My father was in WW ll.  He was very badly wounded.  My father was wounded so badly that he received a 100% disability pension.  That says something when you consider that a soldier who lost both legs would receive an 80% disability pension.  My father kept all his limbs but the damage was still so horrific that he was classed as 100% disabled.

To my way of thinking, 100% disabled is dead.  For much of the first decade after the war, he thought so, too.

My father was totally wrecked and despite the healing, it took him the rest of his life to get near half better.  It took him two years just to get out of the hospital bed and for the next two years after that he was employed at Shaughnessy Hospital as a janitor because he kept collapsing.  It was easier to treat him when he was already there.

I mention all this because I know that he would be disgusted by Remembrance Day 2014 as presented by a government near you. He was very respectful of Remembrance Day but he felt that way because of the soldiers and the victims of war – NOT the government then.  NOT the government now.

He didn’t speak much of the war and, when he did, it was clear: war is hell and there is no glory in it.   He also would have said, “Nor should there be any political gain derived from it!”

Despite the tragedy (and sacrifice) of Cpl. Cirillo, my father would have seen the exaggeration of that nut-bar incident at the Parliament promoted as a quasi-terrorist incident as ridiculous.

My father seethed with anger most of his life but it mostly it just bubbled like lava.  But sometimes it erupted like a volcano.  Hyperbole by politicians would have just raised the temperature a little bit.  Political exploitation, on the other hand, might have set him off like Vesuvius.

He would have grumbled over the tax dollars spent by the Conservative party prior to the nut-bar incident glorifying the war of 1812.  “What the hell are they doing that for?” he would have growled.

And again all the saber-rattling over Ukraine and now Iraq.

And all the government of Canada sponsored TV ads imploring us to remember.

And all the fuss over the Franklin Expedition.  “Who cares about that, anyway?”

He would have been a little bit more riled over the huge Mother of Canada statue proposed to commemorate Canada’s war dead as stupid and ill-considered.  “Why not just help the actual veterans with those millions? Or equip our troops properly?”

But I think he would have been very angry over the whole of it, the cumulative acts by government over the last couple of years to exploit our history for political gain and especially this false alignment of the nut-bar incident with real soldiers in a real war (the victims of the two mental cases are being paraded as soldiers killed on home ground defending our country). 

I think he would have raged at Harper standing in front of poppies and monuments and at commemorations talking nonsense when the veterans themselves would likely string the minister of Veterans Affairs from the nearest tree.

I am pretty sure my father would have erupted at the constant political exploitation of everything Canadian and God help the closest politician to him when that happened.

The reason I can say all this is because I, too, am nauseated by all this pomp and hypocrisy being trotted out as some kind of patriotic Canadian-ism.  It is not.  We are being victimized by political boosterism.  It’s propaganda in a uniform. This is USA-type nationalism to glorify our nation and, by association, our current government.  It is sickening.

We can be proud of being Canadian all by ourselves, thank you.

If my father’s story is anything to go by (and he was there and he paid the price), war should not be glorified.  Not ever.  Victims should never be exploited for politics.  The general population should not be so easily manipulated as they are (record turnouts for Memorial Day ceremonies thanks to the manipulation of the story for the politicians to ride the tunics of the soldiers).  We are a free people and we should exercise that freedom to think for ourselves and NOT allow ourselves to be brainwashed by crass, self promoting politicians.

My father would have said, “Canada is peaceful by nature and that is the way it should be. Any incidents of war were forced on us and let it be left at that. The politicians should stay in the shadows where they belong.  And pipsqueaks like Harper should shut the hell up! 

“Oh, you’re the guy who lives off the grid!”

“Yes.  Yes, I am.  Have we met?”

“No, I am new here but the other staff told me that you were coming in today and they told me that you have solar panels and all that and my husband wants to do that very badly.  He is reading and researching all the time.  I, however, am not so sure.”

“Well, here’s my number.  Give it to him.  I will happily discuss it.”

“Well, we want to buy some land do some farming and live free.  But land is so expensive.”

