Town day.  Ain’t gonna happen.  Winds to 50.  Ferries not running.  Today, it turns out, is a day for hunkering down.

But that’s OK.  We’re cozy.  Enough food to last til the second coming.  ‘Course there is a limit on our scotch reserves.  But there is no sign of panic yet.

It’s a funny thing about timing.  Yesterday I wrote about our need to get more creative if we were to ensure community out here.  And today I got a response.

But first, I had better clarify – it is not like our current sense of community is eroding.  Not quickly, anyway.  In fact, we seem to be ‘holding our own’ and a clutch of cottagers and homesteaders ten miles east of us even seem to be growing a bit.  I wrote what I wrote from a macro perspective – small towns are getting smaller and big cities are getting bigger.

But we are basically keeping the status quo here.  Kinda.  The only real threat to that ‘quo’ is age. Because our quo is aging, time will eventually catch up and we will not be able to keep the status.

Anyway, I heard this morning of someone doing just that – reinforcing his community.  It is small.  It is largely insignificant.  It won’t attract people or keep any.  But it is positive.  It is constructive.  It is creative.  And it is this kind of thing that, if repeated and expanded on, can put the lipstick on the pig.  We will still be small, not a major draw to the multitudes but we’ll definitely be a bit sexier.

He built a phone booth.  A community phone booth to serve the dozen or so others that live near him.

“A phone booth?  You think a phone booth is sexy?!  Dave, you are losing it!”

“Well, maybe it comes up a bit shy on the sexy scale but compared to lipstick on a pig, it holds its own.  In my opinion, anyway.  And, what you don’t know is this: where they are, cell phone reception is poor.  Poor enough to inhibit calling and almost eliminate receiving.  People do as I was doing in that picture I posted two blogs back – holding an aerial and walking about in the rain (in their housecoat if the need requires it) to get or keep a signal.  It can be frustrating to say the least.

But, having a ‘held-high, perhaps mounted-high antennae and a ‘booster’ pack, seems to bring in a signal that can be used much more reliably.  We eventually did that at our place and, with the booster, almost have reliable phone service.  We still ‘drop calls’ and many calls go direct-to-the-message rather than ring but it is 500% better than standing in the rain in the nude (yes, I spared you that picture).

Boosting the Signal

So, this generous fellow went out and built a weather-proof phone booth, equipped it with a booster and such and attached a good antenna on top for everyone around him to use.

Simple, creative.  And definitely community supporting.  And that is what I am talking about, but on bigger and smaller scales.  And more often.

If we ‘construct’ and ‘create’ in ways suitable and appropriate to this lifestyle – which includes some modernity, they will come.

It’s a plan.

One hundred years ago (give or take) there were a lot of people up here.  In fact, there was once an aboriginal village on a narrow passage that was so populated that it was not expected that any one person in the village would know everyone else!  That’s beyond village in my books.  That’s a town!

It was also a bona-fide community.  Campbell River hardly existed back then.  This was the centre of their universe!

At one point, there were five hundred non-aboriginal people living in the channel to the west of us.  Now there are maybe thirty.  And my island once had three times the population that it has now.

The reasons for this, of course, are obvious and can be summarized nicely by the term, urbanization.  Before that tidy word, we had industrialization and modernization.  The implication in the terminology is clear: we are evolving, improving and living better.  Go urban or devolve.

Put more bluntly: there is a death threat warning being broadcast to all small communities.

Already the vast majority of the Canadian population lives in cities and this inner migration phenomena is playing out all over the world.  The trend is likely to continue.  Progress, eh?

But that trend didn’t influence those who stayed here, those who came here and those who are living here now.  It doesn’t seem to include those planning and preparing to come here tomorrow.  Why not?  What is it that makes people ‘buck the trend’ and choose to ‘live freely a harder life with fewer rather than more modern conveniences’?  Are they just nuts?

The reverend Alan Greene (Columbia Coast Mission) wondered that same thing back in the 1930’s and concluded in his journal at the time that “it was their need for independence.”

