Living off the grid (OTG) also means, in many ways, thinking outside the box (OTB). It is not so much that you ALWAYS have to think OTB but, if you don’t, you will ALWAYS be waiting on something (product, materials) or someone (with greater expertise) to get your work done. And sometimes you do not have the time or the money to wait on that. To get anything done OTG, one really must ‘make do’, jerry-rig, get creative, recycle, repurpose, invent or otherwise be uber pragmatlc in the extreme – almost all the time. You cannot phone in an order, call a repairman, use Amazon or have the thing you need already in inventory.

Old-timers-up-the-coast made a lot of things out of wood, repurposed everything else and generally made Rube Goldberg look constrained. Old guys simply ‘made do’. Old guys knew how to make it happen. Oldtimers made it work without Amazon, experts, You Tube or even books!

We, of course, are not bona fide old-timers (except in age)and are not as creative or adaptable as many out here. Plus we have a bad case of MSB (modern spoiled bratism)! As Sal puts it, “We are NOT barbarians!” (i.e. Sal and I have taken to using our Waterford crystal wine glasses every day since NOT using them just means they will last longer than we do – we have gone PRIMAL, we are using the GOOD glasses!). But, still, even the most pampered and spoiled out here have to get ‘down and dirty’, get real, do what needs doing now and then. Bears poop in the woods and so do the princesses. One does what needs doing.

And that is my slightly weird introduction to the keel of our new boat. The keel, of course, is the boat’s foundation, the backbone of the ship, the spine, if you will. The keel is the primary strength of the boat. In fact, the keel-and-ribs is often ‘founded’ on a particuarly strong frame referred to as the ‘strongback’. Anyway…we have a keel. It is strong. It is made of oak. It is good. But…..

…..Oak is wood. Wood is NOT Tungsten, steel or even aluminum. Wood is simply NOT as ‘strong’ in some ways as one might want. Especially if you have an inordinate amount of granite boulders on the beach in your life.

Think of it this way: you are driving slowly (under ten knots) in a nasty storm and at night. The rain is blowing horizontal. Ya can’t see diddly–squat. But you know you are coming up to your shore….that’s good…home is near….but…but….your home shore DOES NOT HAVE a dock. It has rocks, instead. You have to ‘nudge’ your boat on to the shore line to let off your passengers (dogs and wife). In the dark. Maybe there’s even fog. There’s definitely a bit of a storm surge. Waves. Wind. You have to be careful.

If you have a steel boat, you still have to be careful….if you have an aluminum boat , you have to be a bit more careful…if you have a good, strong f’glass boat you have to be even more careful yet and, if you have a wood boat, you have to be so careful you manoeuvre as if you have a boat made of eggshells. Wood boats weighing tons bashing up and down (waves) on granite rocks (beach) will not last long. Wooden boats need care.

I now have a wooden boat.

So, how do I ‘show care’ BEFORE I need to…..how do I make my wood boat less vulnerable to pounding on granite? Why with plastic, of course!

My friend, John, was a salvage kinda guy. If something still good was being thrown out, he rescued it. When the local hockey rink pulled out strips of that yellow, plastic ‘kickboard’ you see around the rink, he got some of it. That stuff is HDPE. High density Polyethylene. They used it at the rink because not only is the stuff really tough but also because it is slippery. It is slippery enough to skate on! Tough and slilppery is what I need.

Yesterday, I cut and fashioned a strip of HDPE as a ‘shoe’ for the bottom of the keel. Just four feet of it two inches wide tapering to one inch at the stem, shaped, sanded, and drilled for holes. It looked perfect! After it was done I gave it a gentle bend to mentally ‘see’ it go around from the bow-to-the first part of the flat keel. It snapped! IT BROKE IN HALF!

HDPE, the wonder plastic that takes nothing but abuse and is very bendable by nature snapped like a toothpick.

Life, eh?