“The land is actually cheap right now and, compared to farming for a living, that is the least of your expenses.  Farming on the coast is very difficult.  Not a lot of good farmland.  We just seem to grow more rock!  But, if you are looking for a kitchen garden with a few fruit trees maybe and some chickens that is very possible.  Cultivating a half a section is almost impossible.”

“Oh.  I will definitely have him call you.”

He didn’t call.  I don’t blame him.  The dream is almost as good as the doing.  And we all need the dream.  This guy was just turning 50 and his wife, late forties.  So, they may get there.  They may make the leap.  Hard to say.  We’ll see.  But one thing is for sure – the term ‘off-the-grid’ has joined the popular lexicon.  People know the phrase, know what it means and seem to regard the idea favourably.  They aren’t leaving the city in droves but they are dreaming and reading and thinking about it.

I have had to have a lot of meetings at the local restaurant this week (I do not have an office anymore) and so I have come to know their staff as well as the one in a different office mentioned above.  Every time I go in, they ask me about living off the grid but really they want to tell me how hard it is living in the city.  One waitress in her mid sixties drives for an hour and a half to get to her job and then the same amount of time and distance to get home.  That’s eleven to twelve hours of working and slogging time!  In her sixties!  I pointed out the cost of operating the car (at least $1000 per month) and the condo fees ($500/month plus an ‘assessment’ every year of an extra $2000) and asked her why she would work just to drive and pay maintenance?

“What can I do?  I need to pay for my dental work.  I need to save…although we have not saved a penny in ten years.  Actually, we are going into debt!  My husband is working but he is getting fewer hours.  I just don’t know…”

“Move to a small town.  Whatever your condo is worth in the city, it will likely get you a better place in a small town.  You may even be able to walk to work.  The salary is likely a bit less but you will keep more of it.  Spend less time in traffic at the very least.”

“I don’t know.  We have always been city people.”

“Go to the opera a lot?  The hockey games?  Live theater?  You a restaurant freak?”

“No.  We don’t go out anymore.  Can’t afford it.  Too tired.  We watch TV.”

“Spusm has TV.”

“Where’s Spusm?”

“Never mind.  If you can muster the energy and the ferry fare some weekend, go look at Ladysmith or Chemainus or Crofton or even Comox.  Nice places.  Not expensive, ‘cept for Comox.  It is getting pretty popular.”

“Gee.  I don’t know.  My daughter is here.  So is my granddaughter.”

“How old is your daughter?”

“Early 40’s.”

“Old enough, I think, to travel to you to visit you.  No?”

“Oh….I dunno….gee….I just don’t know….I better get back to work….”

“OK.  See ya.”

We are in the city again.  And today was sunny. All in all, a good place and time to be.  A trip to our favourite Indian restaurant and it is a perfect day.  In the city, that is.  I am sure there is such a thing as a ‘nice day’ in jail, too.  Even Hell must have better days than others.  It’s all relative.  But let’s make no mistake – a day in the forest…ANY day in the forest, is better than a day in the city.  Maybe not ANY day in the city but certainly MOST.

As you can tell,  I am already having trouble adjusting.  It could be the traffic.  It could be me.  I am getting older and that adds up.  I used to drive faster than everyone else by at least ten and usually 20kms an hour.  While talkin’ on my phone.  Now I am 10 kms less than everyone else.  I drive in the slow lane.  It is not so much about ability although I know that I am not as Mario Andretti as I used to be, it is more about pace.  I am the pace car now.  No need to race.  No need to hurry.  ‘Oooh, look!  A squirrel!’

OK.  I am not  that bad.  Not yet.  But you know what I mean.  Still, if there is any one thing about the city that hits you in the face like a fish, it is traffic.  And it started at the Parkesville interchange.  One minute we were toodling along with the occasional car ripping by us and the next, we were in bumper-to-bumper traffic.  And thus it has remained all the way to downtown Vancouver (25 minute wait to get on the Lions Gate bridge. Parking just off Broadway was 2 minutes for a dime – $3.00 an hour for street parking!).

We were doing 100 to 110kms along the Upper Levels cheek-by-jowl with people in shiny new cars.  It was like an auto showroom somewhere just exploded.

‘Ooooh, look!  A Ferrari!’

