We used to host Woofers.  (Didn’t get any this year, tho…) Willing Workers on Organic Farms…………..basically, people traveling and wanting to ‘help out’ in exchange for room and board.  We did it because we like to see young people traveling the world and we wanted to share our own off-the-grid experience with them.  It was fun.

A week was enough for most of them.  They were very nice.  Can’t think of any that were not.  But, after a week, maybe two, they wanted to keep on with their journey and we were all happy to ‘move on’.  It was good.  But it was usually short.

Christian, however, stayed for about 6 weeks!  He was so keen and fun to have around that he was a notable exception to the usual…………plus he wouldn’t leave!  And we’ve been friends ever since.  I still enjoy hearing from him. 

Typically, we would get Wfers in early summer as the season became ‘flush’ with backpackers and we would then use them to help us bring in the firewood.  We’d only work ’em (and us) for about four hours a day, often less.  And their job would be to ‘wheelbarrow’ chopped wood from the chopping block to the wood shed and then stack it.  We’d usually pull in two cords and that would be enough.  Maybe three cords if they were keen and good at it.  And then they went kayaking and oyster-catching.  The days went by quickly and pleasantly as a rule.

Some were good.  Some were not so good.  Some were brilliant.  Lindsay was some kind of wood-stacking genius.  That woman stacked piles so tight that it was hard to get a finger between the wood!  Seriously!  She had some kind of spatial aptitude-thing going on.  Must have been a puzzle champ or something.  Martha Stewart does wood-stacking.

Rob and Judy were a lovely couple from England.  We really enjoyed them.  They were and probably still are, traveling around the world and taking each day as it comes.  We liked them.  They liked us.  And we were all the better for having met up.

But that was last year.

April, 2012, to be exact.

And that brings me to the point of today’s blog.  I was out at the wood shed this afternoon piling a load into the wheelbarrow for bringin’ in the house (we keep a few days pile stacked in the house) and, as I was reaching for some pieces, a note in a plastic bag wafted down.

It was from Rob and Judy:  “It’s been awhile since we were here helping you with these logs!  Just thought we’d say how much we enjoyed…..hope all is well…….much love and best wishes!” 

OK….admittedly NOT a really big deal…..but both Sal and I wore a grin for a while.  It was a really nice touch.  Brought back memories.  Made us feel good.

Hey!  This blog is about how I spend my day and…well,….I just spent a few extra minutes this afternoon grinning over a pleasant meeting a year and a half ago…………

Just sharin’

I’ve written several blogs these past few days.  Then deleted them.  You likely already know the gist of them…rants, senate, Harper, Christy Clark….amateur politics, Dave style…….the stuff of common knowledge really.  You get enough of that from the ordinary media.  Ya don’t really need me for that.

If anything.

The problem is that I am trying to write what I feel and think about and some of that junk is where my head is at.  But, if I shunt that crap out of my head, what am I left with?

Well, Orcas and ravens and construction projects, of course.  But anything original?

Here’s one: the CBC has orchestrated this senate scandal.  I mean Wallin and Duffy and Brazeau are real, of course, but senate waste is an old story, one we have lived with for years.

From the beginning, this scandal is really a story of the CBC in survivor mode.  And, tho the focus story is a financial tempest-in-a-teapot (tragically, misspending hundreds of thousands by lying and cheating is not really uncommon enough to make much of a deal over these days) it is serving to illustrate the backroom dealings and Machiavellian nature of our government.  Revealing a bit of the underbelly of this and any of the past governments is really just the CBC coming to grips with the fact that the Harper government is trying to kill off the skeletal remains of our national broadcaster – one that has been dying from lack of funding for decades.

Of course, news is just infotainment and the CBC is just fighting for their jobs, not necessarily the public’s interest, but their’s is a fight against a bully and that makes for good watching at the very least.

