1500 and Counting

Our booth in Clikz

The drive to see a transit link between Abbotsford and Chilliwack is accelerating, and I have no doubt that if we can follow through and collect the target number of signatures, that we will succeed. I said after U-PASS that I never wanted to hear the words “bus” or “public transit” again. U-PASS, to me, was a big victory, one that has the potential to significantly change the drive-by culture of this university. The campaign itself, however, was nauseatingly repetitive, and now I find myself in the same situation with the campaign to finally link up Abbotsford and Chilliwack with some form of public transit.

When this campaign wraps up, I will be taking an extended break from this type of public transit advocacy. I am passionate about public transit that adequately services the community and region, and strongly feel that there will still be tremendous room for improvement once we do get the Chilliwack-Abbotsford Connector route, but for the short term, I will not be involved on more than an advisory level.

Now that we have that out of the way, I’ll quickly update how this campaign is going. There are 489 signatures to SFS’s petition online, and I have in the neighbourhood of 950 collected in hard copy. We have some 1-200 still circulating, so we have almost certainly passed the 1500 signature threshold. That’s one quarter of what Edith Griese collected to get the Aldergrove line in place.

On Monday I rode the #21 over to Aldergrove to pay Edith a visit (and get her to sign of course!) I chatted with Edith for about 20 minutes, and at the end of that conversation, I was more determined than ever that to succeed in this effort. We needed this service 30 years ago, and seeing Edith’s resolve and enthusiasm, despite being well into her senior years, was uplifting. In total, Edith collected some 6 000 signatures, taking just over two years to do that. Now, there is no way I am spending two years on this – currently we have been doing this very actively for perhaps three months, so at this pace will need one full year, or 9 more months to match her total. I want to do it faster, as I can’t commit to being here for that long. To accomplish that we will be setting up booths at the Farmer’s Market, the Flea Market, the Greyhound station, and the Welcome Back BBQ’s in September.

Recently, the Abbotsford News wrote a story about this petition effort, and the Aldergrove Star will be publishing a similar piece today (Thursday). The story can be read here, along with my ugly mug about to be run over by a bus.

http://www.bclocalnews.com/fraser_valley/abbynews/news/49038981.html

I am sitting in Clikz cafe, the Tim Hortons on campus as I write this, having collected an additional 50 or so signatures over the last few hours.  It is interesting how people seem to be too preoccupied to notice the petition despite there being a highly legible banner displayed out front, but once you invade their consciousness by asking them if they’ve seen the petition, generally respond enthusiastically. It makes me wonder how many opportunities in life they miss by simply being oblivious to them, being too focused on where they’re going to pay attention to anything else.

This petition, in fact, is one reason that I’m still in the Fraser Valley. When SFS helped the Student Union to pass the U-PASS which will be implemented this September, we committed to advocating for a Chilliwack – Abbotsford Connector, so it was important that somebody take this on. After my bicycle accident in March, I have the time to spare, so here I am, striking a few blows for a workable transit system.

The issue has recently taken on added importance, with UFV’s declared intent to build a ring road and adjoined parking through what is currently one of the last intact mature Douglas Fir forests in the area, the woodlot on the southern half of the campus. To erect new buildings, UFV must provide more parking, and this is the only space which they have to do this, so  they are willing to destroy a grove of mature forest, in which some of the trees must be at least 300 years old. If we can encourage a broad mode-shift to transit, the need for parking will be reduced, and the building permit authority may just waive the strict requirements for more parking for the new buildings.

You’d think that if the City can build a 6 or 7 thousand seat Entertainment Centre with 500 parking spots, that they could arrange something to ensure this small tract of rare forest is preserved.

Locavoring

Food is such a big part of our lives. This simple fact is impossible to escape, much as we might prefer to haphazardly eat what we’d like, when we’d like. Good food really excites me, especially when it’s locally produced and more or less benign – and Sundays at our house really take the cake.

We have glorious Sunday breakfasts that have evolved from a meat, cheese, peanut butter, and jam affair to a veritable feast at which we have Silver Hills sprouted bread, and a choice of: lettuce greens, broccoli/garlic sprouts, tamari, hummus, tahini, eggs, peanut butter, jam, onion, tomato, and butter, together with a black or twig tea. Such variety and exquisite taste simply can’t be beat.

Then over the rest of the day, we had a salad picked fresh from the garden, handfuls of fresh salmonberries and thimbleberries, and a garden smoothie containing lamb’s quarters (a plant related to Quinoa), dandelion, carrot thinnings, very young carrots,  and then made palatable by adding banana and apple. Last and probably least was some cooked cauliflower, quinoa with apples & cinnamon, and black beans with pasta sauce.

Such fare is simply extraordinary, and makes me wish it could be summer in perpetuity, as it is only in summer that it is so easy to find abundant food, and even now, we are still buying produce grown in California, not to mention the things like pasta sauce produced who knows where. Still, a day like today where we had control over so much of what we consumed leaves me feeling empowered, and motivated to do better yet. I am reading Steve Solomon’s “Growing Food in Hard Times” which asserts that with about 2-3 000 sq.ft. of land, cutting one’s food cost in half is entirely within reach with only 2 hrs. of work per week, not to mention the health benefits this would bring. I’d say this is very realistic, and while I only have about 1 000 sq. ft of land that is shaded until noon or later, I can foresee the day that I work at least 3000 sq. ft.

Because I can eat, cook, and sleep anywhere – for that I don’t need to own land. The land I need to own is the land that I work and condition the soil on. If that land happens to also have a place to lay my head, bonus, I’ll take it. But at the end of the day, it’s the productive land that matters, because we can’t rely on Californian imports forever.

The Starbucks Universe

Today I want to do something I never thought I would. A shout-out to a multi-national, ubiquitous corporation with the type of success that borders on being a monopoly. Starbucks. As much as my sweet tooth loves the store and it’s drinks, I really like something the store does that sets it apart from almost all the stores out there. Starbucks has a coffee-grounds giveaway program – one that has turned me into a literal Starbucks junkie. Not because I need my caffeine fix, but because my garden needs its nitrogen.

I’ve been stopping in at the 3 Starbucks locations that I pass by virtually every day to grab the roughly 5 kilo. bags that contain used coffee grounds, which Starbucks staff package up and put out for people to take home. In addition to the grounds being a good source of nitrogen and trace minerals, this saves the grounds from going where they would otherwise go – the landfill. It reduces Starbuck’s trash load, saving them money in disposal, and has made me one loyal customer. Because of course when I stop to grab my coffee grounds, I can’t resist grabbing a drink or a pastry either. It’s basic economics; I’ll spend my dollars with the companies that have practices that I support, and while I don’t drink much coffee, if that happens to be Starbucks, well, then it’s Starbucks.

Edit: Apparently, Go Go Beans in Abbotsford does the same thing. Actually, I suspect a lot of coffee shops will if  y ou ask. But Starbucks makes it soooo easy….end edit.

In my garden I’m growing a few types of crops. Lettuce, carrots, bush beans, pole beans, arugula, chard, broccoli, and raspberries, not to mention the grapes and pears that were present when we moved in to the property. In addition, there’s a roughly 3×3m. area that I use for composting, and it’s the compost where most of my grounds end up. Just yesterday I turned the pile, and to my great delight, could feel the warmth emanating from it, and even see some steam rising from it’s centre as I forked it over. The heat is generated by the copious abundance of micro-organisms feeding on the kitchen and garden waste that I add to my compost, and they do especially well when they have an abundance of nitrogren to feed on – something coffee grounds are high in. The hotter your pile, below a certain temperature, the faster you will get compost and the stronger it will be.

