Busy day yesterday. We went a’visitin’. Again. Then, Peter and Sarah arrived while we were away and were at home to greet us on our return. We had ‘family’ for dinner. A right social whirlwind, it was.

More finger-food and chit-chat tonight when we all go to the neighbours’ for happy hour.

The last twelve logs we have gathered will remain unchopped. Oh well……………

Our first ‘do’ was to say goodbye to a friend and neighbour who was, after 35 years, leaving the area. ‘M’ is 80. Been here for the better part of his life. Built houses, boats, furniture and all sorts of projects and he keeps at it all day long to this very day. They guy is a dynamo. Reason for leaving: “…..the fish have moved north. I came for the fish and I am following them. Bought a little place up past Alert Bay and I’ll keep catching the salmon for as long as I can. You’ll have to visit me sometime!”

And we will. Visiting and being visited is in our genes.

Another old buddy at the party had just come down from Bute Mountain. He had been asked to join the team that was ascending the ‘face’ of it so that some climber-type-guy (Dean Potter?) could leap off of it and plummet 6500 feet to the delta plain below. The ‘alpinist’ was going to do so wearing a squirrel suit, a body glove that puffed up with air and assumes an aerodynamic shape as the wearer falls. Kinda gutsy, if you ask me.

National Geo was filming it and ‘R’, being a famous and local mountaineer was asked to accompany them. ‘R’ is retired now and so he declined the climb and the plummet but he went along as an advisor, colour man and honorary team member. He loved it but it didn’t tempt him as I thought it might. “T’aint no country for old men!”

So, mountain climbers get smarter as they age, it seems.

Can’t say as the rest of us do. Seem to be gettin’ stupider, myself. ‘Course all that finger-food and martini-sipping isn’t helping. Can’t say much for the over-exposure to chit-chat, either. That kind of thing can wear a man down, you know? Makes ya crazy!

Gotta know when to quit. Usually we ‘quit’ at the end of the summer and that is just around the corner. I should be able to make it but I may be a little ‘whacked’. Waddya think?

Neither Sal nor I can see very well, anymore. I mean, we can see well enough to live, of course, but a lot of the details are blurred by decrepitude and the fact that our lifestyle does not require examination of minutiae so much these days. Writing this blog is about as ‘tiny’ as the world gets for me. I really only need to see my dinner plate, the movie screen and logs float by.

And that was what we did this morning. Saw a log and went for it. Actually, we had spied it earlier and it was high up the beach and just a perfect size for log furniture and so we waited until high tide today and went a-pickin’.

The beach was a rocky one and we know it fairly well. There are some big boulders that disappear when the tide is up but they lurk just below the surface. Outboard propellers are vulnerable. I aimed for the right place to land and gave the engine a bit of juice and then slipped the gear into neutral. If the un-powered blades glance a rock at slow speed, no harm is done. Not usually.

But doing so means that Sally, me, the dogs and the boat silently glided into the beach. The Honda at idle is pretty quiet. We slipped in. Sneaky-like. Stealth afloat.

No big deal, really.

Or so we thought.

As we silently approached the still somewhat blurry rocks a little ‘boulder’ lifted off the ‘mother’ rock. Big eyes. It was a baby seal pup and we had mistaken it and it’s still sleeping mother for rock.

And in we came at a quiet rush!

The little guy was not too proficient at launching himself and his mom was sleeping some herring off so he just jiggled and rolled until he was in a position to flop into the sea. That was enough to alert mom and, just as we were about to land on top of them, she managed to torpedo her and kinder out of the way.

The dogs, of course, erupted! Whatever those things were, they deserved a good telling-off and that was delivered with gusto. All hell broke loose for a minute.

We landed, got the log and left. Mom and son watched from a safe distance. Once we were gone, they went back. We felt like riff-raff. And we sounded like it, too. Still, all’s well that ends well.

Amazing. Guilt from Exxon. Guilt from a seal. Does it never end?

Oysten Dahle, Exxon’s former VP North Sea operations said, “Socialism failed because it could not tell the economic truth, and capitalism may fail because it cannot tell the ecological truth.”

It is not often I hear ‘leadership’ from an Oil company executive but that is precisely the message that should be shouted from the rooftops.

Well, so I think, anyway.

I won’t bore you with more environmentalism ranting although I will encourage you to follow Alex Morton on the Cohen Commission into the Fraser River Sockeye runs. Talk about exposing institutional lying!

