……….now I am looking for a chance to work.

It’s embarrassing.  It really is.  Sal’s boat is still high and dry.  Except when it rains but then it is still too high at the very least.  I have got to get on those repairs.  I really do.  It’s been over a week now and Sally is getting more and more comfortable driving my boat. And it just doesn’t feel right, ya know?  Sorta like your wife driving your truck all the time?  Or, if you’re a cowboy, riding your horse?  Just ain’t right.

And it’s not my fault.  Not really.  We’ve been busy.  Town days, guests, community workshop days.  And any days that were not otherwise occupied were pouring with rain.  There just hasn’t been a decent ‘repair’ window.  I blame the weather.

“Geez, Dave, waddya talkin’?  You guys are retired.  You got nothin’ to do all day.  You jus’ sit around and write your blog, right?”

Well, it might seem like that but, honest, we are busy.  I swear.  OK, I don’t get up early.  I admit that.  But I never did.  I used to only apply for jobs that did not require early attendance.  I am not a morning person, OK?

And, of course, you can’t do fibreglass boat repairs when it is dark.  Right?  So, right there we have some major limits on the potential opportunity for working.  I am just a work-victim frustrated-by-circumstances…….like.

Still, that leaves a good six-hour window on a nice day and, so far, we just haven’t managed to find it.  But we will.  It will get done.  You’ll see.

I hope.

But the signs aren’t good.

Today was a great day.  And I was ready to go.  But Sal went up to do another ‘spontaneous’ community work day and I need her hands to help me when I am doing well, anything, really.  Anyway, she wasn’t there for the planned boat repairs.  So, I didn’t do it.  Worse, there were a bunch of vegetables and junk all over the kitchen and I knew what her plans were and so I decided to prepare the dinner.  I made a stew.

I think.  Not sure.  We’ll know later.  It smells OK.  But cooking is not one of my strengths.  We’ll see.

Look!  There are people who build boats.  And there are people who sail boats.  They are rarely the same people.  Builders and users.  That is the way it is.  And it is the same way with cookin’, isn’t it?  Only some cook.  Most eat.  I am in the latter group.  It’s what we like to call a division of labour.  She cooks.  I eat.  We’re both happy.  Mind your own business!

But – just so you know – once in awhile I cook.  You know, like the sensitive, non-sexist, sweetheart I am?  Down deep.  I help out.  I feed the dogs.  I BBQ steaks.  I help with the pizza.  I am pretty good at Sushi.  And, well…………popcorn……..and I pour the wine………

Mind your own business!

But that is what I am writing about, actually.  I am not minding my own damn business.  I spent a couple of hours cooking, for Gawds sake!  And Sal was doing construction!  The world has gone mad!

How is that boat ever going to get done if everyone has gone mad?

Epilogue: Sal came home and ‘messed’ with the stew to ‘fix it up’ a bit.  Tasted OK.  “You did good, sweetie.  Thank you.  In future, tho, you don’t have to do this, ya know?  Really.  Honest.  Thanks a lot, tho.  But, like, it is OK to stay out of the kitchen, OK?  Please?”

I am taking those comments in a positive way.  I think I have been told to relax.

Shakespeare wrote.  He’s from Gambia.  Wants to Woof (volunteer).  T’is the season.

“I want to come help……….. and……..I have five lovely children.”

Sheesh.  I don’t think we can accommodate six people even if five of them are lovely.

Plus kids – if any are under 6 – tend to tip over and, with our slopes, they also tend to keep on rolling and/or sliding after the initial tipping.  Some roll all the way to the sea.  This is not a good thing.  Parents get upset.  Kids usually bounce back up.  But not always.  Parents never do.

Truth is, this is not a good place for little kids.  Portuguese Water dogs, goats, athletes, acrobats and yoga practitioners are best.  Heavy drinkers, little kids, people with poor balance or walking aids……not so good.  We are definitely not wheel-chair friendly.

Well, we are friendly just not very accommodating.

Up until a couple of years ago the only access to our place from the dock was a heavy rope slung over a steep (but short) cliff and the person needing to get to our place had to pull themselves up hand over hand.  More than a few older folks had my shoulder jammed under their rump as they struggled to get up with me providing that little extra push.

Old, bumply-cheeked rumps plunked heavily on my shoulder while I also climb-lifted me and their luggage up about ten feet straight up.  Less than enchanting.  So, I eventually built stairs.  Necessity.  Mother.  Invention.