Another use for coffee grounds is as a foliar fertilizer. I soak the coffee grounds in water for a day or so, strain out the solids, and then use a hand-held sprayer to spray the leaves and stems of any plants that I think can use a boost. The liquid nitrogen content of the water, as well as the other nutrients it absorbs from the grounds, is highly absorbable to the plants who get it. For instance, I used it on a couple of squash plants that I had to move because they were growing in my lettuce bed, and suffered from root disturbance following the move. They seem to be recovering now, but like with natural medicine, you really don’t know if it’s because of the treatment or whether they would have recovered anyway.

So a big kudos to Starbucks for going to the effort of making coffee grounds available for people to filch; we might be playing footsie with the planet’s systems by moving the nutrients in coffee so far around the world, but at least this is one step towards closing the loop and getting some use out of what would otherwise be a waste product.

Nope, Starbucks didn’t hook me with their caffeine, but I’m hooked to Starbucks nonetheless.

Just goes to show; if they don’t get you one way, they’ll get you another.

I should have tried to sell them this post.

Survival and activism

I wrote this short blog post a while back in response to a posting on the Care2 site, www.care2.com, for cause bloggers. I didn’t hear back, but felt I had to give it a shot. I obviously didn’t give this post enough time or energy or the right direction, but even so, getting paid to blog would be a little beyond belief. I doubt it would have been much, but still….

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I first came across the Care2 community way back in early high-school. My idealism and passion for a better world immediately pulled me in, and I enthusiastically began using Care2’s leveraging of the power of advertising to save just a little bit of big cat habitat, conserve marine wetlands, and protect the rainforest. I wasn’t quite changing world events just yet, but I was making a difference, however incremental, and that’s what I cared about. It thrilled me to see an organization aggressively using online media and the power of economics to effect change. Today, I still see Care2 doing exactly that.

–Edit–: In fact, since I wrote this, I’ve learned from Care2 Founder Randy Paynter’s blog that Care2 is currently combating a DDOS attack – a malicious effort to seriously undermine Care2’s effectiveness. Randy writes: “We do not know who is behind the attack. Clearly, someone is threatened with the impact the PetitionSite is having. It’s possible the attack is being coordinated by a single unhappy hacker, or it’s possible it’s related to some of the petitions we’ve recently had related to international events. It’s pure speculation at this point as we simply do not know, however its size and characteristics suggest it’s a well coordinated attack.”

So there you have it. As some reader’s have pointed out, the fact that whoever is behind this attack feels threatened by Care2 means it’s making a positive difference. I encourage you to use or explore Care2. — End edit.–

Since that time, my activism has counter-intuitively expanded to become more local. I’ve passionately raised awareness about my watershed and its salmon populations, chipped in with the local cycling advocacy group, and participated at the civic table. But I’ve also come to realize that though we might want to change the world, there are limitations to how much we can do, and it’s important not to overextend, but to function within our capabilities.

These are tumultuous times, to say the least. Gone are the days when the only thing that mattered was “making it” in the big wide world. Fashioning a product to sell, acquiring personal property, growing your family and staying in touch with your network – it’s easy for these things to pale in comparison to the challenges that science and intuition tells us are coming, if they’re not here yet. A rapidly warming climate, proliferation of packaging and industrial waste, growing worldwide debt loads, all these things and more call on us to act differently, to do more than we ever have before, above and beyond the demands of our careers, and yet for many of us, simply staying afloat in the ever-changing sea of current events and economics is challenge enough.

Some give in to apathy, reckoning the pace and scale of the things that are happening are simply too much to effect change over. That’s not the spirit we need. If we can cultivate an attitude of passionate involvement, and value effort even when the result doesn’t materialize, we can change the course that we’re on. It’s what I’m working towards in my areas of interest, and I hope you do the same in yours.

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Today I’m using Care2 more than I ever have before. I mainly use their e-mail service, figuring that if I’m going to do e-mail anyway, why not do it with an organization that spreads goodwill by raising money for habitat and endangered species preservation among other things, rather than with some anonymous, for-profit, corporation like Hotmail or Gmail?

–Second Edit– One other Care2 feature that I’ve contributed to is absolutely free, and amazingly ingenious. It involves using advertising dollars to fund preservation initiatives. Companies are given the opportunity to advertise on the Care2 site, and Care2 hosts a link that people must log onto the site in order to click. By logging onto the site, they are exposed to that company’s logo, and voila, these companies have gained exposure while contributing their advertising dollars to preservation. For example, one company that stands out as gaining profile in my eyes is Kashi  - the high-fibre healthy cereal company. Now I don’t buy much cereal, but when I do I’m more likely to buy Kashi because of their contribution to the Care2 “Click-2-Donate” sites.

To do some vainglorious chest-thumping, but also demonstrate Care2’s effectiveness (something I was skeptical of for a while) since I started clicking, which I did pretty much daily in early high school and have only recently started doing again, I’ve made the following contributions out of the Care2 totals:

Offset 18 lbs. of carbon/2 549 495 lbs. total

24 THOUSAND sq. feet of Marine Wetland, American Prairie, and Rainforest habitat/ 612 MILLION total

305 ACRES of Big Cat habitat (tiger, jaguar, snow leopard)/ 27 400 SQ. MILES total

830 pcs. fruit for primates/ 18.7 MILLION total

supported Care2 kids for 505 days /18.2 MILLION total

659 pets/ 18.3 MILLION total

1218 letters protesting violence against women/ 12.5 MILLION total

As well, Care2 supports  efforts to help seals, oceans, and to eliminate the environmental causes of breast cancer, albeit with less tangible ways of measuring progress.

I really see Care2 as a shining example of one of our primary options in this rigged economic climate. Until we can achieve wide-reaching reform, we have to try to create a shift in spending habits from supporting harmful practices to supporting beneficial ones, and being willing to pay a little more for it if we have to. Done en masse, this can effect change.–End second edit–

Those of you who read here regularly will have noticed a precipitous decline in the frequency of my posts of late. This is no accident, and has a definite reason, so don’t despair! For the time being, I’ll be posting infrequently, and with little mention of myself. That’s probably as it should be anyhow.

…and the reed canary grass is high…

Life has slowed to a crawl, just in time for the hot weather to sweep in. If your parents ever sang that song about, “Lazy summer days, with the fish jumping and the cotton being high,” well, that’s what things feel like right now. Replace the cotton with reed canary grass or corn, and the fish jumping with red-tailed hawks soaring, and the songs fits perfectly.

I walk home everyday from the bus stop on Blueridge, from which I span the rural-urban divide, going through the subdivision, around the detention pond under the power-lines, through the barbed-wire fence, along the makeshift pathway through a young alder grove, down the hill as the pathway snakes through a grove of middle-age cottonwoods, and then through a large patch of grass that’s waist high, before I cross the creek and cross the field to my house. All in all, it’s about 10 minutes from the bus stop to my house, 13 if I’m going uphill.

It’s a bus route on which I’m starting to know some of the users. There’s Rick, the laid off reformed gang-member and now born-again Christian who’s using his free time do some serious working out. There’s the girl who goes down to the City Blends with her laptop to do her homework and do some people watching. There’s the red-haired girl who draws faces on balloons to pass the time. There’s the Indo-Canadian security guard, who remains the only one to offer to sign my petition to implement a transit line between Chilliwack and Abbotsford. Everyone else I’ve had to approach. There’s the lady who disagrees vehemently with Tim Felger’s “election” signs downtown which say things like, “Your mom called. She said to bring home a baggie.”

Riding transit so much, you start to love the endless variation among the people on the buses. The quirky bus drivers, the poverty, the young punks who hang out in the back of the bus, the young single mothers who you feel sorry for but admire for their pluck, all the people who don’t jive so well with the rest of society. Who you don’t see are the young professionals, the businessmen, the people who think they’ve got it made, who drive sporty cars around town and still believe the world’s their oyster and shun transit at all costs. Here in Abbotsford, there’s a certain homely feel to using transit, almost a sense of ownership that simply isn’t present when you’re in Vancouver or some other urban metropolis, where the sheer multitude of people makes any sort of group identification based on transportation routes unlikely.

