Jim Poling Sr.'s Blog, page 26

Winter discontent, spring of joy?

If John Steinbeck was alive today he might consider changing the title of his 1961 Nobel prize-winning novel from The Winter of Our Discontent to The Winter of World Discontent.
Our current winter of discontent is not simply about the problems of one family or one place. It is a winter of global discontent - or most certainly a winter of western world chaos and unhappiness.
There is hope, however. In the Steinbeck novel the main character reaches into his pocket for a razor blade to slit his wrists. Instead he pulls out a talisman placed by his daughter to remind him of his importance to his family and community despite his moral lapses.
Similarly, we see some hope in our current discontent. Last week, for instance, the chief executive officer of BlackRock Inc., the world’s largest investor, wrote to world business leaders telling them they must become leaders in a divided world.

“Stakeholders are pushing companies to wade into sensitive social and political issues — especially as they see governments failing to do so effectively,” Larry Fink wrote in his letter.
Bang on, Larry. Business leaders should step forward and begin emptying the septic tank of social problems that our governments have been unable, or unwilling, tohandle.
Business leaders must focus beyond the bottom line. They have the experience, the skills and the tools to start fixing our social breakdowns.
Many of our political leaders do not have those tools, skills or drive. Or, if they do, they too often are rendered useless by political expediency.
We witness the damage every day. Britain, still controlled by a stiff upper lip ruling class, is a whitewashed shadow of itself, economically and in terms or global leadership.
The United States, weakened by cancerous degeneration of morality and democracy, has become a comedy sketch. Except it’s not very funny that tens of thousands of federal employees are hurting because of the month-long government shutdown.
In Canada we have a federal government unable to solve the dilemma of how to get our oil to world markets while ensuring environmental safety. In Ontario, we have provincial  politicians wrangling over whether the provincial police force should be led by an unqualified buddy of the premier.
Our once vibrant western world democracies have descended to the level of kakocracies – government by the least qualified people.
Authoritarians are stepping into the vacuums created by complacent democracies. Vladimir Putin of Russia and China’s Xi Jinping are centre stage as world leaders now and are working to make authoritarian government look good.
One strong hope for strengthening our ailing democracies is population turnover.
Mr. Fink’s letter to business executives notes that the largest transfer of wealth in history is occurring now. Billions of dollars are starting to move to Millennials and Post-Millennials as their grandparents and parents pass on.
As these new generations gain wealth they also will gain power. And if you think that 25-year-old sitting on the couch staring into a smartphone doesn’t have any thoughts on wealth, power and change, you are dead wrong.
The seventh annual Deloitte Millennial Survey shows that Millennials and Post-Millennials want to see dramatic changes. It found that only 19 per cent of the young people surveyed believed that politicians are having a positive impact.
By comparison 44 per cent said business leaders are making a positive impact and 75 per cent believed that multinational corporations have the potential to help solve the world’s social, economic and environmental challenges.
The survey involved 10,455 Millennials in 36 countries and 1,850 Post-Millennial (also called Generation Z) respondents in six countries.
Young people are inheriting not just money but the world and all its problems. They are the future leaders and they will demand and make changes.
Yes, there are dullards and airheads among them. (If you want to see some of them look up the video of the Covington Kentucky Catholic High School students, wearing red Trump hats, mocking a native American elder singing during the Indigenous People's March in Washington last Friday).
However, you have got to believe that intelligent Millennials and Generation Zeds are the people with the abilities to turn our winters of discontent into springs of joy.

Spitfire: The wolf who should not have died

I’ve seen their tracks and heard their howls but haven’t met any wolves on my back 40 this winter. Not that I really expect to because it is rare to get even a glimpse of one.
I did get a glimpse last year. I was walking a trail when I saw it briefly on a low ridge ahead of me. It disappeared immediately and when I walked up to where it had been, tracks in the snow told me a story.
The tracks ended in skid marks. The wolf had been chasing a rabbit, was totally focussed on grabbing dinner and didn’t scent or see me as quickly as it might have in other circumstances. When it did, it came to a skidding halt and bolted in the opposite direction.
Perhaps that is how Spitfire, a famous Yellowstone National Park wolf, met her demise last November. She was shot by a trophy hunter just outside the Yellowstone no hunting zone. She was either distracted or unaware that she had left her safe zone and it cost her life.
Spitfire was a seven-year-old alpha female gray wolf revered by biologists and wildlife enthusiasts. She was the daughter of 06, another famous Yellowstone wolf shot by a trophy hunter back in 2012.
The killing of Spitfire was legal because she was outside a protected area. Legal but not logical, because trophy hunting is neither logical nor defensible.

