Being Prepared at the Lutheran Church

The local church (this picture was taken in March of 2005, and it looks like it was a much more kindly March than we are currently experiencing) has been designated a shelter in time of need by the Emergency Preparedness group here on the Point. Of course, one might expect that a local church would not need to be designated ‘a shelter in time of need,’ because that surely is its mission at all times. Nevertheless, it has this new particularity in that designation. Which is to say, should the world except for Point Roberts disappear, we can go there to experience light and heat and food and a place to lay our weary heads.

In order to provide this, however, the church needed more than spiritual resources; it needed a generator. So Lucy Williams has organized a series of fourteen or so concerts over the past two and into the next three months. They are held at the church, in the sanctuary, a sweet and simple room that holds maybe 150 people if sardined in. I like the space, even though I am not much of a churchgoer. What it lacks in mystery, it makes up for in sincerity. And it’s a nice place to hear a small ensemble perform.

This week, we dispensed with the more routine woodwind, string, or recorder groups, and were treated to a haiku poet, a modern composer/keyboardist, and a sumi-e (japanese brush) painter, all of whom were working, for the day, in haiku-like forms. About fifty people showed up, mostly in casual Friday attire, even though it was Sunday in Church. It is one of the charming qualities of Point Roberts that there is so little dressing range. I mean, there are gardening clothes and there are event clothes, but it isn’t a long trip from one to the other.

A lovely performance was had from all the performers, all of whom live in Point Roberts. In fact, most of the concerts are provided by local performers because there’s an awful lot of musicians, painters, poets, weavers, quilters, ceramicists, beadmakers, photographers, and general artists and general crafters living here, away from the commercial frenzy of the ROTUS. We could entertain each other, in one form or another, every weekend of the year, I suspect. Long past the need for generators. Maybe Lucy will need to become the Sol Hurok of Point Roberts…

Beware the Ides of March

What can be said about a day like today, listening to the rain coming down on the skylight, and then looking out the window to see that actually it is snowing. I am bewared, but the forsythia, just starting to open, is surprised, and the crocuses are fallen over in despair.

Signage and Signs

The Community events sign, after almost a year of talking, thinking, and planning has been made manifest this week, at least in an initial stage. The old sign was removed and the new 16-foot tall posts were erected and concrete was poured to set them in stone. There is yet to be a roof constructed and placed, and some kind of planting, and the actual sign itself placed. And there is a solar panel ready that will provide some lighting (though not so much in the winter because, of course, not so much sun).

It has been an extraordinary long time coming although, having attended one meeting a month for over a year, I can’t actually say why it took so long. Perhaps it is just that, as one of the occasional attendees said to me yesterday, “In Point Roberts, nothing happens fast.” But it has happened, and it has been designed to last a long time and will doubtless be well used.

It has required a lot of help, and it has received a lot of help, including cash donations from individuals and organizations (the Voters’ Association, Stanton Northwest Properties, and the P.R. Chamber of Commerce), and donations of materials, especially from Neilson’s Hardware (those 16-foot 8x8 posts weigh in at almost $400). So it truly has had support from many parts of the community.

And as for me? Well, life teaches you a lot of lessons, even when you don’t necessarily want to learn them, and this foray into community organizations has been that kind of lesson for me. I spent lots of years starting and developing ethics committees in hospitals and thought I knew something about working with a disparate group. But it never occurred to me that a group could exist that would have no particular membership, no clear purpose, and no particular commitment, other than to a single task. But it must exist because now the new sign does, and that means the Community Association must have been there to bring it into being. The new sign truly owes its existence to the small number of people who stayed with the task and the group throughout the months. The community owes them their thanks. And they taught me a lot, as well.

One-Click Shopping on Hold

A friend today was regaling us with her tale of misadventures with Amazon.com and her credit card. She concluded—and summarized--this shaggy dog of a story in a despairing tone: “And now, I have no One-Click Shopping!” Perhaps the story of all of us, all over the world. We have run into a loss of our one-click shopping. And now what?

