Hit a milestone last night.  At least a speed bump on the highway of life.  Ben and his partner, K, hosted a Xmas dinner complete with eggnog, shortbread and mashed potatoes.  Kinda like old times but with the rookies in the kitchen.  Pretty neat.  They did good.

I suppose the speed bump was elevated to milestone status by the fact that K invited her family and so did Ben.  Two sets of moms and dads, one set of grandparents and a bunch o siblings in a ‘pair’ tree (they came in couples).  Plus a good friend or two – RC and Steve (his cat).  The dinner went nuclear in the family sense.

This is a good sign for their relationship.  And, I suppose, for ours – given that we all got this far and all.  Father ll and Mother ll are our parental-role counterparts.  Sal is still the cutest.  I am still the most homely.  We have a few more miles on the odometer but they are right behind us.

It’s weird.  Someday Ben might call another woman, ‘Mom’.  Someday, K may stop teasing me.  Family, eh?   

We all sat down to dinner like we had done it many times before.  Despite the healthy level of ‘awareness’ of each other as ‘the-potential-in-laws’, we managed to get along just fine and found a surprising level of enjoyment and comfort in the evening.  It was a ‘natural’ affair.

It seems the same level of madness and character that permeates Sal and my family is countered nicely by the personalities of the ‘other’ clan.  In fact, as much as I hate to admit it, the balance point is clearly with Ben and K.  Usually, I am the most sane person in any given gathering (as you know) but this time the ‘kids’ had it all together and dinner was delicious, the company fun and entertaining and no one asked me to leave early.  It doesn’t get any better than that.

I am not so sure that one dinner completes the passing of the torch but it was definitely a treat to enjoy the evening and not have to clean up afterwards.  And it was especially fun to leave the dishes with Ben.  I am sure that he has done dishes in his lifetime.  Pretty sure, anyway.  He lived as a separate being (eventually becoming an adult at some undetermined point in time that we refer to as the Basement Suite period) and so I know he knows how.  It is just that I have never seen it.

To be fair, I still haven’t.  Since K’s sister, S and Roz (sis-in-law and grandma) were willing to do dishes, Ben (like the chip off the old block he is) snatched every dirty dish within sight and fed the washing duo as fast as he could.  So, technically, he was not the washer-of-dish but rather the ‘dish fetcher’.  Still, it’s a start.  I was and am very proud.

Little does he know, that the domestication process has just officially begun with the ‘parents-meeting-parents’ dinner.

Poor sap. 

(names withheld by request)

…………..all this ranting and raving about the economy, wealth redistribution and yin and yang is because of the outrageous prices charged for outboard motors, right?

“…………all men are created equal……..” may be the very cornerstone of Democracy.  One (wo)man, one vote.  In theory, Democracy is egalitarian, fair, humane and representative.  If you read the US Constitution, it is a marvel of equality for the masses and especially so if read in the context of the time in which it was written.  Those founding fathers had vision!

Capitalism, on the other hand, is founded on differences.  The smarter, stronger, taller, faster will ‘get more’ because they contribute more.  The rich will get richer because they have extra capital to invest.  You can compensate for any lack of inherited talents or wealth by working harder or studying more but, no matter how you cut it, it is competitive and the competition rewards the winner.  The rest are losers.

We all may be seen as equal when the first game is played but, by the end of the season, there is only one champion.

How can we reconcile these two seemingly conflicting ideologies?  I dunno.  Maybe somebody can figure that out but not me.  In professional sports, they just start afresh every season.  Voila!  Winners and then – after the year passes – equals. 

Judaism, at least, anticipated the discrepancy and built in a strong influence for getting rich but then having to share those riches later on.  And they had an egalitarian base as well.  It was the Jews who made the Golden rule, “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” 

But they have their share of Bernie Madoffs so it is not foolproof.

The Chinese seem more comfortable with conflicting ideas.  Yin and yang are used to describe the dynamic tension between forces.  And the world is full of conflicting energies.  So, maybe there is not supposed to be reconciliation of conflicting founding philosophies.  Maybe we are supposed to careen between ideas.  Maybe confusion is the status quo.  Since I don’t know anything, I may be in the perfect spot!

