COVER ARTICLE —The Strategy of Love

by Eva van Loon

What if we gave ourselves a heart-shaped present this Valentine’s Day? What if, for one day, we allowed ourselves to stop struggling, striving, competing? What if we gave up worry, just for today? What if we took a one-day vacation from trying to overcome the daunting obstacles in our lives, the big and the small ones? Just took a day to breathe, slowly, in...out...in...out...look around, watch the colors brighten, love whatever or whoever appears....

So much has been written about the effects of stress on health that we all know exactly what we shouldn’t be doing if we want to live long and worthwhile lives—but most of the time we can’t stop doing those things, because it seems society continues to require us to master our bodies, our enemies, our challenges. A successful life is a dominant life. The cult of personal fame that props up TV programming reinforces the value of dominance every hour.

Could it be that we are sick of it all? Did we weep and scream for joy on November 4 because it seems possible the cult of empire—of the insane need to be the richest, the strongest, the best—might end at last? Could we really be ready to love this planet and share it with its other species and with our fellows at last?

Rabbi Lerner of Tikkun magazine (the name means transformation in Hebrew) says a lot of wise and balanced things on his site, www.spiritualprogressives.org. He published this letter, to President Obama from Charles T. Phillips, without comment. Reproducing it here, in part, is our Valentine’s heart to you.

“U. S. government needs to adopt a new strategy of generosity toward all the world’s people and nations, to replace the strategy of domination that has so long been the policy paradigm. A way of demonstrating generosity is the proposed Global Marshall Plan, which would devote 1-2% of the gross product of all the developed nations over 20 years to help 2 billion of the world’s people move out of poverty through aid and investments specifically directed toward this population. This proposal was introduced in the House of Representatives as H. Res. 1078, and more information is available at the Network of Spiritual Progressives web site (spiritualprogressives.org).

“Second, we need to transform all institutions including the U. S. government to act not merely for economic benefits but also to encourage people’s natural inclination toward love, generosity, compassion, imagination, and wonder at the beauty of the planet Earth and of the universe in which we live. You may say, this is too idealistic. But today, idealism is the new realism. So-called realism, through the strategy of domination, has only led to endless wars, needless suffering, and exploitation. It’s time for radical changes as described above. The world is waiting.”

Are you listening, City Council? Act from love. Employ the strategy of generosity. Transform this place we love.

OPEN SOURCE -News and views as you see it

MUSIC—The Passion in Music Making–Exhibitionism on the main stage

by Corey Matsumoto

Ever thought about what music is? What makes up a song?

Scientists long ago discovered the basic mechanics of sound waves—how sound can be created, shaped, captured, released, and heard. Almost every living thing on earth makes an audible sound of some sort. If you subscribe to Gaia Theory, the earth itself is a single living entity producing an orchestra of sounds.

However, there’s a certain je ne sais quoi about music that puts it in a separate category of sound from other natural and artificial sounds that flood our aural environment. Songs are physical manifestations of our emotions—truly living entities capable of transcending time and space (wirelessly, even). Music is basically physical vibration (sound waves) created by expressing a thought or blend of thoughts through one or more instruments.

Although a song can be technically quite simple when broken down into its elements (bass, rhythm, beat, tempo, etc.), few people truly appreciate how a song comes into being. Indeed, when a band gets together to jam or create a song, there’s a lot more going on than even they may realize.

It may be observed that musicians and artists who are passionate about their work are supersensitive to emotions and interpersonal dynamics. Music and art become an outlet for personal expression and even help the artist process life’s difficulties. A musician playing “in the zone” is literally “flying high”—carried on an emotional wave by the instrumentation. When a group of musicians play “in the zone” together, the results can be pure ecstasy. There’s nothing quite like hearing a group of people playing from the heart while tuning into each other so intensely as to complement one another’s parts in perfect synchronicity. The resulting music becomes an entity unto itself—often only living for the moment (Dude, did we record that?).

Looking at song-crafting in this light, you start to see strange parallels between the dynamic workings of a band and those of a romantic relationship. Any musician who has played in (and especially toured with) a band for any extended period of time would be hard-pressed to deny that such parallels exist. The chemistry required to keep a band together is directly related to the chemistry required to create a marriage working between two people, the only difference being that a band requires several people with the right mix of chemistry between them to allow the relationship to bear fruit. When the mix is right, magic happens, and great songs are conceived.

The similarities between musical and romantic relationships extend to break-ups. If you think making a marriage work between two people is hard, try mixing three or more supersensitive musician types—and throw in the “ego factor” for good measure. The experience of a having a band member leave the group for another band (or even worse, for a solo project) can lead to feelings of rejection not unlike those felt when dumped by a mate. When these musical marriages fail, the results can be messy: witness the sensational band break-ups and “custody battles” over song rights, of which we are so often elegantly informed by the tabloid press.

When the chemistry is right, however, the union of a group of musicians can indeed be stronger than that of a romantic relationship. It’s not unheard of for a musician to choose the band over a lover when forced to pick—the allure of the stage can be overpowering. It’s the one place where you can stand emotionally naked before the world, performing from the heart in pursuit of that elusive “zone” where nothing matters but the feeling of soaring in ecstasy for all to see.

ART

FASHION—Local Fashion...Into the Bedroom

by Caitlin Bryant

Adorn the bedroom…or find things sure to get you into the bedroom with your special someone. This column is full of self-satisfaction because I have a bit of a collection, also known as obsession, with many of these products.

Adorn The Bedchamber
The Magic Trunk: Lois Warner creates stunning bedding in sets and separates: duvet covers, sheets, pillowcases, quilts and wall hangings. A set usually includes a unique batik duvet cover matched to a bottom sheet and two pillowcases. Made of 100% cotton (even the thread) at a standard thread count of 600 (that’s a very fine count, in case you wondered) all for $250.00. Nothing feels better than cotton! Classy bedding is an easy way to jazz up a bedroom and quality duvet covers and sheets last many years. Lois buys her batik cottons from a family in India who dye the fabric by hand. The colors are rich, vibrant—yet machine washable! If you are a Texada resident or visitor, you may have frequented her store, The Magic Trunk, 3309 Cedar St. in Gillies Bay (open spring to fall). If you are unable to make it into her Texada store, contact her at 250 951-6629.

Fabrications: Shelia Munro’s latest textile adventure uses rich textures, colors and prints for decorative cushions in all sizes. She’s always on the lookout for beautiful fabrics in any form, velvets, silks, upholstery, heavy cottons, tassels, fine netting and soft piping. Shelia’s father, who worked in the fabric department at Eaton’s in Vancouver, used to bring home scraps of brocade fabrics for her, and so began the love affair. Just under a year ago, she decided to take her hobby to the streets and test the waters—the waters are warm and business is steady, at prices from $20-$40. Contact Shelia directly at 604 483-9212 or check out her Fabrications at TrendzEssence Fashions.

Adorn The Body
Karin Birch is a master silversmith. She works with .999 % pure silver and stones like emerald and ruby to create stunning earrings, necklaces, pendants, brooches and more. Inspired by nature and sensuality, this silversmith, with 35 years’ experience behind her, has been selling her flawless works of art for the last six years. You can imagine the high quality and craftswomanship, but it’s more fun to see it and handle it. Maybe you saw Karin’s private collection of erotic jewelry at ‘Expose Yourself’ 08? Keep an eye out for her new pieces at Expose Yourself 2 in March. Priced from $25-$200, Karin’s art is available exclusively at Artique.

Adorn The Bathroom
The Primrose Path boasts a line of essential-oil-scented soaps, bath salts and bombs, salt and sugar scrubs (divine!), moisture bars, beeswax candles, and new, undiluted essential-oil blends. One product I’d recommend for Valentine’s Day…the Exotic Orange Moisture Bar. Moisture Bars are made with a mixture of beeswax, cocoa, mango and shea butters, olive and castor oils and—the best part—pure essential oils. The exotic orange blend is particularly nice with a really sweet, spicy and easy scent.

You can peruse them from home with your eyes at www.primrosepath.ca or bring your nose to the display at Artique

The Art Bump is one my favorite new fashion options in town. Jenny Taves moved to our funky little haven last summer to revive, repurpose and reinvent fashions for men and women. Using recycled materials, Jenny works in fabric appliqués, illustration transfers and hand painting and re-dyes. Out of her propensity for recycling come lots of options, from tee shirts to vests, pants to headbands, hats to vintage leather bags. Her more intimate selections? Slips, slips, slips! Slips with appliquéd flowers, slips with hearts (and I mean anatomically correct hearts), tie-dyed, long, short, pink, black, and green. Slips for the bedroom, slips for layering over jeans or leggings, slips of all kinds.
Priced at $45, Jenny’s slips are available exclusively at TrendzEssence Fashions.

POETRY

WORDS—The Eden Express Reading Club –Powell River classic revisited

A new reading club will focus exclusively on an early ‘70s classic that put Powell River on the international literary map.

The Eden Express by Mark Vonnegut chronicles the author’s attempts to establish a communal farm on 80 acres at Powell Lake and his subsequent mental breakdown. The author, son of the late novelist Kurt Vonnegut, broke new ground with his eloquent description of his own psychic unraveling, which fortunately proved to be short-lived. After giving up on Powell River, Mark Vonnegut returned to his native Massachusetts and became a pediatrician.

The book’s richness derives not only from Vonnegut’s first-person account of what it’s like to drift into uncharted psychological waters (the book is typically shelved with psychology texts; such is its power of description) but from its opening chapters, which capture the hope and values that inspired many Age-of-Aquarius types to flee to the wilds of British Columbia in search of utopia.

MacLeod Cushing, who is organising the reading club, says its purpose is to read the book as a group and discuss its enduring value.

“The Eden Express was important when it came out in 1975 and it is just as important today because of its timeless descriptions of youthful idealism and mental illness. We can be proud that Powell River is immortalised in these pages.”

Cushing says he hopes The Eden Express Reading Club will generate enough interest to persuade Mark Vonnegut to revisit old haunts in and around Powell River.

“If enough people become interested, we will contact Mr. Vonnegut and invite him to do a reading in Powell River. Perhaps he would enjoy seeing a few familiar faces from 35 years ago. He edited a recent posthumous collection of his father’s work, and he’s been spotted on the reading circuit.”

ESSAY—One Heart for Quirkyalones

by yazmin (a.k.a Miss Quirkyhearts)

It started with the stores’ immediate post-holiday, full-swing, Valentine’s-Day mode. I thought about writing cheeky comments about the joys of being single, even while realising this was bravado. Facing another one of those miserable days alone!

So, I began the research.



A few keystrokes revealed what I always suspected: there are millions—yes, 45 million—hits on “being single”. My heart leapt, yes! There are many others out there like me and my “Sex in the City” sisters. Not just a few of us—plenty! I was delighted. The sheer ‘numbers alone’ surely proved that we can’t all be losers, right?

Then I made the mistake of digging deeper. Many of those hits had the expected
this-is-what’s-so-great-about-being-single lists: “I can do whatever I darn well please, whenever I want to” and “The toilet seat. Need I say more?” and my personal favourite, “You don’t have to stroke his fragile male ego, among other things.” (But isn’t that an advantage of coupledom?) The sites were also heavily sprinkled with “Singlehood—what to do now” bids accompanied by reams of boring, bad advice. Some painfully honest soul even averred that, “At its heart, though, [singledom] is a soulless, empty existence. The point of life is to give of yourself...”



Yikes.



Panic nibbled at me. I decided to refine my search with an optimistic “joy of being single”. Only three-point-five million hits! Hmm...a far cry from 45 mil but, hey, still better than being >alone< alone—yes?



And then I saw it—at the top of the list: “The Quirkyalones.” Never heard of it? Me neither, and not surprisingly—”Quirkyalone” brought up a paltry 55 thousand hits. A mere ripple in the big pond. Our friends at Wiki clarified the term “Quirkyalone” and its origins.