So, to that extent, the senate scandals are compelling reading for me.  The money itself, the corrupt senate, the lying…pshaw!  Picayune – the type of stuff that rarely lasts on the front page for long.  They have wasted multiple times that on the G8 Summit /fake lake and over-the-top security, the helicopter purchase debacle and even the Cohen Commission’s fish study ($26M to interview scientists who have been saying the same thing for years and then shelving the report is a HUGE waste of money). Look at the submarine scandal.  The slashing of environmental laws for the petroleum industry.  The list goes on and on.   And don’t get me started on the dozens of other crooked deals hatched by our governments these past few years.  Like I said, it is old news and all bad all the time.  And we all just move on….as a rule.

But not this time!  Not the CBC this time!  The CBC is fighting back.  Listen carefully, watch closely.  They are chewing and chewing every little morsel they can find and then hacking it back up for another chew if the there is room.  They will not let the senate issue die till Harper pulls the plug on the CBC.  They are against the Harper government and the gloves are off!

And should the senate scandal somehow get boring?  They will have dredged up something else.  Trust me on this: the CBC are at war!

The good part is that it is encouraging others.  Of course, the ‘free’ press and the ‘freelancers’ have been shrieking for years (Lala Yulie, The Tyee, The Commonsense Canadian just to name a few) but they have the same taint as I do……..we sound biased and partisan.  Our stripes show.  We don’t sound ‘balanced’.  And that is because we are not. I am just a nut and they are more credible.  But marginal nevertheless.

But the CBC still has the ring of professional journalism about them (undeserved but still there) and this is even putting some of the sell-outs to the corporate news outlets looking more critically at the way they do their job.  The Globe and Mail and even the Big Easy (the Vancouver Sun) are, infrequently still, sounding a smidge critical at times.

One can only hope.

Anyway, my point: things are changing.  Independent media, social media and even baby bloggers like Lala Yulie and Rafe Mair are starting to make changes from the sidelines.  It is good to see.  Let us keep our fingers crossed that these new voices can help sway a nation.  And let us hope that the CBC girds their loins to the sticking post and inspires an internal revolution of institutional thinking so as to support that.  Maybe the new revolution is possible by way of information..?  Who knows?

On the theme of Hallowe’en, I have a small tale to tell.  It’s about voices.  We hear ém quite often despite living remote and usually miles from anyone.  Of course, we hear wolves howling and eagles shrieking and we even hear the trailing edge of conversations from moving kayakers now and then as they ply up and down the channel but I am not talking about them.  I am talking about the spirit voices.  Ghosts, maybe.  The ones that whisper in the night.

“Do you hear that?”

“Yeah.  I’ve heard it before.  Can’t make it out but it sounds like voices.  Waddya think it is?”

“Dunno.  I can’t make it out either but it definitely sounds like voices.  Like campfire conversation or something.  I hear what seems like words but none of them are distinct.  Nothing is clear.”

“Me, too.  And I have listened hard.  The voices usually come around after dark and more frequently in the summer but I heard them last night and it is October”.

“Scared?” 

“No.  They don’t seem malevolent.  They don’t sound bad or anything.  Just voices.  Just conversation.  They always sound as if they are just a smidge north of here, ya know.  Not south  Not west.  Kinda north with maybe a bit of east…like they were on the beach where we don’t have a beach. ”

“Yeah.  That’s where I hear it, too.” 

“So, do we tell anyone?”

Nah.  I don’t think so.  Who’d believe it?”  

The outside of the new studio is finished!  (Of course, like any building, it is never ever truly finished – even the outside – but, for all intents and purposes it is.  I will eventually extend the deck rails to connect up with the building and I will likely refinish the doors but they are still performing the basic function regardless.  We are done with the outside practically speaking.  Ooops…’cept for the chimney which we’ll do later…. Still, lockup is lockup and we can lock up!)

And October hasn’t even ended yet!  We are ahead of schedule.  Which is great for me.  I love that.  Sal?  Well, not so much.  She has her own agendas and they have been put on hold while we get the studio at least weather ready.  So, pretty soon now we will get on again with things in the usual way – her doing hers, me doing mine.  But she’ll still do the electrical.  Otherwise I’ll do the interior myself.  Pretty much.  We’ll do the ceiling together, too, but after that, she is gone.

