Big Leaf Maple

They are also called 'dinner-plate maples.' This is why. My hand span (tip of little finger to tip of thumb) is about 8.5 inches; my wrist to the tip of my middle finger, about the same. These leaves are amazing. This is not an exceptional leaf on this kind of full grown tree.

Canadian Minority

It’s been over a week since Canada’s largely disappointing election concluded. The Conservative Prime Minister, Stephen Harper, called an election because, presumably, he thought he could win enough seats in Parliament to become a majority P.M. rather than a minority P.M. Alas, he now has the dubious distinction of being only the second minority P.M. to be elected twice. Didn’t like him that much two years ago, don’t like him much better now. Nevertheless, he is more or less on top of a pretty flat hill with about 40% of the vote and about 40% of the seats in Parliament. The voter turnout was low, around 60%.

The Liberals got about half as many seats as the Conservatives, and the Bloc Quebecois, the NDP, and the Greens have the rest. What it means is that the Conservatives don’t have enough support to do what they want (be more like George W. Bush, unfortunately: apparently Conservatives up here haven’t heard that the rest of the world has thoroughly disabused themselves of the notion that George W. Bush has any mojo). This moderate passion for the Conservatives is puzzling because 77% of Canadians have developed a negative view of the U.S. since Bush was elected. It’s hard for me to understand exactly how it is that they don’t see the Bush in Harper, but I guess they don’t.

So nothing much will happen in Canadian politics for a few more years until another election is called. The Liberal leader has promised to quit in May, so that party can spend the next half year fighting about who is to replace Dion. Small potatoes, I suspect.

It’s a little difficult to understand how Canadian politics works because the parties are not all that clearly delineated to me in terms of philosophy. While poking around on the net trying to find somebody who would explain this more fully, I came upon an excellent site, Political Compass, that not only showed me where Canadian parties are philosophically, but showed me where I am. And you can take a little test (about 50 questions) to find out where you are, too.

The test involves about 50 questions which are not entirely easy to answer because, sometimes, they pose either/or questions when you might be more likely to answer both/and. But on the whole, they are interesting questions because they push you to clarify your philosophical orientation in order to answer them. You answer them on a 4-point scale (strong agree, agree, disagree, strong disagree). The object is to clarify your position on two distinct scales, one economic, the other social. Authoritarian-Libertarian tracks the social dimension, while Left/Right (with communism at the extreme left and neo-liberalism/libertarianism on the extreme right) tracks the economic dimension. So your answers place you somewhere within four boxes described by those two axes. I ended up close to Ghandi, which is nice, although I have been much less effective in my political life than he was, but on the other hand I am currently much more alive.

In addition, the site shows how various countries’ political parties and election candidates rank on this scale. They do this by determining how the parties’ or the candidates’ statements suggest they would answer the questions. When I looked at the Canadian parties’ scale, I was surprised to see that mostly they are in the upper right box: Authoritarian/Right. By contrast, the U.S. election primary campaign candidates were even more all in the upper right hand box, suggesting not so much contrast as I would have thought Well, there Ghandi and I are down in the Left/Libertarian, lower left box, with Canada’s NDP and Bloc Quebecois as well as Ralph Nader and Dennis Kucinich barely in there with us. No wonder I feel so isolated from the U.S. process so much of the time.

So, my advice is go to the site, take the test, look at your results and see whether you might feel more at home in New Zealand or the E.U. or are nicely in line with wherever you are.

Capitalism and Traditional Values

Ah, Capitalism! That which knows the price of everything and the value of nothing. Surely the past month has demonstrated the falsity of that because now capitalism appears to know neither the price NOR the value of anything. I have a friend who was a nun for 25 years but then left the convent, at which point her worldly friends discovered that she was the opposite of old-time capitalism, for she knew the value of everything and the price of nothing. I suppose the job of the rational person is to keep track of both the value AND the price of things.

Quilting is something that, at least when I learned how to do it in the 1940’s, was largely outside the purview of capitalism. It was women’s stuff. For the piecing part, you used old clothes, made patterns with cereal box cardboard, and sewed them by hand. For the quilting part (where you put the three layers together), you might have to buy a commercial batting, but it was also common to use an old worn blanket or flannel sheet for the middle layer. It was an activity that kept you busy, didn’t cost anything, and produced something useful. (There was some commercial development through ‘ladies' magazines’ and newspapers which sold patterns.)