Trophy hunting is not the honourable hunting that many of us enjoy. It is killing for ego. Killing for bragging rights. Killing to stuff and display an animal’s body, or to hang its skin or other parts on a wall.
Trophy hunting is a huge business. American trophy hunters pay big bucks to kill animals overseas. They import more than 126,000 wildlife trophies a year on average. 
The United States Humane Society says that 1.26 million wildlife trophies were imported to the U.S. between 2005 and 2014.
Canadians also are fond of wildlife trophies killed abroad. Between 2007 and 2016 Canadians imported 2,647 mammal parts as hunting trophies, including pieces of 83 elephants, 256 lions, 134 zebras, 76 hippos and 19 rhinoceroses. Pieces such as feet, ears, tusks, skulls and horns.
Those figures come from the database operated by the Convention on the International Trade in Endangered Species, which tracks animals on endangered lists and requires permits for these animals or parts of them to cross international borders.
That database also shows that another 280 mammals were imported intact after having been stuffed, including antelope, oryx, monkeys and lions. Those numbers do not include animals brought back as trophies that are not considered endangered, and not requiring any kind of special permit.Meanwhile, the killing of Spitfire last fall has renewed calls for a no-hunt buffer zone around some national parks. The idea is to protect wildlife such as wolves and grizzly bears that live in the parks but sometimes wander beyond their boundaries.
Wolves have been exterminated in many parts of the world, notably Europe and the United States, where wolf populations had been eliminated everywhere except Alaska and northern Minnesota. Canada and Russia are countries where populations continue to be relatively stable.
Efforts to restore gray wolf populations in the U.S. have been quite successful. They are protected in many states by the Endangered Species Act yet occupy only five per cent of their historic range. But now the Trump administration has signalled that it will end federal protections for all wolves in the U.S.
I understand and support the concerns of ranchers and farmers who must protect their livestock from wolves. I also understand the critical importance of wolves as necessary to the balance of nature.
I also believe we humans can learn to be better beings by studying the traits of wolf society. Wolves are social animals who despite their wildness demonstrate trust, team play, respect for family, kindness and compassion.
These are the same good traits that many people see in their family dogs. Human society would be much better if it demonstrated more of those traits.
Wolves are an important part of our natural world and should not be gunned down by trophy hunters.
Neither should any other animal.
                                                            #

Is this winter an example of future winters?

The New Year opened with so many questions:
Will the global economic turmoil become a recession? Will western Canadian oil be given a stable delivery system to world markets where it can be sold for true market value? Will the trend to populace politics create more chaos? Will Pinocchio Trump move from the White House to a U.S. penitentiary?
The list is lengthy, but the most important question in my mind is what will happen with the weather. Opinions range from ‘global warming is a China-inspired hoax’ to ‘the world will dry up and blow away within the next 30 years.’

