We had a dinner party at Thanksgiving and it was good.  During the inevitable conversation, I asked if anyone was noticing any trends.  “Waddya mean?”

Well, we all naturally see trends, patterns and exceptions.  We may or may not see them accurately but we try to find patterns in things.  It is natural.  Scientists call it inferential scanning.  We look.  We see.  We accumulate information.  And then, when we have enough to work with, we try to order it.  It is all done without thinking consciously.  We just do it.

It is likely a prehistoric survival trait: “What is different here?”   Even our dog alerts us to anything that is ‘out of the ordinary’.  If we leave a tool out on the ground and he didn’t see us do it, he will bark at it the next day.“Hey, Dave! Hey Sal.  Something is different here.  Come look.”  It is a form of pattern recognition. In effect, he is inferentially scanning to make sure things are all well and as they should be.

We all scan for thousands of things every day.  If I ask you, ‘what do you think is the most common colour of a typical four-door sedan you would likely answer, “I have no idea.”  But, if I asked you to ‘take a guess’, you would roll your eyes a bit and think a bit about nothing in particular and say some colour that jumped out for you.  That is inferential scanning.  You would KNOW that metallic burgundy is NOT the most common colour.  Nor would it be lemon yellow or orange.  You would quickly consider black, white, silver and so on and then choose an answer primarily to get me to stop bugging you.

But you’d have one.  And, if someone else piped up, “I think it is metallic burgundy”, you’d even argue the point.

The interesting thing about inferential scanning is that we do it for everything.  We do it for car colours, house colours, prices for eggs and cheese, the most common dog, hair styles, shoes, counter-tops and so on.  Some people see trends faster than others but we all get it eventually.

It is also the way common idioms take off, eh?

So, what are you seeing these days?

“Unh….jeez….I dunno……like, ya mean what colour is my car?  What trends do you see?”

Well, like everyone, I see political trends like more and more violent splinter groups. I see protests like Occupy and Idle No More and the Hong Kong Umbrella protest.  I see more draconian government.  I see more use of smartphones.  More social media.  But that is all common stuff.  I think if I am looking harder, I might suggest that we are looking at a growing dissatisfaction with our institutions like education and health as well as police and government. Hell, we don’t even vote!  But most of all I see a trend towards inequality and I don’t think that inequality is just defined in economic terms.  I think our social structure is fracturing along many separate lines.

I guess I think I am seeing a trend toward anarchy.  I guess I am seeing more force and that means more resistance.  The more force we use to homogenize, the more resistance is encountered.  People are quietly resisting……

“Quietly resisting what?”

I don’t know.  My scanners are not clear.  I just see and feel a quiet but growing buildup of resistance to the status quo…ya know…?

“No.  No idea what you are talking about.  Pass the cranberry sauce.”  

PS: “White especially has been a constant top runner since really 1998,” says Nancy Lockhart, DuPont color marketing manager. “Silver had its reign from 2001 to 2006 as being the leading color and now black has come up as being the leading color in certain segments, especially luxury.”   

“Lovely day for hauling logs, eh?”

“OK.  Let us get the sea weed up, too.”  

And so it was that Saturday became log hauling day.  That is when we bring up the chopped-to-length logs from the beach to the 75 foot level of our property so as to process them into firewood for the coming seasons.  Today we hauled up nine sections. Plus ten buckets of garden sea weed. We are putting in next years compost and year 3’s firewood.  It is good to be out ahead of the chores especially when you are dealing with big logs on high lines and flinging them around like they were pillows.

“The winch won’t start!”

“Never mind, I’ll get my tools.  We’ll fix it.”

And we did.  Bit of a spark plug problem.  Bit of a gasoline-gone-stale problem.  Twenty minutes later, we were lumberjacks again.  Some parts of the high-line had also started to vibrate loose so, between logs, I tightened bolts, re-aligned the cable and re-tightened shackles.  All done matter-of-factly.

Anyone watching would think we knew what we were doing.

