Knitting

There!

I just finished a bunch of slippers for my east coast family.

Pardon me?  They look a little large?  Why, yes, as a matter of fact, big red noses do run the family!

Actually, you wash them in hot water and agitate them quite hard and they turn into this:

I agitated these by reading Stephen Harper's Canada Day address to them.  

Jobs and Prosperity (or Round Holes, Square Pegs)

I am in the skills training business.  I work for a growing scaffold company.  I research, write manuals and teach scaffolding.  Scaffold is part of the carpentry trade (except when it is part of the boilermaker's trade, but that is another story), and it is covered in the classroom time in a carpenter's apprenticeship.  It gets a whopping 2 days-max.

This is the kind of thing that scaffolders do routinely these days:

I think it takes more than 2 days to learn how to do this safely.  Of course, my job kind of depends on me believing that, so feel free comment on cognitive dissonance and give me hell...

So we do more extensive training than two days.  Mostly we offer it through the carpenter's union.  But we have recently been approached by some First Nations training providers.  Now, the provider that called us here in BC and offered courses was a private outfit.  They do all kinds of extensive training, including something called life skills and work readiness.  They really screen the applicants for the scaffold training to make sure they have a good shot at success.  We ran a class for them in 2011.  All the students passed and were immediately hired for a local shutdown.  Several of them were called back for subsequent shutdowns. (Generally and historically scaffolding is not continuous employment.  Like all construction projects, the job eventually gets finished and you have to find something else.  Scaffolding is even more short term than framing houses or pouring concrete high-rises.)    Not all of them kept their memberships in the union.  One or two had other trades and work back and forth.  But three of them  have been continuously employed ever since.

Now a First Nations training provider has called from Saskatchewan.  This one has direct involvement with the provincial government and twice we have talked to someone from the Saskatchewan government about what we offer and what they need.  This is my take and my concerns on what we have heard.  There is a lot of potash to mine in Saskatchewan.  I don't know just what scaffolding goes on in mines, but it does because we have a good number of employees working in mines at any given time.  And Saskatchewan apparently has a shortage of people to put scaffold up in mines. But an abundance of unemployed First Nations, also apparently.  So this government rep tells us about a program they had where they screened candidates, sent them to live in a mine camp for some number of weeks, put them in training in the mornings and had them working on the mine site in the afternoons.  In the end I think 3 or 4 of 12 kept at it.  Some quit early, and some finished but didn't carry on.  

Personally, I think work camps are a sociological nightmare.  I have never lived in a camp, but I have been a carpenter since 1994, and I have worked with hundreds of men - many of whom have lived in camps and been broken by them in one way or another.  Deep, soul destroying boredom breaks them.  Substances break them.  Marriages break.  Relationships with children suffer.  I don't know a single man who worked in camps, has good relationships with his kids with an intact marriage who didn't have to fight like hell to come back from the brink of disaster. 

So I am not surprised at all that this program lost such a lot of its participants.  When you take people away from their home and support, I don't think you are doing them any favours.  But the person we talked to is surprised.  It is good paying work.  Period.  That's it.  

I wonder how long we can labour away at this from this precise mindset?  Here is some earth-raping that some far-removed corporation can make money from.  Lets build some kind of huge industrial earth-raping process that will require a lot of man-power (although significantly less manpower than we might use if we did the job in a less mechanical/technical/earth-raping way) and then train people to do these industrial processes, in artificial and simulated communities. And then wonder why society is unwell.  

What if it's not the workers who won't behave?  What if the hole we are trying to hammer them into is absolutely the wrong shape and toxic to boot?  

Here is a blasphemous statement: I don't really want a job.  I want a purpose. I want to contribute.  But not to someone's stupid abstract economy.  I want to contribute to your life. And to the earth.  What if I am not alone? 

Pardon My Tinfoil Hat

I have a suspicious nature. 

The BC Liberals are either liars or they cannot keep promises.  I am not suspicious about that, but I am suspicious about everything they say.  They were not going to tear up contracts, sell BC Rail,  or bring in the HST, and they have no deficit.  Those are all lies.

Just now  Her Unelectedness has announced that BC does not support the Northern Gateway Pipeline.  She has not cancelled the equivalency agreement, which means that BC's opinion doesn't mean much, and it's kind of a toothless announcement.

Perhaps all those letters that LeadNow bestirred BC's residents to write had something to do with that.  Maybe she has been swayed by this. 

But I kind of doubt it.  She does not have a seat in the Legislature.  She has to win a by-election to get one.  At least one person has promised to make it the fight of her life, and I bet he'll have help. 

Will this be yet another broken promise?
 

Learning Curve

I have had three violin lessons.  I am reading music a little,  and I can find 4 notes on the A and E strings.  I can play a halting but recognizable "Twinkle Twinkle." Moving from one note to the next is not quick, but my teacher says I am faster and my ear is coming along. I am trying to trust her on that.  

It's not music yet.  Don says he can "hear" my tension, but that I am more relaxed today than I was three weeks ago.  

