Survival Mode

Leave it to the Guardian to go where no Canadian or American newspaper would. Talking about what we would do in the absence of the state, grocery stores and electricity won't ever make the front page of the Globe and Mail. But in typical cheeky British fashion, they take the piss out of people like me who are stressing about the end of the world (as if the end of this civilization is the end of the world, right?) and trying to build our own resilience.

It's a fun read and I encourage you to check it out. There's a video too, which in my primitive dial-up state, I cannot access.

But seriously, what would you do?

One problem I had with the article was the psychologist's view that the author should "trust no one". More than skinned rabbit and lean-tos, humans need one another. It's a sad condemnation of our civilization that we are moving away from building strong human relationships. Apart from helping you to find food, build things and encourage you, even just having one or two other humans to cuddle up against on a cold night would make trusting people well worth it.

The funny thing about the end of the article is that it directs the British to build arks and sail to Canada for their salvation. Way to give the secret away!

Apparently the author has read The World Without Us and concludes that our biggest threat is the one thing all our governments want to build: nuclear reactors. Unfortunately without human oversight, as would be the case at the end of the world (aka civilization), they are likely to explode and spread radioactivity across the landscape. Britain with its nuclear warheads and therefore reactors, because you can't have one without the other, is going to be glowing.

You can tell that even with the humour, there's a subtle nervousness. Come back economy! Come back!

Arctic Blast

It's a cold one tonight. Dan had a look at the thermometre an hour after I took this photo and it had dropped to minus 24. That's without the wind of course. So a night inside was on order. We listened to the lovely voice of Neko Case on CBC Radio One's Q. She has a new album coming out by the way. Probably will be worth a listen.

I'm a little worried about our supply of firewood. Mum and Dan kept saying there was nothing to worry about but clearly there is. One big pile has disappeared and we're making short work of the others. And it's kind of hard to be frugal with your primary source of heat; though we do hide out in the kitchen with the woodstove as much as possible.

So we're experiencing a crash course in firewood. Did you know that you should ideally be two years ahead with firewood? So you should be using one year's firewood and have the two next years' firewood curing at the same time. So all the more reason to get a chain saw and probably order a bush cord of wood or two from the woodlot coop. I should have kept track of how much wood we are using. I will have a better idea next winter. Get ready to do some chopping!

I should also see how much a tank of oil costs because it's a nice backup if we are away. That's another realization. You really shouldn't be going that far. If you do, even for one night, your pipes might freeze. That sounds expensive. But it's another way that living in the city is very different.

Here's some other icy pictures to share. This is the door to the mudroom. This door doesn't technically open into the house since the mudroom is pretty cold but all that ice is pretty disconcerting.

Venture out at your own risk!

Destination

On As It Happens the other day, I heard from a lady from an organization of 9/11 families lamenting the closure of Camp Delta at Guantanamo Bay. Her husband was a fireman or policeman, I can't remember which, who was killed in the World Trade Centre on 9/11. She opposed Barack Obama's decision to close the camp. With venom, she called the prisoners there "animals", clearly blaming them vicariously for her husband's death.

I was moved with the degree of her hatred for animals. Reminded of the "cockroaches" of the Rwandan Genocide and George Bush being called a "dog" in the shoe throwing incident or cops called "pigs". When did being an animal become such a bad thing?

So I wrote this:

Power's tool,
A slur, fool:
Raghead maybe.
Perhaps Paki.
But still,
For good or ill,
The fate,
Of life awaits,
Us outside.
To have died,
Above the clouds,
Our burial shrouds,
Fit poorly.
But surely,
A worm's food,
Tastes as good,
From any source,
Without remorse;
In the end,
Compost mends;
The curse forgotten,
We are all rotten . . .

Animals.

Cajun Cleansing

Ever heard of the Acadians? From previous visits to the Maritimes, I was aware of them but for me they were just the random small French Canadian communities. I didn't know much about their complex history and relationship with the British officials that used to run Canada. But they have quite a tragic and violent history.