And the really surprising thing is that we almost do!  Of course, we DO NOT know all that needs knowing but we have managed to learn enough to get past most of the common challenges that are inflicted upon the off-the-grid newbie in the first five years or so.  And there are a myriad of them from reluctant outboards to wiring in new outbuildings, from plumbing to solar arrays.  What used to send a chill down my spine and a tremble in my heart is now, ‘ho hum‘, part of the deal, no biggie.

I can’t describe how good it feels NOT have a slight panic rise in your throat when, a few years ago, it would have.  We are starting to gain some confidence.

Sal’s default position is, of course, always confident and happy. She does not know fear, self-doubt or possess much common sense, really.  It’s bliss.  “What?  Go hunting and kill and butcher a deer?  Why not?  Which end of the gun is this? Point me in the right direction. What kind of wine goes well with venison?”  

My default position?  Disproportionate responsibility, culpability, potential embarrassment and fear of possible dismemberment.  Blood-letting to be sure.  Maybe a lawsuit to follow. Summed up?  “Now what!?” (complete with the appropriate tone). I tend to think that engines will blow up, pipes will burst and electricity will kill me in the end. I still think it a minor miracle that the outboard starts and that we have hot showers. I don’t forget the past easily.  If those things don’t get me, something else will but it might be so quick I might not notice. Like a cougar.  Or a tree falling when I am not looking.  Or,if it isn’t instant death it will be worse than that – it will cost me a lot of money to fix. I hate that.

Or, just as bad, I may have to deal with people-in-power (am getting real close to preferring instant death over people-in-power).

But today was good.  Calm.  No panic attacks.  I have come a long way, baby.  A long way.

Anyway, today we were the people in power and we had our way with those logs and that seaweed. Power put to good use.  It’s intoxicating, it really is.

My father died July 11, 1998.  He was 76.  We held a service for him then and he was cremated.

A few weeks later, the funeral home contacted me to give me his ashes.  I took them in a black, shiny box and have had them ever since.  Put them in the book case.  I didn’t really know what else to do with them.

Today would have been his 92nd birthday.  Now, it seems, is as good a time as any to disperse those ashes.  He would have liked it here.  He loved a great view and this place has that in spades.

He also loved dogs.  And our Megan died February 7th of this year and we have had her ashes here as well.  Now seems as good a time as any to disperse her ashes.  And it seems OK to do them together.  So, we will.

The next time you look at the blog picture of the house on the point, know that there are two old dogs roaming there as well as the three of us.

Apologies for the previous blog-rants.  I couldn’t help myself.  But I’ll try to get back to the forest for you………..

Fall has fallen.  Hallowe’en is just around the corner.  Time to clean up and put things away for the winter.  So we are doing that, putting on covers, tying things down, topping up tanks and making sure that things are ship shape. Which brings me to the ship….

Wasabi is a 17′ puke-green 70’s era Campion runabout with a rotten floor and a less-than-perfect derriere. But Wasabi is still pretty neat.  It has a walk-thru windshield which, it turns out, is remarkably useful when disembarking onto rocks and beaches rather than docks.  And it is easily driven and just about the perfect size for our needs.  I like this little boat.

But I didn’t like the seats when I first found it.  They were rotten, torn, soft and ugly (mind you, ‘ugly’ is the main decorative theme for Wasabi, so they fit in a repulsive-themed kind of way).  I tore them out and used the little rotten, torn, soft seats from the back of the boat on the theory that smaller amounts of ugly was, in some way, an aesthetic improvement.  It was.  And it gave us a bit more needed floor space for the ubiquitous totes we use for just about everything.

One of Wasabi’s old seats

But rotten was the operative word and the seats were on the verge of collapsing so I decided – in a minor blip of energy – to build new seats.  On our last town day, we picked up a couple of yards of upholstery vinyl and we salvaged the foam from the old seats.  And yesterday we built new seats.  New plywood.  New vinyl.  Old foam.