The thing with Woofers is that they all need something.  And that is only fair.  We all do.  Sometimes it is just vegetarian meals.  Sometimes it is as simple as Internet.  Usually it is something made known to us only after the Woofer has arrived.  “Oh, you are allergic to dairy?” “Only eat gluten-free?” “Hate sea food, eh?”

Often, tho, the Woofer is ‘accepting of whatever is going down’ excepting, sometimes, the actual work.  They usually have a good attitude (the continental French are sometimes a little too far out of their natural element, tho) but it is not uncommon to have to teach a young man or woman how a hammer works.  Virtually everyone needs to learn how an axe works.  Well, a splitting maul, anyway.  We don’t trust them with axes.  Too sharp.

Chainsaw?  Power winch?  Rock-drill?  Not a chance.  Maybe the small outboard.  Someday.  Maybe.

I am not kidding.  Shovels are a mystery tool to some.  I’d say only the wheelbarrow is a concept readily grasped by all.  How the hell these people got from their home country all the way to our island is a question I often ponder after seeing them try to work the garden hose or use a screwdriver.

“So, Francine….?  What did you do in France?  You know?  Before coming here?”

“Oooooh………….ah teaze de onglais, eh?  Ah am a On-glaize teazer fo zen ‘eers. eh?” 

“Wow!  Interesting.  What is the name for that utensil in French?”

“Ah ‘ave nezer zeen zat tsing bee-fore.  Wha di zat?”

“We call it a shovel.”

Now don’t get me wrong.  I love the Woofers.  I really do.  They just add to the experience of being out here and they are usually very grateful for the hospitality, the activities and of the surroundings we offer.  It is good.  All good.

But it is not a great deal as such.  True, the labour is free.  But only four hours a day and, typically, it is unskilled in the extreme.  The best woofers are those who can cook, clean and are willing to do the dishes.  That actually helps a great deal. If I have to explain how a nail-puller works, I may as well do it myself.  Plus I limit any blood loss to my own.

Last year we had a lovely woofer from Switzerland and she was great.  She couldn’t do anything but she was a keen cleaner.  She was excited to help Sal spring clean.  We all washed and scrubbed and vacuumed every surface and our place was Swiss-clean after a week.  She has an open invitation to return anytime.

I am gonna have to disappoint Shakespeare, I am afraid.  Right now the house is pretty clean and the only stuff I have planned is heavy, sharp and has motors involved.  This ain’t BCIT, ya know.

Most of the toy-making workshop has now been moved to the Q-hut.  We have one more trip to finish relocating the last of it but all the tools are here as well as most of the bits and pieces.  Plus a number of good toy samples with which to compare our first efforts.  We are pretty much through the big step ONE. Call this the heavy-lifting stage.

I, for one, am glad that stage is over.

Step two is putting it all together.  That means finishing the electrical work, building shelves, setting up the vacuum and air-filter system, attaching bench-based machines, sorting and inventory.  You know……..the usual kind of thing to get everything operational.  Call this the order-from-chaos stage.

But we have to start at chaos, of course.

“Where should I put this?” “In the little room.” “But there’s garbage still there.” “Take the garbage out!” “To where?” “I dunno.” “I am hungry, anyway.  Let’s have some lunch.” “What’s that machine do?” “I dunno.” “But you are the experienced wood-work guy here!?”  “Yeah. True. But the bar is set pretty low and I don’t know what that is.  So, sue me. Looks like a calibrating thingy.  Kinda.”

And on and on.  All day.  But as that background noise continues to drone, things slowly get put away and a few decisions are made.  We are progressing.  Kinda.

“That shouldn’t go there!” “Why not?” “It just shouldn’t.  I like my drill presses in corners.” “OK.  Sounds fine to me but, ya know, we have to make sure we don’t think of this as our own personal shop.  It is a community shop, remember.  Can’t be done as if it belongs to just a few of us.  You know, emphasis on community workshop?” “Does that mean you want the drill press somewhere else?” “No.  Just sayin’.” “Then put it in the damn corner for now, OK?”

It is clear that we are going to have to establish some kind of order but order is anathema to us.  No one likes order.  ‘Course, we don’t like chaos, either.  What we like is ‘natural, common sense’.  The problem is that common sense isn’t common.  Or, it seems, natural.  It is also, at best, subjective and, when exercised in a group of naturally different and uncommon people, very much inclined to recreating chaos.

“So am I the only one eating lunch or what?”

