Cleaned up the work shop yesterday. Took all day. Screws in the nail containers, tools in the wrong spot. Things out of place. Dirt everywhere. Sal has really been letting things slip!

“Shouldn’t you be a bit more diligent in tidying up around here, Sal?”

“What are you talking about? It is your workshop!”

“I thought everything was ours? That is what you say about the dishes. Doesn’t that mean these are our tools and that you own your share of the mess just as I own some of the dirty dishes?”

“Ooh……you are soooo bad! You are the worst, you are!”

Funny how much pleasure I get from such exchanges. Makes the work go better. For me, anyway.

It took us a day to clean up a workshop that is only 12 feet long and four feet wide. You’d wonder how that was possible. I certainly do. ‘Course, the dogs had to be played with. We had a couple of tea-and-muffin breaks and Sal went down to check the boats and tie up a loose log. That cut into the work somewhat.

Plus, I confess, I like to sharpen things as I find them before I put them away. So, every once in a while all cleaning stops while I fire up the grinder and ruin the edge of some tool. And add to the dust and mess, of course. One step forward, two steps back.

(Learning to sharpen is really quite an art, ya know? I got a book on it. But it is really hard to do it right. And not cut yourself when it works out – which it rarely seems to do. More than a few blood stains around my grinder, though, I can tell ya! Tip: Never take out a book on sharpening without also checking out a book on First-Aid!)

The worst part of cleaning up is the ‘catch-all’ box. It is the place where I put small things like extra nails, screws or parts left over from repairing something. It is temporary storage, before I put them away properly. Later. Like, today. Then I am faced with the daunting challenge of sorting through hundreds, if not thousands, of bits and pieces – none of which are valuable or are needed at the time – but that I have learned are essential to keep for later on. Like, when I am repairing that same thing again. So I am sorting through pounds of bits. What a crazy-making but necessary thing to do!

Then there’s the part or something that you don’t recognize but you know it belongs…some….where…? And so the search begins to find the ‘right’ spot which, of course, means nothing because fifteen minutes later you haven’t a clue where it is.

“Hey, did you see that little bronze thing with the hook and adjustable lever attached? Where is it?”

“Geez, I put it somewhere. Ya know? Somewhere where I won’t forget. Sheesh! Where is it?! I had it just a second ago.”

And so time passes as you both search for the thing you didn’t know you had until you found it and now you lost it.

“I must have had a series of mini-strokes or something. I can’t remember a bloody thing!”

“Ooh, yeah! That reminds me…….what was it that I asked you to remind me of?”

“Can’t remember. Was it getting out the dog food? Phoning someone. Putting something on the to-buy list?”

“No……………………..Oh yeah! …………………………. I remember now!”

“What? What was it?”

“Uh, it was to remember to clean up the workshop.”

In fact, it may just help – as a start – to find a place where you can watch the bees and the butterflies and grow some flowers while you are at it.  Gotta start somewhere.  

The following blog is intended to be a small, tiny cry of warning.  Indulge me.  I just have to say it out loud to people I care about.  I have no idea if it should be taken seriously.  But I take it seriously.  

There is no doubt that some things today make me optimistic.  Others pessimistic.  But, in the end, I have to look at ‘the system’ we have invested in (or better put: been conscripted into).  And I don’t like what I see.

The system is not designed so much for ‘the benefit of the people’.  It is designed for the management of the people.

Before I ‘drag’ you through something you don’t want to read, please see Alex Morton’s piece on salmon.  It was the subject of an article in the New York Times.  What she says about salmon is what I am saying about just about everything.  I am just not saying it as well as she does.

Please see: http://alexandramorton.typepad.com/ 

If, after that, you are still willing to read further, let me take you back a smidge…

Private property has always been in the hands of the rich and powerful but it became entrenched in law after the Enclosure Act in England.  And they didn’t do that back then for the common good, you know.  They did it to manage the common man.  Prior to that legislation, the people had access to the ‘common lands’ on which they farmed, gathered, grazed animals and hunted as they pleased.