Am I deterred? No. I’ll cut another piece and do it again. I will bend it again. I may, however, use a little persuasive heat the next time. It will work. It will be fine. Ya just gotta adjust, ya know?

Gus now weighs 57 pounds, Daisy is topping out at 47. They are just five months old!

Gus jumped up on Sal yesterday and laid his paws comfortably on her shoulders, his face only a little bit lower than hers (mind you, Sal was starting to collapse at the time). Sal has had to ‘insert’ webbing into their harnesses ’cause they have already outgrown them. Their food chart states they might eat as much as 4 to maybe 5 cups a day. They are eating 6 and 7 cups and anything else they can find edible (or not). A typical dinner for them is a handful of celery/broccoli/lettuce with maybe an egg together with 2 cups of kibble plus a chicken thigh (yes, a whole chicken thigh each). Breakfast is maybe 3/4 of that and lunch is half of that.

Not all that food turns into ‘dog’. Some of it, of course, is dog-poop but that is to be expected. At least they are now well and truly house-broken. They manage their own metabolisms. Another part is dog-hair (they are hypoallergenic so they have hair rather than fur). I have clipped them three times already and they are due for a fourth grooming soon. I have removed enough hair to make another dog!

Case in point: the swallows have returned and they are renovating their usual home for the season. That requires tossing out the old stuff and stuffing in the new. Some swallows must have discovered some errant dog hair and they liked it. Yesterday, a swallow swept down and landed on Gus in order to get more stuffing. Gus just sat there as the swallow quickly discovered this stuff was still attached!

They have also migrated outside. I am keen to have them ‘leave home’ and live outside in/on their doghouse or even the outdoor couch and we were wondering when they’d be old enough to handle that trauma. But, over the last few nights, they have already chosen to take to the couch and they stay outside almost all night (the front door is left open a crack in case they want back in but they stay out all night but come in just to wake/woof Sal up at 6:00).

Yes. I hear the woof, too. We are now early risers.

Friends provided some goat bones for them. These bones had a lot of meat on them. And our dogs love bones. But, the first pair of bones just disappeared and so the second set was watched more closely. They chewed ’em a bit and then took off and buried them. That is not easy on a granite rock!

In other words, our pups have learned the value of delayed gratification. They are preppers!

They are getting on and off the boat like veteran seamen. They are comfortable in the water (but not swimming yet) and they can travel-without-puking for at least an hour (we have not gone further). They get along with other dogs, even unsocialized ones. They are great with people, too. But, when our grandchildren visited together with their 90 pound family dog, they were exemplary. Both pups were careful around everyone but especially so with the littlest two-year old.

These are good dogs.

No, I am 100% objective and not biased in the least.

Occasionally, I have to do my duty. Chores. Obligations. I avoid them as a rule. I try to delegate as much to Sal as I can but sometimes you just have to face the music and yesterday was one of those days. I had to go to town. Oh my GOD! I hate going to town.

I arrived at the ferry on the other island about fifteen minutes before the ferry sailed but, for reasons not even the Ferry Corp can explain, our ferry route is now experiencing twice the volume. I had a two sailing wait. On a Wednesday in April. Unheard of!

When I go to town it is always with a ten-chore list (of which if six get done, it is considered a great trip) and I started with the ‘Marine’ store. ‘Natch! Because I am still putting the ‘new’ boat together. And I got some stuff. And the prices were, well, ‘UNHEARD of!’. A quart of topside paint is $60.00 (plus taxes, etc.). And so it went. I spent $400 at that store yesterday that a year ago would have been $300.00 Everything was much more pricey.

The sales lady asked for my address, phone number, etc and I balked. “Just for our records”. Well, I said, I live on a remote island. And the phone number doesn’t always work so there is no point. “You live on a remote island? Take me with you!”

I then went to the paint store for Xylene and brushes. Same routine. Same answer. And, this is the point: the tatted-up and studded-faced early-20’s saleswoman (who actually KNEW her stuff) said the same thing, “You live on a remote island? Take me with you!”

