me it was part of the natural rhythm of things, made inevitable by the existence of domesticated animals - and though I am entirely capable of critical self-reflection and rejection of the rules by which I was raised (one of the first to go was the eat the fat and gristle rule!), this one has never been an issue for me. For a few years, I had far more people in my life who didn't eat meat than those who did. Either way, it's not an issue for me - I learned how to cook meatless meals long before I touched meat in my kitchen.
But meat is also the source of my biggest anxiety, when it comes to diet. Yesterday, we got into a discussion of why we choose organic when possible. I said to Lorenz - who is an organic vegetable farmer - that I'm not even particularly afraid of pesticide residue on my vegetables. I choose the organic versions of those because it's an expression of my issues with the agri-food system has become. It's my own little identity creation right there. His reasons were remarkably similar, though he also added that choosing organic here, now is the only way to avoid GM crops.
Then I said, it's different with meat, though. My motivations there are much more selfish. I am not comfortable with the hormones and the antibiotics going into my body. I've avoided using antibiotics for my entire 32 years, and I discontinued the birth control pill as a result of growing awareness of my own hormone levels. Why would I allow meat that is raised with tremendous amounts of these in? Why would I assume that the skyrocketing rates of cancers - particularly breast and uterine cancer - are completely unrelated to diet?
Cause and effect would be difficult to establish. But I am becoming increasingly unwilling to consume conventionally raised meat. I'm not saying it has to be certified organic, but certification is one way of ensuring a minimum bar. These are my reasons. I wish they were nobler, that they were based entirely on more ethical treatment of animals and humane ways of killing, but I don't even know how much that applies in this case. I don't want to eat beef, chicken, pork from conventional slaughterhouses because I don't like stuff it was injected with long before it got there.
BSE has little to do with it - though I'm convinced it's a direct result of the type of farming that led to the hormone and antibiotic use I object to, I'm not afraid that I'll succumb to human variant CJD because I eat beef. The panic over this is unfathomable to me - I think the risks we absorb on a daily basis far outweigh the chance of contracting CJD in a lifetime.
In the past five years, three women I was and am close to battled cancer. All of them were under 30 at the time. One of them is no longer here. From 1986 to 1995, 106 of every 100,000 women in Halton Region battled Breast Cancer. From 1950 to 1989, breast cancer rates in the US rose 52.5%. Testicular cancer over the same time period increased 115%, prostate cancer went up by 108.8%, ovarian cancer 9.2% (cervical cancer rates decreased, undoubtedly the result of public health initiatives including annual pap tests). It's not just reproductive cancers: lung cancer, up 264%; Hodgkins - almost 30%; skin cancer - an astounding 321%. Put them all together, and even with the decreases in those that screening has been successful at (cervical, stomach) - we're looking at an increase of over 44%. Medical intervention has meant that actual deaths from various types of cancer have actually decreased over the 49-year period unless you factor in lung cancer, in wich case the deaths have increased.
It's a miracle of modern medicine, isn't it, that our cancer rates can skyrocket and yet fewer people die. And believe me, if I or my sister or my mother or anyone else in my life were ill, I'd want that medical attention. But we spend so much time looking for the cure... it reminds me of farming, this arms race. Tougher weeds, stronger herbicides. More cancer, more catscans and ultrasounds and MRIs. The comparison isn't entirely valid, the medical procedures don't have that element of furthering the problem. But we're treating the symptom, not the cause. I'd do so too, if the disease is already there.
Given how much effort goes into looking for cures, though, aren't we doing ourselves a disservice by not spending as much time considering why? And given the intimate nature of food, wouldn't what we eat - and how that has changed over time - be the first starting point?
I'm just asking.
I live in 905. 905 refers to the area code assigned to the suburbs when the 416 area code (Toronto) was split over 10 years ago. Toronto (then known as Metropolitan Toronto, in those pre-amalgamation days) kept 416, and all the 'burbs got 905.
To me, 905 has been synonymous with plazas, big box stores, housing developments and highways for so long that I never pictured myself living anywhere near it. Well, just goes to show you that I should eat my words!
It always amused me, the perception that Germany was nothing but pavement and industry from those who had never been there. That image had nothing to do with the pastoral beauty of my childhood - or the German cities that I'd lived in, which had a much more accessible countryside than most Canadian cities I know. And here, I just did the same thing with 905. It's all housing developments and strip-malls and...