“Quirkyalone” refers to someone who enjoys being single (but
is not opposed to being in a relationship) and generally prefers to be alone
rather than dating for the sake of being in a couple. It was coined by To-Do
List magazine publisher Sasha Cagen, who wrote a magazine article in Utne Reader
in 2000 and a book Quirkyalone: A Manifesto for Uncompromising Romantics.



Sasha’s words: “We are the puzzle pieces who seldom fit with other puzzle pieces. We inhabit singledom as our natural resting state. In a world where marriage and proms
define the social order, we are, by force of our personalities and inner strength, rebels.



“Yet make no mistake: We are no less concerned with coupling than your average
serial monogamist. Secretly, we are romantics, romantics of the highest order.
We want a miracle. Out of millions we have to find the one who will understand.


“For the quirkyalone, there is no patience for dating just for the sake of not being alone. On a fine but by no means transcendent date we dream of going home to watch television. We would prefer to be alone with our own thoughts than with a less than perfect fit. We are almost constitutionally incapable of casual relationships.”



Surprise! International Quirkyalone Day is February 14, chosen as an alternative to “the marketing barrage” of Valentine’s Day. It started in 2003 as a “celebration of romance, freedom and individuality”.



My people, at last! I breathed a sigh of relief. “Romantics of the highest order.” That would be me. Quirkyalone in our searching, we have refined the art of knowing what will or won’t work to a science.


So, when that moment comes when you bump into that miracle quirkyalone in a crowded grocery, or find yourself stranded on a tropical island with that someone, you’ll know immediately that this is a “romance of the highest order.”



Are You A Quirkyalone?
Online quiz

Always wondered why you like to be by yourself and why the opposite gender just
scarcely interests you anymore? Answer 'yes' or 'no' to the following questions to
see how quirkyalone you are.

1) You have a talent for self-reflection.

2) You're excited about a successful, interesting life with or without a mate.

3) You create and maintain chosen clusters of friends.

4) You see life as a big choose-your-own-adventure.

5) You support the idea of dating but not necessarily for sex.

6) You prefer solitude to any relationship where you must restrain an essential
part of yourself.

7) You have a compulsion to leave a mark on culture or society, to express yourself either through art, business, literature, or even social activism.

8) You think the ways society dictates happiness, primarily through romantic
love, is a human failing.

9) You have had a taste or glimpse of a great relationship, which intensified your desire for a similar experience.

10) Your talent to deconstruct love songs is equal only to your vulnerability to them.

Answers:

0 to 3 "Yes" responses: Sorry, but you're not a quirkyalone. You should sign up
with an Internet dating service right now and dig out all the singles in your area.

4 to 6 "Yes" responses: You are a borderline quirkyalone. This means that you
may still want to live with another almost quirkyalone as a quirkyalone
couple, or might just want to sleep in your own room while your significant other
sleeps in his/her own room.

7 to 10 "Yes" responses: You are definitely a quirkyalone. Instead of romancing
another person, you will spend your life romancing life for all it's worth. Along with a growing segment of society committed to remaining single, you now can refer to everyone like yourself with a single word: quirkyalone!

ENGLESE 100—There, there...

by Eva van Loon

“Papas no hay!” yells my kid, head in the fridge, searching for dinner.

“Huh?” I am unprepared for Spanish.

“There’s no potatoes!” she transla-shouts.

“Aaarggh!” I snarl back. “There are no potatoes!”
“That’s what I said.”

“No. You said, ‘There is no potatoes.’”

“Right!” She’s exasperated with her nearest ancestor, who is clearly on the edge of dementia or at least maddeningly selectively deaf. “There’s no potatoes.”

I try teaching by example: “There is no potato. There are no potatoes. Get it? There is for a singular noun; there are for a plural noun.”

“Grammar Nazi. There isn’t even one potato. Singular shmingular; plural shmural.”

Being called names grants me leave to complain. “In my day, we could all handle this construction by no later than Grade Three.”

“Your day is over.” She’s a genius at stating the obvious. “Why can’t English behave like Spanish? No hay un papa. No hay papas. No matter how many potatoes there aren’t, it’s no hay. One potato, two potato, three potato, four—it’s always no hay. Simple.”

“It’s not Standard English,” I try to interject, but she’s on a rant, now, showing off her new lingo.

“How about French? “Il y a une pomme de terre. Il y a des pommes de terre. It’s il y a no matter how many potatoes there are.”

“Aha!” I pounce. “There are? Or there is?”
Her turn to glower. “What does il y a really mean, anyway?”

Successfully distracted, I ponder. “I guess it literally translates as he, she, or it has there…whatever it is you’re talking about, which would explain why French—or Spanish—doesn’t need to differentiate between one thing or more things.” I’m warming up. “But English is different, you see—“

Her eyes glaze over, but I persist. “There’s no indefinite he, she or it hanging around in Standard-English-grammar space to govern the verb—”
“Govern the verb? Grammar politics?”

“There’s no politics in grammar. Shut up. You see, there is an adverb. Putting an adverb in front of a sentence doesn’t affect the way the verb works. One potato is there. Two potatoes are there. Simple.”

“English is never simple.” She speaks with the authority of Youth Who Have Found the Truth. “There’s better ways to say things.”

I cringe. “That’s Englese, I suppose?”

“You love fusion cuisine—why not fusion grammar?”

“Confusion grammar!”

She glowers. “Did it ever occur to you and your coven of Grammar Gremlins that grammars can be combined just the way French and Spanish cooking are combined for fusion cuisine? There’s ways!”

I cringe anew. reflecting that not only have I utterly failed as a grammatical parent, but her exposure to Standard English cuisine has been negligible. “English cooking is…well, so English that there’s no fusion possible! It’s the same with Standard English—there are so many peccadilloes and peculiarities, only fools would venture into the grammar hell where angels fear to tread! You can’t turn an adverb into a pronoun any more than you can turn a potato into a papaya!”

She sticks her head inside the fridge again in self defense; emerges triumphant, holding a tiny bottle of clear liquid. “There’s fruit of the potato!” An impish grin: “There’s just two drinks left.”

I give up and toast the future. “Here’s to Englese!”

“How come there’s was wrong but here’s is right?” she says, mock-innocent, a catty cunning gleam in one eye.

‘There’s an ellipse, cretin.”

“Grammar Nazi.”

Standard English — Englese
There’s no excuse. — There’s no excuse.
There are no excuses. — There’s no excuses.
There’s a lot of confusion. — There’s a lot of confusion.
There are lots of issues. — There’s lots of issues.

ENVIRONMENT—Preserve and Protect: Malaspina Land Conservancy Society assists land owners preserve land

by Janet Alred

Almost everything we do reshapes the earth to accommodate human needs. Whether building a forest trail or a concrete parking lot, we are changing what was there.

We might cut down a tree, fearing it may fall upon the house; we might dig a vegetable patch for organic greens; we might choose to drain wet land for some other use.

Under current zoning bylaws, whoever owns the land has the power to decide what happens there. If we do not own the land, although we might petition the owner and reach an agreement, we have no right to dictate what land owners can do. If we want to preserve land on which we depend in some way, we can do that with a land conservancy—and one has just been formed in the Powell River region.

The Malaspina Land Conservancy Society is a non-profit organization formed in the summer of 2008 to assist land owners in preserving land. We cover the whole Powell River region, from Jervis Inlet to Sarah Point, and include our local islands. MLCS has a broad mandate to preserve land that is of natural or scenic beauty, historical or scientific significance, or agricultural or recreational value. We also help preserve areas that are home to species at risk or part of Canada’s natural heritage.

People can use our services in several ways. We can receive donations of land or funds, raise funds to purchase land, place conservation covenants on a part of the land, teach habitat restoration and remediation, raise public awareness, and more. Once MLCS obtains charitable designation, we can issue tax receipts to property owners to offset income tax.

British Columbia boasts more than 30 land conservancies, most quite local to their communities like our own. One, The Land Conservancy (TLC), is provincial and a couple, like The Nature Trust and The Nature Conservancy, are national organisations. Each has its own set of purposes specifying the nature of the land that it is most interested in protecting. In BC, we all operate under the umbrella of the BC Land Trust Alliance, an organisation that provides networking for land conservancies as well as valuable information for the general public.

For $10 per person, you can show your support of MLCS’ endeavours and become a member. Become involved, if you wish, as a volunteer. Come to our first quarterly members’ evening on Monday, February 9th, 7:00 p.m. at Vancouver Island University for information about land conservancies, conservation covenants, the Environment Canada Ecogift program, MLCS goals for the future, and how you can be involved. If you would like to know more, call (604) 483-3683, visit our website at www.malaspinaland.ca, or just come along to the meeting to find out who we are.

Look around you. Is there something about your land you’d like to preserve forever?

FOOD SECURITY—The Seeds of Community

by David Parkinson

The plant is the seed’s way of reproducing itself. And humans are the plant’s way of being kept safe and pest-free long enough to produce seeds? Hmm… so, when we cultivate plants for food, medicine, or their beauty, we are part of nature’s giant conspiracy to keep seeds around? Humans have been actively involved in shaping nature for thousands of years, and we still are, especially through efforts like saving seeds.

In Powell River, there’s an active community working to save seeds, share seeds, and make sure of a good supply of seeds for growing food. If you want to be more involved in these community efforts, here’s how:

I. Come out to the fourth annual Seedy Saturday (March 14 2009, from 10:00 AM to 3:00 PM, at the Community Living Place on Artaban)
Bring your seeds in dry, sealed envelopes and swap them for other seeds. Or you can buy seed packets for fifty cents. You can exchange bedding plants, perennials, roots/tubers, berries, shrubs, and trees. Community groups will be there to give out information on gardening, permaculture, composting, beekeeping, and seed saving. There will also be five free garden-related workshops during the day. Admission is one dollar and children under twelve get in free.

II. Come to a potluck dinner and seed packaging bee sponsored by Kale Force, a local growers’ support group (Wednesday February 11, 5-8 p.m. at the Community Resource Centre, 4752 Joyce Ave.)
After a potluck meal, we will be packaging donated seeds at the bee to fund Seedy Saturday; also, if you have seeds from your own garden to package for swapping, bring them, and we’ll help you get ready.

III. Come and ‘Dig-it’, on Sunday March 1st 1:00 PM to 3:00 PM in Wildwood.
This free workshop demonstrates the division and the digging up of berries and other food plants. Volunteers are invited to bring their boots and extra large pots to Farmers’ Institute member farms: 1:00 PM at Hatch-a-Bird Farm (6603 McMahon Ave.); 2:00 PM with Wendy Devlin at 6834 Smarge Ave. The newly potted plants will be donated to the Seedy Saturday plant exchange.

IV. Read and participate in the new Powell River Seed Savers blog at http://seedsavers.wordpress.com.
We’re hoping that this year we will see a more focused and committed community effort to save seeds and to educate ourselves about how to save high-quality seeds. The blog will be our electronic ‘street corner’ for hanging out, asking and answering questions, sharing stories, successes, and challenges, and creating a community of dedicated seed-savers. Come on by and join the conversation!

LEGAL EYES—What Country is This Again?

by Eva van Loon

The folks at BC Elections will likely be coming to get me when this is published.

If they don’t, they’ll fail to apply uniformly the registration provisions of the Elections Act for “third-party advertisers” during an election period.

All I need to do is criticise the government. Peculiar as it may seem to us ordinary folk, “advertisement” includes criticism. Criticising Candidate A means the speaker supports Candidate B, and that’s advertising, ladies and gentlemen.

That’s doublespeak, if you ask me. And I suggest a governmental toe has been set on the path to fascism with this outrageous requirement to register before ordinary citizens can comment on their government.

This writer could be fined up to ten grand for that suggestion, even though neither I nor this magazine promotes any particular candidate or party in the more–or–less upcoming May provincial election. In an election period, nasty threatening letters can be sent to any group, organised or dis-, that wants changes and has the gall to say so publicly.