I used to relate to traffic.  It was my language.  I was a driver first, a human being second.  I judged people by the cars they drove.  Not in a bad way.  And usually not women or teens.  But a man’s car says something about him.  Even a company car says well, a ‘company man’…I guess.  One of my best friends drives an 80’s era El Camino.  My son drives vehicles of any sort so long as they do not cost more than scrap value – $500.  I know a guy who drives a big black Suburban!  C’mon!  That says something!

We drive a Jed Clampett-san.  An old Nissan Pathfinder.  With (gasp!) rust!  We are the traffic equivalent of lepers in Vancouver.  People judge us.  But, it’s OK.  They are probably right.  ‘Oooh, look!  Hillbillies!’

The next few weeks are gonna be interesting.

I confess to a bias.  I am getting a bit paranoid.  Call me crazy.

We get our water from the local stream almost half a mile from us.  The water comes down a 1″ plastic pipe and flows through the forest and along a few sea-side cliffs to eventually exit at our place.  We have a cistern which collects the flow and, most of the time the cistern is full. The stream still runs even in late August with a hot summer behind us.  It runs low.  But it runs.

Winter, of course, is different.  You can (and we do) have frozen pipes sometimes. Usually in the dead of January.  We have broken or kinked pipes, too, when the volume is so great that the flow ‘messes’ with the pipe.  The big rainfall a few days ago was considerable and the stream was engorged to capacity the day after.  It dropped a few trees on itself and it crumpled up the pipe as well as filling the pick-up valve with pine needles.  Not for the first time this year, but for the first time this winter, water stopped flowing downhill and Sal went up to fix it.

That was day one.

Sal hiked up the hill after taking her small boat into the bay and wading ashore.  She climbed the steep, muddy, overgrown trail that skirted the stream and sometimes disappeared into the water for a few yards until she had gained about 120 feet of elevation. She looked into the raging cauldron of water where the little collection pool exists and the pick-up valve sits weighted to the bottom under a few rocks.  The only way to clear the pick-up was to stand on the lowest side of the pool (itself under two feet of extra water at that time) and then kneel down and reach into the pool and pull out the pipe and pick-up for examination.  In this case the exercise would require virtual submersion into a fast flowing stream.  Sal prepared to do that by first taking off the top half of her wet-weather clothing, warm-layer fleece underneath and finally all but her bra.  Standing water proof from the waist down and Amazonian from the waist up, she reached underwater, grabbed the pipe and wrenched it free from the bottom.  Imagine the cold!

After clearing the pipe of needles and replacing it in the pool, she donned her gear and came home.  Sadly, the water still did not not flow.  So, day two saw us heading up together and our neighbours came along to see the set-up and give a hand.

Here’s the deal: it is basically impossible to remain dry regardless of your preparations when working with a stream in full flow and doing so in the wilds on collapsing banks while climbing very steep sides over deadfall and attempting to clear a partially buried pipe.  So, after filling our boots – literally – it was just one big water fest as we all tumbled, stumbled, clawed, crawled and scrambled up and down the stream for a couple of hours looking for the problem.  Average age of the four of us: 66-68.

But we found two possible sites that proved to be the culprits.  One was a where a deadfall had crushed the pipe and dragged it under water pinching it closed in the process. And the other was a pinch where the flow was so strong at some point that it had folded the pipe back on itself.  We waded in.  We had tools.  We cut out the crimps.  We fixed them with new connectors and we went back down to check out the system where we had some valves installed midway down for that very purpose.  We were successful.  The water was flowing.  And we were heading home.

When we got to the beach, the tide was out and the buffet of oysters was in, so both couples collected dinner before heading for the warmth of our wood stoves.  It was a good day.  A bit wet.  But good..

You should have been there.  .

So, a nearly-certifiable mental drug addict ran into the parliament buildings and committed suicide-by-cop.  Sadly, he felt compelled to take someone with him but (and this is not intended to diminish the memory of Cpl. Nathan Cirillo or the tragedy to his family in any way) so do all of the demented shooters-of-the-public.