We have decided to start by building shelves for storage and small tools.  That, most assuredly, cannot be done by committee.  So one of us will build a set of shelves.  Whoever that is.  And he will likely start as soon as the power is hooked up and we can use the saw.  Which, by the way, is packed away right at the moment but which we will get to.  Soon.  I think.  And whoever is going to work on the power will get to it as soon as…….well…..as soon as we have lunch. 

Tempers heated up yesterday at the community-building site.  We were working on the kitchen extension.  It is coming along nicely.   But a couple of personalities flared.  Sparks flew.  It was the pressure, I think.  As little of it as there was, it was a bit too much.

We are trying to get things done, you see.  We have a sense of urgency (for us).  Therefore we have pressure.

I have come to learn that pressure is relative and, further, one can learn to accept greater and greater pressure as one’s career or personal issues escalate.  What I didn’t know was that, once that pressure eases and things return to a personal and natural equilibrium (different for each of us) one’s ability to ‘kick it up a notch’ weakens.  Let me explain:

I won’t claim to have endured much pressure or any great stresses in my life.  I will claim to thinking that I was, tho.  At the time.  Now and then.  In retrospect, I never had to make life and death decisions, I was never responsible or accountable to thousands.  I didn’t live in the chaos of war.  And, thank God, my wife and kids are fine (perfect in every way, actually).  So, quite probably, my experience with stress and pressure was normal and reasonable for my era and the location in which I lived.

Let’s say, that on a scale of 1 to a hundred, I experienced stress – at the most – at 25 (now and then) and that I likely averaged 15.  Not a lot, but I averaged 15 for decades.  And I handled it well, if I do say so.

But now I live in an environment with an average stress level of 2 or 3.  Five on a busy, frustrating town day.  The needle on the scale barely moves off the ‘equilibrium’ setting most of the time.  I am r-e-l-a-x-e-d.  I am so relaxed that I have noticed that I have to ‘kick it up’ a notch just to drive down Vancouver Island.  That’s right – one of the greatest sources of stress and pressure in my life right now is catching ferries, driving a few hundred kilometers and being somewhere ‘down island’ or in Vancouver on time.  I can feel the stress build, the closer I get to Nanaimo.

After Nanaimo, I start to ‘numb up’ and tense all my neck muscles, ya know?

Imagine that!  Getting close to Nanaimo in traffic is measurably more stressful than anything I live with up here.  Years ago I used to cover that distance easily and do two stressful mediations in one day.  And get home in time for dinner guests!

I can’t nor will I attempt to do that anymore.

And that general declaration is true for many people here, too.  More so, I think for some who have lived even longer more remotely, maybe alone and who have ‘interacted’ with Vancouver and the outside world even less.

As I said, stress and pressure are relative but most of the folks up here live and have lived at lower levels of sensory assault, pace, duties to be performed and, perhaps, most significantly, with lesser personal encounters to manage than urbanites.

Unlike city-folks who have to navigate the sidewalks, parking lots, elevators and offices filled with other people all the time, up here we can spend the whole day on the beach or in the forest.  And many have done so for much of their lives.

So some feel pressure just coming to community workshop day more than others.

Don’t worry.  There is no BIG trouble in paradise.  We’re fine.  It is just an observation.  It is hard NOT to notice, actually.  Not only are we more sensitive to pressure and stress that most urban others would not even notice, we are also, on average, much older than the average age of an urban population.  At the workshop, for instance, there isn’t a soul under 50 and all but a few are over 60.

We are less hardened to the work-with-others scene and we are less capable of learning it at this stage of our lives.

So the typical person coming to ‘cooperate’ and ‘mingle’ and ‘work-in-community’ on Wednesdays is 60 plus, lives alone and has, for the most part, NOT done this teamwork-thing for years.

Furthermore, we have had to be independent.   A lot of things get done because we do them by ourselves.  No one helps.  As a consequence, we have our strengths, we have our weaknesses and we have our own personal ways.

Historically, not a lot had to be compromised or adjusted because of the ways of others.  Personality conflicts could be dealt with simply by avoidance.  We have the space for that.  There was little to force civil interaction.  No one knocked the chips off of shoulders, taught compromise, preached tolerance or threatened paycheques so as to push square personalities into corporate round holes.  People out here don’t have a long history of having to mesh with others.

