I can’t recall his name* but some ex-Liberal MP (southern Ontario) was on the radio last night explaining his reluctance to run again.  Seems MPs are a waste of time.  They can’t do anything.  He felt useless most of the time.  According to him, all the power resides in the Prime Ministers office and government and opposition MPs alike are impotent in every meaningful way.  The most they can hope for is if they are in the party that forms the government. Then they might get some crumbs thrown their way for their riding or themselves.  Even at that, their voice in getting the crumbs is the least heard.  Even being a winner is being a loser if you are not near the very top. 

(Editor: found it on the CBC website: http://www.cbc.ca/asithappens/episode/2012/03/08/the-thursday-edition-19/.  His name is Glen Pearson)

‘Course, we’ve known this for years but this is the first time I have heard an MP say it ‘out loud’.  On CBC, no less.   Mind you, he did wait til he was no longer an MP.  He had lost the last election by just a few votes (18, I recall) to a Conservative and he was being interviewed because, despite the opportunity presented to perhaps get the previous election overturned, he was not willing to get back into the snake pit that is Parliament.  He was not going to challenge the results even if Elections Canada concluded that he lost by dirty tricks.  He was just plain sick of it.

Interesting.  But not as interesting as his reasoning.  He claimed that the Conservatives and many modern parties have a plan to ‘disengage’ the average voter.  The idea is to reduce the voter turnout to the ‘fully engaged’ and most strident voter – get the middle-of-the-road guy out of the way.  And, he claims, low voter turnout proves the plan is working.

With the ‘moderate-centre’ gone, then it is just the right versus the left and the right have more money.  Ergo, low voter turnout will be more likely inclined to the Conservatives.  Throw in a few dirty tricks where necessary and the whole picture becomes so disgusting even more people turn away.  What appears to be apathy in the electorate is purposefully generated disgust and revulsion.  It is a conscious political tactic.

This guy claims that the government will only get worse because by being anti-voter, they turn off more of the opposition than they do their own.  The smaller the vote, the better for the party in government.

A friend of mine said to me the other day,  “I love the blog.  Read it every day.  But, honestly, man.  The ravens and dogs are better than the politicians.  No one wants to hear that stuff.  I don’t read those political rants, myself.  Stick with whales and stuff.”

Reminds me of Walt Kelly all over again.  His cartoon character, Pogo, said, “I have seen the enemy and the enemy is us!”

Wednesday was community-building day.  We went to put up dry wall in the old bunkhouse.  Sal and I arrived just after R, L, J, D and G had gotten started.  We unpacked our junk and looked for something to do.  I went over to D.

“Hey, man.  Long time.  Two months.  Miss me?”

“Nope!”

“Aw, you’re just saying that, you old mushy guy, you.  Tryin’ not to get too emotional eh? Wanna hug, man?”

“Nope.”

D is a good guy.  A smidge reserved and stand-offish at times but it comes from being a top bureaucrat for longer than he should have.  Longer than anyone should have.  Ministry of Justice.  He affects this old, retired brigadier-type thing.  Kinda gruff and growly.

“Read my blog?”

“Nope.  Already know about El Salvador.”

“How’d you know it was about El Salvador if you hadn’t read it?”

There is a grunt, a hint of a smile.  Then a grumbled, “Well, my wife reads it to me.  But I don’t listen!”

“That reminds me”, I said. “A reader wrote to comment on the aging article.  He’s our age.  Claims many of us can’t put our pants on while standing up anymore.  Hey, D, can you put your pants on while standing up?”

“What!?”  He looked horrified.  As I mentioned, D is a bit ‘starched’.  His reaction was something like that of the Queen if you had inquired after her personal habits.

“You heard me.  Can you put on your pants while standing up?  Better question; can you take them off while standing up?  One never knows when that might be necessary,eh?”

“What kind of a question is that?  That is too much information!  Does your wife know what you are saying?!

“Well, not at this particular time but she would expect this kind of thing from me and, further, she would expect me to get the answer.  C’mon, out with it!”

“Well, if you must know……..of course I can put my pants on standing up!” And he harrumphed and blustered like some Agatha Christie character in an English mystery novel.

“I figured.  I’ve watched you bend over.  Everyone has.  But the real question is can you put on your underpants first?”

“What!?  Watched me bend over?! Who watches me bend over?!!