And then over to the propellor shop and the woman there already kinda knows me. “You live remote, right? What’s it like? Can I make a living out there?” (in effect, much the same thing).

Three stops. Three women. All expressing a desire to live ‘OTG’.

No. It was not my natural masculine allure that was drawing them like a magnet (altho the propellor lady does kinda like me), it was just a genuine expression of fatigue, frustration and dissatisfaction with the rat-race and THIS IS IN A SMALL TOWN!!!

I then blasted off to Costco and bought more crap. The guy at the registry checked me through and instructed me on how to use my debit card. I kinda know but I never use it so I looked a little hesitant. He laughed nicely and asked “How does a person shopping at Costco not know how to use the debit card?” Well, I live remote. When we come, my wife does the transaction and I just carry. I am now just a mule and that suits me just fine.

“Wow! You live remote?…………………………………………………take me with you!”

Sal and I started painting the boat a few days ago. Always fun. The best part is that the dogs are not throwing up anymore. I know, yippeee, right? The worst part, truly, is that three hours of work is about all we can put in right now (plus over an hour in driving time). It is not that it is so hard but it is awkward. The boat is only a few feet off the ground. So we lay on the ground and paint overhead. Sal does pretty good, being a yogi and all. I kind of just lay like a log and try to roll along.

Mind you, I went topsides yesterday and put a first coat on the port side. Deep green. Semi-gloss. Sal was finishing the bottom paint (one more layer today) and that colour is flat black. It all looks good.

There is the deck and roof to do soon. There is the last coat of bottom paint and the last coat for the topsides (hull). The two colours are an off white and a deep green.

This boat is already proving interesting. It is in a yard where maybe three people go a week. Maybe as many as five. But we’ve had two visitors from our island and several locals from the area come by for a closer look. Today a couple of fishermen (coming to get their boat) stopped and talked ‘wooden’ boats. Every time we have been there to work on it, someone drops in and talks about how ‘really nice’ she is. Today’s boats-of-envy are heavy-duty aluminum with big engines. Some are upwards of $200K but all of them are very expensive. No one even looks at the $100K boat parked across from us. Everyone, it seems, comes to see our ‘old-style wooden folly’ but they are very complimentary and they are sincere. All to Mike’s credit and Atkins design.

There is a tendency with this little cutie to think ‘Bristol fashion’ (a yachtie term for making your boat sparkle). That means everything is clean, fresh paint everywhere and all the brightwork bright. But varnishing a boat up here is absolutely verboten and considered garish and, probably, ignorant (“Ya can’t keep a yacht out here, man!”). REAL boats up here look like hell but the engine is perfect. To drive around with a ‘tiddly’ vessel is to invite scorn and abuse. The preferred ‘look’ is old, dented, broken and lashed here and there with duct tape and a cheap tarp. We can ‘effect’ that look all too easily. It’s ‘natural’, local and unpretentious. Still, if you purposefully dress down, that, too, is pretentious.

Sometimes you just have to let your beauty out to play, ya know?

When Trump won the 2016 election, I was very surprised. But my surprise took a distinctly different direction initially….I was, of course, distinctly unimpressed by Trump, the pig, but I was stunned at what that perverted victory ACTUALLY said to me. It said, “The White House is NOT a sanctified place. It is NOT special. In fact, the White House is currently occupied by rich white trash and millions of vermin are cheering him on.”

Trump instantly and single-handedly put the ‘holy ground’ of the White House into the same real estate category as the lowest trailer park. Trump took all the magic out of the White House and showed it up as the Motel 6 it really was. The White House was a dump and so were the trashy people who occupied it. That revealing ugliness was quite a shock. It was a reality check.

Put more accurately and succinctly today, I now feel as if the ‘mythical’ White House is just an old building and a corrupt one at that. The pedestal has been removed. Perspective has been gained.