Don’t get me wrong.  The above is not to suggest that we can’t cooperate or socialize or get along.  We can!  We can mesh!  And we do!  But we also can choose NOT TO whenever we wish.  We can leave before we are ‘compromised’ should we feel that compromise is looming.  We have the freedom to leave. And we exercise that, too.  We can maintain our own sense of personal equilibrium because we are free to do so.

Committing to a community project restricts that freedom.  Only a little.  But it does.  And that can cause a bit of stress.  A project that takes on a schedule and has plans and supervision……well, now we are talking some real pressure.  Nerves get strung.  Some of them tight.

God help the poor soul who comes to the exercise with expectations.  That is failure spelled i-n-e-v-i-t-a-b-l-e.  For things to work best out here, people pair with whom they choose, do the chore that they find interesting and do it at their own pace.  Yes, things will get done differently, but they will get done.

You know what they say…….”If you can’t stand the heat, get out of the kitchen!”

I asked a reader why she followed the blog.  “Is it the political critiques?”

“No.  Not so much.”

“The philosophical wanderings?  The stories and anecdotes?  My attempts at humour?”

“Nope.”

What attracts you?”

“Just the everyday living stuff.  You know?  Off-the-grid, chopping wood.  That sort of thing.”

“Dogs and ravens?”

“Yep.”

So…………….

The night before last we were siting having a glass of wine with our neighbours, J&G.  We were talking about the ravens and how they had managed to infiltrate J’s bait box so a heavier one had to be made.  We spoke of the otters who had stolen two-thirds of his cabin’s insulation in trade for a lot of otter poop.  And we spoke of the pair of eagles that had returned to the ‘eagle perch’ just by our house.

But by then, of course, I was aching to tell a story and so like the fool I am (think Charlie Brown trying to kick the football that Lucy holds for him), I began to tell a story.  It was going to be long one.  But I was into the middle of a story (about China – years ago) in no time.

It was good one.

We have a tradition in my house – stories must be broken into segments.  Sally determines when. They don’t have natural chapters so somehow, in some way, Sally usually finds a way to interrupt the story when she feels it needs a ‘break’. 

“….and then, just as the Chinese police arrived and the girls ran naked off into the woods to hide, the pressure in the old steel boiler in the back room got too great to stay………..

Time! Sally stands and starts walking around the room, “More cheese, anyone?” “Would anyone like more wine or maybe some tea?”

What would Jesus do?

But this time the story was interrupted by the dogs (I suspect that she had recently trained them for this).  They started yapping outside and were quite insistent.  Naturally, I attempted to continue but, like every other time, the story was halted by the diverted attentions of my audience and so we all just gave up and went outside to see to the dogs.  Turns out they were on to something.

We estimate that there were at least 7, maybe a couple more, big Orcas swooshing by right near the shore.  One big male was very prominent with his huge black dorsal fin coursing along.  They looked great.  It was worth the interruption and, as soon as we came to see what the fuss was about, the dogs settled down.

And so, as usual, I wrapped up the story in a few quick sentences so that we could have cheese and tea.

The next day, we were off to town.  Early.  Met a neighbour at the community dock on the other side who needed a ride at about 8:00 am and we hooked up the utility trailer and headed for the ferry down the storm-caused log-strewn logging road.  Our goal was to go to the next town south and pick up the rest of the woodworking shop, see an optometrist about my failing eyesight, do the shopping and the other chores, get back to town to pick up and pay for my outboard motor repair and catch the next ferry in time to meet up with H who would transport the workshop totes in his bigger boat to the community dock for packing and stowing the next day after.

Things went like clockwork – slowly – but we managed to make all appointments, connections and rendezvous.  Last stop – we scrambled across the log strewn beach when we got home getting supplies up and had tea and a sandwich at 8:00 – 8:30 pm.

Not much of a blog entry.  But those were the last 24 hours.

“…..so the girls were hiding but desperately wanting their clothes back but the police had to check us out, first.  Documents, questions, heavy stares as papers passed between us and the time passed slowly.  And it was freezing outside.  We were concerned for the girls.  We had just about satisfied the police when one of them picked up a red bra and held it in front of our interpretor.  And stared hard.  Hu Sang looked like he was going to faint.  Fortunately he was kind of slim and he took the garment and, with sheepish grin, wrapped it around his chest.  The police laughed and left and we all sighed a huge sigh of relief”.

L grew up in Squamish back when it was a real waterfront logging town.  A self-confessed tomboy she was always keen to keep up with whatever fun her older brothers were having.  And that included log salvaging.