Just ask the loosely associated group Renters at Risk in the Lower Mainland, who had the temerity to put up some posters advertising their planned discussion for changes they want. They don’t even have a chairperson—but they’re advertising, yessir, plain as day.

Election advertising is “advertising used during a campaign period to promote or oppose, directly or indirectly, the election of a candidate or a registered political party.”

“Our review of the Renters at Risk Campaign website during the campaign periods of the Vancouver-Burrard and Vancouver-Fairview by-elections identified several instances of messaging that appeared to be election advertising,” the letter to Renters at Risk said. “This determination was based on materials on your website that describe past and current issues and legislation, associates them with registered political parties, and directly or indirectly takes a promotional or oppositional position.”

Renters At Risk is being treated the same as any other group that promotes a position before an election, said Kenn Faris, a spokesperson for Elections B.C. The group’s materials used slogans like “send the government a message” that imply people should vote for one party over another, he suggested.

How did this heinous piece of legislation slide in under our noses?And what the heck happened to our Charter right of freedom of speech? What country are we in, again?

Is the following opinion an advertisement, BC Elections? I think whoever the author of these registration provisions is should never, ever be allowed to hold public office again, anywhere in Canada, anytime, because he, she, or it missed one basic fact in school: Canada is a democracy, complete with constitution and Charter of Rights. The right to criticise our governments is embedded in the Charter—and that ain’t advertising!

How could they cheapen our Charter so?

Registration is free, BC Elections hasten to assure us. No big deal.

Sure. The Jews in Europe in the forties didn’t have to pay for their cute yellow stars when they registered, either.

Will someone volunteer to put up a website to monitor my stay in jail over this? Or shall we pull a Denmark* on these dummies—everybody and his dog, register as an election advertiser!

*The (possibly apocryphal) story of how 90% of Denmark’s Jews were spared the Holocaust tells how King Christian X himself wore the star and encouraged all his citizens to do so. –Editor.

HEALTH

ESOTERICA—Love to the Power of "N"

by Michelle Lea McCann

Love–a word thrown around like a broken doll for so many years—a cliché?

Not anymore. The masses—that’s us—have shifted; hearts have broken open in the last months. The Great Mother and Father have reunited and we are all One. Love has taken on a whole new meaning, as One-ness is Love.

One can be in love, Love being an embracing noun in that way, the middle way. Buddha said that Yin and Yang, Positive and Negative, Dark and Light—these pairs are but two sides of the same coin, cancelling out the polarised thinking that is now what we call the past.

The Earth Chakra of the planet is in the Philippines, where the famous Tsunami signalled its return to power. At that point some individuals made the contract to “go home” in the name of Love, and they are written up with highest honors in the Akashik records1. A sneaky little character in all of us sometimes grabs such opportunity, but most of the time it yammers, “No, you can’t do that!” and you think, Maybe they don’t like me; I don’t deserve…I’m so late! Aagh! I need, I want, I wish…blah blah…. It goes on and on.

Here is the thing, though: As for every force there is an equal and opposite reaction, the energy manifests itself physically like this: the extent to which a person has power and gifts to serve as a lightworker2 equals the size of the ego. So, there you go: you fear, or feel guilty, but really you unwittingly undermine yourself. Self-sabotoge is not of Love; it is of Ego.

Love is the antidote to this pesky antiquated creature. As we start to become aware of this, all becomes clear. You are empowered and able to manifest only that which brings you—and therefore others—joy. This is LOVE! True love for oneself and compassion for oneself, even self-forgiveness, is what the ancient Buddhists called metta, and it will ultimately give us the reward that has always been there for us.

We all needed to shift into the energy of this Love and Compassion, into metta, in order for the children who have been called the “indigos”, the “crystals”, the “rainbows”, to come through us in droves. We humans like to use labels and stick them on things and people. It is part of our old linear thinking style. This is also giving way to the increasingly undeniable truth that there is no such thing as linear straight time lines—no past, no future—only NOW. When you accept such a universal truth and replace the balance of our antiquated notions, the universe opens up in direct proportion to the breadth of your insight. This is the new reality—the ability to manifest your reality directly.

Love will grow and manifest in the physical world as abundance and a sense of purpose will make all feel rich and prosperity will flow without end. The endless flow is from the source—from God, if you like. And what is God? LOVE, according to the Bible and all the religions. Even atheists and nihilists cherish Love. If you deny this, your ego is lying to you, acting in equal proportion but opposite direction to your capacity to Love.

Nirvana is here: just look at all that pleases you and it will soon be all you can see.

Watch for the indigo, crystal and rainbow children. They are the ones we have been waiting for. These are the kids with those brilliant eyes that go on forever. They are wise and special. I can’t say enough about them. Many of these children are mistaken for ADD or ADHD—probably a misnomer for dimensional diversity.

Love and Light.

Michelle is available for psychic advice and tarot readings. Email aquamich8@hotmail.com or call 604-485-4041.

Notes:
1. The Akashik recordsare mythic records of all souls from all directions of tine who came to the planet to serve, to sacrifice, in order to teach us compassion and love. This planet of free will is ours to hear and learn from, learn to live by following our driven not only by our natural curiosity cut by our hunger for Love.

2. Lightworkers are those who seek the truth on their spiritual journey toward Enlightenment. They feel the urge to heal others and a deep need to resolve the world’s problems. They very often feel compelled to write, teach, or counsel others; and know without a doubt that they are here for a higher purpose. The feel they have a mission to complete, but often may not know precisely what that mission is. There is a sense of urgency. Lightworkers often have psychic abilities and use them for the good of the world. Physically they may suffer from a persistent, sometimes painful ringing in one ear. This ringing is thought to be messages from higher beings, information from the fourth dimension being communicated directly to the heart chakra.

COVER ARTICLE—Marching Orders

by Eva van Loon

March is named for Mars, god of war. Energy returns to the weather, the ecology, and to all the beasts, as we come out of hibernation and tackle projects and problems.

March rings up echoes of Sousa’s music, of bands whose members must learn to tootle and move their limbs in time. Google march, and Hannibal pops up, the supreme strategist who marched war elephants over the Pyrenees from Spain into Italy to wage the second Punic War, he who famously said, “We will either find a way, or make one,” a statement that may well have inspired the American spirit. (I can’t help but wonder whether his elephants would have delivered much the same stories as American’s war dogs and war dolphins could tell.)

In the 1830s, the First Nations referred to as “The Five Civilised Tribes” were “removed” by US President Jackson and forced to march a murderous 1,000 miles on bare feet to inhospitable ground. Many never made it. Said a Georgia war veteran who had to participate, “The Cherokee Removal was the cruelest work I ever knew.”

Nasty stuff, forced marches. But the last century saw a new kind of march, one that grows and grows as it wends its way to a specific and humane goal. On March 12, 1930, Mahatma Gandhi led the Salt Satyagraha, a campaign of non-violent protest against the British salt tax in colonial India, the first act of organised opposition to the British Raj. Its simple, stated intention was to make salt tax-free; its method was satyagraha, translated as loving force of truth, meaning strength in practising non-violent methods. Growing numbers of Indians joined Gandhi along the way, and Gandhi’s breaking of the salt laws on April 6 sparked acts of civil disobedience by millions.

The satyagraha against the salt tax drew world-wide attention to the issues of Indian independence. At least 80,000 Indians were jailed as a result.

The satyagraha teachings of Gandhi significantly influenced Martin Luther King, Jr. in his fight for civil rights in the Sixties. Three Selma-to-Montgomery marches in 1965 marked the peak of the American civil-rights movement and the culmination of the voting-rights struggle. The first march took place on March 7, 1965—“Bloody Sunday”—when 600 civil-rights marchers were attacked by police with billy clubs and tear gas. The second march took place on March 9. Only the third march, beginning March 21 for five days, made it to Montgomery, 54 miles away. Now this route is memorialised as a U.S. National Historic Trail.

During the so-called Great Depression, thousands of men from work-camps where they received twenty cents per day hopped the freight trains to march on Ottawa in protest. They never got there: in Regina the movement turned into a riot where the police beat many people. But the March on Ottawa positively affected policy.

Notice the nasty cruel marches are generally imposed by an authority. Grassroots marches are uprisings from mass pain. When things get bad enough, people will gather and move to a goal, and there is no force on earth that can stop such a movement, although some may suffer horribly for taking part.

How bad are these times? How sharp is our pain? When do we say, “Enough!” When our march begins, where are we going with it? What goal is big enough, important enough, for us to practise satyagraha?

As warriors, meditate on these two statements:

The first of those statements stops us from frittering what little time is left to save ourselves and this planet with band-aid, short-term solutions. The second statement has the capacity to end the ancient but nonsensical partisan war between so called right and left, conservative and liberal, seal-slugger and tree-hugger.

One doesn’t need to pack the traveling shoes to practise satyagraha. The term march applies to any movement that captures the heart and soul of a people. Can’t satyagraha grow most vigorously in our own yards? Simply by choosing to grow food on a small patch of earth we can call our own for a span, by publishing someone’s words, by proliferating art that speaks about our situation, by writing letters to editors, by finding a way to make an honest living, and by mingling earnestly with our neighbors, we are already marching toward the better world that must arise if we are to survive.

That doesn’t mean we won’t find ourselves literally marching on Victoria or Ottawa one day for a particular cause that will stand for Love and Death and the Whole Damned Thing. But then we’ll be ready, because today, we became warriors. We got our marching orders.

OPEN SOURCE News & Opinions

ART

FASHION

by Caitlin Bryant

Amber Friedman is fairly new to Powell River. She comes all the way from Fredericton, New Brunswick, with a brief stint in Vancouver.

*Live Ta Dye* is Amber’s textile venture and you’ll find her at many of the local fairs and festivals, including the Farmer’s Market which is starting back up in April. At the Live Ta Dye booth you will see silk-screens of her own photography, portraits, embroidery, photo-transfers, bookbinding, batik on paper and fabric, shibori (resist-dyeing—binding fabrics during dye process), and discharge dyeing (removing pigment), on a variety of new and recycled fabrics and papers.

In Fredericton, Amber studied photography and textile arts at the New Brunswick College Of Craft And Design for four years, where she became a Teaching Assistant, facilitated printing and dyeing workshops and gained many accolades. Amber was even invited to exhibit a piece of her art in a faculty show at the New Brunswick Provincial Art Gallery, also known as *The Beaverbrook*. The piece that generated so much interest was a dress entitled ‘Wears Money’. The dress is beautifully constructed from hundreds of fine silk and satin panels printed, front and back, with the official $100 dollar bill design (yes, she obtained permission from The Bank Of Canada). Layers of these panels build upon each other, making up a feathered skirt and leaving a little fray in the edging for added texture. The cocktail dress is finished with a classic halter bodice edged with more of the $100 panels.

This dress is definitely a head turner, sure to make any woman look like a million bucks (sorry—I couldn’t resist!).

Both Amber and Live Ta Dye are about experimentation mingled with tried and true techniques for working with fibers, photography, textiles and dyes. One of Amber’s latest projects is unique. While in Vancouver she acquired an old photocopier—and I mean old, really, *really* old! Amber had some very interesting plans for the beast. “Just imagine what I’ll be able to do tothis fabric with my new photocopier!” Obviously everyday, flimsy fabric was only going to jam the machine; so she had some fun trial-and-error homework to do. After several experiments with various methods of stiffening the fabric, Amber started photocopying images and portraits onto textiles...

Wow! This is a brand-new technique for Amber and, as far I can tell, for anyone, ever. So keep an eye out for Live Ta Dye and Amber herself—she may have something new to show you. And we’ll keep you posted, because, when Amber graces Powell River with a show, it is sure to be exciting, cutting-edge, beautiful, and resourceful.