Transit slows things down as well. Countless times I’ve walked the 15 minutes to get to the bus stop, lounged for 20 minutes reading or chatting at a bus stop, or walked the distance that the bus was going to cover because it wasn’t going to arrive for 20 minutes. As I recover from the concussion that I suffered, I’m not working yet, freeing up 35 hours per week or so. I’m still too stubborn to apply for student loans, having paid for everything out of pocket so far and determined to keep doing that as long as I can, so I’m not taking any classes because I just can’t do it financially. That leaves me with a lot of time to myself. Heck, I don’t even have the money to use all the free time getting my entertainment fix. Instead, an independent business opportunity has arisen to which I’m dedicating myself – one to which I see no downside or risk, and the potential for great rewards –  along with some casual, simple work in my garden, and some excellent literature. Ebay, too, has become my second home as I try to liquidate all the un-needed items that  are scattered around the property.

It’s a lifestyle I’m going to miss when I move on, and make no mistake, move on I will. This little 15 hectare patch of land bi-sected by Downes Creek and containing my little garden patch will be places that I will always visit fondly, albeit with mixed memories of a place that sustained me throughout high-school and early university, literally and spiritually, but also saw the accumulation of more sheer stuff than I could ever use or reasonably dispose of, along with the emergence of health challenges about which I’ve been relatively mute and will remain vague.

All my instincts scream at me to simply play it safe, and establish some kind of shelter against what may or may not metamorphose into an international if not a global catastrophe, as our society’s energy supplies start to stagnate, taxes rise, the baby boomers leave the active economy and demand their social security benefits instead, and the extinction crisis driven by a changing climate begins to mount, affecting not just the world’s ecological systems, but the people who are intricately tied to them.

By nature, I remain a cautious person, with an avid dislike for casting preparation to the wind and letting the chips fall where they may.  Yet, there are things to be said for a devil-may-care lifestyle governed more by the changing of the winds and the seasons than the fickle shifting of society’s economic outlook. It’s a hardy, no-expectations and no set plan lifestyle which takes life as it comes and doesn’t focus too much on the future, outside of idle speculation to pass the time. Perhaps most importantly, it relies on natural skill and capability to pull one through when hard times do arise instead of reserves that have been put aside in good times. What I can’t seem to decide is whether the people who lived in that way did so deliberately, knowing that any disruption in the current socio-economic state of things could turn their world upside-down, or whether they were simply too ignorant, lazy, stubborn, or selfish to focus on getting ahead and laying something aside to help them deal with bad times when they did arrive. I’m not mentioning many names, mainly because there are really only a couple of figures who characerize that lifestyle who I know much about, and even my knowledge of them is limited. But I am thinking of the people who characterized the Beat Generation, the free lifestyles of the 60’s, 70’s, and more recent decades as well. What I am coming to realize is that there was no heavenly balm of peace and good times which settled over that post World War period. There was the Cold War, and the ideologically justified combat of the Vietnam and Gulf Wars. The threat of the annihilation of a way of life was ever-present, as it is now. As I develop a broader understanding of the way things work, I find it more and more difficult to pronounce anything with certainty.

The idealism that would have seen the proliferation of public transit and bicycles, high density self-sufficient housing, community gardens, and the emergence of a government aware of the complete inadequacies of economics as usual, is fast fading within me. From the time of the first catastrophic detonation of the atomic bomb, groups have called for nuclear disarmament without success. The Kyoto Treaty was first adopted in 1997 and took effect in 2005, and today we are further from its goals than we have ever been. People continue to gradually lose traction against the ceaseless wheel of economics, as more slide into poverty and taxes rise ever higher. We are at the point where prominent British scientist James Lovelock, founder of the Gaia Theory, believes that we have finally passed the point of no return, and that the best expenditure of energy is now in preparation for the inevitable collapse of the world as we know it. Now, that’s easy for him to say – on the one hand, advancing a theory that costs him nothing but casts him into the spotlight even if he is dead wrong. But on the other hand, the science and economics of where we are does look grim. The main point here is that progressively minded activists have been calling for certain changes since many of my friend’s grandparents were teenagers, and as far as I can see, have been stymied by a range of factors, from the military-industrial complex, to fractional reserve banking, to simple human nature and greed.

Yeah, that much vaunted idealism that saw me quietly advocate for the things I believed to be of paramount importance, is giving way to a higher degree of realism that espouses one of my brother’s core beliefs: That if you don’t help yourself, you can’t help anyone else. In the face of escalating financial challenges that make a mockery of the naive, simplistic, and innocent desire to triumph over the power of money, the cogs of ICBC, housing markets, food costs, the price of accredited education, physical limitations, and prohibitive health care expenses,  a lot of the edges that defined my core beliefs about the role of a good citizen are being worn away – as near as I can gather, what happens to all idealists who don’t take jobs with the goverment or in government funded academia.

I have not yet seen or met anyone who meets two conditions: 1) is not constrained by money, and 2) acquired their wealth through means that obey the “do no harm” principle. Willful ignorance, rationalization, forced justification, and turning a blind eye seem to dominate in people’s mindsets, which is certainly not to demonize humanity, but to assign fault and to acknowledge our inherent imperfection and pragmatism.

To fly in the face of established wisdom about conclusions, I’m not writing a proper conclusion here. Rather, I’d simply like to urge you, if you read this, to disagree vehemently or simply play the devil’s advocate. I do hate it when people agree with me. I know I’m right anyway; I just wish people wouldn’t admit that. So come on. Tear my impromptu essay to shreds. Give me a failing grade, and I’ll do the same for you. Tell my why and how I’m wrong, and I will be your friend forever. Just know that I don’t make many enemies.

Bitten Tongue

I was going to write something related to family and what makes for a satisfying life tonight. However, I got into a bit of a mental quandary about the possibility of it coming back to bite me in the ass, and decided not to. So this is what you get instead – just a short little note explaining that what you are reading is not a dramatic, controversial expose of the most risque stuff that goes through my head. Rather, it’s a high-percentage log of ideas that don’t appear to have the likelihood of exploding on me, and that I’m very confident about.

Maybe one day I’ll decide that there’s no harm and actually some benefit in spewing out outrageous material, or just material that somebody might twist and use against me. For now, I’ll adhere somewhat to the realm of political correctness, and save anything else for my private life. If you were looking for something else, too damn bad is about all I can say.

Or just wriggle your way into my private life.

What thou eat thou art

Running with the crowd has never been my thing, quite possibly to my detriment, but at certain times, most definitely to my great delight. I wrote a few weeks ago about the oxymoronic ubiquitous phenomenon of claiming not to be mainstream, but truthfully, very few people can make that claim.

What I do know is that I haven’t developed a great deal of friendships, mainly, I think, because I’ve never been remotely interested in what my peers were doing. By Grade Six I had an extensive list of bird species that I’d seen; no one cared when I did mention wild birds.

In Grade Six I’d pull my desk over away from the rest so that nobody would bother me. My future Grade Seven teacher wonderingly said I must like it that way.

By the time my peers reached age sixteen, some were beginning to acquire driver’s licences. Me? I couldn’t have cared less.

After high school, I cycled and bused across town to get to a university, and watched in amazement as the parking lots swelled each day.

At a youth gathering at a friend’s church (ok, I had some friends), when mentioning facts about ourselves, I said, “I grow my own food.” Despite the stifled laughter, it was true. In Gr. 12 I’d put in a veggie garden, to see what my backyard could save my family.

In this picture, you can see where Downes Creek runs by the line of trees, my house in the distance, and the field where I get a lot of my stinging nettle.