In those days there was quite a bit of storm spillage from the old log booms moving up and down the coast and thrifty local folks would help themselves to the spoils that washed up on the beaches.  After all, they reasoned, the resource belonged to the people of BC and ordinary folks were used to recycling, reusing and not letting much go to waste in those days.  Seemed right.

Those who had a license to harvest could officially ‘stamp’ the salvaged logs and some even made a respectable living from selling them back to the lumber companies. There was even a famous and popular TV show called The Beachcombers about that kind of work and it was shot and produced in the nearby area.  It was a ‘spin-off, you might say, of the logging industry.

When she came here to the islands, L quite naturally developed a discerning eye for spotting  and ‘dogging’ (putting a line on to a log) the odd good firewood or milling log floating down the channel or washed up on a beach.  She and her husband only took one (maybe two) a year but she was good at getting the good ones.  And the wood was much appreciated in the winter when it was needed for heat.

These days logs are transported in massive barges towed by high-tech tug boats with very little spillage resulting.  The logs are loaded directly on to the ships and sent off to China without being handled or processed in any way by local people. The log salvagers are all gone and quality logs for the finding are now few and far between.  Put bluntly: there is no benefit to the local people with today’s logging business – not in jobs, not in wood, not even in salvaged wood.

However, the BC coast recently experienced a series of heavy storms that even the massive barges and high tech tugs had trouble negotiating and fate was kind enough to spill a few good logs into the saltchuck somewhere up the coast.  One such log managed to make it down our way and caught L’s beady little beachcombers eyes.  She retrieved it.

Meanwhile, there is a neighbourhood group applying for funding to help local folks with community projects. But a requisite part of the potential grant is that the recipient group has to contribute an equal share either as cash or ‘payment in kind’ which includes private donations or volunteer labor.  We get labour from people.  We don’t get much cash.

The reason?  They no longer have jobs in the forest (or fishing) industry.  Thus the need for grants.  It’s kind of a Catch 22.

Despite considerable success in squeezing local donors, the grant application committee was still short a few hundred dollars.  A few hundred dollars out here is a big number.

L decided to donate the log she had ‘rescued’. It had already been cut into 12 foot lengths but it still had value as ‘short’ lumber. She asked a local old timer to carefully mill the log into rough lumber.  She then ‘donated’ the lumber to the building projects. That is a donation-in-kind.  And so, the grant application requirements were satisfied.

There’s even enough good wood (ends and off-cuts) left over to supply some good quality material to the community woodwork shop in which local craftsmen will hopefully be busy building wooden toys in the near future.  If they succeed in selling some of those toys, then the log will have fulfilled its role as we think it should have – providing building materials for local services and raw materials for ‘finished goods’ that locals might sell.

Hence in a beautifully symmetrical way the log that got away might be seen to have returned to its rightful owner, the people of BC, helping to trigger a new, local and sustainable economy.

Of course, I made this whole story up out of thin air. There is no ‘L’.  There was no log.  Only kiddin’.  This was a work of fiction because retrieving and using logs that float in the water while posing a danger to local boats and usually just end up rotting on the beach is illegal.  I was just messin’ with ya.

But what a concept, eh? I wonder if the politicians know of this novel approach to sustainable employment?

……………!!!?  No, not me!  I have the staying power.  No, no, no!  Don’t worry about me.  I’m here!  I’m staying!!!

I am talking about the robo-call scandal.  I am afraid the momentum of public outrage and interest is waning.  GAWD!  I hope I am wrong.  But the signs are there.

You know the signs, don’t you……?  The story seems to have slipped in the consciousness of the newscasters?  It no longer leads?  When it does surface, the piece is shorter, has less ‘tone’?  The words are read with less feeling?

It is the way of news today.  The public actually feels the loss of feeling on the topic briefly before they forget about the whole thing altogether.  It’s like a mental sleight-of-hand.  The media are slowly dragging us away from that particular car accident.

The pace at which we are distracted is almost pre-determined.  It takes usually about two weeks for a topic to drop completely off the radar once the initial drop in momentum has been noticed in the newsroom.  Many citizens, of course, aren’t conscious enough in the first place to notice and so the topic fades even faster for them.

But even for those of us with a bit longer of an attention span, we are reliably diverted by a new topic.  The sexier it is, the faster we move on.  Nothing like a teen abduction or a sex-trade ‘story’ to get us to mentally move on “…move along, folks.  Nothing of interest here.  Just move along, now.  Hey!  Didya hear about the teen sex-trade worker?”