Putting these seats on a rotting floor is no easy task.  But I’ll find a way.  The alternative is to rebuild the floor and I don’t intend to do that until I eventually step hard enough to plunge through it.  “If it ain’t broke, wait till it is!”  

New Seat!

That’s a bit silly, of course but, honestly, I have enough to do. The floor can wait until it can’t.  Then I’ll fix it.

On the solar front, we are pretty good.  Lots of overcast days necessitated a single, two-hour genset experience but, for the most part, we are still running full-tilt on solar power.  One thing is clear: we have severely cut back our fuel use.

It is NOT like us to be so unproductive and Sal, despite her lingering cold, is trying to get us back in to gear.  I am resisting passively.  “I am sitting down in solidarity with the Hong Kong student protests! And you are acting like the totalitarian despots in the Central Committee!”  

“I would spray you with water cannons and pepper spray in a minute, you foreign devil!”

“So, in the spirit of the Chinese, what do you say we stop for tea and then compromise on something that allows us both to save face?”

“OK.  But then we get back to our work, Yao?”

…hardly blog worthy but so, so unusual for us.  We have been up here for ten years and, not counting the somewhat frequent brushes with death by machines, blunt trauma and myriad other weird, wilderness-related accidents, we have been healthy.  Disease free.  We managed to dodge all the flues and colds that make the usual rounds. Isolation will do that for you.  No people, no disease.

But we haven’t had a visitor in a month and yet we have classic back-to-school colds!?

Of course, we have encountered some people during that time and it was just last week we went to town on a shopping day so it is easily explainable but usually we can handle the occasional immersion in the germ pool without succumbing.  Not this time.  This back-to-school cold got us and is having it’s way with us like a kitten with a ball of yarn.

I mention this only because we also have an increased disease awareness these days. Ebola has a way of getting your attention, ya know?  So does Enterovirus 68. Enterovirus 68 is paralyzing only a few kids so far but the disease made it all over North America pretty quickly.  And people travel around the world in droves all day, every day. Even Liberians are traveling!  My point: disease can attack faster than terrorists.

“Geez, Dave!  You afraid of disease now?”

No more than before and, to be frank, NOT very much.  Disease has been an enemy of the species since the dawn of time.  We have been soundly defeated by bugs not just a few times.  They estimate that as many as 100 million people died from the Spanish Flu circa 1918.

The interesting thing about the Spanish Flu was that it covered the globe in an era BEFORE the world was travel mad.  AND there were fewer people in 1918.  The point: something as benign sounding as ‘flu’ can take us out in swathes.  Something like Ebola is much, much more deadly.  Spanish flu had a death rate of about 4 per thousand people. Ebola kills 500 of 1000 people.

“So, what are you saying?”  

Ebola is more important than ISIL/ISIS.  REAL leaders would be way out ahead of this one.

Mind you, for all that, climate change and pollution are more important than ISIL/ISIS and our leaders haven’t done much on that score at all either.

I guess my point is about politicians – why do we call these people leaders?

This is an interesting blog to write……….it is about you, the readers.  Whoever you are or (as in some cases) whoever you work for…….

Firstly, I encountered one of my ‘regular readers’ on another and very unrelated news-oriented website yesterday.  He used the same nom de guerre on that website as on mine.  Wrote with the same voice (sane).  It was like bumping into an old friend while traveling in say, California.  Weird. But neat. Birds of a feather……..

Another friend was a student at Tiananmen in ’89.  His input was simple: the protest will not end well in HK unless the students de-escalate their demands.  Methinks he should know.

According to Google stats about 25% to 33% of my readers are in China or HK.  Or Russia.  I have no idea why.  Some are likely friends from our travels there but most likely my site is monitored.  I occasionally write about Hong Kong and China, after all, and their government does tend to monitor such things.  Mind you, I sometimes rant about our government, too, so maybe some of the Canadian readers are CSIS staff. I never write about Russia.  So, who knows?