“Well, I have to tell you that I can do it standing up.  I can put on my underpants and then my jeans.  Standing up.  And I am a smidge older than you.  Mind you, I wear boxers and I get big ones.  My shorts are round enough to double as a bed skirt.  It’s easy if you get really big ones.  Now tighty-whities would be hard to do.  Impossible, I think.  You don’t wear tighty-whities do you?”

D was about to come undone.  He spluttered and harrumphed, he fussed and scowled and, basically, was at a loss for words. He turned back to the drywall and examined the screws and tried to calm down.

G and S had heard all this and were smiling…………..

He spun around and addressed me in a strong clear voice, “If you must know, it can be done!  Easily.  You just have to drop the garment to the floor, use your foot to open the leg holes and then you step in, bend down and lift.  Voila!  Easy as pie.  No balancing on one leg necessary.” 

I just looked at him.  Flat affect.  And waited a long time before responding……….

“Wow, man.  Tighty-whities, eh?  That really is too much information.”

Aging is a weird thing.  Don’t you think?  Aside from all the changes one might expect, there seems to be at least as many more that are a complete surprise.  And I am constantly surprising myself.

I am not just talking physical and mental changes though they do tend to mostly manifest that way.  I am also talking about shifting phases-in-life, stages, perspectives, attitudinal shifts……..things that are more philosophical or intellectual in nature……….

I like to think of myself as open-minded and flexible – a liberally minded fellow who has enough years and experiences to still have some opinions but few, if any of them, are cast in stone.  And then, of course, I write a blog on politics and a whole lot of my old biases pop to the fore.  Surprise.

That is a form of calcification, a ‘learned response’ to stimulus.  Pavlovian, if you will.  But, then later, re-reading your own writing, seeing your own ‘automatic response-to-stimuli’, well, that is a different kind of thing again.  Reflective.  Contemplative.  It just might be a slightly different consciousness.  I dunno, but it comes with age.

I still get youth-like feelings.  I still get a visceral response about the mere mention of the Social Credit Party, for instance, and I am pretty sure they have been deeply interred for almost twenty or so years.  I can still see the frozen, plastic, insincere smile of Grace McCarthy like a rigor-mortis grimace in nightmares.  And Bill VanderZalms Colgate countenance still haunts the news even today.

These people are like the three witches in Macbeth for me.  No real role in the current state of affairs but somehow fitting in the shadows.  “Double, double, toil and trouble.”  What a Nightmare on Elm Street they are!

Hard to remain open and flexible when you are haunted so frequently by the past.  Still, I try.

But, I slip into that ‘curmugeon state’ pretty easily………..

“Don’t get me started about DERA/COPE!  The NDP!  The Liberals (all their variations on that Chameleon-based philosophy)!  Mind you, most of those bastards are all dead.  I really should let it go.  It all truly is a closet full of ghastly skeletons that no longer requires my attention”. 

Whew!…….gasp…..count to ten…….breathe……..1……….2………gasp……..3…

So, you see?  Aging, in this case, is seeing your habits, your reflex feelings as being ‘old’ and yet, ‘seeing that whole thing clearly, too’ and hoping it is somehow a bit of growth.

Hard to explain.

Another ‘aging’ thing is one’s sense of personal power on those bigger stages.  One eventually tends to get a broader sense of what constitutes meaningful influence or change and what power and control means with the passage of time……and how there actually isn’t any…..well, not very much, anyway………and how things might seem to change now and then with immense Herculean effort but still, over the long haul, remain so much the same.

And the older person is not so sure if that is a good thing or a bad one.

I have come to learn that attempting to exert power over others is stupid, transient-at-best, ethereal/imaginary-in-your-own-mind and often pointless, really.  Plus Sal wouldn’t have any of it.  Ever.  99% of those so influenced just keep their mouths shut and walk away.  And everything else including your blood, sweat and tears just eventually washes away with the rain.

And that’s if you are doing good stuff!

And that’s if you know what good stuff is!

One eventually learns to let go of much of it.  Purposeful short term memory loss.  Late onset ADHD.  Lot of us old people get that.  Some even feign deafness.  Must be a survival mechanism.

Even the world-altering actions of such monsters as Hitler are being quickly erased from the current mindset.  Not many people feel influenced by WWll anymore.  (Strangely enough, I still feel the effects a great deal but that is another blog)

We find it harder and harder to remember because we find it harder and harder to think, to read, to learn and, with aging, to retain.  Or even to have someone to talk to about it.