Around the 1970’s, technology changed all that. Rotary cutters, acrylic rulers, quilt historians and books about the history of quilting appeared first, followed by ever-more-evolved sewing machines, specialized cutters, threads, fabrics, and battings. By the 1990’s, the art quilt had spun off from mainstream quilting, which meant that quilters were accumulating dyes and paints and metallic stuffs, while the traditional quilters had an endless array of expensive fabrics specially designed for quilters and even for specific quilt patterns, as well as specialized sewing machines whose prices reached into the thousands. By now, here we are: ‘In 2006, money spent on quilting supplies increased 45.4 percent. That year, quilters spent $3.3 billion in the United States alone. Statistics further show that the average quilter spent just over $2,300 for supplies in 2006.’ And there are now perhaps 25 million quilters in the U.S. alone. And capitalism is just all over those numbers.

Capitalism now requires quilting to keep growing in order to reward the companies/people that have invested in it as a product. But as a growth industry, it has some limits: in particular, fewer and fewer younger people actually know how to sew. They certainly don’t know how to sew by hand, and their abilities on a sewing machine are pretty minimal. They didn’t learn at home, they didn’t learn at school. So it’s a little difficult to figure out exactly how they’re going to take up quilting as a serious hobby.

However, I’m spending the weekend with a brand-new borrowed item: something called a ‘threadless sewing machine.’ It’s also called a felting machine, an embellisher, a needlepunch machine, or just a punching machine. This very simple and portable version of a commercial needlepunch machine is made specifically for quilters on the off chance they haven’t got their $2,300+ spent this year. It looks pretty much like a sewing machine, but it doesn’t have any of the mechanical complexity of a good sewing machine: no tension adjustment, no threading mechanism, no bobbin or bobbin case; just an up and down movement. It has an inverted cup with from 3-12 small barbed needles (each maybe 1-1.5 inches long). The cup moves up and down, and on the down stroke the needles go through two layers of fabric and the barbs cause the fibers of the two fabrics to grab on to one another. The more times you go over a specific area, the stronger the fiber grab is. Works best on wool (because of the way wool fibers entangle), but it works on most fabrics to some extent. This may be it: quilting goes from hand sewing to machine sewing to no sewing. Amazing what you see if you just live long enough.

This is all being sold to quilters as effortless creativity. Not clear whether it’s the quilter or the machine that is being creative. Not clear here who knows the value, but we all know the price.

Bear Market Expands

All this spring and summer, I’ve been very careful about mixing the fresh compost thoroughly into the older compost. In the past, we have occasionally had trouble with bears tipping the container over but now that we have a resident bear, it seemed greater caution was called for. And it’s been successful. Or maybe I’ve just been lucky.

This morning, I went out, dumped a pail of coffee grounds and apple cores and egg shells and potato peelings into the compost, sifted a little of the old, and shoveled four shovels-full of the old compost on top of the new, then mixed it all round with one of those compost tools that involve a long metal rod with two half arrows at the bottom for thoroughly displacing compost, and returned to the house, ready to get on with my daily tasks. I do this, when I do this, in the morning because bears are nocturnal, I read, and thus there is a greater opportunity to have the bear-appealing scents dissipate before the bear gets there in the middle of the night.

Alas, the bear and I are reading different books. The bear has been all over the financial system these past weeks and now he’s outside our kitchen door well before noon, as well. Not a half hour passed from my outside work until Ed walked out the door, interrupting bear in his work. In the first photo, bear has already knocked the top half of the compost container off and is working—apparently not all that successfully—to find something to eat. That was the good effect of my work, I guess. In the second photo, he has given up on the compost and is trying to eat the tire on the wheel barrow.

We whooped and hollered (after getting the camera), but he proved largely indifferent to our noisiness as well as our nearness (we’re about 12 feet away from him at most). Once, he looked up at us, but with exceeding boredom...kind of like, 'Do I know you? No, I don't think so.' Then, after about five minutes, he wandered off, around the corner of the house and across the front yard, crowning his bearish behavior by walking right through a small hydrangea bush and breaking off the strong stick that supported it.

Well, as Jennifer Lopez once said, ‘The bear is what we all wrestle with. Everybody has their bear in life. It's about conquering that bear and letting him go.’ I don’t know the occasion for this philosophizing by Ms. Lopez--apparently the music business--but I think that I’ll let the bear go but just pass on the conquering.

Getting Dressed

I’m not sure what is the most depressing part about the current Palin hysteria: the fact that the campaign thought she needed all those designer clothes to run for VP, the fact that she herself seemed to think she needed all those clothes, or the fact that the press seems to think that having all those clothes was great, but either it wasn’t a good idea for her to have them because she’s running as a regular person, or it wasn’t a good idea for the Republican Party to pay for them because she should pay for them herself. Or worse.