...and this. Within less than a half hour's drive from the airport, I live in the middle of rolling hills, a woodlot with a swamp, and a sort of pastoral beauty that I appreciate more every day.
Yesterday was one of those days, when the sun pours in my windows (I even sat outside for a bit, on the protected south side of the barn). I have a little disco ball in the window, and bits of light danced on my walls and ceiling when it caught the sun.
I'd been to the gym (and the Milton version of my gym is way nicer than Guelph!) and feeling lazy - but I couldn't totally waste such brilliant weather. So, taking advantage of this new lifestyle, I strapped on my snowshoes and within 2 minutes was in the middle of fun.
It's not wilderness, not even close. At any given time, I can turn and see an estate home development through the trees. It's not remote, or isolated, or physically challenging. But it's the backyard of where I live right now, and it's beautiful. Furthermore, it's taken away some of my drive to go somewhere that is wild most every weekend. I'm proving my own theory, that my need for backcountry travel is directly related to my urbanized lifestyle.
That being said, I miss going into the bush as much as I did for a while. Partly, it's time; partly, it's the headache my car has been giving me of late - but mostly, it's a lack of good adventure buddies of late. People get busy, me included - but I think I need to make more time to do the things I love to do again.
And some sterotypes about 905 do hold true: I've never been as car-dependent as I am now. I drive everywhere. Default exercise doesn't happen as much as it used to. I have to rethink that part of my life somehow. But then, once the snow melts, I can bike to work, and the last reservation of living here will perhaps vanish!
Do you know who Paul Okalik is?
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I didn't, a year ago. And I'm still struggling to come up to speed. On Monday, Barry walked in and said, "what's going on in Nunavut today?". He knew, it was one of those pop quizzes he likes to toss out. On Monday, Nunavut had its first general election since it became a territory. Until this past weekend, I hadn't realized that there are no parties in the Nunavut government. Paul Okalik is its premier, and likely will be again. Unlike a far too significant portion of the Nunavut government he supported "controversial" legislation: the Human Rights Act, which protects homeosexuals from discrimination. It was accepted in a 10:8 vote, yet Okalik's rival for premier, Tagak Curley, is hoping to amend that bit of legislation. It "could lead to a situation where we become a habitat for that kind of lifestyle", he has said.
I should hope so... I should hope that we, as a nation, are a "habitat" for "alternative" lifestyles. How can this even be open to debate, when even in the US, homosexuals will be awarded refugee status based on a reasonable presumption of hars discrimination in the form of violence or incarceration should they be forced to return home? When the Supreme Court of Canada ruled - six years ago - that Alberta must offer discrimination protection on the basis of sexual orientation?
Shouldn't this be a non-issue by now?
Here's where my basic knowledge of Canadian current events is lacking. I know the setup of Nunavut is fundamentally different from Alberta - not just the no-party thing, the whole charter is unique. Is it just that the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedom does not explicitly state "sexual orientation" (we are assured freedom from "discrimination based on race, national or ethnic origin, colour, religion, sex, age or mental or physical disability")? Wouldn't you expect the same Supreme Court interpretation - based on precedent - to be applied? I'm confused.
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I'm a geographer, by inclination and by training. More than that, I have more than just a bit of the capes-and-bays old style geographer in me. I am more likely than the average person to know capital cities and relative locations and all those things that are associated with "geography" by those who didn't consciously spend any time with it past grade 10 beyond reading Canadian Geographic or National Geographic.
So, if we are to work by the premise that I am at least an average - but more likely above average - Canadian in terms of basic geographic knowledge, and a year ago I didn't have a conscious awareness of Paul Okalik, never mind knowing where Inuvialuit and Nunavik are or the difference between an Innu and an Inuit... that would mean that the average Canadian is not all that aware of the Canadian North. It's such a big part of our iconography, and yet, I'd wager a guess that I could walk into any gathering in southern Ontario and get far more informed discussion of Californian politics than the Nunavut general election. Sad, isn't it? But then, I know far more about Howard Dean than I do Paul Okalik. And Dean's exit from the race for the Democratic nomination had far higher billing than the Nunavut election on Monday, even on the CBC.