Amber facilitates private or group workshops for adults and/or children on a variety of printing and dyeing techniques. If you’re interested in getting a workshop going or would like to express interest in future opportunities, give Amber a call at 604.487.0868, or e-mail her at livetadye@yahoo.ca.

RADIO—The Vitality of JUMP FM 90.1–What does Community Radio mean to Powell River?

by Corey Matsumoto

Community Radio was my prefered choice of radio listening throughout my youth. I was lucky enough to have grown up in a city with a thriving community-radio station, Calgary, providing me with a continuous stream of new music and stimulating spoken-word programming.

Upon moving to what I thought of as the semi-remote community of Powell River in 2004, I was surprised and excited to discover CJMP 90.1FM (JUMP Radio)—a community-radio station broadcasting from the heart of the old downtown core. The fact that only 18 community-radio stations are listed on the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission website, in a province with over 150 towns and municipalities, makes JUMP Radio a bona fide rare gem indeed.

To my dismay, I realised shortly that this little gem of a radio station was massively under-utilised. According to a report released in October, 2007, by the Center for International Media Assistance (CIMA), the station is not alone in its struggle for community recognition. One of the common difficulties faced by community-radio stations is a population unable to recognise fully the wide-ranging benefits of community-radio development.

So what does community radio mean to a community?

Community radio not only provides an outlet for music lovers with a broadcasting bug, it also empowers members of a community to have their own radio shows to promote clubs and organizations, share ideas and information, or just speak their minds. Community radio also provides a means of improving one’s self-confidence through broadcasting, and provides a valuable training ground for those interested in broadcasting as a career.

The CIMA report states, “Community radio plays a vital role in building vibrant communities, in mobilizing groups to action by informing and empowering citizens, in giving voice to the marginalized groups of society, and in bringing community needs to the attention of local and even national governments”.

Being able to bring open discussion to the airwaves about issues important to the development of Powell River as a thriving community can play an important role in bringing about positive change and forward momentum. Without community radio, we are basically relegated to disconnected pockets of kitchen-table and coffee-shop conversations—with little sense of collective unity or shared common vision.

The key to a strong community-radio station is the involvement of the community through membership and volunteering, as well a responsive management structure able to ensure that the diverse needs of the community are met. A strong volunteer base also brings an abundance of dynamic content—something that JUMP Radio has been lacking.

JUMP Radio is undergoing major changes, the desired outcome to be the rebirth of a new JUMP Radio station with fresh management and a new outlook. If you are interested in the future of independent radio in Powell River, please attend the Riot for Radio event on Saturday March 21 at 8pm (details on back cover).

Source: Community Radio: Its Impact and Challenges to its Development—Working Group Report (October 9, 2007), Center for International Media Assistance—A project of the National Endowment for Democracy (Washington, D.C.)

ENGLESE 100—Dance of the Yew-neek Yew-nuck

by Eva van Loon

A recent US essay states that the degree of “lexical diversity” in a speech makes a difference in how intensely the audience listens. Apparently Clinton, McCain, and Obama during the recent election were “very unique” in crafting speeches “more different than others.”

Then, this yew-neekly horrible example of American Englese: “Using more different words forces the listener to more actively process.”

Only America can split an infinitive so magnificently!

Even the computer, a yew-neekly stupid instrument, suggested a right-click for grammar help when I typed that sentence. Just for fun, I right-clicked. Sure enough, Dumbo computer thought the sentence was a “fragment” and more or less politely suggested I revise it. (This so called grammar program couldn’t identify a verb if it waltzed across the screen, skirts flying, one hand on the subject’s shoulder and the other caressing the object of its affections.)

I’m beginning to think Englese is a eunuch. A yew-nuck is someone whose gonads are gone. To me, such careless botching of language, like this essay, leaves blood and phlegm on the page (along with fat red editing marks in my yew-neek handwriting). The language no longer gives birth to meaning. It’s just…a bloody mess.

Different in English is an adjective. Each adjective “takes” its favorite from the almost fifty prepositions standing around the edges of the language, longing to be asked to dance by some handsome adjective. In the old days of Standard English, little old from could always count on hunky different (look at those eyebrows on the effs!) to choose her. Nowadays, that cheap chick than sidles in there before frumpy from can flash her beau an answering eff.

If Englese wants to play cross-dressing games with conjunctions and prepositions, well, that may be just a sign of the times:

Englese: Canadian politicians are different than any others.

English: Canadian politicians are different from any others.

If America can elect a self-styled “mutt” as president and allow the odd same-sex marriage, can Englese dump from in favor of partnering than? Not on my linguistic dance floor—hearing different than is tantamount to the phonograph needle scraping across the vinyl.

From is yew-neek in her ability to partner different. She’s the one and only prep who fits with him, just as preposition with is always the partner for compatible. Can we really afford to mess with these yew-neek relationships?

Yew-neek (unique, for you fanatic spellers) means there’s only one, by the way. Calling something more unique or most unique is not merely a mathematical impossibility similar to being a little bit pregnant, or maybe slightly dead, but turns yew-neek into a yew-nuck—it loses its force.

Englese: Obama is very unique in crafting speeches more different than others.

English: Obama is unique in crafting speeches more varied than others.

Hey! Why did different change to varied in the English version?

It’s time to let out one of juicy little scandals of English.
There are quite a few adjectives who have done the same dastardly deed as different did, only to take little holidays in Englese, flirting with parts of speech they have no business playing with, like conjunctions: Different married from in a quiet civil ceremony many years ago. It seemed such a stable marriage until recently, when, like so many adjectives, different set out to prove he was no yew-nuck, but so far has succeeded in proving only that faithless is his second name.

Perhaps different is going through a mid-life crisis. His cousin, differ the verb, is still pure and strong, as in I beg to differ, but different doesn’t even bother to dress properly for work or play. Take these examples:

Englese: There’s different reasons for Obama’s lexical diversity. Using more different words forces the listener to more actively process.
English: There are several reasons for Obama’s lexical diversity.
Using more varied words forces the listener to process more actively.
“Different from what? More different from what?” screams Madame English on hearing Englese. “You’re so fuzzy! What do you mean? And what did you do with from? Leave her at home again? You…you monster!”

Sometimes Englese lets things go too far. Here’s a yew-neek reason to force different to bring his spouse, from, along with him in public—to prevent Englese from becoming a yew-nuck, a language incapable of spawning true meaning.

Notice we un-split the infinitive? These Englese verbs—no shame! Sitting around the language dance floor in short skirts, elbows on knees spread wide apart! Hold this aspirin firmly between the to and the verb, girls—didn’t Mama English ever teach you how to behave in public?

Here are the rules of the dance: (1) different always dances with from; (2) to doesn’t let any word get between her and her infinitive verb; (3) unique is a bare-naked lady who never wears modifiers, and (4) different is tired of being asked to dance in almost every sentence and wishes you would ask guys like varied, several, or all those bored numbers standing on the sidelines to do the job instead. Happy verbal dancing!

POETRY—Parallel: 49 Canadian Poets Speak to Obama

by The Live Poets' Guild

Powell River Live Poets’ Guild ventures in new directions with Parallel: Forty-nine Canadian poets speak to Obama. About five hundred Canadian poets were invited to a competition for poems that tell the new American president something essential about being Canadian. 



Poets famous, infamous, and unknown responded across the country. Governor-General’s Award winners and Poets Laureate mingle with poets who have never before revealed their verse. The variety and quality are high, says editor Eva van Loon. “I love this anarchic, populist project, not least because only rarely does the literary voice of Canada speak from the West. Tiny Powell River has the red-haired, swashbuckling gumption to try this on. Usually these initiatives come from Toronto or Montreal.”



Parallel will be the first book entirely digitally published and manufactured in Powell River. The Guild, which published its first book in 2008 as the Youth Peace-Poem Contest anthology PRIPPA 2008: Friendship Never Ends, wants to end dependence on out-of-community sources by starting local niche publishing. Parallel will be the first book along the learning curve.


“Some of these poems are heartbreakers and some are hilarious, “ says van Loon, who lilved in the US for a decade. “We’re asking our first, second, and third-round judges to try to put themselves in Obama’s shoes—or slippers, if the First Puppy hasn’t chewed those up—and consider which poems would speak to them about Canada and stick in their minds. That’s what sets this collection apart from any other collection of Canadian poetry. We are at a point in history when we must tell our enormous, powerful neighbor who we really are, and what our vision is. It would have been a waste of time to present the previous American administration with this collection. But this President may just listen—and hear.”



The Guild sent nine of the poems to Obama just before his Canadian visit and will send the book as a gift as soon as it comes off the press in the next two months. Powell Riverites will have first crack at buying a copy from the Guild’s website or at the still-to-be-announced book launch at $15 plus applicable taxes. “For once,” grins van Loon, “the rest of the country is going to have pay a little more—ferry costs, you see.”

WRITING—6th Annual Powell River Festival of Writers

by Barb Rees

Calling all writers—those who would like to get started writing, accomplished writers, or anyone who just loves books! We have a great deal for you:

Mar.27: Opening ceremonies 7:00-9:00 p.m. include winners of the writing contest, and Anthony Dalton spinning his stories from around the world, “Adventures of a Writer.” Doors open at 6:30 with a book fair, silent auction, and host bar. Adults:$10.children 18 and under free. Tickets available at Breakwater Books or by calling Barb: 604-485-2732

Mar.27: Public Library: 1:30-2:30 p.m. Sylvia Taylor will present a mini-version of her “Life Story Writing” workshop. No admission.

Mar.28: Two of BC’s best speaker/authors: Sylvia Taylor ,President of BC Federation of Writers, award -winning freelance writer, editor and speaker will teach memoir or family history writing, “Life Story Writing.: Finding the Extraordinary in the Ordinary.”

Anthony Dalton, National President of the Canadian Authors Association, author and British adventurer will present “Getting It Write” on why research is vital for all genres of writing. Spend the day surrounded by books and writers. Pre-registration required.

Writing contest open to all ages.

Deadline March 13.

Both the opening ceremonies and the workshops will be held at the CEP Local 76 Union Hall, 5814 Ash St., across from Dwight Hall in the townsite.

Registration, program, bios, and writing contest at: www.festivalofwriters.com

MEDIA—Independent Community Media-CJMP and Immanence-Independent and Sustainable?

by Corey Matsumoto and Eva van Loon

The recent uncertainty surrounding the future of CJMP 90.1 (JUMP FM) raises questions: Why is a free and open public forum for ideas, issues, and critical viewpoint so greatly under-utilised? Can JUMP FM be turned around to become a flourishing broadcast centre?

It occurs to us at Immanence that there are parallels between independent community radio and independent community print media What Bruce Girard, communications strategist and founder of comuica.org, said about community radio stations goes as well for us: they are community-based, independent, not for profit, pro-community, and participatory.

Could a symbiotic relationship between community and independent media be the key to their success and longevity? Community media face the challenge of survival in a well developed, billion-dollar advertising industry. Community media can also benefit from advertising, but ads that try to persuade people to act in ways contrary to the principles of community media compromise its role as an independent community voice. That can limit the scope of advertising. For community radio, the CRTC also dictates a maximum quantity of six minutes’ commercial advertising per hour, as well as requiring ownership by a non-profit organisation.

Structuring community radio in this way protects the station from editorial persuasion by advertisers as well as preserving the medium’s right to decide what it will air, even if material contradicts the interests of advertisers. The downside of this protection is the need that immediately arises—to find other revenue sources. Like community radio, Immanence, devoted to being a “safe room” for anyone to discuss and explore the re-invention of Powell River, enjoys a limited scope of ads—local businesses and organisations.

These potential advertisers are precisely those who suffer first when times turn hard. In a depressed economy, businesses looking for the best bang for a slashed advertising buck are less likely to choose independent media with their short signal range or low distribution rates. (At Immanence, of course, we consider our long-term exposure and low rates to be the best top-of-mind advertisement deal in town!).

