Jim Poling Sr.'s Blog, page 13
October 14, 2021
They are everywhere.In the 70 acres of bush that I call h...
They are everywhere.
In the 70 acres of bush that I call home in Haliburton County, I estimate there are nearly 300 of them, and many more just beyond my property lines. They have me surrounded and I have visions of them taking over the entire world.
An exaggeration? Well, wildlife researchers say that one acre of land could hold as many as 30 of them. You do the math: the world has 37 billion acres of land and if each acre has 30 of them, they total 111 billion, outnumbering us humans by 104 billion.

So yes, chipmunks are taking over the world. My world at least.
I can’t walk a short distance without having one or two scamper across my path. When I cut firewood with my chainsaw, one comes close and stares up at me with a look that says: “Why are you here making all that racket?”
When I’m eating lunch on the deck, another approaches with accusing eyes: “Sure, we let you share our land but you won’t share a morsel of your lunch!”
I don’t know where they all came from suddenly. There have been reports of chipmunk population explosions in parts of eastern Canada and the United States over the past two or three years. They have been regional increases, not widespread, with no definitive reasons.
Some wildlife experts say a milder winter and an abundance of acorns might be a reason.
Chipmunks in Canada usually have one litter of newborns a year while in the warmer south they have two litters – one in the spring and one in the fall. There is a theory that warming temperatures are shortening winters, allowing for two litters a year in parts of Canada.
Chipmunk litters usually are four to six kits, so an extra litter a year could increase populations significantly.
These little guys are cute and charming and amaze us with their busyness. They never stop scampering about, looking for things to eat and digging tunnels.
They store seeds, bugs and acorns in their little cheek pouches, which researchers say can hold more food morsels than most people would imagine. A researcher found that one chipmunk packed 60 sunflower seeds into one of its pouches.
Other research has determined that a four-ounce chipmunk can gather and store up to eight pounds of food a year in its underground burrow. Tunnelled burrows are as much as three feet below the ground surface and can be more than 30 feet in length.
The extensive burrowing is an issue for some people. They say that large numbers of tunnelling chipmunks can damage retaining walls, deck supports and even house foundations. Others say there is no real evidence that chipmunk tunnelling causes much landscape structural damage.
They can, however, give gardeners grief. This year we had no sunflowers because they dug up all the seeds we planted – several times. They also love to nibble on ripening tomatoes.
The biggest knock against chipmunks simply being fun little cuties came this year from Lake Tahoe, California. The United States Forest Service closed several popular Tahoe sites when bubonic plague was discovered among chipmunks there.
Bubonic plague occurs naturally in some higher elevations and is found in small rodents, such as chipmunks, and their fleas. Humans are infected if they are bitten by those fleas.
Bubonic plague, also known as The Black Death, killed millions of people around the world centuries ago. Today it is treatable and curable with drugs.
When chipmunk populations explode and damage lawns, gardens and flower beds, some people demand extermination programs. However, we humans need to accept that we just can’t kill everything that disturbs our treasured modern lifestyles.
The U.S. Forest Service understands that. When some Tahoe chipmunks were found with the plague last summer it said it would not start eliminating chipmunks. Controlling the fleas would be a better approach.
At any rate, chipmunks carrying the plague are not an issue in our part of the world. They pose no threat to us, if we watch them from a distance and don’t try to handle them.
As to them taking over the world, I guess that is an exaggeration. The little guys live only two or three years on average.
October 7, 2021
This is the golden time; the best days of the year.Sparkl...
This is the golden time; the best days of the year.
Sparkling sunbeams spill from a brilliant blue sky. Golden bronze and crimson leaves catch them, then lose their weakening autumn grip and flutter to the forest floor.
It is prime time for walking the woods and breathing in the gifts of Nature’s beauty.

It also is hunting season so I walk with a shotgun, although I have no intention of using it. It is an old Winchester 12-gauge featherweight, long-barrelled and pump action.
It was my dad’s duck gun, too heavy-duty for small game in the woods. I carry it not for hunting game, but for memories. Memories are more plentiful than partridge or rabbits.
There’s the memory of dad’s smile as he pumped spent cartridges from the Winchester and watched three mallards fall into a Northwestern Ontario pond. And, the blow to my shoulder the time he showed me how to shoot.