The US soldier who ‘snapped’ and killed 16 civilians in Afghanistan almost did it.  Not quite.  CBC needs something more Canadian.  Push comes to shove, they got hockey.  Serial killers are best.  Pig-farmer Pickton was good for well over a year of real news suppression.  Easy reporting, that.

The hockey riots conveniently outside the Vancouver CBC building was a gift to the entertainment/news industry.  Talk about cheap air-time.

“Investigative reporters?  We don’t need no stinkin’ investigative reporters!”

The worst part of this ‘subtle suppression’ is that it may be justified in this case.  Damnit!

Elections Canada did NOT get 31,000 complaints on the robo-call issue that were, in fact, based on personal experiences of the allegations.  Instead, they got 31,000 people who were mad enough to write in saying they were mad enough to write in!  Seems only 700 or so were actually from people who had some relevant information to pass on.  Seven hundred is still bad.  But it is not 31,000.

The Conservatives will throw a few more Pierre Poutines under the bus when the time is right and that will be it.  File closed.

And I am angry.  It is not that I want anyone to burn in hell for a small matter.  Even tho a scandal limited to a few Pierres in Guelph is still not a small matter.  No, it is more than that.

I know, you know, we all know that the system is rotten.  Judging from low voter turnout alone it seems the majority of people have lost faith in the democratic process to make meaningful change in their lives.  We don’t trust the bastards and now we don’t trust the system.  And the people have been saying this for decades.  So, I am angry because this issue will not be the catalyst I was hoping for it to be.

“We are angry but we have decided to keep on taking it some more!”  (not quite the ring to it that I was hoping for)

Think about it: The feds are threatening our coast with oil spills and the nation as a whole doesn’t seem to care.  DFO has been criminally negligent in protecting our fisheries for close to fifty years and they still exist without so much as a formal rebuke.  The provincial government has a list of crimes to answer for not the least of which is huge fiscal mismanagement, the exporting of raw logs, the gutting of BC Hydro and the fiasco that is now the annual official budget lie.

You know what made us mad?  You know what got the citizens riled enough to make a difference?  HST.  That’s right.  They took another 1% from our wallets and the people threw a fit.  They didn’t rebel over the BC Rail debacle.  Run of River was no big deal.  Legislation erasing public input was sleep-inducing to the average Joe. But that they visibly and blatantly took another 1% and we went nuts.

That the crooks destroy our habitat, undermine our services, neglect the average family and pad their own personal accounts is not as important as an increase of 1% in our miserable little purchases. Even though they steal way more than that from us all day long in more indirect and subtle ways (health, education, justice, pensions), it is the theft-we-can-see that raised our ire.

Lying and cheating?  It has staying power.  Why?  Because we don’t.

As most of you know from the bio, I used to work in social services. 12 years. From age 18 to 30.  Most of that time was spent on the eastside. I grew up there.  The hardest time was four years in skid row running a medical clinic. The staff was great, the job was good and some life-long friends were made as a result of our working together. We did good.  But it was hard.

In many ways, it was a defining time of my life. It also nearly killed me.

There is something about dealing with the sick, the addicted, the mentally ill and the forgotten souls of the world that simply drains you. After four years at the clinic and nearing my twelth year in the trenches, I was done. Burnt out. Dead in the heart and dull in the mind. I was just a few months away from being one of the walking dead myself. So, I got out. Honestly, I got out just in time. I was very depressed.

But some stayed. I have no idea how they do it. But they do. Some of them stay and work and suffer. Mother Teresa-like. I remember the words of one such dedicated person, May Gutteridge, when she and I met at her St. James Social Service. I had been in the area two years and had done good things. I thought I’d be well received. She looked at me and said, “It is not the work you do, you know. It is how long you last”.

She was referring, of course, to making a difference. Making a real difference takes time. Lots of it. Anyone can burn brightly for a few years. Very few can dedicate their whole lives to it. But she did. And I didn’t.

My friend, JG, is one of those who have plied the mean streets of Vancouver’s downtown eastside for decades. She has the staying power. She can hack it. She carries on. It is some kind of strength of which I am not in the least capable.

And she answered my second-to-last blog (Gettin’ biblical on ya’).  She has a point.  This is what she wrote:

Seems every year now, we are expected to pull together a homeless Count of the entire City. As if we pulled such numbers off the corner of our desks.