I grew up in the 50’s and 60’s (five years in California). The threat of nuclear war was taught to us weekly. We even had school drills on how to duck and cover under our desk (for an atomic bomb, no less). And, of course, Russia was, until 1989, the really BIG and SCARY bogeyman that embodied international evil. Let’s face it, they still kind of do. Or, better put: they did!

It turns out, Russia is NOT the ‘unstoppable force’ of evil I thought it was. It is just a country with an army, just a country with poor, young soldiers, just a medium sized tyranny run by a tiny weird man. It can and does, in fact, screw up on a large scale quite often – maybe just as bad or even worse than other dysfunctional countries. Russia is simply a neighbourhood bully is all.

Put more bluntly: except for their nuclear missiles, Russia is not really much of a threat to the West. Not even their next door neighbour. Russia is just a bigger North Korea. The curtain has been pulled back and the little wizard has been exposed. Perspective gained.

This ruination of mythical institutions can take many forms. Catholicism, for instance, has shown itself over time not just as a spiritual guide, a holy movement for good. It is often just a human, ugly, weak institution cloaked in false or covered-up history, fancy dress and ritual all at the same time. They have done evil. That is not a revelation, really. Most of us have rejected religion while still having a sense of a higher power or, as a friend of mine puts it, a omnipotent Universal Force. But the whole of a ‘bad’ church in such disgrace is a very dramatic and steep decline.

And, yet, we are watching a very slow and gradual exposure of all of our institutions – just like the Catholic church – as having feet of clay and hands where they shouldn’t have been.

Canada’s revered Health Care system is coming undone, too. It is now bloated and often ineffective. Our cops are showing up as taxpayer-funded gangs of thugs. Education is NOT working – not for the betterment of humanity, anyway, and few of the degree holders are living happily. Our politicians are increasingly, greedy, elitist and stupid. We are seeing the reduction of myths and fantasies into blunt, harsh realities of vulgarity, coarseness and ugliness. .

Conclusion: the facades of our cultural institutions (and those of other cultures, too) are falling away….

How did all that happen in barely one generation (well, during my generation, anyway)?

Observation: culture is formed more by mass communication than anything else. The priest speaks, the cop speaks, the teacher speaks, the doctor speaks, the news anchor speaks….and we used to listen and obey. Advertising, media, institutional propaganda and the like all once carried some kind of mythical status by communicating en masse one basically similar message. We believed their myths and, as Marshall McLuhan said so well, “The medium is the message.”

But the main disseminator of mis/information today is NOW the so-called ‘social media’. The public is drenched in social media – right, wrong or fantasy – we are saturated, immersed and engulfed in it. When I was younger and being brainwashed, I had to be home to hear ‘information’ on the 6:00 News. Or read a newspaper. Today, I can access tripe, crap, hate-speech, lies, propaganda, and occasionally some truth, in seconds anywhere and at anytime. Our information, misinformation and just-plain lies proliferates like the virus we also endure.

Is social media now just another false-front institution? Have we replaced old, fallible, human, rigid institutions with something MORE fallible, sub-human and disorganized? If so, that does not seem like a good trade-off.

And, like that now-familiar Covid virus, we do not know what is true and what is not anymore. That is perspective skewing at the very least.

Ordinary day for the RH family up the way. R worked the post office for a few hours. It was her day in the rotation. Her three kids went up the hill (250 yards) and attended school. Their young five-month old dog (Hazel) went with them, of course. All in all an almost ordinary day.

An ordinary day, actually, for the family might have had R staying home to do at-home stuff and the kids would go to school on their own. They live two islands away! Fifteen miles by remote, less-traveled channel, the kids would run the boat in any kind of weather and get to school on time. R’s eldest is 13. She runs the 17/18 foot high-powered top-of-the-line aluminum boat with as many as four other kids with her.