Sadly, those memories are being pushed aside by facts about how guns are changing our society. The times of guns as part of our heritage are disappearing into the chaos of gun violence.
Gun violence has been increasing steadily in Canada. Statistics Canada reports that criminal use of firearms increased 81 per cent between 2009 and 2019. There were 7,700 victims of crime involving firearms in Canada during 2017, the most recent year for which there are statistics.
Toronto is the epicentre of gun crime, registering 462 of what police call ‘firearms events’ in 2020. Those events saw 217 people shot and killed or injured.
U.S. figures collected by the Gun Violence Archive are even more shocking. Gun violence is so rampant there that the place should be labelled a third world country.
So far this year there have been roughly 34,000 gun deaths in the United States. Another 31,000 people have been wounded. Those figures include 535 mass shootings and 22 mass murders.
By year’s end there will have been between 85,000 and 90,000 shooting deaths and woundings in the U.S.
Children are not being spared. Gun violence became the leading cause of death of American children ages one to19 in 2018, according to the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). A year later, nine children and teens were killed with guns each day - a total of 3,371 young deaths by guns for 2019.
It is estimated that guns now kill more American children and teens than cancer, pneumonia, influenza, asthma, HIV/AIDs, and opioids combined.
The figures keep climbing but many American politicians resist making laws to control the gun madness. Some, like Senator Elizabeth Warren, a presidential hopeful, try but can’t get the needed support.
“If a mysterious virus suddenly started killing eight of our children every day, America would mobilize teams of doctors and public health officials,” Warren wrote in her 2014 book A Fighting Chance. “We would move heaven and earth until we found a way to protect our children. But not with gun violence.”
Gun sales in the states have soared during the Covid pandemic. In March 2020, the first official month of the pandemic, nearly two million guns were sold in 31 days, the second highest number of guns sold in a single month.
Americans now own roughly 400 million firearms, compared with 5.5 million possessed by U.S. military and law enforcement agencies. Nearly one in five firearms are sold without background checks, which are not required for sales at gun shows, online or between private persons.
Canada has significant controls on guns, but few over the factors that help to create gun violence. U.S. and Canadian geography and culture are so tightly tied together that what happens there often develops here.
There is growing demand in both countries that something be done about gun violence. It’s not likely that anything will be done soon in the U.S. but certainly there is a growing demand in Canada for politicians to do even more.
What worries me is that when our politicians do more to control guns, they usually end up with more restrictions on lawful gun owners, while criminals continue to get more guns for more crimes against society.
Watching all this I fear that our gun heritage soon will be just a memory.
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September 30, 2021
While we humans continue to fret and argue about climate ...
While we humans continue to fret and argue about climate change, animals have already started to adapt to it.
That’s really no surprise because some folks, me included, believe that animals are smarter than humans. If not smarter, certainly more team oriented and more together in troubling times.Animals are better at being flexible and watching out for each other. If the leader of a V of Canada geese gets tired or ill, another goose quickly takes his or her place. When danger is present, musk oxen gather in a circle of group defence.
Researchers say that some wild things already have started changing their behaviour to adapt to climate change. Some birds are migrating earlier, sea turtles are adjusting their routes and caribou are having their babies earlier in the spring.
These changes are being made because seasons are out of whack. Summers are becoming longer while spring, autumn and winter are becoming shorter and warmer.
Research shows that the summer’s length in the Northern Hemisphere’s mid-latitudes increased to 95 days from 78 between 1952 and 2011. Winter contracted from 76 to 73 days, spring from 124 days to 115 and autumn shrank from 87 to 82 days.
That research is 10 years old but the past decade has been the warmest on record so the changes in the seasons no doubt have become even more dramatic.
This past summer is evidence of that. June’s heat wave, which was particularly extreme out West, has been recorded as the deadliest weather event in Canadian history.
B.C. reports that from June 24 to June 30 its paramedics responded to 772 heat-related illnesses, two-thirds of them age 60 or older. The province’s coroner service reported 569 heat-related deaths during the heat wave.
The warming world is not just causing some animals to change migration routes and other living habits. It also has them shapeshifting – changing their bodies to adapt to temperatures.
In some hotter regions, black decorations are starting to disappear from the wings of male dragonflies. The decorations attract females, but because they are black they draw unwanted heat into the insect’s body.
