Mulling on Red Shoes

I learned something tonight. Earlier I was talking with my friend Laurel about Cape Breton and Hamilton and the distance between places and people. She asked if I felt welcome here. I answered that I do feel welcome for the most part. For some people I will always be from away but those people aren't likely to make the best friends so I think I'll stick with all the people who have welcomed me home.

But there is still something of the tourist in me. Like I'm just passing through when in reality I'm going to live the rest of my life here. So I have to really accept this reality and embrace it.

One way that I feel like a tourist is that when I go out (rarely for a miser like me) I go to the Red Shoe Pub in Mabou. This is a spot for tourists. The license plates out front read Vermont, Massachusetts, British Columbia and they are sported by the most fabulous antique cars and Harley Davidson motorcycles. The food isn't very good given what you pay and it doesn't have to be. Locals sometimes attend but mostly tourists drop their large wads on the tables and move on.

In Mabou there's another restaurant called the Mull. The Mull is open all year to the Red Shoe's seasonality. To be honest that's all I know about it. I only passed through the door once, to put up a poster (in typical Ontario fashion). It felt dark and small at the time, nothing compared with the bright and cheery Red Shoe. But it's the real spot. It's made a commitment. Real people go there not the playboys and playgirls from New England.

So I'll be going. This week. Small steps matter.

Gold?

Wow. I just read a convincing article from Mike Ruppert about buying gold as a stopgap between this shitty economic paradigm and the steady state/no-growth one to come (really there's no other choice because if we keep choosing infinite growth then we are dead and sadly most of life on earth along with us). It's a good article and I encourage you to check it out.

I feel a bit like the potato guy in the story who thinks potatoes are valuable, certainly more than gold and cash (or bullshit numbers in a computer somewhere). Though Ruppert makes the case that potatoes will be valuable in 10-50 years, they are not valuable now nor will they be valuable in the transition period. So I'm a bit ahead of myself perhaps (certainly lots of potatoes in the ground).

I just had a quick look at the Royal Canadian Mint and it looks like some of their stock is running out. So obviously someone is taking his advice (and the advice of other sages). They are sold out of 1 oz gold wafers--pure gold! The funniest thing is that they have special coins for what we value as a society (an RCMP coin, an oil and gas coin, an Olympics coin and a Navy coin). But they are not pure gold or silver (is that ironic?) and are therefore of lesser value than a pure gold or silver wafer.

So what do you think? Should I buy some gold and silver? If I can that is.

Choices

I found this opinion piece through Mike Ruppert's new online home CollapseNet. Now I know that many of my friends have or are planning to have children and I'm almost there myself so this article might be a bit shocking. But it's worth thinking about given the clear and present danger of climate change.

It's something I wrestle with but I think given my family's current situation, moderate level of adaptability and inclination to grow that any child would be somewhat provided for and happy. Maybe the debate started by the article above would merely be passed down to another generation like I was buying myself and my family some time but letting the kids make the tough decisions. In some ways this is what our culture does, passes the buck.

Guns, Morns and Meals

Some random thoughts:

Go biodiversity! Perhaps I'm just more perceptive these days but I'm seeing all kinds of different creatures in our gardens that I didn't see last year. From field mice to dragonflies to snakes and toads. And the birds seem to be following us around and talking to us whenever we are out and digging. I expect they are just thanking us for revealing so many yummy worms.


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I recently took the Firearms Safety Course with the long-term goal of learning to hunt. It was an interesting experience to say the least. If you weren't confident and didn't know anything about firearms then you were cast adrift. It was very male-centred despite a bunch of women on the course. I didn't know anything about guns but I got up at the breaks and learned how to cock and half cock a number of rifles and how to safely load and unload.

Of the men in attendance there was a distinct difference in attitude between the older and younger generations. I sat next to a nice old man who was forced to take the course after having hunt for years but had just purchased a new rifle and it fell under the new regulations. All the old men seemed level headed and mature.

Contrast that with the men between 15-40 (yes you can take the course when you are 12 even I think). It was all "I want to get an assault rifle" and "Canada is way to strict when it comes to guns" and "Wish I lived in the states". I overheard one fellow who had come back home from Alberta telling a story about how his friend and he had been drinking and his friend pulled out all his guns and lay them on his bed (yes they covered the whole bed). Then they called "the whores" and when they got them in to the bedroom they ran away screaming having seen all the weapons arrayed there. It was bizarre and creepy and says a lot about our culture.

