Does the Lion Bite?

Yesterday I spent the better part of the day on my hands and knees exterminating dandelions. After about an hour, I began to ask myself just why am I doing this? There was no particularly good answer forthcoming. Up in Roberts Creek (unlike down in Point Roberts), we have a lawn and I never dig the dandelions out of the lawn because they get mowed regularly. In Point Roberts, where I have no lawn--just pathways through whatever the nature deities grow in the areas that are not specific flowerly gardens—I wouldn’t dream of digging up dandelions. Except in the pathways that are covered with wood chips and pecan shells.

Okay, maybe there’s some logic here. Yesterday I was digging the dandelions out of the gravel driveway and the beaten earth area around the wood shed. So maybe it’s that dandelions offend me when they are growing in something that ISN’T either grass or plain dirt. Nope. I dig them up out of the flower beds, too, which is clearly dirt. So maybe dandelions can grow only in grass in my rule book. It just makes no sense, I tell myself, to keep trying to exterminate them, except in the flower beds where they will quickly drive everything else out.

When I was a kid, when my children were kids, when my grandchildren were kids, we all would come in at some point with a handful of dandelions, looking for a jelly glass with water to put them in. We wanted them to be displayed on the dinner table where all could admire their beauty, our good work, and our good judgment in gathering them. They were desirable flowers then for us. Why not now? What did we know then that we have now forgotten? Or have we learned something along the way that escaped us as children? The lions do have a strong, slightly unpleasant smell, but they also have gorgeous color and intricately shaped and abundant petals; they grow easily and are long-lasting.. And they have one of the best flower names in the world: Dandelions, Dandy Lions, Dents de Leons (teeth of lions). Any of those three are names worth having, worth admiring, worth saving. In the northwest, we also have another wild plant similar to the Dandy Lion: the also French-named Langues du Chats, which in English becomes not Cats’ Tongues but Cats’ Ears. Felines both, these plants, the cats and the lions: independent little guys who like to hang around people but don’t like to submit to them too much. We, on the other hand, would like them to submit just a little more.

Several years ago, I was conducting the standard war on slugs that never stops during the warmer months up here. I was engaged in a particularly aggressive campaign of gathering and killing slugs every night after dinner. I was finding myself the sole executioner of a hundred a night, then two hundred. After a week, I began really to feel like an executioner and I gave it all up and stopped planting things that slugs are interested in consuming wholesale. Maybe it’s time to start giving the cats and the lions of the yard the same consideration: at least if they are not in the flower beds, where they really will take over. In other places, maybe there’s no bite involved.

What's Above Us?

One of the great advantages of life in Point Roberts is the proximity of the Vancouver Airport, a scant 30-minute drive from the border. Most simply, it means the ROTUS, as well as the rest of the world, is easily available to us. It's a beautiful airport, but since they collect $10 from every passenger that takes a flight out of the airport, I think of the airport and all its beauty as in some small way belonging to me, and of course to all of us who fly out of YVR and pay our $10 fees. I like to think that my many $10 bills were used to pay for some part of the waterfall near the entry to customs as you arrive in Vancouver. You, on the other hand, may have paid for part of the Jade Boat in the main departure hall. Another good choice.

Although neither Point Roberts nor Roberts Creek is directly under the flight path of the Vancouver airport, one is aware of the great number of planes taking off each day (less aware of landings, unless you're nearer yet to the airport). There is one flight in particular, thought, that puzzles me. I hear it from both places, lying in my bed, somehow awakened around 1:30-2:00 a.m. The sound of a plane flying at first puzzles me because it's late and the planes have stopped flying by that time, I think. But it is a plane, a heavy plane as the controllers say. It's going somewhere I can't quite figure out. But here, today, and also here in a somewhat different version, comes the answer...if only I study it long enough, I'm bound to be able to spot that very late-night plane and to see at last where it's going.