Oh, feminism, where have we gotten to after all these tiring years? I read or hear some journalist or campaign person or both saying, ‘Well, of course, it’s a lot more expensive to dress a woman for a campaign.’ Really? Why would that be? Well, that would be, I guess, because they are objects to be adorned and they have to be adorned expensively and with great variety or we won’t really like them. We certainly aren’t going to like them for their ideas or for their ‘war hero’ qualities, I imagine. I wonder if Hillary Clinton feels she just didn’t spend enough on her clothes and that’s why she’s not running for president?

I am deeply saddened that after all this time, women, too, are still so profoundly committed to worrying about their attire: whether it’s sexy enough, flashy enough, fashionable enough, cute enough, expensive enough, glamorous enough; but never whether it’s comfortable enough, or whether it’s a match for the task the woman has at hand. You can’t go out to the world of commerce and see all those babes in high-heels without thinking about—and wincing in anticipation of--the back problems in their future. Or to the beach, where you can consider whether a future as a dermatological oncologist isn't a smart way to go for financial security.

Men, who have their own problems of failed maturity, at least seem better able to handle clothes. Virtually none of us--male or female--knows whether Obama has never worn the same suit twice, has only one suit, or has fifty suits that are all just alike. He comes out, he’s dressed, he looks suitable, and that’s good enough (suitable! What a great word in that context!). Ms. Palin looks okay to me, but I wouldn’t notice if she were wearing Valentino Originals or Liz Claiborne off the rack from a discount mall. But then I come from the rural northwest where Ms. Palin’s everyday Alaska clothes look perfectly fine and, except for those high heels and the Louis Vuitton bag (scroll down to October 22), genuinely appropriate (although the high heels may be necessary for ‘fancy beauty pageant walking').

My sympathies sort of go out to the Republican donors who didn’t think that was what they were buying with the earnest money they sent to their party. Would they have felt as bad if the money had been used to pay for bespoke suits for McCain? Is their unhappiness about its being used for expensive clothes? Or expensive clothes for women? The McCain Campaign says there are more important issues to discuss, but for myself, I think that why women have (1) to think of themselves as and/or (2) to be treated by others as Barbie dolls ought to be one of the top ten issues for the country. When I think of important female political leaders, my mind does not go to Cleopatra; I think about Margaret Thatcher, Golda Meir, Indira Ghandi—asexual, unfashionable beings for the most part (although I may not be a good judge of high fashion saris). If Americans ever do elect a women as President, she’ll doubtless look more like this than like Ms. Palin or Ms. Clinton, of course. We like our women to be glamorous and sexy, but if they rise to the bait, we don’t trust ‘em.


(Fabric Portrait, 9"x13", 2008)

Tidying Up

Why is our work room cluttered and disorganized? Why is our yard not a picturesque scene? Why, now that we are not burdened with the task of getting and not even much burdened with the task of spending, do we not live in a more orderly environment? Why, now that children are not a regular part of our household, are we not living in a haven of orderliness? This is a question that could bear a long winter’s pondering. All the older people I know who do the kind of things I do seem to suffer similarly. Our brains may be as neat as a pin (but just how neat is a pin or a bandbox, either?), but our surroundings lack neatness as well as orderliness.

Garrison Keillor the other day suggested that our yards are always disreputable but that we notice it only in the fall when the leaves comes down and nature’s disarray is combined with our own. Could be. In my yard are plastic gallon milk bottles that I use to gather water in the summer from the rain barrels or from running the taps to get hot water. But there is nothing much to water from October on, yet here are my two dozen jugs, mostly filled with water, standing around without a chore in the world to occupy them and no reasonable place to sit. Leaf rakes are strewn here and there because leaf rakes have a short life span but even when their life span is shortened they still have some use when the leaves are cascading down. A leaf rake that has, e.g., only a 2-foot handle can still be used in small areas. The hoses are still uncoiled as if something was going to be sprinkled in just a few minutes, but the fact is that we are close to turning the outdoor water off for the winter, at which point the hoses will be disconnected entirely and otherwise useless. Nevertheless, they continue to wend their weary ways across the yard.

Indoors, there is more order in the parlor and sitting room and other household rooms; at least there is until you come to the rooms where all the real stuff gets done. In my case, it’s the quilting workshop; in Ed’s, it’s the computer room. Here the Lord of Misrule is a permanent resident, as if I were conducting an endless, medieval Christmas pageant. I’ve tried boxes, I’ve tried shelves, I’ve tried fancy wire shelves with drawers, specialized containers, all of it. I bring in tabletops and within minutes the tabletops are covered with things that really should be in the boxes, shelves, and drawers, but they’re already full. I daresay I’ve tried everything but just throwing it all out, which I cannot do because I might need it some day. Well, given the coming recession, my depression training might just be the right response. I might indeed need it some day, or somebody might need it and there’ll be no more easy getting it because we will not have the spare cash, or the prices will be too high because the Chinese will have stopped working for us at very low wages.