But aren’t independent community media much too valuable to be left vulnerable to fluctuations in the economy?

By offering membership, independent community media can offer advertising and sponsorship rates affordable by even the smallest local businesses, with dual benefits: bringing in more ads (= revenue) while creating more rounded representation of the local business community.

JUMP FM does have a membership program in place, although not to full potential. But, before the station can build a strong community membership, it must provide enough quality programming to attract new members. It is not an easy dilemma. Could the first step be a benefit system to entice members?

Some organisations have met this challenge with amazing results. A community radio station based at the University of Calgary. (CJSW 90.9 FM), offers “Friends of CJSW” cards for a minimal annual fee that gives cardholders discounts at over 90 participating businesses. Shopping exclusively at participating businesses can save much more money over the course of a year than the cost of the card. (Indeed, even someone who never listens to CJSW might buy a card, just for the discounts.) Participating businesses benefit from increased consumer traffic flow, and thus increased sales.

Can this model can be adopted by community media and the local business community here in Powell River? A cross-marketing membership-based system tied to local independent media not only can strengthen our community financially, it can increase cohesion among local consumers, local businesses, and media.

The upcoming May/June 2009 issue of Immanence marks the magazine’s 2nd anniversary. To celebrate, we invite your feedback on the following proposed solutions to widen our scope of funding and thus strengthen our independent community voice:

A. “Immanence on Your Doorstep”—a subscription service aimed primarily at 1) those who value the content of the magazine and don’t want to miss an issue, 2) those living on the outskirts (or out) of town who seldom come across the magazine, and 3) those who want to share a piece of their Powell River community with out-of-town family and friends.

B. Business subscriptions—the difference from private subscriptions is that business subscribers receive substantial discounts on advertising within the magazine.

C. Membership-card program with mutual benefits between Immanence members and local businesses. Look for details in the May/June issue.

Immanence will continue to release the same number of copies with every issue. As the number of subscribers goes up, the number of free copies available goes down. The goal is to move primarily to a subscription-based distribution within two years.

To kick off the program, the first twenty subscribers to Immanence will receive “2008, A Year of Immanence”, an entire collection of issues published in 2008 along with a complete index of the nearly 200 articles and letters. The first five subscribers will also receive the 2007 collection, including a reprint of the rare inaugural issue published in June of 2007.

What do you think? Are we nutty or what? Contact us by emailing editor@immanence.ca or calling 604 414-4676 with comments or ideas of how independent community media can evolve.

FOOD

HEALTH

LEGAL EYES—Learning to be Dead

by Eva van Loon

Last year’s column on the desirability of creating a Civic Forest from Lund to Saltery Bay (“Fish Need TLC, Too”) didn’t exactly rock the corporate boat. “Good idea,” people yawned, and went right back to working on problems they can more or less control. The last thing many of us want to contemplate is setting up yet another public campaign for something government should really figure out for itself.

A year later, the ecological apocalypse that a Civic Forest would somewhat guard against has taken a giant step closer to our little community, where we foolishly imagined ourselves immune from at least the worst of worldly ills. It’s now frightening to hear a newscast, sanitised as it probably is. Some of us are beginning to face reality: we may not live to be a hundred; our children and grandchildren are in for a rough time—if they get much time at all.

The future ain’t what it used to be. For those of us over forty, life is beginning to resemble a salvage operation instead of legacy-building.

James Lovelock, of the Gaia Hypothesis, says this time has the feel of Europe just before WW II. People were not depressed, he says. The prospect of disaster engaged them and fostered a lively team spirit. Everywhere in the darkness of collapse gleamed the lights of courage and ingenuity and—dare we say it?—love.

A big gleam in our local darkness in the past year is the birth of the Malaspina Land Conservancy Society, midwifed by farsighted realtor Janet Alred.

Land conservancies are hot. They are proliferating in BC and across the country as a way for people to preserve their land and control its use beyond their own lives. And we don’t have to wait for government to get a brain in order to leave this legacy.

You can use your local land conservancy in several ways to ensure that your bit of forest, farm, or history never falls to the corporate ax. Attend a public presentation or visit or visit malaspinaland.org for the basic information. However, a conservancy is something you need to get right the first time—this is part of learning to be dead—and the fine-tuning process can take time.

What to do meanwhile? You’ve heard it before, and you didn’t want to think about it, but now it’s not such a gloomy prospect. Your will can repay Mother Earth for the life she lent you, with interest, if it contains well thought-out instructions for a conservancy on your land.

Guess what? Another gleam of light from Powell River: according to the Wills and Trusts subsection of the Canadian Bar Association in BC: our little old town is the first to declare a need for creating effective will clauses to help clients create land conservancies.

If this news doesn’t make you clap your hands, it’s probably a good thing you skipped law school, but know this cool fact about wills: you can change your mind about your will as often as you change the bedsheets. You can re-write your will until you get the legal equivalent of those tricky hospital corners just right. You can practise being dead—what a concept! Meanwhile, a will with conservancy instructions gives you peace of mind. If there is a forever, your land will form a part of it, just as it is today.

Why wait for spring? Do it now, while land and law are available.

NON FICTION—Heroines of Glorious Now

by Laura Dene McIntyre

I fought off a mountain lion yesterday. With rocks and sticks and my best girlfriend at my side, we fought it off together. It was creeping along behind us, slinking lithely as cats do, eavesdropping, curious, hungry.

With my feet stepping firmly on the forest floor, rain dripping from the cedar branches and from the tip of my nose, I was in my Temple. This is where I pray silently to the Universe, where I play on my days off and where I breathe peace.

The early March wind was softly gusting along the treetops, as usual.

We are nearly thirty and single, and we thought we were talking about how we would not let any more clown-boyfriends into our lives. We thought we were talking about being the main characters in our world, taking every lesson we’ve learned from our past and applying it to our present. This glorious present, where we were hiking in the unspoiled wilderness. The glorious present, where we felt the rain on our faces, where the characters who hurt us are just minor characters in the plot, people who entered our stage with the purpose of teaching us perhaps compassion, resilience, trust or courage. These characters can’t rule anything we don’t allow them to rule. I knew then I had shifted consciously into believing I am the one who gets to be the hero.

As we turned to return to the truck, we were caught in a limbo trance, staring straight into a lion’s eyes. She could have been tracking us the entire hour but she now crouched beside a fallen tree, five meters away. An iciness slipped over and around me as we realised what this meant. My father’s friend was killed by a mountain lion several years ago; these cats don’t hunt mice. We took turns bringing each other out of the depths as we slid in and out of frozen immobility.

As we thawed, we made ourselves look like one giant beast, holding onto the other’s arms, clutching and waving the biggest tree branches we could lift.

Yelling and bellowing, we had to remember what our Girl Guide leaders had taught us twenty years ago. The motto Be Prepared came to mind, and something about a reef knot. But underneath was an innate knowledge that we had to choose in this Glorious Moment not to be prey.

Holding eye contact with the awesome animal, we retreated slowly, continuously searching for anything to throw at her. She stepped forward with every step we took backward. Interestingly enough, our cell service worked in the backwoods, and we spoke to 911 to let someone know our deal. We were an hour from civilisation of any sort, fighting off a mountain lion with sticks and rocks. We were not going to be prey, nor the victim in this story. We would fight to the death if we had to. I was willing to kick that pussy’s ass and I was not going down without a fight.

I scanned the trail for rocks and found nothing. Sandra found a large stone and hurled it at her, and she eased away slightly. For fifteen minutes she stepped forward, staring me in the eye, daring me to survive this.

Stumbling backwards down the trail, we faced her head on, hurling chunks of wood and waving the logs in the air. We were yelling such profanities that my uncles, the potty-mouth loggers, would have swept tears of pride from their cheeks. Shaking and near exhaustion, we pretended to be the bravest heroes we’d ever heard about. Our cat eventually stalked away into the mossy distance, leaving us to live our lives like the heroines we know we are.

RCMP gunfire echoed in the distance as the day drew darker. When officers arrived to escort us out, we had been alone for over an hour on a slippery wooden bridge. We had our collection of stones and branches for protection, and we were watching over our shoulders into the deep underbrush. At last, we were able to exhale.

Shivering as rain seeped through my layers, I quietly observed the magnitude and fragility of my life. I sifted through the pieces of my story that I want to hold onto, and looked closely at the ones I want to let go of. If I can fight off a mountain lion, I can unleash the ghosts from my heart into the depths of the rainforest. Thank you, feline Goddess of the Backcountry for allowing me to fight for my life, for allowing me to be my own heroine, right now.

ESOTERICA—The Age of Aquarius

by Michelle Lea McCann

The earth’s revolution around the sun means that the astrological signs run backwards from our vantage point. The Piscean Age is slipping away and it is crucial as we enter the Aquarian Age that the “old world” energy dissolve—be it through cleansing, purging, confusion or chaos. Each Age is about 26,000 years; so there is a cusp, or overlap, when we look at it from the perspective of linear time.

It is important to look at the differences in the times of the signs. In the Piscean Era we have all of human history, so far as we know, for 26,000 years. To name a few examples of the Piscean era’s major moments: Jesus, music, painting, art, poetry, wars—and mass self-deception. Illusions abounded and history is peppered with instances of OOPS! it seemed like a good idea at the time! instances. The thing about Pisces is, the energy is quite dramatic, fantastical and not always realistic. Its symbol is the two fish swimming in opposing directions going in endless circles. If we look at history the cyclical nature of dreams, dramas and destruction is apparent: there have been many “spiritual” yet self-satisfying power struggles.

The sign Aquarius is said to be the sign of astrology itself. The quantum paradigm shift that we have made in the last thirty years has been evidence of the influence. The fact is, the Planet Uranus means business in a crazy, magical, playful way. This is the big time—the Revolution of Evolution. It’s like Quantum to the Sciences; it’s the PSI research to the esoteric; it’s the myth to the mystical; it is metaphor to the inane. This Aquarian spirit will help to bring the love and intellectual balance Beauty, truth, empowerment, humanitarianism will rise again within us all. The genius, the magician, and the mad scientist are all part of the New Earth Energy.

The planet Uranus is thought of as a bit of an angry and unpredictable planet, and the changes can seem violent to some. Most of the world is aware of a transformation taking place in the whole matrix. In the age of Aquarius we will really prove that we should be allowed to stay and be safe, living in love and sharing in harmony with one another. We have the heart, and it’s thanks to all the drama of the Piscean era being so blatantly; well, dramatic and so fantastically creative, that we are now finally too smart to &*#@ it up again.

Getting into Astrology is a good idea if you wish to make the most of this magical powerful energy. For all its humanitarianism and benevolence, this energy has the power to rise above anything imaginable, but if the energy isn’t dealt with mindfully…. Well, I think we all know an Aquarian or two who can serve as examples of lost or long-dormant, huge potential, maybe some who just keep stubbornly working their power against themselves... Many Aquarians will get it together in a huge way; the culmination of many years will make sense as there are cusps in the ages just as with personal birth charts, .particularly the dates that fall near the ending and beginning dates of the signs.

The actual event of the date of the Age of Aquarius has now occurred for real; so there are a lot of surprises in store for us and it’s up to us to bring what we wish into our experience. The water bearer holds the urn that is in the constellation Aquarius. It is said to be the liquid intelligence pouring out of the Urn; it is said to be a distribution enough for all. The sky is not the limit; there is infinite supply and abundance with this intellectual, playful, friendly, generous energy, without question. Perfect timing, don’t you think?

Michelle Lea McCann is available for private psychic readings and teaches basic Astrology for beginners.
Next workshop: March 21st from 2–5:30pm at Breakwater Books. Space is limited! $60.00 per class
Ph: 485-4041, 483-8019 or e: aquamich8@hotmail.com

RETHINK—Local Currency Systems

by Corey Matsumoto

Cash has been king of Canada’s economic system since the gold standard was abandoned in 1931. However, in the current economic climate we have a problem with cash—a system-wide lack of it. In a depressed economy, cash disappears but the skilled people remain, revealing a growing disparity between the value we hold in our wallets and the value we hold as creative, productive members of our community. The resulting cheapening of human resources can devastate the morale of a community as persons rich in skills and creativity head to the food bank, while shopkeepers slash prices, with disheartening results.