“Isn’t that dangerous?” Maybe. But J was trained for years by her parents before being given the helm. The first few times it may have been a bit intimidating for her (maybe not). But J now runs the boat better than the adults. “Why is she better?” She can do everything and she is extra responsible. She follows the rules and drives sanely. Everyone has life jackets on. She handles the boat with skill and precision. She’s very good.

But yesterday was a bit different. Hazel wandered off.

At first, I am sure, everyone was calm. They all called to her and wandered around looking but, by late afternoon, their day had been extended and it was starting to get dark and the wind was picking up. A five month old puppy has little chance out here all alone. All sorts of dogs have gone for dinner with wolves and cougars never to return. A five month old puppy is like ‘dinner walking’. A little bit of panic began to set in. Calls were made. Emails were sent. The community was alerted.

Sal was ready to get out there with flashlights and dog treats. Out here, your window is a short one and, if really, really lucky, the pooch might survive one night somewhere (likely near the school) but there isn’t a snowball’s chance for her to survive two.

To be fair, there is usually some local traffic and people do come and go from the area of the school and the post office. And no one would leave a puppy out at night. If you are gonna get lost, getting lost at the school is one of the safer places. But cougars (and all sorts of wildlife) pass by the school all the time. The ‘Nature Path’ for wildlife is just a few hundred yards away. It is the path followed by animals when going from island to island. The Nature Path goes to the narrowest gap in the channel. Bears, wolves, deer and cougar are commonly sighted by those living near or on that route.

Of course, Hazel had not gone far. She was found nearing dinner time by R and the family close to the school. She just took a puppy time out. Maybe went to sleep? Who knows? But family out here includes the pooches and R’s family was on high alert for awhile.

It is all good now, thank Goodness. Still, it was kind of a little OTG moment that most people wouldn’t feel as strongly living elsewhere. OTG has more than a few variables, as you know, but our ‘interface’ with wildlife is a special one.

Typically we, actually Sal, goes up the stream to clear the system maybe, on average, once a month. I drive her and the pups in, go do something else and then go back and pick ’em up cause there is no dock or landing at our beach). The stream intake for our water system often gets clogged with debris and pine needles. In the winter it might be a bit more frequently but, regardless, Sal’s hiking the trail a lot. Lately the clogging up has been even worse. This time even some of the pipe got crushed by fallen trees. So Sal went up the trail again today. The best part for her is that the dogs now go with her and love it. They think the trail is so much fun!

Of course, Sal falls in almost every time so that is always fun. When the task is done, Sal drips and slimes back to the boat soaking wet and looking half-drowned. “Wha’ happened?” “Slipped. And then a fitting came undone so I got drenched. Then I slipped again.”

C’mon! THAT is fun! (For me, anyway.)

The dogs are really enjoying the trip to the creek more and more. When I came into the beach this time they joyfully ran into the ocean water and bounced and splashed in anticipation of my arrival. They were frolicking! No reluctance-to-get-wet was evident. Great! Mind you, minor reluctance is starting show up in Sal (no frolicking) so we’ll see how that all eventually pans out. Poor Sal.

Day before yesterday, we went over to the storage yard and sussed out what needed doing on the new boat. The dogs came. In the car, Daisy puked all over Sal again – Poor Sal. Gus kept his breakfast down – for the first time. Mind you, he seemed very intent on putting his head out my window – while standing on my lap – and I was driving at the time!

So, once there, we all putzed about measuring and assessing and taking notes. Or digging random holes in the yard. Conclusion: we’ll likely be ‘on the hard’ for a whole month. It’s not that the work is so much but rather it’s that we’re getting on and the trip in takes an hour and there’s a lot of dog puke involved. Plus we and the boat are in a field. No power. No water. All done without too much in the way of support facilities. And then an hour to get home….with more puke looming the whole way. Poor us (mostly Poor Sal).

Still fun, tho.