On one of the internet groups I belong to where you trade artist trading cards, the members were all announcing that they’re never going to buy any more art supplies, that they have enough to last them until their deaths, that all they are dealing in nowadays is real needs, not just wants. I felt like I had fallen into a group-therapy experience. Or maybe an AA meeting. There was a lot of confessing of bad behavior and promises never to do it again.

I look back at that long line of refrigerators at the local dump, all X-ed out (as if for execution as another friend noted), and wonder if they are there because of one-click shopping. Buying errors? “What was I thinking? How could I have bought a harvest gold/avacado refrigerator?” How indeed. Or are they all lined up there awaiting disposal because they failed to be sufficiently energy efficient for those who need to save the earth? How many new refrigerators could Point Roberts possibly need in, say, any given year? Surely not that many (the picture includes only half of the death row group).

This is all a very mysterious time, I think. I can’t at all make out whether we are all watching the end of the world as we know it, or a movie of the end of the world as we know it. Does our collective (Western) future hold the ocean at my doorstep, an ocean currently a half mile and 180 feet away from and below me? Or gasoline at $50/gallon? Or food riots? Or is it just that everyone will have to give up their private gym memberships and instead walk briskly around the block where the rest of us can look at them when they feel a need for movement? Cook something when they feel hungry rather than ordering out or going out to restaurants? What’s really there at the fork in the road ahead, just over the top of that hill? Can't see yet.

It is clear that there is a big up-tick in rentals here on the Point since Christmas; most of them long-term, not just before summer stuff. Many houses for sale at high prices, but the realtors are urging that people make offers, strongly implying that owners will accept considerably less than the stated price. I guess we will all get to stay tuned for this.

Kindness Towards Animals

But, really, how fair is this? March 9th? Snow?

Knitting

Daylight saving begins and leaves me surprised, as usual. It will be so light tonight at dinner time that I will not even believe it is time to cook dinner. However, even though daylight savings time has arrived, presumably because we have entered the vernal season, it does not feel like the vernal season. It feels still like winter and, yesterday, we were treated to high winds and a little snow, followed by hard sunshine and temperatures in the high thirties. Today, it is even colder, but we are spared the snow.

In honor of the reality—as opposed to this vernal fantasy--I was reading today about the bankruptcy of Iceland. It is not clear to me how a country becomes bankrupt (as opposed to a business or a person), nor what it is like when that happens. Presumably, the article on the topic in this week’s New Yorker is going to explain it to me. Alas, after an hour’s work on my part, I am informed as to how the banks all failed (pretty much the same as here), but not quite clear on how Iceland itself failed. (The New Yorker article may not be available on the net without a subscription.) (Update: Vanity Fair also has an article about Iceland's state of affairs, which is available without subscription. )

What I do discover, however, is how at least some Icelanders feel about living in a bankrupt country. Some, of course, are furious, and go out and march about with signs and demand that heads roll. Oh, where is the guillotine when you need one? But others, and in this I recognize some sparks of myself, think it is all for the best. They think that Iceland’s recent spree of easy money risked the loss of their basic character. Now, they can go back to being the kind of people we know, here in Point Roberts, are basic Icelandic stock. (Those of you from Away will recall that Point Roberts was originally settled (after the Native Americans/First Nations, of course) by Icelandic farmers who came here by way of Vancouver Island. The old families were Magnussons and Thorsteinsons and I suppose some Olafsdottirs, but I’ve never heard any ‘dottirs’ names in my local history reading.)

Says the New Yorker writer, as if it explains all, ‘there is talk of knitting.’ Ah, now we are talking business, character business. Icelanders are going back to knitting. I suppose that would be the ‘dottirs’ who are doing that, whereas the Icelandic men will be going back to their boats, where they engage in the partner word, ‘knotting.’ The New Yorker writer speaks of knitting here with some level of contempt, I fear, but also some level of understanding that knitting is the most basic of home-like things, a bed-rock of character activity.

