Yesterday was community work day.  We were back at it with diminished gusto after a winter hiatus (the spirit was willing, the flesh somewhat reticent).  We started by putting up dry wall and then I left the tough-going to Sal and J, D & R and went down to the Q-hut to meet H and prepare the new space for all the workshop tools we are getting.  They are coming by barge on Friday.

That’s the day – wouldn’t you know – that all the guys are scheduled to go to town and shop or, more likely, see the doctor.  Seeing the doctor seems to be a regularly scheduled stop these days.

‘Course, it wasn’t planned that way.  Really.  People were going to be here.  It is just that, well, the doctor doesn’t travel (neither does the grocery or hardware store) and appointments are made well in advance. The planets just didn’t align this month, that’s all.

The barge travels on the first three days of the month.  Always does.  That’s the schedule.  Sometimes it goes north first and then circles down south.  Other times the circuit is reversed.  It depends on the weather and the urgency of a needed delivery.  As a consequence, most of us have no idea when the barge will come.  So, we just carry on with our schedules and sometimes meet the barge and sometimes not.  Shame, really.  The arrival of the barge is always kind of exciting.

The barge is really a fantastic service!  This big sea-going behemoth carries propane and fuel along with pallets of supplies and materials all around a five hundred square mile area.  The guys nudge the 150 by 40 foot monster gently on to the beach (adjusting for tidal differences each time) and they unload all manner of things off the dropping front ramp.

The Barge Coming into the Dock

One of their main chores is to hump a heavy hose up the shoreline – sometimes hundreds of feet – to a filler pipe – and then, after the fuel has been transferred, wrap and drag the whole, heavy, dead-python-like thing back neatly onto the boat.  This ain’t easy.

Fancy GPS systems and such ‘hold’ the boat in place despite often being buffeted by strong winds and even more influential currents while the work is being done.  We typically have 1000 pounds of propane and a few gallons of other fuels delivered, only twice a year, but we feel like the captain and crew are good friends.  And they are.

Everybody’s landing is different and each landing is made more different by the conditions of the moment.  Doesn’t matter what they have loaded on the barge, they manage to find a way to unload it onto your beach in the most convenient-to-you way possible.  They get pretty creative with some pretty nasty, heavy, awkward and dangerous stuff.  I have nothing but respect for them.

Eight years ago we had two filled-to-the-brim porta-potties to get onto the barge from a steep rocky promontory (don’t ask – the answers don’t make any sense).  That was a major and stinky affair.

Whenever I call the barge head office and say my name, no one knows it.  I am just one of a hundred customers.  Then I say, “N, this is Porta-potty Dave!” N laughs every time and says, “OK.  I know where you are.  I know who this is!  hahahahaha!”

At least he knows who I am. 

This Friday the crew will have to squeeze down close to the public wharf (boats and things have to be rearranged to make enough room) and then they will unload onto the upper deck up at the community landing.  Then the work begins.  We have to schlep all that stuff up a steep gravel-strewn dirt road about 1000 feet to the Q-hut in which the tools are to be housed.

We may wait til Saturday when the ‘work crew’ members are all back from town.

I got a call yesterday from the captain.  “We’ll be there.  You can count on it.  But it is a bit difficult to make a business case for the tool delivery this time since we have absolutely no other customers over your way scheduled for fuel.  It makes it a whole lot more feasible to try to service a few other stops at the same time.”

“Give me an hour.”

Phone calls were made.  “Yo!  Cap’n.  Could you please stop by D’s and drop 1000 pounds of propane and three drums of fuel. Then stop by my place and drop 1000 pounds and one drum and I am pretty sure L is wanting much the same but he’ll phone you direct.”

I could hear the smile in the Cap’ns voice.  “Yeah, sure.  I think we can squeeze that in. See ya Friday.”

It is a different set of challenges getting things done out here.  One has to think onside the barge, as it were.

Boxes?  We are waaaaaaay outside the boxes.  Hell, I long for thinking inside or outside the simple boxes!  It should only be so simple.

Now I am going to have to start thinking upside the gravel road.

B&K are in Vietnam riding around on a small motorbike.  Having fun.  See it all at: http://circumnavigate2012.tumblr.com/

Sorry about the ‘plug’.  Just a smidge of parental pride.