The best way to find an answer to the weather question is to look for facts. I am aware that looking for facts is considered old-fashioned these days, but I still find it helpful.
First, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) recently reported that the last four years of global temperatures have been the hottest on record. Also the 20 warmest years on record all occurred in the last 22 years.
October just passed was the 406th consecutive month in which global temperatures were above normal. There is no official final data for November yet, but it appears that it too will be above average, making it the 407th consecutive month.
That means that anyone under 33 years old never has experienced a cooler-than-average month of global temperatures.
So what’s ahead for 2019 weather? Some scientists are concluding that this year will be the hottest ever recorded in human history.
The U.S. Climate Prediction Centre says there is an 80 per cent chance that a full-fledged El Niño already has begun and will last at least until the end of February. El Niño is a weather phenomenon in which parts of the Pacific Ocean warm and cause weather chaos, including a warmer-than-usual winter in much of Canada.
The documented trend to warmer world temperatures combining with an El Niño is the reason why some science professionals say this year will be the hottest ever.
More warmth is something the world does not need.
Rising temperatures have increased droughts, wildfires, and more violent weather in general. The World Meteorological Organization reports 70 tropical cyclones or hurricanes during 2018, far above the annual average of 53. 
These violent weather events cause agricultural losses, which are followed by malnutrition, then large migrations of people seeking more stable living conditions. These migrations create moral and political quandaries – do you build walls and pens to keep displaced people off your turf, or do you work to fix the things causing them to be displaced?
Newspapers and television news shows have been filled with reports of weather disasters in recent years. Most of them have been in far off places like Europe, California, and the U.S. south. But we are seeing weird weather changes – although not as violent or dramatic - right here at home.
The past fall and current winter in Haliburton have been among the most bizarre in memory. There was some precipitation – rain or snow – on 27 of 30 days in November and 24 of 31 in December.
December had rain on 10 days, almost double the average for that month.
There have been eye-popping temperature anomalies as well. Temperatures in November ranged from minus 26 Celsius to plus 14. December temperatures ranged from minus 24 to plus nine.
The wild temperature swings have continued into the New Year. Already this month we have seen a couple lows in the minus 20s and three or four days above freezing.
Weather ups and downs are not unusual. We’ve seen them before in the Haliburton-Muskoka region. However, looking at data from the last 10 years, there is evidence that our climate is changing.
The first effects of changing climate are being seen by skiers, snowboarders, snowmobilers and others who enjoy winter sports.
How climate change will affect other seasons remains to be seen. The wild winds, droughts and fires seen in other parts of the world would be a serious threat to our most important natural resource – our trees.
This week at a lake just south of Minden I saw a soft maple budding. Budding in mid-winter is unhealthy and a sign that all is not right in the natural world.

Laughing out loud

It is indeed a wonderful life, especially when we begin laughing at ourselves.
Laughter is a magic elixir that improves our lives. It is a bonding agent that calms conflict and helps us get along with each other. We need more of it in an increasingly troubled and angry world.
Judging by some recent television viewing, we are getting more if it.
For example, NBC’s Saturday Night Live (SNL) is giving us strong doses of laughter by poking fun at the train wreck of American politics. A train wreck that is causing hardship and division around the world.
SNL’s recent parody of the 1946 movie It’s A Wonderful Life is an example of how laughing at ourselves better equips us to face the madness surrounding us.
A little memory jog: In the movie, George Bailey, played by actor James Stewart, is overwhelmed by problems and decides to jump off a bridge and end his life. A wingless  angel named Clarence appears and shows him what George’s town would have looked liked without all his work over the years.

The SNL version has Donald Trump, overwhelmed by problems, wishing he had never become president. Enter Clarence the angel who shows Trump what life would be like if he had not become president.
Melania is divorced and speaks clearly and without an accent. “They said being around you was hurting my language skills,” she tells Trump.
Mike Pence is a DJ at a White House Christmas party, happy and thankful that he did not have to sit in meetings as vice-president and look stone-faced bored and stupid.
Near the end of the 1946 movie the little daughter of George Bailey tells her dad that whenever a bell rings, an angel has received its wings.
In the SNL version, Kellyanne Conway, one of Trump’s mouthpieces, says to her boss: “Every time a bell rings, somebody you know quits, or goes to jail,”   
Canadian television also has us laughing at ourselves with the popular CBC show Still Standing. It is a hybrid comedy-reality series in which Newfoundland comedian Jonny Harris visits small Canadian towns that have gone through hard times.
Harris, also seen in the Murdoch Mysteries TV series, gives stand-up comedy shows in front of locals who have stuck it out in their towns, getting them to laugh at themselves. Along with the stand-up routine are video clips of Harris doing stuff with some of the residents.
For instance in a recent show from Wells, B.C. (population 245) Harris takes a side-by-side four-wheeler pedal bike ride along a snowy street with resident writer-actor-director James Douglas. Douglas is the filmmaker behind The Doctor’s Case, an award-winning movie based on a Stephen King short story.
During the ride Harris and his TV audience  learn about the town’s founder, Fred Wells, who discovered gold there. Wells was a mining boom town during the 1930s but as mining waned so did the town. Then in the 1970s hippies moved in, buying vacant houses and properties and established an arts community.
The town now is a mix of artists and miners, a dichotomy that Harris explores along with its stories and aspirations, weaving in jokes about the town and its people.
The towns Harris visits all have something sad in their past. A fishery collapsed and young people moved away. A logging operation closed, cancelling most of the town’s jobs.
Still Standing recognizes the melancholy produced by past events but finds humour that helps the residents laugh, or at least smile, at themselves. It also recognizes their resilience in staying on and working at building a strong community spirit.
It is a show that makes you feel good despite difficulties and reinforces the age-old message that good people overcome bad things when they laugh and work together.
Here’s how one person on Twitter described a Still Standing episode: “I needed that. The world (and my twitter feed) has been so UGH. @jollyharrisand @StillStandingTV gives hope, spreads light & humor and shows us the best of people.”
We all need more of this. Hopefully we will see more of it as we enter 2019, which some folks say will bring continuing social, economic, political and climate upheaval.