I think all 3-digit IQ people are now onside with ‘protecting the planet’. You don’t need me to muddy the issue further. Nor will I get on a podium about capitalism and it’s evil conjoined twin brother, Greed. Everyone also knows about that. No, to me the essence of Mr. Dahle’s message is simply about telling the truth.

Truth-telling, it seems, has simply gone out of fashion. From being politically correct to the now-common poli-speak, from business jargon to burying our heads in the TV, from muted media to ‘being professional’, we seem to have incorporated the essence of lies into everything we do.

And remember: for evil to be done, good people only have to do nothing! If we aren’t actually lying, we are silently acquiescing to it. Did it start with political propaganda deemed so necessary to start a war? Did it start simply in the loose license of mass advertising? Maybe it started with the married customers of the world’s oldest profession. I dunno.

But it is pervasive.

All I know is that the truth is rarely heard anymore. No more John Crosbys’, no more Jack Munroes’. We still have Rafe Mair, thank God. And Alex Morton. But, really? If numbers of honest speakers means anything, truth-telling is dead.

And I am just as guilty. I pick and choose the hills on which I might die and more and more I am using diplomacy and double-speak rather than get-to-the-point truth in my communications. I just don’t want to offend or argue or inherit a legacy of animosity, ya know? Easier to say, ‘whatever’ and shrug and leave the issue alone. Easier for everyone.

I’d feel more guilty if I was being paid to ferret out the truth, though. Like the media. Or our politicians. Or even our ‘professions’ and institutions so overly invested in the status quo. Together, they promote the BIG LIE instead of any inconvenient truths and it is just too easy to go along. Isn’t it?

Imagine that? An Exxon executive makes me feel guilty! What is the world coming to?

Sally’s dad is coming. He’s bringing his granddaughter, Sarah, our niece. They set sail from Sidney a few days ago and are tacking and jibing their way north. They are on a 27 foot sailboat that Peter has had since we (Sal and I) were last on boats. At least twenty years ago, probably 30. It is ship-shape, of course, clean as a whistle and well-equipped. Looks the same as the day he bought it – only better!

And not because of modern gee-gaws.

Peter is a sailor of the old school. In fact he is a real master mariner and, I believe, was a captain when he left the sea to immigrate to Canada some 55 years ago. He knows sailing from when ‘sailing’ actually meant sailing. I wouldn’t be surprised if he still uses a lead-line instead of a sounder. Mind you, the lead-line would be well-marked, and be made of real lead with a hollow bottom and, knowing Peter, have a real dollop of wax in it (for determining what kind of bottom he is anchoring in).

Of course he has a real lead line! What am I thinking?

He and Sarah will sail when the wind allows it and, like all BC sailors, power when the wind is on their nose. And they’ll anchor instead of tying up to wharves. Dig for clams. Grab a few oysters. And they’ll catch prawns and maybe a fish now and then. They’ll use a real chart, not a ‘book’ or a ‘map’ or GPS. And they’ll have martinis when the sun sets over the yardarm. Old school.

Perhaps I shouldn’t emphasize ‘old’. Peter is, however, 88. That is ‘getting on’, for most of us. He is more than capable of single-handing the little sloop all by himself but he is definitely pushing the higher end of middle-aged. I think he would accept that……..

He’s more than capable of making martinis all by himself, too, but it just isn’t as much fun, as I understand it, unless you have younger company that passes out hours before you do. Peter is, honestly, more like 58 than 88. The guy makes the Energizer bunny look like a slacker.

And good ol’ Sal shares some of those genes (she got the best of both gene pools, really).

My biggest challenge over the next few days will be to stop him from making me work at things I don’t want to do and for me to keep up with the martinis once the damn yardarm is in the shadows. Trust me, you have to pace yourself with Peter.

They say age is just a state of mind. I don’t believe that. I think numbers count. Age accumulates and then you topple over from the weight of it all. So far, the best argument against such an obvious truth is Peter. He is 25 years older than I am and I fully expect him to ‘see me out’ as the British say.

Maybe it’s the martinis?

Received a comment yesterday critical of my previous post regarding the Layton funeral and the CBC. Except for all the usual and regular critical comments of my kids begging me to ‘stop using my real name’, this was the first real negative I have had on the blog (well, there is the daily critique from Sally, too, but I have developed a selective deaf ear like most husbands. It is a universal coping mechanism employed by 50% of the population – if not more).