I trust that these young men will grow up one day but I'm not betting on it. Violence is the middle name of civilization after all.

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Back to some good news: the strawberries that we planted last year have arrived. We have a bowl of fresh strawberries with each meal it seems. And if you get hungry in the garden you can wander down and pick a few too give you a little boost. It's pretty nice I must admit.

And we have lots of garlic scapes and things are growing nicely. Though the summer squash have been decimated by cucumber beetles and slugs despite my best efforts to kill them all (don't worry, you never can, and I know they are part of a diverse garden, grumble, grumble).

June Thoughts

I haven't written in ages. We've been pretty full on here at Wild Roots since mid-June. Thought I should share some pictures and some news.

We have two great wwoofers helping out and we've been making beds and pulling weeds pretty much exclusively. It's a lot of hard work but they have been happy to do it. Can't really ask for more. We still have more seedlings than we have bed space but we're working on it. Thanks to Maggie and Piramila.


Jane and Minou have arrived. They are both having a great time. Minou caught her first mouse yesterday and we had to drag her back to the house or she would have stayed outside all day and night. Jane and I were both worried that Buddy would attack and wound her for invading his space but as usual he has surprised me. This is the cat by the way who attacked two dogs when they entered our house. Maybe her smaller stature made him feel comfortable. All she got were two hisses and now they are friends. They even eat together and Minou pushes him out of the way to get to his food. Good old Buddysatva.


I've started to get up at 6am every day. It's a nice time to be up. The weather is cool and the bugs are slow (fracking cucumber beetles). I do all my watering between 6-7 and then come in for breakfast. Frances was the one who wanted to get up early but she always sleeps in to about 8am. No problem but 6am makes for some beautiful starts to the day. I just have to have a nap around lunch or I'm beat around 8pm.

So blogging is kind of taking a back seat to all this activity. But I'll try my best to at least put up some photos.

Newfoundland

Since moving out east I've had the pleasure of reading several books by Farley Mowat. He's a good writer and deserving of his place in the Canadian Walk of Fame. Though I don't expect he'll attend the twisted ceremony, but perhaps I'm wrong.

Right now I'm finishing The New Founde Land, Mowat's tribute to Newfoundland and its people, and it turns out its ghosts. When Europeans first "discovered" Newfoundland and Labrador they might have thought they had discovered the Garden of Eden, well in a manner of speaking. Sure it lacked milk and honey but Newfoundland had possibly the most abundant wildlife in the world, surely rivaling the plains of Africa and North America.

You could literally stick your hand in the water and pull out cod. Reports from sailors stated that the sheer abundance of cod slowed their boats from passing through the water. They are almost gone today.

There were polar bears everywhere. Last night I read a dismal account from a 18th century insane European who repeatedly shot polar bears through the head for the mere sport of it. Now if a polar bear has the ill fortune of straying south in winter it is shot immediately, for public safety, as if humans matter more than polar bears.

There were millions of birds on isolated offshore islands. The great auk was the most prized, providing meat, eggs and feathers. Now they are extinct, wiped off the map by civilization.

Seals populated the winter ice around Newfoundland and Labrador in far greater numbers than we see today. At least they are still with us.

Pilot whales are estimated to have numbered some 60,000 even into the twentieth century before they became the food of mink farmers in Newfoundland. Some good news is that they are still with us, a smaller and sadder population for having met civilized humans.

I could go on.

All I can think, in this world of oil spills and climate change, that had I be born in Newfoundland before Europeans I would have looked on this abundance and thanked the earth for her generosity. And surely the First Nations of Newfoundland and Labrador did. They did not let their populations grow too high and took only what they needed and gave themselves back when their lives ended. They probably couldn't have ever foreseen an end to this Garden of Eden. These people, like the great auks, are gone now too.

There's just us civilized people left and a few species hanging on. And we'll destroy them in the end. That's what we do. All for a "higher standard of living". Not really worth it if you ask me.

Missing

People out here often ask if I miss Hamilton. Usually I reply that I miss my friends and that's certainly true. I've known lots of great people in Hamilton. People that try to make the world a better place against all odds. So I miss them always.

The other day I realized that there's another thing I miss from southern Ontario. I miss thunderstorms. I miss the energy and power of those moments. There don't seem to be many thunderstorms out east, whereas in Ontario all the hot, humid weather always seems to be ready to burst.

But tonight I was blessed with a lovely thunderstorm. Not a really loud one but I spent a bunch of time at the door just being in the moment. Good times.

I miss you!