Month: October 2012 Page 1 of 2

This is a rant. I am disappointed, utterly disappointed with the way the press has chosen to respond to the Canada-China Investment Treaty issue. I admit to getting passionate about things I believe are worth fighting for. This is one of them. It is for the first time that I am so affected by a political decision but this a decision that we will pay for, and a high price at that, long after the present Prime Minister will be done with his commitment to Canada. A betraying one at this point in my opinion.

People like me can idiotically hope that the treaty pitfalls are just imaginary and nothing bad will happen for the next 31 years. Gulp. A long time. Wait, they said we can think about it for a bit after 15 years or so. See, it already sounds better. It’s not like forever. Always see the glass half full. Blah blah… if I had a dime for every time I heard that.

Now, if you’re ready to say “Come on, lighten up” I will politely ask that you don’t. It’s upsetting to see numbness around me regarding this issue. Not complete numbness, in all fairness, some people have tried very hard to raise awareness, but the situation would have required way more intervention than it got.

I was born in Romania during a time when communists ruled and freedom of speech was not in fashion. During those times, many people including one of my grandfathers, chose to trade their freedom for hard years in communist prisons just so they can have a shot at bringing change. And they thought it was worth it. And they exercised it.

The revolution, which was or was not a political coup – but that debate is not taking the front seat in this particular discussion – made it possible to talk without fear. A huge thing which many take for granted. I was too young to remember the relief brought by knowing that you won’t be taken away for speaking your mind and flexing your democratic muscle. A weak one in many, still, at the time… Strong in others.

It took me a while to “grow” enough to speak my mind. To say what I believe in and express it as such. And then I was told that’s nice and sweet but you know, actions without words don’t do much. And then I added actions to my words. There is no going back, I know that much. I am to speak my mind from now until. Until. I always tell my boys that we don’t live just for ourselves, we live for those to come. For those who are already here and are too innocent to see the shade of gray on the horizon. We live in a society.

Now, for the record, I am an optimist. Ha, you’ll say, really? Who, how, when? Me, like this, here. Until a few hours ago I thought it was still possible to somehow stop this thing from being signed until a public scrutiny would take place and the provincial governments would be in accord. And the opposition parties too. Oh, no, it’s not the party where everybody smiles and nods, you might say. And I will say that it actually should be, this kind of treaty that locks Canada and Canadians in for the next 31 years. That’s 31. A long time by all accounts. So everybody should be informed and should agree to it.

So. The deal will be done. Tomorrow. Unless some miracle happens. Which it won’t. So there. Happy 31st and see you next year when we’ll celebrate the 30th!

“Do I have frostbite?” Sasha’s jesty question makes me roll my eyes. Yeah right… His hands are red though and they should be freezing cold by now. We got here half an hour ago and he got busy building a snowman. Mittens got in the way and how could they not, all battered by snow, rock solid and uncomfortable after half the snowman was up.

As we were driving towards Lodgepole Lake earlier the back road turned white and inviting. “Can we stop, can we?” Wet gravel looked dark and shiny. After a few hundred meters snow won though and the gravel slid under all that white. Quiet. Fresh snow and the woods stare at us. We go uphill. And rightfully so and quite immediately slide downhill. We park at the side of the white road and jump in softness. Tracks this way and that, the boys are happy to have winter so close and so sudden. “Will it snow in town soon?” Maybe, maybe not. Weather is like that. I take photos of spikes and water droplets trapped in old spiderwebs and I’m grateful. For the whiteness of the quiet woods, for my boys whooping and for knowing that when we get cold enough we hop in the car and head home for warmth.

Bows and arrows, the quiet woods, there’s magic in it. Quiet no more, the woods laugh with my boys and the arrows whoosh their way through the dancing snowflakes before they plop on the ground. One arrow gets lost, playing hide-and-seek in the snow. Search this way and that, where did it go? Sasha invents a snow catapult and accidentally finds the lost arrow.

I find beautiful daisies, withered and patient, up to their waist in snow. One peeks from snow pressed by hurried feet. Stop, listen, how can we hear snowflakes? Cold and grey, the air has something comforting. “Mom, can we go? I’m freezing…” Tony’s cheeks are red his dark eyes smile with the anticipation of warming up in the car. Jump this way, search for deer tracks “They’re there, look, so many of them…” New snow settles in the small indentations left by the soft-eyed inhabitants of the woods.

A sign by the trail dated back in 2008 announces that there are leg hold traps in the woods. The magic crumbles, and the woods are loud and unsettled all of a sudden. It was 2008, I tell the boys, perhaps they’re banned now. They should be. There’s no merit in such actions, it’s cruel and senseless. Sad to think about it. How?