The writer disagreed with me and waxed proud of Canada and Harper and the CBC. I am glad he/she wrote. Nice to get feedback. The writer was polite. And that was nice, too. It was good of them to take the time.

Mind you, for the record: I prefer praise but, failing that, encouragement will do almost as well.

One of the reasons for living off-the-grid is a lack of tolerance for living on the grid. Stands to reason, really, if you think about it. If you don’t really like the ‘grid’, that likely means disliking things like the CBC, the government and all that.

You know..I mean…. I don’t really dislike cheap power or roads or piped in water, do I? Who would? In this context, the ‘grid’ is a metaphor for ‘normal living’. I am just not ‘keen’ on what passes for real life in the burbs anymore. That’s all. Nothing wrong with it. I am just not keen.

And, to be fair, it is not so much the life-in-the-burbs lifestyle but rather the lies and constructs that seem so necessary to keep us there, grazing in herds peacefully all the live-long day. I think the news is a farce. T’aint news at all. It is virtually all lies.

I think the justice system is so often wrong as to be criminal in itself (I wrote it off when Robert Latimer went to jail and then again when we paid the millions of dollars to the lawyers for the defense of the Gordon Campbell scum that arranged the BC Rail deal). Actually, I wrote it off a long time ago. I have no idea what it is but justice it most definitely is not!

I think our politicians are corrupt beyond comprehension (see BC Hydro, IPPS, BC Rail, DFO, Fighter jet purchase and the list just goes on and on). And it never seems to stop, regardless of who is in power. I am tired of it.

I think the medical profession has forgotten the Hippocratic oath. And they are not alone amongst the professions to sublimate ethics for money. I am disgusted by that. And even for the still-dedicated doctor and nurse, every hospital in BC is now infected with the Superbug. Hard to have faith in that system, ya know?

I think the education system…………well, you get the idea. I have lost faith in our systems. I have lost faith in our institutions. I have just lost faith.

NOT with people, however. Some of them are heroes (good example: see Alex Morton at: http://alexandramorton.typepad.com/). I have just lost faith in the systems.

Please! Let us be clear on that.

In fact, I think of it like I do the US soldiers. They were sent to Iraq on a big lie. They shouldn’t be part of what is a horrible political blunder/lie but each soldier has put faith (and their lives) in a system that is simply wrong. I don’t blame them. I blame the system.

I have rejected as much as possible living in the big lie. Or, rather, I have tried to. Not so much that I am uncomfortable, mind you. Path of least resistance and all that. I keep one foot dipped into the system so as to get library books, movie rentals and keep my own ‘systems’ going so I am definitely a hypocrite about it all. I cherry-pick. Lick the icing off the top. Drive my car. NOT noble. I am corrupt as well to get what I want. But I am also trying to want less. I am just intolerant of it on the BIG scale, I guess.

I am like the armchair, Monday morning quarterback passing judgment on the weekend football game. Only difference I can claim: I built the armchair and I am free on Monday mornings to do as I please.

But more succinctly: all criticisms are warranted, legitimate and welcome. Thanks for writing.

Down to Nanaimo and back yesterday: 400 kilometers, 12 hours of shopping chores and travel in the heat of the day. I am not suited for that kind of crap anymore. Too old.

Age, eh?

Speaking of which: Jack Layton was buried yesterday. It was on the radio as we drove. It was on the TV screens at the places we stopped. I found it embarrassing.

I may have this all wrong so I apologize for any offense but I honestly don’t get it. JL was a fine fellow from all accounts – no quarrel with that. And I am sure that he deserved a decent burial and some public ceremony. Who am I to begrudge a public man his last farewell? But, honestly, a state funeral?

I think I am grossed out more than embarrassed. The CBC, in my opinion, exploited the grief of the family shamelessly. They Americanized the event complete with close ups of his wife’s face, spotlights on his coffin and over-the-top eulogies some of them delivered by certified imbeciles. The CBC did a Michael Jackson-type Special on Jack Layton. I half-expected Leonard Cohen to host.

Are we so hard up for cheap-to-produce news that our national broadcasting company has to sensationalize a family’s loss for ratings? It is an embarrassment for the CBC and I am grossed out. Makes my skin crawl.

When the CBC was simply boring and useless, I could just choose not to tune in. But, when it is the only ‘outside’ news readily available to me, I tend to expose myself to it’s toxic blandness more than any sane man should. And yesterday was just plain sickening.