I don’t think that’s it.  Not entirely.  I think man is mostly a social animal and isolation, separation and, in some cases, deviation, is not their chosen path to happiness and fulfillment.  I think even the most eccentric amongst us wants to belong a bit.  Once in a while.  Somewhere.  Put more succinctly, I think we all crave a little community now and then.  And, more than that,  we want to be members in that community, not guests or visiting strangers.

“So, then, why do it? Why live remote?  Why go feral?  What kind of community is in it for you way out there?”

My first thought is that it is not about ‘what you get’ in the way of community.  I had no idea when we arrived what community might look like when I got out here.  I think it is more about what you don’t get.  I think the urban-type-who-goes-feral is really fleeing the order, the controls, the rules, the restrictions and the overwhelming presence of authority they see and experience in their current city-based lives.  So, in that way we, ‘the fleeing’, are seeking less-of-what-passes-for-community-in-the-city, to be sure.

Of course, in that way, it is the same thing as Rev. Green said. we seek independence.  But I am shading that idea a bit darker.  I think that we first experienced civic claustrophobia.  Civic dystopia.  Too much overbearing community.  I think we first felt unhappy in the row house, the apartment building and the cul-de-sac and then we jumped from the frying pan into the great outdoors.

And who can blame us? It has only gotten worse, it seems.  In the last decade community has morphed into BIG BROTHER much as I sensed and feared it would when it was just a bit too much of a restrictive and claustrophobic community.  Now we have CCTV and gas-passing police tasering, shooting, and harassing people.  We have gangs-at-war, escalating housing costs, longer commutes, bad air, polluted water, diminishing quality of life and worse, fear of each other rather than a sense of community with each other.

So, to me, the off-the-gridder still wants community but simply doesn’t like the kind on offer in the city.  And most of us that come from the city – even those who came years ago with the back-to-the-land movement of the seventies – really don’t know what kind of community we are wanting, getting in to or are working towards when we get here.  We don’t know what we are doing.  Community building is a lost art.

Of course, we tend to follow the old patterns of community building somewhat.  It’s a path, of sorts.  We hope for enough kids to justify a school.  We build and frequent a community hall.  We help one another through various tests, trials and challenges.  And, of course, like all good people, we share and give generously to the local common weal.  And we socialize.

But regular potlucks is not enough. The pressures to move to the city are too great.  And we are too weak in that regard.  Our community currently isn’t sexy enough to ensure sustainability.

Gut wrenching reality fact: sexting and texting seems to bond people better than potlucks.

Don’t get me wrong – the appeal of the hinterlands hasn’t diminished.  Not a bit.  Not even the potlucks.  In fact, whenever the country is directly compared to the city it is like comparing Shangri-la to Calcutta’s sewers.  Looking at them that way makes the choice or the decision easy. For anything.

But the pressures are still there.   They are subtle, though.  They are indirect.  They are unhealthy.  They are wrong.  And they are sneaky.  But they are damned effective.  Let me explain…………

The ferry system (for instance) doesn’t directly serve the urban communities (for the typical young urban Vancouverite in the west end or Yaletown, they may use the ferry for infrequent summer time recreational purposes or even less).  BC Ferries, by original design and annual usage, mostly serves the gulf and Vancouver island communities.  And the ferry system is not working very well due to lack of funds and proper management focus (they forgot who their main customer was).

The result: regular and especially gulf island-based ferry users are considerably more inconvenienced than their city counterparts.  More than they originally bargained for anyway.  Older and younger people experience even greater hardship due to costs and poor transit connections.  Hardship = pressure.  Pressure seeks relief.  Relief = city living.

We are also taxed pretty highly out here.  Especially when considering the dirth of services.  Less services + higher costs = pressure.  Pressure seeks relief.  Relief = city living.  

You can repeat that formula for just about everything from communication to food shopping, from doing business to visiting friends and family, from transportation to casting your vote.  Living out here is hard and they purposefully make it harder.  

“Ya know, this island thing is just too inconvenient.  Plus we are getting older.  Maybe we should move back to the city?”  (my parents in the 70’s when they needed a bit more attention)

At some point almost everyone on an island entertains that thought at one time or another.  The government does not support as much those who live rural compared to those who live urban.  Period.  Not by a long shot.