Email: shaman@vianet.ca
Profile: http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B001K8FY3Y

O Holy Night!

Many Christmas Eves have passed since the one years ago when I heard the voice of an angel. It was a voice I can never forget; a voice that gave me the best Christmas present ever.Fresh-fallen snow protested beneath my gumboots breaking trail down the unploughed lane as I walked home that Christmas Eve. Dry, sharp squeaks, not unlike the cries of cheap chalk scrapped against too clean a blackboard. Skuur-eek, skuur-eek. The boots ignored the sounds. They moved on, ribbed rubber bottoms and laced high leather tops creating a meandering wake in the ankle deep snow. From each side of the lane, drifted snow leaned tiredly against the backsides of the bungalows, dropped there by an impatient blizzard just passed through. Their crests were indistinguishable against the white stucco walls but nearly reached tufted piles of fluffy snow clinging nervously to windowsills and eavestrough lips. The squeaks flew through the still night air, dodging fat snowflakes that fell heavily onto my cap bill, occasionally splashing into my face, flushed warm from the walk. Faint strains of music joined the squeaking as I approached our back fence. I stopped to hear the music more clearly, now identifiable as singing voices escaping through an open window. I shuffled forward and listened to the notes float out crisply and clearly, then mingle with smoke rising from the chimneys. Notes and smoke rose together into an icy sky illuminated by frost crystals set shimmering by thousands of stars and the frosty moon. The music was the Christmas carol ‘O Holy Night,’ and the notes came from the window in my grandmother’s room. It was open to the cold because most people smoked cigarettes back then and cracked a window at gatherings to thin the smoke. They sang the first verse, and, when they reached the seventh line, the other voices ceased and a single voice carried on alone: “Fall on your knees! Oh, hear the angel voices! O Niiii ... iiight Diii...vine! ...” That’s the part where the voice rises higher and higher until the singer reaches a stratospheric note. The solo voice belonged to Louise LaFrance, my grandmother, and I knew she was hitting that high note while sitting on the edge of the bed that had been her prison for sixteen years. She was crippled with limb-twisting rheumatoid arthritis and suffered searing pain and the humiliation of being bedridden, a humiliation that included needing a bedpan to relieve herself and having her son-in-law lift her into the bathtub.

She had taken up smoking to help ease the pain but had trouble holding a cigarette between her gnarled fingers.
She never complained or questioned why she had to bear the pain, and despite her frailty, she was a leader in our house. We brought our problems to her. When we hurt, we ran to her and she draped her twisted arms around us and absorbed our pain because she believed it was better that she have it than us.
The others had stopped singing to listen to her. A shiver danced on my spine the second time she hit the high notes at the words “O Night Divine,”. When she finished singing “O Holy Night,” the other voices started up again, this time with “Silent Night” and other favourite carols. I went into the house and found Christmas Eve celebrants — my mom, dad, and some neighbours — crowded into the ten-by-ten bedroom that was my grandmother’s world. They sang long into the night, mostly in French because the neighbours were the Gauthiers who seldom spoke English to my grandmother and my mother. After the singing ended my mother served tourtière, which I slathered with mustard and devoured as only a teenager can. Then we gathered at the tree and opened our gifts. I have long forgotten what I got, and it doesn’t matter, because my real gift was the understanding that those high notes were not solely the products of my grandmother’s lungs. They came from a strength far beyond anything that mere human flesh can produce. They were high notes driven by something far stronger — an unbreakable spirit. It was my grandmother’s last Christmas. But the memory of her high notes and unbreakable spirit brings her back every Christmas.
Email: shaman@vianet.ca
Profile: http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B001K8FY3Y

Worry about future work

It was a long time ago, but I was an elevator operator once. That was back in the days when elevators were not push-button automatic and needed a human to guide them from floor to floor with a physical hand control lever.