Elections: Fraud and Fatigue

The Canadians had their knickers in a twist last week about election irregularities. (The Canadians can say things like that because of their long connection with the British and because they know what ‘knickers’ are: we in the U.S.—at least the non-sports-minded—are more likely to be left wondering if that is the name of a new football or baseball team…the Des Moines Knickers, say.) The Canadians I know get very upset when there are charges of election fraud. I assume that election fraud is endemic in the U.S., of course, but I also assume that a lot of money will be involved.

In this case, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police served a warrant at the Progressive Conservative Party’s Headquarters and marched out with the Progressive Conservative Party’s computers and other records. None of the newspaper accounts explain how the Progressive Conservative Party (which is currently the main party running the country) continues to operate without its computers. My own day/week/month/year would be absolutely ruined if someone were to march in and seize my computers. Elections Canada, which sent the unmounted Mounties out on this mission, appears to be claiming that the Progressive Conservatives spent $1 million more on the last election than the $18 million they were allowed to spend, and that they achieved this by moving checks and cash back and forth between the Party and the candidates.

The Progressive Conservatives came to power on the hem of a previous knicker-twisting election problem, something called the “sponsorship scandal.” In that activity, it was the Liberals who were using fancy accounting and checks and cash moved here and there, and they were accused of improperly distributing about $100 million of $250 million of public funds with an eye to elections. That is a reasonable amount of money to be concerned with and, in large part, that led to the fall of the Liberal government. The PC’s were mighty pure about their own intentions at the time of the Liberal fall, so there is some irony in that they are now faced with charges of tiny fraud or whatever it is that Elections Canada is thinking of charging them with.

What strikes me, as an American, is how small the sums involved are. A Canadian expert on such stuff, is quoted in the news as saying, "There's always little nickel and dime stuff in every election, but this is not nickel and dime ... those are major sums, at least by Canadian standards." He’s talking about $1 million. Now granted that Canada’s population is only about 1/10th of the U.S. population, a dubious allocation of $10 million in a U.S. election would seem to me to be nickel and dime stuff. It cost the Republicans $216 million to elevate John McCain to candidate; the Democrats don’t even have a presidential candidate yet, and they’ve already spent over $289 million. Hard to imagine that all those funds can actually be accounted for if anybody was trying to see if it were all on the up and up.

In that light, I noticed a New York Times article this week about the final negotiations on the farm bill just about to issue from the Congress. One billion dollars was added in these negotiations for food stamps for poor people; another $1.8 billion was added in tax cuts for rich people, including tax cuts for racehorse breeders (Thank You, Senator Mitch McConnell from Kentucky, Senate Minority Leader. Maybe we could just give them food stamps instead?) This, of course, is all legal, what we cutely refer to as 'earmarks'; no fraud or corruption here. We save that for elections. I doubt that Canadians have the stamina for U.S. politics. I’m beginning to doubt that I have it, either.

Meet the Old Neighbors!

Yesterday, Ed and I were sitting on the porch having mid-afternoon coffee and observing the various changes in the yard that the slowly advancing spring was making. There are pasque flowers blooming, even though Easter came through quite a while ago; daffodils and tulips are making a simultaneous appearance, even though the tulips normally don't start until the daffs are finished; and lilac buds are yet tightly furled, although they usually bloom by May 1st. I’m afraid that won’t happen this year, but it’s all to the good, I suppose, since I will be gone by then.

As we talked, into the yard strolled a medium-sized deer. It was the second deer I’d seen this week, which is unusual. They’re around all the time, but I don’t usually see them: just signs of their passing. This one was about 15 feet away from us and he stopped to eat the leaves off the rose bushes. These are rugosa roses, very fragrant but not awfully showy bushes and we have rows of them, so I wasn’t too concerned about the deer’s feeding. But I was surprised to note that I had never before seen them do this nor seen any evidence of their doing it. They eat blackberries regularly and you can see where they have been lunching, but no sign on the rose bushes. We were talking and the deer was paying no particular notice to us. Then a second, smaller deer wandered in; the two touched noses communicating something about the quality of the rose leaves, maybe, because the second one did not participate in the lunch. But the two of them stood there, looking around, cocking their ears, for all the world as if they were concerned about something. But it definitely wasn’t us. Never glanced our way.