Vast numbers of Canadians have no recollection of anything except, perhaps, hockey stats and what they had for dinner last night.  And they choose to have that state of mind on purpose.  History and even personal experiential perspective are just not big interests in today’s faster-than-understanding world.  Or maybe it is the faster-than-I-care world.

Or maybe it is a faster-than-I-can-afford-to-divert-from world.

Whatever. BIG pictures seem too big for most people.  And, the older person wonders, “…maybe they are?”

“History, old man?  That was then.  What have you got to entertain me with now?”

Here’s a fun game: go up to your younger co-worker or neighbour or brother-in-law and ask them if they think Keynes or Friedman had a bigger influence on the current financial system or was it more likely the lesser-but-more-recent efforts of Greenspan?  Then, as they try to process that question, add, “Or do you think the Sens should try to exempt them from the salary cap?”  

You’ll get……“Geez, man.  I don’t know.  What are you having for dinner tonight?”

But it may not be the world that is all at fault.  It could be me and this aging thing.  I may have just started out with too much testosterone and too few wars on which to spend it.  And now I don’t have either.  When I was young, I felt that I was just a few strategic moves away from running the world.  At 64, I am mildly surprised the dogs will do as I say.  It has always been tough to get your testosterone synched with the rest of the world.

Trouble is, I still have a bit of ‘snarl’ in me. Even if it lacks any power to influence.  Picture a very old, nasty, fat Chihuahua who still feels Mexican.

I expected to get a bit creaky as I aged.  ‘Specially my knees.  I even kind of expected to get a bit stupider, if for no other reason than I no longer feel the need to keep up, to be hip.  There just isn’t the drive to follow trends and fashions anymore.  Frankly,  a 3x t-shirt is the perfect fashion item for me now.  And a remote with big buttons helps. Some things were anticipated.

But that dumb and dumber feeling is because brain cells die by the gazillions in men after 60 and many of us didn’t come with too many to spare in the first place.  We’re now running on a quarter of a tank if not empty.  So, we have ‘snarl’ but no power, thoughts but shallow ones and huge perspectives on which to place tiny points of view.  Like a Chihuahua.

Put more bluntly: It seems to me that many of my contemporaries are walking around with their dried up walnut-like brains quietly rolling around in an ever-more roomy space.  They can’t find their keys.  They can’t finish their sentences, some are even piddling on the rug and I forgot what they were trying to say, anyway.

Oh yeah.  I remember now.  They were telling me the hockey score and what they had for dinner last night. 

The first Canadian Prime Minister was John A. MacDonald, a Conservative.  He was forced to resign as Prime Minister over the Pacific Scandal affair which brought to light secret campaign contributions from American investors interested in getting the contract to build the Trans-Canada railway.  Sir John A. experienced deep embarrassment over this weakness in his character and morals and resigned of his own volition.

Brian Mulroney, a more recent Conservative Prime Minister was investigated by the RCMP for suspicious dealings. Those allegations helped destroy his already shredded-to-tatters reputation.   But he wasn’t embarrassed in the least about that and, in fact, sued the Canadian government successfully for just over $2.1 million dollars for damaging his reputation further than he had managed to do on his own.

Brian Mulroney also accepted undeclared funds delivered secretly in paper bags from Karlhans Schrieber, a lobbyist for a European airplane manufacturer attempting to influence the Canadian government while Mulroney was the Prime Minister.

Mind you, the Karlhans Schrieber payments were revealed after the successful lawsuit against Canada to restore his reputation.  So Karlhans paid and we, the taxpayer, paid to assuage the feelings of a politician who accepted bribes while in office.  He is probably still not embarrassed.

John A. was humiliated and resigned.  Brian Mulroney was shamed and sued.  It would seem the blood still runs blue in the Conservative party but the embarrassingly low standards of behaviour have slipped even lower as the years have passed.

I can only shudder to think to what level the standards currently in vogue in the Conservative party have sunk.  How does one out-do ‘Paper-bag’ Mulroney?

Harper, it seems, has found ways.