“Dave, you gettin’ wimpy on us?”

No.  No!  A thousand times no!  In fact, it is the opposite of wimpiness I am talking about.  I am suggesting facing the reality of it is all.  I think we have to kick it up a notch to survive.  Community-wise, I mean.  And I don’t mean protesting.  That is ‘old’.  That is negative.  It is not the constructive way to do it.

We off-the-gridders thought outside-the-box and then went one step further and got-outside-the-box.  But the box is still a big influence and we may have to look away completely.  Being outside and yet still looking in is not good enough.  It generates protest but nothing else.  We have to learn to build community out here.  On our own terms.  We have to have a blend of old (potluck dinners) and new (modernization projects, community projects, etc.).  This is a lifestyle so utterly fanatstic that it should not be threatened in the least by such mudanities as ferry service or the price of gasoline, of government policies or services.

If we are truly independent then we are going to have to simply get more creative.

I am kinda lookin’ forward to it.  But it is a bit of a challenge, don’t you think?

Hello? Hello?

Texting?  Twitting?  I don’t think so.  Not my style.  The idea of my face on Facebook freaks me out.  And I’d prefer to keep mySpace to myself, thank you very much.  I am just not into it.

I even try to limit my phone time now.  Don’t like it.  Zero phone time is good.  I don’t even like retrieving ‘messages’.  Means I have to phone the ‘special number’ to get them.  Hate that.   I just don’t like phoning or even being phoned anymore.   It may be an ‘age thing’.   Definitely an off-the-grid thing.  But partly it is because it is expensive and, for sure, it is because the service is ‘sketchy’ out here and it is usually hard to hear the other person.  Bugs me.

And the new social messaging leaves me cold.  I just don’t tweet.

But I like e-mail.  I can get it written and sent and then go about my business to enjoy the receipt of the response later on at my convenience.  I think that is a great form of communication. Emphasis on my convenience. 

But it has it’s downsides.

Firstly, there seems to be a tendency for most writers to keep it short.  I hate that, too. Brevity is a style that I am not familiar with.  I just don’t get it.  I like to write short stories, myself.  Even when answering short questions.  I like to open up, ya know?  But most people keep it short.  Too short, if you ask me.  I prefer some gut-spilling, if you don’t mind.  Let it out!  Show me the blood!

And those who ‘text’ with their thumbs while waiting in line for a cappucino at Starbucks are the worst. ” CU la8-er.  lol.”

What the hell is that!?

Another problem with e-mail is that many tend to write in some weird kind of memo-speak.  Like they are talking to JB at head office or something.  Some of us, of course, write in a real, down-home, earthy, great-guy-next-door style but that has it’s own problems whenever you are writing to people who have other, stiffer, professional styles.  Or, as in most cases, no style at all!  Or, even more likely, no personality at all!

Government types don’t seem to like the folksy style one little bit.  “Don’t be my friend”  is the message writ large between the lines of their e-mail response to my friendly, ‘come hither’ style.  And some tend to write as if Homeland Security is reading the blind copy.  What the hell are these people afraid of?  We’re not talking about a sale on box-cutters or where to get a mail-order pilot’s license.  Lighten up, for heaven’s sake.

(Note to Homeland Security personnel: I am old.  I am harmless.  Not a Muslim.  Don’t even know where Mecca is.  It was just a joke.  Allah Akbar!)

But there is no denying it, e-messages written in your basic English still seem to get mistranslated now and then.  It’s a common problem amongst e-mailers.  Still, I prefer it.  I really do.  At the very least it means getting to write a few more e-mails for clarification.  It can be a kind of an extra bonding experience for me.

‘Course, you have to actually get some bloody e-mails now and then.  Know what I mean?  Otherwise the reader with the empty inbox might just get hurt feelings.  I mean, I am just postulating.  I think we all have to stay in contact, ya now?  Just saying…..

The thing is, there ain’t no middle ground up here!

No, I don’t mean ‘middle-of-the-road’.  And I don’t mean ‘mean’ (as in average kinda).  I mean that, if you live feral, you are either outside-and-in-the-present-moment or else you are inside and thinking globally most of the time.  I do, anyway.