Perhaps the bigger or better question is Why Care? Is this yet one more puritanical inheritance that I could do without? As long as Ed can find the papers and computer parts he needs in the stack of papers and computers and computer parts that cover his floor and tabletops, what does it matter that the floor and tables are not free for tap dancing? As long as mice are not nesting in my boxes and bags and drawers of fabric and thread and wool, what matter is it that I cannot navigate a straight line from one end of the room to the other; I am not, after all, driving through the room.

Well, it matters to some. For example, here is advice number 2 (of 4) from an expert: ‘2. Be Ruthless When Throwing Old Items Out - Don't allow sentiment or desires to hoard to get in the way of clearing things out when you declutter your house. Be ruthless with your cleaning and you will see some amazing results.’ Perhaps so, but I suspect I want sentiment and desires to hoard to be a part of me. The very fact that I want that is what keeps my workroom in the shape it’s in. If I were someone else without those qualities, my world would doubtless be neater. That may be enough of a conclusion for me to cart outdoors another bunch of flattened tin cans which live in an outdoor box for flattened and increasingly rusted tin cans. I've got a project in mind for them, if I just live long enough to get it done. Maybe in the spring, when I’ve tidied the workroom up a bit.

Isolation Times Two

Isolation calling. In Point Roberts, the border is the isolating factor. The border keeps me at home because the mere possibility of border problems often leads me to not bother to go there unless I have to. Of course, it’s an inclination that’s pretty easy to get past. On the Sunshine Coast, it is the Ferry Corporation that is the isolating factor. Although the Coast is on the Canadian mainland, it is like living on an island because there are no roads that lead to here: water crossing only. I assure Ed that, in an emergency, he can paddle his kayak over to the mainland and he can strap me to the side, the way you’d strap a slain deer onto a car.

At the Point Roberts’ border crossing, my concerns are about the latent hostility toward individuals. By contrast, meeting up with the B.C. Ferry Corporation is a sublimely impersonal experience. You’re just a number to them and a profoundly uninteresting number, I’d guess. They decide when they’re going to offer you a ride; they decide the cost; their buildings, their roads, their ships: take ‘em or leave ‘em. You got a problem with that? Sorry. Their mission, they say, is ‘to provide safe, reliable and efficient marine transportation services which consistently exceed the expectations of our customers, employees and communities, while creating enterprise value.’ It’s the enterprise value that seems uppermost in their mind, though. The expectations are clearly not the big show.

Right now, people up on the Coast indeed have a problem with all that because they feel a tad hostage to the Corporation’s idea of its mission. The Ferry Corporation, which used to be a Crown Corporation—i.e., a government agency--was privatized in 2003, and now finds that this run is not sufficiently rewarding from an economic perspective as a steady operation. It finds it more interesting in the summer when the tourists line up to come here than in the other seasons when it’s just the cranky locals. I guess their theory is that we should all just stay put up here and not be wanting to go to Vancouver. It’s a variation of the Whatcom County view that everybody in Point Roberts knew what it was like when they moved there, so why are they complaining? Similarly, you knew when you moved to the Coast that ferries didn’t run every hour, so why are you complaining?

The current unhappiness is a result of the Corporation’s decision to eliminate two sailings a week—one early Sunday morning and one on Saturday evening-- which it assures us is actually not a problem because they will add to sailings in the summer and somehow it will all add up to the same number of yearly sailings. They complain accurately that these two sailings--which have been provided for many, many years--are underused. Of course they are thoroughly used by the people who use them. Perhaps those users could encourage more of their neighbors to go to Vancouver at 6:20 Sunday morning. Probably not. In any case, it appears that it is the tourists, not the residents who will benefit here…the tourists and the Ferry Corporation, of course, which will sell more tickets in the summer.

The underlying problem is that many people on the Coast think the ferries are a part of British Columbia’s highway system and the Ferry Corporation thinks it is running a transportation business, sort of like moving containers around. You get the same kind of disconnect down at the Point Roberts border where Homeland Security sees itself as in the cops and robbers business, while the residents see the border folks more like conductors on a bus whose job is largely to take tickets and help out in an emergency. The way to avoid problems with them both, of course, is just to stay at home once you get home. Once you get used to the isolation, you might like it.