Back when the British and French (and the Dutch too I suppose but to a lesser extent) were starting to occupy and colonize North America, the first settlers in the Maritimes (Prince Edward Island, Nova Scotia and New Brunswick) were French. This area was called Acadia and these people were the Acadians.

Then in 1713, as part of the Treaty of Utrecht between Britain and France, Acadia was handed over to the British and all European colonists came under their jurisdiction. No one really considered the Mikmaq but then what else is new? I wonder what kind of relationship the Acadians had with the Mikmaq. I'm sure they were told to despise the savages and probably just accepted that they should hate them. Though the Mikmaq did help the Acadians when they needed them most.

The British regarded the Acadians suspiciously as a potential sixth column should they come into conflict with France again; they were probably already making plans. And the Acadians didn't fit into those plans. So they expelled them from Acadia in 1755. Families were separated, farms burned, livestock slaughtered. People were rounded up by soldiers and forced onto waiting ships to be carried to the 13 colonies and then-Spanish Louisiana.

In fact, the term cajun from Louisiana comes from Acadian (say it really fast). The cajun people were Acadians from the Maritimes. Apparently the Spanish were happy to have the deportees since they were Catholics. Quite a change from the Maritimes to Louisiana. Can you imagine growing up knowing one climate and one way of life and then having to start over in a completely different climate? I guess we might experience chances like this in our lifetime with our own human-made climate change.

Many Acadians ran away and hid in the forests of the Maritimes. They were helped by the Mikmaq. These Acadians eventually returned and started the Acadian communities that continue to this day.

But despite their efforts to have this ethnic cleansing recognized for what it is, the British and subsequent Canadian governments have never admitted their crimes. Each time we go to Sydney we see a sign which states: Celebrating Democracy, 1758-2008. Apparently the government of Nova Scotia is proud of its representative democracy despite the treatment of both the Acadians and the Mikmaq. I guess technically the 250-year period started just after the deportations and the powerful write the history.

Guide to Civilization

So you might have noticed that I go on and on about civilized humans and civilization as the underlying cause of much of the world's problems. Unfortunately, I'm a civilized human myself so I could be called a self-hating human or something like that; fair enough.

But seriously let's take some major crises: climate change, nuclear waste, fish stock collapse, rainforest felling, bird numbers declining, a plastic island of garbage the size of the continental US floating in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, genetically modified foods and the list goes on. All caused by civilized humans. If we were as smart as we think we are we might consider stopping or even doing the honourable thing and putting one of our sophisticated firearms to our collective thick skull and pulling the trigger.

Some of you might not share my belief in the destructive nature of civilization. You might point to art and culture and healthcare and sustainability (it's still just a word). So I want to suggest a good, quick, amazing read that will help you to understand civilization. Don't worry it's not too preachy. And you'll even get a glimpse of uncivilized humans in its pages. Now unfortunately there are few uncivilized humans left to provide us with another option. Most were hunted down and absorbed or murdered by the civilized, this was deliberate by the way. We are a monoculture as much as fields of genetically modified soy and corn are.

The book is a Canadian classic no less: Never Cry Wolf by Farley Mowat. It's the story of his work with the Department of Mines and Resources (precursor to Natural Resources Canada and now NRCan--oh I'd love to tackle the semantics of this name change and change again to something barely mentioning its mission of repeatedly raping the earth). He observed wolves in modern Nunavut over a year in order to understand this savage, murderous animal and learned a lot along the way. I just read it in one day.

It challenged me in that I'm not sure if I could shed my civilized self much like the narrator. Have I been indoctrinated too long? Have the muscles grown too slack? Do I look at other beings only with dollar signs in my eyes? Can I walk under cool trees and feel at home amongst the black flies?

Read it, you won't be disappointed and you might just get to understand a little better the problem of civilization. Let me know what you think.

Tech Mind

In winter, the CBC becomes invaluable to an inquisitive mind. Especially if you are isolated, listening to stimulating explorations opens up new ideas and thoughts with space to grow and flourish. Of course, I’m not talking of the news, whose repetitiveness and surface treatment of issues can drive one mad. News always seems stale and old even though you only heard it a few hours earlier. But let’s get back to the wide open world of thoughts.