Dark-eyed juncos, those dark grey and white little birds common in our areas, have been growing larger bills in recent years. The bills of some Australian parrots have seen a four-to-10-per-cent increase in bill size. Some other birds have been growing slightly larger legs.
Bird bills and legs are not feathered and allow birds to dissipate body heat more efficiently. Birds living in hot climates have larger beaks and legs than northern birds but studies are showing northern beaks and legs are getting larger.
Climate change also is warming our waters, creating important changes. Deep and cold lakes once prized lake trout habitat are warming and becoming habitat for warmer water species such as pickerel.
For instance, I’m told that one of my former favourite lake trout fishing spots – Lake Clear in the Ottawa Valley – is becoming a hotspot for pickerel fishing.
Warming also is allowing longer growing seasons, but creates better conditions for insects that can damage crops. Extreme heat also could turn some agriculture areas into deserts.
More heat also will change our forests, changes that will affect birds, animals and insects that depend on trees for food and shelter.
Some animals will be able to shapeshift to survive the changing climate. Many others won’t. The United Nations reported in 2019 that one million species of animals and plants already are at risk of extinction.
Shapeshifting is not something that will help humans adapt to a changing climate. Unlike elephants we can’t grow larger ears that are waved like fans to create breezes that cool the body.
Human bodies cannot evolve quickly enough to help us adapt to the climate changes that scientists are warning us about.
We can, however, become more serous about changing our lifestyles to help slow climate change. Being more serious about climate change includes being louder and more demanding of immediate action.
Take it from Al Gore, environmentalist and former vice-president of the United States, who has said:
“The more noise you make, the more accountability you demand from your leaders, the more our world will change for the better.”
September 23, 2021
You gotta love autumn baseball, especially when the Blue ...
You gotta love autumn baseball, especially when the Blue Jays are providing such dramatic late-season entertainment.
Toronto’s team has given Major League Baseball (MLB) - the entire sport in fact - a needed boost out of the gloom that has come with two seasons of Covid constraints.

The youthful Jays have won 18 of their last 22 games, winning series over Oakland A’s, New York Yankees, Baltimore Orioles, Tampa Bay Rays and Minnesota Twins. And, some of those games were won with dramatic come-from-behind scoring outbursts in late innings.
There were difficult games to be played this week with more excitement and a possibility of the Jays making the playoffs. Whatever happens in coming days, these Jays have provided some great baseball watching.
It’s all been wonderful, with one exception: the spitting. Spitting during the deadliest infectious disease outbreak in 100 years.
Why spitting continues to be allowed in baseball is beyond me. One would have expected to see it finally disappear during the Covid-19 pandemic.
MLB has banned spitting during Covid but no one seems to be paying attention. As far as I know there is no enforcement and no fines or suspensions for any players who continue to spit.
I messaged MLB officials to ask why spitting continues. Is the ban still in effect? I didn’t receive a reply.
Newsday, the Long Island New York newspaper, reported earlier this year that the MLB spitting ban remains in effect for the 2021 season.
The league, reporters who cover professional baseball and the folks who broadcast the games apparently are content to ignore the spitting issue.
Spitting has been a major part of baseball since the first pitch crossed a home plate. Spit has been used to soften new gloves, to get a better grip on the bat and to give pitchers a better feel and grip on the ball.
Spitting is believed to have started early in baseball history when games were played in hot, dusty locations. Players chewed tobacco to keep their mouths moist, spitting as they chewed.
About 10 years ago, players and MLB agreed tobacco would not be chewed in the presence of fans. Then last year when Covid struck, MLB banned spitting and spitting paraphernalia like sunflower seeds, shelled peanuts and tobacco.
Some argue that spitting on the baseball diamond is not a serious problem in terms of spreading disease. Players are well separated for much of a game and other Covid protections are in place.
Some catchers certainly are not comfortable with the continued spitting.
“People spit at home plate when I’m squatting and it blows in my face,” Washington Nationals catcher Kurt Suzuki said in a newspaper interview. “That stuff happens all the time. It’s nuts.”
Baseball park grass and sand are dotted with spit, and baseballs pick it up when they roll across the field. Pitchers continue to lick their fingers to improve grip.
Whether spit presents Covid dangers or not, spitting is a disgusting habit that does nothing to improve game viewing for fans.