One thing is true, however: yin and yang are alternatively in ascendancy or descendancy depending on the other at any given time.  The pendulum swings.

And then it swings back.

And, if that is the case, the pendulum seems to have swung too far when one person can earn 57000 times what another can in a given year.  The winner/loser system has gone as far as it can.  It is now time for the egalitarian energies to triumph.  The ‘get rich’ pendulum must be at the height of it’s swing and the ‘share-with-others’ force must be gathering energy to swing the other way.

Could we be on the verge of a revolution and not even know it?

I think I have said this before – we are unfathomably busy!  It makes no sense, really, but it’s true.  Every day is filled.  We finish at night exhausted.  Chores are left undone, e-mails unresponded to, calls not made and dogs not played-with simply because we were too busy at other things.  How is this possible?

When we lived in the city, we did all of that and more and held down full-time jobs, raised two kids and spent more money!  How did we do that?  Hell, we even had more sex back then!

Yesterday we went and fixed our neighbour’s plumbing.  That was good.  John has fixed ours so many times, it was good to be able to reciprocate.  Sal then went over and checked out the neighbour’s cabins.  Then we moved some logs, bathed the dogs, fixed a few more things and did some computer work.  Dinner was almost late.  Then we did some baking (yes, I helped!) and did some more chores and answered some calls and tried to watch a movie.  We finally stopped and did some reading. 

Sal fell asleep while reading but she always does.  She sits there with her head drooped and the book slowly falling until it hits her lap and then, with a start, the book is lifted and the eyes are opened for a few seconds and the cycle repeats for as long as an hour.  She claims to be reading, anyway.  She is even worse if we watch a ‘nature’ show, like David Attenborough or some Discovery Channel thing.  Before the initial credits have rolled, she is unconscious.  “I really like nature shows, I think.  I just can’t stay awake long enough to be really sure!” 

I am half asleep most of the day but not when reading.  When I am reading, I am fully awake but, of course, I am only using one eye (two eyes make it blurred) so maybe that’s it.

Every day we have breakfast and say, “So, what chores have we got planned for today?”   The answers vary from ‘building a new building to trimming the dogs, from cooking a meal to receiving guests, from doing some ‘business’ to working on the old Quonset hut.  And on and on and on.  And on.  The chore list never ends and is increased regularly by things that break or that are new projects. 

Mind you, ‘new’ is a relative term.  The second, lower funicular is the current new project that has been in the planning stage for four years, the purchase-of-materials stage for two and the construction stage for one.  I am barely half-way through.

“What do you do all day when you live on a remote island?  Do you get bored?”  I am never bored.  There is not enough time in every day to get everything done.  There is so much more that I want to do and not enough lifetime left to even read about it.  We are busy every day.   Our plates are full.  Our cups runneth over.  

A 60+ year old friend of mine who was one of the volunteers at our Hong Kong school won a scholarship to learn Mandarin in Tianjin, China, a city of 12 million.  It has been quite an experience for her (not in the least because they didn’t know she was 60 when she applied!). She writes:

A really poor person makes or gets, say, $10,000.00 a year (welfare recipient).  A ‘rich’ person earns say, one million ($1,000,000) annually.  Of course there are many more ‘elite’ who make more than that but one has to admit it, $1M a year seems like a pretty good hit for most people.  I’d take it. 

David Hahn, the admiral of our aging ferry fleet makes that and he hasn’t resigned.  It seems adequate for him!  I think one has to accept that $1,000,000 a year is more than enough to live on and even have a bit left over for your RRSP.  Right?  Well, the ratio of income between the two recipients described above is 100 to one.  David Hahn makes 100 times more than what a poor person makes.

You know what?  I don’t care.  Life is full of inequity and unfairness and, even if it were not, some people work harder, do more and are more valuable to the economy than others.  I can accept a disparity of 100 to one.  It’s a bit galling, I suppose, from an idealistic point of view but I have learned to mix a bit of reality into my idealism and I can live with it.

Hell, I am so tolerant that I can accept twice that (200 times) for a good hockey player or Angelina Jolie.

