Jim Poling Sr.'s Blog, page 34
June 8, 2017
Finding Haliburton 3
Finally, the mystery is solved.
It took considerable poking and prodding of the federal bureaucracy but we have found Hal 3. It is a weather site, in fact the only weather site recording daily weather statistics in Haliburton County.
Environment Canada (EC) does not have any weather stations in Haliburton County. Neither do other weather services such as The Weather Network, which feed off EC data and massage it for their own reports.
When you search EC online for Haliburton weather you get forecasts and data from Bancroft, an hour’s drive from the centre of Haliburton County.
Haliburton 3 does not do forecasts but provides temperature and precipitation information for days past. If you want to know how much rain fell on the holiday Monday about three weeks ago, it will tell you (almost 15 millimeters, or more than one-half an inch).
I learned of Hal 3 while stumbling around the Internet some years back, but could never find any specific information about it. January past I made it a mission to find out where it was and why its detail is so much better than anything provided by the EC station in Bancroft.
I started with messages to EC in Gatineau, Quebec. They ignored me. I sent other messages until a human finally replied, telling me that to direct my inquiry to the national severe weather centre.
“This has nothing to do with severe weather,” I shot back. “I just want to know where Haliburton 3 weather is collected.”
There was no response. I sent other messages asking if anyone in Environment Canada ever was going to talk to me about Hal 3. No response.
After almost four months of trying to penetrate the thick federal bureaucracy I resorted to a threat. I messaged EC saying it could ignore my requests, but I was certain the federal information commissioner and my local MP would not.
The response was very quick and Hal 3 no longer is a mystery. It is a Cooperative Climate Network (CCN) weather station staffed by a private individual who collects weather data daily and provides it to Environment Canada.
What makes Hal 3 information so much more useful is the word “staffed.” A person actually measures the amount of rainfall and snowfall.
In many locations, Bancroft included, EC has automated weather stations that do not measure rain and snow individually. They collect rain and snow together as liquid and report total precipitation in millimetres.
So it is virtually impossible to know how much snow fell on a given day, which seems bit unCanadian.
Hal 3 however tells us how much snow and rain falls on a given day. For instance, it tells you that on April 6, a day when it both rained and snowed, rainfall was 17 millimetres, and the snowfall totalled 13 centimetres.
The automated stations simply report 30 millimetres of precipitation, which gives no idea of how much snow fell.
The EC bureaucrats, citing privacy laws, won’t give the name of the individual collecting weather information at Hal 3. They just say that it is a person operating somewhere at Latitude: N45° 1' 56.094" Longitude: W 78° 31' 52.014" somewhere near Grass Lake.
They don’t tell us anything about the Cooperative Climate Network (CCN) but we can guess it is similar to the Cooperative Observer Program in the United States where more than 10,000 volunteers take daily weather observations and report them to the National Weather Service.
You can find Hal 3 on the Internet by going to http://climate.weather.gc.ca/historical_data/search_historic_data_e.htmland doing a search for Haliburton 3.
Most people are content to receive standard weather information provided by any of the weather services on the Internet and have little interest in the details. Some others, like myself, are keenly interested in accurate detail and say thanks to the Hal 3 volunteer, whoever you are.
Here are some interesting facts put together with data from Hal 3:
There were no days last winter with lows of minus 30C or colder.
March had more cold days than December, January or February, but December had more snow (134.4 cm) than January, February and March combined.
There was at least a trace of rain on 18 days in April and 21 days in May.
It took considerable poking and prodding of the federal bureaucracy but we have found Hal 3. It is a weather site, in fact the only weather site recording daily weather statistics in Haliburton County.
Environment Canada (EC) does not have any weather stations in Haliburton County. Neither do other weather services such as The Weather Network, which feed off EC data and massage it for their own reports.
When you search EC online for Haliburton weather you get forecasts and data from Bancroft, an hour’s drive from the centre of Haliburton County.
Haliburton 3 does not do forecasts but provides temperature and precipitation information for days past. If you want to know how much rain fell on the holiday Monday about three weeks ago, it will tell you (almost 15 millimeters, or more than one-half an inch).
I learned of Hal 3 while stumbling around the Internet some years back, but could never find any specific information about it. January past I made it a mission to find out where it was and why its detail is so much better than anything provided by the EC station in Bancroft.
I started with messages to EC in Gatineau, Quebec. They ignored me. I sent other messages until a human finally replied, telling me that to direct my inquiry to the national severe weather centre.
“This has nothing to do with severe weather,” I shot back. “I just want to know where Haliburton 3 weather is collected.”
There was no response. I sent other messages asking if anyone in Environment Canada ever was going to talk to me about Hal 3. No response.
After almost four months of trying to penetrate the thick federal bureaucracy I resorted to a threat. I messaged EC saying it could ignore my requests, but I was certain the federal information commissioner and my local MP would not.
The response was very quick and Hal 3 no longer is a mystery. It is a Cooperative Climate Network (CCN) weather station staffed by a private individual who collects weather data daily and provides it to Environment Canada.
What makes Hal 3 information so much more useful is the word “staffed.” A person actually measures the amount of rainfall and snowfall.
In many locations, Bancroft included, EC has automated weather stations that do not measure rain and snow individually. They collect rain and snow together as liquid and report total precipitation in millimetres.
So it is virtually impossible to know how much snow fell on a given day, which seems bit unCanadian.
Hal 3 however tells us how much snow and rain falls on a given day. For instance, it tells you that on April 6, a day when it both rained and snowed, rainfall was 17 millimetres, and the snowfall totalled 13 centimetres.
The automated stations simply report 30 millimetres of precipitation, which gives no idea of how much snow fell.
The EC bureaucrats, citing privacy laws, won’t give the name of the individual collecting weather information at Hal 3. They just say that it is a person operating somewhere at Latitude: N45° 1' 56.094" Longitude: W 78° 31' 52.014" somewhere near Grass Lake.
They don’t tell us anything about the Cooperative Climate Network (CCN) but we can guess it is similar to the Cooperative Observer Program in the United States where more than 10,000 volunteers take daily weather observations and report them to the National Weather Service.
You can find Hal 3 on the Internet by going to http://climate.weather.gc.ca/historical_data/search_historic_data_e.htmland doing a search for Haliburton 3.
Most people are content to receive standard weather information provided by any of the weather services on the Internet and have little interest in the details. Some others, like myself, are keenly interested in accurate detail and say thanks to the Hal 3 volunteer, whoever you are.
Here are some interesting facts put together with data from Hal 3:
There were no days last winter with lows of minus 30C or colder.
March had more cold days than December, January or February, but December had more snow (134.4 cm) than January, February and March combined.
There was at least a trace of rain on 18 days in April and 21 days in May.
June 1, 2017
Machines with Screens
Machines and I don’t get along. I have never done them any bad, but they have never liked me. Whenever we meet, they treat me like an idiot. That happened again last week when I had to make a trip into the Big Smoke.
Going to the Big Smoke is stressful, so I decided I might lessen the strain by taking the train. Avoid the craziness of Highway 400, and the alleged city ‘expressways’ that are clogged arteries into that heart of madness called Toronto.
Go Train service now reaches as far north as Barrie so I decided to get a ticket there, hop on and ride relaxed.
I arrived at the Barrie waterfront station early one morning but could not find anyone to sell me a ticket. I wandered about looking and found a sign with a pointing arrow and the word ‘Tickets.’ I followed the arrow, then came face to face with . . . a machine. Apparently ticket machines have replaced humans at some GO stations.
I panicked. Did I have any coins? Could I remember my credit card password? Would I end up wrangling with the machine as the train pulled away without me?
I approached the machine cautiously. You can’t let them sense your nervousness. If they do, it can be bad. Very bad.
The machine seemed friendly enough. Big numbers with instructions. You spoke to it by tapping its screen, which was reasonably readable. Not like some parking meters that in the slightest bit of sunlight, you have to squat and bob your head up, down and sideways to see what they are asking you.