I should write more about the CIA and MI6 just to keep the whole spook community equally engaged, I guess.  It increases my readership at the very least.  I could end my blogs with ‘Allahu Akbar’ but that might be pushing things a bit too far.  Big Brother has no sense of humour.  And they do have jails and tasers.  Well, they all seem to find jailing and tasering folks somewhat amusing so maybe it is just a different sense of humour, eh?

Since this blog is a bit deviant, let me ask a few questions…..ISIL/ISIS is reported to have 30,000 soldiers (more, according to Obama).  But they don’t have significant numbers of vehicles, no tanks, no planes and, presumably, no discernible supply lines. Young men eat a lot.  They need food and toilet paper.  And soldiers need transportation.  So, how are they doing this?

Iraq has 250,000 soldiers, tons of planes and tanks and the backing of the world.  So why is Harper sending them 60 or so advisors and a few F-18s?

Why is Harper doing the same kind of thing in Ukraine?

Did Canada become a superpower while I have been away?

My guess?  Canada and the US intend to get aggressive around the Arctic circle and they have some kind of quid pro quo thing going on.  Plus Harper is an idiot and fancies himself a historical figure in the making.  He is easily manipulated as a result.

Ebola is getting out of hand.  It will likely ‘burn itself out’ as they say but it hasn’t so far and more efforts are needed to stop the possible pandemic.  Canada has offered up some supplies but the supplies can’t be shipped because commercial air carriers aren’t going into Liberia and Sierra Leone anytime soon.  So our contribution sits in Winnipeg or wherever. They are planning to ship it by sea!  Doesn’t the Canadian government have a few more planes other than the F-18s?  Aren’t the US flying in?  Can’t we hitch a ride?

How is it that we can join the forces against ISIL and not the forces against Ebola?

Where has Canada’s peace-keeping role gone?

How did a dickhead like Harper hijack our nation?

POSTSCRIPT: Seems Harper DOES read the blog!  After that last post, he announced a stepped up effort to address the Ebola issue.  Authorized a whole new mobile clinic to be sent.  I think the man suffers from a number of psychiatric disorders but making better decisions has to be acknowledged and fighting Ebola with more aid is a better decision.  ‘Bout time.  

The recent student-led protest in Hong Kong against Beijing-influenced elections is not exactly new.  HK Chinese have protested before and increasingly as the central government’s tentacles have reached further into the city-state’s administration over the past ten or so years.  The promise given at the 1997 ‘handover’ when HK went from a British colony to return to China was; “One country, two systems.”  It promised to keep the loosely-defined Hong Kong form of democracy and autonomy in place.  But they lied.

That government doesn’t speak the truth is not news anymore.  That Bejing lied is to be expected.  Lying is endemic to all governments.  And, with a hobbled and muted media, they get away with it.  In Canada, too.  But Hong Kong Chinese believed them.  They really did.  And they are fighting for that belief.  It is a show of incredible courage.

The real story is that the students are leading the revolt once again – like in the times of Tiananmen Square.  And in no small part that is a surprise in itself.  The government does not teach the Tiananmen Square history in school.  Chinese students today are generally ignorant of that time in Chinese history and even their parents have opted not to speak of it most of the time.  Safer that way.  These students are protesting without the sense of tradition or history that so often lends courage to such efforts.

They are NOT saying, “If they can, we can!”  Because no one in Hong Kong knows they could.  No one knows they did try once before.  And no one knows that the protests were crushed by none other than the People’s Army.  That video we are all so familiar with..? The man with the shopping bags blocking the path of a line of tanks by simply daring the driver to run him over..?  That video is never been seen officially in China.

Of course it has been seen but not officially.  And it has become part of the secret history that only a few know about now.  The extreme minority of Chinese who are personally committed to protest are not open about it.  They are not visible.  If that should ever happen, they are jailed.

Who amongst us would forget the images of Kent State?  Rodney King?  The Watts riots?  Who would forget the story of Lt. Calley at My Lai?  Nixon’s departure from the White House?  These are images that give us vision, that provide us with perspective and that help us make decisions on what our limits are.  The Chinese don’t have that. They get rhetoric and propaganda exclusively.