It may not be too healthy.  I am trying to figure that out.

We ‘do’ house and garden, of course.  We ‘do’ boats.  And we ‘do’ small community once in awhile.  We know how to talk and walk in the here and now.  But we don’t ‘do’ middle-sized community (including Quadra Island) except rarely and we don’t do large community (including Campbell River and/or Strathcona) at all.  Nor do we ‘do’ regional (Vancouver Island or Gulf of Georgia) or even very often, provincial – except at elections.  We are tiny-minded or globally-minded as a general rule.  We just don’t do middle very often.

Well, I don’t, anyway.

And that explains, in part, the inconsistency of my blog.  It started out as a daily journal of our living and learning up the wild BC coast.  And I try to stay on that theme as much as possible.  But, as we gained some comfort in our surroundings, as we increased our competence living rural, as we progressed towards an equalibrium of sorts, we naturally sought to look a bit past ourselves.   We looked outward again.  It’s only natural.

And naturally, the first direction in which one looks is where others around us were looking and so we, too, began the process of learning about fish farms, oil pipelines, local economic indicators and that sort of thing.  Of course, the view eventually expands to include climate change and world politics……and…….well………….eventually I found myself writing about Syria one day, squirrels the next.  The credit default mortgage schemes that catalyzed global economic chaos on Monday and going to town to do some shopping on Wednesday.

Like I said; there just isn’t much middle ground.

And there should be.  Why isn’t there?

For instance – we should be thinking provincially and federally at least once in awhile.  Don’t you think?  But the province is currently in hiding hoping that the collateral damage left behind by the previous despot will blow over before the next election.  They are keeping a low profile as well they should.  They should be trying to officially change their names, if you ask me!  And the Feds are naturally zenophobic, agorophobic and homophobic anyway.  They are as visible as the proverbial groundhog in February.  Our federal rep is a ghost, a mere hint of a person who, when seen can be easily seen through.  We’re talking walkin’ onion skin here.

Harper was apparently sighted in Hawaii last week.  That fits.

So, anyway.  I started to think BIG while looking for medium.  Sorry.  I just spent an hour writing about the money supply.  No, not mine.  I can cover that in a nano-second.  No, I was writing about M1, M2, M3 ad nauseum all the way over to the Euro and what it will all mean in the future.  Big picture stuff, ya know?   As if I had a clue………..

Sally interrupted.  “Did you pay John for the loaf of bread?” 

“Huh?  Unh, no.  Forgot.  You goin’ over?”

“Yeah.  No worries.  I’ll settle up.  What you writin’ about this time?”

“Unh….well, M1, M2, M3 and such, ya know?  The money supply.  I gotta world economic theory I am messin’ with.  Thought I’d share it on the blog.”

“Sweetie.  You didn’t even manage to cover the lousy few bucks we owed John.  Don’t you think you might be a smidge underqualified for waxing philosophic about the world’s money supply?”

“Yeah.  I guess.  Think they wanna hear some more about the ravens?”

Sunday.  Book club day again.  Women in boats carrying pies and casseroles.  Freezing weather.  A few hours of chit-chat on chick-lit and this-and-that and then it is again with the  over the seas and through the piercing wind trying to make it safely home before darkness and even-colder temperatures.  Gawd!  They sure know how to have a good time, eh?

This month Sally took her famous lemon meringue pie.  I confess to not being very happy about that.  But I am sure you know why.  If you can’t guess, I’ll make it more clear: she didn’t make two of them!  She did leave me a tuna fish sandwich, though.  I am not complaining.  I am definitely a well-cared-for old bastard but she can be a bit stingy with the baked treats now and again.

……….unless you are a dog or a bookclub member and then she is the source of all things good to eat.

Book club is hosted by Sal next month – weather permitting.   But, who are we kidding?  It would take a hurricane, sleet and minus-degree temperatures for cancellation to even be considered and, even then, half the women would still make it.  The main reason for that, of course, is that they all really like to gather, eat, drink and hob nob.  And they’ve been doing it for over 25 years.  It’s their thing.