It’s a habit that many players don’t want to give up. They argue it is a traditional part of the game, helps concentration and is difficult to stop.
Some observers say MLB is slowly adapting to changes that one day will see spitting eliminated from the game. However, they note MLB is a traditional institution, always slow to adapt; slower than the rest of the world adapts to any change.
I accept that spitting is a traditional part of the game and that some efforts are being made to control it, or perhaps even eliminate it.
If the professional baseball leagues can’t eliminate it now, perhaps it’s up to the TV broadcasters to act to prevent viewers from having to see it. Perhaps they could be more diligent in cutting out frames in which players are spitting.
This baseball season has been a terrific one, and a great distraction from the Covid nightmare we have been living through. But it doesn’t make sense to see players spitting while the disease continues to spread.
However, little in this Covid horror show has made any sense, including the confusing government attempts to bring it under control.
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September 15, 2021
Dusk is falling over the federal election campaign. Soon...
Dusk is falling over the federal election campaign. Soon it will be dark, the campaigning over, and an election result presumably known Monday night.
But after listening to all the promises, all the hyperbole and examination of the issues, I’m still wondering why one of the real issues troubling Canada has not been whispered.

That issue starts with ’se’ and ends with ’ism’.
If you are thinking separatism, you are wrong. Talk of Quebec separation has been around since the beginning and will be with us long into the future.
I’m thinking sectionalism, in which groups of us huddle tightly into our own sections, thinking less and understanding less, about the lives our fellow Canadians huddled in their own sections.
Canada is one of the world’s most sectionalized nations. Look around. There’s Atlantic Canada, Central Canada, the Prairies, British Columbia and the North. All sectionalized by geology or language, culture or climate.
Atlantic Canada is off on its own, separated from Ontario and the West by Quebec with its French language and culture. The Prairie provinces are sectionalized by the vast wilderness of Northwestern Ontario and the Rocky Mountains which leave B.C. perched alone on the edge of the Pacific Ocean.
Above all this is the barely populated North, separated mainly by geology and climate.
None of this is new. Canada always has been like this.
However, it seems that the different sections, or regions, of our country are losing touch with each other. We don’t know each other as well as we used to and each section has been going its own way with less thought about the concerns, problems and dreams of the others.
This certainly has affected our politics. Our federal politics are controlled by one section – Central Canada. Sure, we elect MPs from all parts of Canada, but the power and decisions really lie with people from Central Canada, which is southern Ontario and Quebec.
For instance, the three politicians with any chance of becoming prime minister next week – Justin Trudeau, Erin O’Toole and Jagmeet Singh - all are products of the Central Canadian core: Toronto, Ottawa, Montreal.
In the last 100 years, 11 of 14 prime ministers have been from Central Canada. Richard Bennett was from New Brunswick (1930-1935), Alberta’s Joe Clark served less than a year in 1979-80 and Kim Campbell of B.C. did less than six months in 1993.
What our country needs is more ideas and more leadership from all sections of the country. We also need to know more about each other, and understand each other, so it becomes easier for us to work together.
Despite the marvels of modern communication technology, Canadians know less about each other than in the past.
Two years ago, Historica Canada, an organization dedicated to enhancing awareness of the country's history and citizenship, conducted a survey that shows just how little we know about ourselves and our history.
Sixty-seven per cent of those who completed the survey got a failing grade.
Scores were particularly poor for questions about Canadian science and innovation. Most test takers did not know that the world’s first Internet archive and the Jolly Jumper baby exercise swing were Canadian inventions.
I suppose it is not critical that we all know that, or that most Historica survey takers did not know that the first recorded instance of Hallowe’en costume dressing in North America was documented in Vancouver in 1898. But knowing more about other regions and their people, even if it is just trivia, helps us to understand each other.
Complicating Canada’s sectionalism problem is the fact that most of the sections hug the American border. A majority of Canadians live within 160 kilometres of the U.S. border and have a huge amount of their facts, opinions, and ideas influenced by American culture.
We need to work at ensuring a unified Canadian identity and increasing sectionalism will not help us to do that. Allowing sectionalism to grow will make Canada a series of islands that do what they think best for themselves instead of the overall country.