Earlier in the day, I’d been walking up the road when I came upon a 15-inch snake of the grass sort: yellow stripes and a darting red tongue. When I first saw him, he was so still I thought he was dead. I was standing right next to him and there was no sign of life in him. Then I nudged him slightly with my foot and, although he did not move his body, he did make his red tongue go in and out very fast. This seems an evolutionarily weak response. I mean, my foot was nowhere near his tongue so it’s hard to think that he was actually concerned about me standing there, enormous me.

We have raccoons around all the time, too. Here they mostly come round at night and we hear them rattling around more often than we see them. But down in Point Roberts, they are perfectly content to walk within five feet of us and never give us a glance. It almost seems rude, their failure to acknowledge our presence. Hummingbirds, too, fly in and around us desperate for sugar water but without any concern about us. These are an interesting kind of neighbor, and it is always a little strange, after years of city living, to have them around so much of the time. And to have them so uninterested in us. The bears are not like that, though. They see you, they move right off. Of course, when I see them, I’m inclined to move right off too. The cougars, I never see; but they see me, I imagine.

When I first came here, I would voice some alarm about the bears, but long-time residents would say, ‘What did you expect? You moved to a place where there are bears.’ I got the message quickly: you don’t want to live with bears, don’t move here. I’m okay with them, now, but I never expected to live with wild animals who were absolutely indifferent to my presence. Don’t they know I could be dangerous?

Meet the New Neighbors!

It’s been a very noisy past few days on our normally quiet road. Roberts Creek is noisier than Point Roberts because we are closer to roads that permit speeds of 40-50 mph. Also, ambulance sounds are more common as late night drivers fall off the road and into the ditches with remarkable frequency. Nevertheless, it’s still a pretty quiet place compared to the city.

The sounds that one really doesn’t like to hear are the noises of big chain saws. There’s plenty of arguing about how many trees ought to be cut up on the mountain, but we can’t hear the sounds of those trees being cut. On your own street, however, it’s a very big noise. And if it goes on for very long, it does make me wince.

This particular noise was issuing from a house up the road that was recently sold. I’ve walked and driven past that house every day or so for the past fourteen years and never gotten a clear look at it. On foot, you could stand at the edge of the driveway and actually see the shape of the house, but driving past, you knew there was a house there only because there was a driveway and a trash can on Wednesdays.

The first few days, the noise was identifiably chain saw. The third and fourth days were different: at first I thought that it was a helicopter overhead, but it turned out to be a very long logging truck, loaded right up with 20-30 foot trimmed logs from that property up the road, now driving very slowly and very noisily down our road. Then, later in the afternoon, the helicopter sound started up again and eventually a second fully laden truck came down the road past our driveway. And the next day, the same.

Many trees-now-logs have by now passed by us so, today, I walked up the road to see what had transpired. And there was the house, never before seen clearly but now in full view. Logs still piled up, so presumably the big logging trucks will be back on Monday bringing us again the sound of destruction of the owner’s and resident animals’ habitat.

Roberts Creek is famous for its trees, so it always puzzles me that people buy property here and then proceed to cut down all the trees. If you are going to build a house, you obviously have to cut some trees so you’ll have space for the house. But clearing enormous spaces of trees or of cutting any trees when the house is already built seems to me to want an explanation. I’m told that people worry about having the trees fall on their houses and that’s why they cut so many. And it’s true that tree branches often come down in the winter winds and damage roofs, but that requires the tree to be very close to the house. Some people may be just taking a little profit as the trees are worth a lot if they are cedar or fir ($1,000 or so/tree, they say), and real estate prices have gone up here sufficiently that a quick profit may be needed. Some people are said to want more light. But then, why buy a house in the northwest where it is mostly grey (even on the Sunshine Coast) and mostly forested and not very light? Maybe it is just a manifestation of humans’ desire to improve things or at least to change them or to make them more like where they came from (the prairies?). Maybe it is just a yearning for a creative touch, for making what is in some way different and thus one’s own.