It is about a three month job. Map, recruit 300 volunteers, co-ordinate, train, appease… This year they gave us 5 weeks… So on top of regular work days we have to do the Count. Anything that needs reading has had to compete with everything else and some of it gets lost. Sorry.  I lost your e-mail/blog.

So I get it when a friend yells at me for not responding. My oh-so-urban life has come unbalanced, my brain has come unstuck and my friends are being ignored.  I get it.  So I read your blog.  And here goes:

David, it isn’t where you are that brings you to the awareness you are expressing.  You are coming to awareness because you have time to attune. You have time to think. You have time.

A person can’t live more on-the-grid and in-the-rat-race than I.  I have no time. I can’t think.

Occasionally, I can see. I have an apartment in a 1910 building at Robson and Thurlow. Heritage plumbing, heritage wiring, 3rd floor. The windstorm picked up all the filth of peak oil and other people’s SUVs and threw the black micro-particles through my barely open windows. And my windows were open only a crack.  But even in my altered state of distraction and with my normal flakiness I had to notice the urban pollution encroaching everywhere.

I don’t usually see it, though.  This time it was because I had spent the day of the storm worrying about my neighbours and friends, some of whom live near me behind dumpsters, in doorways, and in driftwood lean-tos on the waterfront.  I worked all that day to make sure they knew we were opening extra shelters for them, and advising others of available underground parking garages for those too anxious to risk coming into a shelter. I didn’t take much time to notice things or think for myself. Too busy.

But I was lucky. In the morning, my electricity was working, heritage wiring and all. My place was filthy from the urban grime, but my coffee was hot, my housecoat warm, and the TV news was relatively good. No reports that anyone of my friends had died or been injured. Relief. Still, that windstorm had taken more trees in Stanley Park. That always worries me. People live in the park.

My outdoor friends are people against whom our political masters are committing genocide-by-neglect. People with severe multiple disabilities, scorned and ignored, are deliberately left to fend for themselves in the savage streets of the urban jungle.  It is the major crime I face every day.

We know a human left to live outside, on or off the grid will die 20 – 30 years sooner than you or I who lives indoors. And yet politicians, planners, bureaucrats and the greed machine scheme to eliminate any indoor housing the poor and disenfranchised might afford, to make sure that they eat our day old donuts as their dietary staple, that they are regularly and systematically victimized and that they are deprived of the basics of health.

It is not that our province and country does not have enough to go around, it is that these “little ones” have been chosen to go without so that the wealthy can have more.

As manifested by the clear-cut forests, the filthy polluted air, the soon-to-burst oil pipelines and the wholesale risking of the life-sustaining nature of our rivers and oceans, those in greed ignore the truth. It is the venerable story again and again of the slaughter of the lambs of God.

God rails against these choices from Genesis through the Prophets, and through the mouth of Jesus. But the rich and powerful don’t listen.

Because of that, David, I cannot entertain your suggestion of forgiveness for those responsible for this state of affairs. They are not ignorant.  They know exactly what they are doing. They are choosing Hell over the gift of God’s green earth, and over the human beings and other creatures that inhabit it.

A better biblical quote might be: Matt 6:24 “No one can serve two masters. Either he will hate one and love the other, or he will be devoted to one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and money.”

Six of us on Wednesday.  Doing drywall.  Muddin’. Talkin’.  Having lunch.  It was fun.  We probably got the same amount of work done as would one guy working two hours who knew what he was doing but it was a nice way to spend the day.  Stories told.  Jokes.  A few laughs.

Some might think we were bonding.

That is, in essence, what working on the bunkhouse or the Q-hut is all about.  My neighbour calls this ‘fellowship’.  My other neighbour calls it ‘community’. I think of it as kinda goofy but, regardless, we all enjoy it.  Food’s usually good.

My wife is big on bonding, tho.  For me, anyway.  “Why don’t you go up to the workshop and find some guys and do that bonding thing?  You know?  Like guys do?”

“Sal!  I don’t bond!  OK?  I talk.  I socialize.  I may even ‘like’ or ‘enjoy’.  I do not bond. That is just bloody weird.  Paramecium bond.  Men don’t bond.  Guys who think they bond freak me out!”

“Well, you know.  Guys standing around, hands in their pockets, talking guns or engines or whatever.  Isn’t that bonding?”

“No, sweetie.  That is not bonding.  That is called talking.  Bonding is when glue is involved.  Seems highly over rated to me.  Actors in movies claim to bond.  No one else does.  Maybe if you fought in a war together and saved each other’s lives and married twin sisters and bought a business together.  Maybe then you’d bond.  But it would take more than that for me.  I’d need glue.  Epoxy.  Literally.  So, stop with the bonding, OK?”