Em and B are cutting the mustard in Hong Kong and teaching English at our favourite school.  They, too, are doing good and so the parental pride thing is a’bursting.

Parenting?  ‘Ship ém to Asia!’, I say.

It is not so much that they have things that I think that they should do.  It isn’t that at all.  These guys are grownups. They choose what they want to do.  It is just that they are all taking bites out of life and chewing it up (‘specially K’.  She’s a foodie).  These kids are living. That’s where the pride-thing comes from……young, competent, healthy people exploring the world, doing things, meeting people and doing it all well.  Plus they write to mom and dad.

Doesn’t get much better than that.

The fact that ‘screen time’ is minimized and exotic locales are explored in ‘real time’ on real motorbikes rather than ‘virtual’ ones is also a big plus.

Man…….I feel like a raven watching the fledges take off for points unknown.

Jack and Liz with one of their four(!) offspring last Spring

Speaking of which – Yesterday Jack swoops down and settles beside Sal.  He struts his way kinda close and gives her one of those ‘look at me’ stares.  Sal stops what she is doing and looks.  Jack sucks his craw down and splays his neck feathers out.  He is ‘scrunching’ down – presumably for effect.  At the same time, he makes a huffing and puffing sound, like wheezing in and out.  Does that for a few seconds.  He finishes with a loud sigh.

After that little display, he resumes his proper raven posture and gives Sal ‘the look’ again.  Sal stares back stunned.  Jack looks at her and repeats the display and performance.  Sal looks stunned.  Again.  Jack does it again.  After awhile Jack concludes that Sal ‘just doesn’t get it’.  He gives her a disdainful look, shakes his head in seeming frustration and flies off.  She can almost hear him say, “What a ditz!”

Sal is beside herself.  “Dave!  Jack was talking to me!  Honest!  He was trying to say something.  I think it was kinda intimate stuff.  Maybe.  I think.  Who knows?  It was ‘whisper-y’ kinda and all fluffed up with sighs and wheezes.  Jack was talkin’ to me!”

“I dunno, Sal.  Hard to tell with Jack.  He’s a raven, ya know.  They got a sense of humour.  I think he was just messin’ with your head.  Probably went back to Liz and they’re just a’cacklin’ over how he ‘got ya goin’. I think he knows a patsy when he sees one.” 

“Really?!”

“No, sweetie.  I have no idea.  But I know a patsy when I see one. Obviously!”

So we have no idea what Jack is up to but I have to hand it to him: he comes up with something new all the time.  Boring, he is not.  Liz?  Well, Liz has issues.  Hard to get to know Liz.  She’s a bit anxious.  Nervous.  Aloof.

Corvidae, eh? Hard to live with ’em.  Harder still to live without ’em.

I am slightly embarrassed.  Seems I am a blog whore.  No shame, either.  And, it seems, I have no boundaries.  Nude pics of me would be posted if I didn’t know in advance that such sights would drive readers away.  I want readers.

At first, I swore that I was just writing for myself, ya know?  ‘Jus’ keeping a journal’.  Jus’ an exercise in trying to write better “Good practice.” I would say.

I was kidding myself.  I have needs.  And this is one of them!

It was an easy lie to perpetrate for awhile.  I only had 28 readers (they registered on my old blog – so I knew who they were).  But when I actually bumped into any of them, they would avert my look and, when questioned would say, “Oh!  Right!  Well, damn it.  I’ve just been so busy lately.  Kinda missed a few.  But I love it, dad, honest.  I’ll go home and read it right away.  I promise.”

“What was the name of it again?  Off-your-nut or something?”

It was easier to pretend that the number of readers, per se, was not as important as, um, well…….getting words down…….sorta………..or honing one’s craft…….kinda………well, never mind, I can do what I want in my spare time! But I can no longer deny it.  Numbers count!

So to speak.

I changed to WordPress as the blog-host and WordPress provides statistics.  Seems I was getting more readers than I thought.  29.  30.  Gusting to forty.  And it was gooooood!   Oooohhhhhh……………what a rush!

But that is when it started to get out of control.  I began to check the numbers every day.  If the numbers went up, I was perplexed.  “Damn, where did they come from?”  If the numbers went down, I was depressed.  “What did I say?  What put them off?  Where did they go?  Oh Gawd!”

It was an emotional yo yo.

Still is.  Blogging is hell.

