Yesterday, the septic tank inspectors came to inspect the septic tank. We're a little behind the curve on this, but not too much. And now it's done.
Two guys came. They opened the two lids, poked around with measuring sticks, measuring the top and the bottom. Then they turned the hose on into the opening for awhile and checked to see whether there was any water coming up to the surface of the drain field (which they said was in a place that we would not have expected it to be, indeed, did not think it was: level with the tank, rather than downhill from it). There was no surface water. Everything was as it should be, given that it is a septic tank here rather than a sewer connection.
And then they measured some here and there, presumably for the County's records. At the end of about a half hour, they went away with their check for $225, the going rate here on the Point, $35 of which, as I recall, goes directly to the County for its good services, whatever they may be in this case: perhaps for keeping the records.
It seemed quite a lot of money for such a brief amount of work. But, opening the tank does expose one to a noticeably unpleasant smell. Maybe that's why they get the big bucks.
Also, as a side benefit, now we know not to build on where the drain field is, as opposed to our previous belief that we should not build on where the drain field isn't..
Wednesday, January 13, 2010
Monday, January 11, 2010
Gifts and OtherTransactions
Last month, maybe ten days before Christmas, we had a big power outage here in Point Roberts. Big, well, in the sense that it was cold and the power was off for hours...about 6-8, depending upon where you were. No power is always an inconvenience, if not worse, but this one was a particular problem because it was the very height of the Christmas mailing traffic, and the local post office has no independent generator.
It was daylight, so the post office people could see what they were doing, but none of the electronics worked: the scales that calculated weight and postage simultaneously and also printed out postage mailing stamps were not happening; nor were the credit card machines: it was a cash only business. Now this last wouldn't be the worst thing in most post offices, but up here on the border, it's a very different matter. Easily half or more of the people who are mailing packages are Canadian and they are not regular carrier of quantities of U.S. cash. Nor, since they were coming down from the neighboring Canadian town where the power was flowing freely, did they appear at the post office knowing about the outage.
By contrast, this was a good time for an American with U.S. cash to show up to do some Christmas mailing because the line was seriously shortened. I arrived with my packages and my cash shortly after 1 p.m. and was immediately No. 2 in line. Phenomenal! The man ahead of me me was describing to the postal person his struggle to get his packet mailed. He had been there an hour previously and discovered that his credit card was not going to be useful. He had then roamed around somewhere and found some kind of ATM or business that had sold him US$20 for a $3 surcharge. But now, as I waited for him to complete his mailing business--which was a small package heading for Europe--he discovered that the postage cost was $21.86. We all of us winced for him as we heard this news.
He checked his pockets, his wallet, looking for loose change, and turned up something like 20 cents. My wallet was already opened, so I took out $1.86, exactly, and laid it on the counter in front of him. He refused; I insisted; he refused; he offered to consider it as a loan; I insisted upon it as a gift, pointing out to him that it was Christmas and that it was a very small amount of money, in any case, so it wasn't a big sacrifice on my part, that I was happy to give it to him, that I was almost willing to leave it on the counter in front of him and drive away. He offered to mail it to me; I refused on the grounds that he would then have to pay 44 cents to mail $1.86 to me, and that was just silly. He offered to return it the next day to the post office and leave it at the counter for me. I would have none of it and insisted he just take the money, and finally he did.
I have never had so much trouble doing a good deed, and especially such a small one.
Then, yesterday, when I went to the post office to pick up the mail, there in the box was a plain, white envelope with 'Judy. . . Thank You. $2' written on it in ink and, in a different handwriting, 'This from the man you lent to." Inside the envelope, two dollar bills. So I made 7% on a month's 'loan,' which would be, I guess, a 125% annual interest rate. It left me feeling like one of the usurious credit card companies. It also left me saddened all over again as to how difficult it can be in this culture to accept a gift from a stranger, apparently because to be a recipient of an undeserved gift establishes some moral hierarchy in which the recipient is shamed.