Sectionalism is not the biggest issue we have considering what we’ve been going through with Covid and climate change. It is, however, something worth thinking about.
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September 9, 2021
The storms of a globally warming summer have passed and h...
The storms of a globally warming summer have passed and hopefully we can settle into a more relaxed autumn of stable weather patterns, blue skies and gentle breezes.
It’s been a crazy weather year. It was an early spring with little runoff, then a long dry spell that could have qualified as a drought. Garden soil was powder dry and there was much anxiety about forest fires.
Then came the rain, 16 days of it in June In Haliburton County, another 16 in July and an almost daily shower in August. Interspersed in the rain were days of high heat and suffocating humidity.
We got off easy. Other parts of the world, the United States in particular, suffered unprecedented damaging events caused by extreme weather - wildfires, storms that caused massive flooding and winds that tore apart communities.

Damaging weather events no longer are few and far between. In 2020 in the U.S. there were 22 billion dollar extreme weather events.
From 1980 to 2020 the annual average of extreme weather events totalled 7.1. The average for the past five years (2016-2020) was 16.2 extreme weather events per year.
A Washington Post analysis of federal disaster declarations shows that almost one-third of Americans live in a county hit by a weather disaster just in the past three months. And, almost 400 Americans have died in hurricanes, floods, heat waves and wildfires just since June.
Weather analysts say this is only the beginning of changing weather patterns and extreme weather events as global warming intensifies.
Canada has not been as severely affected, yet. However, global warming is heating the north and bringing new risks. Black-legged ticks, which carry serious Lyme disease, have been reported just north of Orillia and are continuing their northward march as our climate becomes warmer.
In 2009 only 144 cases of Lyme disease were reported across Canada. In 2019, the number of confirmed and suspected cases totalled 2,636.
A warming climate also is making new homes for a variety of mosquitoes. The Asian tiger mosquito is believed to be established now in the Windsor area. That mosquito is known to carry chikungunya and dengue and other viruses that we have never had to worry about before.
Some research indicates that climate change will bring the risk of malaria to millions of people, including Canadians, who seldom had to be concerned about it.
“The one thing we do know is slowly the distribution of mosquitoes is changing,” Robbin Lindsay, a research scientist with the Public Health Agency of Canada (PHAC) told Global News two years ago. “And we do see events and we see species here that we haven’t seen before.”
At the same time, the environmental magazine Yale Environment 360 reported that by 2050 climate change will expose one-half of the world’s population to disease spreading mosquitoes.
Climate change brings warmer weather that brings earlier springs that allow mosquito eggs to mature faster. It also brings more flooding which means more water in which the bugs can multiply.
Many experts say, however, that the main focus now should not be mosquitoes, but controlling global warming itself. Slowing climate change will slow mosquito population growth, and transmission of the viruses they carry.
Some people are finding advantages in our warming climate. Some companies are considering introducing afternoon siestas into their workplaces because climate change is increasing summer temperatures.
The National Trust, a British charity, is giving workers and volunteers Mediterranean-type working hours in southern England because of increasingly hot summers.
“It’s fair to say that as we experience more extreme temperatures, we will be looking to offer Mediterranean working hours, especially in the east which is likely to experience more frequent higher temperatures to ensure the health and safety of our staff and volunteers,” said a spokesman for the charity.
Mediterranean hours already are being offered at one National Trust property south of London, where the afternoon temperature went above 40 Celsius for the first time ever.
Meanwhile, more mosquito-borne disease and more Mediterranean working hours are serious signs that we all have to get together, believe that climate change is seriously real and do our part to help control it.
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August 26, 2021
Lessons from long-neck crittersWhenever I click on a news...
Whenever I click on a newspaper website, or switch on the TV news, I see someone cradling an AK47 or some similar killing machine.
Another click takes me to news of more shootings in the Ant Hill – the place most people call Toronto. There have been 248 shootings and firearms discharges in that city so far this year resulting in 125 injuries of deaths.
Globally, 560,000 people died in interpersonal and collective violence in 2016, says the Small Arms Survey produced by a Swiss study group. About 385,000 of them were the victims of intentional homicides, 99,000 were casualties of war and the rest a variety of causes.
Ours is a violent world. So much so that I wonder if we humans actually are more violent than the wild animals, most of which kill for food. Some don’t kill at all, restricting their diets to plants.