Ideas is a wonderful show on CBC. I encourage you to tune in to hear interesting documentaries about a range of subjects. One show we listened to the other night really got me thinking about our whole experience here and the wider culture. And it didn’t even touch on these issues. The show was called Ocean Mind and explored the underwater experience of whales.

Whales are certainly mysterious and solitary, and I’m sure civilized humans hate them for it. How dare they hide secrets from us? Why else would the US military destroy whales with underwater sonar recently approved by the US Supreme Court (I’m sure the whales would ask you to burn down the building and execute all the “justices” inside)?

So civilized humans, science priests as a friend calls them, are trying to understand how whales experience the sea and, particularly, the nature of their songs. Obviously this exercise is useless, they are there and that is enough, but this show has led me to think about how environments influence humans. It seems that whales and their songs and how their brains work (apart from flippers and blowholes and physical attributes) are influenced by their experience of the sea. This is perhaps obvious but maybe not so.

So how are civilized humans’ minds, yours and mine, influenced by our environments? Increasingly our minds and consciousness are divorcing from the world that we were formed in. We became a species on the planes of eastern Africa with generally flat terrain, some forests, many predators and much game to hunt and fruits and nuts to gather. This naturally impacted our consciousness in that we learned to work together to hunt and for protection which likely helped develop language to communicate more effectively. Our numbers grew and we moved to new areas, meeting new environments and adapting to them and eventually moving across the whole planet. New areas required new conscious ways of approaching them.

But now we find ourselves increasingly an urban and disparate species. We are islands in many ways requiring little of our fellows since advanced technology and complex systems provide us with clothing, shelter, entertainment, food. One could theoretically live inside an apartment having food delivered and warmth provided and entertainment on sight without ever interacting with another person over a lifetime. Theoretically. We are a social species though and our inclination is to be with others but how much is this changing with technology? Even the fact that I am typing these words instead of speaking to you puts a barrier between us. We cannot sing to one another like whales my friend.

Much like moving to the ocean forced changes in whales’ brains so moving into technology is forcing changes in civilized humans’ minds. I sometimes find myself unable to think outside the box and I wonder if this is due to the way I was brought up with increasing technology. I can’t think of an example though there have been a few. I guess it’s like I was taught one way to do something even though there are hundreds of potential ways but I am stuck on the one and can’t even consider the others. Maybe this is just me. Oh, I’m sorry I don’t have an example right now; I’ve thought of it often since being here.

I wonder if children who were born in the 1990s are even more rigid than me. And would this rigidity lead to helplessness in the face of changing circumstances? That’s my one fear because certainly things are going to change a lot for humans. We won’t have time, like pre-whales moving slowly into the sea to adapt. It’s our own curse I suppose. That’s the problem really, we all assume that our technology and our minds that create it will adapt to changing circumstances but ignore the depleting material base that has allowed our rapid growth in technological consciousness.

What happens when “natural resources” like oil, freshwater and uranium deplete to the point where they are less easy to access? Naturally they will restrict our ability to make new adaptive technologies. How will this barrier impact our consciousnesses?

I actually believe that humans have an incredible capacity to adapt but that we have dulled it through technology. We are all amazing and we should prove it by not embracing too many crutches. Your muscles will weaken the more you do. When they break you will fall. I don’t think the same will be said of the whales and their beautiful song.

Car Curse

Oh the pain of it all. In planning my future, I never planned on thinking about a shitty vehicle. Not that I don’t appreciate my mum’s ancient Nissan. It used to get us around, with only a hint of gasoline left on our clothes and in our brain cells. But today, it failed on Kelly’s Mountain. We figure it must be the transmission. It felt like it couldn’t change gears and was constantly shuffling and slowing. Then it gave it up altogether. Dan just got it rolling off the road. Thankfully it wasn’t the 401.