I tapped the GO’s screen and pushed my credit card in and out with mounting frustration as cancellation slips piled up around my feet. I began making faces at the thing, and shouted not-so-nice words.
“Do you need help?” came a voice from an open door of the train on the other side of the fence.
It was one of the train operators and he jumped onto the platform and came through a gate to either help me or restrain me. Turns out it was to help.
He obviously had never bought a ticket because he read the instructions slowly and tapped the screen cautiously. Then he paused.
“Oh, there’s a key punch board over here,” he said with surprise.
And, there it was, partly hidden away. After working with the screen you had to move over and tap the keys to enter your credit card information.
On board, I settled into my seat. There were nine other passengers in my section and I thought it would be nice to chat with someone. When I looked around, I saw all nine faces buried in cell phone screens.
Apparently the only way I could chat with any of them was to get their online addresses. With no one to chat with I sat back to think, which can be dangerous.
We live in a society that deals more with screens than people. We do banking with screens, shop through screens, buy tickets on screens. We even order our hamburgers and fries at MacDonald’s on screens.
I wonder about the jobs the machines with screens have eliminated. The GO train ticket seller might have been a single mom working a couple hours a day to help make ends meet. Or, an old guy whose pension was cut by a corporate CEO obsessed with building a better bottom line. Or, a lonely person seeking social contact with people through part-time work.
It is only the beginning. Already there are driverless cars, delivery drones, and Artificial Intelligence could bring even more. The future is more screens and fewer face-to-face dealings with humans.
I can imagine myself walking in the woods, brushing my arm against a plant, then noticing a rash rising on my skin. I photograph it with my cell phone and message the image to an online site.
The words Poison Ivy then flash across my phone screen. Seconds later a prescription appears. I go into town, find a kiosk and feed it the prescription code and my health card. A tube of poison ivy salve drops into the kiosk’s dispenser.
That’s the future, eh?
Email: shaman@vianet.ca
Profile: http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B001K8FY3Y
Going to the Big Smoke is stressful, so I decided I might lessen the strain by taking the train. Avoid the craziness of Highway 400, and the alleged city ‘expressways’ that are clogged arteries into that heart of madness called Toronto.
Go Train service now reaches as far north as Barrie so I decided to get a ticket there, hop on and ride relaxed.
I arrived at the Barrie waterfront station early one morning but could not find anyone to sell me a ticket. I wandered about looking and found a sign with a pointing arrow and the word ‘Tickets.’ I followed the arrow, then came face to face with . . . a machine. Apparently ticket machines have replaced humans at some GO stations.
I panicked. Did I have any coins? Could I remember my credit card password? Would I end up wrangling with the machine as the train pulled away without me?
I approached the machine cautiously. You can’t let them sense your nervousness. If they do, it can be bad. Very bad.
The machine seemed friendly enough. Big numbers with instructions. You spoke to it by tapping its screen, which was reasonably readable. Not like some parking meters that in the slightest bit of sunlight, you have to squat and bob your head up, down and sideways to see what they are asking you.
I tapped the GO’s screen and pushed my credit card in and out with mounting frustration as cancellation slips piled up around my feet. I began making faces at the thing, and shouted not-so-nice words.
“Do you need help?” came a voice from an open door of the train on the other side of the fence.
It was one of the train operators and he jumped onto the platform and came through a gate to either help me or restrain me. Turns out it was to help.
He obviously had never bought a ticket because he read the instructions slowly and tapped the screen cautiously. Then he paused.
“Oh, there’s a key punch board over here,” he said with surprise.
And, there it was, partly hidden away. After working with the screen you had to move over and tap the keys to enter your credit card information.
On board, I settled into my seat. There were nine other passengers in my section and I thought it would be nice to chat with someone. When I looked around, I saw all nine faces buried in cell phone screens.
Apparently the only way I could chat with any of them was to get their online addresses. With no one to chat with I sat back to think, which can be dangerous.
We live in a society that deals more with screens than people. We do banking with screens, shop through screens, buy tickets on screens. We even order our hamburgers and fries at MacDonald’s on screens.
I wonder about the jobs the machines with screens have eliminated. The GO train ticket seller might have been a single mom working a couple hours a day to help make ends meet. Or, an old guy whose pension was cut by a corporate CEO obsessed with building a better bottom line. Or, a lonely person seeking social contact with people through part-time work.
It is only the beginning. Already there are driverless cars, delivery drones, and Artificial Intelligence could bring even more. The future is more screens and fewer face-to-face dealings with humans.
I can imagine myself walking in the woods, brushing my arm against a plant, then noticing a rash rising on my skin. I photograph it with my cell phone and message the image to an online site.
The words Poison Ivy then flash across my phone screen. Seconds later a prescription appears. I go into town, find a kiosk and feed it the prescription code and my health card. A tube of poison ivy salve drops into the kiosk’s dispenser.
That’s the future, eh?
Email: shaman@vianet.ca
Profile: http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B001K8FY3Y
May 11, 2017
The Bear and the Backscratcher
Back scratchers do not have video screens, so I was surprised when my 10-year-old grandson Anderson asked me to make him a wooden back scratcher.
Kids do make odd requests so I agreed to carve a back scratcher with his name on it. My only concern, besides my dubious woodworking ability, was that when other grandchildren saw or heard of this, they too would ask for one. I could see myself trapped in a crowded workshop for months, patiently carving back scratchers.
So I decided to invent a story about how I got the back scratcher; a story that would explain why it would be impossible to get another. The story went like this:
I was walking the woods at Shaman’s Rock when I came across an old guy sitting outside the entrance to a cave. He had silver hair grown well below his shoulders and a silver beard that touched his belly button. The patch of face not concealed by hair was wrinkled and tanned brown by the sun.
He was carving a piece of birch branch and paid little attention to my approach.
“I’ve never seen you out here before,” I said to him.
“There are many things out here that you do not see, nor hear,” he replied, raising his head and revealing a pair of dazzling blue eyes that illuminated the darkness of his face.
“So what are you carving?” I asked.
“Back scratchers. For the bears.”
“Back scratchers!. Bears don’t use back scratchers.”
Those bright blue eyes locked me in a look that said “you have much to learn and much to understand,” then he told me a story.
He was walking the woods when he saw a bear rubbing his back against the rough bark of an ancient oak tree. The bear spotted him and summoned him to come and talk.
“Do me a favour old man,” said the bear. “Scratch my back. The itch is driving me crazy.”
The old guy knew that it was important never to upset a bear, or any of the forest animals. So he scratched the bear’s back as it sighed contentedly. Scratching through that thick fur coat was tiring work.
Back at his cave the old guy realized the bear likely would come looking for him to scratch its back again. And, it would tell other bears who would line up to have their backs scratched.
Then he was struck by an idea: He would make the bear a personalized back scratcher and show it how to use it.
The bear loved the back scratcher and as word spread, other bears came to the cave to place their orders. The old guy was happy because carving back scratchers was much more enjoyable and less tiring than scratching a bear’s back.
“So the bears are happy,” said the old guy. “And when the bears are happy, everyone is happy.”
I gave the old guy a skeptical look and was about to tell him how ridiculous I thought his story was when he stared into my eyes and said:
“When you help and respect nature and all its inhabitants, it will help and respect you.”
Then the old guy simply vanished and I found myself standing in the woods with a freshly whittled and decorated back scratcher. Carved into its middle was the name Anderson.
I’m sure Anderson will enjoy his back scratcher. When the other grandkids see it and ask for their own, I’ll tell them the story of the old guy and the bears and how I keep looking for him in the woods to ask him for more back scratchers.
The story might keep me off the back scratcher assembly line. Yeah, good luck with that.
Email: shaman@vianet.ca
Profile: http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B001K8FY3Y
Kids do make odd requests so I agreed to carve a back scratcher with his name on it. My only concern, besides my dubious woodworking ability, was that when other grandchildren saw or heard of this, they too would ask for one. I could see myself trapped in a crowded workshop for months, patiently carving back scratchers.