Please don’t misunderstand me: it is to tasteless non-news puffed-up grotesquely that I object. When JL stepped down, it was news. When he died, it was also news – but it was only news for those who knew him personally. The funeral service was not news! This funeral service was turned into made-for-TV news by the CBC.

It is a sad statement but: it was only done because it was cheap-to-produce air-time.

Sadly, it reminded of the Vancouver hockey riots. That, too, was news on the scale of yet another nipple-revealing by a minor singer-celebrity. I.e. little to none. A hockey game riot! Puleez! It is just a bunch of spoiled-brat punks acting out their beer and testosterone. Period! And the CBC made a mountain out of assholes. You know why?

BECAUSE THEY DIDN’T HAVE TO LEAVE THE BUILDING!

That’s right – it was delivered hot and fresh and virtually free to their door! THEY REPORTED FROM THEIR WINDOWS! Given that they have no reporters nor any kind of reasonable operating budget, they could divert from the normal on-going, mind-numbing gibberish of their usual on-air non-personalities in order to bring us weeks of coverage of thugs burning cars. OMYGAWD!!

Olivia Layton wouldn’t have asked for what happened. No one would. She didn’t need full facial TV close-ups for long durations, she didn’t need Thompson Hall’s spotlights on the coffin. She sure as hell didn’t need Stephen Lewis prattling on and on as if auditioning for a role at Stratford. That ceremony was not only in bad taste, it was insensitive to the family, exploitative of the man, and sensationalized and embarrassingly self-serving by and for the CBC.

It was bad – maybe as bad as Justin Trudeau when PET died.

I sure hope Wayne Gretsky, Shania Twain and William Shatner outlive me. I can’t take any more of this drivel.

Down to Nanaimo tomorrow to pick up two more guests. They are not ours. They belong to our neighbours but we owe them a favour so Saturday is booked balancing the ledger. May as well shop and stock up while we are at it. And Sunday is bookclub. Sal works Monday at the post office or is it that we have two more guests arriving that are ours? Either way, the beginning of the week is chock-a-block. It is probably both.

But today is a day of cusp. Students gone yesterday, guests arrive tomorrow. Clean-up, shop and prepare = CUSP.

I made Chinese food last night. Seemed fitting somehow, ya know? Sal got home tired from all the running around and so I turned my hand to a fried rice dish. Passable. Edible. But chock-full of husband bonus points. Kept her wine glass full, too. Very good long term move on my part given that I am deep in the red on husband points. Did the dishes, too.

Pretty much had to. Sal was asleep.

‘Course none of this ‘domesticity’ was done well. If I do it well, I have the job forever. I am not stupid. The idea is to do something good enough to get the points but nowhere near as good as she can do it or else I have a new domestic job for the rest of my life. Hard to do it right, sometimes. It’s a balance-thing. Done right, you can keep the points at a negative but respectable level and yet inherit fewer than two or three new domestic chores a year.

I should teach a course.

My neighbour, Mike had it down pat but lacked the finesse. Once he was saddled with too many chores, he simply burnt the house down. Hasn’t been asked to set foot in the kitchen (or the house, for that matter) in years.

Hey, life is all about making choices!

It’s noon. Thursday. And all is quiet on the Western Geweilo Front. Kids are gone. Laundry at capacity. Fridge empty. House is otherwise normal. Water tank refilling as I write.

Dogs seem stunned.

Everyone up at 6:15 (including me!) to hug and say goodbye. Then Sal took them off in the boat to catch various connections depending on their destinations (Hong Kong, Victoria and Toronto). Busy, busy, busy.

But before they go, she will take them to the Ideal Café on the outskirts of Campbell River for a good breakfast. Good , in this sense, means huge, greasy and set in a small 50’s-style diner complete with loggers and mechanics in overalls. The ambiance of the café couldn’t be reproduced by Stephen Spielberg for anything under $30M. The Ideal is ideal. And original.

Erica will head back to Hong Kong. Tracy is off to Toronto for a work-study and the other kids are off to tempt the Grizzlies in Banff.

(But, as everyone knows, Grizzlies generally prefer Germans. The bears get their quota just about every summer. Those tourists are so easy to catch. They walk off the bus and hug you. If you are a Grizzly, you eat ’em. It’s simply ‘good eatin’. Except for having to spit out the camera parts, it’s easier than the garbage bins. German exports (tourists) are the main reason the Rocky Mountain Grizzly thrives to this day!)