(But my love of the CBC is unabated. I listened so ridiculously early this morning that I got a snippet of the Deutsche Welle broadcast on CBC this morning, and I have reaffirmed my assertion that German taste in pop music is very, very bad. They played a current hit on the German singles chart, "Du hast mein Herz gebrochen". It made Celine Dion sound edgy.)
This is "sugar snow". If you take a handful of sugar and look at it, you'll see granules. That's what this snow is like, too. There are no snowflakes in it, just round little pellets. Old snow is often sugar snow, especially snow that has been through a number of freeze-thaw cycles. That's pretty much what it's been like around here.
Sugar snow is not good igloo building snow. Actually, it's crappy igloo building snow. Igloo building works best when you have fresh powder, and the snowflakes can lock together. I've built igloos out of powder, and I've made an igloo with sticky snow, but sugar snow is a challenge. The igloo building project on the weekend at Silent Lake never got past level 2.
The IceBox Igloo kit makers, however, claim that you can build an igloo in any kind of conditions, even in sugar snow. Well, time to put that one to the doubting Thomas test - as in, show me! And since Igloo Ed is around and I happen to have had him hostage at the farm, I got him to build me an igloo.
I, of course, had to go to work. So, being the delegator that I am, I suggested to Ed that HP would be happy to help (fortunately, HP is as easygoing as everyone else who hangs out at that farm...). Then I invited Stef and Nick over, and Fraser too when I ran into him on campus. By the time I got home from work, the igloo was well underway.
It takes a long time with sugar snow, though. The igloo builders (of which I was not one, I was in charge of dinner) worked well into the night with the use of Lorenz's utility light. The sugar snow requires a lot of "working up" - HP and Stef were using metal shovels to break up all the chunks with a combination of bashing and scraping. The idea is, apparently, to use friction to melt the very outside of the snow crystals. Then it can be packed. By Igloo Ed, sure, by me, probably not. But then, I wasn't helping. Fraser and I stood around while Ed packed, Nick held the utility light, and Boris the dog dug in the snow.
Sloooowly, the igloo neared completion. There was much talking (because Ed had to keep teaching new people as different people helped), goofing off (because, if Fraser and I were to stand around and do nothing, we had to at least make smart-mouth remarks), and a bit of Ed fuelling (at which time Fraser found his niche as the beer holder).
The igloo did get finished, though it was well past Malcolm's bedtime. He did, however, declare that his room is now for rent, since he is moving into the igloo. And he was out there checking it out before school this morning. So Igloo Ed proved his point - it may take a long time, but it's possible to build an igloo even with really terrible snow. Of course, he has to now go and do it all over again, this time in Waterloo for Adventure Guide's snowshoe demo.
Heh. The Tom Sawyer principle really works!
I am not a web expert, so my understanding of all of this is very limited, but here's how I think this works:
Google rankings are based on referrals, a combination of quantity and quality (quality being defined by page rank of referring site). So, if you want a high google rank, you want lots of sites to refer you. If you have a site of questionable or downright obnoxious content, getting those referrals is not easy.
The googlebot, however, crawls weblogs. And every entry becomes a separate page. So if I wanted my main site to have a higher ranking, I would have it as a permanent link in the sidebar. More than that, though, I'd go to lots of other blogs that allow comments and post my URL link - because then those blogs would be referring me, even though I put it there myself.
The whole point of a high google ranking is so that you show up on the first page or two of search engine results. In my case, that's not a problem - mostly because my name is not that common, and my ranking is high enough that it is not difficult to find me. I've given people my first name and the fact that I lived in Guelph, and they found me in one search. But if you're selling whatever obnoxious thing it is you sell, or you want to trick people into travelling to your not exactly savoury site... you need a higher google ranking.
And it seems that there are lots of creeps out there who are all over that, because I've been deleting comments that have nothing to do with the content of this site but contain links that I don't need to follow to know that I don't want to go there. The delete function has been getting a workout. I love when people comment here (ahem!) when it's actually tangentially related to what I say... But I'm not going to play the google referral pawn game. So today I figured out how to ban IP addresses (yes, I know, not exactly difficult when using Movable Type - but I still had to find the option!).