We’re now waiting on its prognosis. Much like “invaluable” human life, there’s always one more procedure to keep you hanging on. But at what cost, $250 or $1,000? Is our car a vegetable? If so it certainly doesn’t smell like it. But this very well could be the end.

And that means that with money tight, we have to make some tough decisions about a new vehicle. Mostly that I have to make the tough decision because I have to pay out for it. Shudder. If you know me at all, you know that I don’t need much convincing that buying a vehicle is equivalent to flushing your brain down the toilet. Vehicles only suck money and if you’re lucky you’ll get a decade out of them while paying out double what you did initially in repairs. I know that on balance I’ll get a reliable vehicle but we never think that way do we?

And of course I want to get as new a vehicle as possible, with as little mileage as possible. You can, I’m sure, visualize the price tag climbing. I did buy a lottery ticket today in vain hope that it will make my dreams of a new Toyota Tacoma come true.

We’re trying our best to be peasants but when you “need” a new truck it’s kind of hard. There aren’t any options unless the neighbourhood is interested in banding together to purchase some shared vehicles—they aren’t there yet though this might be reality someday. And don’t get me started about horses. A truck is a breeze in comparison. Maybe one day we’ll do without a vehicle but unfortunately we’re not there yet.

So my combing of Autotrader, Kijiji, the Maritime Merchant and RepoDepot continue. It’s kind of fun searching, like the old me is back again, the one who wanted all the technology in the world at his fingertips. But paying certainly won’t be fun. And I know that in six months vehicles will be so cheap that I’ll kick myself. The one guy who might win from this recession because he doesn’t invest in murderous companies and is planning to produce things people actually need and he’s going to be out a few thousand dollars. Oh well, small price to pay, fingers crossed, for the end of capitalism. If only . . .

And now, ironically, we don’t have a vehicle to go and purchase a new one. Our thumbs will have to do.

Hockey Day in Brook Village

We finally got to skate today. And under a sunny sky, a rarity it seems near the sea. A family in Brook Village floods a quarry to use as a rink. It's a small rink but enough to go around and around in circles or take shots on a makeshift goal.

I bought shiny new skates just for this and they didn't disappoint. I guess I have to still work them in but let this be a lesson: don't buy the same sized skates as your shoe size. They must always be smaller sized. I didn't know this before this year and suffered greatly in recent years.

The ice was a little rough but it was nice to shuffle around (with Dan dancing around me like a figure skater). Skating with my stick and passing the puck was actually nice because I stopped thinking about what my legs were doing and just received and passed the puck. The stick also helped me to balance like a high wire acrobat. I fell of course but no damage done, though my shoulder is hurting me now.

The thing with skating and with living the way you want to live is that the longer you keep at it the better you get and the faster it goes. There's a little voice inside me that sometimes says, "What are you doing? You don't actually think that you'll be able to provide for yourself? You dope. Go home and get a job". It's a small voice I assure you. But it's there. It's the voice of our culture, wanting to make me into a slave, reliant on a system to provide for all my needs and wants. It's not going to work culture, your days are numbered.

So I was flying, for me anyway, before we left the ice. I can't wait to go back. Is this an authentic Canadian moment or what? And it only took 30 years.

Filling the Loneliness

Not that I can carry a tune in the least, but I think I finally understand why Cape Bretoners are so into music. A few weeks ago, up in Sydney, I was spending some time with a few friends. We spent a Saturday night drinking a little wine and playing a whole mess of musical instruments. We even were able to record our cacophonous production.

We played guitars, a xylophone, a finger piano (is that the right name?), tabla drums, deep African goatskin drums, digereedoo, something resembling a sitar but whose name I don't know, flutes, and probably a bunch more that I'm forgetting.

It was so fun. Mistakes didn't matter and we laughed a lot. So wonderful.

So I think I understand Cape Bretoners love of making music. When you aren't distracted by the city you make time to become creative. In the city, you go to see music, you don't perform it yourself. You have to be a professional musician to go on stage. And even then there are movie theatres, bars, clubs, restaurants, sports arenas and more to grab your attention and keep you from picking up an instrument, or a crayon or a paintbrush and making something beautiful yourself.