Can’t stop, though.  Gotta blog.  I don’t have a blog.  It has me!   Aaaaaarggh.

By the way the numbers really do fluctuate.  Weirdly.  Doesn’t seem to matter what the content is, the numbers go up and down.  Hit 1200 one day.  34 the next.  The only reliable subject matter is dogs and ravens.

Dinner is Served

Raven Takeout

Book Club is a steady number pumper, too.  But politics is fickle.  Rant one day and have a dozen comments and good stats.  Rant in a similar vein on another day and stand alone like the cheese.  I don’t get it.

One commentator asked ‘Who are you and why are you doing this?’ I didn’t answer.  I am not really sure about either answer, really.  I kinda thought the ‘urban guy gone feral’ bio at the top of the blog would suffice but then WordPress provided a follow-up space that needed filling so I went with the ‘…brutish and short….’ thing to help flesh it out.  Plus you get all the diarrhea and wound and laceration updates.  What more could anyone want?

As for why…………..?  Well, like I said, “I thought it was just good practice for writing a book or something………” But now I am not so sure.  I am reassessing.  I want more.

Yeah, the fame, the followers, the hordes of readers……(averaging 200+ lately)……..yeah, that has some appeal.  No question.  Although, as it turns out I seem to appeal to an unusually large contingent of older antique collectors so the chance of wild parties and indulging groupies seems pretty remote.

I guess the main reason is still to try to convey what it is like living off the grid.  People who do that don’t just chop wood, feed ravens and watch the whales. We are involved in some of the on-the-grid issues indirectly if not, sometimes, more directly.  Planet/climate/environmental and political stuff affects us more ‘in-the-face’, viscerally.  We are more engaged with the natural world than most urban people.  We care about salmon.  Hell, we even care more about herring and marmots and the whole enchilada.  I think.

And, it has hit me hard, – we truly are all in this thing together.

I guess I am just more of a penguin than a leviathan (title of book by Yochai Benkler) that describes those that belong and cooperate versus those that take and dominate.  Or maybe I am just a big fat penguin forcing my blog-will whenever I can and looking for small, weak leviathans on which to practice.

Either way, the blog is part me and Sal, mostly off-the-grid lifestyle, some eco-stuff with the attendant dollop of politics.  It has weather, alternative energy, aging and a sprinkling of international visitors to spice things up.

I might even get personal now and then.  Hard to say.

“No, it isn’t!” said Sal.  “This is just self indulgent pap, you old fool!”

My sister-in-law lives in Haida Gwaii.  Done so for years.  And she writes.  I attach her blog: http://blueseaskyhaidagwaii.wordpress.com

Hers is not a unique view of the area – many of her friends and neighbours feel the same way about the North Coast as she does.  But it is a unique way of looking at things compared to the urban point of view.  Seems lower mainlanders and Ontarians see the North as simply a hinterland, a ‘back forty full of resources to use as we see fit.’  They just don’t get it.  It is more than that.

In this recent blog ‘link’, C remembers the lessons learned and shared by Justice Tom Berger looking into an oil pipeline proposal undertaken decades ago in the late 70’s.  Justice Berger went up north with a bias, a predisposition to what he thought was a good idea for Canadian progress. And he listened to the people and he saw what they were defending. And he was disuaded from his initial view.

The Berger report recommended NOT approving such a pipeline.

No, this is not another anti-pipeline blog but you can take it that way because my sentiments haven’t changed on that.  Rather, this is a comment on our institutions.  As we all know, they are failing us but, few of us know how and why.  Partly it is because we forget.

And partly it is because we remember.

Berger is a case in point.  He says, “The choice we make will decide whether the North is to be primarily a frontier for industry or a homeland for its peoples. We shall have the choice only once.”  And he chose homeland.

Poor, naive supreme court justice, Thomas Berger.  He thought he made a judicial-like finding.  Once and for all.  “The North is not a frontier for industry but a homeland for it’s peoples”.  Done.  End of story.

“At least a precedent was set, eh. Tom?”

Well, until the next oil pipeline proposal comes along, that is.  Seems Berger’s point of view is no longer current reading.  Such findings are no longer relevant.  “That was then, this is now.  Now we want to look at it again and maybe the chief honcho we appoint will see it like we want it seen.  This time let’s pick a better stooge!”

This time they started with Transport Canada.