As we wrapped up this conversation, my neighbour, J, came over.  “Hey, Dave!  Wanna go out and get some logs, ol buddy?  Do a little bonding?  Waddya say?”  

I look at Sal.  She gives me one of her beautiful smiles………..“Yeah.  Sounds good.  I’ll just get my boots.”

“Don’t forget the epoxy, sweetie”, she says.

Day before, right after the big windstorm followed by hail and rain, I was bundled up and down at the water putzing about when it started snowing!  Sheesh.  I did a few more things for a few more minutes and then it stopped.  Ten minutes later it was warming up and ten minutes after that, I shed my jacket and worked in a long-sleeved shirt.  Later that day, I had a small headache and a red face – a sure sign for me that I had had too much sun!

Now, I am adjusting to climate change like the rest of us but that is ridiculous!

Of course, climate change is not what I went through.  I’m only joking.  But I must admit we do have a micro-climate here that is quite fantastic at times.  And, in it’s own way, it is very revealing.

Over the last few days many of our neighbours experienced damage and inconvenience from the big wind storm.  Trees down, roofs torn, things toppled over.  In fact, thousands of people in the area were without power and several hundred are still out!  Seems power poles littered the roads of the island next door and, of course, the ferry stopped running.  Us?  Nada.  We were protected.  We have our own power.  For us, it was just a nice windy day.

Our house is built just a tuck and a scrunch behind a rock outcropping which, at the time of construction, was not even considered.  Turns out it is the world’s best wind deflector.  We live in the lee of southeasters.  The stronger they blow, the more they ‘bounce’ over.  Again – we were protected.

When the weather gets really cold, we get cold too.  But it seems we never get as cold as everyone else.  We are, of course, surrounded by water on three sides and that is a tempering effect and it is also quite remarkable.  One mile away the locals can have six inches of snow on the ground.  Us?  Nothing.

Even the winds here seem to blow less than most places.  Our location, in a manner of speaking, is one of the best in the area weather wise.  We just seem to have lucked out. Protected, you might say.

I suppose the best of it is less rain.  We get plenty (what we need) but we seem to get less than, say, Campbell River.  When it is raining on the next island, it is not on ours – not where we are, anyway.  Of course it all has to do with wind patterns, elevations and other things meteorological and geographical and we were certainly not aware of such things when building.  It was all just fortuitous.  But it was fortuitous.  We are lucky.  Not only protected but also provided for.

It’s weird, in a ‘connected’ kind of way.  As I have mentioned before, we are more in tune with the weather around here.  We have to be.  But being in tune makes you aware of things in ways you never expected.  Holistically, actually.  Weather is a metaphor in this sense.  Wind blows one way and we call certain neighbours to check on them.  Blows another and it is a different set of calls.  We feel the larger connections we have with the area – in all ways.

For instance; weather some days means not getting mail, not going to town and/or not doing chores.  Schedules adjust with the weather.  Longer term plans have the caveat, ‘weather permitting, of course’ added.  Hell, even my e-mail has a caveat attached: IMPORTANT: My ISP is satellite based. Weather affects it. Sometimes e-mails are lost transmitting and/or receiving. If you expect a response that is overdue, please send the e-mail again. The original was likely lost.  

Protected, provided for, greater awareness.

All this is a way of explaining – kinda – my somewhat tiresome ranting on the environment. You see, I am just so much closer to it.  I am living with it more intimately than ever before.  To me, the environment and the climate is not just an idea, a news topic, or an issue to be debated.  For me it is ‘in my face’, front and centre, up close and personal.  It is like the weather. Only bigger.  Much bigger.

It is all so much more real than ever before.  I now – for example – feel personally assaulted by the Enbridge pipeline proposal.  I feel personally threatened by DFO’s criminal negligence regarding the fish.  I am actually living within the results of poor government forestry and fisheries policies.  It is like watching a crime being committed before my very eyes.

I am more aware that my protection and my provisions are threatened.

The point: reality is a local phenomena.  We see what we can see and only what we can see.  But, for government decision-makers that is limited by walls and buildings and highways and airports and meeting rooms.  These people don’t see what they should see.  They don’t ‘get it’.  They are not aware.  And, as a result, they are making bad decisions.

It’s been done before.

I am not in the least religious but I am reminded of the biblical, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do“. (Luke 23:34)