It was only a part-time thing. I was bellhop in a hotel and was required to relieve the regular operator during her lunch or dinner.
It was wonderful work. You had the challenge of making swift but smooth rides without jerky stops and starts. And, you had to align the elevator cage floor exactly with the hotel floor so no one would trip getting on or off.
Best of all was meeting the people. Many remarkable folks and many interesting conversations, often brief but interesting.
The most interesting and remarkable – at least for a young guy – were the June Taylor dancers from the Jackie Gleason Show, who were brought in for several performances at the Canadian Lakehead Exhibition, a very big show back in those times. The young ladies all were stunningly beautiful, pleasantly chatty and complimentary about how smoothly I operated the elevator.
The memories of elevator work came flooding back recently when I read a story about how elevator operating has survived in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Several thousand people work as elevator operators there because of 1991 state law that requires elevator attendants in commercial buildings five or more storeys.
The elevator jobs that remain, however, are in jeopardy. A court recently ruled against the 1991 law, saying that it unreasonably burdens building owners. In other words, owners have to pay operators wages that could be used to fatten profits.
Elevator operators disappeared in most places decades ago along with telephone operators. The Rio story highlighted the seemingly never-ending stream of lost jobs in our  society.
In the last month we have had the news of General Motors closing its Oshawa plant, knocking thousands of autoworkers out of jobs throughout the Canadian auto industry. And, the loss of 700 jobs in Sydney, N.S. when Servicom Canada closed its call centre.
Too many workers in Canada and elsewhere around the world, are losing their livelihoods. Too few jobs are being created to provide alternate employment.
It makes you wonder about the future and how many people who want to work will be able to find jobs as companies seeking to build profits turn to more automation. The concern has helped generate talk, and some experiments, of a guaranteed basic annual income for people without enough basic employment to sustain them.
But jobs are about more than money. Jobs provide fulfilment and help to build social connections and the person-to-person communication that is such an important part of living. Humans are wired for social connections and useful work.
An elevator operator explained the importance of a job and communication in a New York Times interview for the Rio de Janeiro story.
“You’re never bored,” said Roselia da Conceição.  “You’re always talking and interacting with people, you learn a lot and you create a type of intimacy.”
Huge networks of social connections are cut when a plant closes or when jobs such as elevator operators become redundant.
We live in an increasing angry and violent world. Older people will tell you that the extent of the anger and its resulting turmoil are unprecedented in their lifetimes.
You have to wonder if at least part of the cause is a lack of fulfilling work and the social benefits it provides.
The future of jobs is a serious worry.
The International Labor Organization has released a 2018 report on world employment and social trends. It estimates that 1.4 billion workers were in ‘vulnerable’ employment in 2017 and that an  additional 35 million will join them by 2019.
Vulnerable employment is a job with inadequate earnings, low productivity, difficult working conditions and little or no security. In many cases vulnerable employment is work grudgingly offered because it is needed today, but likely will not be in the future.
As more jobs disappear you have to worry about what the future will look like. We can be positive and hope it will not be as angry and violent as it is today.
Email: shaman@vianet.ca
Profile: http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B001K8FY3Y