The point: the battle never ends.  Ministries to the left, departments to the right.  One Royal Commission after another, one environmental study after another, one more revolution (generation) of the system and we get to go through the whole damn exercise again. Should we lose one of these battles, the war and the battlefield is lost – there is nothing to protest anymore.  If we win, it entitles us to fight the same fight again and again.

“Heads, the bastards win, tails, we flip again and again until we get heads!”

Know what happens if we stop the Enbridge line?  First, we only ‘won’ the status quo, that which we already had.  We achieve what Berger achieved.  For him and for us, NOTHING happening, in such a case, is a victory.  Secondly, we get to gird our loins for another run at it a generation later.

That is how our institutions fail us.  Just one of the ways, I mean.  Too easily they forget. Too easily they are swayed by the next group of hucksters.

But they also fail us by remembering to obey – following blindly the prime directive – whatever the premier or the Prime minster says, “do as you are told!”.  Don’t any of these people have spines!?

Our institutions don’t change.  They don’t shed the dead skin.  They just get older and more rickety, unresponsive to everything but their own needs.  It’s a self-serving memory. Institutions get into survival mode pretty quickly.  They don’t live to serve, they live to survive.

The Ministry of Fisheries now thinks their main purpose is to sell fish.  Honest to God!  DFO are fish mongers first (read the Cohen Commission report). DFO is not ‘for‘ fisheries and oceans.  It is ‘for‘ companies and corporations.

Well, it is for whatever Stephen Harper and his sycophants tell them they are for so, ultimately, DFO is simply for DFO.  And your MP is for your MP.  And your MLA is for your MLA.

Transport Canada is no better.  It is not about improving transportation for Canadians.  In a country with a two-lane TransCanada highway, a largely useless passenger rail system, the most expensive airfares in the world and a ferry system threatening to sink, we have a ministry focusing on the shoes passengers wear at airports, day-time running headlights on cars and inspecting small boat trailers at the border.

And it was Transport Canada that recently rubber-stamped the oil tanker traffic planned for the Enbrdige pipeline.  Transport Canada is less than useless, it is criminally negligent and derilect in it’s duties.  But it will survive.

“So, Dave, what is the point and why another rant so soon?  Losing it, are we?”

No.  I am not losing it.  In fact, I might be on to something.  The point is simple: the more things change, the more they remain the same.  The bad guys will continue to take runs at the resources and the people wil continue to defend them until they can’t.  The bad guys never stop.  The people sometimes do.  Our salvation should be in our institutions but they all seem corrupted.  Our heroes should be our politicians but they are, essentially, just organized crime.  Our old system doesn’t work.

Maybe everyone should take up a blog and maybe a sharpened plowshare and state their opposition to this madness.  Maybe now is the time for the silent majority to make a noise by way of social media.  Maybe now is the time to raise the twitter to a roar!

My sister-in-law is.

And so is her son: http://www.salmonguy.org/

Tide was up early this morning.  So were we.  We launched the boat.  I am now mobile again.  Well, boat-wise, anyway.

I confess to having a bit of difficulty getting off my butt lately.  Such a feeling may be an after-effect of having spent so much time in that particular position addressing the Antigua Amoeba these past couple of weeks but I am inclined to think that it is more like the residue of an overall winter slow-down. I just don’t feel like ‘starting’ a project yet, ya know?

The weather is still chilly.  Sometimes it is wet.  The fire is so nice.  Sal made muffins yesterday.  What’s the hurry?

And yes, you guessed it…………books came in by ‘plane’.  I have reading material again.

But, I gotta kickstart my spring.  Sometime.  Soon.  Lots to do.  Got a funicular to finish.  And I want to re-do the log hauler.  There is boat work to do.  And I’d like to build a shower for guests.  Maybe build a small greenhouse.  Gotta get more wood in, of course.  And I am obliged to help with the community woodwork shop.  Plus there are people coming.  And the garden, of course.

Man, I am glad Sal is on the ball.

I’d delegate but she is in charge.  I think.

Anyway, delegation won’t work.  We need to work together.  Sal is the best partner in the world but, sadly, we don’t work well together.  She insists on knowing what we are doing in advance of doing it.  I prefer to discover what we end up with.  Fundamentally different.  She reads the instructions………….I mean, really?