In the car we talk about salt lakes, living off the land and martens. I stop for more photos. Light is sieved through a layer of clouds thick and stubborn, like an old wet duvet. Oh well. Shy orange leaves adorned with tiny droplets smile at me anyway.

Kamloops is wetter here than ever before. Drops as big as beetles drum wildly on the windshield… Home. Hot dinner and hot chocolate, tired boys rolled in blankets… It rains, still, and I’m grateful. For rain, for warmth and for having seen so much. Today. Every day.

I did it before and I will do it again. Give garbage a voice that most don’t want to hear. Because it stinks, it really does. Before my official coronation as the queen of doom, here are the facts.

I am preparing a presentation for the boys’ school for this coming Friday. Exciting but upsetting at the same time. About garbage. About how much we produce – 31 million tonnes a year, give or take – about how we don’t recycle enough and about what can be done. It’s shocking, isn’t it? There are 34.5 million of us making a mess we really should not. Not that big anyway. We live in the days of disposable everything.

It’s a disposable planet, and that’s how we should first think of it. Every part of it that we chop to make something out of – something that will get thrown out, that is –  is a part of the planet that gets destroyed. The irony is that the planet gets back the part, minus the usability of it because it is, after all, regurgitated stuff. Even that would not be too bad, you could say, it will at some point disintegrate… Not so, not very soon and some stuff close to never. Eternity becomes one crappy concept, no pun intended whatsoever.

Because here’s the kicker: We take resources, make them into non-recyclable products with a limited shelf life – because everyone knows by now that cradle-to-grave items are the death of wealth through incessant marketing – and then when they break down we throw them out. The garbage truck takes them away and away they go. But the trip is short. The landfills seem to be some mythical creatures with bottomless stomachs where we deposit our garbage only to be eaten away and hence disappear forever. As if.

Stuff doesn’t go anywhere. It stays on this planet. It’s compacted and placed in cubicles that are then buried nicely and covered with dirt, enough to become a meadow of some sort of even some bushy terrain. No sign of the undead unless you count the occasional leakage. Yes, stuff oozes out and from what I’ve read it is not pretty. How could it be, it’s garbage. That’s why we are throwing it out after all, right?

Methane gas produced by garbage can be captured and used as fuel. Nice and dandy but that still does not address the actual problem: the increased amounts of garbage choking life as we know it. Just like recycling does not truly address the problem of over-consumption.

What to do? Buy less, buy quality, resist upgrading if your life does not depend on it, recycle, compost, buy used and breathe cleaner air. Because what you throw ends up in your body as water or air at some point anyway.

We are what we eat and we are what we throw out.

I am closing my Facebook account. Been tinkering with the idea for a while now but the day came and there’s no debate in my mind. A few days ago a 15-year-old girl committed suicide after being bullied on Facebook and at school. I was shaken by this incident and saddened in a way that I did not expect.

Perhaps because I have my two beautiful boys and they are part of this world, and I want them to be both kind and able to stand up for themselves. Perhaps it is because I’ve been lonely at times and in places dark enough to know how scary they look, especially from up close. They are cold. It matters less or at all why I was shaken.

Amanda Todd added a storm to my world. I watched her voiceless video and cried. She made me rethink so many things with her mute showing of the cards that told her story. I thought of how she put them together, of how she tried to say she’s lonely and hurting. I looked at her hands and then I looked at my own. We can do so much harm with them. We can hurt, others and ourselves, and at the same time, we can help, and soothe and write things that could make someone’s world better.

The Facebook thing.  She was part of a network of “friends.” How then? It’s so backwards. It would choke me to know that I am still there. Why, you say, that’s an emotional response to a fact of life. A sad fact, very sad, but not my fault, you’ll say. It’s the fault of a circle of young people who didn’t know any better. Logical indeed but life is never logical. Life is. Or isn’t. Just like that. We make choices and live with them. Live with the consequences. And for how long can one go with “he/she/they didn’t know any better?”

It’s good to take time to reflect. I’ll miss the occasional chuckle brought by one of my cousin’s funny cartoon finds, but he promised he’ll save them for me. I will miss my friends’ beautiful photos but I will keep my eyes open to the beauty around me. And I will hope that I never overlook anything that’s worth it.

If nothing else, it will be a reminder, to myself and others, that words can hurt. They can push people in corners dark and cold and they might not be able to fight their way out. It will be a reminder that we are on borrowed time after all and no one should be taken for granted. A reminder to teach my boys to never judge and to be kind. Kind to not strike unless they have to defend themselves and there is no other way. A reminder that words can kill. In many ways.