Take for instance giraffes. They eat leaves, vines and fruits, although in desperate times have been known to grab something meaty.
Giraffes set a good example for we humans, not just for eating healthier but for living peacefully. Those long-neck critters live in loose, open herds, doing their own thing, or just going with the flow.
They get along without leaders to tell them where to go, and what to do. And, they are not territorial, a trait that gets humans in a lot of trouble.
Besides being gentle and graceful, giraffes are quiet, never causing noisy uproars. They are not known to roar, growl or howl. The most any researchers have ever heard from a giraffe is a grunt, which could be translated as: “Whatever, eh?”
Because giraffes have little to say some people assume they must be stupid. They are not dumb; they communicate not with their voices, but by touching and eye signalling each other. They identify each other by their spots, which are different in each giraffe.
They often hang around villages in southern Africa where folks consider them gentle giants who seldom do any damage and don’t cause anyone to be afraid.
Giraffes fooled the early Romans, who first became acquainted with them when Julius Caesar brought one back from Alexandra, Egypt. The Romans thought that the strange beasts, which they called camelopards because of their brownish flagstone-like patches, would make vicious opponents for the gladiators.
Imagine the spectacle! A short, muscular gladiator with shield in one hand, battle axe in the other, staring up at a 16-foot-tall beast that could sit on him and crush him into the sand.
However, giraffes are lovers, not fighters, and any brought into the killing ring likely just stared at the odd little men standing beneath them. The Colosseum crowds no doubt were disappointed.
Staring is what giraffes do today when confronted by lions that want to eat them. A herd of giraffes will stand and stare patiently at lions that come looking for a meal. The giraffes have learned that lions will not attack when they are being watched.
So, there is much we can learn from these peaceful beasts. Diet is obvious. A mature male giraffe weighs roughly 2,500 pounds. He has grown all that muscle, bone and sinew without ever tasting a Big Mac, fries, or pepperoni pizza. Acacia leaves, and other greenery, suit him just fine.
Getting along with each other is another lesson. Males might get into a serious neck wrestling match over a female but these encounters are not usually overly violent.
Yes, there is much to learn from watching and listening to animals. As A. A. Milne, the author who created Winnie-the-Pooh, is reported to have said: “Some people talk to animals. Not many listen though. That’s the problem.”
One of the problems for giraffes is trophy hunting. Between 2006 and 2015, trophy hunters legally imported into the United States 3,744 giraffe hunting trophies, and thousands of giraffe parts such as skins, bones and bone carvings.
There are an estimated 117,000 giraffes remaining in Africa, according to the Giraffe Conservation Foundation. They are considered endangered because populations have decreased by roughly 30 per cent in recent times.
We need to keep them around. They are good teachers, and we humans have much to learn.
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August 21, 2021
How many kids will die?From Shaman’s RockBy Jim Poling Sr...
How many kids will die?
From Shaman’s Rock
By Jim Poling Sr.
There are days this summer when my mind spins like a roulette wheel about to fly off its spindle and crash into a wall.
I sometimes think it is this summer’s hot and unsettled weather that is making me feel that way. It’s not. It’s all the unsettling crisis-like events swirling around us all.

Some of the events are far away, but still threatening to us, and others are on our doorsteps. It hurts to think that much of what threatens us is preventable or solvable. It hurts even more thinking about how little progress we are making in eliminating, or at least reducing, these threats.
The menacing threat on our doorsteps, of course, is the Covid-19 Delta variant. It is starting to sicken and kill unvaccinated children. It’s not so bad yet in Canada, but Canadian institutions always lag behind the U.S. in collecting and distributing data important to its citizens.
Covid-19 infecting children is a developing nightmare. In the United States almost 4.5 million children have tested positive for Covid since the pandemic began. More shocking, 94,000 children tested positive in the first week of August, according to the American Academy of Pediatrics.
The U.S. Centres for Disease Control reported a 27.3-per-cent increase in the seven-day average for Covid hospital admissions among children zero to 17 years old. That increase was seen in just 14 days in late July and early August.
Vaccines have made Covid-19 controllable. If everyone got the shot, infections, hospitalizations and deaths would be minimal.
The fact that there are hundreds and hundreds of thousands of people who refuse vaccination and are willing to let children get sick and perhaps die is beyond shocking.