And don’t think for a minute that today’s Conservative party doesn’t inherit the traditions and behaviours of it’s former members.  Of course it does.  Parties are like loose families.  Some members carry the party genes down the line generation after generation, election after election.  This is what makes a Tory a Tory.  It’s what makes a party a party.  They carry and share the values of their ancestors.  And they even call such beliefs ‘our traditional values’.

Stephen Harper and his MPs have the same values as Brian Mulroney.

In effect, when a person joins a party, they are claiming allegiance to the values of the others in the party, especially the leaders and the previous leaders.  A member of the Conservative Party of Canada is saying (in their defense: I believe they are saying it without knowing they are saying it), “I accept the taking of bribes/doing dirty tricks/selling out our heritage/mismanaging funds/usurping our rights/invading our privacy/ignoring the poor even if it is to the greater detriment of the Canadian people.” 

How can they deny it?  Even if they, personally, don’t accept bribes or do dirty tricks or lie and cheat and steal, they accept it in their own party.  It is a matter of record.

And this is the real point of the blog.  Most Conservatives I know are not that way inclined at all.  They are decent, honest people…………(albeit in denial about their political friends). 

The problem?  They are not looking past the name of the party.

To be labelled a small ‘c’ conservative is what they want to be saying.  “I am fiscally conservative.  I am even somewhat socially conservative.  And I think government should be as small as possible.  I am disinclined to vary greatly from what have been CANADIAN values.  I like Canadian values and I want to see them continue.”  I believe that is what virtually everyone (not deeply entrenched in the party) who votes Conservative is saying.

But BIG ‘C’  Conservative is just a name.  It is a word that doesn’t express the values of the party, it just differentiates one group from another.  Those who vote BIG C Conservative because they hold small c conservative values are being duped by the label being waved by crooks.  It is just branding.  It is just marketing.

Do you think a Ford actually fords (as in crossing a river?).  Do you think Armstrong cheese is made by strong arms?  Do you think Liberals are liberally minded?  Of course not.  So why would anyone think a Conservative has conservative values?

Put more bluntly:  they do not!

To be really ‘aware’ of what I am saying consider this simple question: which party conserves?  Which party promotes the preservation and conservation of that which Canadians value highly?  Which party could honestly be called Conservatives?

The answer is the Greens.  Here is a party totally dedicated to traditional values, sustainability, local economies and protecting the environment.  It is pretty hard to be any more conservative than that.

Go look up the definitions of conserve and conservation, why don’t you?

In fact, the Greens are so conservative, many people don’t vote for them because they seem unsophisticated in modern ways.  We are afraid the Greens haven’t evolved enough to understand business and the economy the way it is currently being played.  We think they would ‘lose’ in the economic sweepstakes.

And that fear is well-founded.  Greens are not crooks.  Not yet, anyway (power has a way of corrupting so watch that Elizabeth May like a hawk!).  The Greens don’t owe big business favours.  Greens don’t have a network of dirty tricks, secret plans and criminal operatives.  We are quite right in fearing that they can’t play the game the way it is played.

But isn’t that what we want?

My boat isn’t so good.  Waterlogged, I think.  It’s an old whaler-style, heavily laid up and it has been used a long time,  It is pretty old.  Fibreglass boats don’t die so much as they just get heavier and heavier as they absorb more and more.  I can relate.

The old ‘Surf’ is 16 feet long and a helluva design.  It is similar to a Boston Whaler.  I can stand on a corner and it remains stable and relatively level.  That is a good feature for old, heavy guys whose balance is not what it used to be.  I love the design concept but I sometimes wish it was a bit bigger.  I have lots of stuff to ferry about.

Plus I am not getting any lighter myself.  Something has to give.

Slow, steady and stable

And this one needs power!  A 16 footer shouldn’t need 70 horsepower.  And worse, I only have 50!  So, it is a good boat but not economically or functionally ‘sustainable’ in the long run.

It works, though.  That’s good.  I am not going to sink.  And that is even better.  But I may have to do something about this situation and, if I do, it may involve boat building.  Gadzooks!

There are few undertakings by individuals more destructive to their health, their finances and their relationships than that of boat-building.  On a percentage wise basis, you are statistically more likely to become a healthy, active, accomplished and revered member of society from the experience of being an ex-heroin addict than from being an ex-boat-builder.  In fact, very few boat-builders actually ever finish their boat and thus do not even get to the ‘ex’ stage.

Boat-building: the unwritten tragedy.