So I decided to invent a story about how I got the back scratcher; a story that would explain why it would be impossible to get another. The story went like this:
I was walking the woods at Shaman’s Rock when I came across an old guy sitting outside the entrance to a cave. He had silver hair grown well below his shoulders and a silver beard that touched his belly button. The patch of face not concealed by hair was wrinkled and tanned brown by the sun.
He was carving a piece of birch branch and paid little attention to my approach.
“I’ve never seen you out here before,” I said to him.
“There are many things out here that you do not see, nor hear,” he replied, raising his head and revealing a pair of dazzling blue eyes that illuminated the darkness of his face.
“So what are you carving?” I asked.
“Back scratchers. For the bears.”
“Back scratchers!. Bears don’t use back scratchers.”
Those bright blue eyes locked me in a look that said “you have much to learn and much to understand,” then he told me a story.
He was walking the woods when he saw a bear rubbing his back against the rough bark of an ancient oak tree. The bear spotted him and summoned him to come and talk.
“Do me a favour old man,” said the bear. “Scratch my back. The itch is driving me crazy.”
The old guy knew that it was important never to upset a bear, or any of the forest animals. So he scratched the bear’s back as it sighed contentedly. Scratching through that thick fur coat was tiring work.
Back at his cave the old guy realized the bear likely would come looking for him to scratch its back again. And, it would tell other bears who would line up to have their backs scratched.
Then he was struck by an idea: He would make the bear a personalized back scratcher and show it how to use it.
The bear loved the back scratcher and as word spread, other bears came to the cave to place their orders. The old guy was happy because carving back scratchers was much more enjoyable and less tiring than scratching a bear’s back.
“So the bears are happy,” said the old guy. “And when the bears are happy, everyone is happy.”
I gave the old guy a skeptical look and was about to tell him how ridiculous I thought his story was when he stared into my eyes and said:
“When you help and respect nature and all its inhabitants, it will help and respect you.”
Then the old guy simply vanished and I found myself standing in the woods with a freshly whittled and decorated back scratcher. Carved into its middle was the name Anderson.
I’m sure Anderson will enjoy his back scratcher. When the other grandkids see it and ask for their own, I’ll tell them the story of the old guy and the bears and how I keep looking for him in the woods to ask him for more back scratchers.
The story might keep me off the back scratcher assembly line. Yeah, good luck with that.
Email: shaman@vianet.ca
Profile: http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B001K8FY3Y
May 9, 2017
My First 100 Days
Judging the first 100 days in office is ridiculous, artificial and something invented by the news media.
That’s how U.S. President Forrest Trump sees it. I feel it is important however, as president of my family, to review my performance for the first 100 days of each year.
Trump’s first 100 days have been fantastic, spectacular, unbelievably good, the best of any president ever and best of any to come. He instantly achieved his prediction of being “the greatest jobs president that God ever created.”
My 100 days report card is not nearly that effusive because I don’t have his vast store of superlatives. But I can report some modest successes, and some failures.
First, in the area of foreign affairs, I had none. In fact I didn’t even have any domestic affairs.
I did travel abroad for consultations. I went to California to ask my granddog Rusty to join my cabinet of advisors. When it comes to cabinet advisors, I pick only the best of the best.
Rusty is a pretty smart cookie with ideas on how to make life even better for the family pets. He is thrilled to be in my inner circle because the publicity will boost sales of a new dog food that he is promoting.
I also travelled to Hamilton for talks with Louie, my first great-granddog. He is a chocolate brown lab and advised me that more money must be spent to ensure a constant supply of tennis balls are available at the cottage shoreline.
Over in Mississauga I met with Georgia, my Great Dane granddog and senior special advisor. She told me that our family congress would vote for a budget that includes money for a new, larger and more comfortable couch. Grandcat Rainbow agreed wholeheartedly.
Money has been a problem during the first 100 days. The nine-year-old presidential pickup truck needed major repairs. So did two of the presidential teeth.
Despite these financial setbacks I remain steadfast in my promise to build a wall to keep the red squirrels out of our great cottage land. They are aggressive, noisy good-for-nothings. Bad, bad. Totally destructive.
Nobody builds walls better than me because I have fantastic ability and I am really smart. Squirrels are dumb and actually I would like to see them ride the MOAB into squirrel heaven.
Unfortunately the courts stupidly have ruled that red squirrels are a protected species and must be treated nicely. Dumb. Really dumb. Judges need their heads examined.
Meanwhile, the first 100 days infrastructure program is running a bit behind. The new back window project and some other stuff are not completed yet.
These projects and the squirrel wall are making it difficult to bring in a balanced budget, which is a must because I am not allowed to increase our debt.
Ontario Premier Kathy says she is going to balance her budget despite millions of dollars of new vote-getting spending. She can do that because when she wants to spend more, she borrows more.
Her debt, now more than $300 billion, equals the debt of all the other nine provinces combined. Interest charges on that debt are $12 billion a year.
If I run up too much debt, a guy with a head bandana and tattoos arrives in a tow truck and takes away my pickup. And the bank kicks me out of my house. Then there’s nothing to do except wander into the woods, sit on a tree stump and listen to the birds.
I can report that I did file my income tax return ahead of this week’s deadline. I am willing to make my returns public in case anyone out there needs a really good laugh.
Overall, it’s been a pretty good first 100 days. However, I didn’t realize that being president of the family was so complicated. Hockey tournaments to drive to, baseball practices to attend. School concerts. Easter gatherings. Helping to pick out birthday and anniversary cards.
The media doesn’t understand all the complications I must deal with. Reporters are meanies who say everything I do is wrong. I’d like to hit them so hard their heads spin. But then my editor might not let me write this column anymore.
Email: shaman@vianet.ca
Profile: http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B001K8FY3Y
That’s how U.S. President Forrest Trump sees it. I feel it is important however, as president of my family, to review my performance for the first 100 days of each year.
Trump’s first 100 days have been fantastic, spectacular, unbelievably good, the best of any president ever and best of any to come. He instantly achieved his prediction of being “the greatest jobs president that God ever created.”
My 100 days report card is not nearly that effusive because I don’t have his vast store of superlatives. But I can report some modest successes, and some failures.
First, in the area of foreign affairs, I had none. In fact I didn’t even have any domestic affairs.
I did travel abroad for consultations. I went to California to ask my granddog Rusty to join my cabinet of advisors. When it comes to cabinet advisors, I pick only the best of the best.
Rusty is a pretty smart cookie with ideas on how to make life even better for the family pets. He is thrilled to be in my inner circle because the publicity will boost sales of a new dog food that he is promoting.
I also travelled to Hamilton for talks with Louie, my first great-granddog. He is a chocolate brown lab and advised me that more money must be spent to ensure a constant supply of tennis balls are available at the cottage shoreline.
Over in Mississauga I met with Georgia, my Great Dane granddog and senior special advisor. She told me that our family congress would vote for a budget that includes money for a new, larger and more comfortable couch. Grandcat Rainbow agreed wholeheartedly.
Money has been a problem during the first 100 days. The nine-year-old presidential pickup truck needed major repairs. So did two of the presidential teeth.
Despite these financial setbacks I remain steadfast in my promise to build a wall to keep the red squirrels out of our great cottage land. They are aggressive, noisy good-for-nothings. Bad, bad. Totally destructive.
Nobody builds walls better than me because I have fantastic ability and I am really smart. Squirrels are dumb and actually I would like to see them ride the MOAB into squirrel heaven.
Unfortunately the courts stupidly have ruled that red squirrels are a protected species and must be treated nicely. Dumb. Really dumb. Judges need their heads examined.
Meanwhile, the first 100 days infrastructure program is running a bit behind. The new back window project and some other stuff are not completed yet.
These projects and the squirrel wall are making it difficult to bring in a balanced budget, which is a must because I am not allowed to increase our debt.
Ontario Premier Kathy says she is going to balance her budget despite millions of dollars of new vote-getting spending. She can do that because when she wants to spend more, she borrows more.
Her debt, now more than $300 billion, equals the debt of all the other nine provinces combined. Interest charges on that debt are $12 billion a year.