I glance at them to make sure that I already know what they say………

Sal also cleans up.  A lot.  But she tends to clean up when I am still in the middle of the job.  Admittedly, I am disinclined to finish anything so undertaking a clean up after a week of inactivity makes some degree of sense.  I understand that.  But, you see, I really need all the stuff laying around to remind me what stage I am at in the process.  If everything is put away, it kinda looks finished.

And, anyway, it took a lot of effort to spread all that stuff all over the place.  I just don’t wanna get it all out again!

We are also both natural managers.  Sal’s also a very good worker but it’s the dueling manager thing that makes life difficult.

“Grab that board, please, and go up the ladder and hold one end near that log end!”

“Why?  Why am I doing that?  Shouldn’t we miter the end first?”

“Well, that would be a good idea if we were going to have mitred ends but these are butt joints.  Please.  Go up the ladder.”

“I don’t want butt joints.  I want miter joints.”

“Now is not the right time to tell me that.”

“Why?”

“Because they have been cut to length and are now too short to miter.”

“So, you screwed that up, eh?”

“Would you please pass me the chainsaw and then lie down on the two saw horses for a sec?”

Actually, Sal is pretty good to work with.  She thinks so, anyway.  She enjoys working in the outdoors.  And she is even getting good at construction.  And, even if the work is hard going, she knows how to find a way to have some fun.

That is a beautiful thing.  I admire it.  Can’t do it.  But I admire it.  Especially when she takes a break to ‘have fun’ when she is working on her own job.  She’ll stop to toss the stick for the dogs, for instance. And she’ll be happy.  She’ll smile.  It’s a lovely thing to see.

Sometimes, however, when she takes a break to play with the dogs or watch an eagle soar or a butterfly flap and I happen to be on the roof balancing a board waiting for her to refocus on the job at-hand, it just seems so wrong, ya know?

“Uh, Sal, I have the board here.  I am ready for you put in the nail……..you know, like we planned……..?”

“Just a sec, sweetie.  Megan lost her ball.  I’m just gonna get it.  Just a sec.”

Working together is both a delight and a challenge.  Mostly good.  But you can understand why I am a bit reluctant to get back in the ring with her, can’t you?  Anyway, I think she promoted herself over the last season and she is now my supervisor.  I now report to her.

It’s like reporting to Lucille Ball.

As you know, I try to limit my rants but sometimes the spleen is full-to-the-bursting and needs venting.  Sorry.  My spleen is about to go nuclear.  I am apoplectic.

Our government is so bad.  It is so bad.  It is so bad.

For those of you not on this magnificent coast, the Enbridge Pipeline proposal may not ring any bells but, out here, it is big news.  This proposal threatens to cover our beaches in oil.  And it will.

The Enbridge company, the provinces and the federal government want to pump sludge from the northern Alberta tar sands through BC to the deep sea port of Kitimat.  The sludge will then be shipped to China using 250 tankers a year that will pass through the dangerous waters between Haida Gwaii (Queen Charlotte Islands) and the railhead terminal.

These are the same waters that claim ships every year and, just a few years ago, took down a BC ferry.  Hurricane force winds are common.  Keel-snapping seas are common.  It is the northern section of the Graveyard of the Pacific.

A spill is inevitable.

And Enbridge has a long and dismal record of oil spills.

Seems the Chinese government has invested billions in the tar sands (by buying Canadian companies) and they want their oil.  ‘Course, our government has to make a show of applying studies and regulations so that appearances are kept up.  But it is just a show.  The decision has been made.  Doesn’t matter what you read, the fix is in.  The latest insanity proving this is a press release made yesterday (through the lickspittle CBC) that Transport Canada has no regulatory concerns over the proposal.  Transport Canada gave Enbridge the ‘thumbs up’ to ship oil along our coast.

No worries.

Sal called, “Come!  Come quick!”

It was early.  I had just gotten up and turned on the ‘puter.  Had a nice cuppa tea beside me.  But, I went anyway.  When Sal calls, I jump.

“Listen….hear that?”

“What?”

“Wolves.  Clear as a bell.  Just across there.  Hear ém?”

It is not often we hear wolves so clearly and this was the first time I had ever heard them howling in the early hours of the day.  But they always get your attention.  You just have to listen.  I suspect that they had winkled out a deer and were on the hunt.  Sounded like they were moving.  That, too, would be rare.  We usually hear them in the evening when they ‘part-tay’.  Different howls.

Nice to be home.