Many of our financial difficulties are virtually out of our control. Globalisation has forced us to relinquish control to outside forces. U.S. lobby groups influence our provincial government to the detriment of our wood and paper mills, placing higher value on BC’s raw-log exports than to value-added products that would provide us with desperately needed jobs. Energy bills are going up, but the government seems set on privatising our hydro power for American-backed corporate profit despite the lessons learned from sky-rocketing energy prices in de-regulated California. Fractional-reserve banking allows banks to mint money out of thin air and then charge interest for it, resulting in the proliferation of predatory loans, which in turn result in mass defaults and bankruptcy.

Ironically, yet another cause of financial difficulty in our community is an economic system that leads to out-of-town shopping in higher-density markets, resulting in economic hari-kari as local businesses falter.

These and many other out-of-control factors that define our faulty economic system are robbing us of prosperity. It is just so easy to throw our hands up in the air in despair (or just throw up!).

There are, however, ways for communities to take back some control of their economy. Either by force or forethought, rather than simply falling victim to the system, many communities around the world have boldly taken action by instituting their own local currency.

Local currencies can rebuild local economies by simplifying complex barter-like transactions, empowering individuals to re-attach economic value to themselves and their skills. More importantly, they afford an alternative system of payment in an economy with sluggish cash flow.

A legal local currency can be created by any organisation, business or individual. In times of crisis, even local, regional, or national governments throughout the world have instituted local currencies, which have a long history going back to before the Great Depression.

Although federal currency is conveniently universally accepted for face value everywhere, local currency has value only to merchants and individuals within the community who choose to accept it. This is the underlying purpose of creating local currencies—keeping money flowing within the community. Effective local currencies stimulate local economies because they are non-interest-bearing and thus never go up in value; however, they are still tied to the inflationary national currency, resulting in a currency that is best circulated rapidly rather than hoarded.

Local currency is not meant to replace national currency completely; rather, it runs parallel to it. Businesses and individuals trading in local currency are still liable for GST, PST and income tax but these liabilities must be paid in federal currency of equal value. To make the system work, most participating businesses require partial payment in federal currency to ensure monies are available for these taxes and expenses not payable in local currency.

In western Canada, the communities of Salt Spring Island, Nelson, and Calgary have all instituted their own local currencies. Kirti Bhadresa, a co-ordinator with Calgary Dollars (C$), states that approximately eighty thousand dollars’ worth of C$ is in circulation throughout the city. C$ can be used to purchase hundreds of different products and services from individuals and participating businesses (including Calgary Transit). Participants get C$20 just for signing up to the program. Monthly C$ community-potluck markets provide opportunities to network with other participants and provide more access to the currency through the selling of hand-made goods or other items in C$.

The inspiration for Calgary Dollars came from Ithaca, New York, where a local currency (named Ithaca Hours) has been in circulation since 1991. This groundbreaking system took a step further by offering interest-free loans to businesses and individuals in Ithaca Hours, with the stipulation that all funds are spent within six months and repaid within a year.

So what is needed to get a similar system happening here in Powell River?

Robin Morrison of Wellness Energy Services was a Business Coordinator with Calgary Dollars for 3 years before moving to Powell River in the winter of 2005. She advises that an alignment with a non-profit organization with access to core funding from the United Way or similar foundation is needed, and that there is also a need to hire a coordinator with a variety of skill sets in community development, marketing, self-employment, small-biz ownership—and a big interest in making the world a better place.

With over 2,500 local-currency systems operating throughout the world, including extremely successful models in our own country, establishing a local-currency system here in Powell River is not a far-fetched idea. In these days of financial trouble, regaining as much control over our local economy as we can would seem a priority.

Local currency may seem a big leap for Powell River: fundamental changes must be made at the local level and within our collective psyche. Perhaps we need to make a few smaller first steps towards instituting bartering as a standard way of life. Encouraging every single household to save seeds and grow food—if only one or two garden vegetables, would encourage barter among neighbours. We’ll begin to rediscover community and realise the power we have within us to save ourselves.

Cover Article—Growth

I worry through this Spring, usually the season of glad growth. Amid the familiar joys of burgeoning warmth, the perfume of fresh green shoots, and the welcome sight of deciduous trees getting decently dressed once more, I worry. My feet as always love the rediscovery of resilient dirt beneath them; yet heart and brain fret together, over thoughts no generation has ever thought before.

Hearing that the mason bees are out, I check the nest under the eaves and, sure enough, some have chewn their way out of their adobe condominiums to find a new life. This is joy…but I worry. They live only three weeks. There’s mud for them now in the yard, but no flowers. The ancient apple, the crippled cherry, and the teenage plum slumber on, leaves and blossoms as tightly furled as tomorrow. Nothing yet blooms—how will my bees survive?

I want to cry. I might be wrong; I might be right—it doesn’t matter. My hungry bees are a microcosm of the farmer’s hell—that sinking sense of powerlessness before nature. As climate change wreaks transformations, we stand to face legions of unconquerable alterations in patterns of growth, grueling tests of our ingenuity and endurance, beyond the imaginations of all our forebears.

Spring used to be the season of hope, of renewed confidence in the expansive and forgiving wisdom of the planet. Now we listen anxiously to the news: was the cold snap long enough to kill off the pine beetle? Is the water table back up? Will the snow packs last till August, as they should? Are crops flowering and fruiting as planned? Even members of the Black Thumb Club, like me, figure we’d better try our hands at growing something, even if it’s just potatoes, if we are seriously interested in survival.

Growth is a value for our culture. It seems naturally paired with creativity, hope, patience, and courage. We talk of “boosting” the economy, of “growing” a culture or business, of multiplying, expanding, franchising, globalising. We describe the success of our nations in GNP—Gross National Product—and crow with joy when our money is worth more, when our sales are higher, when we achieve the goal first. Bigger is better. Faster is better. Higher, stronger and longer are better. Every day in every way, we are getting better and better. We are “upwardly mobile”. There need be no end to “smart growth”.

Physics, the implacable science, will slam the door of this linear thinking in our faces faster than any other branch of human thought. Study chaos theory, even just a little, and it dawns on you that everything in existence has a story, a narrative with a development stage, a crisis, and a denouement. Including us, the smart-ass apes who for an embarrassing number of centuries fooled ourselves into thinking we were somehow beyond nature, somehow in control of this little rock sailing crookedly around a minor star.

Oh my goodness! The concept of growth abruptly shrinks to a much smaller concept. Growth is part of the development stage of a story. The alarming part for those of us now alive is that degrowth (new word—get used to it) happens in the denouement, which is always a very short part of any good story.

Consider: other than the Catholic Church, what human culture has taken more than a few centuries to tell its tale? Everything, including human culture, emerges, waxes, wanes, and ends. To pretend to eternity is to cheat oneself of fragile, temporal joys. Remember what Faust says to the present moment, thus inviting the deal with the devil which seals his doom: “Oh, stay! Thou art so fair!” It doesn’t work that way. Love the present moment as you will, you cannot make it last.

It’s instructive to study positive feedback loops in chaos theory. The word positive does not imply anything nice: it means merely that the loop keeps adding to itself to make an even bigger loop next time around. Eventually the positive feedback loop gets so big and heavy, feeding on itself, that it collapses the entire structure from which it sprang and to which it returns. When the structure collapses, all is chaos. It feels like chaos. There is a pattern about to be born but as yet invisible—small comfort to those drowning in a suddenly incomprehensible world.

Whether you are studying economics, politics, literature, or science, you are studying positive feedback loops. The sense of many students now is that of impending climax and chaos. The many might be right, or wrong. The question is the same in every discipline: is this loop the last positive feedback loop before the crash, or can we stave that off for one more cycle?

The cautious recognise that nature is the only timekeeper, and we strange, proud little mammals have problems reading the clock. The cautious among us have already decided that we may as well act as if this feedback loop is the final one, as there is no downside. Indeed, there are comforts to be found in the end of growth. Anyone whose livelihood depends on the philosophy of endless growth, such as trucking, housing, or gas-vehicle manufacture, will suffer until new patterns emerge out of need, such as solar power and local industry and culture.

Stop the linear thinking now and jump ahead. True, things are not getting better and better, but neither need they grow worse and worse. Under all the pain, new patterns are forming. Find a bit that suits you, and drag it into the light of spring…to grow anew.

OPEN SOURCE—News and Opinions

BC VOTE—BC STV–The Basics

BC-STV, or “BC—ingle transferable vote” was recommended overwhelmingly by the BC Citizens’ Assembly in 2005 as the best method for electing politicians here in BC. The Citizens’ Assembly was a group of randomly chosen ordinary voters (politicians and party organisers were excluded) who spent a year studying systems from around the world and touring BC to listen to their fellow citizens. In choosing the best system, they focused on 3 key values:

1. fairness in representation (if a party gets 24% of the vote, it should get that many seats);
2. local representation (every voter should have an MLA who represents their views); and
3. more voter choice (voters should have more than one candidate from each party to choose from).

It’s clear that values 1 and 3 are not delivered by “First-Past-the-Post”, our current system. Even #2 is only partly fulfilled: right now, MLAs typically win with 40-50% of the vote. This means that 50-60% of the voters do not have a local MLA who supports their values—they are not represented.

BC-STV fixes this using the following features:

1. multi-member ridings—more than one MLA per electoral riding
2. a preferential ballot—voters rank the candidates using 1, 2, 3...instead of marking “x”s;
3. a counting system that makes as many votes as possible go to electing an MLA.

Multi-member ridings mean proportional results and better local representation. In a 4-MLA riding, if 50% of the voters support a particular party, they will elect only 2 MLAs. The other 2 MLAs will be from other parties. So, many more voters get an MLA from a party they support. (Under BC-STV, there is no increase in the number of MLAs, so to have multi-member ridings, the ridings must be bigger.) Having more than a single MLA gives voters more choice as well as more accountable government.

Because more MLAs are elected in a riding, the ballot will be longer, resembling a municipal election ballot. Larger parties will run 2 or 3 candidates per riding. Voters rank as many candidates as they please. This means that there is open competition among candidates of the same party, and underperforming MLAs can be voted out even if their party is popular. The counting system makes sure that every vote counts. It takes the same number of votes to elect every MLA in every riding – about 20,000. If you vote for a candidate who does not win, your vote transfers to your second choice. If you vote for a candidate who wins 25,000 votes, the extra votes are divided evenly among the supported candidates, and these “partial votes” transferred to supporters’ second choices to help elect someone else. The counting system may sound complex, but can be done by hand in a few hours (in seconds, by computer). Most importantly, the counting system removes the need for “strategic voting”.

The STV voting system has been in use for over 100 years. It is used in Ireland, Scotland, Australia, and elsewhere around the world.

BC-STV will change provincial politics. It is a very fair system, chosen by citizens, for citizens.

For more information visit the following web sites:
www.citizensassembly.bc.ca/public
www.bcstv.tv
www.bcstv.blogspot.com
www.stv.ca

Raging Grannies’ interpretation of STV

(use the tune of “Darling Clementine“)

Do you feel unrepresented
when the vote count is complete,
and your party lost by inches
and is left without a seat?

Try a new way, for the old way
doesn’t give an equal voice
to the voters disenfranchised
who had made a different choice.

If the seats were in proportion
to percentage of the vote,
there would be an opposition
and the winners couldn’t gloat.

All would have to work together
on the passage of each bill.
No more trampling of opinion;
build a democratic will.

In proportion, in proportion,
in proportion to the vote—
we would all be represented;
keep democracy afloat.