• For my boys and being there for them – To hug, to learn the depths of my heart and how to spell trust. That includes Sasha trusting me to get a pebble out of his ear today and me knowing enough about boys to know that he put it there on purpose but not forcing him to admit to it. For being told later “Yes, I did it, I wanted to try something else.” A journey of many steps, big and small.

• Water. Clean. Whenever I need it.

• For people who will be there no matter what and for them knowing that I will be too. For never taking anyone for granted.

• For having learned to not miss the forest for the trees and yet treasure both.

• For being told “Yes you can” at least once and for being able to remember how to say it when there’s no one to do it.

• For being heard at least once.

• For learning to speak my mind.

• For being trusted.

• For knowing when a miracle happens.

• For rain and clouds. For colors.

• For being asked.

• For knowing that today only happens once. Now.

• For caring.

• For that perfect orange sunshine glow on an late October afternoon that makes me feel like I know about beauty.

• For being told “You’re worth it” loud enough to hear.

• For all the meals I was hoping for and did not dare ask, including the potatoes I dug out of my new garden one late evening after a long trip.

• For downhills.

• For being able to write while I cook and for knowing that someone will read it.

• For knowing that spring always comes.

• For knowing that offering forgiveness is learning to be humble and listen to someone’s heart hugging my own.

• For people who make me think and challenge me to see, and for knowing that I did that for at least one person.

• For knowing that I have everything I need.

• For being forgiven.

• For being there when my boys laughed for the first time. For remembering it.

• For being told “No” when the answer was really “No.”

• For being told “Yes” when I was holding my breath in fear.

• For knowing that I can challenge you to add at least one thing you’re grateful for and for hoping that you will do it. How else do you make it go on otherwise?

It’s Wednesday morning, around 8.45am and I’m on my way to a meeting. Kamloops is treating everybody this morning to a chilly start. The air is so cold it pinches my face. One cheeky degree Celsius…

The sidewalk along the library is adorned with tables full of tomatoes, plums, leeks, apples, eggs and the whole farmer’s market bounty I usually see on Saturdays. It happens on Wednesdays too, I remember now.

Meeting over, I remember Sasha’s request for crunchy apples. I buy a bucketful of green apples, crunchiness included and the promise that no pesticides were used. Same for plums, tomatoes, lettuce, leeks and carrots. Eggs and a chat. About growing and eating real food and how it’s so worth it. I’m charmed by the idea of raising chickens in my backyard. Dream on… For now at least. I tell the guy of my moving into a house with a yard full of fruit and veggies and how I want to grow more next year. No chuckles, he knows what’s out there. Our food getting more toxic by the day and getting the water and air toxic with it too. Say it isn’t so.

It’s the saddest riddle I know: Why do we even entertain the thought of chemicals on, near and in our food? Why use pesticides, herbicides and fertilizers? To increase productivity, to reduce costs and to allow as many people as possible to buy fresh produce, you’ll say. Right? Wrong. People who make it happen without chemicals is proof that it can be done.

I am not a farmer but I’ve talked to enough to know about how challenging it is to grow food without chemicals, yet they do it. It doesn’t result in cheap food, that’s for sure. Not as cheap as chemical-infused food and definitely not tasteless. So you pay slightly more. It’s worth it. For now. Because you see, every time pesticides are sprayed on crops that are I can choose to avoid, I will still get some residue via soil, water and air. So do my children. And yours. Needless to say, those little signs warning of pesticide use on lawns that we see on our walk from school ever now and then only add insult to the injury.

There’s studies showing the effects on children and the results are not pretty to look at. Some pesticides reduce IQ, some may act as endocrine disruptors, many increase the risk of cancer and even more are persistent enough to make us look bad for quite a while from now on. For starters.

And then there’s the GM foods. As long as we don’t request labeling, it won’t happen. Nothing short of a miracle. It starts with not buying a product if it’s tainted or if you suspect it is. The longer we put it off the murkier it gets. France is incensed over a study showing that rats fed GM corn ended up with cancer. How about us? What if it’s flawed or exaggerated (we always doubt the good ones)? … Then we look at other studies. Like the one showing that GM crops (courtesy of Monsanto) require more pesticides than back in 1996 when they were first introduced. The pesticide called Roundup (courtesy of Monsanto) is used for the purpose to kill weeds but it does not live up the the expectations as superweeds are developing and chuckling away. What’s a farmer to do? Use stronger chemicals that will eventually seep into the water and dissipate into the air? Your air and mine. Our children’s. It’s complicated and far from glamorous. But real. Food for thought sounds about right.