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I had a fun weekend at Silent Lake (too fun, my body is saying right now). There should be a web page about it sometime this week, or at least an extended weblog entry. But with Igloo Ed visiting, this job thing and all... no time just yet...
I tend to stay out of global warming discussions that focus on the so-called scientific basis. I fully accept that we are experiencing and will continue to experience changes in climate – manifested either in changes in long-term means or the frequency of extreme events. I also accept that there are anthropogenic causes. Neither one of those statements can count as controversial these days.
So, we take the premise that something is happening, that it has an impact on other things, and that its cause is at least in part what we are doing. It follows: what do we do about it? If climate change is the “problem”, what is the “solution”? (Quotes are because this is a gross oversimplification).
Well, we start with – there’s a problem, and the problem is because of greenhouse gas emissions. So, let’s stop the problem, let’s reduce emissions. Enter the Kyoto Protocol, cap and trade schemes, and finally carbon sequestration and credit schemes. It seems like an obvious one, doesn’t it? If emissions are causing us to put ourselves into a potentially “dangerous” (yet another contested word) position, let’s deal with emissions. That’s the “mitigation” approach to climate change. And, from what I can see, it’s the one where the lion’s share of resources has gone.
My take has always been on the “adaptation” side – which I interpret as, yes, something is happening, and that’s a problem. Whether or not it’s anthropogenic and if and how we can slow it down, stop it or reverse it – sure, that’s important, but more important from my perspective? How do we deal with it. It’s already happening. We’re already dealing with it. Why aren’t we putting more resources toward ensuring that “dangerous” doesn’t happen from another angle – instead of just trying to control climate (and given considerations such as international negotiations, coal-fired plants being brought back on-line, and a sneaky shift to discussions of emissions intensity instead of total emissions a la George Bush, trying to control climate change seems like a bit of a pipe dream to me), why are we not putting a big chunk of our energy to adopting a no-regrets strategy?
It is “dangerous” if the change is greater than what we can handle. So, if we are to avoid dangerous, we can address the change – ie. mitigation – and the “what we can handle” angle – adaptation. It’s not an either/or situation. And I’ve focused my energy on the adaptation side, which is why I get bored with the mitigation only discussions ad nauseum.
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One of the issues on the mitigation side of the debate that has captured my attention of late, though, is carbon sequestration. I got into a discussion about carbon credits and emissions trading with Bo over coffee yesterday. His position was much like that of the International Emissions Trading Association: emissions trading “provide entities with the flexibility to determine the most economic means to reduce emissions”. As in, if you put a cap-and-trade scheme onto pollution, the market will sort itself out and eventually only the most efficient (in terms of emissions) will exist, because the less efficient, once they are internalizing the cost of pollution, will not be as profitable. Yes, I see that.
But. That whole thing requires a few things: it requires 1) that the levels set (by the Kyoto Protocol or any other body) are adequate to address the issue; 2) that all signatory parties are compliant; 3) that there is some sort of enforcement – “voluntary” is toothless. I have my doubts on 1, 2 makes me laugh (see above comment on sneakily switching to pollution intensity) and 3 has become a moot point in part because of 2. So… the whole idea of not using your allocated pollution allowance and then trying to cash in on that becomes pointless to me. You’ve got 10 kids, and $100 to spend on toys for a birthday party for Billy. So each kid has $10 to play with. And we each get a credit card, with no limit, and we know that our total shouldn’t exceed the $100. So I know that Johnny has a great idea but it would cost $52, so I only spend $3 on a card so Johnny has $7 in addition to his $10, and Jimmy has the same idea, and Johnny is getting closer to the $52 he needs to implement this great toy that will make Billy happy if he can convince four of the remaining seven kids to do what Jimmy and I’ve done – and because we’re such good sports, we do it. Seven of us have spent a total of $18 just cards, leaving $52 for the cool present – and there are still three other kids with $10 allowances. Jane has her own $10 idea, and sticks with it. Sally and Jessie, however, both have crushes on Billy – and they want to take credit for the cool present. So they, independently, take their credit cards and each buy the $52 present. So now we’ve spent a total of $184 on a $100 allowance – and eight of us, which is the majority after all, are feeling great because we not only complied with the rules, but we managed to do something pretty cool. The fact that two kids didn’t play nice hardly seems to matter in the grand scheme of things, when you look at it that way. We’ve got 80% compliance, look how well the system is working – it’s fostered cooperation and we’ve achieved our objectives without undue hardship! And the fact that we’re at 184% of the target… oops.