Also on our doorsteps and threatening our futures is climate change. Western North America is on fire, other parts have dried to dust and still others are flooding under a summer of violent storms.
We have been warned about global warming and climate change for more than 100 years. Amateur scientist and women’s right activist Eunice Foote experimented with carbon dioxide in the 1850s and concluded: “An atmosphere of that gas [CO2] would give to our Earth a high temperature.”
Despite even more conclusive evidence, more warnings, a lot of political talk and some weak-kneed action, the fires and the floods grow worse. So do CO2 emissions.
Meanwhile far abroad, the mentally-deranged Taliban, who treat women as sex slaves and stop children from reading books, have taken over Afghanistan. No big deal for us in North America?
No big deal - until they get their hands on a nuclear bomb from neighbouring Pakistan, North Korea or China. The Taliban goal is to eliminate all ‘infidels’.
The biggest threat, however, is ourselves. We allow ourselves to be governed by weak leaders who worry that firm stands and strong actions needed for solutions to the threats will threaten their re-election. Making masks and vaccinations mandatory would end Covid but would make some voters unhappy.
While all of this swirls around us, our federal politicians are stomping through our neighbourhoods sucking up to us for votes.
We are told we need a federal election - in the midst of the most serious health crisis in modern history and an unprecedented developing climate crisis - despite one being held only 22 months ago. The need is simply a wish in the mind of the current minority government.
A minority Parliament is probably better for finding solutions to our problems. With a minority the government has to listen to and work with the other political parties. Majority governments think they know it all, don’t listen to anyone else and carry on doing what they want.
Covid, climate change, and international upheavals are major threats that require bipartisan solutions. Also, solutions require money.
Elections Canada estimates that the Sept. 20 federal election will cost us an estimated $610 million, roughly $100 million more than the one 22 months ago. That will be the most expensive election in Canadian history.
The cost could be higher depending on how the fourth wave of Covid-19 develops.
Six hundred million plus seems like a ton of money that could be used to help fix current problems and threats.
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August 12, 2021
A good friend who lived at the top of the hill behind my...
A good friend who lived at the top of the hill behind my place passed away this summer. Her name was Fagus, a Latin name I believe.
I’m guessing that Fagus was close to 100 years old. I can’t be certain because I never counted her growth rings.
Yes, my friend Fagus was a tree. Fagus Grandifolia is the official name for North American beech, those heavily crowned forest sentinels with smooth bluish-grey bark and saw-tooth leaves.
I don’t know what killed her. It was likely beech bark disease, which has become a grim reaper in Ontario’s beech stands. The disease is caused by the combination of a canker fungus and the beech bark beetle, an invasive bug from Europe.

Fagus had a short life, considering beeches can live for 200 or more years. But hers was a happy and productive life, spent giving and helping others.
It might seem odd to be writing an obituary about a tree. However, trees have lives similar to humans. Like us they are born from seed, grow through life stages of childhood, young adulthood, maturity and old age. Like us they have to fight off diseases and try to protect themselves from natural disasters.
They are a vital part of overall life on this planet, probably more so than we humans, and deserve recognition and respect.
Fagus stood on the edge of a trail I use regularly. Whenever I walked up the hill I stopped and leaned against her trunk to catch my breath.
I often thought it would be nice to talk to Fagus, to hear her story and what changes she has seen over the last century. Some indigenous cultures believe that trees have spirits that talk and people can speak with them if they listen deeply and learn their language.
There is no solid evidence of that but scientists tell us that trees do communicate with each other through underground fungal networks. There is a growing pile of research that shows trees send water and nutrients to each other through underground networks that also carry warning signals about dangers such as disease and insect attacks.
I know little about talking to trees, but I have learned much about Fagus’ life just by observing her and her surroundings.
Fagus believed that even as a lone individual she had a critical role in sustaining the world around her. She gave of herself fully and her generosity was evident everywhere.
She regularly dropped high-protein nuts that gave bears, deer and some smaller critters the energy and strength they need to live in their harsh environments.
She sheltered many birds in her dense foliage, protecting them from predators and killer storms. Birds, squirrels and chipmunks gave birth to their young in nests she allowed them to build in cavities created where branches were torn from her trunk by strong winds and heavy snows.