Shakespeare might be more respected as a writer if he had addressed the tragedy of boat-building but I am glad that he left me the opportunity.  Sadly, though, one really must live the experience before writing about it and I don’t think I have the cojones.  “To build or not to build……..?”  

“Alas, poor (fill in the boat-builder’s name), I knew him well!”

It probably won’t come to that.  I hope not.  Boats are pretty cheap these days.  No one can really afford to run them anymore just for fun and many can’t afford to ‘moor’ them if they aren’t going to be used.  There is a glut of boats on the market and, in the states, some old boats are just being abandoned.

You’d think I could find something wouldn’t you?  But so far, no luck.

Partly, it is me.  I want a boat about 20 feet long – give or take two feet (but, like most boat owners, it is easy for me to fall in love with just about anything that appeals).  I want it to go fast (planing hull) and use very little fuel (displacement hull).  I want it stable (square-ish) and sleek (pencil-like).  I want open decks and no cabin but I want to stay dry when it is raining.  I would like to use the existing motor I have (Honda 50 – but that is like trying to find a wife whose finger fits the engagement ring you’ve already bought.  Wrong order of things.)

It is because of all that I am considering building what I want but, to be fair, building the impossible is just as hard as buying the impossible.  Boats just don’t do all things well.  Boats are compromises.

Still, there are a few designs that compromise well.  Power catamarans do a lot of what I want.  Lighter-weight whaler designs do that, too.  Generally, speaking I can get a bit of what I want but I can’t get all of what I want.

I want, I want and I want.  But I am not prepared to pay, work or even search too hard.  I just want.  It is not the recipe for success we have come to rely on but it is the one I am employing right now.  It could happen…

Dreaming.  It is the way of boats.

It is the way of all things.

Just got back from shlepping tools and I am tired and sore.  Not so much because of the tool carrying – rather just because I am gettin’ on and everything makes me tired and sore.  Feel the need to be a bit grumpy, if you don’t mind….

I have to comment on the recent revelations that the Conservative Party of Canada used ‘dirty tricks’ to get elected (gasp!).  Seems they used automated calling devices (robo-calls) to phone voters that they had profiled as being NDP or Liberal and they then instructed those voters that the polling station had been moved.  People were sent to places miles distant just to find that the so-called official Elections Canada phone call was false.

Oh my.  Nasty stuff.  We are not amused.

Having said that, I recall working for the NDP when I was young (If you are not a liberal/socialist/Green when you are 25 you have no heart.  If you are still a liberal/socialist/Green when you are old, you have no brains….a David-ized version of Churchill’s statement so often quoted and I plead guilty to still having no brains)…and being informed at the party head office that all of our cars had been towed!  Seems someone who knew of the NDP offices called a towing company and about twenty of us had to go down to the city impound lot to get our cars out of hock.  That was in the 60’s.

I quit all parties after that.  It was too ugly.

Back in the ’30’s there was a political activist by the name of Saul Alinsky who drafted a veritable manual on how to rig democratic processes in Chicago.  I remember one: provide lots of free extra-strong coffee to the voting crowd early and often and have your supporters not drink any.  Close the bathrooms when the meeting begins and then drag out every speech as long as possible.  When the crowd had thinned – which it had to – the vote was called and the majority of those left were your non coffee-drinking supporters.

Democracy.

Having been involved in a number of electoral processes (and No!  Not once playing a dirty trick.  I swear!) I watched in horror as Saul Alinsky tactics were adopted by one of the Vancouver Civic parties all the time.  It was their main way to ‘get ahead’.  Their primary trick was to have all their supporters join a society at the last minute and then have all their people elected to that board.  The thing is, this group used to do it to hospitals and charitable organizations and then, with the board stacked with their members, they would ‘feed’ off the resources of the innocent-bystander society or service.  More than a few civic campaigns were subsidized by unwilling hospitals, charities and other groups that had the photocopy machines, phones and budgets to drain.

My point: Saul Alinsly did it.  Richard Nixon did it.  And I am pretty suspect of GW Bush and his brother Jeb down in Florida during the presidential election when Al Gore didn’t win.  And the Liberals were renowned for ‘buying’ favouritism in Quebec for decades.  The Conservatives – if guilty as charged – are simply the latest dirty rotten scoundrels in a sewer full of them.  Frankly, I am not in the least surprised by this.