The second reason is that book club is deemed all the more necessary when it is darkest winter.  They feel they need some ‘socializing’ even more.  And they are right.  Winter is the onset of potential ‘Bush Disorder’ (not to be confused with a similarly named but different problem south of the border)’ and, if it is a short winter, there are usually only a few sufferers.  But if it is long and harsh (as it threatens to be this year) then getting ‘out and about’ is one small way of dealing with it.  Every year someone is described as, or acts a little ‘bushed’ and the old, isolated bachelors suffer the most.  The women of book club seem to fare the best.  It is not a coincidence.

The third reason for good December turnouts is that Sally serves a rich and plentiful ‘spiked’ egg-nog that is to travel through Paulines perils for.  Naturally no one would travel tens of miles by sea in an open boat in winter merely to get a single cup of free egg nog.  Unless, of course, they had tasted it the pervious year in which case the temptation seed would have been well and truly planted.  But the real lure is that there is no chance of being limited to just one.  Sal goes big.  More than a few old gals have spent the entire day only steps from the punch bowl.  And the smiles are broad when they leave.

The bowl is always emptied.  Trust me.   It is the first thing I check when I am allowed back in.

Men are not alowed at bookclub.  I sit in the woodshed or go to my neighbour’s.  One year I just puttered about in the rain.  It’s pathetic.  Nevermind, in a few years I will be allowed to phone the elder abuse hotline and don’t think I won’t!

If they let me in to make the phone call.

In theory, anyway, we old men should be doing something like they do.  A regular poker night, a pub to go to, a sport to play together.  Or even a community project around which to coalesce.  Or something.  But we don’t.  Anyway, none of us are good cooks or are organized enough to get that part handled so we’d just sit around and get hungrier and hungrier til we left.  And we’d all be ticked as hell, too!  Doesn’t sound so great to me.

We have a pretty high proportion of prefer-to-be-alone males out here, anyway.  Independent, whacked-out,old-loners whose only real connection to one another is an inclination to conspiracy theories and perhaps a little substance abuse.  Any male bonding-like behavior is usually done in the summer when it is warm and sunny and we can hammer or saw over the other guys inane chatter.  We old codgers just aren’t as sociable as the women.  Nor do we like each other as much as they do.

And, even if we did like each other, most of the old guys are deaf!  So conversation is limited at best, non-existent most of the time and we don’t even get near one another in the winter.

Put another way: I have more conversation with more people in one half hour on a sunny summer Wednesday at the community dock café than I do during the entire winter months from mid-November to mid February.  Factor in the male-of-the-species component and there is an even a greater disparity.  Old guys just don’t ‘bunch up’.

It ain’t our thing.

November 19.  Local elections day.

Bitterly cold outside right now.  Clear skies do that up here.  The difference in temperature can be considerable simply because of cloud cover.  Minus -5 on a clear night, plus +5 on a cloudy one.  Ground gets hard, too.  Mind you, it is mostly rock where I live.  But I am talking about the abundant and thick moss-cover around us, too.  It actually gets crunchy when frozen. When it is cold footprints remain behind from a walk on the moss as if it was snow.

I don’t usually ‘do’ weather.  It is one of those things I can’t do anything about so I just accept it as it is and carry on.  But I must admit, I am much more aware of the effects of weather on daily life out here than I ever was in the city.  Especially in the winter.

There is such a thing as an urban cocoon of sorts weather-wise in the city.  Cars, underground parking, heated garages and large urban buildings isolate you from the elements and as necessary and civilized as that is, it is also a subtle form of denial.  In Calgary you can live the entire day and travel about the city without feeling the cold.  Same for parts of Montreal.  Probably the same for many cities these days.

Comment: harder to stay in touch with the health and well-being of the planet when you are isolated from it.

‘Course, I am trying my best to stay insulated, if not isolated, myself.  We are crankin’ through the wood.  Staying warm requires a constant feed to the woodstove and we are diminishing the wood pile at a prodigous rate.  But the house is good.  Warm and toasty.    And we are OK.

Without the woodpile, however, we’d have no choice but to leave.  Firewood is essential for survival out here.  Don’t got central heat or electric baseboards.