So she thinks, anyway.

The truth is I am a bit of a pain in the butt when I am ‘into’ one of my projects.  Even if Sally is busy doing something else, I will often call out, “Hey, Sal!  Could you come over here for a minute?  Here, just hold this for a minute while I get this nail in….”  “Hey, Sal!  Could you come over here a minute and just….”  And, to her credit, she is always there for me.  She’ll come.  She’ll hold.  She’ll wait till it fits (several extra cuts then a new piece altogether).  Then she will leave and get back to what she was doing.  Usually good naturedly, too.  She’s very patient and tolerant with me and I kinda rely on it.  It is how things get done out here – she does her job and half of mine, too.

Still, it is nice to show off the pictures.  The building is only 16 by 12.  192sft.  And that is measuring the outside.  The inside is made smaller by the 6 inch walls and so the useable square footage is 11 by 15 or 165 sft.  NOT huge.  But it is going to be big enough and it has plenty of light with the two windows, four skylights and, of course, the French doors.

I’ll make shelving and a workbench when finishing the inside. And I’ll add two large shelves at the eight-foot level to create mini-lofts at both ends increasing storage by almost 50 sft as well.  Naturally, I will have outgrown the damn thing by the time it is complete but, really………that just means I GET TO BUILD ANOTHER SHED!

I just overheard Sally say something about ‘lock-up’, too.  But I think she may have been referring to me!

Senators squabbling.  Fabulous.  Pigs at the trough.  As if they didn’t have it so good they could keep shut about it all, they had to push the envelope for more and get into a pissing contest.  Beautiful.  Just great.  What geniuses we have running our country!

But let us be clear about it.  We are complicit.  We allow it.  We don’t protest.  We just step out of the way when they run for the buffet.  They should be embarrassed and ashamed and so should we be for having them there.  And allowing them there in the first place.  It is elitism of the worst kind.

You have to give the CBC credit.  The CBC did this exposé .  I think the CBC has decided to put up a fight (for their very survival) against this government in any way they can and good for them!  They found a vein!

Face it!  It was NOT us.  It was NOT the opposition either (The Liberals have been at the trough longer and for more goodies and have just as scandalous a history).  The NDP (now the official opposition) just haven’t had the chance yet.

And I say that because the construct of the senate as an unelected upper chamber is nothing more than a corrupt reward for party hacks doing partisan backroom dealings.  If you get in bed with dogs, you will end up with fleas and even tho the NDP are flealess now, they would be scratching if they showed up at the trough too.  It is the very being there that is wrong.  The senate should be abolished.

Mind you, they can take the Commons and shove it, too……..

Well, I had to say something, didn’t I?  How could I not?  I actually have a final ‘studio-building blog’ ready to publish complete with pics but the studio isn’t quite yet 100% ready so I am putting it off for a day or so.

This little rant is like MUZAK…ya know…while you are waiting?  Barry Manilow?  Elevator muzak?

More breaking news….I’ll be taking a blog break for awhile…………or a change, anyway.  Starting in a week or so – because in a couple of weeks we go to Mexico for my daughter’s wedding.  I’ll blog a bit about that.  But, you know, it is her wedding.  Gotta respect that it is her story, not mine.

Mind you, I will tell you about my part in it…………whatever that turns out to be.  Sal says, “You just have to be there, sweetie.” I hope she is right.

Finally, a word about God, magic, the universe unfolding as it should…………whatever…..I am pretty happy these days and not in just the least bit aware of the many little miracles that seem to be dropping like sugar plums around us.  We are incredibly fortunate.  Life is good,

……………………senators and government notwithstanding.   

It was after dinner.  It was dark.  The fog had rolled in early and was as thick as a Canadian senator’s sense of privilege.   Looking out from the balcony was just a grey blur and we could barely see to the shore below.  About 100 feet.  The dogs were going crazy.  So Sal and I ventured out to stare into the gloom with them.

What could possibly have set them off?

Just as we were about to go in, Sal spied a shape emerging out of the mist.  A big herring skiff with a small aluminum boat tied alongside was slowly approaching the beach.  It was Alvin-the-floating-junk-man.