EVENTS—Ability First: Employment for Persons with Disabilities

Everyone wants to have some impact on the world; to change things for the better or simply to create something of value to others. This can translate into producing a work of art or an excellent loaf of bread, or into providing efficient service in a check-out aisle. Whatever people’s social class, age, and physical or cognitive ability, using an acquired skill toward greater goals is a deep human need. While employment can take many forms, it is the dramatic effect that work can have on increasing the quality of life for everyone—including persons with disabilities—that remains unquantifiable. It’s in this spirit that The Powell River Measuring Up Committee for Accessibility and Inclusion will host the free lunchtime event Ability First! A Community Gathering on Employment for Persons with Disabilities on May 26, 2009 from 11 am to 2 pm (snacks provided) in the Powell River Recreation Complex’s Cedar Room (upper level).

This event will bring together local organisations like Career Link, Triumph Vocational Services, The Model Community Project for Persons with Disabilities, The Powell River Association for Community Living, and government agencies providing support to clients with visible or invisible disabilities or barriers to employment and to their employers. It is a delicate and individualised process that is helping us to meet R.H Claude Richmond’s “10 by 10 Challenge”:

“Today, there are about 300,000 working-age people with disabilities in B.C. […] they are highly motivated & dedicated individuals! 34,000 have college diplomas, 30,000 have trade certificates and 28,000 have university degrees. We issued the ‘10 by 10 Challenge’—calling on municipal & business leaders across the province to increase employment of people with disabilities in each community by 10% by the year 2010 […] to increase the number of British Columbians with disabilities in the workforce by 13,000 by 2010.”

Ability First! will feature presentations and information booths covering diverse topics that will be of interest to businesses and to the general public such as: the use of Plain Language in the workplace; the seven principles of Universal Design; a look at assistive technologies; government assistance and incentive programs for employers who hire persons with disabilities; case studies showing our community’s accomplishments, and ideas on how to increase access and inclusion of persons with disabilities in the workplace and beyond. Door prizes will be awarded at the end of this event.

For more information on this event, please visit http://prability.org. The Measuring Up Committee’s web site is at: http://powellriver.wordpress.com. For more information on the “10 by 10 Challenge” visit: http://10by10challenge.gov.bc.ca

The Ability First! gathering is funded through a grant from The Vancouver Foundation.

MUSIC—Elke and JP return to Powell River

One year ago, singer-songwriter Elke Robitaille and bass player JP Downer, kicked off day one of their eighteen week long tour with a full crowd at Local Loco’s.

Over 18,000 miles and 4 months later, the gypsy folk duo had graced venue stages in more than 60 cities across the US and Canada.

Traveling through mountain ranges, vast prairies, dry deserts, and along twisting coastlines, Robitaille was greatly inspired by her experiences and surroundings.

“Traveling has always been an amazing inspiration for my songwriting process. You meet a lot of new people, and there are experiences you share. There is so much to see and you draw from it all. You learn a lot about yourself and you grow as a person and an artist. I’ve always enjoyed writing songs under these circumstances.”

After completing the tour, Elke and JP decided to take a break and settle down for a while in Portland, Oregon.

With a plethora of inspiration from life on the road, Elke began writing many new songs, as well as finalising some un-finished works with a helpful new perspective. Elke and JP teamed up with engineer Adam Pike and began recording Flowers in the City in November, 2008, at Toadhouse in Portland.

Together the duo had the foundation of acoustic guitar, bass and vocals, but they wanted a fuller sounding album.

“We were very lucky to be able to collaborate with some amazingly talented musicians in Portland,” says Robitaille. “The album [Flowers in the City] includes drums, piano, cello, and banjo, among other instruments.”

In March, 2009, the album went into mixing and mastering, followed by duplication. “We are so pleased with the way this new CD has turned out and I’m very excited for it to be released.”

Elke’s discography spans from 2002 to 2009, with 3 full-length studio albums released through her own indie label, Rag Veda Records.

Flowers in the City is the brand new 2009 release. The CD includes 10 songs and features a strong mix of folk, pop, rock, and even bluegrass. This album showcases some of Elke’s best songwriting to date and is sure to be a favorite for folk fans everywhere.

Elke and JP will have a CD Release Party at McKinney’s Pub in Powell River on Saturday, May 23rd. Flowers in the City will be available for $15 along with other merchandise and fun giveaways!

www.elkemusic.com www.myspace.com/elkemusic

ART—Hunger for Light and Hope

by Skye Morrison

I want to take responsibility for what I create. I can no longer be careless with my words, thoughts, actions, or paintbrush.

I believe that we have chosen the most challenging and exciting time to be alive on this planet. Humanity is being called to rise, and that is now an urgent matter. Every aspect of our lives is being shaken, and we are becoming aware of our careless impacts on the Earth and one another.

Although today is arguably a difficult time, I believe it is even more an evolving time. We are at the threshold of boundless possibilities. I want to shine a light, to connect to those around me through honesty and awakening, to celebrate this fantastic adventure.

Maybe I am making it harder for myself by not capitalizing on the morbidity of popular media. But then, aren’t we all ready for something different? Ready to release the judgments of an outlived sorrow? I believe we are hungry for light and hope.

I humbly offer you your own reflection: one of a healing humanity, one of a sublime divinity.

After an inspiring winter of living and painting on Maui, Autumn Skye has returned home to BC with nine new paintings. In this body of work she explores sacred geometry, divine essence, and the beauty of the human form. These new works, and others, will be showing at Bemused Bistro (4623 Marine Ave) from May 10th until June 7th. There will be an opening reception on Sunday, May 10th from 7-9pm.

FASHION—The Sow’s Ear and the Silk Purse…

From times of rationing during the Depression, when women saved each usable patch of cloth for new purposes, to the recent times of ravenous consumption and disposability, fashion has run the gamut over the past century. Over the last decade or two, we’ve seen a new fashion trend: even those who can afford a closetful of ever-changing, trendy, new, disposable garments are choosing something different—to re-vamp, re-cycle, re-use and re-envision. Thankfully, Shaunie Yates and The Sow’s Ear and the Silk Purse are here to make life a little easier for the textile-disinclined.

Shaunie’s grandmother used to say, “You can’t make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear.” In other words, you can’t make something beautiful out of a tattered scrap of fabric; when it’s done, it’s done. From that adage, or in spite of it, came the ideals and the name of The Sow’s Ear and the Silk Purse. Handspun fibers, vintage pieces and tattered scarps are re-envisioned into exciting new creations full of charm and memories.

Starting in the Seventies, weaving on a traditional backstrap loom in Guatemala, Shaunie has studied and sold her medium in many locations, including Canadian venues such as the Banff School of Fine Arts and the University of Manaioba, Circle Craft of Vancouver and Powell River’s Artique, to name only a few.

Shaunie talks intently about fibers, weaving, colours and textures. She allows the fibers to teach her as she works them. “Each piece is like a painting, almost impossible to reproduce. The materials are the guide: they say, ‘I will ruffle this much; I keep a sharp edge; I will stick to this but not to that.’”

Shaunie talks about the art of getting dressed in the morning and the power of fashion. When we get dressed, we think about what colours we want around us, what textures we want next to our skin, and what we want to say to the world today. Perhaps not everyone feels this kind of connection to the fibers and textiles worn everyday but it is an important, tangible means of daily self-expression.

As we know, with many artistic disciplines we learn the basics of a craft by building layers of knowledge and complexity, before there comes a point where we take ourselves to the next level of understanding. Mastery is in the deconstruction and simplification of the craft. Creations of The Sow’s Ear and the Silk Purse can be witnessed and purchased at Artique Artists’ Co-Operative on Marine Ave, Powell River.

BOOKS—New Publication from Local Teacher, Painter, & Printer

“This story was inspired by Dr. Seuss, his Lorax, and the friends of Eagle River. It is dedicated to life...lost, displaced, and affected by the trashing of special places.” So reads the inscription of the new story, Way back in Time When the Forests Were Green.

A year ago, Earth Day, local elementary teacher Anne Howey was moved to create a local version of Seuss’s timeless tale of environmental waste. Anne is a second-generation Powell Riverian who, as a youth, explored endlessly the area’s forests, rivers and beaches. I was happy to be asked to illustrate the book. I thought it a nice match for a style I’ve developed for my hand-painted cards, using acrylic paint under ink.

After deciding to donate the proceeds to conservation efforts, we designed something small, with the lightest footprint possible, to spread the message. Luckily, local media guru Corey Matsumoto prints right here in town, exclusively on recycled stock, like the magazine you are holding. (Next step—renewable tree-free paper!)

One year after the project’s inception, a standing-room-only crowd took in a reading and toasted the book at its launch on Sunday, April 19th, at Bemused Bistro, where the original illustrations are now on display. For just $10, you can get your own copy of the book. This is a handsome little book, perfect for mailing.

POETRY—Youth Peace Poem Contest

In only its second year in Powell River, the Youth Peace Poem Competition, hosted by the Powell River Live Poets; Guild and running parallel with the International Peace Poem Project in the US, attracted more participants than in 2008, and nearly filled the Max Cameron Theatre for an Awards Ceremony.

About two hundred acknowledgments of the students’ fine work were given out. Nine or ten students braved the onstage microphone to read their own work, including peace poems in French and English read by students from École Cȏte du Soleil, appearing together onstage. Ms. Gesell and Ms. Evans’ Edgehill class performed their couplets in a group choral work they put together to express youth’s preference for peaceful home life involving friends, family, pets, and the outdoors. Local poet Allan Brown spoke to the students and their families about the experience of having a life in poetry. Ms. Barb Rees of the Powell River Festival of Writers was pleased to award the top three winners, whose poems appear below, a pass to next year’s writers’ conference along with the generous cash prizes from the First Credit Union: $200 for first place, $100 for second, and $50 for third.

The second-place winner, Zoey Schutz, wrote in from Sechelt. As the only out-of-jurisdiction entrant, she was included with local Grade Sevens and did very well. Next year she hopes to take part in a separate competition on the Lower Sunshine Coast.

The second Powell River International-Peace-Poem Anthology (PRIPPA 2009) will publish all the winning poems and honorable mentions in a handsome book published and manufactured entirely in Powell River. The expected price per copy is $15. Anyone can order using the form on page 16.

Grand Prize Winners
Group Winners

TRANSITION—Powell River: Transition Town in the Making

The Transition movement is a grass-roots, bottom-up community response to the combined challenges of climate change, resource depletion (including “peak oil”) and economic instability. It started in the UK several years ago and has been spreading by leaps and bounds ever since. There are currently 159 official transition initiatives in 14 countries and many more communities thinking about becoming Transitioners. Transition Initiatives work towards rebuilding the resilience of their communities to climate change, energy crises, and shocks to the economy.

Transition Initiatives are based on four key assumptions:
1. life with dramatically lower energy consumption is inevitable, and that it’s better to plan for it than to be taken by surprise;
2. our settlements and communities presently lack the resilience to enable them to weather the severe energy shocks that will accompany peak oil;
3. we have to act collectively, and we have to act now;
4. by unleashing the collective genius of the whole community to creatively and proactively design our energy descent, we can build ways of living that are more connected, more enriching, and more cognizant of the biological limits of our planet.

Almost all local-development plans and government plans are based on the assumption that climate change won’t happen for a long time, if ever, and energy prices will remain low. The Transition movement is an attempt to design abundant pathways down from peak oil, to generate new stories about what might be waiting for us at the end of the descent, and to put resilience-building back at the heart of any plans we make.

Transition Powell River (TPR) is an independent community-action project which will encourage, rather than compete with, similar projects, seeking to work in partnership with individuals, local groups, businesses and City Council. We want to engage our whole community in finding and implementing practical alternatives to our fossil-fuelled and energy-intense lifestyles, and to foster the idea that everyone can make changes which matter, right now, without waiting for unknown experts or government to do it for us. This gives us the best opportunity to develop locally what our communities actually need, and improve the resilience of the area as a whole. The aim is to re-localise our town, making it vibrant, resilient and truly sustainable.