I have had enough years of learning new things that I can be amused now at my tension and frustration.  I know that when a skill is sufficiently out of my comfort zone I feel absolutely wooden in the steps and I feel like I might never get it.  Not that that makes me less tense or frustrated, but perseverance is easier now.  

Whenever I am learning something new, or when I am teaching someone a skill,  I remember Rhonda from my first job.  

When I was 17 I got a job as a carhop at an A&W drive-in.  I was so thrilled.  When I was a child it was a great treat to go to the A&W with my parents.  I  always thought the carhops looked so confident, walking down the walk with trays full of rootbeer in frosty mugs.  I learned right away that the trays are slippery and the mugs are heavy, that the change clip on my belt would jam at inopportune moments and that it was not easy to manipulate the small sheaf of paper money we wore wrapped around our middle fingers with just one hand.  I watched Rhonda, who was incidentally also tall and graceful, carry a tray in each hand and be able to set one deftly on a window, manage payment for the order with one hand and then take the second to it's destination.  She  was calm, cool and collected.  I was in awe.  It took me three days  to even have the nerve to talk to her.  "How long have you been doing this?"  I finally asked her, expecting her to tell me months and months.  I was floored when she answered, "Since last Wednesday."

Carhopping was easier than driving, knitting, sewing, building a house or decently mentoring a carpentry apprentice, parenting and just about everything else I can do. And carhopping was definitely easier than learning to play the violin.  But I still think that moment with Rhonda, and the fact that in a week I was as good and confident a carhop as she was one of the most instructive ones in my life.  

Hey Rhonda?  Wherever you are: Thanks.  

The Hand That Feeds Us...

Yesterday was Earth Day.

The Sea to Sands Conservation Alliance had a little gathering.  We started at 5:30 pm in the parking lot of the Enbridge office, which, by the way, has no signs identifying it and has 2 surveillance cameras on each side of the building.  That's it in the left of this picture.

There were some DIY and waste reduction demonstrations going on at a local community space a few km away, so we walked there together with our signs.  We walked on the main street that runs through town and we got quite a few honks and thumbs up.  

The Liberal campaign office happens to be on the way, so we thought we would stop and say hello.  We had big cards for our local liberals asking them to join us in defending our coast.  We had called the office to see what time they close and we were told 7 pm.  We arrived around 6.  

We took a few pictures and then a member of the group tried to go in and say hello and deliver the cards.  The doors were locked, and they forgot to turn the sign over.   

So we just left the card.  As we were about to leave, a Liberal supporter or volunteer arrived with doughnuts.  As she was approaching the door she said, "biting the hand that feeds you, are you?" 

We were not confrontational with her, and we told her we thought it was rude of them to lock her and her doughnuts out, wished her a happy Earth Day and continued on our way.  I meant to go back before 7 to see if they unlocked the door, but I was having a rather nice time at our celebration and I forgot.  

The Liberal whose sign can be seen in that last picture was once upon a time a School Trustee.  She was the trustee for the elementary school the Offspring attended. Said school was about 100 years old and it housed the neighbourhood public school,  the Programme Cadre French program, and the YMCA's daycare.  We had a thriving community association.  It was a beautiful old school.  (remind me sometime to tell you about the aesthetics, or lack thereof,  in Atmon) It had 12 foot ceilings and soaring windows. It had tall raised panel doors with transom windows over them.  It had wide hallways   and some wood floors.  It had character.  Beginning around 1990 the district stopped doing major maintenance to the school and it was beginning to suffer.  It had an old boiler that was not being properly maintained, its paint was chipped and peeling  and they stopped replacing windows.  The floors were not getting regular maintenance. It looked kind of slummy if you didn't love it.  (Aside: I also attended this school when I was 10.) In 1996 the district started trying to close it.  One of its infuriating arguments was that it was going to be too expensive to perform all the necessary repairs and maintenance.  The district's stated objective was to have a few superschools and close most of the neighbourhood schools.  We started a group called Save Our Community Schools, and we fought hard to keep our school and the others open.  All the community schools were housing other programs and I think we all had programs that brought in some revenue, like the Y in our school.  

Having Programme Cadre in the school was so wonderful.  We shared all our celebrations and in the english program we had the opportunity to learn about Quebec culture.  One of the celebrations we looked forward to every year was Carnivale, which gave us a whole week of fun activities, beginning on Monday with a pancake breakfast.  We invited our trustee to breakfast, and to show her all the wonderful things we were doing in that school.  I will never forget greeting her and welcoming her and thanking her for coming.  She had brought two men with her, and she was shaking as she took my hand. She did not meet my eye.   She was not gracious.  She was not friendly.  She did not make any attempt to engage with any of the parents or the children.  I thought then, and I think today that she is a coward and a small, small human being.  

We meant no violence, no harm whatsoever in visiting that office.  Some of us are constituents.  But we are certainly not represented.  Everyone at our rally cares deeply about the planet and our ability to exist on it without destroying it.  

I have to wonder, who is biting who? 

h/t to my friend Adam for the pictures  

Winter and Spring on a Merry Chase in Atmon

The seasons in Atmon are completely unpredictable and unreliable.  Last summer was hot and bright and unrelentingly green.  Some summers turn brown and dusty by July.  Everything looks to be tired of the sun, gasping for a bit of rain or fog that never arrives.