After the Enclosure Acts, the peasants had so much less ‘commons’ that they were impoverished.  If they ‘poached’ or otherwise trespassed on the private land, they could be punished or even executed.  They needed to be managed and so they were herded into factories and mines.  And wars, of course.

Private land ownership was not a reward for the peasantry.  It was management of the peasantry.  And it hasn’t gotten any better for the poor or the middle class of today.   Imagine being 25 and looking at a half-million dollar mortgage to have a ‘starter’ apartment in downtown Vancouver?  ‘Handcuffs’ and ‘jail’ and ‘life term’ come to mind for me.  Über managment!

In fact, owning a home isn’t really a good idea at all.  It’s a mug’s game.  Owning real estate is a con!  You never stop paying for your house.  In fact, in 40 years most people have paid in taxes again what they originally paid for the house.  Live there longer than 40 years and you pay for it again in a much shorter period of time.  And if you don’t pay your property taxes they take the house!

Was it ever yours?  No.  It never was and it never is.  It is their house.  That, too, is part of the system.  Property ownership is just a subtle form of enslavement.  It is ‘capturing the taxpayer’.  You paid for your own jail (so did I)!

More evil is done in the name of paying the mortgage than all the crimes of theft and fraud rolled into one.   

And they don’t stop herding the sheople there.   Remember: they only ‘keep you to tax you’.  Think:  Matrix (the movie).  It was Ronald Regan who pointed out that there are 151 taxes in just a loaf of bread!   Eat the bread, and pay them the tax!  That is the system.
    
Friends of mine are selling their house for almost $900,000.  It’s a simple cul-de-sac type house in a boringly flat neighbourhood.  Nice place, actually.  But no mansion.  2000 sft.  They are doing this to ‘downsize’.  1200 sft.  Good idea.  They are going to buy the new house for $800,000.  But they won’t ‘pocket the difference’.  There are taxes and commissions and professional fees that will eat up at least half.  Not to mention moving expenses and ‘making the new-place-home‘ expenses.  Plus HST all over the place!  They may break even.  The government and the real estate industry will make out like bandits.  Because they are bandits!

My friends will pay the same if not more (similar tax rates and strata fees) to live in their down-sized home.  Who wins?

As I said, it ain’t just the real estate business.  It is everything.  In the early United States, nature provided all the meat and protein the populace at the time could want – given a little management.  Deer, pheasant, turkeys and wild produce were plentiful.  The bison herds of the plains covered the areas as far as the eye could see.  But then the American ”Enclosure Acts” came along with the railroad.  And all the deer and the antelope and the bison were slaughtered and replaced by cows, sheep and steers on ranches.

Ever seen a modern chicken factory?  A modern pig factory is even worse!

The landowners raised domesticated meat and charged the peasants for it.  They didn’t bother to restore the free bison herds.  Who would profit from that?  What was free for the poor person (Native American mostly, in this case) was now an expense for everyone.

The system: most of our protein was privatized.

Fortunately for the powers that be in Canada and the United States, the population embraced the industrial revolution (AKA captivity) with increased gusto and soon most everyone could buy their Wonder Bread while wearing a grey suit and living in a ticky-tacky box instead of living off the land.  But, of course, people had to work 8 hours a day back then to be able to do that.

Now we have to work that and more.  So does our spouse.  So do our kids.  That allows us to buy the suit, the box and the Wonder bread.  Well, smaller houses, maybe.  All stuck close together.  And Big Macs instead of real food.

151 taxes in a loaf of Wonder Bread helps perpetuate the system but you can be assured that it is not only bread and real estate that is ‘controlled’.

Monsanto is trying to privatize seeds!

GE was and is trying to privatize water!

Fish farms are trying to privatize fish!

And our (?) government is collaborating with all of it!

Just in case you are missing the point still: they do not own the bread!  It is not theirs to tax.  They don’t own the salmon.  They didn’t own the bison.  They don’t own the land or the water or the air we breathe.  They think they do but they don’t own us either! 