But it turns out the richest of the hedge fund managers makes 50 thousand times what the poor person makes.  Every year!  Seems billionaires  are so rich they can’t reasonably spend the interest off their wealth even if they spent a million dollars a day!  There are now so many of these super-rich that the Forbes Richest 400 list is all billionaires and the lower ranks of billionaires can’t break the 400 mark!

50,000 times more income per year is the greatest disparity in all of history by a huge, huge factor.  Even Marie Antoinette, when advising the revolting French to ‘why not eat cake?’ only had 100 times the income of the poor peasant.  John D Rockefeller never exceeded 300 times.

Another way to look at it: if you count  each second (i.e. 1 – 2 – 3), it will take you twelve days to count to a million.  It will take you 32 years to count to a billion.  It will take you almost 140 years (counting every second) to reach the same number as Jimmy Pattison has in dollars.  And JP is small potatoes.   Real disparity: you can’t live long enough to even count Jimmy’s money!
 
Something has gone out of whack in the ‘fairness’ of it all to be sure but that is not really the issue.  The issue is that dollars – in a capitalist society – replace votes in terms of influence.  When everyone has the same, one vote per person can have some influence in the way things go.  But when one person has 50,000 times the influence of others because of their income, political votes are rendered largely irrelevant.  The voter investing his/her ballot has been effectively marginalized by the ‘new votes’ (dollars).  No wonder the electorate is apathetic.  They ‘feel’ that their vote doesn’t count and it doesn’t.

Add to that globalization and those who now pull the strings are ‘out of reach’ of the revolting peasants.  Remember, the peasants took Marie’s head!  When Britain threatened to ‘punish’ (tax) the excessively rich so-called bankers who helped bring down the global economy (2007/08), the banks simply threatened to leave London and go to Switzerland.  The banks (virtually created and supported by the laws of the nation) are now so big they can thumb their noses at the government who created them!

So, what do you think your provincial vote is worth these days?

Answer:  It is not worth the same Canadian penny they are soon to discontinue.  Your vote ain’t worth squat!  You know why?  Because you are voting to sustain the very same system that makes your vote worthless.

Ironic, isn’t it?

Is there an answer?  Well, there are too many of them to chop off their heads and they have lots and lots of security (haven’t you noticed?) with which to monitor our collective behaviour and mood so it just may be that the battle is lost and the dark side has won.  Sorry, Luke.  The force just wasn’t as strong as we hoped.

And, if that is the case, learn to say ‘yes sir’ to the jackboots of regulation and adjust your tastes and consumptions to that which you can barely afford while you work harder and harder to do it.  You know, like it has been for the past two decades?

I suppose we could all rise in one united voice and vote for a ‘new party’ that promises to end this return to peasantry and slavery but, really, who might that be then?     

Seems I was wrong – some people do read this blog!  And I offended a couple of them!  Maybe more. 

A couple of neighbours took umbrage at my reference to our community as a motley crew and implying, however indirectly, that they may be, in some way, not respected by me.  This because of the description of the Gladstone school incident in the previous entry and descriptive SWAT team response.

I heard tell of this while in attendance at the Annual School Xmas Play (capitalized because it is a big event).   

Naturally, I apologized and explained myself as best I could.  For the record:  I love and respect my neighbours all to hell and their attributed ‘motley-ness’ is meant in the best possible way.

Having said that, I still reserve the right to poke fun and to try, as best I can, to call a spade a spade.   But good manners and real respect (read: fear) means that I will resist any such teasing for awhile and until the ‘incident’ blows over.  I am not so well respected myself that I can play fast and loose with any sensitive community feelings.   

Still – for the record: they are motley.  And, for the record, I fit right in!  We are motley!  We certainly would attract attention if we went through a Vancouver urban school and 150 Read Islanders would definitely generate a SWAT team response.  Hell, RI’s even ‘stand out’ somewhat in Campbell River where gumboots and multi-layered, old survival gear is a fairly common ‘look’.  Truth is: we tend to look a bit like the homeless contingent of Vancouver’s back alleys.  It’s called the ‘survivor-on-a-budget’ look. 

