Thoughts on Idling

Idling cars on the 401

I’ve been meaning to ask and investigate how I would feel about the treatment of natives in Canada if I was native. Not the past. The lack of help with sickness, the pushing aside, the mild to blatant racism, the pushing on to reserves, the sometimes respectful and sometimes awful individual treatments, the push to Europeanise a culture.

It’s the present I’m wondering about. It’s the present that something can be done about so that the future is different than the current message that I hear that is mostly the same, although perhaps from a different place, then when I first started listening to news. The high dropout rates, addictions, healing from residential schools, fractured cultures, suicide rates, unemployment rates, health problems, financial corruption and other issues all cultures have that seem more prevalent in native communities.

How would I feel if I was native? It’s hard to tell. I understand some of the issues. I grew up rurally and believe that native issues are shaped in part by the rural isolated nature of most reserves. One must choose between a job and home. We shouldn’t forget that they were designed that way. As with blacks slaves awarded free land for fighting with the British, they were given what were considered the poorest parcels of land.

Source: wikicommons; can you find them all without zooming in?

Would I be enraged at the government? Each reserve, smaller then the provinces that we rumour of merging for efficiency, yet asked to serve like a country. The Indian Act changed on the whim of a few hundred people. Isn’t that based on treaties? Shouldn’t be at least as hard to change as the Canadian Constitution?

Or would the anger be at my local band for mismanagement of funds? In communities where there are less higher educated people, and people from away don’t often stay for more than a few years, who is best to hire? On the job training seems like a good idea, but who would provide it? My vision of the demand is great enough that I think the federal government of the Assembly of First  Nations could offer online courses as well as a list of standards, does this exist? Or are offices full of people trying to do their best, knowing that if they knew more, they could do more? Do they lose a sense of being while they try to be building inspector, school district trustee, municipal planner, and health administrator, each on a part-time basis?

I think I would be angered. I would be angered at the lack of innovation used to solve the problems of native communities. Within days of the large earthquake in Haiti, engineers were competing and designing low cost structures that could serve as shelter. People were training Haitians better ways of building their homes. Where is the competition that asks engineers to come up with structures that use more local materials therefore reducing imported materials (sometimes by plane only) and the cost of housing? Hasn’t anyone thought to take one of the small portable sawmills and have isolated forested communities use their own wood for housing? Would it be too much forest to cut from the reserve? Isn’t there forest right outside of it too?  Or must their houses look more like ours?

I think I would be mad. I think I would be mad at the years of problems. Yet I’m not sure I would be on the road protesting. There’s more than one way to use angry energy. One is to start doing things, and see if how far you can get, who will lend you a hand, and how much help you really need. Prepare a plan, so that if help comes, as much as possible can be done.

Here are some places I’ve started reading to learn more, you might find them useful too.
http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/chelsea-vowel/attawapiskat-emergency_b_1127066.html
http://idlenomore.ca/

It’s the end of a world

One of the more consistent stories of the past year, aside from the financial crisis, has been the end of the world, specifically the fact that the Mayan Calendar, a very accurate calendar, ends in 2012. I am not terribly worried the world will end, because there are very plausible reasons for the calendar to stop when it does.

First, personnel issues. If plagues of foreign diseases are ravaging through your population, it can be hard to find, train and maintain accurate replacements.

Second, budget cuts. If you are an ancient civilisation, even if you have discovered a mathematical cyclical pattern to a solar calendar, why would you, when everything needed to be written out, need a calendar that went one thousand years into the future?

The only one I can come up with, aside from a very forward thinking society, is that the makers liked math and it became a passionate pastime. Passionate pastimes, unless they are cultural traditions rarely make it beyond budget cuts when spending efficiencies need to be made(at least these days). I can imagine aged Mayan scholars mumbling about how the cuts are terrible and one must really stay ahead of time to be a great civilisation. I like this vision, of an expert’s decision to return one day to their craft, to pass it on to their kids even if the greater society doesn’t agree that it is important.

So December 21, 2012 is the end of a world, it marks the end of the world for the ancient calendar makers and their century spanning work.

Addendum: If it wasn’t clear from the writing, I didn’t research this that much before writing, mostly because I wanted to share what to me is a slightly amusing idea. If you would like to know more about Mayan Calenders I would recommend Wikipedia, or this CBC documentary, http://www.cbc.ca/ideas/episodes/2012/12/17/the-end-of-days/ .

Yes I lost, but I won too

For me Nanowrimo ended definitively on the 28th. Two days before the end of the event I was just a tad more than halfway to my cheating win goal of 50 000, even, or perhaps because I was not forcing myself to write one continuous story. With a growing mental list of items to do before Christmas, a realistic outlook on how much sleep I needed to get my butt to work over the next two days, and a rough idea of how much I could write an hour, I decided to give up.
I am happy with how I did though. I wrote. I wrote more than I have written, outside of work or school related text, in the past three years. This, despite knowing for that same amount of time that I needed to write if I didn’t want to feel less competent than I was in the high school every time I sat down to get my thoughts out .
So today I’m going to celebrate my win, because if this post written on December first is an indication, the writing habit will stick with me for at least a little while yet.

23 miles

           There are certain things which come to mind and drop down the spine to the heart and gut to radiate out along limbs in continuous feelings. Sometimes they are good things such as the moment when you realise that you are head over heels in love and your life just got more complicated. Sometimes it’s an uneasy feeling like standing from a height, reminding yourself you just saw someone safely jump from the same location, so things should be fine, although yes if there was not water there you should definitely ultimately be scared.