On Sunday mornings, despite going to a Mennonite school, I wouldn’t go to church, even though I promised a cute girl that I’d go with her one day. Instead, I’d go on long rambles over Fishtrap Creek or Downes Bowl, figuring that was all the church I needed. In retrospect, they weren’t long enough by miles. Oh yeah, she’s married now, a fate I’d sooner put off. But that’s what they all say, isn’t it?

These days, I cook stinging nettle for dinner. It’s free, abundant, and great for you. What better combination is there in this world than that, and yet who among my peers does it?

I never have cared much for alcohol, blazing, smoking, or drugs, reckoning this world was still good enough I didn’t need those things. Besides, I ride transit. I know where overuse of them will land you. It ain’t pretty, though better than some fates I suppose. As to whether this world’s good enough, well, the jury’s hung on that one. And they’ll probably appeal the verdict anyway.

To find like-minded people, Abbotsford probably isn’t the place to be. I know that, and yet I can’t leave. Besides, I’d probably find a way to disagree with the like-minded ones too.

Probably it’s the stinging nettle. I hear the system can only handle so much before you become an ornery contrarian. Haven’t you heard? It’s called biomimicry.

The Eclectic Herd

Canucks mania has spread like wildfire in the Fraser Valley. Establishments frequented by hockey mad folk are thanking the heavens for the rush of euphoria that is helping to counteract the effects of the recession. People schedule tasks around Canucks games, gladly opting to take a few hours away from the grind to relax in front of the tube, knowing that remaining caught up in the status of the NHL playoffs will benefit them. You might think that that’s an odd thought; how on Earth can keeping one’s eyes fixed to a hockey screen displaying unrelated men vying to insert a black rubber disk into a net, and doing this for three hours, possibly benefit one?  Around playoff time we humans certainly exhibit some strange behaviour, but upon closer inspection, it becomes clear that it’s not as if this type of behaviour is at all impractical on a personal level. A lot of stuff I don’t like isn’t, actually.

Drivers and pedestrians celebrating the Canucks Game 2 win

Before I go any further, I just want to point out that until the last year or two, I was as big of a Canucks fan as anybody I know; hell, I made friends on the basis of talking about hockey and the Canucks together. Even today, I still get a kick out of watching the game; if I’m at home I’ll still follow the game log or watch the game despite having a grainy, wavy CBC image. We don’t have any cable TV; never have and I probably never will.

Recently however, I’m not really the kid who would want his sports section along with the morning oatmeal in Gr.5. I still want my oatmeal, but not so much the sports. But the question remains, what could possibly drive people to become so rabid over something so inconsequential?

The first big benefit is pretty simple. Hunkering down in front of “the game” relaxes people! Taking a few hours out of a busy day to do nothing productive and focus on cheering on a favorite team, be it mentally or physically, is a powerful urge because it gives us an excuse to take a long break. It would be one thing if that break was taken in isolation, but what’s even better is that in this case there are huge social benefits! Since everybody’s talking hockey these days, if you can join in or even direct the chatter by knowing what’s going on, you’ve immediately got a social leg-up. For basically doing nothing.

At the same time, though I’ve done absolutely no research on this and have no intention of doing so, I believe it’s been shown that having a championship team locally gives a region a big boost. There’s a general sense of euphoria as people have their innate desires of seeing “their” team win fulfilled. This tends to raise feelings of goodwill. Also, having a local play-off team gives people a reason to get together and celebrate, and what do people do when they celebrate? They buy stuff and consume it, so it boosts the economy. Whether it provides a long term boost is questionable, but there’s a high likelihood that all the simultaneous celebrations result in increased sales, which in turn makes local retailers happy and also boosts the euphoria level. As with the social benefits, this is all well and good until you think about the fact that all this is accomplished through manic support for a group of millionaires, most of whom have nothing to do with the local community and are only playing here because a General Manager, who also likely hails from somewhere else, had the aptitude to bring them in. By cheering these people on, we’re basically saying that being here by default makes you a better player or manager than all the other players or managers in the league. It’s senseless, but hey, it boosts the economy and makes us feel better so we’re going to go party, alright?

After Game 2, a 3-0 Canucks win in which Sundin scored the first goal, a buddy and I walked out to South Fraser Way to check out the celebrations. The dominant thought that I had as people beetled down Abbotsford’s main artery honking and waving and basically letting go of some steam, was, “Gosh, when does Abbotsford ever get excited about anything? Now look at this!” I’ve heard estimates of around 1000 people out celebrating, and that doesn’t include the many thousands more who stayed home. It’s basically a herd mentality; what we’re basically saying is that, “Even though few of the Canucks actually hail from Vancouver, when they win we feel happy and drink beer and consume other stuff and watch lots of ads, so let’s all join in!!” How’s that for logic eh?

Somewhat miraculously, I apparently am in near complete agreement with my brother on what I’m going to say next. This pretty much never happens. We respect each other, but live very different lifestyles and hold some pretty different viewpoints, so I’m pretty flabbergasted whenever we agree on something.

What I heard him saying yesterday is basically an exact replica of what I was arguing with my buddy a couple nights ago; that it’s great to see Abbotsford citizens out in numbers to support something, but how in hell have we come to a point where the only time they will ever come out in numbers for anything is when something of absolutely no consequence except how they ‘feel’ goes in their favour? How assinine have we become, and how has this happened? How is it that about issues such as land use or transportation or tax rates or pollution we raise nary a peep, by comparison, but when a bunch of millionares defeat some other millionaires by playing with marginally more skill, and subsequently causes the supporters of the other millionaires to be dejected and generate a collective pall over their goings on, that we rejoice!?

When our very food and drink is at stake because of development on agricultural land, and our ability to feed our family is threatened by economic rumblings, we clamor but do nothing, but when ‘our’ team wins we celebrate and drink beer and give ourselves a collective pat on the back.

Is that we’re completely happy with the way things are organized by our governments and leading personalities? Is it that we’re all too confused to adamantly advocate anything? Are we too apathetic to stick out our necks for anything when there is the slightest element of risk, which there is none of when celebrating a Canucks win? Have the forces of media forced us into enough of a philosophical straightjacket that we trust that our duly elected leaders will do the right thing?

So, you down for some drinks when the next series starts? Sure, I’ll buy.

I mean, you did read this far didn’t you?

Clusterfuck Nation Redirect

Don’t read my blog tonight. I have lots to say but no time to say it, so just head on over to Clusterfuck Nation by James Howard Kunstler:

www.jameshowardkunstler.typepad.com.

He`s very thought provoking, and says some things I would agree with. Not all, mind you, but some.

I mean, have I ever completely agreed with anyone?

A Step Back

There is an entire school of thought which revolves around self-directed learning: learning that is ongoing, in that one never stops doing it and actively seeks it out; inexpensive, in that one does not pay ~$150.00 per credit to do it; relationship building, in that one sometimes chooses to do it in collaboration with a close friend or group of friends who are interested in the same thing. Some people choose this option as an alternative to post-secondary education, figuring that they would rather live in and learn from the real world and use whatever leftover time they have to bolster their knowledge and awareness.

Self-directed learning is something that I’ve been trying to remind myself to do more often. It’s something that takes discipline, or just the absence of pesky friends who want to go and drink over some board games or something like that in the evenings. Giving in to that temptation too often is more likely than not to land one among what’s called the “deadbeat masses.” Giving in on occasion is, I think, a necessity for sanity. Giving in never at all might just saddle you with a frown and a scowl far more often is necessary. Anyway, self-directed learning is a way to create some discussion or banter about topics that schools and universities just don’t really cover, and that is probably a necessity.

So from time to time I’ll make this blog a little on the academic side, when and where I deem appropriate, by sharing what’s emerging from my episodes of self-directed learning, most of which I do while waiting for buses.

