…for us.

0 degrees Celsius is NOT all that cold by any real standards but freezing feels colder when you are on the water.  And, we are.  It feels damn cold.  So, the furnace is cranked up and the house is toasty and the chores are just being left to fend for themselves.  We are still very busy, tho.  Today is the last ‘visits’ day of the season.  We have a large group of students coming from Campbell River plus a couple of friends staying for a few days arriving just after the kids leave.

The kids are great.  They are just happy to be out of the classroom and we happen to be a useful excuse.  We are their ‘field trip’ but only because their teacher read our first book, liked it and wanted out of the classroom, too.  They came last year.  It was fun.  I am guessing we are on the verge of becoming an annual event.

Our friends are great, too.  Well, one is…..his partner is ‘new-to-us’ and so this visit is our formal introduction to his new squeeze.  We’ll like her.  B’s partners are fun.  They are always eccentric, quirky, funny and kinda wild and untamed all at the same time.  I am looking forward to meeting R.

As of this writing, I am pretty happy and content.  The chore list – while still long – was tallied up and we did pretty good this year despite a record number of guests and events.  We both find it crazy that we live remote on an unserviced island, retired and unemployed at anything even similar to work and yet have been busy all day every day since May 1.  That’s wild.  Seriously?  I haven’t worked this hard since carrying sides of beef at Canada Packers.

Well, slaughtering pigs at Swift’s Premium in Richmond was the worst manual job but that was just because of all the blood and screaming (some of that was me).  And pouring concrete with the Italian crew (I was 16) would have been harder had I not fallen asleep at the first coffee break and they ‘sent me home’ thinking I was ill.  I wasn’t – I was just exhausted after the first three hours.

I have had some pretty crazy jobs and done some pretty goofy things but I have never been as busy as we have been this year.

You may have noticed a studied avoidance of politics in the last few blogs.  I have plenty to say, of course but, for the most part, it has all been said and Trump and Trudeau are just carrying on being themselves and creating havoc and stench as they go about their corrupt and stupid ways.  No real news there.

But there is something to add….

……‘T’is the season of our discontent’ was the end-phrase last blog.  In case I wasn’t clear, I was referring to the myriad protests happening around the world.  The interesting thing is that, despite the growing crowds, the issues (although similar) are NOT the same one.  ‘Mericans protest Trump.  Hong Kong protests the PRC.  Brits protesting Brexit.  Chileans are protesting corruption.  Venezuela protesting for food and toilet paper.  The list just goes on and on.  Even Russia is experiencing more public protests.

Ya gotta wonder…’what is it that is prompting all this at much the same time?’

I suggest that it might be as simple as social media.  The way I see it, the only common thread to all the protests all over the world is the unifying, galvanizing force of social media.  The hoi polloi can ‘organize’ and ‘gather’ in a very short time.  They do not even have to ‘stage’ themselves to then march – they can ‘flash’ march (as they are doing in Hong Kong).  And fewer of these protests have prominent leadership or even spokespeople.  These are not your grandmother’s protests!  They are also NOT quite being done anonymously but it is definitely more ‘mouse’ with so many donning masks and NOT setting themselves up to be public martyrs.

Are we more angry or are we just better connected?  I think it is both and I think we are going to see more of this ‘different’ way of fighting back over the next few years.  AND we are going to see more migration.

One obvious-but-incidental sign of the deep underlying discontent (even in the first world) is that the OTG phenomena is still growing.  Seems like a lot of people want to get away……