If I run up too much debt, a guy with a head bandana and tattoos arrives in a tow truck and takes away my pickup. And the bank kicks me out of my house. Then there’s nothing to do except wander into the woods, sit on a tree stump and listen to the birds.
I can report that I did file my income tax return ahead of this week’s deadline. I am willing to make my returns public in case anyone out there needs a really good laugh.
Overall, it’s been a pretty good first 100 days. However, I didn’t realize that being president of the family was so complicated. Hockey tournaments to drive to, baseball practices to attend. School concerts. Easter gatherings. Helping to pick out birthday and anniversary cards.
The media doesn’t understand all the complications I must deal with. Reporters are meanies who say everything I do is wrong. I’d like to hit them so hard their heads spin. But then my editor might not let me write this column anymore.
Email: shaman@vianet.ca
Profile: http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B001K8FY3Y
April 27, 2017
Stale Pretzels and Soda Water
The cattle are prowlin', the coyotes are howlin'Way out where the doggies bawlWoo - hoo - woo - ooo - ti - deWoo - hoo - ooo - oop - i - de - deWoo - hoo - woo - ooo - ti - deYodel - odel - lo - ti – deSingin’ his cattle call
Anyone remember that catchy but smooth yodellin’ tune? Tex Owens wrote it way back in 1934, but it has jumped out of the past and taken over my head. I’ve been humming it ever since David Dao boarded a United Airlines flight a doctor and got off a patient.
Video clips of Dr. Dao being dragged off the flight by the feet, screaming and bleeding, showed the entire world just how far the airline industry has descended into passenger Hell.
Round ‘em up, stuff ‘em in and ship ‘em out. Rawhide! Keep ‘em movin’, movin’, movin’, there’s a bigger bottom line at the end of this ride.
Commercial airline travel these days is about being shoehorned into an increasingly crammed seating area and fed tiny packages of stale pretzels with half-filled plastic cups of soda water. Set up a compact laptop on your fold-down seatback tray and it gut punches you when the guy in front tilts his seat back one inch.
All that after being pushed through the airport check-in obstacle course, and the unpacking and undressing at security. Then after being vacuum-packed into your seat comes the anxiety of wondering whether a computer will bump you from the overbooked flight.
It didn’t used to be this way. Back in the days before airline CEOs became bean counters, passenger comfort and satisfaction were important. Claude Taylor, who ran Air Canada roughly 30 years ago, personally replied to passengers who complained about service or offered suggestions.
Then there was Max Ward, the bush pilot who built a world-class airline with a passion to make flying an enjoyable experience. And it was, until the Transport Canada bureaucracy drove Wardair out of the business.
Wardair gave passengers first-class treatment for economy fares. Cabins were decorated in bright holiday colours. Dinners featured filet mignon cooked on board to the passenger’s preference. It was served on Royal Doulton china, with stainless steel cutlery and linen napkins. Flight attendants hand delivered individual food trays to each seat.
Drinks were free and coffee was fresh percolated. Then there was that fabulous dessert trolley.
Max Ward has been quoted as saying: “In the airline business, it’s about the journey, not the destination. It’s much more than merely getting our valued customer from A to B, and the level of service a passenger receives is indicative of exactly how the airline values the customer.”
Airline passengers today know how the carriers value them. Maybe you get to your destination, maybe you don’t. If you don’t get bumped from a flight, you arrive at your destination burping up stale pretzels.
United CEO Oscar Munoz presumably has learned a bit about the value of customers since Dr. Dao was beaten up on one of his airplanes. One of his first statements on the incident called Dr. Dao “disruptive and belligerent” and praised the United crew.
When the incident caused millions of dollars in United stock losses, Munoz threw on the reverse thrusters and has been falling over himself apologizing to Dr. Dao, saying his treatment was horrific and promising that nothing like this ever will happen again.
He certainly hopes not because the United board has decided that his $18-million-a-year pay cheque now will be tied to a new customer satisfaction pay scheme.
Max Ward never made that kind of salary. He paid himself less than his pilots and ploughed the savings back into building a customer friendly airline.
Meanwhile, I just can’t get The Cattle Call song out of my head. Tex Owens said he wrote it after watching the snow fall in Kansas.
“My sympathy went out to cattle everywhere, and I just wished I could call them all around me and break some corn over a wagon wheel and feed them.”Cracked corn, eh? Sounds a mite more appetizing than stale pretzels.
Email: shaman@vianet.ca
Profile: http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B001K8FY3Y
Anyone remember that catchy but smooth yodellin’ tune? Tex Owens wrote it way back in 1934, but it has jumped out of the past and taken over my head. I’ve been humming it ever since David Dao boarded a United Airlines flight a doctor and got off a patient.
Video clips of Dr. Dao being dragged off the flight by the feet, screaming and bleeding, showed the entire world just how far the airline industry has descended into passenger Hell.
Round ‘em up, stuff ‘em in and ship ‘em out. Rawhide! Keep ‘em movin’, movin’, movin’, there’s a bigger bottom line at the end of this ride. Commercial airline travel these days is about being shoehorned into an increasingly crammed seating area and fed tiny packages of stale pretzels with half-filled plastic cups of soda water. Set up a compact laptop on your fold-down seatback tray and it gut punches you when the guy in front tilts his seat back one inch.
All that after being pushed through the airport check-in obstacle course, and the unpacking and undressing at security. Then after being vacuum-packed into your seat comes the anxiety of wondering whether a computer will bump you from the overbooked flight.
It didn’t used to be this way. Back in the days before airline CEOs became bean counters, passenger comfort and satisfaction were important. Claude Taylor, who ran Air Canada roughly 30 years ago, personally replied to passengers who complained about service or offered suggestions.
Then there was Max Ward, the bush pilot who built a world-class airline with a passion to make flying an enjoyable experience. And it was, until the Transport Canada bureaucracy drove Wardair out of the business.
Wardair gave passengers first-class treatment for economy fares. Cabins were decorated in bright holiday colours. Dinners featured filet mignon cooked on board to the passenger’s preference. It was served on Royal Doulton china, with stainless steel cutlery and linen napkins. Flight attendants hand delivered individual food trays to each seat.
Drinks were free and coffee was fresh percolated. Then there was that fabulous dessert trolley.
Max Ward has been quoted as saying: “In the airline business, it’s about the journey, not the destination. It’s much more than merely getting our valued customer from A to B, and the level of service a passenger receives is indicative of exactly how the airline values the customer.”
Airline passengers today know how the carriers value them. Maybe you get to your destination, maybe you don’t. If you don’t get bumped from a flight, you arrive at your destination burping up stale pretzels.
United CEO Oscar Munoz presumably has learned a bit about the value of customers since Dr. Dao was beaten up on one of his airplanes. One of his first statements on the incident called Dr. Dao “disruptive and belligerent” and praised the United crew.
When the incident caused millions of dollars in United stock losses, Munoz threw on the reverse thrusters and has been falling over himself apologizing to Dr. Dao, saying his treatment was horrific and promising that nothing like this ever will happen again.
He certainly hopes not because the United board has decided that his $18-million-a-year pay cheque now will be tied to a new customer satisfaction pay scheme.
Max Ward never made that kind of salary. He paid himself less than his pilots and ploughed the savings back into building a customer friendly airline.
Meanwhile, I just can’t get The Cattle Call song out of my head. Tex Owens said he wrote it after watching the snow fall in Kansas.
“My sympathy went out to cattle everywhere, and I just wished I could call them all around me and break some corn over a wagon wheel and feed them.”Cracked corn, eh? Sounds a mite more appetizing than stale pretzels.
Email: shaman@vianet.ca
Profile: http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B001K8FY3Y
April 26, 2017
Maple Syrup Mysteries
Spring is a season of mysteries.
For instance: How do plants know when to start growing? How do hibernators such as bears know when to wake up? Why do mosquitoes and blackflies not move to another planet?
But surely the greatest mystery is about the sweetest of all spring things. How did maple syrup get invented?