I gotta launch my boat tomorrow.  That means servicing it today.  Lube in the leg.  That sorta thing.  But it has to be launched tomorrow.  The tide is high enough then to float it off the ‘storage-on-a-log-ramp’. I might have enough  height the next day but, after that, it is a long wait to get a high enough tide.

Boat Maintenance in the Wild

When we go away, I haul the boat up so that it does not need any attention.  But hauling means getting it out of the water higher than the highest tide.  Mind you, we go away in the winter, as a rule, and that is when the tides are highest in the daylight hours.  So getting it out is easy enough.  Getting it back in can be the challenge.

It is very heavy for a 16 foot boat.  Too heavy.  Methinks it is water-logged.  Time to get or build a new one.  Some blogs will result this year from that last statement, I am sure.

From the moment we leave, the tides get lower and switch to being highest in the middle of the night.  Not good. I prefer to sleep in the middle of the night.  In fact, I am inclined to nap now and then in the daytime, too.  Launching windows are getting tighter.

The boat has to get out out and stored on the hard in a protected spot.  Thus the cobbled-together log ramp placed on the right part of the beach but still out of the weather.  We get it out, strap it down, lash on a few tarps and open all the drains.  That usually does the trick.  Then we haul Sal’s boat and do the same thing.

Sal’s boat is smaller and lighter and we can relaunch that puppy pretty easy even in a lesser tide.  Sal’s boat got wet again a few days ago.  Fired right up, too.  She’s been a-zoomin’ around ever since.  Which is good.  Bookclub on Sunday.

Community-building day again yesterday.  A half-dozen or so intrepid souls (including Sal) went up and worked on the community building, the ‘bunkhouse’.  The kitchen extension was being insulated and the separation wall between the extension and the old building was being removed.  Still lots to do so every Wednesday from now on has been designated ‘kitchen’ day.  Things are starting to roll.

Spring must be here.  I’d better get some of it in my step.

Friends called yesterday.  Seems everything they have ‘back east’ is sold or is for sale.  Their business is now history. They are coming out to BC!  They have a cabin here and are planning on spending a great deal more time putzing about on these west coast islands.  I think that is good.

Another friend sold his business last year and is still trying to rid himself of all his other ‘stuff’ so that he, too, can spend more time here.  At this stage in his life, his assets are millstones.

And a third did the same but set his sights on Palm Springs.

Maybe the exodus has begun?

I dunno.  I don’t really care.  I have already exited.  I am pretty happy as I am and the additional presence of more friends only makes it better.  Things are pretty good.

But it is clearly time for retirement.  There is no room in the workforce for the likes of me anymore.  If I had any doubts – (and occassionally I do.  I sometimes wonder if I should shake the dust off my mediation/arbitration shingle and snag me a problem or two to solve.  Something that does not involve heavy lifting) – those doubts were all erased last night as I read the Roger’s business telephone magazine.

Yes, I am that desperate for reading material right now.  I even read the Costco mag.  I read both Lee Valleys.  And now I am reading the Roger’s (cell phone service provider) ‘CONNECTED’ magazine.  I have the Vanity Fair Hollywood edition to review when all the other stuff is done.  It does not get any more desperate than that.

GAWD!  I hope the fly-in library service kicks in quickly.  I have to say that all things are great but that statement hinges on the regularity of the books-by-mail plane and we suspended service while we were away.  Big mistake.

But back to Roger’s Connected magazine.  I was at about page ten when I realized that I didn’t understand anything I was reading!  I mean, I had been wrestling with Monty (Montezuma’s Revenge) for over a week and I confess to being a bit dozy as a result but this magazine may as well been written in Mandarin.

They were talking about the new LTE devices.   Seems I could ‘tap into success with top business apps for 2012!’.  And every name of every device they mentioned was either misspelled (RAZR) or was in some kind of code – “the new ISo -i5 with built-in apps!”  There was the Galaxy ll S LTE (no mention of whatever happened to the Galaxy I).  “Motorola brings back its iconic RAZR – now an Android-running, HD-shooting, razor-thin superphone.  A welcome evolution for business.”

What kinda business needs HD-shootin’?

I am clearly no longer hip.  And, if you ain’t hip, stay home.  So, I put my shingle back in the closet.  Left the dust on it.  I don’t think I can ‘cut it’ without a new RAZR, anyway, and I don’t really wanna know what that is. Frankly, I don’t think I have enough time in my life to waste any of it learning how to run with the androids or tap apps.  Life is too short.