But what else would you expect?  There is no hairdresser, barber, haberdasher, dry cleaner or full length mirrors on Read Island.  And we are on a budget.  We are minimalists, damn it!  And we intend to keep it that way!  (except for outboard motors, Blue-Ray DVD players and chainsaws, we keep the expenditures to a minimum)

Please understand – there is nothing wrong with that (we work outdoors in all types of weather year around) nor is there anything wrong with any of the RI community members as people (well, maybe a couple……).  The story was not about us.  It is about them!  The city is paranoid.  They are freaked.  They are living under a subtle form of house arrest and they suspect everyone.  All the time.  And, after my last experience, I can’t really blame them.  The day I left, 10 people were shot on Oak Street after a restaurant party ended.  Ciudad Juarez and Vancouver are becoming sister cities in the worst possible way. 

The hotel parking lot in which my car was sitting when broken into has 12 security cameras.  All pointed at the relatively small 40 car lot.  That is almost one camera for every three cars!  My own car was front and centre of the view from one camera.  We saw everything after the fact.  And, at the time of the incident, so could the all-night desk clerk – who, of course, saw nothing!  Security in the city is like security at the airports – pointless. 

“Ever since the skytrain…..” is the common response.  B&E’s into cars are so common that they don’t even report it (not that it would do any good) anymore anyway.  Being insecure while draped in the technical, so-called security systems (read: privacy invasion) is just a ‘fact of city life’.

And except for the nasty coincidence of my boat trailer being stolen, it is much, much better here.  I know the point is weakened by the boat trailer theft I had but not really.  The theft happened on Quadra.  NOT on Read.

Now those Quadra Islanders are a suspicious lot…………..

Xmas party at the school this Wednesday.  It is the day of the annual school play.  About 150 people show up.  Typically there are only 10 or 11 students at the school in any given year.  Even if they were all born of an orgy, 150 people wouldn’t have been involved.  I can assure you that I wasn’t!

So, why all the people in attendance?  I HAVE NO BLOODY IDEA!  But it is de rigeure.  If you attend no other social event on the Read Island calendar, you must attend the school Xmas play.  The women try to assuage the madness by serving a pot luck lunch and for many bachelors, it is an irresistible draw.  So we get the old recluse contingent with no attachment to anything but samosas and Bratwurst in regular attendance and that swells the numbers.

Which, in today’s social cesspool would be grounds alone for calling in the SWAT team.

When I was in Vancouver, the police ‘shut down’ Gladstone school for five hours and sent in dozens of ‘troops’ because an ‘unknown man’ had been seen entering the building.  Egads!  Can you imagine what those storm-trooper security freaks would do if they saw even the most respectable Read Islander entering the building, not to mention 150 of them!!!

We are a Motley crew at the best of times and, so far, I have not even seen the best of times. 

One year I was asked to write a play by one of the parents.  So, I did.  It involved the audience, had a dark streak and was a bit ‘quirky’.  I have not been asked to write one since.  Too bad, really, the next one was going to be about a do-it-yourself butcher shop that had a member bring in an ungulate with a distinctly red nose.  I was also entertaining a story about gay workshop elves that felt discriminated against by their surprisingly fat and randy but heterosexual red-suited boss.  But I am not likely to contribute ever again if the first audience was anything to go by.  Just as well, I suppose.  I was starting to get a following from some of the old bachelors.  “That’s the Santa I knew!!! Har, har, har!” 

Doors are on the Q-hut.  In my absence some actual progress was made.  The building is now enclosed and heated.  If you connect the dots in this blog, you will likely guess that after the play is over, some of the old geezer contingent, once sated on cous cous and what-all, will likely gather around the old wood stove down at the Q-hut.  We’ll stand around amongst the sawdust and look at the bare benches and think, “This was a good Xmas party!”

Once a month Canada’s ‘best’ book-club meets at one of the member’s homes.  The hostess is obliged to serve coffee and tea, juice and water, but the rest of the contingent brings the food.  Typically between 12 and 20 women show up for the event.  Men are not allowed. 