In the days before steam engines and gas motors, girls and women of all ages, knit socks for their family, and knit socks to sell to others. It was like butter and egg money, the socks money. And hard earned in the way of time, since knitting a pair of the simplest kind of adult socks is something that takes about 8-10 hours, at least, even for an experienced knitter. I doubt if anybody paid a lot for women’s work, but they paid enough so that socks were not a disposable commodity as they are now. Folk had few pairs and when they wore out, people (again, mostly women) knew how to darn them. And they were darned regularly because they were valuable.

Valuing that which is basic to our lives: what a good idea! Perhaps that is what the Icelandic people are talking about as the something that they want to go back to. Sounds good to me, especially since I am myself a knitter. And a darner of socks, on occasion, as well. Perhaps with our Icelandic connections, Point Roberts could become the knitting capital of the newly bankrupt/newly restoring world. Perhaps that could be our economic development plan. We could have a slogan, ‘The community that knits together, fits together.’

A limiting factor, of course, is that we have no sheep. Goats, chickens, cattle, horses, burros: but no sheep. So, getting sheep could be the first step in launching both our economic development plans as well as our character restoration goals.

(Sterling Bank got down to penny stock territory this week, where it joined CitiGroup.)

Detritus

Trash is on our minds again these days. According to the local paper, the most distressed parties to the current recycling/trash collection distress in Point Roberts are engaged in a mediation intervention under the guidance of a judge. And the parties would, I think, be Arthur (who is the current possessor of the trash/recycling license), the three P.R. complainants, and the County itself.

Arthur, I think, wants everyone in Pt. Roberts to have to be a part of the trash/recycling service. (Currently, it is dealer’s choice, and not enough of the dealers are choosing to be part of it.) The complainants want the County to take away Arthur’s license to handle the trash/recycling and, further, to award it instead to someone who will provide curbside recycling regardless of the universality of membership in that club. And the County, it would appear, just wishes that the whole thing would go away without its having to alter the ordinance that does not permit requiring everybody to participate monetarily in trash/recycling in rural areas. If the mediation doesn’t lead to something agreeable to the three parties, then the WUTC (the Washington Utilities and Transportation Commission) will take the matter in hand later in the spring.

As it happens, we went out to the trash/recycling center (which is called either The Transfer Station or The Dump) to deliver unto it a large quantity of recycling that we had been gathering up over the weeks and months since Arthur’s company had ceased picking it up (on a bi-weekly basis). Plastic bottles, glass, tin cans, paper and cardboard are the stuff of recycling in this venue. I hadn’t been out there for several years and it had changed a lot. I don’t remember, actually, what it used to look like, but I don’t remember it looking like it currently does.

What you have is a large yard with abandoned refrigerators lined up on one side, and dumpsters of various sizes located in the center. You drive up a ramp arrangement and park your car. Then you take your recycling (or whatever you are taking to them) and put it in the appropriate area/container. The recyclables are in one area, and everything else is also in the central area slightly separated from the recycling part. There are signs explaining what goes where and how what is to be rendered before it goes where. The paper goes here, and the cardboard goes there, and the plastic bottles/tin cans/glass containers are dropped over the edge into a large dumpster. The sign says that the plastic bottles must have necks and that the plastic bottles must not have lids and that the plastic bottles must be flattened. The glass containers and the tin cans go in as God made them.

However, as you can see from the photo, the plastic bottles are often not flattened and their lids are still with them, the cardboard is not glass, metal, or plastic and thus is erroneously dumped: here, as in everywhere that humans function, directions are intended only for those who care about directions, a small and tedious bunch of people, one might assume.

More sorrowful than that, though, was the very sight of it all. As with the making of sausage and laws: you’ve got to see it happen before you can really know how much of a fan you want to be of the product. I remember suggesting to people who drink and drive about the advisability of spending a little late evening time in an urban emergency room before they pursue that activity. Just seeing all this stuff, all those refrigerators, all these bottles and cans and things, all this detritus. Not an uplifting sight with respect to the makers of all this after-material.

Two thoughts: (1) It’s not a particularly pleasant experience going to the dump and adding to the mass of material, but maybe that’s a good thing, in that it requires us, just a bit, to see what the dark side of a consumptive life looks like; and (2) It’s not a particularly pleasant experience but, as with pumping my own gasoline, I suppose I could get used to it.