They are lied to even more than we are.

I totally respect the protestors.  To stand up to Goliath without the foundation of history, knowledge, perspective and the known support of others is incredibly courageous.  You are seeing a lot of brave young people in Hong Kong these days.  And to do that in conflict with a culture steeped in obedience, harmony and cooperation, is amazing. These are students born into a culture of respect for the hierarchy and for ‘your superiors’ and their school system is very, very reaffirming of that.  For them to object to anything in an anti-social way is nothing short of a major shift in the ‘force’.  These young people are different and they are making a difference.

We could use a few Chinese dissidents here.

It has been over a month and the genset has not been used once!  Sally even twice ironed her quilt-in-the-making pieces, a previous hangin’ offense.  I figure we have saved at least $25.00 so far in fuel, maybe a few dollars in depreciation and wear on the genset and at least ten hours of noise.  So far, this solar thing is workin’ out.

A few days ago it blew a gale.  Maybe gusted to 30.  The array presents a lot of surface area to the wind.  And, as you know, I eschew proper engineering and opt, instead, to use what I have at hand.  Maybe doubling it all up if I have two of them.  Tripling if I am worried.  At first I wasn’t worried.  Not in the least.  “Let her blow!”

But then it did blow.  It howled.  And my confidence ebbed pretty quickly.  I went up to look at the array when it was blowing about 20.  It was fine.  Not a vibration.  But, at 30, I went back to worrying.  Which is silly.  ‘Cause, what are you gonna do at that point? Catch panels as they fly by?  What will be will be.

Everything held and there was not a hint or indication of a problem.

I am going to double up on a few things.

I blame my neighbour for this sense of worry.  He is the very good neighbour who is pretty knowledgeable about construction and all things woodsy.  I respect his opinion. But I don’t always follow it because if I over-engineer, he over-engineers what I would do.  If a 2 x 2 is strong enough, I might use a 4 x 4 but he would advise employing a 6 x 6 with steel reinforcement.  I exaggerate only a little.

“Geez, Dave.  I dunno,  I am not saying anything.  It’s your money.  But you think that will stand up to a good wind?  Well, good luck to you.  Glad you can afford to throw away money.”

“I can’t afford to throw away money ’cause I don’t have any to fling!  Do you think that is going to fall down?”

” I ain’t saying nothing.”

“Yes, you are.  You just said it!  You are scaring the hell out of me.  What do you know that I don’t?”

“Have you calculated the wind force per square inch for this area?  What kind of steel thickness and hardness did you use?  Do you know the breaking strength of those cables?  What kind of rock anchors did you use?  How deep did you drill into the rock?”

“Unh..well, the force is the same as a small jib.  So, there is lots.  I used to sail, so I know  there is lots. The steel was salvaged from an old storage rack and it was hard enough to require me hitting it strongly with a hammer and welding parts of it.  Then I jumped on it with a friend of mine.  A bunch of times.  It held.  The cables were shrouds off an old sailboat and I drilled about six inches into the rock.”

“Well, I am glad they didn’t build the Ironworker’s Memorial bridge like that.  But maybe this will become the Ironworkers Memorial solar array.  We’ll see.”

I really have to stop asking him about things.  I may just triple a few things while I am at it.

Transient Orcas went by yesterday.  Heading south.  Six or seven of them, I think. Huge.  Likely all male judging from the profiles of the fins (all tall).

I first noticed the two bright red whale watching boats across the channel and got the binoculars out to see what they were looking at when, all of a sudden – ‘SWWWOOSH’. Right in front of me!  They whales were fifteen feet off my beach!

The whales were on this side of the channel and the tour-boats, keeping the requisite distance were far away on the other.  I guessed that the whales were the transient pod due to the high number of males but that was confirmed later by a neighbour who told us they had watched the whales find lunch – two seals.  Seems the transients eat mammals (seals, dolphins, porpoises) and the resident pods eat fish (salmon).