Yesterday we had to take the pups in for their 4 month shots and physical exam. Sal put on full wet-weather gear. “If they’re gonna puke all over me, I do not want it soaking into my clothes like the last few times!” Sal is adapting to the new reality. Poor ol’ Sal.

Gus rolled into the vet at 51.6 pounds. Daisy at 44. Still, they received an exemplary bill of health and all sorts of petting, treats and admiring comments.

It’s a bit ironic….the dogs are getting bigger, stronger, smarter and learning more and more…we, on the other hand, are getting older, with less energy and forgetting everything….and the four of us just play, plug and puke along as if this is all normal.

Today, Sal said, “Ya know, Dave, I am not so sure this really is all normal.”

“Well, Sal, falling in has become normal….especially for you! Puke has become way too common lately, if not actually normal. Fixing boats has been normal for an even longer time in our lives. The only part really not normal is that we are getting old.”

“So, you are saying all sorts of female septuagenarians fix boats, climb streams and sit in dog puke?”

“Yep. Very common. That’s exactly what female seniors do – more often than not with grandkids, tho. Just get used to it. Maybe find an OTG forum on it? I am sure you’ll have a whole bunch o’ new friends in the puppy, puke and dunk forum for OTG seniors.”

I bought a boat. New-kinda. Home-built. Still a bit unfinished. It is technically a wooden boat but there is so much epoxy and f’glass used in the construction, it is really more of a composite. Mind you, enough of it is bare wood that it would be eligible for the Wooden Boat festivals and will be the focus of much more maintenance than a ‘glass’ or aluminum boat.

In 1963 John Atkin designed a simple dory-style, semi-lobster-boat-looking vessel for personal pleasure use. It was called the Ninigret 22 after a famous coastal lagoon off Rhode Island and, as the name suggests, it is 22 feet long. It is 6′ 8″ wide at the beam and draws only a foot of water. Ninigret has a fine steep entry that will take a mid-sized sea but our area is generally quite protected (by standard nautical perspective) and it will do me very well. The best features for me are that it is ‘easily driven’ and has a large cockpit. Our life off the grid requires that we carry a lot of stuff and that ‘stuff’ now includes two ginormous fur-balls already the size of an adult female passenger. And they are getting bigger.

Typically a modern planning-hull boat 22 feet long, would require at least 200 horsepower to get up on a plane and go 25 knots or so. 200 hp and a helluva lot of gasoline. But to drive a displacement-hull the same size can be done with something around 10 or 12 horsepower. Displacement speed is slower (1.4 times the square root of the waterline or 1.4 x 4.2 or almost 7 knots for this boat).

Niniget is a compromise of those two styles and is, logically, deemed a semi-displacement hull and, also logically, requires a power plant somewhere in the middle. Atkins designed the boat to be powered with a 25 or 30 hp outboard but, over time, people have put on as much as a 60 hp. My new boat has a 40 hp and should do about 20 knots with just Sal and me, 18 knots with a reasonable load and we should still clip along nicely at around 8-10 knots chock-full.

Mike, the builder, is older than I am but he started building the boat years ago and just poked away at it until he got to the point that his age began to inhibit his progress and, at the same time, suggest that extensive future use of the finished boat was unlikely. Mike put it up for sale and I bought it as he puts it: “90% finished“. So I still have some work to do but it will be running within a month (assuming Murphy doesn’t visit) and might be fully finished during the summer – maybe sooner.

Mike built the boat down in Vancouver. And that meant me taking my boat trailer down, loading the boat and (duh) returning home to some dry storage site to finish off what needed doing before putting it in the water. The dogs throw up in the car and, as great a help as Sal is, her accompanying me was not worth the effort and leaving the dogs with anyone else at this time in their puppyhood was out of the question. I was gonna go alone but my nearby friend, SD, volunteered to join me and so two old dorks with ropes and tools headed to the BIG SMOKE to get a boat.