Where to start? A tough one. Local farmers who grow real food without chemicals are a good bet. As stated in an older post, eating less but better quality food gives the body the right nutrients. As simple as that.

The choices we make in buying food for our families will shape the offer. As simple as that. We might have to give up off-season produce and cheap food, we may have to steer clear of foods so processed even mold won’t grow on them, and the sacrifice is minimal. Pay more, throw away less or at all and help your children understand why. We have to choose and the fact that we still have a choice is a glorious one. Awareness is a beast but a necessary one. Let’s not kill it with indifference. I know you know that, we all do. So choose wisely and stay healthy.

“I’ll get a Triops kit with the garage sale money.” Sasha, back in Vancouver at the end of August. And what’s wrong with that.

We had the smaller version of those, informally called sea monkeys but they did not make past the first month or so. It clearly said on the box that they live longer. With good care. Talk about feeling inadequate as a sea monkey caregiver.

We fed them the food they brought with them in those little packages. DO NOT OVERFEED! it said right there but since there’s barely any creatures in there it’s easy to assume that barely anything is too much. I really thought we passed the rookie stage successfully that time. We did. Or so we thought.

At least there was no need to recover the bodies once the (un)thinkable happened. Sea monkeys are too small and translucent to be spotted easily. No bodies left behind, a perfect crime if I’ve ever seen one (I haven’t, really, aside from the occasional mosquito swapping but that’s a society crime if we’re judging it as such.)

So the time has come for us to try again. Sasha’s relentlessness is not new to me. A good trait to have in life. We will make it work this time, the oversized sea monkeys (can’t see how they got this name in the first place, no relation to monkeys, no resemblance.) Regardless. Fifteen dollars later and confident, we set to work. We follow the detailed instructions. Religiously does not emphasize enough the meticulous triple reading of every word that I went through. Just to make sure. Use spring water only. Check. Don’t allow temperature to fluctuate, the slightest change can affect the eggs. You do not need to know how frightening small those eggs are, you really do not. Don’t overpopulate they said. As if. Add grated fresh carrot. Check. The plastic container we’re supposed to use gives me the creeps as it is that no-number-God-knows-what-bad-stuff-is-in-it. I promise to move them to a jar as soon as they are old enough. For now Sasha does not want to go off the beaten path. Beaten? I really want to know who made it work. There must be some Merlin award I’ll never get close to.

The first batch started hatching after the predicted four to five days. The tininess is cute and allows me to breathe. We did it! Ta-da! Two days later the questionable plastic container is as empty as the primordial liquid that was to become the soup. Same as before. We have more eggs though. Replay. Three days into it I’m feeling confident. Sasha’s hopeful. An unfortunate spilling of the water paralyzes my thoughts for a good two minutes. What now. What now.

Replay. Third batch of eggs. Last one. The box says the company has a “don’t disappoint the child” policy. If the eggs fail, send two dollars for shipping and they’ll send more eggs. Ha. Doubt, doubt. Set the eggs in, carefully. Sasha’s overseeing the process and hopes are up. Again. And they hatch. Four of them. The next day two are missing in action. Or maybe hiding in the grated carrot. Maybe. The second day we’re back to the pre-primordial quietness. Sasha’s disappointment doubles mine.

Was it us? But how, how did these creatures survive for millions of years yet they cannot make it past the two days in my kitchen. To this day I say it’s the plastic. Having just researched a mountain of studies about plastic and how they affect life (for an article, not for the the monkeys), I will keep that conviction alive, unlike the very tiny creatures I couldn’t.

Prehistoric creature episode might not be over yet. Sasha’s planning a follow up on the “no disappointed child” promise. Until then, I decided to move up the evolution ladder and bring home the fish. Literally.

A betta fish or if you want the more glamorous name, a Siamese fighting fish. Red and bouncy. Ours. He comes with a seven day warranty (the things we think of these days) but his liveliness makes me think we don’t need that plan B. “Mom, he eats dried blood worms. Cool!” It is. Good thing they’re dried to flakes, but you can buy the live ones should that sound like a good idea. Not to me.

Five days and counting, Bubble is swimming happily and blowing bubbles like any respectable fish would. Swallowing blood worms like a true warrior. The boys were beyond surprised and happy when they first saw him. I picked him up just before I had to pick them up from school. A plastic bag with a tight knot at the top, wrapped in newspaper like a one of a kind purchase. “You got a fish? He’s so beautiful, mom!” That he is. He needs a small habitat and likes solitude. Or creates it, as literature informs us. He kills other similar fish that come close. Right on. Prehistoric critters have nothing on him. Not that he would give a frozen blood worm about it anyway…