The US has had more than their share of gun-toting maniacs over the last forty years.  But we’ve had a few as well (i.e. Marc Lepine) and Norway had a loon of the same feather not long ago. The addled are everywhere. These people are 100% alienated, marginalized, desperate, mentally ill and usually under the influence of something chemical as well. They are dangerous.  They are NOT terrorists.

But you know that.

Today’s headline: CBC – Harper Wants to Make Terror Arrests Easier.   Seems Harper wants to make arrests easier where  he could more logically have said ‘I want to make mental health and community care of the sick and disenfranchised a priority.’  It would have been a more directly related-to-the-facts reaction than suggesting easing of restrictions on arresting people.  And, anyway, what could be easier than shootin’ them dead’?  That lunatic who ran over a soldier with his car, overturned it in a ditch as a result of a high-speed chase with the cops, was simply executed. He was trapped in the car upside down in a ditch.  No gun.  They shot him where he sat.

And that was NOT an isolated case.  Shooting and tasering willy-nilly is often the default reaction of police these days.  See: Sammy Yatim.  See Peter DeGroot,  See Robt. Dziekanski.  Arresting may not be easy but it seems pulling the trigger is getting easier.

Making terror arrests easier is really just saying, ‘Make arresting people easier’.  That means innocent people as well as guilty people.  That means fewer rights and freedoms for Canadians.  That means less proof will be required for arrests.  More jail time.

And that is a giant step towards a police state.

Well, it is really just another giant step.  We’ve taken a few too many already.

But we haven’t objected much, now have we?

The US is intentionally militarizing it’s police forces.  This is a fact.  It is why small towns have SWAT teams and armoured vehicles.  The bulk of it is hand-me-downs from the military.  It is why the police are trained as they are.  It is a conscious decision to focus military might inwards on citizens rather than outwards on foreign invaders.   The Conservative/Republican thinking is (on the surface) that ‘we can’t afford a standing army anymore so let’s combine police and soldier functions so that we have, in effect, a standing army within the civilian population.’  Sort of a logical next-step in the military mind-set after having the Reserves.

That all this serves to create a secondary market for the military industrial complex is just a bonus to the economy.

And Canada is following suit.  They sent a Swat team after Peter deGroot even though his sister offered to go talk him in.  Mr. DeGroot was somewhat marginalized by his health and his vision and his general abilities.  The eliminated him.  And – in case you missed it – there was no charge, no proof of a crime.

While the poor, addled miscreant placed himself in a bulls-eye in the Centre block surrounded by Parliament security armed-to-the-teeth, Stephen Harper hid in a closet.  I don’t blame him.  His security probably made him do it and, let’s face it, the Prime Minister has to be considered a target for anyone making the moves that Michael Zihaf-Bibeau made.  I would have hidden, too.  But after learning the facts of the case, I would not be calling out for more powers to arrest , would I?  I’d be trying to provide more care for the mentally ill and the marginalized, wouldn’t I?

Do you know why I would be such a nice guy instead of a hate mongering, dissembler and power-tripper?  Do you know why I would not think to strengthen over-armed and trigger-happy bullies?  Do you know why I would choose the path of compassion rather than power?

Because the path of repression and oppression doesn’t work.  Even if people don’t openly resist, they resist in their hearts.  It festers inside instead.  It makes us all dangerous and suspicious of one another.  It makes our country worse to live in and more vulnerable to real enemies.  And it divides us.

The only reason civilized people accept government is for reasons of peace and security. Increased Swat-style security is not the way we want that in Canada.  Harper is making yet another series of mistakes and he is tacitly asking our permission to accept them.

How are we going to answer?

Parliament was attacked this morning.  Two dead at this writing.  Not enough information to have much to say, actually, but any blog should acknowledge that event.  It is bad news. Again.

I am writing because I was going to anyway.  But I’ll keep it to off-the-grid stuff.  We had a major gale last night.  Some reports stated 90 kmh gusts in our vicinity.  I doubt that number but, then again, I slept through the whole thing.  Sal claimed that it sounded and felt like all hell was breaking loose.  Even if it was only 60 kmh, it was a test.