A few years back, Sally volunteered to host the December meeting.  I am not so sure that her motive was pure hospitality, however.  She volunteered in August of that year when we had not yet finished the house!  No furniture, plumbing, electricity.  The floors were not in.  Doors not on.  Walls not painted.  Kitchen unassembled.  I assumed the offer was a prompt for us to work harder.  I was right.  When she told me, I laughed, “Well, these women are good sports.  I am sure that bare plywood floors and water bottles will be OK.” 

“Not on your life, big boy.  We just have to pick up the pace.  This place is going to be finished December 11th.  Now, shut up and work!”

Book-club was held on time.  The women sat on chesterfields and walked on Persian carpets-over-finished-wood floors.  The water was running.  Walls painted.  The wood stove was ablaze with heat and the kitchen stove was warming the pot-luck dishes.  Sal was pleased.  I was dead on my feet. 

The next year, she did the same – volunteered for December.  But this time she got creative with her hostessing.  She made real, home-made eggnog fortified generously with a bottle or two of rum.  She made quite a volume – three dozen eggs, four liters of whipping cream and a whole lot of other stuff.  I would estimate about 2.5 gallons.  But, I am not sure.  I never saw nor tasted a drop of it.  I recall one woman walked directly to the nog bowl as I was leaving at the beginning of the session and she was the last to leave as I returned five hours later at the end of the day.  She was standing in the same place!   

A tradition was born.

Sal’s book-club is not Canada’s best because of the food, the books or the loyal following.  Nor is it the best because they, Sally or I think it is.  It is deemed the best by the CBC. 

Two years ago the CBC ran a contest to see who had the best book-club and why.  It seems that having 20 or so members for 25 years was a good start but the clincher was that the meetings moved every month and that each chatelaine’s home was water access only.  Approximately 20 women-in-boats headed out in every kind of weather every month to attend their book-club.  They came from at least five separate islands and they came singly, in pairs and bunched up in small boats.  Kayak travel is not uncommon.

These are dedicated members.  They are not always so disciplined that every member has read the chosen selection every time but they attend anyway.  Sometimes they even talk about the actual book!   

I guess I deserved it, what with all the boosterisms I bleat about Read, rural and country living.  Comeuppance, thy name is ‘theft’.  Yep!  That’s right!  Got robbed again!  This time on the old Surge road near the ‘middle’ lakes.  I had my old boat trailer parked there and it was well entrenched when we left two weeks ago and yet was gone when we returned home today.

Broken in-to at the hotel and relieved of a rear window and Xmas presents last week.  Bummer!  And then, after denigrating the urban jungle to all and sundry, I find that rural thieves have been just as bad!  My trailer being GONE when I come home is some kind of retribution for dissing the city, I guess.  No place, it seems, is safe!

(By the way, ‘dissing’ does not show up as an error on my spell check.  What has our language come to?)

The trailer is not valuable.  Probably replace it for $5-750 or so.  Maybe $1,000.  But that means a minimum of $1200-1500 in losses this trip.  That kinda cuts into the revenue stream somewhat.   Two steps forward, one step back.  VERY reminiscent of my working life.  I am convinced that NOT working works better for me when you ‘net’ it out.  

And, of course, ICBC doesn’t cover it.  The thieves tossed the plate and we found it.  Wouldn’t you know, we had not renewed the insurance.  The trailer was slated for conversion to a funicular carrier and we knew we weren’t going to use it as a trailer so we didn’t ‘keep the insurance up’.  Ergo: no coverage.  Which is neither here nor there, really.  It would have been valued at less than $500, I am sure, and so the deductible would have taken care of most of that.

I am not so enamored of insurance companies at the best of times but ICBC really sucks even if it was entirely my own fault this time.  C’mon, I have to vent at someone. 

Tís the season, eh?

On a happier note, the dogs are still with Judith.  Thank God!  But they’ll come home tomorrow and that should end the troubles, I think.  Bad things happen in ‘3’s’ and that’s two thefts and the return of the dogs!  Pretty bad.  But that should be it for the bad news for awhile.

Unless Sal reads that last part……………..then it will be 4-parts trouble.