Whatever it is, I hope it isn’t followed by a need for a lawn, a riding mower, a weed whacker, and then a leaf blower, but I won’t be surprised if they and their accompanying noise all appear, as the days and seasons go by.

Time: Not on Our Side

All of the Sunshine Coast, like Gaul, is divided into three parts: Gibsons, Roberts Creek, and Sechelt. Roberts Creek is by far the smallest (only 3,300 people here), but it is also by far the most distinctive. Gibsons is famous for being the slightly picturesque town in which the CBC filmed a very popular and soapy kind of TV show many years ago (before we got here, which is now 16 years ago) and is the first stop for tourists getting off the ferry. Sechelt is the Coast’s town with the largest population, but it is in most ways even less memorable than Gibsons. (Well, they both have marinas, wonderful ocean views and lots of trees, but in Sechelt the trees are mostly gone until you get up into the mountain areas.)

Roberts Creek, by contrast, has barely any town and no business to speak of or to see, by intention. In the 1960’s, lots of American boys facing the draft and Vietnam made their way to Canada as draft dodgers and Canada welcomed them. Lots of them made their way to Roberts Creek, where they continued the leftist, hippy, free-wheeling life that had inclined them to want to avoid Vietnam in the first place. And many of them are still here, working to keep Roberts Creek as it always was. In 1994, Roberts Creek embarked upon a town plan which was intended to solidify the common view of the Creek: nature (including substantial amounts of marijuana growing) not commerce. There are only two roads that go through the Creek along the north-south route, and according to the town plan, neither of them was to have any business on them. Only one little east-west street, about a block long, was zoned for commercial enterprises. So, you could drive through Roberts Creek on the highway and never even know that you had been there. All you see are trees, which obscure the ocean.

Back before the town plan was made, there was a plant nursery that was visible from the 2-lane highway, but it wasn’t accessible from the highway. Across the road from it was a dog kennel, but I think it must have been a home business. And there was the Peninsula Motor Inn, which featured ‘E OTIC DANCERS.’ I could never decide whether their letter set had no X or whether they wanted you to imagine that they had dancers with an R rather than an X, but just didn’t want to say so. Anyway, the Pen Inn, the nursery, and the dog kennel were grandfathered in.

And that is how it still is, 14 years later. No visible business on the highway for a ten-mile stretch beginning with the beginning of Roberts Creek, and ending with Roberts Creek Provincial Park and Rat Portage Hill. On the other hand, it is not exactly how it still is. The Pen Inn burned down and hasn’t been replaced by anything yet. And that little commercially zoned area has filled out quite a bit. Fourteen years ago, there was a library/post office building, a general store, a hair salon, and ‘The Gumboot,’ a hippy café. On any sunny day, you could go there and the place would look like it was hosting a touring company of Hair. Lots of long hair, lots of wild beards, lots of long, Indian skirts on the girls who carried babies in slings on their back. Lots of bare feet, even, as well as the smell of dope and incense. And if you wanted, Erica Snowflake would arrange to take you on a fairy tour of the local mountains. The walls featured art of the original period.

I haven’t seen Erica for the past couple of years and the hippy quality of The Gumboot has decidedly deteriorated, although people are still very friendly, and there’s still a very 60’s wall painting (see picture above). The Gumboot itself has spun off a second business, a restaurant for fine dining. The owners built a large greenhouse next to the restaurant to ensure that their dining patrons have the finest of fresh lettuce and whatever else can be grown in greenhouses. The original Gumboot specialized more in granola and huevos rancheros and big plates of fried potatoes. Ah, well, time passes and all things change.