It is also, remarkably so, a Point Roberts kind of thing. The man I offered the money to wasn't from here, but from cross the border. If he had been a local, I think he could have accepted it, knowing that he would, sooner or later and probably sooner, be offering help to some other local with one thing or another. Because we have such limited options in a lot of areas, we learn regularly to help one another: to give and to receive. You know that you are as likely to be a recipient of a gift as you are to be a provider of a gift. There's no hierarchy and no shame and not any particular credit, either.
It's a particularly Point Roberts kind of thing in another way, too. What other place have I ever lived where a guy could come into the post office a month after I/someone had given him some postage money, and the post office people would know who/what he was talking about and would deliver the envelope unto that patron? Amazing!
Nevertheless, there may be some other kind of lesson lurking here. I read today that Goldman, Sachs is going to require its executives to give most of their bonuses to charity. But what if no one will accept it?
It was daylight, so the post office people could see what they were doing, but none of the electronics worked: the scales that calculated weight and postage simultaneously and also printed out postage mailing stamps were not happening; nor were the credit card machines: it was a cash only business. Now this last wouldn't be the worst thing in most post offices, but up here on the border, it's a very different matter. Easily half or more of the people who are mailing packages are Canadian and they are not regular carrier of quantities of U.S. cash. Nor, since they were coming down from the neighboring Canadian town where the power was flowing freely, did they appear at the post office knowing about the outage.
By contrast, this was a good time for an American with U.S. cash to show up to do some Christmas mailing because the line was seriously shortened. I arrived with my packages and my cash shortly after 1 p.m. and was immediately No. 2 in line. Phenomenal! The man ahead of me me was describing to the postal person his struggle to get his packet mailed. He had been there an hour previously and discovered that his credit card was not going to be useful. He had then roamed around somewhere and found some kind of ATM or business that had sold him US$20 for a $3 surcharge. But now, as I waited for him to complete his mailing business--which was a small package heading for Europe--he discovered that the postage cost was $21.86. We all of us winced for him as we heard this news.
He checked his pockets, his wallet, looking for loose change, and turned up something like 20 cents. My wallet was already opened, so I took out $1.86, exactly, and laid it on the counter in front of him. He refused; I insisted; he refused; he offered to consider it as a loan; I insisted upon it as a gift, pointing out to him that it was Christmas and that it was a very small amount of money, in any case, so it wasn't a big sacrifice on my part, that I was happy to give it to him, that I was almost willing to leave it on the counter in front of him and drive away. He offered to mail it to me; I refused on the grounds that he would then have to pay 44 cents to mail $1.86 to me, and that was just silly. He offered to return it the next day to the post office and leave it at the counter for me. I would have none of it and insisted he just take the money, and finally he did.
I have never had so much trouble doing a good deed, and especially such a small one.
Then, yesterday, when I went to the post office to pick up the mail, there in the box was a plain, white envelope with 'Judy. . . Thank You. $2' written on it in ink and, in a different handwriting, 'This from the man you lent to." Inside the envelope, two dollar bills. So I made 7% on a month's 'loan,' which would be, I guess, a 125% annual interest rate. It left me feeling like one of the usurious credit card companies. It also left me saddened all over again as to how difficult it can be in this culture to accept a gift from a stranger, apparently because to be a recipient of an undeserved gift establishes some moral hierarchy in which the recipient is shamed.
It is also, remarkably so, a Point Roberts kind of thing. The man I offered the money to wasn't from here, but from cross the border. If he had been a local, I think he could have accepted it, knowing that he would, sooner or later and probably sooner, be offering help to some other local with one thing or another. Because we have such limited options in a lot of areas, we learn regularly to help one another: to give and to receive. You know that you are as likely to be a recipient of a gift as you are to be a provider of a gift. There's no hierarchy and no shame and not any particular credit, either.
It's a particularly Point Roberts kind of thing in another way, too. What other place have I ever lived where a guy could come into the post office a month after I/someone had given him some postage money, and the post office people would know who/what he was talking about and would deliver the envelope unto that patron? Amazing!