There is a lot of snow on the higher elevations around us.  That means the ‘logging road’ we travel on the next island over will have snow on it.  Usually more than a few trees ‘freeze’, crack, split and fall across the road somewhere along the route in the winter.  That means carrying a chainsaw with you when you go out.

It’s still a bit of an adventure out here.  Every day.

Well, ‘adventure’ is a bit of a stretch.  After a while some familiarity and competence enters the picture (or should) and what might reasonably be described as an ‘adventure’ to some is really just an ordinary everyday-type event to a local.

Frankly, I am still somewhere in between.  I am relatively calm in the face of the regular challenges and I am generally prepared to deal with them – whatever they are – but sometimes I think, “Geez, if I do this wrong I am sitting in a remote ditch in freezing weather with night falling and no one likely to come along.  And no cell phone service for 15 miles!”  I am not yet so competent and confident that I assume safe-going.   Especially if the conditions are harsh.  I am not so sure I’ll ever get there.  There are frequent reminders of mortality out here.

Mind you, I am starting to adopt the local custom of dressing in multiple layers.  And I mean multiple – like 7 or more.  Complete with enveloping survival suit for some.  They look like polar explorers sometimes.  I am not quite there.  My record to date: 5 layers.

Most of the people out here have a greater confidence in their abilities to cope than I do in mine.  But that confidence is rooted in decades of experience.  (Sally doesn’t count – she was born lacking the ‘fear’ chromosone.)  

Our friend J, who lives another ten or so miles up the coast, once came to vist in a major storm in the middle of a cold and tempestuous December.  And she was dressed for it.  Her boat is about 14′ long and the seas were really nasty.  Didn’t faze her in the least.  She will travel in the storms, the dark, the freezing and the sleet and fog that we get up here and not so much as blink an eye.  And she typifies the attitude of most of those who have been up here for decades.

‘Course there are some who had that same level of confidence and have since passed on.  Confidence is not enough.  Losing people out here in the winter is not an uncommon occurence.  So that is why I am not so sure I’ll ever achieve 100% comfort.

But I have an answer to that.  I tend to ‘opt out’ of the possibility rather earlier in the risk escalation process.  “Hey!  It’s cold.  It’s blowing hard and I’m sure I can make it.  But it is not letting up and so it may get worse and I am not going to put myself in that position.  So, I’m not going!”  

“We understand, Dave.  Take care.”  And then all the old women, puppies and children leave without me.

And I wave goodbye and go make myself some tea.

Discretion is the better part of valour.

Believe it or not, I got friends.  Honest.  Some of them even like me.  I am never quite sure which ones hold me in current favour but I know that some do.  A few.  Maybe three at a time on any given day.  I hope so.  Call me an optimist.  Whatever.  What keeps us together is that I like them.  Perhaps my standards are low and I am desperate but it is a love of some kind.  I am the glue and I think you guys are great!

OK, maybe it is an unrequited kind of love but men learn about that kind of thing very young – with the onset of puberty, actually.  It should be called the onset of ‘rejection’ but, nevertheless, I am comfortable with it.  I know from rejection.  I can take it.  This cheese can stand alone (with Sal).

But, call me silly if you want to, I don’t want to be rejected through misunderstanding.  If you ‘get me’ and reject me, that’s fine. Those numbers are legion.  But if you don’t understand me and decide to reject me, well, that just makes me try harder.  And that is so much work.

Anyway, one of my friends is dyed-in-the-wool establishment.  Probably votes Conservative.  I know he voted for Campbell.  Still, despite that, he is a wonderful guy.  Really.  C’mon, you gotta trust me on this one.  He’s OK.

Anyway, he is currently against the OCCUPY movement.  Thinks it’s stupid.  He’s rejecting me.  “The protesters are dirty and unkempt and have tattoos and piercings and they just want stuff for free!  I work hard for my money (he does) and they are just a bunch of freeloaders.  Dave, how could you support that nonsense?!”  

Basically it comes down to this: peaceful resistance is the only way to achieve lasting change.  See Ghandi.  See Martin Luther King.  See Aung San Suu Kyi.  There really is no other way.  And even my friend acknowledges that big changes are needed.  Therefore, you have to protest and the OCCUPIERS are currently doing that for you.  So, support them, already.