Getting to the Lower Mainland from here is usually a ten-hour trip. If all ferry connections go perfectly (very rare) it can be theoretically done in eight or nine hours but most people (me included) plan for twelve and the whole day is spent in transit.

We stayed overnight in a B&B near Mike’s place and, in the morning, joined Mike and his just-arrived adult children along with Roger, my friend and partner up here, in getting the boat out of the garage and onto the trailer. It went well. But we were all initially concerned that with the trailer being only 16 feet long, and the boat being 6 feet longer, we just might drag or hang out too much.

SD is a retired tradesman with several professional designations to add to his considerable marine knowledge. We all milled about at first humming and hawing, planning and proposing and generally procrastinating and delaying until SD kinda took charge. By noon the boat was on the trailer and strapped down. SD made sure it was loaded right and there was no danger of it dragging. We headed home.

After dropping the boat at the dry-land storage on the neighbouring island, we took SDs boat to my house where he was re-united with his dog (Sal had three dogs to look after for two days) and I with my family of three and it was a reunion at exactly 10:00 pm in a light rain. SD left for his place and, with luck, got dry by 10:30. It was a successful venture in every regard. No Murphy. No hassles. Nothing broke. Everything worked out.

But SD and I were both exhausted.

There will be more on the new boat as things progress. It’s another project!

Gus is almost 50 pounds (49 with the needle jumping a bit to 50)! Daisy is trailing in a dainty 40 pound glamour-bod (more leg, fluffy hair, extra bit of bounce). That is 90 pounds of dog!

Gus just thuds. Well, he rolls and runs and climbs all over but each paw sends reverberations through the granite rock or, well, OK, maybe it’s my imagination....? Put a bit differently; Daisy seems to walk on air, like a ballerina. Gus walks like a weight-lifter after a big lunch.

They are both (duh) growing like weeds and it is a smidge intimidating. “I swear the guy grew last night! I mean, he just LOOKS bigger than just a few hours ago!”

Eighteen weeks old! Four and a half months! Still puppies, still growing, still eating and still goofier than hell! A lot of fun.

Sal does most of the dog walking. I do a bit. Funny how a walk with a dog makes you see things differently. Yesterday, there were three separate Garter snakes sunning on the rocks. The dogs were fascinated. But the snakes being cold-blooded were not quick, not zippy. They were long slugs, actually. Gus sniffed. Daisy sniffed. Sal shrieked (to save the snakes) and both dogs gave up their new toys instantly. We’re a bit protective of Garter snakes. They are good for the garden and keep the insect pests away.

“We saw a mink, David! Daisy even kind of ambled over to it. It was not much of a chase and the mink didn’t run. I think Daisy got distracted. Anyway, the mink jumped in to the ocean and swam off.” Sal was more excited than the dogs. The dogs are definitely NOT hunters. Lesson learned: how we have this weird little community of squirrels, snakes, dogs, otters, ravens and mink and Spring is waking everything up……

But, it is said by Sal, that they are becoming ‘alert’ dogs. Which is some kind of descriptive sop for a dog that doesn’t do much. To pad out their resume, Sal also throws in “….good trail dogs, too.”

“What the hell is a trail dog and what makes one dog a better trail dog than another?”

“You know….we are all on the trail and they stay on the trail unless they stray a bit but they always come back to the trail….?”

“Sweetie, that is just a good dog. There is no such thing as a trail dog. Quite honestly, I have always doubted your reference to ‘alert’ dog, too. All dogs bark when they hear or see something new. That’s what being a dog is.”

“No, no. They alert me. So, they are alert dogs. That’s their job. And they walk on the trail really well. So they are great trail dogs, too.”

“Well, in that case, I am going to describe them as being good ‘pooping’ dogs, good eating dogs and good sleeping dogs. What the hell…they are great tail-wagging dogs, too!”

The truth is they are great at just being dogs and they do not have to prove anything to me at all. Especially not at four-and-a-half months! I might have expectations of them sometime in the distant future but, for now, they are just perfect.