Nevertheless, there may be some other kind of lesson lurking here. I read today that Goldman, Sachs is going to require its executives to give most of their bonuses to charity. But what if no one will accept it?
Saturday, January 9, 2010
Welcome, New Residents!
The reason they'd never been here before (a sufficient reason, anyway) is because of their border crossing status. Goats, it turns out, can't freely cross the border between the U.S. and Canada. This is surely the result of some kind of Dept. of Agriculture rule, not the dealings of the Dept. of Homeland Security. But, in its own way, it, too, is related to homeland security, just not the terrorist kind. Beef, lamb, goat (and, presumably, parrot), none of that is going to come to be among us without some very involved border dealings.
My friends who brought them over today had tried all the standard options: talking to the border people, talking to the people who ship things through the double border with bonds (i.e., such business people are bonded in order to announce to the world their trustworthiness with respect to not letting their cargo out anywhere in Canada or picking up additional cargo in Canada that is not covered by the bond). 'No!' said they each, one and all.
We got involved when the idea was to bring them over in the helicopter. But we didn't turn out to be much more useful than the border or bonding people. It's a pretty small helicopter and it was clear that all three goats could not go at once; indeed, it seemed to involve three separate trips from Semiahmoo. Which gets to be a little pricey in the helicopter rental world.
So, our friends ended up bringing them over in their boat, which is normally in Salt Spring. That meant a boat trip from Salt Spring to Blaine; a simultaneous car trip from P.R. to Blaine to pick up the goats; then an overnight on the (small but covered) boat with the three goats keeping the two people nice and warm; followed by a car trip back to P.R. along with a boat trip from Blaine across Boundary Bay to the Marina. On a couple of cloudy and rainy days with anything but a clear wind and a following sea. A very large effort went into bringing these ladies over to be among us.
Really cute ladies: all under a year; all as soft as down; all smelling a little goaty, but then what can you expect from a goat? Friendly, lively, soft and kind of cuddly if you don't think too much about their hooves. They'll be living down on the west side of the Point on the beach, so they can look out and remember their big adventure.
And the next step, the new owners report, is to find a llama to guard them from coyotes So, if you know a responsible llama with a passport who's interested in travel and an adventurous life, get in touch.
Thursday, January 7, 2010
Not Fit for Duty
Turns out to be a damaged tendon, not a break, but it still means that I have an invasive splint in everything I try to do. Grr!
Yesterday, we had scheduled a day off quite independent of the finger adventure, so in the morning we set off brightly for Steveston up in Greater Vancouver where they keep a series of large, linked buildings to keep us endlessly entertained. This entertainment manifests itself primarily in about 18 movie theatres, including an Imax Theatre. We had presented us there in the morning so that we could spend $28 in order to add to the coffers of James Cameron’s production company, or whoever is collecting those stunning profits—first movie ever to gross $1 billion on its first weekend out. That would be Avatar.
I’ve never seen a Cameron movie that I thought much of, so my being there was a dubious venture, but both the New York Times and The New Yorker produced pretty positive reviews; even more than positive. Ed was persuaded, and I’m capable of being a good sport in such adventures, and I’ve always kind of liked Imax pics.
So there we were, at 11:30 in the morning, in a theatre with a screen about 100 feet high in an auditorium that seats 260 people in about 12 very wide rows with very little knee space, very steeply arranged. Only seats available are singles up in the middle of the back row. We slog over half the people in the row, settle in, and the movie starts quickly.
Big beginning. As usual in Imax, lots of swooping around. Normally, this swooping makes me a little woozy, but then I quickly accommodate to it. Unfortunately, with the added 3-D effect, no settling happened, and I was getting dizzy, nauseous, scared. Here I was packed into the theatre, by myself, unable—as a practical matter--to get out in the dark through the narrow passageway available to me, and feeling sicker by the second.