To be frank, I am glad they are doing it.  But I wouldn’t.  I hate tents.  In fact, I hate crowds and I really hate police and crowds.  Ewww!

I think protest can take many forms and I choose a more comfortable one.  I write.  I talk.  I buy books.  I make sushi.  I even moved away!

That’s a form of passive resistance.

I might lob an egg at a politician from a long way off in a crowd someday but that would be mostly for the atheletic challenge of it.  I don’t really expect an egg to make a difference.

The point is this: the system is broken.  Not 100% but broken enough for a radical overhaul.  Tinkering and fine-tuning isn’t enough.  Voting in the clones won’t do it.  I have no idea how radical, fundamental change is achieved but it is definitely needed and needed quickly.  We need new leaders, new messages, a revitalized sense of morality and a redefined sense of purpose that does not include the worship of wealth.

(Actually, I do have some ideas but I am a little afraid of rejection)

Given climate change, poverty, a growing world population and the inclination of some to shoot others, it just might require the worship of peace, the planet and our own personal survival.

I don’t usually miss the city.  But I did Tuesday night.  Tuesday night VanCity sponsored an evening with Paul Hawken.  Paul is a co-author of Natural Capitalism, a book which changed quite dramatically the way I see things .  It is, in effect, a how-to on sustainability.  And more.

H.L. Lovins, Amory Lovins and Paul Hawken (of the Rocky Mountain Institute) wrote the book in the last years of the 20th century (1999, I believe) and it basically describes how Capitalism can ‘adjust’ to become more natural and sustainable.  And ‘healing and constructive’ in some kind of holistic way.  Ya hafta read it.

It is more than just theory and lofty ideas, though.  Ray Anderson of Interface Corporation modelled the principles of Natural Capitalism by way of his carpet business and the story is just plain magic.  Huge success.  Virtually 100% recyclables.  Happy workers.  Life is good.  Brilliant.

Still, business success in carpets is not quite magic enough for most people.  I understand.

But Hawken also predicted the Occupy movement and the Arab Spring years before the thought of occupying Wall Street had even crossed the minds of the Canadian ad-busters who dreamt it up when the timing was right.  Hawken is prophetic.  Practically speaking, he is a bona fide Edgar Cayce for our times.

I asked a few friends to attend his talk for me.  R reported back that it was illuminating and educational.  And more.  I suspect that he is a convert.  J wants to know how we convert more people to the ideas she heard that night.  She is more than a convert, she is a torch-carrier.

And, I am afraid, so am I.  Read Natural capitalsim.  Learn about Ray Anderson. Read Blessed Unrest (Hawken’s latest book) and get to know Paul Hawken.  You don’t have to quit your job, send money or joing a cult. Just read a book.  It is really the way the world is changing and I just wanted you to know.

Mid November.  One of our neighbours notices an active campsite a smidge down the coastline from their house.  Investigates.  Finds an ad hoc ‘net’ strung across a stream and a returning salmon hung up on it.  A close examination of the campsite shows the remains of a few other fish having been fried.  Calls the police.  Poaching is suspected.

Police come.  Campers see them arriving and run in to the woods.  Campsite examined.  ID found.  Cops leave.

Campers return.  Seems there are four of them.  Three men and a young woman.  Everyone looks a bit rough.

Neighbour’s son decides to watch them more closely and hikes up behind the hill (the whole island is hills).  While he is there, he hears them breaking into another neighbour’s place.  Runs home.  Cops called again.

A bunch of cops appear this time.  And a helicopter, SWAT-types and a K-9 unit.  Forces deploy.  Bad guys captured, handcuffed and flown out.

The ‘victimized’ neighbour comes to survey the damage after the break-in.  Lotta mess.  Some food missing.  Perps in custody.

Message: if you are ‘on the lam’ (seems they were.  From Victoria.  Don’t know why) do not go to a remote island. 

“It’s like a fishbowl out here when you think about it.  At least a half dozen people knew they were here and one of them phoned the police before they broke in to someone’s house!  People murder, rape, steal and plunder in the city and are never caught.  These dorks catch a salmon illegally and are taken out by SWAT!”