Here in Cape Breton, there are few distractions to dull the mind. It's lonely to be sure and it's up to you to fill that loneliness with your own creativity. Otherwise you'll be depressed and sad. Filling the loneliness is what we did that night and that's what I'll have to do from now on. At least until the summer comes but, thankfully, winter always comes again.

So anyone have any instruments they want to donate?

Maybe

Inspired by an errant thought (as most creativity is) and correspondence . . .

Elemental forces,
They break like hearts,
Upon the infinite shores,
Of the possible.

We are flawed, confused,
Gambling on destiny,
Lost in the maelstrom,
Ruled by the planets.

Maybe,
Or maybe this is just what waves do.

Drifter

A sore back is the price of learning lessons.

New Year's Eve Cape Breton was hit with a mighty blizzard. The winds beat at the windows. The lights flickered threateningly. The fire roared.

Afterward we emerged to assess the damage. A few branches down, trees are more resilient than buildings perhaps. Or maybe they know when to shed dead weight. Apart from those observations, the car, my cursed lifeline, was buried up to the windows in snow.

Over the course of a day, we took shifts and dug out the entire driveway. Not a small job, it's probably a couple hundred feet long. But we were free. We had done it. We went out to a postponed New Year's party in Brook Village.

Then the snow blew again that night after our return. What's a little blowing snow? Happy to forget the car, we spent a day around the fire having some friends over for a meal. I didn't think when I saw them trudging up the drive.

Then this morning we left to run out to pay our taxes and insurance (shudder!) and were faced with a return of the mighty white barrier. The whole driveway was filled in with snow.

Let this be a lesson, young Mentat. Park the car at the bottom of the drive when a storm is coming or even when it is blowing out. The walk is nothing compared to the alternative. Another few hours of angry shoveling later, I'm ready for my sore back tomorrow. Also we should bend our knees when shoveling--something you don't think of as a child digging your mum out in the morning.

Only Fools?

Some people have asked me, why Museum Fremen? Well as I've mentioned before it's a term from the Dune books that have had such an impact on me. I titled this blog based on a reading of God Emperor of Dune by Frank Herbert. However this reading was some years old. Since rereading the book, I've realized that perhaps Museum Fremen isn't what we're totally about here in the east.

The Museum Fremen were a deliberate creation of the God Emperor to maintain certain traditions that had been lost over time and through a changing climate. He understood that in time the Fremen and their skills and beliefs would be needed again as the climate would change again.

Obviously civilized humans and especially North Americans have lost so much essential knowledge, not to mention seeds and topsoil, over just the past hundred years. So our goals here are to resurrect some of that knowledge, to build our resilience. We are going to need it if our communities are going to survive the days to come. If grocery stores and their bright shelves disappeared tomorrow, would we survive? Unlikely. So in that way the name Museum Fremen fits.

However in the book, Museum Fremen are objects of derision and ridicule because they do such a poor job of impersonating Fremen. Though other characters in the book live comfortable lives they take ample time to insult the Fremen. Perhaps they have good cause, perhaps not. It's also hard to come close to the real thing without the appropriate climate to form you; like other animals we should always evolve in relation to our climate, predators and with foresight. And I don't expect people to respect our decision to come here and do what we are doing. Doing so might imply that your choice of lifestyle is inappropriate given the days to come. So give us a hard time, we can take it and maybe we'll just convince you.

I think that the most important lesson I learned from my rereading of the book was that you can never really go back to some idealized past. In that way Museum Fremen are not enough. They need to become agents of change and create the new taking lessons from all times in history. As the God Emperor states: "Only fools prefer the past". But this does not mean, like our culture teaches, that history is a straight progression toward some technological paradise. It ain't.

So there's some thoughts on the label I've assigned to myself. Not perfect but what is? Check out the Dune books though. They aught to be counted with Silent Spring and Small is Beautiful as the books that started it all.