About a week ago, I  picked up “The Upside of Down” by Thomas Homer Dixon, and unlike most of my schoolbooks, despite me being enrolled in a degree which interests me, have been glued to its pages. In order to function, anybody needs to formulate something of a worldview; a way of thinking about the order or disorder in their lives that answers some of the big questions and explains how things work. My worldview, particularly in the last few months, really has no rhyme nor reason to it. Not much makes sense on a broader scale. I don’t really have much in the way of religion, having survived private high school without acquiring that. Economically, sustainablility is the very last of all the traits we’ve managed to acquire. Politically, a lot of the people in leadership positions are the wrong people to be there. Socially, so many seem stuck in the status quo. I think, thankfully, that I’ve managed to get one leg out.

Many people live their day to day lives smack-dab in the middle of a gigantic economic construct that is explained to them by newspapers, television programs, news hours, their paycheque, and the books they read. In large part, in North American society, this involves  a capitalistic economic structure framed around free enterprise, a consumer good oriented society in which many everyday consumables are made overseas and imported into North America, a large middle class that works in various sectors of the economy, many in service sectors, but some also in production or manufacturing, and a large automobile industry that employs much of the work force, from automobile maintenance, to repairs, to sales of new vehicles, to production of domestics, to automobile associations which lobby for space for cars. For pretty much all of this, high resource consumption is integral to the process, and also largely ignored and taken for granted. Now that capitalism appears to be failing, some people are starting to ask the odd question (odd behaviour, I know) and some bigger topics open up.

What Dixon has to say about all this is, I think, crucial. Dixon seems to like our banking system, stating that the Federal Reserve system brings added flexibility. With that out of the way, there’s lots of things that seem to be nagging Dixon. He calls these things Tectonic Stresses. They are:

• population stresses
• peak oil (less energy for more people, eventually maybe no conventional energy)
• environmental stress
• climate change
• economic stress (widening gaps between rich and poor)

If any one of these, or worse, several at once, rear their ugly heads, things would go downhill fast, Dixon says.

He writes, “Most of us in cities are now so specialized in our skills and so utterly dependent on complex technologies that we’re completely dependent on complex technologies that we’re quickly in desperate straits when things go wrong.“

Perhaps more importantly, he writes that, “Most of the five stresses spring from our troubled relationship with nature. Indeed, one of my most important points is that we can’t ignore nature any longer, because it affects every aspect of our well-being and even determines our survival……they (policians, corporate leaders, social scientists) tend to dismiss people who concern themselves with nature as, at best, softheaded do-gooders or, at worst, eco-freak fanatics.”

He goes on to say that, “….opinion leaders conveniently overlook the fact that every great civilization believes itself to be exceptional, right up to the time that it collapses.”

The route to success is either through long-term employment and saving for retirement through investing, or in the ownership of a potential business. A high tax load ensures the punctual payments of interest on the national debts, and as they did in ancient Rome, people complain incessantly that only two things are guaranteed: death and taxes. For some, perhaps only one of those, though some are worried they’ll soon be taxing ghosts too.

Xurbia.ca – they’ve got solutions to this kind of stuff

Dixon describes several scenarios of concern, one of them being the the failure of the power generation system, as happened on the East Coast in 2003 for an extended amount of time. He writes that, “…we can make much greater use of decentralized, local energy generation, and alternative energy sources (like small and medium scale solar, wind, and geothermal power) so that individual users are more independent of the grid.” This is what Dixon terms a resilience enhancing strategy, and it’s my view that not to make use of the technologies that now exist at relatively affordable prices, probably the most affordable they have ever been, is irresponsible from both a personal and societal standpoint. This is one example of both how a breakdown can be minimized in its intensity, and dealt with when and if it does happen.

Suffice it to say that in today’s day and age, we count on the institutions that we’re familiar with to continue functioning as we expect them to. We expect resource extraction and subsequent production to continue to employ people, even as evidence mounts that same pace extraction would be hazardous to ourselves and the planet. We expect universities and corporations and retail outlets to continue to pay our salaries; we expect people in developing nations to continue making the products we ‘need,’ because if they didn’t and we made them ourselves, we couldn’t afford them. We expect food and consumables to continue to be shipped around the world, and then to appear on the shelves of the stores we frequent. It’s in those paradigms that we happily function, remaining completely unprepared for things to change, and unaware of whether our planet could cope with large-scale changes if they were to occur.

Systemic change simply isn’t on our radar screens. I mean, the last time things got really tough was over 60 years ago.

A lot has changed since then. Only time will tell if the next 60 will be as nice as the last 60. And perhaps, it’s only fools who would count on it.

Downes Road Bicycle Lane

 In recent years, the City of Abbotsford has been giving the creation of bicycle lanes a little more consideration, making progress by creating a Bicycle Master Plan, participating in Bike to Work Week, and most importantly creating bike lanes on a few of the major east-west running streets.

One of those east-west running streets is Downes Road, a major thoroughfare that lies outside Abbotsford’s urban core and is marked by a long succession of hills, one after the other. I happen to live on Downes Road, so have seen firsthand the efforts to make it bicycle friendly.

At this point, the City has finished most of the job of widening the road, painting the lines, and installing signs alerting drivers to the presence of the bike lane. They have yet to paint bicycle symbols on the lane though. The bicycle lane is well positioned to connect to the bike lane on Clayburn Road, though between the two lies a  hill that is intimidating to drive up, let alone bicycle. The new lane also connects to the bicycle lane on Mt. Lehman Road, but that bike lane is plagued by the presence of a lot of gravel, while also being intermittent and limited in scope.

So when the bicycle lane on Downes is finished and connects to these other two bike lanes, what Abbotsford will have is something of horseshoe shape of bike lanes on its northern perimeter. These lanes also happen to be  located on some of Abbotsford’s hilliest roads with the exception of the urban growth on Sumas Mountain.

So make no mistake about it. These new bike lanes will never accomplish the task of making Abbotsford a bike friendly city. At best they will make it more pleasant for people who already cycle to do so. They are little more than glorified shoulders in their current state, and the cynical will argue that the construction of bike lanes is a nice way to add money to the road-building budget, and use it to upgrade poor shoulders.

Though the new bike lanes on Downes are by no means unwelcome, they aren’t particularly helpful either. What is needed is bike lanes on the major roads of Abbotsford that come close to the urban core – on South Fraser Way, Sumas Way, Hillcrest, George Ferguson, Clearbrook – and other such roads, to send a message loud and clear that Abbotsford intends to become a bike friendly city as soon as possible.

Though these new bicycle lanes will do very little to boost the popularity of cycling, I can understand the thought process used by planners. Since Abbotsford had virtually no bike lanes prior to the construction of the ones on Bevan and Peardonville, they probably felt that bike lanes on Downes and Clayburn would be a good way to introduce Abbotsford’s drivers to the concept, bridging the way to make Abbotsford’s core bike friendly. If this is the thought behind these bike lanes, I can understand it – on the assumption that making the rest of the city bike friendly happens sooner rather than later.

Stinging Nettle: Not what it sounds like

The sun blazed down from the sky yesterday, Sunday, warming the Fraser Valley as much as it is really capable of doing at this time of year as it nears its Spring equinox period of matching daylight and night-time hours. As I mean to do every year and only accomplish some years, I went for a long walk, clearing some cobwebs from my system while picking stinging nettle (Urtica dioica) for the evening meal. Stinging nettle is a fantastic edible potherb that grows wild in great abundance, pulling minerals and vitamins from the top layer of soil and making them available to us in a way that they wouldn’t be otherwise. At this time of year, I supplement our diet with big buckets of Urtica, and this year, still being more or less decomissioned because of my Mar.4 accident, finding the time to go and get it wasn’t really a problem.

From my place, a ramble out through the field, over the creek, up the hill, through the barbed wire fence is certain to yield some of this plant, and extending the walk is sure to fill a big bucket or two.