Don’t get me wrong: if you are going to have hundreds of millions of cattle, ooops…….. people, then ‘providing for them’ is necessary.  I guess.  And, of course, there is no point in having them just to provide for them, is there?  Ya gotta work ’em!  They are not pets!  They have to make a living, earn a profit and feed the machine.   The system makes sense to the system.

Not to me.

Capitalism.  It is not about the money.  The ‘system’ is also about keeping us ‘in our place’.

It seems that when we organize and ‘do business’, the only ones who benefit are those who ‘tax’ or control the basic necessities.  But the small producers (farmers etc.) don’t do well.  Neither does the fisherman.  Hunters went the way of the dodo (fittingly, I suppose).  Gatherers are now minimum wage exploited wet-backs from Mexico.  And even artisans and skilled producers are being replaced by cheap overseas labour and automation.  The rich get richer.  The poor get poorer.  Those who tax are responsible.

And the wild fisheries get privatized.

Soon the professional class will feel the constraints.  According to the ‘Occupy Movement’ they already are.

This is where the warning gets more close to home:

With modernization and globalization, we have also become even more dependent on the system and we peasants of the 1st-world are also fast becoming redundant to it!

Pretty soon, the rich won’t want to keep some of the more demanding peasants around any longer.  Why should they when they have plenty of eager, work-for-less peasants all  around the world from whom to pick?  Do you really think that the governments that bring you war, enclosure acts, lies, corruption and taxes are going to ‘treat you good’ when you are no longer useful?

They won’t even do that for the beautiful, harmless, free resource of magnificent salmon.  And they didn’t do it for the bison or the cod.  Or the dodo.

They ain’t going to do it for you.

No, they aren’t going to kill you.  Not directly.  But your pension will evaporate in some slight-of-hand.  Your cost of living will exceed your ability to meet it and sections of the ‘system’ you rely on will be withdrawn.  To do that, they will bolster the police, the laws and the regulations.  Hint:  some governments will go bankrupt so they don’t have to pay the people what they owe.  I know that only because that is what is already happening.  We can measure that today.

I have no idea what more they have up their sleeve.  But the writing is on the wall.  It reads: Warning! 

The ol’ Honda had a frayed starting rope. I used to ignore that kind of thing. ‘No sense fixin’ ít if it ain’t broke, eh? I’d say that with country wisdom just ‘a-oozin’. And I meant it, too. But that is just procrastinating with charm, really.

And then there’s the old wive’s version that makes much more sense: ‘A stitch in time saves nine’.

Once again the old double-y’s have it.

I could have gone to the Honda dealership but that would have entailed carrying the generator into town and then picking it up again a few months later. ‘Course, even then, they’d screw it up and I’d have to take it back again. Worse, I’d be a $250.00 lighter at the very least. I have long opted to ‘go it alone’ on this sort of thing.

Anyway, ‘how hard can it be to replace a starter rope?’

A Honda 2000 looks like a big red bar of soap. But it has screws and bolts, tabs and slots, clips and cinches just like the rest of us. I’ve been getting past clips and cinches since I was 16. Nothin’ to it.

Start with a smile…………

But I looked on the net just to be sure. And sure enough, it ain’t as easy as it looks. I won’t bore you with the sequence of events but suffice to say, Sally and I worked on that little genset all afternoon and we didn’t waste a move. Well, maybe a couple (like when Sal dropped a bolt under the deck). But, basically, we just followed the steps, put the parts in a tub and then replaced the pull-cord and reversed the order of steps taken to put it together. Piece o’cake.

But there are dozens of steps! Honest to God, I can remove your appendix with fewer steps. Fewer tools, too.

You see, the whole generator has to come apart. You don’t get gensets to look like soap and have easy access as well, ya know. Ya gotta take off the feet, take off the sides, take off the ends, take off the fuel tank and disentangle the electrics. Then you take off the pull-cord assembly. Plus you have to do this with bolts and pins that are rusted. One little blighter was so tough I had to drill it out hollow, use an easy-out and then make a bolt from another (metric, don’t ya know) to replace it. No big deal but not a 20-minute task.