We know that indigenous peoples were the first to have it. The mystery is how did they make the jump from bitter tree sap to the sweet golden fluid that makes pancakes and waffles so scrumptious? No one has been able to provide the answer in more than 500 years.
It is easy to speculate how these early peoples discovered sap. Walk through the spring woods and look at woodpecker holes or a broken branch. Or cut a recently blown down tree.
The sap is easy to see, or feel if you are handling wood or touching trees. But how did someone realize that collecting a large quantity of sap, then boiling it down 40 to1, would produce one of the world’s tastiest delights.
There are legends, of course. One of the most common is that a chief stuck his tomahawk into a maple tree one night before going to bed. His wife had left a bark vessel at the base of the tree below the tomahawk.
In the morning the wife found the vessel filled with what appeared to be rain water that had run down the tree. So she decided to boil a piece meat in it and noticed the water turning brown and getting thicker. The meat had a sweet maple flavour.
Not likely. The Indians had maple syrup long before the Europeans arrived and gave them metal hatchets.
More likely, maple syrup resulted from experimentation. Tree saps were used for many purposes. Spruce gum was collected, mixed with animal fat then rendered over fire to make the sticky substance used to seal canoe seams.
Someone likely was doing something similar when they dipped a finger in to test thickness, then licked the finger and Eureka!
The Indians pushed slips of bark into cuts in maple trunks to allow sap to drip into bark buckets set below. When the French arrived, the Indians showed them the process, which the newcomers modified by drilling tap holes and using metal collection and boiling pots.
Maple syrup was a nice treat for personal use but processing did not become an industry until the mid-1800s. Most of the cane sugar consumed in the United States back then came from black slave labour in the southern states and the Caribbean.
As the anti-slavery movement grew and the civil war loomed, many abolitionists urged boycotting cane sugar and use of maple sugar instead.
“Cane sugar is the result of the forced labor of the most wretched slaves, toiling under the cruel lash of a cutting whip,” William Drown wrote in the 1824 Compendium of Agriculture. “While the maple sugar is made by those who are happy and free."
Large flat evaporator pans replaced kettles for processing larger amounts of syrup and maple sugar. The rest, as they say, is history.
The maple syrup industry grew consistently with improved techniques, equipment and marketing of maple products abroad. Canada now produces 80 per cent of the world’s pure maple syrup, the majority of which comes from Quebec’s 7,000 or so producers.
The maple syrup industry generates hundreds of millions of dollars a year for the Canadian economy. Some estimates put maple syrup at 13 times more costly than crude oil.
It has become so valuable that it was the subject of a mystery five years ago. Someone tapping barrels in a maple syrup storehouse found that some sounded odd, or not completely full.
Further investigation revealed that thieves had stolen $18 million (wholesale price) worth of syrup over 12 months from a stockpile kept by the Federation of Quebec Maple Syrup Producers. Thieves with access to the warehouse drained maple syrup from 9,500 barrels and refilled them with water. They sold the stolen syrup on the black market.
Roughly 225 investigators were used in trying to solve the case. Finally, 26 people were charged in the theft, 17 of whom were eventually convicted.
Email: shaman@vianet.ca
Profile: http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B001K8FY3Y
For instance: How do plants know when to start growing? How do hibernators such as bears know when to wake up? Why do mosquitoes and blackflies not move to another planet?
But surely the greatest mystery is about the sweetest of all spring things. How did maple syrup get invented?
We know that indigenous peoples were the first to have it. The mystery is how did they make the jump from bitter tree sap to the sweet golden fluid that makes pancakes and waffles so scrumptious? No one has been able to provide the answer in more than 500 years.
It is easy to speculate how these early peoples discovered sap. Walk through the spring woods and look at woodpecker holes or a broken branch. Or cut a recently blown down tree.
The sap is easy to see, or feel if you are handling wood or touching trees. But how did someone realize that collecting a large quantity of sap, then boiling it down 40 to1, would produce one of the world’s tastiest delights.
There are legends, of course. One of the most common is that a chief stuck his tomahawk into a maple tree one night before going to bed. His wife had left a bark vessel at the base of the tree below the tomahawk.
In the morning the wife found the vessel filled with what appeared to be rain water that had run down the tree. So she decided to boil a piece meat in it and noticed the water turning brown and getting thicker. The meat had a sweet maple flavour.
Not likely. The Indians had maple syrup long before the Europeans arrived and gave them metal hatchets.
More likely, maple syrup resulted from experimentation. Tree saps were used for many purposes. Spruce gum was collected, mixed with animal fat then rendered over fire to make the sticky substance used to seal canoe seams.
Someone likely was doing something similar when they dipped a finger in to test thickness, then licked the finger and Eureka!
The Indians pushed slips of bark into cuts in maple trunks to allow sap to drip into bark buckets set below. When the French arrived, the Indians showed them the process, which the newcomers modified by drilling tap holes and using metal collection and boiling pots.
Maple syrup was a nice treat for personal use but processing did not become an industry until the mid-1800s. Most of the cane sugar consumed in the United States back then came from black slave labour in the southern states and the Caribbean.
As the anti-slavery movement grew and the civil war loomed, many abolitionists urged boycotting cane sugar and use of maple sugar instead.
“Cane sugar is the result of the forced labor of the most wretched slaves, toiling under the cruel lash of a cutting whip,” William Drown wrote in the 1824 Compendium of Agriculture. “While the maple sugar is made by those who are happy and free."
Large flat evaporator pans replaced kettles for processing larger amounts of syrup and maple sugar. The rest, as they say, is history.
The maple syrup industry grew consistently with improved techniques, equipment and marketing of maple products abroad. Canada now produces 80 per cent of the world’s pure maple syrup, the majority of which comes from Quebec’s 7,000 or so producers.
The maple syrup industry generates hundreds of millions of dollars a year for the Canadian economy. Some estimates put maple syrup at 13 times more costly than crude oil.
It has become so valuable that it was the subject of a mystery five years ago. Someone tapping barrels in a maple syrup storehouse found that some sounded odd, or not completely full.
Further investigation revealed that thieves had stolen $18 million (wholesale price) worth of syrup over 12 months from a stockpile kept by the Federation of Quebec Maple Syrup Producers. Thieves with access to the warehouse drained maple syrup from 9,500 barrels and refilled them with water. They sold the stolen syrup on the black market.
Roughly 225 investigators were used in trying to solve the case. Finally, 26 people were charged in the theft, 17 of whom were eventually convicted.
Email: shaman@vianet.ca
Profile: http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B001K8FY3Y
April 13, 2017
A Walk in the Spring Woods
A long-awaited walk in the spring woods is like stepping through a looking glass and entering a remarkably different world.
Before me is life as it was meant to be. Not uncomplicated, but certainly logical. Everything that happens back here is an act of nature. Plants, animals and other organisms are born and proceed naturally toward death.
Reality lives in the spring woods. What happens here is clear to your senses. There is no information that has been juiced or twisted. There are no alternative facts; no fake news.
It’s good to be back here after a long winter. I could have come earlier on snowshoes but it is never the same. Snow shackles freedom, unless you are seeking physical exercise. And, winter light is too weak to show fully the sights I want to see.
A foot of snow remains in the hollows but it is rotting, changing into the water needed for new life. The hilly areas facing the afternoon sun are clear, exposing pieces of forest floor plastered with the fallen buttery yellow-brown leaves of last autumn.
Already there are signs of new life. Green shoots shoulder their way up through the mats of lifeless leaves. I am careful not to step on any, although the ground is so mushy beneath my boots that anything trampled will bounce back quickly.
The trees, coldly stiff just days ago, stretch and yawn in the morning sun. Moved by the breeze their branches sway without creaking and complaining the way they do during the bitter cold of January. The sap produced from the winter starch stored in their roots is flowing freely, lubricating every joint.
Spring sounds are abundant. A croak from a crow passing nearby. The gurgles of rivulets along the hillsides. They are not sharp or loud sounds, but muted as if not to wake anything still sleeping or just awakened and rubbing the sleep from its eyes. They will get louder as spring progresses.
