and spruce and viola in my mouth after munching on them during tool clean-up this evening. Went back to the garage in the rain to retrieve this device and snapped this picture. The videos that Beaver has been putting on Facebook reminded me of the delights of tree buds, good tasting and new nutritious. So much is edible in our environment that we don’t need to rely on supermarkets.
land is food. land is plants. land is animal. land
is dirt. land is us. a friend called it the skin of the earth, a biome encompassing all living beings in the water, on the ground and in the air.
It is not that i chose to be poor but rather that i chose many years ago to deviate from a path that would have lead to a middle class career with a salary. And being a student at that time meant that i was in a position of little income to begin with and being upwardly mobile did not appeal to me. Such a deviation from didn’t sit well with my parents but they taught us to be independent and to stick up for the little guy so they took a ‘grin and bear it’ attitude to the change. They were workers but “middle class” is one of those illusions that proves to be useful to the elite, every division helps their cause. None of the 50 years of my life after leaving the nest have seen a lucrative income, never enough to enable me to go into long term debt. The richest i have been was when my father died and i shared a small estate with my sisters.
Odd jobs, social programs, the generosity of others, and the sales of crafts have always provided enough to keep a roof over my head and food in my belly. I have never been homeless but have come close enough to understand how people can end up in that predicament. Poverty is not a state of mind, it is state of being. I don’t feel poor but as i walk through dowtown Bancroft, i realize that most of the stores will never see my business. I am not able to shop like the middle class and do not want or need to. It is commenable that enough people do as thrift store goods have to start somewhere.
So yeah, i fail at being a consumer. The lifestyle i have chosen still has a carbon footprint but less than average and every reduction counts when it is a matter of mitigating the foreseeable catatstrophes. Having little disposable (sic!) income means i have less choices in the marketplace but so what? I don’t suffer for that lack, i make do with what is front of me, what i can find in my surroundings or what i can make or fix or borrow. It means that i am more engaged with the infrastructure of life but i have trouble sitting still anyway and my labour time is seldom devoted to wage earning. More stuff comes out of my workshop than i can get rid of.
this is a wine bottle holder being manufactured
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Roasted Koalas now on special for $5.98/lb. at WorldMart. Help make the Worldbanger family richer and happier by buying some today.
Excuse this macabre opening to a New Year’s message but if you can’t laugh, you gotta cry at what is on top of the news these days. Few human lives have been lost in the Australian Apocalypse so far but millions of animals won’t wake up tomorrow. So where is the story of citizens rioting and hauling off their idiot of a prime minster to the gallows? But the Murdoch Media has the populace zombified and only marching to the tune of their next paycheque.
In the year 2020, we will get a clear vision of what is in store for the next decade, whether the world will continue down a path towards authoritarian capitalism or take a sharp left turn to libertarian socialism. The American presidential elections will be the tipping point when either Trump gets back in or his opponent wins the race. The status quo will not hold. If the Democrats put forth a “moderate” candidate in an attempt to tweak the status quo sufficiently, they will fail. Only Bernie Sanders has enough credibility to make a real difference.
Of course, if he wins then the right wing will mobilize all their forces to attempt a coup. It won’t be pretty. Think Spain in 1936. If Trump wins, his war on people and the environment will swing into high gear. Either way, the future does not look bright in the short term.
Couldn,t get in here on the laptop but no problem with my tablet while sitting at Tim Ho at 7 n 62 with a wheel horse secured on the back of the truck. For bush work and snowplowing. Will be back in time for the Sunrun party.
Listening to a CBC Ideas on Luddism that Walter had taped reminded me how the historical narrative has maligned the Luddites. Machines were smashed not because they were against technology but because they wanted to be free. At the time, changes were coming to the textile industry and people who had been weaving for generations were quite willing to adopt new methods. However, they were not willing to be locked into factories to work at the looms only rich industrialists could afford. Working for themselves, they could set their own hours, socialize whenever they wanted and not have do the bidding of a boss. They rebelled not at the machines but against becoming cogs in a machine.
And now we are cogs in the machines like the one you’re reading this on. Our psyches are being mined by captains of silicon valley industries to enrich themselves.
Father’s Day was last weekend, an event that was started to commemorate the deaths of dozens of West Virginia miners in 1907 and which resonated with similar holidays in other parts of the world. The loss of these men was significant not only emotionally but also financially because they were the breadwinners of their families who would be faced with the difficult task of making ends meet without them.
Our father, Leonard Vickars in this picture painted by his daughter Dawn, was the breadwinner for our nuclear family of 5 children, his wife Doris and occasionally other relatives. Mom did most of the housework helped by us kids and Dad paid the bills for food, mortgage, car, insurance, hydro, etc. That’s the way it was for most people in the small towns we grew up in, the normality we knew. Extended families which include grandparents at least and perhaps aunts, uncles and cousins all living under the same roof used to be a lot more common than they are now.
Humans need family. Romulus and Remus may have been able to make it but the chances of most infants surviving to maturity on their own are close to zilch. Other mammals would have a difficult time without a mother but have a greater chance of living. Breast milk improves the odds significantly and having others of your species in the neighbourhood adds a few more decimal points towards success. For us, however, our biology necessitates that Dad stick around. Our big brains are a blessing and a curse. I’ve seen a cow and its offspring walking around normally minutes after they parted ways but a human child is totally at the mercy of its environment because it is not fully formed. And Mom is quite drained after such an arduous task , both of them would make easy prey. For the next couple of years, the young one is quite mobility challenged compared to other mammals so needs to be carried around and have access to breast milk. Mom is still quite capable of the all the tasks she was doing before the new addition, she provides most of the nutrition for the family. Self-defence and defence of two is more difficult and this where Dad comes into the picture, protecting the next generation and adding meat to their diet. Both parents are able to do most of the work involved in keeping the species going but the males have a slight edge when it comes to size and strength. However, primitive societies are incorrectly named hunter-gatherer when actually it is the gatherers who should come first because they provide more towards sustenance. And give birth.