It’s possible to walk all the way to Highway 1 by going through the suburb at the top of the hill, and then down the trails which snake down the hillside over to Fishtrap Creek, which flows south into Washington and the Skagit River. Here it’s still a small tributary, rippling through residential suburbans, a forested ravine, busy roadways, industrial sites, and farmland before coming to the border.

Though I described Fishtrap as being just a small tributary, here it looks like more than that because City engineers have dammed it to hold back water, sparing farmers from the agony of flooded fields.

After that, I don’t know what it does, though one day, when the similarity of all of Cascadia is recognized, I hope it is managed in its entirety by one  authority so that its headwaters and mainstem are subject to the same types of regulation. I mean, who knows what them Yanks are doin’ at Fishtrap’s mouth, eh?

My sister accompanied me on the first portion of this walk, helping me to pick stinging nettle, so by this time my bucket was getting pretty full. Fishtrap was not very rewarding with its Urtica populations, and besides, what’s to say the legion of people who walk their dogs here have kept their dogs away from it? Not likely, so I simply walked around Fishtrap without picking very much. There was a bald eagle here, as well as two double-crested cormorants and an abundance of waterfowl – gadwall, green-winged teal, Canada geese, American coot, double-crested merganser, mallard, and others. Here’s a photo of the habitat at Fishtrap:

Fishtrap Creek Park, looking south

Stinging Nettle is quite easy to recognize. It’s high in minerals, especially the young shoots which are available for perhaps a month in the springtime. I don’t have a picture, but it tends to grow in thoroughly wooded areas where deciduous trees predominate. At the end of the walk, I gathered almost a full bucket. It doesn’t have the most pleasant taste at the best of times, so some people like to mix or season it. Today I mixed it with some potatoes from Aldergrove, causing the unpleasantness to more or less disappear as the potato taste dominates. Otherwise, a simple addition of toasted, ground sesame seeds and/or olive or other oil does wonders and makes this plant very palatable. Who needs early salad greens when you can start off the growing season by consuming this wonderful, free, green?

So much more happened on this walk that I could comment on; the construction of the Discovery Trail; the salmon art at DeHavilland and Old Yale; the vista of Abbotsford you get from up on Blueridge; the action’s of the landlord in and around Downes Creek; the curiously dense growth of red alder on the hill, forming a natural monoculture reminiscent of a tree farm, and more. Despite Abbotsford’s rapid growth, it retains some of its natural features and remains an intriguing city, from both a cultural and naturalistic perspective. Here’s a few more photos.

This grove of Red Alder (Alnus rubra) has dramatically changed the environment of this hillside.

This is the view of Abbotsford from the top of Blueridge Hill, complete with a boring Oak that still retains it’s leaves! What? Don’t these trees ever lose their leaves? I guess that’s why they plant them. Retards!

A pair of red-tailed hawks have used this stately black cottonwood (Populus balsamifera) to nest in for years now.

Cranked

On March 4 I was hit by the driver of a Lexus while trying to find a way to bicycle to New Westminster.I was on Broadway, heading East around dusk, and woke up a few hours later in a hospital bed. Of the interceding period I have no memory, and my memory of days and events immediately after the accident is patchy at best.

I haven’t driven or bicycled since the accident, and have walked, taken transit, or been carpooled everywhere. Since then I’ve seen a flurry of doctors and a couple lawyers, spending most of the rest of my time at home just “takin’ it easy”, as Buck 65 says about his trip to the fishing hole. I’ve rediscovered some wild places, started some good books, and tried to remember that I actually do still have some academic obligations. I think I’d kinda been in the unconscious process of dropping out of sight and starting afresh in some ways anyway.

What matters is that despite having been in jured while riding my bike, in no way will I be deterred from doing so in traffic again. Perhaps my resolve is even stronger. In a sense I’m lucky to bere; some maniac irresponsibility on the part of the driver of that Lexus, who was going 65km/h in an intersection, while according to the police officer who attended the scene, I was doing everything right. My life however, wouldn’t be the same without my bicycle, so damned if I let this be a big setback in that regard.

Mentally things have been a little patchy. I don’t always reconcile with reality, I guess you could say. For instance, in the preceding text, I’d swear I’d written “incident” instead of “accident” as my subconscious seems to prefer that word. When I go back and read it however, what do I see? The word “accident.” Perhaps most strangely, my family queries me about things I did just after Mar. 4, and the event in question simply doesn’t register on me. I have no memory of some of those things. Days seem to go by like the flash of a shutter; I’ve barely started one before it’s time to go to bed and start the next one again.

Oddly though, I’m not getting any mental feelings of regret or resentment; only a feeling of  “this is how it is, this is what happened, now you find the best solution.” Nothing else, other than a seeming inability to focus on the mundane and the occurrence of an obsession with the bigger picture that’s a little disconcerting.

I mean, it’s a bigger picture which includes the prospect of continuing ecological destruction, a dysfunctional economic system, a patchy job market (or soon to be patchy if it’s not yet), and a living situation that has more questions than answers.

More insanity than mundanity.

Unconventional in the Valley

Some clever wag once commented that we’re all unique, just like everybody else, or something to that effect. Together with planning to be spontaneous tomorrow, it’s one of my favorite oxymorons, because it captures the internal dilemma that so many of us grapple with. Nobody, but nobody, wants to “fit in with the crowd,” or to “be mainstream.” Nobody will happily admit that they’re pretty mainstream, that they just go with the flow and do what most other people do, and like what most other people like. The phrase “I just don’t do mainstream” is almost ubiquitous.

In ‘05 I worked a blueberry field in Matsqui, where I had this conversation with a woman who was just pickin’ for kicks, saving some pocket money and spending time with her daughters. I posited that I’d sort of come to the conclusion that if most people seemed to be doing something, it probably wasn’t the right thing to be doing. She agreed, saying it was the exact conclusion she’d come to. The next step in that line of thought however, has to be, what if most people are studiously avoiding what what most people are doing?  Is it then time to avoid mass avoidance and fall back into line with the masses? Now we’re well into the realm of circular thinking, of self-destructive logic.

The reason being, that the scale of acceptance of a school of thought or phenomena shouldn’t by itself be the litmus test of its worthiness. We all have to make our own judgement calls on every particular issue; sometimes this might put us squarely in line with the majority, other times it might put us on a collision course with a juggernaut. This is when things get interesting, and you check the displacement value of whatever you’re driving. (for the uninitiated, this is what passes as dry 2:35 a.m. humor.)

Of course, the line between being “mainstream” and being “unique” is extremely broad. You only have to read the book, “Stuff White People Like” to understand this. In fact, the range of lifestyles, hobbies, and careers that are available to us in today’s day and age is mind-boggling, and so broad as to make us all unique almost simply as a product of living in the society that we do. We are all drawn to particular aspects of our culture for various reasons; some people have an affinity for puttering around with clubs trying to stick little white dimpled balls into holes in the ground, some get together in groups and try to simplistically emulate popular numbers with simplified guitars, which is basically an admittance that we’re too lame to actually learn to play a guitar and instead are content with knowing this is as close as we will ever get. Some people like to take up a cause and try to arrest the momentum of something they are certain is Bad so that something Good can take its place. Point being, we all have the little things upon which we balance our Individuality. In keeping with the ubiquitous quest to be “random” and “spontaneous,” people especially prize being able to claim as a hobby something that apparently has no basis in the realm of practicality and is by all appearances completely unproductive, and of course, random. If there’s one thing that can be said about the segment of society with which I am familiar, it’s that above almost all else, we prize anything and everything “random.”