                One of the later things is 23 miles. Felix Baumgartner’s 23 miles high in the sky with hot air balloon, protective gear, pressurised suit, sun visor and special jumping technique due to lack of air resistance. 23 miles in which to set a record for highest freefall and win the race against sound. Yet it’s not imagining myself in his shoes that makes my nerves tingle. I actually image his composure as being somewhat calmed by the hours of practice and coolness of head that allows one to do difficult and specific tasks under high pressure situations.

wiki commons, share alike:Perlemorsky_januar_2008

           23 miles is less than the distance I travel to work each day, and then I go over another 23 miles on the way home. Felix Baumgartner not only travelled much faster than I ever expect my commute to be in my lifetime, but the shots of him in his balloon, the view from the balloon before he jumped, they made me think one thing very strongly. The casual 23 miles I take to work each day could be very very far away.

                The atmospheric horizon could be seen in those shots, and I realised that if I was to travel the distance I go to work each do in another direction, up or down, instead of parallel to the earth’s core, I would be moving out of human’s natural habitat. There’s just a thin little band between air and rock into which if I was dropped, I would have any chance at survival.

wiki commons, share alike: 640px-Polar_Stratospheric_Cloud_type_I_above_Cirrus

That is what spawns the feeling that goes straight to my body before entering being fully analysed by my brain. Yes the world is round, but the part of it we live in is very flat compared to its size. When that thought is placed so clearly in front of me, I have no answer to the question, where would you run?

To all the happy single people in my life…

I am not a happy single person, but for a time I was, and planned my life and dreams as if I would continue to be part of your group. My sole commitments would be visiting and connecting to family and friends periodically enough that they wouldn’t worry about my health.

Then I got a partner, a long distance one. Vacations meant being together. Work and school meant being apart. Then school finished, and so began the process of figuring out how to both get jobs in the same location, and how to live with each other, and questions, sometimes unanswered, of commitment.

It made me think of the happy single people in my life. They were happy, they were single, they were not dealing with the complications brought into life by having an attachment. What were the trade-offs of my situation, and were they worth it? Then one of them invited me on a trip, and I realised that having a partner didn’t mean I couldn’t go on a trip with awesome happy single person. It made my day, it helped me dream.

So, thank you, happy single people,  and please remember that you are awesome,  because when I see your adventures, I remember that I don’t have to stop dreaming, that my choices have more meaning because I can walk away, and that I don’t have to start planning for the “next step”  right away, or conventionally, or at all.  For helping me remember, all in all, life ain’t bad, and I can be happy.

Simplified success

I stumbled across this post today, and I can’t help but feel proud of myself.
http://grist.org/sustainable-food/2012-01-11-5-packaged-foods-you-never-need-to-buy-again/
I pretty much do all of these things, when I wasn’t doing them 5 years ago. I didn’t even notice that I had slowly working my way towards the more from scratch method of cooking.  In small steps, I started making my own stock because of a waste not want not philosophy. I stopped buying hummus because I saw from people around me how easy and cheap it was to make (although the only time I made hummus I broke my potato masher, I now have a new one, and just need to get around to making it). I started making soups because I had too much stock in my freezer. I buy dried beans because there’s a bigger variety, they are cheaper, and it doesn’t really take more time.

For the past 2 weeks I have survived without any prepackaged cereal, which may not be a permanent change,  but it is longer then I’ve gone before.

This makes me proud because I wanted to eat less processed foods (not to mention cheaper and healthier), and diversify the food that I eat. Reading the post made me realise that I had achieved a goal I’d been slowly working on for a while, like finally finishing a craft project that I’ve been working on for so long that I stopped looking for the end.

Bookmarks

I have never really been a collector, I don’t amass large numbers of one thing simply for the sake of having them. Any collecting I did was greatly inspired by people asking “What do you collect?”, “Do you have a collection?” and getting my collection badge in brownies.  Eventually, I picked something to collect. After all, its something people did, right? I picked bookmarks.

I am a reader, and as a reader, one of the inevitable gifts you receive are bookmarks. By the time I started collecting them I already had close to 50, despite rarely using bookmarks unless I am slowly working my way through a less intriguing book. My hands can usually feel where I’ve left off in most books, and a few quick glances at pages gets me back to where I left off. Bookmarks are a thing to use when I know I won’t be back for a while, or when I want to mark a particularly good passage or fact and continue reading.

It has been years since I bought a bookmark, simply because I don’t need any more, and I had better things to spend money on then a collection I no longer cared about.  I have finally gotten rid of my bookmark collection, keeping only my favourite ones. Gone are the 3rd to 10th copies of bookmarks the local bookstore so carefully tucked into each purchase, along with others advertising to kids, and many of the wistful ones purchased when I still thought I could be a collector.  I kept only about 20 of my favourites, and have decided to use them until they break.

Looking into the box where the bookmarks had been stored, I also decided to make more bookmarks. The box was full of items that I didn’t actually want, but that I kept for the memories they brought to mind. I took the objects out, found a decent background along the stairs, and took pictures of each one. I then gave all the objects to my mom, so they can find new homes. Eventually, I’ll write the memory that comes to mind on each picture. The picture will become a bookmark of my life, reminding me of a friend, or a summer camp, or a dream I used to have.

Childhood travel bag

Self-description

I was going to write a self description introducing myself, but I have decided not to. If I do manage to maintain posts with the blog, they should create a self-portrait of myself over time.

I would like to make two things clear at this point though.  First, I won’t be revealing my actual identity. I am beginning my career and I want to use this blog as a means to express my thoughts without holding myself back. I am doing this for myself and won’t get much out of it if I’m filtering my thoughts for anything other than better self-expression.  Second, if you are visiting this blog because you would like the name, and feel that I have abandoned it, please get in touch. If it is the case, I may be willing to pass it on to someone who will use the site better.

Have a good day, and thanks for reading.

p.s. I sincerely hope that there’s a way to create paragraphs without spaces between them. I have always hate the line between two paragraphs style of formatting.