The only response seemed to be to stop looking. So, I simply closed my eyes. Every ten minutes or so, I’d try opening my eyes, but the wooziness came right back. After a couple of these efforts, I gave up and kept them shut, resigning myself to just sitting with my eyes closed in a dark, crowded, and astonishingly noisy space for a couple of hours. Only later did I discover that it was a 2 ¾ hour movie.
I could follow a lot of what was going on, of course, just by listening, and sometime during the second hour I began to be able to tell from the music whether there was going to be a lot of movement if I opened my eyes. In that latter part of the movie, there were quite a few quiet parts, so I got to see some of the advertised techno-marvels, along with lots of profoundly sappy dialog. But the moment big moves started again, my stomach again rose up in protest.
Eventually it was over, and I could get out, though none too steady on my feet. And now, I have to come to grips with the fact that I am no longer able to participate in the next glorious advance in movies. That’s what reviewers are saying about Avatar. I spent lots of years in Los Angeles, the home of the serious moviegoer. And now it’s gone right by me. It’s not enough that I’m old; it’s not enough that I live in a strangely isolated place; it’s not enough that we don’t have cell phone reception. Now I can’t even watch a movie.
One good outcome, though. Granted, my assessment of this movie would have to come with some serious disclaimers, but I do think that, by comparison, Cameron's Titanic looks like Shakespeare at its best. My granddaughter reviews it more concisely: “A Remake of Pocahontas.” Although with much bigger weapons, I'd say. And, at the end, the U.S, troops go sadly home in defeat, as in Vietnam. And also, though said to have an antiwar message, the big fun of the movie is clearly all the shooting of stuff¸ including the ‘indians,’ as opposed to the love story between what appears to be a couple of those 60’s Walter Keene big-eyed kids, now grown up and turned blue, with subtle striping.
Yesterday, we had scheduled a day off quite independent of the finger adventure, so in the morning we set off brightly for Steveston up in Greater Vancouver where they keep a series of large, linked buildings to keep us endlessly entertained. This entertainment manifests itself primarily in about 18 movie theatres, including an Imax Theatre. We had presented us there in the morning so that we could spend $28 in order to add to the coffers of James Cameron’s production company, or whoever is collecting those stunning profits—first movie ever to gross $1 billion on its first weekend out. That would be Avatar.
I’ve never seen a Cameron movie that I thought much of, so my being there was a dubious venture, but both the New York Times and The New Yorker produced pretty positive reviews; even more than positive. Ed was persuaded, and I’m capable of being a good sport in such adventures, and I’ve always kind of liked Imax pics.
So there we were, at 11:30 in the morning, in a theatre with a screen about 100 feet high in an auditorium that seats 260 people in about 12 very wide rows with very little knee space, very steeply arranged. Only seats available are singles up in the middle of the back row. We slog over half the people in the row, settle in, and the movie starts quickly.
Big beginning. As usual in Imax, lots of swooping around. Normally, this swooping makes me a little woozy, but then I quickly accommodate to it. Unfortunately, with the added 3-D effect, no settling happened, and I was getting dizzy, nauseous, scared. Here I was packed into the theatre, by myself, unable—as a practical matter--to get out in the dark through the narrow passageway available to me, and feeling sicker by the second.
The only response seemed to be to stop looking. So, I simply closed my eyes. Every ten minutes or so, I’d try opening my eyes, but the wooziness came right back. After a couple of these efforts, I gave up and kept them shut, resigning myself to just sitting with my eyes closed in a dark, crowded, and astonishingly noisy space for a couple of hours. Only later did I discover that it was a 2 ¾ hour movie.
I could follow a lot of what was going on, of course, just by listening, and sometime during the second hour I began to be able to tell from the music whether there was going to be a lot of movement if I opened my eyes. In that latter part of the movie, there were quite a few quiet parts, so I got to see some of the advertised techno-marvels, along with lots of profoundly sappy dialog. But the moment big moves started again, my stomach again rose up in protest.