Ironic, isn’t it?  As the world gets more ‘whiz-bang’ and ‘e-tronic’, I am leaning towards making wooden toys.  I prefer a saw to a RAZR, an axe to APPs, sandpaper to a touch-screen.  I think I am regressing, devolving.  I am past my best-before date by a decade or two.

There is the very real risk that, when my kids come home, they will pack me up and put me on an ice floe and set me adrift on the sea.  Where there is no cell phone coverage.

It is the way of all things.

As most of you know, we are in the process of ‘building community’ up here.  I apologize for the term, though.  It smacks of jargon to me.  Nauseating, I think. But I must admit that normal words don’t describe what we are doing quite as well as community-building.  Still……makes me gag.

Mind you I am starting to gag over ‘sustainable’, ‘holistic’, ‘synergistic’, ‘environmental’ (don’t even mention, ‘at the end of the day’) and a whole lot of other over-used and diluted/compromised words corrupted by marketers.  But that is just me, I suppose.

Sorry.

Anyway……………there are about 250 people on the nearby islands that associate or relate to our ‘village hub’ to a greater or lesser degree.  They shop elsewhere.  They work elsewhere.  They live a good distance away by boat.  And many never even get to the ‘hub’ in any given year.  But, it is where the school is (two rooms) and it is where the post office is (100 square feet on a floating barge) so, if you are looking for a ‘centre’, our ‘hub’ has to do.

It used to be more of a hub in the past.  We had a store.  And the people were younger and more inclined to promote their personal offerings to the gene pool so social mixing was pretty regular and evident.  Young people can stay up longer, too.

But, over the years, the youth went to the city and the residents just got older. and older.  And they became a bit ‘set in their ways’.  Society, such as it was, diminished somewhat despite regular gatherings at Xmas and such.  The store closed.  Some people moved away.  Some became single. A few passed away.  Others got ‘isolated’.  The hub almost stopped turning.

One of my neighbours had a near-death experience a couple years ago and it inspired him to a renewed sense of ‘love’ and ‘community’.  He was waxing lovingly about all sorts of things for a few months even going so far as to start hugging me and stuff. 

Really nauseating (but kinda funny).

After awhile, he got that particular and peculiar strain of madness under control and redirected his energies to preaching community. He started saying “Community building! Community building! That is what we gotta do!”

I am disinclined towards community at the best of times and, to be fair, the feeling as a rule is reciprocated by any community I have been near.  We just don’t need each other.

Well, as I have learned, we don’t need each other much. 

Once in awhile we do need each other and, when that happens up here, it is like herding demented cats (are there any other kind?).  Organization is impossible.  The best you can hope for is people showing up at close to the right time on  hopefully the right day.  Forget giving or getting directions.  Plans are anethma.  Efforts at supervision are taken as insults.  If we all happen to be there and we all happen to feel like it, we may, if no one bugs us (which is almost a sure thing) actually do something together for the good of the community.  Maybe.

It helps if there is lunch provided but that, too, is another coordination challenge.

But it does happen now and then and, over the last two years, we managed to make it happen enough to restore the old school building and turn it into a community work-shop.  Trust me – it was a miracle. Since I was part of that effort, I had a taste of community-building and it wasn’t all bad.  Crazy.  Goofy.  Unpredictable.  But kinda fun.  We did good.

The trouble with that kind of nonsense is that it goes to your head.  It is like finally hitting the golf ball just right………..you now have sense of what ‘just right’ feels like and you keep persuing it.  And, like golf, you rarely ever ‘hit it right’ again.

Community building is hard.  It is easy to trip up.  The ‘man-hugs’ alone put many of us off.  Mind you, we are currently on a bit of a roll.  We have, over the past few years, undertaken a few significant chores and they seemed to have worked out pretty good.  Some of the more isolated and reclusive types are even showing up.  My loving friend can hardly hold himself back from hugging people.

“How nice for you all. What’s the point?”

Glad you asked.

As you also know, we bought the contents of a woodworking shop that specialized in making wooden toys.  I posted some pics of a few of them last year.  And while I was away, some of the guys started moving the tools to our new shop.  This, of course, has incurred some expenses that are greater than we anticipated.  We are running a bit low on funds.

