Tag Archives: sustainable

Take Two

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I just deleted a very, very lengthy entry! After taking a break from it I decided that nothing I was writing about needed to be said or read, delete!

Last week Attila had his flue shot at a public health clinic. I go to the family physician to ensure the non-medicinal ingredients do not include my allergen. So far, so good. One never knows when things will change. My appointment was onf Friday and while I was at the family physician’s I also received my first pneumonia inoculation. The tiredness and soreness in my arm remain, but I can easily live with this slight discomfort. I did find though that over the weekend I felt cranky from time to time, and I was aware of it. I hope I kept that well away from other people, I think I succeeded, with the exception of one little terse conversation with Attila, who wasn’t being all sugar and honey himself at the time.

We made a whirlwind trip to our little house in the city. On Saturday we arrived, cooked and ate a box of Kraft Dinner (poorly planned that one!) and headed out to Terra and Lares new house. They moved on Saturday and by the time we arrived all the lifting and toting had been done. Their house was full of jolly people, all of whom had helped with the move, except us of course.

The house does need a lot of work. What an adventure it will be, slowly nursing this century home back into good health. It is large and beautiful; well worth the effort to bring it back.

Luna and Janus travelled a long distance to help with the move, and the whole family came, Imp and Elf and Tink. Well almost the whole family, the dogs Benny and Bim were left with the in-laws and Soot the cat was left in peace at home.

It was wonderful to see the Grandbabies. They have grown a lot and are such characters. They are all so different from one another and we enjoy and love each personality. They spent a lot of time playing in the “exercise room”, an office in a separate building which was carpeted. They played happily in there for hours and we could see them through the window and could keep an eye on them.

Since we could not help with the actual move, we contributed otherwise. Attila build two extremely strong saw horses for Lares, and I prepared breakfast for the crowd that stayed overnight till Sunday, after the hectic Saturday move. My first priority was to prepare toast and peanut butter for the Grandbabies. After they had all they wanted to eat, I prepared toast and sausages and eggs for the rest. I also kept a sink full of dishwater and washed and dried the dirty dishes as they were piled by the sink. By the time everyone had eaten the dishes were done and the kitchen cleaned up; ready for the sanding and painting job which is next on Terra’s list.

Then it was back to the little house to wash up the dishes there and get things shut down and locked up until the next visit.

The drive home was beautiful. So much colour, even without autumn leaves! Bright sunshine is a balm.

Today I am making more applesauce for freezing and baking a cranberry-apple crisp for breakfast and snacks later in the week. I’ve been offered a few more hours work in the coming weeks, so I will be busy.

Standing at the window this afternoon I spotted what could be a lone coyote trotting down the road in front of the house, head lowered, glancing back over its shoulder. A little later I saw him running out our driveway, he had obviously been in our back yard. The tail seemed a little too long for a coyote, but it was very large and certainly did not resemble any of the Red Foxes that I have seen trotting by in the past. I have my camera out and ready now in case it passes this way again, then perhaps the species can be identified with a photograph.

Worldly Distractions

Weather

7 °C
Date: 3:00 PM EST Monday 19 November 2012
Condition: Partly Cloudy
Pressure: 102.7 kPa
Visibility: 16 km
Temperature: 6.7°C
Dewpoint: 1.4°C
Humidity: 69 %

Quote 

“It is by the goodness of God that in our country we have those three unspeakably precious things: freedom of speech, freedom of conscience, and the prudence never to practice either of them.”
Mark Twain
1835 – 1910
Long live the imprudent, say I!!!

Captains of Industry

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Devastating, the situation in Japan. Should be an eye opener to all of us, what the captains of industry have gotten us into, and how our governments are implicated. I feel a lot of compassion and respect for the general population of Japan. I feel disgust and contempt for the movers and shakers of industry, business and progress, worldwide. The fear of nuclear contamination is not generated by a war, it is created in the name of progress, aka greed, the very same progress that promotes nuclear power in Canada as a “green” alternative. The hubris of the powerful has been visited upon the meek.

In my opinion, the powerful are invisible to the general public and self-protective, the politicians are glib, incredibly convoluted and cunning. History is written for the powerful. Knowledge is generated for the powerful.

For all we know, humans existed in peaceful co-existence with each other and the planet, before this brief era of written history. The stories of our distant ancestors are buried in time.

As a species we need leadership with integrity, not politics. There is a world of difference.

Worldly Distractions

Weather

1 °C
Condition: Light Freezing Rain
Visibility: 5 km
Temperature: 1.0°C
Dewpoint: 1.0°C
Humidity: 100 %
Wind: SE 5 km/h

Quote 

“Life Is What You Make It: Find Your Own Path to Fulfillment”
Peter Buffett

Notes

Raw Data from Japan

Fukushima Nuclear Plant Japan March 16, 2011
Source: http://www.jaif.or.jp/english/news_images/pdf/ENGNEWS01_1300273535P.pdf

Ongoing News from Japan

HAPPENING NOW: Live updates of developments in Japan
JAPAN EARTHQUAKE LIVE

Our Government’s Stance on Nuclear Issues

Harper embraces the nuclear future
Climate-change anxiety breathes new life into nuclear power, and shifts Ottawa’s plans
JOHN GEDDES | May 7, 2007 |