Having said that, I am surprised by the inneffectiveness of the RCMP and Elections Canada.  We know the politicians are crooks but, really, admit it – you thought our actual ‘voting’ system was pretty good, right?  Apparently not.

And this boggles the mind:  Elections Canada and the RCMP (according to the CBC) announced that they were going to investigate fully the allegations of wrong-doing by the Guelph chapter of the Conservative Party.  They announced that they were on their way days before they were, actually, on their way. What is that?  A polite raid?

Does that mean the RCMP phones the Hell’s Angels and says, “Hey!  We’ve got some suspicions about you guys and we think we might find some evidence at your clubhouse so we are coming to see you next week.  Yes, we are.  You’ll see.  We’re on our way.  Now don’t you go trying to hide anything, OK?”

It will come as no surprise that the next radio commentary mentioned that Conservative party members were reviewing their Guelph office records the very next day.  “No, we are not listening to any tapes or looking through files.  We are just trying to determine if any of us were involved.  Inadvertently, of course.”

Which leads me back to the tools.  We got ’em.  Took half of them up the hill and into the shop. But, by then we were tired, hungry and sore.  So we left the other half on the dock. Some of the others will get to it, I am sure.  There is always tomorrow. The tools are safe.  No one is going to steal them.  No one is going to vandalize them.  This is a good place.  It is a nice place.  The people are good.

It should come as no surprise that we have no politicians.  No police.  No judicial system and no bureaucrats.  We have no riches, no commerce, not even a store to shoplift from.  We got people but none that belong to a political party.

Whew!

Just as well, I think. Seems some people will cheat to get ahead.  And we don’t need any of that out here.

Yesterday was community work day.  We were back at it with diminished gusto after a winter hiatus (the spirit was willing, the flesh somewhat reticent).  We started by putting up dry wall and then I left the tough-going to Sal and J, D & R and went down to the Q-hut to meet H and prepare the new space for all the workshop tools we are getting.  They are coming by barge on Friday.

That’s the day – wouldn’t you know – that all the guys are scheduled to go to town and shop or, more likely, see the doctor.  Seeing the doctor seems to be a regularly scheduled stop these days.

‘Course, it wasn’t planned that way.  Really.  People were going to be here.  It is just that, well, the doctor doesn’t travel (neither does the grocery or hardware store) and appointments are made well in advance. The planets just didn’t align this month, that’s all.

The barge travels on the first three days of the month.  Always does.  That’s the schedule.  Sometimes it goes north first and then circles down south.  Other times the circuit is reversed.  It depends on the weather and the urgency of a needed delivery.  As a consequence, most of us have no idea when the barge will come.  So, we just carry on with our schedules and sometimes meet the barge and sometimes not.  Shame, really.  The arrival of the barge is always kind of exciting.

The barge is really a fantastic service!  This big sea-going behemoth carries propane and fuel along with pallets of supplies and materials all around a five hundred square mile area.  The guys nudge the 150 by 40 foot monster gently on to the beach (adjusting for tidal differences each time) and they unload all manner of things off the dropping front ramp.

The Barge Coming into the Dock

One of their main chores is to hump a heavy hose up the shoreline – sometimes hundreds of feet – to a filler pipe – and then, after the fuel has been transferred, wrap and drag the whole, heavy, dead-python-like thing back neatly onto the boat.  This ain’t easy.

Fancy GPS systems and such ‘hold’ the boat in place despite often being buffeted by strong winds and even more influential currents while the work is being done.  We typically have 1000 pounds of propane and a few gallons of other fuels delivered, only twice a year, but we feel like the captain and crew are good friends.  And they are.

Everybody’s landing is different and each landing is made more different by the conditions of the moment.  Doesn’t matter what they have loaded on the barge, they manage to find a way to unload it onto your beach in the most convenient-to-you way possible.  They get pretty creative with some pretty nasty, heavy, awkward and dangerous stuff.  I have nothing but respect for them.

Eight years ago we had two filled-to-the-brim porta-potties to get onto the barge from a steep rocky promontory (don’t ask – the answers don’t make any sense).  That was a major and stinky affair.

Whenever I call the barge head office and say my name, no one knows it.  I am just one of a hundred customers.  Then I say, “N, this is Porta-potty Dave!” N laughs every time and says, “OK.  I know where you are.  I know who this is!  hahahahaha!”