Eventually it was over, and I could get out, though none too steady on my feet. And now, I have to come to grips with the fact that I am no longer able to participate in the next glorious advance in movies. That’s what reviewers are saying about Avatar. I spent lots of years in Los Angeles, the home of the serious moviegoer. And now it’s gone right by me. It’s not enough that I’m old; it’s not enough that I live in a strangely isolated place; it’s not enough that we don’t have cell phone reception. Now I can’t even watch a movie.
One good outcome, though. Granted, my assessment of this movie would have to come with some serious disclaimers, but I do think that, by comparison, Cameron's Titanic looks like Shakespeare at its best. My granddaughter reviews it more concisely: “A Remake of Pocahontas.” Although with much bigger weapons, I'd say. And, at the end, the U.S, troops go sadly home in defeat, as in Vietnam. And also, though said to have an antiwar message, the big fun of the movie is clearly all the shooting of stuff¸ including the ‘indians,’ as opposed to the love story between what appears to be a couple of those 60’s Walter Keene big-eyed kids, now grown up and turned blue, with subtle striping.
Tuesday, January 5, 2010
broke!
i seem to have broken my finger just a bit ago, so there won't be much writing until i get it stabilized...
Sunday, January 3, 2010
Howl!
UPDATED BELOW
Coyotes very active today up here in the center parts of Point Roberts. I don’t hear them all that often, and usually it is in the summertime. But today, there have been repeated periods of call and response. Omens of some kind, doubtless, but we’ve lost the ability to know what they’re trying to tell us.
And reasonably warm today, too. Maybe that’s what they’re howling about. The bushes are showing alarming signs of swelling buds. ‘Wait,’ I want to tell them, ‘You’ve got all of January still to get through.’ But maybe they, like the coyotes, know something we don’t. We did see, coming through Vancouver a few days ago a row of four trees in bloom--pink flowers--in front of the condos down on English Bay, right near the entrance to the Burrard St. Bridge. And there are daffodils showing their leaf tips over at the Community Center, here in Point Roberts. Well, we’ll see.
Other things we are seeing about:
1. According to the business news, the FDIC (the part of the federal government that is in charge of bank closings, among other things) is said to be getting serious with Sterling Financial Corp., the parent company of Sterling Savings Bank. Sterling is said to have less than two months to get a plan together to get its business, as it were, back on track. So we’ll be hearing more about that as February comes to a close. In the meantime, two or three more legal firms have announced that they’re trolling for participants in a class action suit against the company. The FDIC has been on a vacation as far as closing banks is concerned, but they’ll be back in that business next week. It is also reported that they’re hiring a lot of new, but temporary, workers to help them in that sad activity.
2. The WUTC held its public hearing on Pt. Roberts' trash issues on the 29th, although earlier in the day than originally scheduled. I suppose it occurred to them that it wasn’t difficult enough for people from Point Roberts to get down to Olympia for this hearing to find out what they think, so they re-scheduled it to 9:300 a.m. A veritable red-eye trip.
In any case, they had the hearing, and attendance appeared minimal, at least as far as the ‘Sign-In Sheet’ revealed. At the end of whatever happened, the Commission requested the staff to get some information for them (not a moment too soon, I’d say) as to Whatcom County’s actual trash/recycling plan, the Commission’s staff’s analysis of that plan, the State of Washington’s views on the status of Freedom 2000, and the (I assume) federal Dept. of Transportation’s view on the status of Freedom 2000 with respect to licensure (12/31, 'notice of bench requests' at the link).
And within less than 48 hours, the state responded ('response' 12/31, at the link; now there’s a bureaucracy that’s performing at top speed; kudos to them) by announcing that they had dissolved the company (i.e., Freedom 2000) on December 1, 2009, because of the company’s failure to complete various paperwork required of such companies in order to be recognized by the state. That would be 28 days BEFORE the public hearing on whether Freedom 2000, the company, should be awarded the opportunity to collect our trash and recycling.