It’s not that simple of course.  And, in a way, it is.  Everyone knows everyone else’s business out here.  The forest telegraph works amazingly fast.  The stories are numerous.  It’s hard to hide out here.

We’ll find you.

Re:  Hawken.  No reports in yet.  Will share when they are received.

I occasionally write to BIG cheeses.  Not big, rich, celebrity cheeses but rather to literary-type fromage.  The ones who make me think.  And sometimes they write back.

Years ago John Robbins wrote a book called Diet for a New America.  That really changed my way of thinking about the medical profession and the way I was eating.  After the book, I went vegetarian.  Five months.  Octo-lacto, dipso-facto, pure-wool vegan.  I did it mostly because at the time I weighed 207 pounds and I thought I was beginning to lose my sex appeal.  I no longer saw a shorter version of Tom Sellek in the mirror.  I was seeing a taller version of Danny deVito instead.  Not good.

I was really disciplined about it, too.  Despite being three times the size of anyone else in the vegan restaurant lineup, I kept to the regime.  I did so until I ended up in the hospital.

Went to Emergency.  I had chest pains.  “Oh great!  Here I go.  Just as I was getting all healthy and all, my family’s old genetic destiny is grabbing hold and I am going to croak!”  

Turned out I was having a gall bladder attack.

The young, tall, dark and healthy-looking doctor looked at me.  “You didn’t do something stupid, did ya, like going vegan or something?”

“Umh………yeah.  Kinda……you know?  Gettin’ into being healthy and all…..?”

“Ya can’t do that, man.  You crazy?  You gotta get into that madness gradual-like.  If you do it at all.  Crazy, if you ask me.  Packs up your gallbladder just like that!”  And he snapped his fingers to illustrate the point dramatically.  Sounded like he was shooting his horse.  “We’ll prep you and take that puppy out.  Better tell your spouse you are going in for surgery!”

“Whoa, there big fella.  I’m keeping my gall bladder.  Don’t even think about going for it!  John Robbins warned me about you guys.  He said, ‘Modern medicine operates on the premise that you have too many organs or too few drugs in your system’.  I am keeping the gall bladder but we can discuss the drugs part.  This thing is really killing me.”

He looked at me as if I had just insulted his profession.  If you can imagine that!?  “If you think it hurts now, just wait for a few hours when you go to pass the stone.  They say it is more painful than childbirth!  Think about that!”

“Never mind that, man.  I am keeping it.  I’ll go home and pass the stone in the comfort of my own bed, you sadistic organ-snatcher, you!”

Three hours later when I was back at home I thought a Zulu warrior had pierced my chest with his largest spear and was twisting it.

“Sal!  Call the ambulance.  Gotta go back to the hospital.  He was right.  John was wrong!  I am dying.  This is unbearable………….aaaargggh…………..never mind.  By the time they get here, I’ll be dead.  Say goodbye to the kids.  I love you all………….araarrghh……….”   and then I passed out.  I came to a few hours later and I was fine except that my arm was really hurting because I conked out and got the limb all bent up underneath me.  A few hours later, that ‘kink’ worked out.  I was good to go.

And I had my gall bladder.  No drugs.  I was victorious and went back to the doctor to report in.  Feeling a bit smug, I must admit.  OK, stupid and smug at the same time.  While waiting, I got on the scale.  I was 207 pounds.  FIVE months of lentils and beans and a night of excruciating pain and I hadn’t dropped but the ounce the stone may have weighed! 

The lunacy of it all prompted me to go for a cheeseburger.

I have been feeling better ever since.

I wrote to John Robbins to thank him for his book.  I credit him with almost packing up my gall bladder but also in having the proper reparté when dealing with the doctor.  He got points for me keeping the organ even if his diet was partially responsible for the said organ to malfunction. It’s complicated.

He wrote back.  We exchanged e-mails.  I like him.  He’s good.  Just remember the lesson: moderation in all things.

This blog segues (tomorrows blog) into an exchange with Paul Hawken, co-author of another book that altered my life, Natural Capitalism.  He is speaking in Vancouver tonight.  I wish I was there.

Yeah.  You read that right.  I really wish I was there!