I hope to hear the most exciting of spring sounds: a Tom gobbling. Regretfully there is no sign yet of the turkey flock I saw last fall.
There is no deer sign either, and that is disturbing. Usually the eight-point buck that has lived here for the past five or six years is back on these hillsides after returning from wherever he winters.
I check for damage wreaked by winter’s snow, ice and winds. Some young trees are bent over the trail, but nothing big has been brought down. If I do see any large windfalls I mark them with fluorescent tape so I can find them later and cut them for firewood.
The hills in these woods are populated mainly by oak, maple, birch and beech, all of which burn hot and long when the cottage needs heat.
As I walk I wonder once again why the beeches with their smooth grey trunks and saw-toothed oval leaves grow only on the east side of these hills. There are none on the west side over the ridge. I make a mental note to find out why that is.
It is hard to be here without thinking about the writings of conservationists like Henry David Thoreau of Massachusetts and John Muir, who wrote extensively about the forests of the U.S. West.
And, of course, Ralph Waldo Emerson, the American transcendentalist who wrote his famous essay Nature in 1836. In it he said that people do not fully understand the power and meaning of nature because they are too distracted by the demands of their societies.
“In the woods,” Emerson wrote, “we return to reason and faith. There I feel that nothing can befall me in life – no disgrace, no calamity . . . which nature cannot repair.”
These writers believed that nature can provide all we need to live good lives.
A spring storm illustrates that for me. The cottage electricity is out, leaving us without light, heat, water, and refrigeration. And of course, no means of recharging the smart phones, tablets and other electronics that are major parts of our lives.
However, we survive with wax candles, rain barrel water, and a stack of solid firewood. They provide us all the comforts that we really need.
Email: shaman@vianet.ca
Profile: http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B001K8FY3Y
Before me is life as it was meant to be. Not uncomplicated, but certainly logical. Everything that happens back here is an act of nature. Plants, animals and other organisms are born and proceed naturally toward death.
Reality lives in the spring woods. What happens here is clear to your senses. There is no information that has been juiced or twisted. There are no alternative facts; no fake news.
It’s good to be back here after a long winter. I could have come earlier on snowshoes but it is never the same. Snow shackles freedom, unless you are seeking physical exercise. And, winter light is too weak to show fully the sights I want to see.
A foot of snow remains in the hollows but it is rotting, changing into the water needed for new life. The hilly areas facing the afternoon sun are clear, exposing pieces of forest floor plastered with the fallen buttery yellow-brown leaves of last autumn. Already there are signs of new life. Green shoots shoulder their way up through the mats of lifeless leaves. I am careful not to step on any, although the ground is so mushy beneath my boots that anything trampled will bounce back quickly.
The trees, coldly stiff just days ago, stretch and yawn in the morning sun. Moved by the breeze their branches sway without creaking and complaining the way they do during the bitter cold of January. The sap produced from the winter starch stored in their roots is flowing freely, lubricating every joint.
Spring sounds are abundant. A croak from a crow passing nearby. The gurgles of rivulets along the hillsides. They are not sharp or loud sounds, but muted as if not to wake anything still sleeping or just awakened and rubbing the sleep from its eyes. They will get louder as spring progresses.
I hope to hear the most exciting of spring sounds: a Tom gobbling. Regretfully there is no sign yet of the turkey flock I saw last fall.
There is no deer sign either, and that is disturbing. Usually the eight-point buck that has lived here for the past five or six years is back on these hillsides after returning from wherever he winters.
I check for damage wreaked by winter’s snow, ice and winds. Some young trees are bent over the trail, but nothing big has been brought down. If I do see any large windfalls I mark them with fluorescent tape so I can find them later and cut them for firewood.
The hills in these woods are populated mainly by oak, maple, birch and beech, all of which burn hot and long when the cottage needs heat.
As I walk I wonder once again why the beeches with their smooth grey trunks and saw-toothed oval leaves grow only on the east side of these hills. There are none on the west side over the ridge. I make a mental note to find out why that is.
It is hard to be here without thinking about the writings of conservationists like Henry David Thoreau of Massachusetts and John Muir, who wrote extensively about the forests of the U.S. West.
And, of course, Ralph Waldo Emerson, the American transcendentalist who wrote his famous essay Nature in 1836. In it he said that people do not fully understand the power and meaning of nature because they are too distracted by the demands of their societies.
“In the woods,” Emerson wrote, “we return to reason and faith. There I feel that nothing can befall me in life – no disgrace, no calamity . . . which nature cannot repair.”
These writers believed that nature can provide all we need to live good lives.
A spring storm illustrates that for me. The cottage electricity is out, leaving us without light, heat, water, and refrigeration. And of course, no means of recharging the smart phones, tablets and other electronics that are major parts of our lives.
However, we survive with wax candles, rain barrel water, and a stack of solid firewood. They provide us all the comforts that we really need.
Email: shaman@vianet.ca
Profile: http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B001K8FY3Y
April 6, 2017
What Lurks Below?
I can’t delay any longer. It is April and it has to get done, so I’ll just have to screw up my nerve and get on with it - the hated spring crawl.
Every April I must enter the dark and dreaded crawl space under the cottage to convert the water system from winter to summer operation. It is a hateful job. The area is cramped and dark. The perfect nestling place for something that you never want meet.
It is a reasonably well sealed area. Concrete block walls with screened air vents. But there is a doorway and I always worry that it was left ajar last autumn just long enough for something to sneak in for the winter.
On one spring crawl I heard a low growl and shone my light into a corner, revealing the cute face of a pine marten. Cute except for the two front fangs that could turn my face to hamburger in a matter of seconds. I backed out rather quickly, leaving the door open for the marten to exit at his leisure.
I am especially nervous about this spring’s crawl because of a couple stories I heard on a recent trip to California. I accompanied my California family up into ski country near Tahoe where people have cottages like we do in Haliburton, but call them chalets.
During a social gathering one chalet owner told me he was having trouble with heating ducts that run through the chalet’s crawl space. A heating guy came and very cautiously began to check the crawl space, looking into the dark corners before fully entering.
The heating guy explained that he had gone into a similar chalet crawl space and had awakened a large black bear, which somehow had crawled in to hibernate. Terrified humans tend to move much more quickly than sleepy bears, so the heating guy escaped without harm.
Then someone else told me about being at her chalet in summer and hearing some banging and crashing in the kitchen. She assumed it was her husband and went to the kitchen to see what he was doing. He actually was outside and the noise was coming from a mama black bear going through the cupboards.
The woman ran from the kitchen only to encounter three cubs coming down a staircase from the second floor.
Getting between a mama bear and her cubs can cause some really bad scenes. Fortunately, the woman got out of the chalet without incident and the bears found their way outside.
I had a similar experience many years ago when I was a lot younger, and a lot more foolish. I came across two cubs on a bush trail and decided it would be neat to pick one up and cuddle it. The mother, who exploded from the bush with a roar, did not agree. Fortunately, fear and youth gave me the super speed needed to escape.
I had never thought of California as a place for bears, even though the state flag is known as the Bear Flag and features an image of a grizzly.
There are no grizzlies or brown bears left in California but there are an estimated 30,000 black bears. They are not always black. California black bears have fur colours that can be chocolate brown, red, blonde or cinnamon.
Interestingly, California’s black bears, almost one-half of which live in the Sierra Nevada mountains, don’t all hibernate for the entire winter. Because temperatures and snow levels vary at different altitudes, bears come and go during winter hibernation according to how weather changes affect food sources.
Ontario has an estimated 85,000 to 105,000 black bears, some of which shorten their hibernation because of warmer winters. The Orillia Packet and Times reported that a young bear emerged from its den during this January’s mild spell and was attacked on a lake and eaten by coyotes.
Most of our bears are emerging now from their winter sleeping spots. Hopefully, one of those spots was not my cottage crawl space.
I’ll soon find out. And after I check out the dreaded crawl space I’ll set to work figuring out a system to keep hungry bears out of the spring bird feeders.