A friend asks, ‘So, where does that leave us now?’ Good question. Freedom 2000 is no longer a company, apparently, and Points Recycling and Refuse, the Wilkowsky contestant, is offering to do less than the County says is to be done. I would think that figuring this out would take, oh, maybe another 30 days? Stay in touch. Or maybe just howl.
Update: On January 4, Freedom 2000 filed reinstatement papers, including fees, etc. So, presumably it's back in business. Link here.
Coyotes very active today up here in the center parts of Point Roberts. I don’t hear them all that often, and usually it is in the summertime. But today, there have been repeated periods of call and response. Omens of some kind, doubtless, but we’ve lost the ability to know what they’re trying to tell us.
And reasonably warm today, too. Maybe that’s what they’re howling about. The bushes are showing alarming signs of swelling buds. ‘Wait,’ I want to tell them, ‘You’ve got all of January still to get through.’ But maybe they, like the coyotes, know something we don’t. We did see, coming through Vancouver a few days ago a row of four trees in bloom--pink flowers--in front of the condos down on English Bay, right near the entrance to the Burrard St. Bridge. And there are daffodils showing their leaf tips over at the Community Center, here in Point Roberts. Well, we’ll see.
Other things we are seeing about:
1. According to the business news, the FDIC (the part of the federal government that is in charge of bank closings, among other things) is said to be getting serious with Sterling Financial Corp., the parent company of Sterling Savings Bank. Sterling is said to have less than two months to get a plan together to get its business, as it were, back on track. So we’ll be hearing more about that as February comes to a close. In the meantime, two or three more legal firms have announced that they’re trolling for participants in a class action suit against the company. The FDIC has been on a vacation as far as closing banks is concerned, but they’ll be back in that business next week. It is also reported that they’re hiring a lot of new, but temporary, workers to help them in that sad activity.
2. The WUTC held its public hearing on Pt. Roberts' trash issues on the 29th, although earlier in the day than originally scheduled. I suppose it occurred to them that it wasn’t difficult enough for people from Point Roberts to get down to Olympia for this hearing to find out what they think, so they re-scheduled it to 9:
In any case, they had the hearing, and attendance appeared minimal, at least as far as the ‘Sign-In Sheet’ revealed. At the end of whatever happened, the Commission requested the staff to get some information for them (not a moment too soon, I’d say) as to Whatcom County’s actual trash/recycling plan, the Commission’s staff’s analysis of that plan, the State of Washington’s views on the status of Freedom 2000, and the (I assume) federal Dept. of Transportation’s view on the status of Freedom 2000 with respect to licensure (12/31, 'notice of bench requests' at the link).
And within less than 48 hours, the state responded ('response' 12/31, at the link; now there’s a bureaucracy that’s performing at top speed; kudos to them) by announcing that they had dissolved the company (i.e., Freedom 2000) on December 1, 2009, because of the company’s failure to complete various paperwork required of such companies in order to be recognized by the state. That would be 28 days BEFORE the public hearing on whether Freedom 2000, the company, should be awarded the opportunity to collect our trash and recycling.
A friend asks, ‘So, where does that leave us now?’ Good question. Freedom 2000 is no longer a company, apparently, and Points Recycling and Refuse, the Wilkowsky contestant, is offering to do less than the County says is to be done. I would think that figuring this out would take, oh, maybe another 30 days? Stay in touch. Or maybe just howl.
Update: On January 4, Freedom 2000 filed reinstatement papers, including fees, etc. So, presumably it's back in business. Link here.
Friday, January 1, 2010
And in with the New
Yes, the fabulous New Year's Day has come upon us, to be celebrated this evening with a bottle of champagne that we forgot to open, and a dinner featuring half of a turkey-breast that I slow-cooked in our very small slow cooker. Perhaps I should have added the champagne to the turkey, though it did not lack for good taste and an abundance of moistness, which rates five stars in my book.
It was very quiet here last night at midnight, but it often is very quiet here, so I don't take it to mean that we are not looking forward to a new year, and particularly looking forward to a new decade that might have more cheer in it than the last one did. Of course, the last had lots of cheer: think of all the babies born, the college graduations, the first drivers licenses, weddings, terrific vacations, and all that personal stuff, but of course I was thinking more of the public setting and the trials therein (and for some people--john Yoo, we're thinking of you--the lack of trials therein).