During her life Fagus took in about 48 pounds of carbon dioxide a year, or more than two tons over her 100 years. She released enough oxygen into the air for 10 people to inhale each year.
It was all part of that miracle process called photosynthesis in which trees take in and store harmful carbons and give off helpful oxygen. Without photosynthesis there would be no plant life on earth, and therefore no human life.
Fagus dropped her leaves every autumn, fertilizing and protecting the soil around her. Her massive crown of leaves provided shade that helped to regulate temperature extremes.
Along with all her good work, Fagus also raised children who are the promise of a strong, healthy forest future.
Even in death Fagus is not finished giving. Her wood could be used for plywood, pallets or even railroad ties. However, I’ll cut her wood into rounds, and split them for the woodstove because beech burns hot and slowly and is rated among the top firewoods.
I’m sad to see Fagus gone, but happy for the generosity of her life. Like humans she provided much good, but unlike humans she never did anything bad.
Thank you, Fagus. You were kind and generous, and beautiful to look at.
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August 5, 2021
Have the feeling that someone is listening and watching?I...
Have the feeling that someone is listening and watching?
I have that feeling more often these days. It’s more than a feeling. It has become a belief.
The other night the television went wonky, as televisions do in these times of mystifying electronics, spy satellites and other stuff beyond the reach of average human comprehension.
I called the TV service provider. A distant and unconcerned voice answered and said things were being checked but nothing appeared to be wrong.
“You might try changing your TV remote battery,” advised the voice. “It’s down to 30 per cent.”

I stared at the remote in my left hand, then the telephone in my right.
“How do you know that?” I asked. No answer.
I changed the battery, but the TV remained wonky. Occasional cutting in and out and flashing like there was a thunderstorm overhead, but that night there wasn’t a cloud for hundreds of miles around.
“Monitor it for the next 24 hours and if there’s still a problem, call us back.”
The next day the TV was normal and I assumed the voice had fiddled a switch or jiggled a button and the problem disappeared. However, I was left with that uncomfortable feeling that the voice on the phone also was a set of eyes inside my home.
How did it know the battery level in the TV remote sitting on my coffee table? And, why didn’t it say how it knew when I asked?
It’s creepy how little of our lives is private anymore.
For instance, I’d like to know where they get those questions you must answer to get into your bank account web site. Who was your first manager? Where did you go on your honeymoon? Who was your Grade 12 math teacher? On what day did you clip your toenails last month?
I don’t remember giving anyone those questions, or the answers.
I suppose I should be thankful they are questions I can guess at. If they asked me really difficult stuff like: Where did you leave your car keys? I would never get into my bank account or any password-protected site.
Governments and big businesses know more about every one of us than they will ever admit. They have it stored in brightly lit rooms that buzz, whir and crackle with digital sounds.
By one estimate, more than 98 percent of the world’s information now is stored digitally, and the volume of that data has quadrupled since 2007. Much of it is data taken from home and work electronics that we use to send and receive emails, chat on social media and work on crowd-sourced projects.
Many of us were shocked reading George Orwell’s novel 1984. The book’s Big Brother with his telescreens in every home and office was small potatoes compared with today’s Big Data.
Stroll into a shopping mall store and covert lenses track you to record your shopping experience. Show an interest in Big Bill blue jeans and the Big Bill company knows about it.
Big Data has tens of thousands of unambiguous algorithms sniffing through our Web histories like beagles looking for puppy snacks. What they find is stored forever, unlike paper which loses what it has stored when you accidentally spill your coffee on it.
Big Data has other sneaky tools – like facial recognition, which you thought was really cool when you got it on your new smartphone. So did governments and big corporations, who now know more about you than your mother.
Those selfies that many folks are so fond of placing on social media apps? They likely are ending up somewhere you didn’t want them to be.
Surveillance of citizens minding their own business has been growing dramatically during the Covid pandemic. Hundreds of millions of Chinese have installed mandatory ‘health code’ smartphone apps that determine whether they can leave home.
Some European governments are collecting Telcom data, employing drones and copying contact-tracing apps invented in Asia as part of Covid surveillance.
Governments and corporate giants constantly tell us that privacy is important and surveillance is used only to prevent crime, improve efficiency, or whatever.
Yeah, maybe. But just to be safe I am going to start showering in my undershorts.
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