That’s just voluntary cap-and-trade. Now let’s enter the notion of “credits” as part of the sequestration issue. The idea here is that if I plant trees or switch to wind power or otherwise do something that will reduce emissions or absorb greenhouse gases, we all get a credit – in essence, our pollution allowance goes up. Never mind the messiness of the science behind it, I now get credit for what should just be good stewardship, and I can offset said good stewardship with increased pollution. It’s like giving myself an additional $5 allowance just for playing nice with the other kids… because I was so good about letting Johnny use my extra $7, I now reward myself with $5 worth of toys for me me me!
I think what it comes down to, I resent the “look at us, look how great we are, we’re not polluting as much as we could so compensate us for that” idea.
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Update on 16-02-04: This article nails the point nicely...
There's a fax machine in the office across the hall. When the fax machine jams, it starts to beep like a thing possessed. The other day, I was there when Lorenz unjammed the fax machine, and the backed up faxes started spitting out. There were advertisements for spring vacation-type trips to Cuba and similar junk among the legitimate correspondence.
In the US, as of 1991, unsolicited advertising faxes are illegal under the Telephone Consumer Protection Act. We have no such legislation here, nor do we have a way of stopping the telemarketing phone calls other than not picking up the phone. Or, in my case, changing my phone number, keeping it unlisted, and only giving it out on a need-to-know basis. Right now, when my phone rings, I can be sure it's somebody I actually want to hear from. I still don't want call display.
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Despite my frustration with fax machines and phones, I'm turning to these means of communication more and more. I'm not as hot and bothered about junk email as many, though I get more than my share. I've had the same primary email address for almost 11 years now. For a couple of months now, spam filtering has been available at the server end, but even before that - and given that I don't have the security turned that high - I've managed to control the annoyance with Mozilla (currently, Thunderbird) and its adaptive filters. I suspect the occasional legitimate email does not reach me, though.
However, over the past year or so I've noticed that email communication does not have the same effect that it used to. Just now, as people I was not used to having available on-line have adopted this medium, I'm no longer trusting it for important stuff. It's not security I'm concerned with - it's just too easy to lose the communication. And even easier to ignore something we don't want to deal with, or to put it off...
Tonight, As It Happens went out of their way to explain that not all emails sent to the show are getting through, that even if they do receive the emails, they may not be able to replly to them due to technological difficulties - and that this problem is not just one isolated show in the CBC realm. "Server hiccup" entered my lexicon quite some time ago.
So, now, 12 years after I started being a regular email user, I find myself relying on the phone and, increasingly, the fax more than at any time in the past seven or eight years. I get better results. Funny thing, that.
(Heh. Here's an aside. At the gym tonight, I read a pre-Christmas People magazine. There was an interview with George W. and Laura Bush. They were asked if they were phone, email or fax people. George W. said phone. And I wish I could remember his actual words, but it was along the lines of, he prefers the phone because he doesn't want an email or a fax to be thrown back in his face, so he prefers for there to be no communication at all. That really is how it was reported, not "no record of the communication" but the phone because he prefers "no communication".)
I failed my driver's test the first time I took it. I was in my dad's old blue truck (a 78 Chevy that used to be a diesel but wasn't by the time we bought it). It had an automatic transmission with an idle speed of about 60. The very first time I went driving (before I even got my Beginner's Permit), I went with my dad in that truck. The whole brake left, gas right thing was not intuitive. I started feeling too fast on the gravel road, and the truck started fishtailing a bit. My dad said to step on the brake. I stepped on the gas. I went into the ditch, out the ditch on the other side, and through the fence. When we stopped, there was a big dent in the bumper, and my dad got out of the cab to retrieve the tailgate. I flat-out refused to drive home after that. The worst part was that our neighbour had witnessed the whole thing, and there were years of teasing (fortunately, he never could keep Marlene and me straight a few years after that, and she got the brunt of the teasing for something she never did).