Well, there are other things that unite us of course, things that run as common threads through many of us, and, yes, make us “mainstream.” One of these, nearly to a man (and woman, geez, the expression was written before feminism ok?), we’re extravagant consumers. When we shop at Tim Horton’s, Starbucks, Staples, Ikea, Walmart, buy Apple computers or use Windows operating systems, buy a daily coffee because we “need” that to kickstart our day, uber-obsess over appearances, look for a “good” “job” (which I’ve heard defined two ways – “just over broke, and jackass of boss), these things make us mainstream because we all do them. This doesn’t necessarily make them bad, it just makes that highly likely. I mean seriously, try to defend any of those lifestyle practices to me from a social consciousness perspective. I ain’t all holier than thou either. I do all that too, fairly regularly actually. And so, I forego my claim to the realm of “uniqueness.”

Where all this is going, is to pave the way for me to say that, “there are a million things I could do with this life; just none of them have appealed to me so far.” There. I just quoted myself, on something I just put into writing now for the first time. Somehow that seems appropriate, I think because I’ve been turning that phrase over in my head for so long that I feel like it’s not even original anymore.

I could study geography and go on to revolutionize the community planning process with my brilliant ideological reforms to the way we plan stuff right now; right, that would go over well. I could take out a mortgage, as most of my visioning episodes for the future do seem to involve a peaceful domestic life, but they do call it a “mort-gage” for a reason. I could take up the bottle and drink and party myself into oblivion, interspersed of course with unpleasant episodes of reality. I could study the political process and try my damnedest to effect the change I want to see through political avenues. I could barnacle onto one of my dad’s businesses and maybe eventually run the show. I could study the heck out of investing, smart tax strategy, and financial policy to try and play it smart by raking in enough cash to live on without actually hardly working. I could learn a trade or two and be a hard workin’ Joe earning my living through hand-labor. I could be a transient farmer, helping out on organic farms round the world. I could devote myself to music/arts and see if I don’t have some untapped potential in that area. I could “be a writer, laddie buck” and try to turn words into dollars, work from home, and hopefully do some travelling along the way. I could be a career student as well….

For the time being, I’ll not be doing too much of that, particularly not the exotic stuff. I can’t, you see, for reasons that I can’t go into except to say they’re not financial – not primarily, at any rate.

No, I’ll be sitting tight here in the Valley for a bit, biding my time and…..being unconventional.

As usual.

Unlike everyone.

This little Doug. Fir sprang up in some disturbed soil in the field next to my house. It’s likely that it was seeded by the larger Douglas Fir next to our driveway, that a Red-breasted Sapsucker drilled full of holes this winter. It’s also likely that this area will be developed, so when I move, this little guy comes with me.

Scooter Poetry

Well, I just went weak in the poetic knees after reading this, so I had to post it of course. Isn’t this just superb?

Here is a link to the Allen Ginsberg photo mentioned in the poem: http://mysite.verizon.net/paulruby/ginsburgmonkey.jpg

1984 Honda Elite Scooter, 12K miles, $750, 769-3329, Bellefonte

Paul Ruby

Let me tell you about it.

It starts easy

with a little electric motor

attached to the side of a big one.

Kind of like those icky fish that stick

to the side of the big shark in the pulsing

ocean’s belly.

It used to make me so happy

waiting for my stuff to dry,

in front of Splish Splash Laundromat.

And even though I only like the Pina Colada song a little

I dreamed I made whoopee on it

in the dunes of the Cape.

Go ahead, sit on it.

You’ll think you’re in Paris

or India with the monkeys

like in that Allen Ginsburg photo.

Girls will wave

as you drive by.

Forget about a Corvette

that only attracts other guys.

You need this Scooter!

Take it for a spin put on

my helmet.

Your breath fogs the visor

and mixes with my smells

of garlic, dirty hair and extra virgin olive oil

in a squishy corner of your mind.

Now we are close. It’s the smells of our

fore fathers, their fathers and that fellow in the

Raphael painting riding the stinky pony

on the Apian Way.

This scooter is your ticket to ride.

Okay, so it won’t start.

Help me bounce it up and down real hard

to knock some American sense into it.

Notice how the tires leave the ground

coins and tools fly

out of the glove box and bounce

under my ex’s burgundy Camry.

Look down.

That’s her watching us through the laundromat

window. The steamy window of our lives.

Corvid Sky

One of many, many, trees around 16th and 250th that was filled with crows

They’re viewed as pests by some; as natural marvels by others. Cunning, highly social, and omnipresent, crows evoke strong imagery by their presence. They are commonly used in literature and films. I’ve been told about a Hitchcock thriller in which crows turn violent and turn on people; since then I’ve had the occasional nightmare including such imagery. Crows act as Saruman’s spies in The Fellowship of the Ring. Ernest Thompson Seton writes of a wise old crow named Silverspot, who led a band of crows for years before being murdered by an owl, and in The Secret Garden, Dicken had a pet crow, I do believe.

I once observed two crows making out in a cottonwood tree, to the best of their ability (we are far better equipped for that).  This is one of several moments which impressed on me how little removed we really are from the rest of nature, and how much we have in common with all life, and how interconnected everything is.

The night I took this picture, the sky, in places, was black with crows. Hundreds of thousands swooped and perched and cawed in this area of southern Aldergrove. Their presence changed the very mood of the area. A few moments ago I heard a beautiful birdsong that perhaps will kick off a low-key winter dawn chorus, but the sound of many crows together is harsh and raucous; it sends chills down your spine and makes your hair stand on end. Crows have a mystique, a stigma about them that many people dislike, but which I find fascinating. This night the trees were weighed down with crows, it was as if they had gathered here for a grand congress, the entire crow family coming together to meet and talk and elect leaders and draft policy. I have no doubt there is meaningful communication going on at these gatherings.

For a rare moment, humans were not the predominant, overriding presence on the landscape. These black winged animals drowned out the human presence. They flew in from all  corners of the region, they blackened the sky, they were a reminder that we must yet cooperate with nature and live within its limitations.

Save-on Feathers

There is a Save-On Foods inhabited by two birds; this discovery was the highlight of my Tuesday. The short glimpse I caught of one of them led me to believe they are Juncos; little birds that before I knew their actual names, I used to call “black-heads” and “gray-heads,” because the males had solid black heads while the females were just a light gray.

I mentioned this to a staff member. I was heartened that she was aware of them and that the staff there had actually named them, rather than removing them from the premises.  I guess I just expect that nowadays nobody can accept the intrusion of anything natural that potentially compromises “food safety,” and it makes me happy to come across an exception.

I am not specifying which Save-on Foods right now, but next time you are in one, keep an eye on the rafters; you just might see a flash of feathers as a Junco flits out of sight. Who knew you could birdwatch while shopping? Now that’s multi-tasking…

The Cycling Life

I’ve never, ever, sincerely regretted a bike ride. I’ve had flat tires, gotten soaked in impromptu rainshowers, ran out of water, been dead beat so I felt I couldn’t pedal any further, been honked at by retard drivers, been honked at by sane drivers because I was a retard cyclist doing stupid things, pissed off bus drivers, flipped the bird to more than one driver, cycled home from Langley, cycled to Cultus Lake and then dragonboated for a couple hours and then cycled home, gone over the handlebars after being cut off and jamming on the brakes, and had all kinds of other wonderful bike-related experiences. Three things I haven’t done, which perhaps disqualify me from being a true, blue, cyclist, are cycled drunk, cycled naked, or doubled anybody. Neither have I ridden a tall-bike, ridden a unicycle, or texted while cycling. All of those are on the list of fun bike things yet to come. Here’s to all things bike-related!

Of note, just yesterday I was cycling home along the Bevan bike lane, which I usually avoid because it’s hillier than the alternative route, but today I took it because I wanted to do the hill. Guess who was riding the opposite way? The only cyclist I saw riding that day? Abbotsford-Clayburn’s MP, B.C.’s Solicitor-General, and Minister for Public Safety, John van Dongen. As long as I’ve been involved in cycling advocacy, he’s been a strong supporter of more bicycle infrastructure, and someone who really listens to his constituents. He’s a busy guy, yet somehow he finds time to ride his bike to and from work now and again.