Of friendship and common decency

It has been a week of thoughtful recollection and warm tributes to George H. W. Bush, the 41stpresident of the United States, who died last Friday.
Like all leaders, global or local, Bush collected his share of credits and blame and leaves a legacy of character traits to follow or ignore. To me, a key Bush lesson is the value of nurturing friendships.
Bush’s long friendship with James Baker, his secretary of state and White House chief of staff, is well documented as a friendship that benefitted both men and their missions.
There were many other nurtured friendships, not so well documented but certainly reflective of how friendships make us better human beings and help us achieve what we need to achieve. One example is the 30-year friendship between Bush and Brian Mulroney, our former prime minister.
The two men developed a bond that Mulroney says helped achieve policies important to Canadians, including the North American Free Trade Agreement and the U.S.–Canada Treaty on acid rain.
Bush’s friendships were not just with people who felt the same about things that he did. He was close with Bill Clinton, the political opposite who denied him a second presidential term. Some observers have said that Democrat Clinton had huge respect for the man he defeated and Republican Bush treated Clinton much like a son.
Friendships offer people opportunities to learn from each other. Arnold Schwarzenegger, former California governor and movie star, remembers that his  friendship with Bush taught him “the good side of politics, that you can cross the aisle and you can talk to the other side.”
Bush also was an example of how common decency allows a person to have friendships with people who criticize you and sometimes hurt you.
Maureen Dowd, the New York Times journalist, revealed this week her unlikely friendship with Bush despite some tough pieces she wrote about his presidency and that of his son, George.
Bush did not like some things the New York Times wrote, but always seemed to understand the relationship between the press and people in power. He never considered the media the enemy of the people.
Dowd revealed that he once wrote her a note that characterizes his feelings about the press and how building friendships was a critical part of his character.

“Put it this way,’’ said his note to her. “I reserve the right to whine, to not read, to use profanity, but if you ever get really hurt or if you ever get really down and need a shoulder to cry on or just need a friend — give me a call. I’ll be there for you. I’ll not let you down. Now, go on out and knock my knickers off. When you do, I might just cancel my subscription.”
Bush was a classic example of how to build, maintain and manage friendships. Respect friends, their time, their space, their ideas and their opinions. You don’t have to agree with them but don’t be manipulative or dishonest with them.
Being honest is always the best way of doing the right thing, no matter how much it might hurt. Bush showed that in a 1995 letter to the National Rifle Association (NRA) of which he was a lifetime member.
Wayne LaPierre, the NRA head, had written a mean-spirited letter to President Clinton condemning his administration’s 10-year ban on some semi-automatic assault weapons (the ban expired in 2004). It said the “ban gives jackbooted government thugs more power to take away our constitutional rights, break in our doors, seize our guns, destroy our property, and even injure or kill us.”
Bush, gun owner, hunter and then retired in Houston, wrote LaPierre saying the NRA letter offended a “sense of decency and honor” and “indirectly slanders a wide array of government law enforcement officials, who are out there, day and night, laying their lives on the line for all of us.”
The letter said he was rescinding his lifetime NRA membership.
Times change, sometimes not for the better. But George H. W. Bush never forgot the advice of Aesop, the ancient Greek storyteller who wrote (personal pronouns changed to reflect our times):
“A person is known by the company he or she keeps.”
Email: shaman@vianet.ca
Profile: http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B001K8FY3Y

A man and his messages

There are days when you look around and see too many mean-spirited jerks. Then you turn on the television and meet Tim Green.
Green appeared on the 60 Minutes television news show recently and provided viewers with some much needed inspiration.
He was a star linebacker and defensive end who played eight seasons with the Atlanta Falcons of the National Football League. He retired as an active player in 1993, then really got busy.
He earned a law degree, joined a New York State legal firm, became a television commentator on PBS, Fox and ABC and began writing. He has published more than three dozen books in the adult suspense and youth sports genres.

One of his books, Unstoppable, debuted at No. 2 on the New York Times bestseller list. It is about a troubled 14-year-old boy who finds a real life in playing football, only to have  to face a fierce fight against cancer.  
Green has made 1,200 school visits, speaking to more than half a million school kids about the importance of reading books and getting a good education. He urges the children to read 20 minutes every day.
“Reading is weightlifting for the brain,” he has said.