I mention this only because we passed the test.  The panels are still standing.  The first thing we do when the wind exceeds the last high wind is to check to see if the array withstood the latest test.  It did.  I am relieved but I know my neighbour would say, “Well, we have had worse than that, so the possibility of catastrophe is still there.”  He’s a ray of sunshine, he is.  If we ever get hit simultaneously by a hurricane and an earthquake and the array collapses, he’ll say, “See.  Ya shoulda had more steel structure!”

He’s right, of course.  With enough of an engineered steel structure, I would be at less risk but, then again, I would not have been able to build it for $300.00.

The ramp on the dock jumped it’s rails last night.  Moved a good four feet south.  The dock must have been a-leaping like lords at Xmas.  So the seas were nasty to be sure but everything was basically OK.

While I was traveling in the boat this morning a huge sea lion reared out of the water right beside me.  Unlike their usual actions, this one came half out of the water and looked at me.  It was like he was standing on a submerged stool.  It was pretty neat to see such a huge animal so close and so high out of the water that his head was higher than than mine!

I picked the doctor up from the community dock for her bi-weekly clinic on the island and the waiting room will be full.  A lot of islanders are grateful NOT to have to travel in the winter.  They still do, of course, but they are happy to minimize their trips to town.

One of the people at the dock laden with groceries said, “Man, I hate town days!”  A recent guest at our house asked me what I disliked about my living out here and the only thing I could think to respond with was, “Man, I hate town days!” Another woman at the ‘other side’ community dock said, “Man I am glad I don’t have to go to town!  It is not an uncommon refrain.  Nobody likes going to town.

Living off the grid, October 22, 2014…….out here, today was just an ordinary day with sea lions, neighbours, wind, rain and doctors making their rounds.  But, in Ottawa, history was being made.

I prefer here.

We got your basic politics, left and right.  War, of course.  That damn Ebola thing.  HK protesters.  Ravens, Orcas and all the other wild things.  We got Sal and me, of course. Fiddich.  Book club is usually good for a post….and it was…for Sal…and, indirectly, me. Very good, thanks to Eileen, actually (good feedback from a beta reader).  And we have the recalcitrant Honda engine that I fixed once but it coughed up another hairball and required a re-do today so that could be woven into a story….but……..

….something else today….

…something sad.  Bad trip.

A 50 year old guy drowned the other day somewhere in the near vicinity.  He was kayaking.  Alone.  We learned about it when the Coastguard flew it’s big Chinook over our heads the other night while it was doing a shore search.  That usually means what it did – someone was lost at sea. Happens.

Happens 2 out of three years and that is just counting around here.  Including the whole coast, I am guessing at maybe a dozen a year?  Hard to say.  Two more died a couple of days later just a few miles away when a barge sank so that is three within hours of each other.  The sea is unforgiving.

The guy I am referring to was NOT someone we knew.  As the Coastguard did their thing that night, his identity wasn’t even known to them and, when we inquired the next morning, everyone acted as if it was ‘confidential’ and none of anyone’s business.  The officials were not forthcoming even when we told them where we lived and that we would go out that day and look.  Their ‘official’ position seemed silly to me.  There are people out here. They should be contacted.  Maybe we could be of assistance………?

Anyway, we went out the next day and covered the same basic area that the Coastguard had during the previous night on the assumption that searching at night from a helicopter 300 feet off the ground was not as good as searching from a small vessel that could bump the shore while moving about in broad daylight.  But we found nothing.

As we were finishing our effort there was a woman on a dock walking towards us.  We were crawling along the last stretch of shoreline.  We stopped.  We spoke.  She was one of his friends.  She described him.  The guy WAS someone we knew, after all!  He was a nice guy and such an avid kayaker that we would often see him when we were out and we had passed a few salutations of greeting and a bit of minor chit chat now and then over the past few years.  We knew him.  He had been out kayaking again.

We knew him enough, anyway.

I am glad we both had the compulsion to go looking for him the next day.  It was obviously not meant to be but it was better that we added our efforts to the search.  We will probably have to do it again some day, I am afraid.  The nature of things makes claims now and again and this time it was a kayaker who loved the nature of things.

.