And he was taking the hill too.

Removed

I haven’t been in school for a while now, not since early December, and I have to say that I’m loving the freedom it brings. While I am taking the one course, it doesn’t even feel like a course at all; more of a regular group discussion or something, as it’s held in a coffeeshop once every weekend. Though I’m working around the same amount as I did last semester when I was actually taking classes, it’s not the 10 hour a week low pay type of student jobs that ate up so much time last semester. It’s evening work, but I find that evenings are the best time to work – that way, I can take advantage of being free during business hours. I always wonder how business in service industries manage to attract business when so many of their potential customers are working at the times that they’re open. For myself, I can make all the phone calls and other appointments when the people I’m dealing with are actually available, and then work the evenings when I can’t get much done anyway. Though I do have some concern that not being in school is borrowing from my future; that I ought to get the degree out of the way quickly and then re-balance once I’m in the work force, the kind of balance I’m achieving now is something I simply couldn’t put off any longer. I’m reading far more than I did in school, and finding more time to explore, on my own time, the skills which make one a well-rounded person. 13 years of academics can really turn one into a very one-sided individual. I’ve been working out more; cycling more, reading more, cooking more, and lazing around more. Those are all fantastic things, and I feel great. Recently I finished Garth Turner’s “The Greater Fool” – a book which puts into perspective the shamefully positive spin the real estate industry puts out there on a daily basis, trying to con people into “investing” in real estate when they’re really not ready to do so. I’ve read Trevor Carolan’s “Return to Stillness,” in which Carolan, one of my profs at UFV, talks about the 20+ years he spent learning Tai Chi from Master Sifu Ng in Vancouver’s Chinatown. Rather than merely read about Tai Chi, perhaps I should take it up. The book certainly made me want to. Currently I’m reading Kurt Vonnegut’s “Slaughterhouse Five,” recommended to me by a friend, not necessarily for it’s abilities to entertain, but for the insights into human nature. I can’t say I’m truly enjoying it, but it’s certainly an important read. I still have no idea how the title plays into the actual novel though. I’ve also made a lot of headway into Thoreau’s “Walden,” given to me by a friend last Christmas. Thoreau has such an assertive writing style. He was known as rather a grouch and as a cantankerous fellow, lived a very independent life of partial isolation, and spurned most of the accepted ways of doing things. He was opinionated, outspoken, and not afraid to speak his mind, unpopular though his views were. He also seemed very sure of himself, not given to second guessing his actions. Much of his writing is composed of flat, assertive statements about society and his contemporaries’ way of living. At the same time, his radical views and approach to life made him something of a self-imposed outcast; he never married; had little desire or inclination to travel therefore never really distancing himself from his mother and family. Women, or relationships, in fact, are one subject on which Thoreau sheds absolutely no light that I have been able to find. He is virtually silent on the subject, only once or twice mentioning the company of unnamed “ladies.” He once asked for someone’s hand in marriage, and was rejected, and he eventually died relatively young, in his fourties, of complications from a cold contracted while out inspecting some natural feature or other. He was lauded as a true American by his contemporary and landlord Ralph Waldo Emerson, and another, who visited Thoreau while he lay dying, said he had never seen someone dying so peacefully. Thoreau had harvested from this life all that he could, or wanted to, and when it came time to move on, he accepted it gracefully. He had once written that he “went to the woods because he wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when it came time to die, discover that I had not lived.” There are times when I am reading Thoreau, that it feels as if I am just looking in the mirror. I am no Thoreau, but if I had to choose one writer/philosopher who best represented me, Henry David Thoreau would have to be the one.

The Petitions

Everyday, the freeway between Chilliwack and Abbotsford is packed. There are line-ups at the major intersections bordering the freeway, Whatcom and Vedder Roads. A very steady flow of traffic constantly occupies the Number One. It’s not like further west, in Surrey and around the Port Mann, and in Vancouver. But it’s definitely busy. Not all of this traffic is necessarily stopping in one of the two cities other. Some is passing right on through, but a good deal of it is bound for a destination in Chilliwack or Abbotsford, be it a UFV campus, Seven Oaks or Willowbrook, a financial institution, or a restaurant.

Both cities are part of the Fraser Valley Regional District, a level of government on the same level as Metro Vancouver, or any of the other regional districts in B.C. The FVRD also includes Mission, as well as the smaller districts of Hope, Agassiz, and Yale. Though public transit systems in all of these areas are managed by BC Transit, there is a startling lack of integration within the region.

Obviously, the two major population centres are Chilliwack and Abbotsford. Each operates transit systems that function independently of each other, and the Abbotsford system is joined up with the Mission system, which together are called ValleyMax. The two systems contribute to the operation of a connector bus, the #31, which runs from transit loop to transit loop over Highway 11, the Abbotsford-Mission Highway, and during peak periods offers 15 minute service, and half hour service all day.

Similarly, there is a connector service between Abbotsford and Aldergrove, though it’s not very frequent at all, only running 6 times per day. Even so, it serves around 100 people per day, connecting Abbotsford to Metro Vancouver through Aldergrove for those who rely on transit. The Aldergrove Connector, of course, is only in place because of a petition campaign ran by Aldergrove senior Edith Griese, who was fed up with not being able to visit people in Abbotsford when she chose. She got 7 000 people to back her up, and voila, she had her bus. They should have named it the Edith Griese line while they were at it.

So with those connections in place, it seems patently obvious that a route between Chilliwack and Abbotsford is the glaring shortcoming of the regional system. There are obviously many areas where the systems need improvement, but the number one area is the Chilliwack-Abbotsford connection. There is Greyhound service between the cities, but it`s expensive and infrequent, and requires additional transfers to connect in to the municipal transit systems. A round trip will cost you $13.30 for a refundable ticket, or around $10 for a non-refundable ticket. By comparison, a municipal service should be much cheaper. In Metro Vancouver, a cross-regional route, say the 502 from Aldergrove to Surrey, which I happen to ride regularly, costs the same as a short inner-city route, that cost being $2.50. Regular fare for the ValleyMax and Chilliwack transit systems is $1.75, which is what a connector service should cost as well, though a top-up of $1.00 is charged for the Aldergrove route, to bring the fare up to $2.75. This really shouldn’t be the case; I don’t believe it’s standard practice for transit authorities to charge more for longer routes, as this simply confuses things. System funding should make all routes available at the same cost.

It’s true that the personal automobile is the dominant mode of transportation in the region. I don’t believe that this is because it is better. I think this is because the service level for people to do otherwise simply hasn’t been provided. Transit service faces a long, uphill battle in the FVRD, but the first priority has to be the Chilliwack to Abbotsford service. It’s essential for students commuting between campuses, seniors wanting to travel between the cities, and the general public that doesn’t really want to drive but has no other choice. Now that UFV will have a U-PASS in September ‘09, it is paramount that this service is implemented as soon as possible. The petition is online, at:

http://www.thepetitionsite.com/1/chilliwackabbotsfordconnection. It has 123 signatures online, and a bunch more in hardcopy, and that’s only a start.

Let’s speak up and make it known that we want authorities to make public transit a higher priority, and provide for immediate funding for this route. And let’s not forget about Rail for the Valley; we need rail AND bus service, and tthat petition is now online too:

http://www.thepetitionsite.com/1/rail-for-the-valley.

Students for Sustainability and I can’t do it by ourselves. I’ve tagged you in this note because we all need to become advocates. We won’t succeed with one or two people here or there tugging at the politician’s shoulders; we need to be a loud, persistent voice demanding that commitments to public transit are made and lived up to. E-mail enviro@ufv.ca for copies of the petition that you can print out and distribute, and send around the link. We can’t do it without you!