Sal, on the other hand……..

This topic is a real struggle for me. It’s basically about truth, lies, propaganda and the resulting confusion, mistrust and apathy that inevitably follows. But, at a different level it is also about function, energy allocation, focus and life. It’s personal! Put bluntly: it turns out we need truth to operate properly and lies makes us operate like idiots!

My examples below are not particularly good ones but they are recent, current, ongoing.

Let’s first look at how our media’s current dysfunction recently affected Trudeau and, ultimately, us. He was just given a good dressing down by some European parliament MPs who accused him of first being a China-lover, then a democracy hater and finally a bully because of his actions regarding the Freedom convoy that occupied Ottawa. I am, as you know, 100% displeased with Trudeau as a leader but everything they said about him was wrong. Totally fabricated. Two idiots in Europe have miscast Trudeau to the European Union. Two idiots have miscast Canada and the people in it.

How do we explain away two well-placed, educated, informed and elected MPs being so ignorant, so wrong and so misled?

Blame it on the media, I guess.

Now let’s look at Ukraine and Russia, for a second. I read, see, hear every day how valiantly the Ukrainian forces are defending their country and, frankly, I believe most of it. I hear of Russian soldiers deserting, surrendering, condemning their leaders. I kinda believe much of that, too. I see wrecked Russian tanks, fallen fighter jets and helicopters and even a good-sized ship or two that has been sunk. Ukraine is punching way above their weight. I am sure of that….. well, pretty sure…..

And yet…..Russia plods along. The heroic messages and stories do not quite jibe with the fall of Mariupol and the loss of the two eastern states. There has to be a lot more going on. But what is it? Most of the real story goes unreported, I think.

Blame that on the media, too, I guess.

And the media have been reporting the fall and destruction of Trump’s evil empire for a long time. For four years it was ‘wait ’til the next election and then he’s gonna get his.’ And then Biden won. And then the Attorneys General, the FBI, the special counsels and the media ramped it up. And yet, Manafort, Stone, Bannon and, most of all, Trump, family and friends still just carry on. Put another way, Capitol rioters who only violated the law of trespass and vandalism are already in jail and doing their time. Trump has been crooked since the day he was born. But he’s free. How is that possible? Is he going down? Or not?

Oh, hell, blame that on the media, too, I guess. To my mind, if Trump doesn’t suffer significantly, there is something significantly wrong in this world.

“Dave! What’s your point?”

The media can’t be trusted? The media do not do a good job? The media is just propaganda? Maybe the media cannot do a good job?

I really do not know the answer. I guess the media (whatever it REALLY is) has been that way for a long time and it is only the rapid inclusion and infusion of social media that has cast this different light on our primary information source. We were not confused when we had only one main media stream. Now we have many and the result is just confusion. Maybe we have been lied to or at least misled all of our lives?

Confusion? Mistrust? Apathy?

My Hong Kong friends constantly tell me a different story of Hong Kong than the one our media presents. They are happy. Western media says otherwise. My friends who go to Mexico every winter consistently tell me different stories about Mexico, too. I have friends in the Philippines, Germany, Britain and the United States. They all tell me different points of view from that which is reported.

Confusion? Mistrust? Apathy?

Bottom line: I have never read an accurate story about anything I was closely involved with either. Never. Not once. The reporter always got it wrong. That was usually quite alright for me because I was almost always the sympathetic subject (delinquents, Skid Row, refugees) and they told a story that made me look better than I was by a huge dollop of exaggeration. But they got it wrong. People reading it without the background were misled. Those reading it with the right perspective, were either lied to, misled or knew it was wrong but they were also okay with it (sympathy floats all boats in Skid Row).

Maybe the truth is too elusive and all we can hope for is to get close…….

“And sure enough, there it was,
not the sought-after needle, but,
to my agreeable astonishment,
the haystack in the field by the lane.”
― Robert Kroetsch,