“Stephen Harper would seem an unlikely pitchman for nuclear power. When the Prime Minister launches into his familiar spiel about Canada as an emerging “energy superpower,” we all think we know what he’s talking about — he’s an Alberta MP, after all, and his father worked for Imperial Oil. Yet in a key speech last summer in London, his most gleeful boast was not about record oil profits, but about soaring uranium prices. “There aren’t many hotter commodities, so to speak, in the resource markets these days,” Harper joked to the Canada-U.K. Chamber of Commerce crowd. Then, noting that Britain is among those countries poised to begin buying new reactors for the first time in decades, he added: “We’ll hope you remember that Canada is not just a source of uranium; we also manufacture state-of-the-art CANDU reactor technology, and we’re world leaders in safe management of fuel waste…

It’s a renaissance fuelled largely by climate-change anxiety…

However these battles unfold, the nuclear industry and its political supporters will be looking to exploit cracks they see in the wall of environmentalist opposition…

In an email exchange with Maclean’s, Suzuki explained his position. “I don’t say unequivocally that nuclear is not an option. It may very well be sometime in the future,” he wrote. “But right now, I think it’s nuts to even suggest nuclear. Climate change confronts us with the opportunity to think and design the kind of energy we want in the future and to me, it’s clear it should be a network of small-scale, diverse sources.” He lists wind, solar and tidal power as his preferences….”

Source: http://www.macleans.ca/canada/features/article.jsp?content=20070507_105095_105095

Chernobyl 1986 – 2006, 20 years later

English Russia: The Lost City of Chernobyl

Right Kind of Genius

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To my way of thinking we are living in a era where the cultural empire is creating a fast narrowing path to survival. The empire is ultimately self-destructive. There are historical precedents; the Roman empire, the Mayan empire… analyze these structures of power any way you like, from any disciplinary perspective, spend countless hours discussing what little we actually know of how they actually grew and died off, intellectual discussion doesn’t change that they existed, grew and disappeared but for built form. They were what they were, no matter how we analyze and categorize and philosophize.

The descendants of meek members of those cultures remain, healthy and strong. It seems a bit biblical really, the meek have inherited the earth many times over during written history and who knows how many times in the vast ages of human history before the written word.

Many times over the weak have inherited an earth much diminished by the unnatural growths of powerful structures that fed like parasites on a balanced system.

Here is where my thoughts on genius intersect with my thoughts on culture.

The right kind of genius would put the weight of its talent behind a balanced structure of human habitation and community. Since the beginning of written history the right kind of genius has not been culturally favoured. Genius instead has been siphoned off and poured into the foundations of imbalance, the gathering of resources into the hands of the few.

An example is Christaller, whose theory on central place was used extensively by the Nazi’s to create, among other things, a network of internment camps. Christaller’s contemporary, August Loesch, see also, was comparatively ignored; I wonder if this was because his intellectual integrity was not as useful to political and economic strategies. Dr. Loesch did not join the Nazi party.

These are names of people who carried genius. Much of the built form in our present day-to-day lives, in Europe and North America, has been shaped by the product of their minds in the hands of the powerful.

In spite of the successful efforts of this towering structure of wealth, that reaches towards the heaven of its own desires, the right kind of genius remains, germinal, a force of nature, not of culture. And that is as much “human nature” as is greed and competition; more so in my view.

I wish my world were an ancient tale, a sleeping beauty and I a prince to kiss us all awake, in time to live the lives we have been given.

May those who carry the seed of genius with integrity live happy and fulfilled lives. If they can, then we will. Thank you for existing.

What can I say, I am like this in the mornings.

Worldly Distractions

Weather

-10 °C
Condition: Snow
Pressure: 102.0 kPa
Visibility: 8 km
Temperature: -10.0°C
Dewpoint: -13.2°C
Humidity: 78 %
Wind: W 11 km/h
Wind Chill: -16

Quote

“I decided blacks should not have to experience the difficulties I had faced, so I decided to open a flying school and teach other black women to fly.”
Bessie Coleman

From the movie The Matrix
Lock: “Goddamnit, Morpheus! Not everyone believes what you believe!”
Morpheus: “My beliefs do not require them to.”

Flowing White Hair

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Last night, in my dreams, I rode a polar bear across a white and frozen landscape; resplendent in a richly hand embroidered and beaded, colourful, full length overcoat and long flowing white hair.

Today should be a day of domestic goddessing. Maybe. Maybe not.

The insurance company has just sent along an additional increase in insurance costs, the explanation being, “the government made us do this”. Smoke and mirrors. Regulations did not mandate that higher premiums must be charged for a value-reduced product. We have less insurance, we should be paying lower premiums. Gone are the days of childhood, when Mom took care of all this &%^$*. Thanks again Mom!!

Cloudy with rain today. Eighteen years ago, on February the eighteenth, Attila and I moved into our first house in the big city, where we lived just before we moved to this country house. We liked that little house, we were married in that little house. The weather on the day we moved into that little house was warm and springlike; very similar to the weather we are experiencing right now. Winter came back that year, as it will this year. Spring will prevail.

Worldly Distractions

Weather

-5 °C
Condition: Snow
Pressure: 101.8 kPa
Visibility: 16 km
Temperature: -5.0°C
Dewpoint: -9.3°C
Humidity: 72 %
Wind: SSE 18 km/h
Wind Chill: -11

Quote 

“There are no passengers on Spaceship Earth. We are all crew.”
Marshall McLuhan
1964