Alvin and his partner had promised to drop by to pick up the inevitable scrap metal pile consisting mostly of somewhat valuable dead lead batteries and stray steel and aluminum that seems to collect at remote homes like broken glass on the side of a Mexican highway.  We had a ton of metal or close to it and they were making their last stop for the night.

They were pretty late.  But at least they showed up!

I fired up the big yellow iodine floodlight we have on the lower deck so as to cast an eery glow over the shore and they gently bumped up alongside.  We helped them load the stuff aboard the large rectangular skiff piled to the brim with old refrigerators, car parts, batteries, cable and miscellaneous junk.

They climbed across the skiff from the small power boat, scrambling over the junk in sneakers and jeans and torn hoodies like creepy night creatures, to receive our offerings.  Both fellows are older and thin as rails.  Skeletal.  Skin like darkly tanned leather.  They were the very image of the junk collector with the added cachet of looking vaguely pirate-like at the same time.  Arriving late and leaving in the dark thick fog like ghosts of Marley simply added to the bizarre marine Halloween scene.  Scrap collectors? Or trick or treaters?  You be the judge.

It would be hard to make this stuff up.

Book club today.  The coven is meeting.  Almost Halloweén.  But it is a new house this time.  A new cauldron is brewing the tea.  Double, double, toil and trouble. 

The house is new in the sense of hosting book club and pretty new in the sense of existence as well.  Most of the women attending have no idea where exactly the house is but they know which beach to land at.  They’ll be guided from there.  The host family came a couple of years ago and have been building ever since.  They moved in and got comfortable early this summer.  They, too, are part of a group.  A mystery group…….

Well, not that much of a mystery group, I suppose.  But they are interesting, to be sure.  I don’t know the whole story, actually, but I do know that all of these folks can build and they can build fast and well.  They were a group of people who lived up North and built everything from scratch.  The whole community!  Everything.  Stores, barns, houses, schools and churches.

Real hippies, I guess.  Nice folks. But they are also our age and you’d think they would be slowing down.  NOT SO!  One of the guys is building his place up behind where book club is meeting and he just started this summer and it is already to lock-up.  He is 73!  And going like a train.

I am tellin’ ya, there’s something to this kinda lifetsyle.  Lots of people are poor.  Lots of people have little.  But damn near all of ém seem to keep on ticking and are still stepping pretty lively.

I remember well the year before we came up here for good, I attended a town hall meeting.  I wanted to see the community into which I was moving.  I was about 52-ish, in jeans, Gore-Tex and new boots.  A fashion hunk.  I watched the people enter and were struck by their ruddy complexions, lack of body fat and their incredibly disreputable garb.  I looked like an alien.  They were wearing Goodwill third time around.  I was at a meeting of hillbillies!

I fit in pretty well today.

And, of course, what is a clan of hillbillies without a Daisy Mae or two and I couldn’t help but notice the odd one.  One beautifully proportioned woman walked in front me wearing one of those long, thin, hippie dresses from the 70’s.  She positively sashayed.  It was mesmerizing.  I was transported immediately back to 1968, the summer of love.  Haight Ashbury.  Emily Faith Hart (long story).  Hitchhiking.  The Diggers.

Her hair swished from side to side and she had her back to me (which was just fine) and then she turned to say hello to the people around me.  She was still very beautiful but she was 70 if she was a day!  Older now that I think about it.  This woman moved and swayed like a teenager.  She was strong, healthy, full of energy and – did I mention that she had a good figure?

I was stunned.

But I shouldn’t have been.  Looking around the room I could see that a lot of the people up here were pretty fit.  I doubt that they watch what they eat – they take what they can get or what they have on hand.  No restaurants out here.  And there ain’t no gym!  The folks are fit because they move, work and are outdoors trekking on irregular ground all day long.  Or in boats.  Or carrying stuff.  Or building.

Usually all of the above.