This past autumn was very weird indeed.  The leaves turned colour on one side of a lot of trees, and there was a lot of very bright, but almost translucent yellow.  In the evening sun the trees that line the next street over seemed to have their own internal light source.  It was eerily beautiful.  A lot of trees turned a kind of soft brown, like milky tea, and the leaves stayed on all winter.

I love winter.  I am mostly fine with  the cold, and it can be very cold, although it seems less cold than the winters of my childhood.  I remember long stretches of -20 and -30 and -40 were not unusual at all.  I can't remember the last time it was -40.  We did have a few intermittent weeks of nearly -30 this year.  If it is cold it is usually sunny and bright, and if it is not, we can have everything covered in a glittering coat of hoarfrost, which is really beautiful, even if I never do seem to get a picture of it.   But winters can be long, sometimes getting underway early in October and lasting until April.  And we are all tired of it by then, no matter how much we like to ski or  snowshoe.

Spring some years makes the winter worth it.  Some years it is spectacularly colourful and fragrant.  Two years ago it even drowned out the smell of the pulp mills.  Instead of sulphur, you smelled apple blossom when you went outside. I don't remember that ever happening before.

This year winter and spring are having a hell of a good time with us.  Spring has started two or three times already.  Four weeks ago we went out to my  parents and shovelled  3 feet of snow off the north side of their roof.  It had been melting at the top, but the melt water was cooling and freezing by the time it got to the north overhang. Under the 3 feet of snow was a 12 inch ice dam. Three weeks ago we had 3 feet of snow in the yard, and then the temperature rose to 11 or 12 and the snow receded a foot from the edge of the sidewalks.   Then it snowed for 3 days.  Back and forth for three weeks.  Yesterday I had a tenacious little bump of snow around the trees in the front yard and bare lawn.  My vegetable gardens are completely bare and begging to be tidied up.  This morning I opened the door for the cat.  He saw this:

He gave me a look and a noise that I am quite certain was, "WTF?" and went back to bed.  

Two weeks ago we started the  tomatoes, which look like this this morning:

I don't suppose they are going outside in any hurry.  

One of my favourite harbingers of spring are the Seville oranges that turn up in the grocery store.  My grandmother always made marmalade in the spring, and my mom does too, occasionally.  I made marmalade once a few years ago.  Its a big job.  Slicing all that fruit nice and thin takes a long time, and a Seville orange has nearly as much mass in seeds as in peel.  It needs to be soaked, then reduced, then mixed with sugar and cooked.  Nothing much happens in the cooking for more than half an hour, the whole thing is just reducing.  But after 35-40 minutes or so, the caramelizing is obvious, and if you don't watch it it gets too dark and rubbery.  That was my first batch.  I still thought it was delicious, even if it was overcooked.  This year I spent nearly 2 days on a whole batch.   I'm happy with it.  

 Just as the first of our short warm spells started, I finished these

plus a second pair of the striped gloves for my mom, and we all laughed that it was good I was finishing up the gloves and mittens just in time to put them away for the year.  I guess winter got the last laugh on that one.  

I know the first day of spring is in March, but it is almost never "spring" here then.  Today is my parent's wedding anniversary (50 years!) and in the 36 years they have lived in their current house, this is one of only 3 years that the snow is not gone entirely from their front yard by their anniversary.  This day is always the beginning of spring for me.  Have a happy one.  

A Disturbance in The Force

I have been thinking a lot lately about blogging communities.   I started blogging after 10 years of reading and lurking and sporadic commenting, because I wanted to fully join the conversation.  Over the years I have learned about bloggers,  and grown to know their voices and to care about them.  I really like the community of progressive bloggers and it is a relief to know there are others out there who care about the things I care about.  

A few bloggers have disappeared lately.  A few of them have announced their departures.  A few not.  In some cases, there was a change in tone before a disappearance which may have led more bloggers than myself to wonder if someone was okay.  Last week Lorne talked about the nature of this community and about missing people we have never met. 

Today  Jymn  posted a letter that made me ashamed.  Gretchen wrote to him to tell him that she was alarmed at the tone his blog had taken.  She said things that you should say when someone you care about is melting down.  I nearly quit reading Jymn’s blog this week.  It alarmed and frightened me.  And I didn’t know what to do about that.  I have been thinking about the way his posts make me feel- frightened and small and misunderstood- all week.  And also wondering what the hell to do, because if I felt frightened and misunderstood,  Jymn, saying these things, must feel really really bad. 

This sounds unrelated but it is not:  Last fall at a community meeting about serious city budget cuts, 0.002% of our population turned up.  Maybe it was apathy that kept some people away.  Maybe it was ignorance.  But I bet two big reasons were: "I had something else even more important," and "I don't know what to do to help."  After the meeting, discussing this with my partner I said, "what we need is a movement where we all turn to someone else and say, 'What can I do to make something easier for you?' "

I think of myself as a caring individual.  And someone I cared about was in pain.  If I want a movement, maybe I gotta start it myself.  

Jymn: What can I do to make something easier for you?