Yes, of course, you can send money!  Don’t think twice.  Just pump it.

But that is not why I am writing.  I am writing this to say that I may post an ad alongside the blog that advertises toys.  Just so you know, all proceeds from the intial sales go to SNCA (our community non-profit organization) to help with our $5,000 debt. After awhile – when we get operational, some of the proceeds will go to SNCA but most will go to the maker of the toy that is sold.  Our community workshop is intended to ‘support’ some kind of piddling income stream for the locals.  Artisan stuff.  It is our JOBS CREATION program.

You know, like what the government does ‘cept we’re hoping to do it better?

If this ‘advertising’, ‘promotion’ or ‘agenda’ idea annoys you, please let me know.  BEFORE I do it.

Time to refocus on being off-the-grid in an isolated island sense.  Mind you, being in Central America was definitely off-the-sane-grid.  They are off-the-hygiene-grid, the safety-grid and the desirability-grid as well.  So, in a way, I have been kinda true to the title of the blog if you’ll allow a little (or a lot of) slack in the definition…………….

…………..regardless, we are back and ‘off-the-grid’ in the more conventional sense and I have to say, “It does not get any better.”

Garden is starting to grow.  Which is weird since nothing was planted.  But Broccoli is still producing, onions are poking up and parsely and rosemary are pretty prerenial, anyway, and ‘lookin’ good.  Crop of garlic is on the way.  Even the carrots are still looming in the loam.  That’s very good.

We’ve had a woofer (two, actually) ask to come and visit and help and so we have our first working guests scheduled already for April.  They’re coming from England. Could be good.  I need some help with the never-finished funicular and the greenhouse I want to build.  Hope to work ém like dogs.

More like rented mules.  The dogs out here live the life of Riley.

We’ve had woofers from Australia, Japan, Switzerland, Germany, France, The US and, of course, from Canada.  They were all good but the French.  What a couple of useless doofuses they were!  And so, natch, they are the focus of this blog post.

It was two years ago when A and F showed up to ‘woof’.  The chores at the time were simple.  I was gonna put in a new window in the boatshed (and wanted some assistance) and we were going to carry boulders from one pile to another.  Each boulder being beween the size of a cabbage and a bowling ball.  Heavy but still an easy-to-grasp, one-person job.

They were beyond useless.  Couldn’t walk and carry a boulder and chew gum at the same time and no inclination to try, either.  The window installation was rocket science to them – beyond their conceptual grasp.  They looked at the tools I gave them as if they were ray-guns from the Planet Zorg.  They stood dumbstruck the whole time.  They were very pleasant to be with (except when working) and they loved the wine and food.  But labour was not only beneath them, it also seemed too intellectually challenging.  They just didn’t seem to get it even as we were doing it.

A and F, of course, were teachers back in France.

We share our woofers around and they eventually made a similar impression on a few others but a favourable one at one of the local lodges.  Seems A and F liked working in the kitchen.  So, that was good.  And, I guess they ‘hung around’ the islands for a month or so before returning back home to France.

I didn’t miss them.

Last night at a dinner party, J asked, “Have you heard about F and A?  Seems they went back to France, felt they needed to grow more independent in some way and so emmigrated to Canada last summer.  They are working on a cattle ranch in the Chilcotins!”

“WHAT!!!  They are the last people I thought would ever get it together!!!  OMYGAWD!  How are they doing?”

“Well, they are riding horses, chasing cattle, mending fences and building buildings.  Really into alternative energy, too, I gather.  I saw a picture of the cabin they had to build for themselves.  It was pretty good!”

“What the hell happened to them!?”

“Well, F wrote to tell me that their time on our island taught them that they were lacking in real life skills and they were very impressed with all of us and how independent we were.  After a time in France, they decided that they preferred to live ‘our’ way and made application to come – not to Quebec – but to BC.  They got another woofing gig at a ranch and are now employees.  They are really into óff-the-grid’ learning and are picking up skills wherever they can.  They seem pretty pleased with themselves.” 

I picked my jaw up from the floor.  I stammered.  I was stunned to say the least…………“those guys were the least capable people we have ever encountered and bear in mind that we, ourselves, are barely functional out here.  I would never have guessed that happening in a million years.  That’s astonishing!”

“Yeah, me too.  Pretty cool, huh?”