For a guy like me who feels that any unnecessary movements are a sign of inefficiency and should be avoided at all costs, who thinks that one of man’s greatest inventions was the remote control and for a guy who now prefers an automatic over a manual transmission, I need the discipline that this environment forces on me.  ‘Course, I will never look good in a thin cotton dress nor will I ever be able to sashay in any way but lumpily, but still I am a lot healthier for being here.  I know that.

Now the first thing you have to know about Emily Faith Hart was that she was studying and residing in a convent in Oakland when we met in Haight Ashbury. She was dressed as a witch………………

We have basically ‘turned the corner’ on the studio.  Almost to ‘lock-up’.  We are having fun!

Since I will put the doors on at the very last (they are glass double French doors and a smidge vulnerable) we will not technically be to lock-up til we are virtually done – even the inside – because shlepping in and out of finishing materials, tools and stuff means passing through the doorway.  A lot!  May as well do that when the opening is wide and not breakable.

Did I mention the doors (that I transport by small boat) are glass?

But the windows are in and the siding will be on within the next few days so we feel as if we are dry and almost home.  The bulk of the work remaining is inside work.  The pressure – such as it was – is almost off.  Whew!

Sally, actually, feels the relief more than I do.  She was the one on the roof.  I built scaffolding so that I could work at eave level and pass Sal ‘cut’ pieces that she calls for as she needs them while sitting astride the roof.  Same kind of process for the inside.  So, for instance, while she was on the cat-walk scaffold in the inside-middle of the building, I was cutting collar-ties and rafters and passing them up to her.  She would then hold them while I got into position (the lower part of the ceiling near the wall) and the two of us would screw or nail in our ends.

Then – when the framing was complete but still skeletal – she would climb up on the very top of the roof outside and I would pass her cut sheet metal that she would screw into place and then she would scramble/slide along to the next section where the process would be repeated.  Since it was only an 8/12 pitch and I had scaffolding three feet down from the eaves (three sides), we were content to simply tie a line from her and to me for safety.  If she fell, my weight alone would save her.

This all sounds good but it is Sally who is at the top looking at the ground twenty feet below.

And sitting astride a metal roof (to put on the cap) is something that I would find quite difficult.  Sal does yoga.  Piece o’ cake.  As Sal says, “You do not need a carpenter for a partner, you need a yoga practitioner!”

Have you noticed that any old carpenters still doing framing are skinny?  Well, I have.

Anyway, the weather is still good and we will soon be able to work inside.  Except for the stovepipe opening our outside work will be over.

And to think you poor folks have to go to a restaurant, the theater or the mall for fun.

Roof’s on.  Soffits are done.  That’s good.  Neigbours houseboat is coming along.  That’s good, too.  Basically life is progressing and I will take some pics to show off today.  It is time for an ‘update’.  But I’ll save that for the next post.

My daughter is getting married in a couple of weeks.  That’s good.  At least 50% of the time, that is good.  Sometimes it isn’t.  Being a mediator for 20 or so years has exposed a lot of marriages to me (I have mediated well over 200 separation agreements) and I have a different view of it all than most people as a result.  But this one looks good.  I like B.  B seems to like me.  That is a good start.  Maybe I can get him to do some of the heavy lifting…?  We’ll see how this pans out.  But, so far, it has all the right ingredients.

But life is changing for young people.  The challenges are new and way more daunting.  We don’t know what they are going to have to deal with.  And how does one or even two deal with climate change and economic turmoil anyway?  Add possible children into the mix and it may be a helluva ride for them.  I wouldn’t want to have to handle that, myself.

It was hard enough when things were easy.  We got started on LIP and OFY grants and be-ins and good music.  We had free love – not free virus-ridden love.  We had The Beatles, The Stones, The Temptations, Otis Redding, Aretha and Janis.  Nowadays, they have rapsters killin’ and bein’ gangstas.  Grunge and crap.  Meth.  They got cartels and Homeland Security and CCTV.  Neither Orwell nor I would want to have to grow up with all that.

If they come to me for help, what can I say?  “Run!  Run for the hills!  Get out!  Get out now!”  Zat sound like experienced wisdom talking?  Zat sound like sage advice?