The title above refers to the Herculean task Sal and I gave ourselves trying to cobble a book together from the just-under 1000 blog entries (3000 pages) of Offthegridliving I had written as of 2012.  There has been that much written again since then – this is yet another page.  It just never ends.

The blog itself was originally conceived as a personal exercise to improve my writing and, while Malcolm Gladwell or Margaret Atwood are in no immediate professional danger, that goal has been at least partially achieved.  Sally says I am no longer an F’ing writer.  She now gives me an E.  Frankly, I am giving myself a heavy D but, with a little more work and an actual story to tell, I am aiming for a non-embarrassing C-. Someday. Maybe.

The book we have been trying to write (about 300 pages) for a couple of years is in it’s third iteration. We have massaged it, culled it, varied it and added to the original stuff. Lots of rearranging, too. Sal has cut, cut, cut, that bloated little piggy. Mostly, sliced, cleaved and butchered, actually.  Hogwash and Pork chops.  Thus the title of the blog.

The book was initially titled North of 50 (referring cleverly to our then age and our latitude) and then Tales From Off The Grid.  Sal likes that one.  I like Urban Couple Goes Feral.  We’re still thinking.

Other titles in the running include: The Making of a Hillbilly?  Musings From the Margins?  Off the Grid and Out of Our Minds  To Hell With Safety? Longevity is for Sissies?  Who Needs Hospitals?

Anyway, maybe we are at an even later version than third as we seem to continually chip away at it. It never really does end.  Hmmm…. The Never Ending Story?

Now that I know better, I wouldn’t do it this way again.  I wrote the blog and then, in a fit of writer’s parsimony, expressed a desire to re-use all those ‘existing’ words in some kind of different way…like a book!  “Waddya say, Sal?  Wanna edit a book?”

After a year, Sal had what she thought might be a book.  It wasn’t.  But good ol’ Sal kept at it and eventually produced something less-than-really-horrible.  Out it went to a couple of beta readers.  Friends in the field, people of letters, voracious readers, that sort of thing.  And we waited.  Got very few comments back and they were like warm milk turning sour.  “Well, you’ve got some great raw material there, really raw.  Good luck.”   “Geez, I laughed at Guido.  Was that in your book?  Gotta go”. “Oh, the book? Yeah.  Been so busy, ya know?  Hard to find the time.  Unh, you can still do mediations, right?”

And the lesson learned?  Well, you can’t make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear.  We should have remembered that.  You can’t even make any kind of purse out of a sow’s ear, really. And, truth be told, you can’t even make a sow’s ear out of a sow’s ear because for it to be any good, it should have stayed on the poor ol’ sow in the first place.  We tried to put lipstick on an already butchered and refrigerated display-case pork chop.

So, the lesson: When presented with a pig, make pork chops not purses and, for God’s sake, don’t put lipstick or a hard or soft cover on it.

And don’t ever say this blog is not educational.

So….you are watching TV………………and they tell you on the news that several people at the nearest hospital to you are suspected of having contracted Ebola.  None of them are from Liberia.  All of them are from your own community.  What do you do?  What can you do?

Do you go about your business content in the knowledge that ‘the professionals’ have it well in hand? (If you think that, please take the time to read up on the Texas hospital’s efforts-to-date with handling Ebola and the subsequent actions of the CDC).

Or do you go about your business but take extraordinary precautions like face-masks and Chlorine spray bottles? (considerably more effective than relying on ‘our professionals’ but even more subject to Murphy’s rules).

Or do you immediately go to the local SuperMart and load up on food and crap so as to be able to ‘ride out’ a 30 day quarantine?  Do you suggest that all family members stay home for a while (and to Hell with school and work!).  Do you cancel social gatherings?

I don’t know either.  I have no idea.  At what point does fear of – or worse – evidence of catastrophic threat make you alter your life?  We have not really thought this one out, either.  But some folks have and they posted You-tubes about various forms of End-of-Days.

Hard to believe people actually film themselves being so stupid.  I have been that stupid many times but didn’t have the foresight to set up a camera first so maybe that makes me stupider?