Email: shaman@vianet.ca
Profile: http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B001K8FY3Y
Every April I must enter the dark and dreaded crawl space under the cottage to convert the water system from winter to summer operation. It is a hateful job. The area is cramped and dark. The perfect nestling place for something that you never want meet.
It is a reasonably well sealed area. Concrete block walls with screened air vents. But there is a doorway and I always worry that it was left ajar last autumn just long enough for something to sneak in for the winter.
On one spring crawl I heard a low growl and shone my light into a corner, revealing the cute face of a pine marten. Cute except for the two front fangs that could turn my face to hamburger in a matter of seconds. I backed out rather quickly, leaving the door open for the marten to exit at his leisure.
I am especially nervous about this spring’s crawl because of a couple stories I heard on a recent trip to California. I accompanied my California family up into ski country near Tahoe where people have cottages like we do in Haliburton, but call them chalets.
During a social gathering one chalet owner told me he was having trouble with heating ducts that run through the chalet’s crawl space. A heating guy came and very cautiously began to check the crawl space, looking into the dark corners before fully entering.
The heating guy explained that he had gone into a similar chalet crawl space and had awakened a large black bear, which somehow had crawled in to hibernate. Terrified humans tend to move much more quickly than sleepy bears, so the heating guy escaped without harm.
Then someone else told me about being at her chalet in summer and hearing some banging and crashing in the kitchen. She assumed it was her husband and went to the kitchen to see what he was doing. He actually was outside and the noise was coming from a mama black bear going through the cupboards.
The woman ran from the kitchen only to encounter three cubs coming down a staircase from the second floor.
Getting between a mama bear and her cubs can cause some really bad scenes. Fortunately, the woman got out of the chalet without incident and the bears found their way outside.
I had a similar experience many years ago when I was a lot younger, and a lot more foolish. I came across two cubs on a bush trail and decided it would be neat to pick one up and cuddle it. The mother, who exploded from the bush with a roar, did not agree. Fortunately, fear and youth gave me the super speed needed to escape.
I had never thought of California as a place for bears, even though the state flag is known as the Bear Flag and features an image of a grizzly.
There are no grizzlies or brown bears left in California but there are an estimated 30,000 black bears. They are not always black. California black bears have fur colours that can be chocolate brown, red, blonde or cinnamon.
Interestingly, California’s black bears, almost one-half of which live in the Sierra Nevada mountains, don’t all hibernate for the entire winter. Because temperatures and snow levels vary at different altitudes, bears come and go during winter hibernation according to how weather changes affect food sources.
Ontario has an estimated 85,000 to 105,000 black bears, some of which shorten their hibernation because of warmer winters. The Orillia Packet and Times reported that a young bear emerged from its den during this January’s mild spell and was attacked on a lake and eaten by coyotes.
Most of our bears are emerging now from their winter sleeping spots. Hopefully, one of those spots was not my cottage crawl space.
I’ll soon find out. And after I check out the dreaded crawl space I’ll set to work figuring out a system to keep hungry bears out of the spring bird feeders.
Email: shaman@vianet.ca
Profile: http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B001K8FY3Y
March 30, 2017
The Forgotten Common Good
The New York Times’ columnist Paul Krugman wrote recently that the Republican party, now governing the U.S., is not ready to govern.
I would add this: There are few, if any, political parties anywhere - Canada included - ready or fit to govern. Good governance is a scarcity in a consumer society that has lost its feel for the concept of common good.
Ours is a society of individuals that believes we all should be free to chase our individual desires and self interests without giving up much for the overall common good.
Our governments have become tightly focussed on the individual. It is important for them to protect our individual benefits. Not doing so would cost them support because fewer people are willing to accept sacrifices required for the common good.
As more individual voices – the voices of minorities once seldom heard - have gained prominence, it has become difficult for political parties to serve the common good, or even to determine what it is.
Working for the common good has mutated into the belief that you do whatever is needed for the political party to gain and retain power, thereby ensuring it can do good things. However, too often what the party needs to have and to hold power is not always what is best for the common good.
More simply put: Too often politicians push aside what they truly believe is right, and stand up for what is perceived best for the political party.
There was an example of this late last fall when Cuban leader Fidel Castro died. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, who called Castro a “remarkable leader”, caved in to critics and decided not to attend the funeral.
Castro was a friend of the Trudeau family and an honorary pallbearer at Pierre Trudeau’s funeral. The elder Trudeau did not accept Castro’s Communist dictatorship methods but understood why the Cuban revolution occurred. He encouraged a special Canada-Cuba relationship based on helping the Cuban people.
Justin Trudeau decided not to attend the funeral because the Liberal party feared it would cost them votes. And, likely anger incoming U.S. President Donald ‘Forrest’ Trump who planned a harder line against the island nation.
It was another case of abandoning what you think is right in favour of what’s good for the party. Pierre Trudeau would have given the party operatives the finger and gone to the funeral.
Not standing firm for what you believe, not accepting sacrifice for the common good, has created a leadership crisis. Our leadership class is collapsing as people have lost trust in government, the news media, many of our institutions and systems.
We don’t have the strong leaders needed to guide us through some of the most serious problems faced by humankind. How to balance and protect our world in an era of rapidly changing climates? How to pay for and maintain our tremendous gains in health care? How to stop social disintegration caused by an ever-decreasing job market, especially for those without post-secondary education?
We have created a society that encourages freedom of the individual more than the citizen working for the common good. Most of us agree that we must dramatically reduce pollution, change energy consumption, provide excellent health care while reigning in costs. Yet too few of us are willing to change our personal habits.
Our governments could move us to change our personal habits but won’t for fear of lost support. In the meantime, they continue to try to satisfy everyone.
They overcommit themselves despite knowing that all expectations can’t be satisfied. They continue to make promises they cannot meet, while racking up more and more deficits.
The American writer Robert J. Samuelson wrote in a 1992 Newsweek article that America cannot work unless citizens take more responsibility for their actions.
“We face a choice between a society where people accept modest sacrifices for a common goal or a more contentious society where groups selfishly protect their own benefits.”
That certainly applies to Ontario, and the rest of Canada. We need to change our thinking and the thinking of our politicians. If we can’t do the latter, we need a wholesale change of politicians of all parties.
Email: shaman@vianet.ca
Profile: http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B001K8FY3Y
I would add this: There are few, if any, political parties anywhere - Canada included - ready or fit to govern. Good governance is a scarcity in a consumer society that has lost its feel for the concept of common good.
Ours is a society of individuals that believes we all should be free to chase our individual desires and self interests without giving up much for the overall common good.
Our governments have become tightly focussed on the individual. It is important for them to protect our individual benefits. Not doing so would cost them support because fewer people are willing to accept sacrifices required for the common good.
As more individual voices – the voices of minorities once seldom heard - have gained prominence, it has become difficult for political parties to serve the common good, or even to determine what it is.
Working for the common good has mutated into the belief that you do whatever is needed for the political party to gain and retain power, thereby ensuring it can do good things. However, too often what the party needs to have and to hold power is not always what is best for the common good.
More simply put: Too often politicians push aside what they truly believe is right, and stand up for what is perceived best for the political party.
There was an example of this late last fall when Cuban leader Fidel Castro died. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, who called Castro a “remarkable leader”, caved in to critics and decided not to attend the funeral.
Castro was a friend of the Trudeau family and an honorary pallbearer at Pierre Trudeau’s funeral. The elder Trudeau did not accept Castro’s Communist dictatorship methods but understood why the Cuban revolution occurred. He encouraged a special Canada-Cuba relationship based on helping the Cuban people.
Justin Trudeau decided not to attend the funeral because the Liberal party feared it would cost them votes. And, likely anger incoming U.S. President Donald ‘Forrest’ Trump who planned a harder line against the island nation.
It was another case of abandoning what you think is right in favour of what’s good for the party. Pierre Trudeau would have given the party operatives the finger and gone to the funeral.
Not standing firm for what you believe, not accepting sacrifice for the common good, has created a leadership crisis. Our leadership class is collapsing as people have lost trust in government, the news media, many of our institutions and systems.