So, the driver's test. I think two of my bigger sins were an illegal lane change (on, I might point out, a road with no median, never mind lanes - I was told to pretend) and a rolling stop at a stop sign. I didn't go home with a driver's licence. For the weeks after that, while waiting for a re-test (in the city, with a driver's ed car that didn't zoom along if you didn't keep your foot firmly anchored on the brake, thankyouverymuch), I spent my breaks at work watching the traffic on Highway 17. It seemed that every frickin' idiot could get a driver's license, but not me! Clearly, there was something incredibly stupid about me! Obviously, the mouth-breather who can't open his mouth without cuss words erupting from it was much smarter than I was, since *he* had his license!
Yeah, well, needless to say, I got over it. To this day, I would never call myself a "good" driver. I drive. I've done so accident-free for the 15 or so years that I have been driving. My driving concerns Lorenz, who claims to be a nervous passenger, so little that he fell asleep on the way to the Sault last summer - he thinks I suck so little, he can sleep while I'm in control of the van that has both his and his kids' lives in it. But I still think the mouth-breather (who probably cleaned up his language by now) is probably a better driver than I am.
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That's what cross-country skiing feels like to me. Why don't I get it? Where is the magic that I am missing?
Over the past week, I've learned an awful lot about waxing my skis. I have an assortment of grip waxes, I have glide wax, a cork, a scraper, and these things that look exactly like kitchen scrubbies but cost about 10 times as much. I can wax my damn skis. But I can't fly along the trails...
Ok, my trail sucks. It would have been ok, but we had that whole freezing rain, thaw, hard freeze cycle last week, and now there's this massive crust on top of everything. This massive icy crust - so in order for me to be able to grip at all, I put on my stickiest wax (this might be the time to learn a new word: klister). Within about 20 minutes, the wax has worn off - and no wonder, the ice feels as hard as the fancy plexi-glass scraper I have. Before the wax wears off, I shuffle along - until I come to a hill. At which point I do an agonizing combination of herringbone, pushing against my poles, and stomping hard enough to break through the crust every now and then to anchor myself. If I come to a downward slope, panic ensues.
I made it to the top of the hill, and was actually having a bit of fun with my shuffle scrape shuffle routine. Then I thought, maybe the crust will hold me - and lo and behold, I skated along it for a few steps (my flat learning curve did not extend to skate-skiing the one time I went - I had fun with that from the get-go). It was great! Until, of course - don't tell me you didn't see this one coming - I broke through the crust and did a face plant. I wriggled, and I writhed - but I couldn't get up again. If I managed to get my skis under me, they flew out in two different directions on the ice when I tried to get up. I finally, after doing a creditable impression of the cuss-emitting mouth-breather, managed to get out of the bindings. It was only about 25 meters to the packed top part of the hill, which also marked the slope of death that I'd planned to walk down anyway (even Simon, who can actually ski well, wipes out on the hill of death). So I picked up my skis and walked.
Ow. If I had my camera here, I'd take a picture of the bruises on my calves. The crust was not enough to carry my weight, but it was a thick enough crust that it slammed into the part where my leg gets wider - aka my calf - with painful force. 25 very agonizing meters, with the cussing soundtrack. I suck at this skiing thing.
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While I was illustrating my lack of competence at skiing, I really should have done something about the toboggan run on the hill of death. But I procrastinated on that until Sunday morning, at which time I realized that the crust made for a very fast and out of control ride down. This would have been fun, except the run is between two fences. One of them is a high tension wire fence. The kind that can slice parts of your anatomy off if you hit it with enough force. I bailed on the sled a couple of times to avoid such a fate, and then stomped back to the yard to get a metal shovel. My plan was to break the crust and build a slower trench. And between that and the fence of doom, I would use the crust to build a small wall. This way, if you were zooming on the fast crust on the side with the painful but not dangerous wooden fence and you started going over to the dangerous side (which you do, because that hill slopes that way a bit) you would hit the wall and riccochet back. If you were a chicken, you could do the slower ride in the trench. I did about a third of the hill, and that technique worked well.
HP saw what I was doing, and decided to help out with the tractor. At which point I figured my services weren't needed, and wandered to the house. An hour later, with the 13 kiddies about to go out, I realized that HP and the tractor were stuck, the hill was nowhere near safe, and there would be carnage. HP and I worked like fiends with the shovels, but for safety reasons the whole tobogganing party got moved to one of the horse paddocks. They kids could safely careen on top of the crust, and it is thick enough to carry their weight.