There is also a new building complex called ‘Heart of the Creek,’ tastefully built, that houses a woodworking school (where the students and teachers make exquisite little boxes and cabinets that are priced in the thousands of dollars), a large kayak and other adventure equipment rental store, an osteopathy/acupuncturist office, a health food store where a pound of organic flour will cost you around $3, and a clothing store that specializes in things made of hemp and organic cotton. The clothing store also sells and uses incense and among their dwindling stock of 60’s goods you can yet find a string of Tibetan prayer flags. I bought some because I’m afraid the Creek is in need of a few prayers.

Getting What We Pay For

Because I lived in Los Angeles for most of the last forty years of the Twentieth Century, I still read the L.A. Times every day, though now on the net. There was a period when it was a terrific newspaper, but I wouldn’t describe it that way now. However, I read it, and was surprised to see the other day that California has now sunk to the #46 position in per capita student spending for public education. When I moved there, the schools were terrific, from K all the way through University, and famous across the country for being good. Part of what made them good was the state was willing to spend money on teachers. I don’t think it was #46 in those days. At #46, it must now be competing favorably with Alabama and Mississippi, I thought.

So I poked around a little to see what the status of public education (K-12) funding is nowadays. It’s pretty dismal, it turns out. At the top of the list in recent years are New York ($14,000/student), New Jersey, and Washington, D.C. It is my guess that none of those three states is regularly congratulated for how wonderful their public schools are, despite their high spending levels. The bottom of the list is firmly anchored year after year by the great state of Utah ($5,463/student), with Arizona a solid #49 ($6,232/student). And lurking there at the bottom with them (in addition to California) is the beloved state of Washington, #45, with the princely sum of $7,432/student. You couldn’t hire a baby sitter for that price.

California and Washington have achieved their dismal funding levels by similar means. Back in the 1960’s, Californians passed something called Proposition 13, which effectively froze property taxes on real estate as long as you didn’t sell it. Your house could have appreciated from a $25K bungalow to a $500K bungalow, but as long as you were living in it, the assessor thought it was a $25K bungalow (although a very small annual percentage increase was allowed). That simply crippled education because it crippled the source of education funding. Washington hasn’t (yet) followed that dim-witted act, but the absence of a state income tax is just as bad. I know, I know…they are always trying to take away YOUR money (Thief! Robbery!) to pay for your children’s education when it would be so much more sensible if the children just paid for it themselves.

Taxes: The Admission Price We Pay for Living in a Civilized Society. Of course, if we refuse to pay them (Tim Eyman and friends, are you listening?), then we will have the privilege of living in an uncivilized society. I can hardly wait.

Money alone won’t make for better schools, of course, but inadequate funding definitely will make for worse schools. And if the state I was living in was #45 in spending, I wouldn’t be feeling too confident about the kind of education that was on offer. But then, think of it this way: the average school child’s education costs us in Washington about $2,800 dollars less than the average social security check for the post 65-year-olds among us, so it’s kind of a bargain. Not only that, but we spend each year $1,000/person more on the average school child’s education in Washington than we do on the average person’s healthcare. Of course, the average school child is involved in that education a significant percentage of the time, which is not true of the average patient’s receipt of health care (a very occasional thing except for a very small number of people).

We’re happy to pay for those social security checks because it shows how we respect the elders among us; we’re happy to pay for that healthcare because it shows our concern for the sick among us. How come we’re not so happy to pay to educate the nation’s children? Is it just because we probably will get old and we definitely might become sick, but we absolutely will never go to a public elementary or secondary school again? So…what’s it to us?

Numbers to keep in mind for scale and to understand our priorities:
U.S. average per pupil spending for public education $8,700/year (Washington: $7,432)
U.S. average social security check: $11,500/year
U.S. average per capita spending on healthcare: $6,401