His main message is: Put school before sports and think of success not as fame and fortune, but in terms of kindness and personal relationships.
It’s an important, powerful message but unfortunately Tim Green won’t be able to deliver it himself for much longer. He is dying, which is a tragedy because when you watch him for only a few minutes you wish the world had millions more humans like him.
A couple of weeks ago he made a Facebook post announcing that he is suffering from amyotrophic lateral sclerosis ALS, commonly known as Lou Gehrig’s disease. Gehrig was a professional baseball player diagnosed with the disease in the 1930s.
Green has a slow moving form of the disease but ALS always is fatal. It affects the nerves in the brain and spinal cord, weakening muscles and making it difficult to talk, walk, eat and breathe.
He was diagnosed two years ago after having difficulty using his hands. He had trouble using nail clippers and opening things with his fingers. A hand surgeon told him he had ALS and a neurologist told him to get his affairs in order.
The disease is threatening his voice but on the television show he was able to say that the best time of his life is right now. “I have everything,” he said.
Despite the ALS his purpose is “the same as it was before: be the best husband, best dad, lawyer, writer, businessperson I can be. And also to tackle ALS.”
“I can still write and that opens up a universe.”
He has been writing his latest books on his smartphone, typing the words with his thumbs. He has a sensor in his eyeglasses that helps him to see and type the letters.
"People will say, 'God bless you,' " Green said, "and I would say, He already has.”
Eighty per cent of ALS patients die within two to five years of diagnosis, says the ALS Society of Canada. It says an estimated 3,000 Canadians currently are living with ALS  and that the disease is responsible for two or three deaths each day.
Green is a driving force behind ALS fund-raising efforts, notably the website www.TackleALS.com/teams/Atlanta-Falcons. He appears in a video there, wearing his trademark No. 99 Falcons jersey.
Dr. Merit Cudkowicz, professor of neurology at Harvard Medical School, says in the ad that the number of ALS diagnoses will grow by 70 per cent over the next 20 years. She does not give reasons for that large increase, however, presumably it comes from the fact that the disease strikes mainly people ages 40 to 70 and the world’s population is aging.
Some research suggests that military veterans are 1.5 to two times more likely to get ALS. Researchers have suggested that exposure to toxins during warfare, and strenuous physical activity, might be reasons why military veterans and athletes seem more at risk to developing the disease.
Meanwhile, Green continues to deliver his messages of inspiration.
“Life can never be long enough,” he told the 60 Minutes audience.
Email: shaman@vianet.caProfile: http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B001K8FY3Y

A world on fire

Through snowflake-speckled windows I watch stately trees sagging beneath the weight of the early November snowfall. It is a winter picture that denies the existence of wildfires.
Yet the wildfires are there, on the television screens, in newspaper stories and photos and on social media  sites. Walls of flames consuming huge pieces of California, its people and their possessions.
The images are only camera views, and they come from 2,000-plus miles away, so they are no threat and can be forgotten easily. They shouldn’t be because wildfires are an increasing threat to our country, and the world.
This year alone there have been 6,845 wildfires in Canada, more than double the 25-year average of 3,000. They burned 2.2 million hectares of land and forests. Last year 5,305 wildfires burned 3.4 million hectares.
Ontario alone had 1,325 fires that consumed 276,356 hectares in 2018, and that’s close to double the annual average of 757 fires burning 111,487 hectares. A July fire was close to home, burning 11,000 hectares in the Parry Sound area, threatening to shut down Highway 69.
We Canadians tend to think of wildfires as forest fires that burn bushes, trees, and cause grief to wildlife. In fact, they are becoming more of a threat to the places where we live, our homes and our other possessions.
A most recent and terrifying example is the Fort McMurray, Alberta fire of 2016. Upwards of 88,000 people in the city and surrounding areas were evacuated – the largest wildfire evacuation in Canadian history. Also, it was the costliest disaster in Canadian history.
No one died directly in the fire, however, thousands of lives were changed.