43% of Spanish youth are unemployed.  23% in Greece.  Over 30 million Americans are unemployed (officially the number is lower but that is because the ‘official’ number is a false one).  Millions more are underemployed.  The richest 400 Americans have a greater net worth than the lowest 155 million Americans combined.  A huge percentage of 24-to-34 year olds still live at home with their parents.  And the US continues to print money and lend it to banks for practically-speaking free in an almost six-year continuing attempt to kick-start the economy.  It is not working.  Not yet, anyway.  That does not make for an ‘easy-entry’ for youth.

But 25 year olds have energy.  They have attitude.  They have dreams.  They have ‘the right stuff’.  So, they may do OK.  They may do great.  Will they ever get to live in paradise and build sheds, tend gardens and be as happy as we are?

I hope so.  But I don’t see it comin’ easy.

We ‘boomers’ may have done a ‘not-so-good’ job with our turn at the helm.  We should have done better.  We still can.  Maybe it is time we collectively did something good for the generations coming up…..waddya think?

Quick survey…..anyone out there?

Numbers are off.  Comments way, way down.  Has the apocolypse happened already and no one bothered to tell us?   Look outside – do you see zombies?  Please tell me.

Admittedly nothing I have written lately is Pulitzer in nature but David J is usually good for a short confirmation of my existence.  And, to be fair, he was there for me when I needed him most (around the whale carving blog).  My new BFF!  But only once! The silence is deafening, the cold in the air more than just arctic air.  Was it sump’n I said?

On the assumption that you are not all suffering early onset zombification (which is quite generous of me when you think about it), is there something you want to say?

Mind you, unemployment is down to 7% so maybe everyone is at work?  Still, I noticed that most comments contributed over the years were from readers who were actually supposed to be at their desk doing their work and so that theory is weak.  Is it because I have held off on the ObamaCare/Boehner issue?  Or is it simply not enough ravens?

Maybe I have not ranted enough about the way life is?  Could that be it?

I do have this to throw in to the mix, “Hey, Dave!  Looks like there are fewer conspiracy theories out there, eh?” 

The old building-supply guy and I often trade cynical comments while exchanging cash for plastic crap and his opinion that fewer conspiracy theories existing currently could only mean one thing, “So, you are saying that because the theories are now out there, exposed and proven to be true?”

“Exactly!  So many skeletons are coming out of the closet these days it feels like it must almost be empty!  That Snowden fella and Julian Aasange are leaking more dirty secrets faster than even our senators can create new ones.  And Harper and Christy are out shilling for corrupt corporate takeovers like due process and public opinion have no part.  It’s all so obvious.  Right out in the open!  The hubris of these people and the ones being exposed is beyond belief.  But the good part is that our suspicions and theories have been confirmed.”

“Did you really need confirmantion?”

“No.  Not really.  But such arrogance usually preceeds serious comeuppance.  So, I am now moving from the conspiracy stage to the hoping for change stage.”

“Y’all sounding downright biblical, ya know that?  Pride commeth before the fall and all that.”

I later shared that conversation with another local guy.  A hermit of sorts.  Nice guy.  Very quiet.  Even more solitary than a lost guru on top of a Himalayan mountain. “Yeah, I agree.  It’s all coming apart.  No doubt.  I feel relief, actually.  Been waiting a long time.  Can’t end soon enough for me!” 

Which, of course, sent me along sharing that sentiment with anyone else who would listen.  And the consensus was shockingly unanimous:  The system is coming apart and we can all ‘feel it’ doing so.   It is overdue.  And there is no fear.  There is only anticipation and curiousity. 

Don’t misunderstand me.  I am not endorsing the End of Days.  My survey group was limited to those I bumped into and half of those were still fully committed to the conspiracy stage and not in the least moving on to the more rosy and cheery end-of-days apocalyptic stage.  And let us not forget the zombie phase – wherever that fits into the plot.  So, it is not like we have consensus or anything.  But I have a confession to make.  After all this talk of the END, I am now feeling much better about the extra beans in the food shed.