But it impressed Sal. That’s pretty good after 40 plus years.

Living off-the-grid means doing with what you have, making do or doing without. It doesn’t mean ‘dealerships’. It doesn’t even mean always ‘getting parts from the parts supply’. And it sure as hell doesn’t mean ‘knowin’ what you are doin’.

It means ‘gettin’ by’ with what you got.

It is kinda fun (when it works out).

Difficulties in cyberspace

Worse, we’re doing this by e-mail.

It is worse because he e-mails me things like, “Yeah.  Ya gotta get in behind it if you wanna change the background colour.  You know?  That’s, like ‘admin’ dad!”

“Right”, I say, “admin.  Of course.  Gotta get behind it.  Right!”

I call out to Sally upstairs.  “Hey, Sal, Ben wrote and told me to ‘get behind it’.  What does that mean?”

“Dunno.  Gonna ask him?”

“Not yet.  I’m afraid to.  You know how he is.  He thinks I should figure it out.  He thinks it is good for me.  Sorta like when I was his dad and I’d say, ‘figure it out, son.  It’s good for you!  Well, this is payback.  ‘Big time’.  Damn his vengeful little heart!”

I am starting to think I will have to take an IT degree or something to earn back my status as the dad, ya know?  Right now, I am the doofus and I have been for quite awhile.  It’s starting to look like a permanent position.  I can’t let on that I haven’t a clue as to how to ‘get behind it’ or I may get further demoted to imbecile or something.  I’ll bet everybody under forty knows how to get behind it but me.  

“You wanna ask him?” 

“No way!  When it comes to computers, he just yells at me too.  I am also afraid.  Very afraid.  At least you don’t look scared.  I start to shake.  I’m thinking of going back to pen and paper, myself.” 

This is crazy!  I am NOT afraid.  I am gonna ask him what he means.

E-mail: “Ben, this is your dad.  Ya know……….I was well, getting ready to get behind it, ya know and, well, I don’t really know how to do that.  What exactly do you mean?” 

“Oh yeah, right.  I gotta make you an administrator. (tap tap tap in the background) There!  That’s done it.  Should be able to get there now.  Gotta go……….” 

“Hey, Sal.  That wasn’t so bad.  Seems I didn’t have a ‘get behind it’ pass but Ben just made me one so I am good to go.” 

“That’s great! He yell at ya?” 

“Nah.  He was great.  Abrupt but great.” 

And so I go to the new website.  I look around a for a button to click.  Any button.  Anything.  I can’t find a way in.  

“Hey Sal.  Still can’t find a way in.  I can’t write to my new blog!” 

“You gonna call Ben and ask him?” 

You crazy!  He’ll yell at me!”

I didn’t post yesterday.  When I don’t write it is because of one of two things; I’m either busier than a pig or just have nothing to say.  Yesterday was mostly the latter.  I was mute.

Not speaking or writing doesn’t mean that I am not thinking, though.  I am.  I got plans.  Lots of plans.  I am just not doing anything on them yet.  That’s all.

Actually, I am a dreamer first.  I have ten dreams for every plan I draw up and ten plans for every one I eventually do.  I am a 1% man-of-action.

And then the weather has to be right and the budget healthy.  1% is a big success rate.   

Sometimes the dreams are enough though, ya know?  You think something up, go explore the subject, make some pseudo-plans, keep digging and, next thing you know, that was enough.  The curiosity has been satisfied.  Time to move on.  It can be very satisfying and it is a helluva lot cheaper if you can do it that way.  Touring Russia came and went for me like that.  Been there, done that.  Kinda.     

Other times researching, learning and investigating is still ongoing.  It is a work-in-progress with information that may have already gone stale due to the sluggish pace.  That’s kind of fun, too.  In a way, one feels a bit like a historian, tracking the changes that are going on while you are still in the planning stage.  Costa Rica is like that for me.  Been dreaming of CR for over 20 years.  It has really changed in all that time I haven’t been there!