As already established, it is not thick enough to carry mine in most places. After I gave up on working on the run I'd spent so much time on, I got a kick out of watching them whiz around on the crust. Then I banged up my shins some more, and that was that. I failed the tobogganing test too.
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It's a good thing I have such a great relationship with my snowshoes.
And I haven't given up on the skiing thing. I'm hoping for fresh snow...
This is how you spend the evening after you drive your friend, landlord and resident organic farmer to the airport.
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I want more information on the Schmeiser case. It stymies my ability to think critically, because here’s what I distil it down to:
1. Monsanto has a patent on a particular cultivar – one engineered to work with their herbicide.
2. Percy Schmeiser had canola growing in his fields that bore the hallmarks of the patented crop.
3. Percy Schmeiser neither purchased the seed from Monsanto, nor paid a licensing fee.
So there’s conclusion 1: Percy Schmeiser owes Monsanto a licensing fee. At $15/acre, with over 1,000 acres, that’s close to $16,000. Net returns on those acres were about $19,000 (and as Ian Binnie, supreme court judge, pointed out – that’s a lot of work for $3,000). So even if I were to accept conclusion 1 without reservations, my questions:
What the hell is the point of buying into something where the lion’s share of your profit goes to Monsanto?
Except it’s not quite as straightforward to me:
1. The chief “advantage” of the GM canola is its tolerance to the company’s own glyphosate herbicide.
2. Schmeiser never sprayed said herbicide.
3. Schmeiser had no advantage from growing the crop.
4. Release of the crop and attendant higher herbicide use – whether by Schmeiser or anyone else – has led to “superweeds”, necessitating ever stronger herbicides.
So there’s conclusion 2: Even without the lawsuit, Schmeiser got screwed. Percy Schmeiser didn’t take advantage of the special qualities of the GM crop in his fields. Not only that, he – inadvertently or otherwise – helped the company make the conditions of growing crops more difficult overall. Now, I don’t understand the motive – I can, somehow, see the motivation behind growing a crop that requires licensing and skipping out on paying the license fee. I don’t understand why someone would take that risk for no reason at all.
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I don’t care whether or not Schmeiser somehow managed to save a seed he shouldn’t have as per the “should” of an agrichemical giant who expects more than 75% of your profit for using the seed. I don’t even want, so much, to get into the point of patenting living matter. What I care about is a court judgment that rules that if you are found with the patented crop on your fields – regardless of how it got there – the crop belongs to Monsanto. And, apparently, if they have to sue your ass off to get it, you have to pay their court costs too.
Pollen doesn’t respect property boundaries, and weeds evolve. So shouldn’t the agrichemical giants be sued by all of us for creating an environment which essentially makes Canadian canola unmarketable in some of our most lucrative markets as well as giving us a bigger weed problem than ever before?
Doesn’t this remind me of StarLink? Why is the word contamination accepted there, but not here?
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What am I missing?
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I’m not convinced that eating a genetically modified organism is going to have immediate or even intermediate effects on my personal health status. I have a resilient system. In many cases, I think genetic modification achieves what can be done with years of breeding. That’s where my problems begin, though.
1. We do in the space of a year what used to take generations.
2. We are only focused on the genetics in our lab, not on all the other inadvertent impacts we may have on non-food crops and organisms.
3. The year then becomes the generation, in terms of other organisms stepping up their evolution to build resistance. The case of corn borers and Bt-corn comes to mind.
4. We are now doing the exact same thing we’ve always done, breeding – just at a different pace, with a licensing fee attached.
5. Even if you do manage to get those super yields for a year or two, the prices fall – do you really make more money? I accept that you’d make less money if you continued to stick to the other way while your peers went the new way.
Conclusion: it’s not for my good, or the good of the planet, or the good of the farmer, that the genetic modification I’ve seen takes place. My quality of life will not increase with increased shelf life of tomatoes, increased cold tolerance in corn, or herbicide tolerance of wheat. My quality of life may decrease with herbicide residue in the food supply, human-induced evolution at unprecedented speed, and the like.
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This whole mess challenges my critical thinking skills. I know where I stand. But I also hear the arguments of the proponents of this, and they’re not always easy to dismiss. People need to make a living. An individual can only do so much – and may end up in massive debt with a lien on his farm, like Percy Schmeiser.