My own family history tells a lot about how wildfires change lives. My grandparents and their young family escaped from the Great Minnesota Fires that destroyed their hometown of Cloquet, near Duluth, in 1918. I remember a photograph of my grandmother holding my father and his older brother as she stood in water (likely the St. Louis River) as flames engulfed their town.
Hundreds of people died in the fires and many hundreds more lost their homes and jobs. The paper mill where my grandfather worked was destroyed. He moved the family to Canada to get work in another mill.
The Cloquet fire that changed my family history was touched off by human activity - sparks from a train. Roughly one-third of wildfires are started by human activity. Lightning strikes cause the rest.
The increase in wildfires is not just a North American thing. The number of fires this year across Europe is up 40 percent on average.
With statistics showing wildfires becoming more frequent, we must work harder to reduce human causes, plus find fresh ways to control fires when they start and reduce the areas that they burn.
The best way to achieve that is to listen to the experts. There are thousands of wildfire and climate experts with the science backgrounds and experience needed to find solutions. They need to have a bigger voice in saying how we can lessen the threat.
One person who thinks he is an expert, but definitely is not, is the president of the United States who says that wildfires can be prevented by raking the forest floors.
“We gotta take care of the floors, you know, the floors of the forest. Very Important.” he said during a tour of the California devastation in which he mistakenly called the burned out town of Paradise, ‘Pleasure.’
One of the scientists worth listening to is Australian David Bowman, a global wildfire expert often quoted in the world media.
 “Growing cities, poor planning, recurring heat waves, more people living closer to forests and more combustible landscapes have together created a more fire-prone world,” Bowman has said. Add in climate change, which is accelerating ecological instability.
“It is causing fire seasons to start earlier and finish later. We are seeing more severe, more intense and longer lasting wildfires causing more loss of life and property. Fires used to be seen as local, but we should see them as part of a global-scale phenomenon.”
Wildfires are a threat to our future. We need to take that threat seriously.

Email: shaman@vianet.ca
Profile: http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B001K8FY3Y

No trespassing!

It is 6:25 a.m. opening day of the deer hunting season. Still coal black outside, so I am sipping the last of my coffee before heading into the woods.
The telephone rings. Who calls at this time of morning on a dark, rainy day in November?
It is my wife, calling from home: “The bank just called to say our credit card has been compromised. Two charges, one for $1,100 and another for $300.”

She still has the caller, who identified himself as a bank fraud squad guy, on another line. He has given her his name, and a badge number. (Bank employees now have badge numbers?)
He is asking that she go to her computer and open the credit card account to confirm a few things.
It is all very slick but she refuses and calls me.  He has told her that our credit card has been frozen, which I say is good because no one, including a thief like him, will be able to use it.
She gets rid of the guy and calls the real bank fraud unit, which confirms the card has not been comprised, the account is not frozen and there is no need to worry. The caller was just another scammer trying to weasel pieces of information that would allow him to get into our bank accounts.
All that settled, I pick up my rifle and head for the cottage door when the phone rings again. It is a woman with a thick accent and unpronounceable name. She says she is with our bank.
I have a short fuse that gets shorter when something or someone holds me back from a trip into the woods.
I launch a rant into the phone’s mouthpiece, which is answered by a click, then a dial tone. The caller was either a bank employee not wanting to listen to a madman, or a scammer who realized this was not going to be a profitable call.
Finally out in the woods I sit and reflect on what has happened. I become angry, very angry. And nervous.
Within 30 minutes during a period when much of the country was in bed, two different scammers have telephoned our home and our cottage and have identified us by name. This is either a wild coincidence or a group of criminals invested some time to find out who we are, where we bank and that we have two telephones at two different residences.
Most disturbing is the cottage call. Our lake place is precious part of our lives. It is a place where we resist the outside world. No one enters that space unless we invite them.
We all get these annoying, and disturbing, intrusions on our telephones, personal computers and mobile phones. There seems to be no end to them, and there will not be until we demand that telephone and Internet scamming be treated as serious and dangerous crime, and not simply a nuisance.
These calls are not just annoying nuisances. More and more they are a means to successful identity theft.
Statistics show scam calls on a rocket-launch rise and are the top consumer complaint received by  the United States Federal Communications Commission. Presumably they are a top complaint in Canada also, but you can’t find out for sure on government bureaucratic sites, which are mainly interested in boasting how well they are protecting consumers.
A recent Forbes magazine article said that 60 per cent of people received a scam call during one survey week. That’s a 113-per-cent increase over the same study one year before.
And, the New York Times has reported that robocalls hit an all-time high of 3.4 billion in one month - April of this year. That’s an increase of 900 million over April 2017.
Scamming is out of control and threatens to become worse. Governments and data and telephone carriers must begin taking it more seriously and create better strategies to stamp it out.
Scamming is trespassing. Farmers and ranchers, particularly out West, have a saying about trespassing. It goes like this:
“Prayer is one of the ways to meet your Maker. Trespassing is the fastest.”
We need faster ways to send the people and organizations behind high tech scamming on to their just rewards.