Or, just as often it is my wife’s initial response, “What are you thinking!?  Well, I am not going there.  NO way.  Never.  You can go, you fool.  Buy life insurance.  Call me when you get back.  I may or I may not answer the phone!”

I take that kind of response as a ‘maybe’.

If she continues saying that for a year or more, I may ‘let the idea go’.  But it takes at least a year and, if there is any let-up in the objections, I tend to get encouraged.  “Well, how much does it cost to get there and do we really have to take malaria shots and be armed?”

That is a yes!

I’ve been working on the converted bread van idea for a long time – over ten years – and I am making gradual but still encouraging progress.  

You should have heard Sal’s initial response to selling the cul-de-sac house-with-pool and moving to a remote island to build our own house by our own hands while living in an unfinished boatshed for two years.  Going to Borneo with a religious cult got a better first response.

And therein lies the point of this blog.  I am a dreamer.  Sal is a pragmatist.  You really need both to get something done.  Fortunately, Sally is also organized, practical, calm and not easily duped by romantic visions described seductively.  Nor is she convinced by repetitive haranguing and nagging.  I’ve tried that.  Sal just has to ‘get there’ on her own terms and then the magic of teamwork unfolds.  Then things get done.

It is a great system.  

I was staring out the window yesterday.  Contemplating.  A little movement in the bush caught my eye and out from the Salal bushes stepped four plump little quail.  The kind with the little hangy-down things on their heads.  Like decorations.  Pretty cute.   

They jigged and bobbed and zagged, feinting right and left but basically they headed right for me,  blindly oblivious to the huge Tyranosaurus-type (me) lurking behind the window.  I could see the whites of their eyes.  And I thought, “Geez, they are small.  I could eat all four of ’em and still go for some sweet-potato pie afterwards.  Maybe some chitlins, corn-pone and poke salad, too.”

No.  I didn’t really. 

Maybe for a sec’. 

I called up to Sal and she watched out the upstairs window while I kept my vigil downstairs.  Strange how fascinating little fat birds can be.  We were there for awhile.

Jack the Raven and Liz, his partner, are back for their regular ‘clean-up’ at the end of every day.  The eagles are back, too.  Making a nest.  Doing what they do.  Chum salmon are jumping all over the damn place.  A regular aquatic gymnastics show sometimes.  But, ya can’t catch ’em.  Need a license.  Plus they aren’t necessarily biting just ’cause they’re jumpin someone told me.  Doesn’t matter.  I couldn’t catch a salmon if there were six in my bathtub.  Just don’t have the ‘touch’.

The other day Sally heard something ‘scary’ in the bushes about a hundred yards from us. 

Megan was sitting down on the dock seemingly frozen in place and Sal called and called but she just wouldn’t budge.  So, ol’ Sal went to Meg.  She was gonna ‘hold a paw’ so that ‘Meg  felt safe and, in that way, the sweetie would come home for dinner.  Poor baby.’

We had no idea why she was ‘stuck’ on the dock, cowering in my boat.  

Sal got her and gently pulled her along until they drew near the aforementioned bushes.  Meg was resistant to say the least.  Then Sally heard it.  There was a screeching roar, a wild yowl of sorts, a sound of pain and threat and imminent danger.  It was also very,very loud.

Meg moved quickly then.  So did Sal.  They both got back to the house in jig time.

Interesting.

Probably nothing.  Maybe a cougar.  Possibly one of those ‘cougar ducks’, the kind that do perfect impressions of large feline predators.  You know the kind?  These are little wood-duck type fowl that can really screech like a cat.  Harmless.  But scary loud.  

That’s what we were thinking, anyway.  Just a duck.  No sense going to look for a duck, is there?  So we stayed home.  Had a cup of tea.  Killed some time over it, too.  Talked about the wonders of wildlife and all.  Meg and Fid were let in.  No sense in disturbing anything too wild, ya know?