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Ever since I got a new computer at work, I’ve spent far more money than I’d like to on the software budget. I have to buy new legal copies of stuff that I already had legal copies of – but it won’t work with the latest software. I was happy with my computer two computers ago, except that every time there was a software upgrade, it got relatively slower. I was happy with dial-up internet until everybody went high speed and nobody designed pages with bandwidth as a crucial factor anymore. I got high speed, for a while it made me happy, then it just changed my lifestyle. Not for the better.
Microsoft and Monsanto (and the rest of them, let’s not just vilify Monsanto) have a similar approach to selling product.
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I have a t-shirt, I think of it as my naïve idealist t-shirt because it has a catchy slogan that I doubt was thought out all that well:
“Monsanto: playing god like only the devil can”.
The shirt amuses me, because it’s symptomatic of the vilification of one particular company with perhaps a not-quite-competent PR department. The issues, as far as I’m concerned, are much deeper than one company, and silk-screening that slogan is akin to protesting globalization without being able to tell me what said globalization is. Monsanto has become discourse to some.
But reading through Percy Schmeiser’s website, I’m tempted to buy into the slogan.
And it’s going to be months before we hear a judgment from the Supreme Court on Monsanto vs. Schmeiser
I spent a part of the weekend on my snowshoes, stomping up and down the hill on the farm. There is a children's tobogganing party in the works, and the drifts are too big for toboggans to barrel through without some pre-packing, so stomp stomp stomp I went. Now I'm tempted to take my shovel and put in curves and embankments, and then I want to build an igloo at the top. But let's be realistic, shall we? There is not enough time.
I also got myself some nordic skis, though I don't have them yet - all the boots in stock at the store I went to in Milton were too big, so they have to order some in. I can't wait. I stomped out a trail around a few of the fields, again on snowshoes, which I can hopefully trackset when the skis come in. Dog-walkers from the subdivision (I think, it's nobody who lives here anyway) have been barreling through that field, so I have a sad suspicion that, by the time I get back to it, my evenly and lightly packed snowshoe trail will have bootholes punched all along it and won't be any good for tracksetting.
The dog came with me when I worked on the toboggan run and snowshoe trail yesterday. He helped by pooping in the middle of the steepest part of the slide, but he was having a good time and so was I, so I just picked it up with the shovel and tossed it over the fence. He valiantly tried to come along on the snowshoe trail packing, but it was a bit too much for him. After about 500m, he stayed put and barked his little head off for a while, before skulking back to the farmyard.
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I went to Ikea yesterday. The irritating quotient went way high. People go there to spend entire days wandering around pre-packaged low-end but fun style. After 20 minutes, I wanted out, desperately. This of course meant that I ignored the arrows on the floor that funnel you through all the showrooms and did an unfortunate second loop of the couches. But I now have a laundry storage solution, a full-length mirror and a new bedside lamp that doesn't require stripping the fingerprints from my fingers to turn on and off. But I can wait another five to ten years before I revisit Ikea.
And I had my first real company in my place on the weekend. I've had people drop in a few times now, but they all live here. And Phil drove out last weekend, but I wasn't ready to entertain in my little place and he came to the house and we just did a quick tour here. But with Rebecca, Nick, Stef and Bob over for drinks, it was truly cosy in the cutest apartment in the region. But given that I only have two chairs and I wasn't in the mood for eating perched on couches, I took advantage of the most tolerant landlord in the world and made dinner in the house. The house not only has a great kitchen and gigantic table to eat at, but it has the handy feature that I can put leftovers in the fridge, and they stop being my problem! They always get eaten up there.
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Speaking of eating, moving must burn some serious calories. I've been eating like a farmer (ok, not quite - but bacon, eggs, pasta, pork roast and apple pie have all featured in my diet in the past week!), and this morning I braved the scale, thinking I must now do penance for the eating habits I'd cultivated. Ha! Not only did I get away with it, I actually lost a pound or two in the past week! This now officially undoes the Christmas Pudge, though there is plenty of other pudge I'm not happy about these days...
But I can't help but suspect that there's a pound or five just hiding in my closet, waiting to leap onto my body when I get dressed one day. My body does that.