Well, that is what I tell my Chinese students, anyway. It’s my way of warning them away from the bears. I also suggest that they do not get their picture taken with a German tourist anywhere in the park. No sense tempting fate.

Mind you, I also teach them to yell “Allahu Akbar!” in the airport as a native Haida farewell.

I sure hope the students don’t forget us.

Kids leave tomorrow. Early. So the ‘goodbyes’ will be said tonight. Around the campfire. Like in the old days when kids ‘went to camp’. It will be fun. It will be a bit sad and it will be good. It always is.

But there the similarity ends. Each group of kids is different and this group is as unique as the others were. Hazel is dynamic and full of beans and ‘up’. Her English is not the best but her willingness is. She is a lot of fun. Smart, too. Tracy is much the same only quieter, a bit more lady-like. Very easy to like. Eddy is a real ‘guy’ and wants to do well but he is the most likely to stay in Hong Kong and live and work there. There is something of a ‘home boy’ in Eddy. Eric is a bit odd. Quiet, gentle, almost effeminate, he likes to chop wood and wanted to learn to box! Big fan of Bruce Lee.

It is a lot of fun getting to know these kids. And it will be even more fun when they stay in touch which at least half of them do. We’ve already seen and heard of ‘milestones’ passed as the first kids graduated and took jobs and partners.

Interesting.

“It’s different and the same all at once”.

I complained to the local fish farm about a mile or so down the channel. They were making too much noise for my sensibilities. I was polite. They were polite. And they asked to come visit. And so they came.

Marilyn and Tim were nice people. I’ve met plenty of nice people from the industry over the years. They get good staff. Tim is Australian and it was a stroke of genius to hire him. Canadians love a good OZ accent. I liked him as soon as he spoke. They pulled up on a pretty functional 20 footer with a great engine.

I greeted them, “Give me that boat as a bribe and I’ll cancel my complaint!” ‘Course, they don’t know me or my sense of humour so they just looked at me, stunned. It is always good to keep the enemy guessing, ya know?

“Never mind. Come along and we’ll have some tea.”

We walked up past John’s cabin and over the hill to my place. They chose to sit outside and marveled appropriately at the view and said nice things about our house. It was all very civilized and, in my opinion, also sincere and well-meaning. We had established ourselves as ‘real people’ and now it was time to discuss the hard cheese.

“The noise you hear comes from our generators that run the bubbling machines. We bubble all around the fish to keep algae away when the algae blooms occur. They are occurring now and therefore the bubblers are on constant duty. In this way, we can avoid the problems of blooms and keep the fish healthy.”

“Sounds reasonable, I suppose. Ya gotta do what ya gotta do. But can’t you attenuate the noise? Can’t you put some kind of insulation around the generators?”

“Never had to in the past because our farms have been remote. But this one is close and so we concede that it is a problem. But it should only be a problem while the blooms are happening and we are quite sure that they will end before October but at the end of October at the very latest. Good news is, we are moving out for good in February. No matter what, we are gone in a few months.”

“Well, in that case, have a cookie and consider my complaint dealt with. Just knowing that the farm goes fallow again in February makes it all better.”

I continued……“You do realize, of course, that everyone hates you!”

“Yeah. It’s horrible thing. Not everyone hates us but most do. But this is only in BC, ya know. BC hates us but, around the world, we are generally liked.”

“You mean, closed containment farms on land? They require immense amounts of fresh water and power. We just don’t have the capital for that.”

“Well, the coast IPPS have been largely discredited. The Campbell Government did everything wrong with them but some considerable infrastructure has been put in place. It may be a natural fit to change IPPS on the coast to salmon hatcheries and farms. Done right, you could become heroes.”

“Please don’t be offended but no thanks. I can’t eat farmed salmon. Just can’t do it. Thanks for the offer but no thanks.”

I have no doubt that, if left to Tim and Marilyn, the industry would eventually get it right. And likely sooner rather than later – like I said, ‘they are nice people’. But people move on. And the corporate business plan is what will stay. The corporate business plan is not, in my opinion, responsive enough to the environment and the people. It it too profit oriented and not people or environment related. Not enough, anyway. And therein lies the problem.

However, it is not a big problem in the giant scheme of things. The giant scheme of things includes the fact that we have 387 parts of CO 2 per million in the atmosphere when we should have 250 parts for a stable climate. Worse, we have no means with which to deal with the issue and it is only getting worse. And very quickly. The existence of salmon, moose, and even people may be moot soon enough.