The whales eventually turned the corner of the point and the tour-boats scurried after. The game was afoot.  And what a game it is.  The whales draw a tour boat crowd every day and are followed relentlessly as they go about their Orca business.  It has to be a form of harassment but, to be fair, the tour-boats do keep the required distance (100 yards, I believe) and they are religious about it.  They are very good at being annoying as Hell.

The whales can get away.  Of that I am pretty sure.  Sometimes they simply dive and stay down a long time and, while down there, swim fast and go a long way.  If they do that twice or three times, they tend to lose the tour-boats pretty quickly.   But the tour boats are not without aids.  They, too, have binoculars (on many pairs of eyes), sonar and now, I understand, the aquarium is following pods with surveillance drones.  It is an interesting and merry chase for the tourists but I am not so sure how the whales feel about it.  There is no doubt that the boats make hunting and fishing harder.

Fewer Eagles this year.  Fewer sea lions.  Plenty of seals.  Seems the salmon came back in droves so that is good.  The ebb and flow of life on the coast, I guess.  A couple of years back jellyfish seemed to be the predominant life form.  They were a gelatinous carpet at times.  Then we had way too many sea-stars.  This year few of either.  If anything was noticeable in the numbers this year it was boaters.  We simply had more small (under 50 feet) boats plying the waters.  With fuel prices being what they are, I was surprised.

First official day of Fall and it is marked by a serious day of rain, a gloomy cloud cover and a gale warning for the evening.  And I am feeling pensive and, oddly for me, already missing the sunshine.  But the whale tours are basically over.  The boat traffic is all but gone.  It will be quiet again.  And that is the way it should be.  Quiet is good.

The silly season is finally over.  I can feel it.  I can also see it.  There are fewer boats going by, fewer e-mails coming in, no phone calls, the pace has slowed on everything. Especially me.  Sal is still busy, of course, but she has gone from warp speed to something closer to formula one – a big slowdown for supersonic Sal.

I have projects and I usually have overlapping projects so that I can keep as busy as I want to.  But not right now.  Right now, I am at the end of a major project (the new array) and without one ongoing to go to.  Worse, I don’t feel like starting one. I have had a long week off.  So long, in fact, it has been two weeks (well, there was a bit of tower dismantling but that doesn’t really count)!

Mind you, this time is not so much relaxing as it is lumpifying.  Like a stale bag of Reddi-mix, I am now just a heavy useless lump.  I am hardly moving at all. Yesterday, I got up, measured a few things and then spent long sections of time thinking about the new project (distant future) in a comfortable chair. Sitting was interrupted only by tea-making.  After I had done a lot of thinking, I went to another place and measured a few different things and repeated the chair and tea thing while I thought about that second project (further distant future).  A ball of fire I am not.

But that’s OK.  I got no boss, ‘cept Sal.  And she – as I said – has slowed down, too. Plus she pulled a muscle the day before (wrestling an old carpet into a garbage bag, no less) and so the whip has been hung on the wall for a bit.  If there is going to be any rest for the wicked, it is when Sal hangs up the motivator.

And the lazy brown dog?  Well, he has been on ‘idle’ for a considerable time.  But he looks positively active now compared to us.  A lot of balls and sticks have been fetched these past two weeks.  He has been getting some of the attention he thinks he deserves and he has been busy settling his canine accounts.

This is not a true Indian summer because the temperature is dropping.  Slightly.  Still warm and sunny but definitely Fall has been ‘in the air’ for awhile.  Mind you, we just had an algae bloom last week (a bit late) and I am still in shorts and a t-shirt.  Outdoor furniture is still outdoors.  Still veggies in the garden, fruit in the neighbour’s trees. When the weather turns, it may not come back to sunny and warm and we may be immersed in the change of seasons but, right  now, it is even more pleasant than ever. September to mid October is my favourite time out here.  It’s perfect.

It’s all good.  I am content.  But I did hear Sal talking on the phone about cattle prods and where to buy them so I may have to start doing something soon.  I hope I can put it off til Spring.

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