We don’t have the strong leaders needed to guide us through some of the most serious problems faced by humankind. How to balance and protect our world in an era of rapidly changing climates? How to pay for and maintain our tremendous gains in health care? How to stop social disintegration caused by an ever-decreasing job market, especially for those without post-secondary education?
We have created a society that encourages freedom of the individual more than the citizen working for the common good. Most of us agree that we must dramatically reduce pollution, change energy consumption, provide excellent health care while reigning in costs. Yet too few of us are willing to change our personal habits.
Our governments could move us to change our personal habits but won’t for fear of lost support. In the meantime, they continue to try to satisfy everyone.
They overcommit themselves despite knowing that all expectations can’t be satisfied. They continue to make promises they cannot meet, while racking up more and more deficits.
The American writer Robert J. Samuelson wrote in a 1992 Newsweek article that America cannot work unless citizens take more responsibility for their actions.
“We face a choice between a society where people accept modest sacrifices for a common goal or a more contentious society where groups selfishly protect their own benefits.”
That certainly applies to Ontario, and the rest of Canada. We need to change our thinking and the thinking of our politicians. If we can’t do the latter, we need a wholesale change of politicians of all parties.
Email: shaman@vianet.ca
Profile: http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B001K8FY3Y
March 24, 2017
Here Are The News
I woke this morning with a head like a fermenting pumpkin, ready to explode.
No, I do not have a late winter cold. It’s just that I’m stuffed to the sinuses with unhappy news overload.
The UK is leaving the EU. Scotland is leaving the UK. The Dutch and the Turks keep yelling at each other. Bad Vlad, the new leader of the modern world, is busily sowing evil seeds in everyone else’s garden.
Forrest Trump, the nutbar president, ran out of people to insult this week so had more time to spend at his Florida golf course making America great again.
The only cure for bad news overload is to let the mind drift back to days long passed when the daily news was more fun, certainly a lot less threatening.
Many folks who collected and wrote the news back then did so outside the corridors of huge populations and power. They were a lot closer to real people living real lives.
I always enjoyed reading Margaret ‘Ma’ Murray’s (Aug. 3, 1888 – Sept. 25, 1982) writings in the Bridge River-Lillooet News from the B.C. interior. Her stuff was earthy and loaded with acid that peeled the pretentions off people who thought they were much smarter than the rest of us.
She told it like she saw it (“that’s fur damshur!”) enraging politicians and others, who often threatened her with legal actions or lickings. She rolled with the criticism saying:
“It’s a poor turkey who can’t pack a few lice.”
Then there was Edith Josie who wrote a column about life in the remote Yukon community of Old Crow, a place you’ll never hear about these days unless some calamity or tragedy occurs there.
Josie (Dec. 8, 1921–Jan. 31, 2010) was a Gwich’in whose Here Are The News column appeared in the Whitehorse Star for 40 years. It told of the comings and goings of life in the isolated village above the Arctic Circle.
She was single woman who had three children and wrote about giving birth to one.
“At 8:30 p.m. I had baby boy and he’s 6 lb. . . . . I give it to Mrs. Ellen Abel to have him for his little boy. She was very glad to have him cause he’s boy. I was in nurse station and Miss Youngs sure treat me nice. Myself and baby I really thanks her very much for her good kindness to me.”
Her writing was in broken English and ungrammatical but it gave the outside world clear pictures of life in that place, and presumably places like it.
Neither Ma Murray nor Miss Edith had much formal education. Ma left school at age 13, Miss Josie at 14. They didn’t know many rules of writing, but that did not matter. What mattered was the story.
You don’t hear many stories these days from tiny, tucked away communities like Lillooet and Old Crow. That’s a shame because the news of those places can tell us a lot about Canada and Canadians.
And these places produced stories that often brought you laughter. One of my favourites was about a famous parrot in Carcross, Yukon and was written by my talented Canadian Press colleague, Dennis Bell, who has since passed.
“The world famous Carcross parrot is probably the oldest, meanest, ugliest, dirtiest bird north of the 60th parallel,” Bell wrote.
“He hates everybody. Which is understandable, because the damned old buzzard has resided within spitting distance of a beer parlour since 1919 and has had to endure 64 years of beer fumes, drunks who mash soggy crackers through the bars of his cage, and phantom, feather pluckers.”
Bar patrons amused themselves by feeding the parrot beer and shots of booze. Sometimes it got so drunk it fell off its perch. But then someone taught it to sing Onward Christian Soldiers and it found religion and quit drinking.
One day in the 1970s it was found drumsticks up on its cage floor. It apparently died of old age. A public funeral was held, which included a procession down the hamlet’s main street. After the burial everyone went back to the hotel for drinks.
Email: shaman@vianet.ca
Profile: http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B001K8FY3Y
No, I do not have a late winter cold. It’s just that I’m stuffed to the sinuses with unhappy news overload.
The UK is leaving the EU. Scotland is leaving the UK. The Dutch and the Turks keep yelling at each other. Bad Vlad, the new leader of the modern world, is busily sowing evil seeds in everyone else’s garden.
Forrest Trump, the nutbar president, ran out of people to insult this week so had more time to spend at his Florida golf course making America great again.
The only cure for bad news overload is to let the mind drift back to days long passed when the daily news was more fun, certainly a lot less threatening.
Many folks who collected and wrote the news back then did so outside the corridors of huge populations and power. They were a lot closer to real people living real lives.
I always enjoyed reading Margaret ‘Ma’ Murray’s (Aug. 3, 1888 – Sept. 25, 1982) writings in the Bridge River-Lillooet News from the B.C. interior. Her stuff was earthy and loaded with acid that peeled the pretentions off people who thought they were much smarter than the rest of us.
She told it like she saw it (“that’s fur damshur!”) enraging politicians and others, who often threatened her with legal actions or lickings. She rolled with the criticism saying:
“It’s a poor turkey who can’t pack a few lice.”
Then there was Edith Josie who wrote a column about life in the remote Yukon community of Old Crow, a place you’ll never hear about these days unless some calamity or tragedy occurs there.
Josie (Dec. 8, 1921–Jan. 31, 2010) was a Gwich’in whose Here Are The News column appeared in the Whitehorse Star for 40 years. It told of the comings and goings of life in the isolated village above the Arctic Circle.
She was single woman who had three children and wrote about giving birth to one.
“At 8:30 p.m. I had baby boy and he’s 6 lb. . . . . I give it to Mrs. Ellen Abel to have him for his little boy. She was very glad to have him cause he’s boy. I was in nurse station and Miss Youngs sure treat me nice. Myself and baby I really thanks her very much for her good kindness to me.”
Her writing was in broken English and ungrammatical but it gave the outside world clear pictures of life in that place, and presumably places like it.
Neither Ma Murray nor Miss Edith had much formal education. Ma left school at age 13, Miss Josie at 14. They didn’t know many rules of writing, but that did not matter. What mattered was the story.
You don’t hear many stories these days from tiny, tucked away communities like Lillooet and Old Crow. That’s a shame because the news of those places can tell us a lot about Canada and Canadians.
And these places produced stories that often brought you laughter. One of my favourites was about a famous parrot in Carcross, Yukon and was written by my talented Canadian Press colleague, Dennis Bell, who has since passed.
“The world famous Carcross parrot is probably the oldest, meanest, ugliest, dirtiest bird north of the 60th parallel,” Bell wrote.
“He hates everybody. Which is understandable, because the damned old buzzard has resided within spitting distance of a beer parlour since 1919 and has had to endure 64 years of beer fumes, drunks who mash soggy crackers through the bars of his cage, and phantom, feather pluckers.”
Bar patrons amused themselves by feeding the parrot beer and shots of booze. Sometimes it got so drunk it fell off its perch. But then someone taught it to sing Onward Christian Soldiers and it found religion and quit drinking.
One day in the 1970s it was found drumsticks up on its cage floor. It apparently died of old age. A public funeral was held, which included a procession down the hamlet’s main street. After the burial everyone went back to the hotel for drinks.
Email: shaman@vianet.ca
Profile: http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B001K8FY3Y