At least he knows who I am. 

This Friday the crew will have to squeeze down close to the public wharf (boats and things have to be rearranged to make enough room) and then they will unload onto the upper deck up at the community landing.  Then the work begins.  We have to schlep all that stuff up a steep gravel-strewn dirt road about 1000 feet to the Q-hut in which the tools are to be housed.

We may wait til Saturday when the ‘work crew’ members are all back from town.

I got a call yesterday from the captain.  “We’ll be there.  You can count on it.  But it is a bit difficult to make a business case for the tool delivery this time since we have absolutely no other customers over your way scheduled for fuel.  It makes it a whole lot more feasible to try to service a few other stops at the same time.”

“Give me an hour.”

Phone calls were made.  “Yo!  Cap’n.  Could you please stop by D’s and drop 1000 pounds of propane and three drums of fuel. Then stop by my place and drop 1000 pounds and one drum and I am pretty sure L is wanting much the same but he’ll phone you direct.”

I could hear the smile in the Cap’ns voice.  “Yeah, sure.  I think we can squeeze that in. See ya Friday.”

It is a different set of challenges getting things done out here.  One has to think onside the barge, as it were.

Boxes?  We are waaaaaaay outside the boxes.  Hell, I long for thinking inside or outside the simple boxes!  It should only be so simple.

Now I am going to have to start thinking upside the gravel road.

B&K are in Vietnam riding around on a small motorbike.  Having fun.  See it all at: http://circumnavigate2012.tumblr.com/

Sorry about the ‘plug’.  Just a smidge of parental pride.

Em and B are cutting the mustard in Hong Kong and teaching English at our favourite school.  They, too, are doing good and so the parental pride thing is a’bursting.

Parenting?  ‘Ship ém to Asia!’, I say.

It is not so much that they have things that I think that they should do.  It isn’t that at all.  These guys are grownups. They choose what they want to do.  It is just that they are all taking bites out of life and chewing it up (‘specially K’.  She’s a foodie).  These kids are living. That’s where the pride-thing comes from……young, competent, healthy people exploring the world, doing things, meeting people and doing it all well.  Plus they write to mom and dad.

Doesn’t get much better than that.

The fact that ‘screen time’ is minimized and exotic locales are explored in ‘real time’ on real motorbikes rather than ‘virtual’ ones is also a big plus.

Man…….I feel like a raven watching the fledges take off for points unknown.

Jack and Liz with one of their four(!) offspring last Spring

Speaking of which – Yesterday Jack swoops down and settles beside Sal.  He struts his way kinda close and gives her one of those ‘look at me’ stares.  Sal stops what she is doing and looks.  Jack sucks his craw down and splays his neck feathers out.  He is ‘scrunching’ down – presumably for effect.  At the same time, he makes a huffing and puffing sound, like wheezing in and out.  Does that for a few seconds.  He finishes with a loud sigh.

After that little display, he resumes his proper raven posture and gives Sal ‘the look’ again.  Sal stares back stunned.  Jack looks at her and repeats the display and performance.  Sal looks stunned.  Again.  Jack does it again.  After awhile Jack concludes that Sal ‘just doesn’t get it’.  He gives her a disdainful look, shakes his head in seeming frustration and flies off.  She can almost hear him say, “What a ditz!”

Sal is beside herself.  “Dave!  Jack was talking to me!  Honest!  He was trying to say something.  I think it was kinda intimate stuff.  Maybe.  I think.  Who knows?  It was ‘whisper-y’ kinda and all fluffed up with sighs and wheezes.  Jack was talkin’ to me!”

“I dunno, Sal.  Hard to tell with Jack.  He’s a raven, ya know.  They got a sense of humour.  I think he was just messin’ with your head.  Probably went back to Liz and they’re just a’cacklin’ over how he ‘got ya goin’. I think he knows a patsy when he sees one.” 

“Really?!”

“No, sweetie.  I have no idea.  But I know a patsy when I see one. Obviously!”

So we have no idea what Jack is up to but I have to hand it to him: he comes up with something new all the time.  Boring, he is not.  Liz?  Well, Liz has issues.  Hard to get to know Liz.  She’s a bit anxious.  Nervous.  Aloof.

Corvidae, eh? Hard to live with ’em.  Harder still to live without ’em.