Last night – while Sal was quilting – she suggested that we watch some You-tubes because ‘we haven’t watched many of them and we should at least see what they have to offer.’ The first titles we saw listed on the right hand side menu were all about DOOMSDAY PREPPING.  Somehow that seemed apt for the times.  Even seemed somewhat apt for us. We laughed at ourselves.  And turned one on.

That first YT called Doomsday Preppers was pretty ridiculous.  Two guys were featured. One was focused on making an assault ATV and tire dis-ablers so that he could catch bad guys on his property and, presumably, blow them away with his more-than-adequate arsenal.  His feature should have been titled Mad Max Wannabe. What a nut!

But the other guy was even stupider.  He figured that he and his family may have to run and hide and, for reasons unfathomable to me, his front door was not likely to work when he really needed it to so he built an underground tunnel from his bedroom to where his ‘bug-out’ vehicle was parked.  Not counting the incredible expense (better put elsewhere), it actually delayed him and his family from getting to the escape vehicle. Parking it in the front driveway would have been much better.

That YT video was just funny and entertaining in a stupid kind of way.

It was the next You-Tube that kinda shocked me.  It was a ‘sponsored’ excerpt presumably from the National Geographic Channel and it portrayed what would likely happen to a family in LA when a killer disease ravaged the country.  And it was (in my opinion) somewhat (at times) more realistic.  Well, more so than the first two at least.

We actually now HAVE a killer disease to apply this scenario to, anyway.

The biggest point made in the NATGEO excerpt: most people would stay home and watch it all unfold on TV (the story line posited several weeks of watching TV for the subjects being filmed) until forced to take some action at which point it would be way, way too late.

What shocked me equally as much was that so many people were presumably thinking this way that the so-called ‘entertainment’ industry would invest in such a bizarre ‘DOOMSDAY’ show production.  Just how many paranoid preppers are there out there, anyway?

I know, I know, it is not the accuracy of the content so much as the sheer ‘goofiness’ of the characters involved that probably prompted the industry to do shows like these. Like all so-called reality shows, it is the unreality of the characters (and how they think) that makes them interesting.

Having said that, it is not just a little weird and coincidental that we now have the specter of Ebola to consider while watching such nonsense.  For me, it is the juxtaposition of the goofy with reality and timing that prompted this blog.

Could the nut-bars be right? (NOT the guys with tunnels and arsenals).  I mean…..think about it……Ebola came to Texas and the nurses attending the patient that died contracted the disease.  That’s scary in itself.  But, worse than that, the hospital mishandled just about everything they could and the Center for Disease Control even cleared one of the nurses for travel to Cleveland on the basis that ‘she was properly outfitted’ during the time of her shifts.

Makes some sense, I suppose……unless you are wrong or she made a mistake…….then such a ‘protocol’ just made the problem exponentially worse.

Doesn’t seem like an abundance of caution was the operating policy.

I guess what I am saying is this: Murphy rules.  In all things.  And Murphy rules absolutely and quickly with pandemics.  If something CAN go wrong, it WILL go wrong.

And it has.

So, ‘……they tell you that several people at the nearest hospital to you are suspected of having contracted Ebola.  None of them are from Liberia.  All are from your own community. What do you do?  What can you do?’

Suggestion: do not watch it unfold on TV.

Perspective: We first heard about the Liberian Ebola patient in Texas on or about September 30.  I wrote about it on October 5th.  It is now October 16th. Approximately two weeks and a bit since this disease became publicly known two new cases have been found and one of them had done some traveling within N. America.  By airplane.  With airports.  In just two weeks Murphy has proved his mettle.  Please, my friends….I am not suggesting anything…….except: watch this one closely.  And don’t just watch for too long.

“Dave!  Are you suggesting we all head for the hills?”  

Of course not.  In fact, I am heading for the city myself (ready to turn around at a moments notice, however).  I am just saying; ‘think about it.  Watch it.  And don’t be caught flat-footed if the unthinkable happens because the unthinkable only happens when you don’t think’.

DISCLAIMER:  WORDPRESS does not endorse the opinions of the author.  Nor does his wife or friends.  They think the author is a nut.  The author isn’t sure, either.  The jury is still out.