On that front, I suppose we could all sit down and resolve to have a better public life this next year, but I don't exactly know how we would achieve that. "I resolve that more people will not only think about the things that I think about, but will think about them in the same way and come to the same conclusions that I come to." Nice, maybe even Utopian, or maybe just plain silly. We live, we disagree, and nothing I can resolve, no regimen I can pursue, is going to change that.
Making successful new year resolutions perhaps requires that they be exquisitely and exclusively personal. Then, if you don't do your own part (the only part there is), it is clear where there has been something lacking.
My own commitment in this respect has been with exercise. In the spring and summer, gardening can pass for exercise--often actually really truly is exercise, and I end some hours exhausted--and there are enough pleasant days that walking is regularly and easily available to me still if I want a little more feeling of doing something south of my neck. In the winter, even in the late fall, not so much. The garden doesn't need me, and the rain discourages me, and the gray days make me think it's already evening and too late for walking. Not to mention the fact that it's so dark in the morning that 10 a.m. seems an extremely early start.
However, for the new year, I took it in my mind to return to an earlier enthusiasm for riding a stationary bicycle. I'm not entirely sure that I could successfully, which is to say safely, ride any other kind of bike any longer. Once in my mind, though, I took to actually doing it. I started cautiously at ten minutes. Boring but successful. Then, each day (with the help of the CBC) the past ten days (with Christmas Day off for good behavior), I added a minute, and by yesterday, I was up to 20 minutes.
At this rate, and if the gardening chores in spring don't take me off my glide path, by next Christmas, I will be able to ride my stationary bicycle for almost six hours every day. Well, it's something to think about, although perhaps not to aspire to.
It was very quiet here last night at midnight, but it often is very quiet here, so I don't take it to mean that we are not looking forward to a new year, and particularly looking forward to a new decade that might have more cheer in it than the last one did. Of course, the last had lots of cheer: think of all the babies born, the college graduations, the first drivers licenses, weddings, terrific vacations, and all that personal stuff, but of course I was thinking more of the public setting and the trials therein (and for some people--john Yoo, we're thinking of you--the lack of trials therein).
On that front, I suppose we could all sit down and resolve to have a better public life this next year, but I don't exactly know how we would achieve that. "I resolve that more people will not only think about the things that I think about, but will think about them in the same way and come to the same conclusions that I come to." Nice, maybe even Utopian, or maybe just plain silly. We live, we disagree, and nothing I can resolve, no regimen I can pursue, is going to change that.
Making successful new year resolutions perhaps requires that they be exquisitely and exclusively personal. Then, if you don't do your own part (the only part there is), it is clear where there has been something lacking.
My own commitment in this respect has been with exercise. In the spring and summer, gardening can pass for exercise--often actually really truly is exercise, and I end some hours exhausted--and there are enough pleasant days that walking is regularly and easily available to me still if I want a little more feeling of doing something south of my neck. In the winter, even in the late fall, not so much. The garden doesn't need me, and the rain discourages me, and the gray days make me think it's already evening and too late for walking. Not to mention the fact that it's so dark in the morning that 10 a.m. seems an extremely early start.
However, for the new year, I took it in my mind to return to an earlier enthusiasm for riding a stationary bicycle. I'm not entirely sure that I could successfully, which is to say safely, ride any other kind of bike any longer. Once in my mind, though, I took to actually doing it. I started cautiously at ten minutes. Boring but successful. Then, each day (with the help of the CBC) the past ten days (with Christmas Day off for good behavior), I added a minute, and by yesterday, I was up to 20 minutes.
At this rate, and if the gardening chores in spring don't take me off my glide path, by next Christmas, I will be able to ride my stationary bicycle for almost six hours every day. Well, it's something to think about, although perhaps not to aspire to.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)