What’s special about Transition Initiatives?
• Transition initiatives are proactive. Rather than reacting to actions by others (government, business etc) and saying what we don’t want, Transition initiatives work out what we DO want and exactly how to get there.
• Transition initiatives are inclusive. Everyone will be affected by climate change and peak oil, and only by involving all of us will we come up with the most innovative, effective and practical ideas, and have the energy and skills to carry them out. Transition doesn’t seek to blame, to point fingers, or to emphasise difference.
• Transition initiatives are positive! While there’s plenty of doom and gloom to go around, it’s possible that the future with less oil could be preferable to the present, if we plan sufficiently in advance with imagination and creativity. We focus on the positive benefits of the changes we’re trying to bring about rather than the terrible consequences of worst-case climate and energy scenarios.

Interested in becoming a member of the Transition Initiative steering group?
A meeting is to be held on Wednesday 20th May, 7pm. This first meeting is intended to bring together people who might be interested in forming a steering group to get Transition Powell River started.
RSVP to Kevin Wilson at 483–9052 or transitionpowellriver@gmail.com for location (to be determined by RVSP volume). For more info visit: http://transitionpowellriver.wordpress.com

FOOD—A Food Policy Charter for Powell River?

by David Parkinson

What is a food policy charter? What will it do for us? How can we get one?

A food policy charter—food charter, for short—is a document which expresses the attitudes and hopes of a town, city, or region towards food and people’s relationships to it. Generally, a food charter starts from the recognition that even in a society like ours which prides itself on its fair treatment of its most vulnerable members, not everyone can afford to eat well or has access to the knowledge or skills needed to eat well. Alongside the honest accounting of the weaknesses of the current food system, there will be a more positive reckoning of the aspects of the region which already support food security: farming, gardening, food banks, community kitchens, low-cost community dinners, and so on.

Building from that recognition—both positive and negative—of where we’re at, the food charter will develop along lines familiar to anyone who has participated in the creation of Powell River’s regional Sustainability Charter: plenty of meetings, consultations, and probably a lot of lively conversation and maybe a bit of controversy along the way. These meetings and conversations are aimed at developing a regional vision which states where we would like to be in five, ten, or twenty years. From that grand vision, we can formulate more specific goals and objectives, and then work backwards to develop a set of policies and actions which, we hope, can accomplish those goals and objective, and eventually move us closer towards our vision. Some policies can be assigned to our local governments, and some can be assigned to community groups and associations of people who want to accomplish specific tasks.

Plenty of towns and cities throughout North America have developed, or are developing, a food charter: Toronto, Vancouver, Victoria and the Capital Region, Kamloops, Hazelton, Kaslo, and others. There is talk of a BC food charter, which individual communities can sign onto. But on the Upper Sunshine Coast, we might want to think about developing our own charter. Why not?

So what is our vision? What is your vision?

If you ask me, any regional food charter should start from the recognition that this part of the world used to be highly self-reliant in food. Powell River and its environs used to ship out excess food to steamers and ships plying the coastal waters. We have astounding potential for becoming a world leader in local production and eating, and there are already many little projects and initiatives which point in the direction of a stronger and more self-reliant local food economy: the 50-mile diet; the Open Air Market and other smaller markets; the work that our local Farmers’ Institute has put into defending our right to produce meat and slaughter it here; the community and demonstration gardens popping up all over; and so on. But we need policies which support the return to self-reliance.

Here are some of the concrete policies suggested by Michael Ableman in the March 19, 2009, episode of Deconstructing Dinner. Ableman is one of BC’s precious human resources in the struggle to become more food-secure, and his ideas are pretty good ones:

• Every urban area should have an urban agricultural centre, offering practical assistance in urban food production and support for making these activities economically viable;
• These centres should support urban agriculture on all scales, from containers to rooftops to acreages, with a particular focus on fundamental sources of protein and carbohydrates (i.e., grains, beans, eggs, dairy);
• Urban areas should have agricultural extension agents on their staffs offering workshops, classes, and on-site technical support and help in agricultural marketing; • Organic waste should be returned to farms via large-scale composting operations;
• All permits for new housing developments should require that space be set aside for food production;
• All new office, retail, and warehouse projects must contain a rooftop farming component, with greenhouses that use the building’s spent heat;
• All municipalities should immediately phase out lawns (uh oh, controversy!);
• All existing schools, churches, and sports facilities should provide cooperative neighbourhood canning, freezing, and dehydration services to the community;
• All real estate transactions should include a 1% farmland preservation tax and the lands preserved should be put under covenants which protect their status as agricultural land;
• Municipalities should offer property tax credits for landowners who turn their property over to long-term food-growing initiatives.

If you are interested in being part of a conversation about a regional food charter, please contact me at fsp@prepsociety.org.

HEALTH—Mighty Minty to the Rescue

Peppermint, whose Latin name is mentha piperita, is a helpful agent in cases of stomach flu, nausea and indigestion. Peppermint oil relaxes the smooth muscles of the bowel, while its antibacterial properties fight the flu. Peppermint prevents gas and increases the action of bile in the body while alleviating the nasty sinus headache that often accompanies stomach flu. A well recognized folk remedy for over 200 years, mentha piperita can be differentiated from other types of mint by the purple color on the underside of the leaf.

The best time to harvest this plant is right before it flowers. As with most herbs, it is best when fresh, and the high content of volatile oil in peppermint proscribes boiling. To make a peppermint infusion, first let the water in your kettle sit for a few minutes after boiling. Next, pour the hot water over the herb and steep, covered, for 5-7 minutes. Strain and enjoy your peppermint tea!

Peppermint leaves can be chewed raw or added to ice cubes as a refreshing digestive aid. This helpful herb can even treat people with gallstones or gallbladder inflammation, and can be taken in capsule form to heal itchy skin from the inside out.

Recently my children and I came down with the stomach flu, and peppermint essential oil became an invaluable aid. By adding 10 drops of peppermint oil and 5 drops of tea-tree oil to a spray bottle, I made an aromatic mister to freshen up the room which doubled as a sanitizing spray to wipe down any messes near the vomit bowl. Some peppermint essential oil straight onto the bedtime stuffed toy served to relieve night-time nausea (if you do this, be sure to warn children not to hold the toy directly to the face or eyes). Caution: do not use peppermint oil undiluted on the skin; do not put in the bath; and do not use on infants under one year old.

My son had a cotton ball with peppermint oil poking through the button hole of his coat to help with nausea while outdoors. His coat still smells like peppermint! Peppermint combines well with other herbs. Mix peppermint with elder-flower and lemon-balm to take warm in cases of fever. Combine valerian root with peppermint to soothe the stomach and act as a safe and gentle sedative.

Here’s a combination that works well as Tummy Tea: Peppermint and young, fresh blackberry leaves. Steep for 5-10 minutes, add a few drops of Oregon-grape-root tincture, and sweeten with a little honey.

Fennel, mullein, calendula. chamomile (as a weak tea), marshmallow root, Oregon-grape root, and raspberry leaves are some other helpful herbs for tummy troubles. Young blackberry leaves, having an astringent effect on the system, can be especially helpful when diarrhea happens.

Ulmus fulva, slippery-elm bark, is safe to use on babies over 6 months of age. Powdered slippery-elm can be made into a gruel when no other food can be taken by mouth. It is also available in lozenge form. Add slippery elm to a small glass of water and sip slowly. Slippery elm also helps soothe itchy skin when added directly to bath water. Do not take slippery elm when taking prescription meds, however.

Zingiber officianalis, otherwise known as ginger, can enhance the activity of other herbs, this makes it an excellent herb for combinations. Ginger increases digestion and helps ease nausea. It is a good idea to keep some candied ginger on hand to ease nausea and raise the blood-sugar level after a puking session.

For foods that are easy on the tummy, follow the rule, the plainer the better. To get through this sensitive time, try apples, bananas, oatmeal with cinnamon, dry toast or crackers, brown or white rice, miso soup, raw spinach, parsley, dill and frozen or fresh blackberries. Avoid dairy products, eggs, meat, beans, sugary foods, processed foods, fried foods, spices, corn, chocolate, and coffee. Acidophilus is good to keep on hand to fight bad bacteria and renew the healthy flora in the digestive system, Be sure to buy a good-quality brand and keep it in the refrigerator.

You may not feel like ingesting anything, but it’s especially important to stay hydrated. Encourage frequent small sips of water. Children may become thirsty after vomiting but it’s not a good idea to chug water at this point, as this may cause more vomiting.

You’ll love this recipe for stomach-soothing popsicles: add organic apple juice or cider to your popsicle-maker. Stir in some slippery-elm-bark powder, add one drop of Oregon-grape root to each Popsicle; add a sprinkle of spirulina to half a tray, place in freezer.

Should you get a stomach flu allow yourself as much rest as possible and keep the fresh air flowing Contact your family doctor if you don’t notice any improvement when using a herbal remedy, stronger medicine may be required.

RETHINK—What If...

What if Powell River started thinking like—what it really is—an island?

When you go on vacation to one of the beautiful Gulf Islands, you think and act differently because you are on an island that usually has issues concerning things like fresh water, sewage and garbage disposal and, really, we have many of those same issues. There is no landfill here. Every bag of garbage that is picked up at your curb leaves the community on a barge.

Consider the ubiquitous plastic shopping bag. What if it was banned? Would it make any difference at all?

Suppose that every person collects about a bag a day on average. Powell River’s population, city & district, is estimated at 20,000 so that equals more than 7 million shopping bags annually. Depending on its thickness, a plastic bag weighs between 8g and 60g; so banning plastic shopping bags means refusing to import at least 56 metric tonnes of plastic (or 2.8 kilos per person) into our island community, 56 metric tonnes of plastic that, with precious few exceptions, we later pay to barge out as waste.

In the last year alone, I have noticed a definite shift: consumers bringing their own cloth bags when shopping. Advertisers have also noticed this shift. Today, I noticed a television commercial featuring two ladies at a supermarket whose check-out carts contained only cloth bags. Plastic bags have, in a very short period, become the exception and not the rule.

This has been a voluntary effort that many people have undertaken and, although it isn’t difficult, I still see more than a few people leaving the supermarket with a handful of groceries packed into multiple plastic bags when one cloth bag would hold all. To encourage people further, a couple of retailers are now charging a fee for plastic bags.

But what, you ask, do I use for household garbage, kitty litter, etcetera? Well, there are lots of replacements if a little thought is given to the issue. For instance, I now use brown butcher wrap saved from my cold-cut purchases to line my kitchen bin and then dump it into the biodegradable garbage bag in my trash can. Newspaper also works, but it definitely can get soggy. For kitty litter, why put it in the plastic bag at all? Just go straight to the bin with it. See? There is always another solution.

To recap: banning plastic carry bags means refusing to let 56 metric tonnes of plastic annually enter our community. If the average person weighs about 80kg, that is the equivalent weight of more than 700 people, more than twice the capacity of Dwight Hall. That’s quite a crowd for this town.

LEGAL EYES—Humanity, Re-sorted

We didn’t hear a peep from major news services about the Indigenous Peoples’ Summit on Climate Change at Anchorage in late April. A week later, a fellow student at California Institute of Integral Studies sent all of us the fruits of this caucus of indigenous representatives from North and South America, the Pacific, Africa, Russia, Asia, and the Caribbean, the brutally forthright Anchorage Declaration.

If you read nothing else, take a deep breath, pour yourself a stiff one, and visit our website for the full text of the Summit’s consensus on where humanity finds itself, and what must be done. Here’s a couple of bookend quotes:

“Mother Earth is no longer in a period of climate change, but in climate crisis. We therefore insist on an immediate end to the destruction and desecration of the elements of life.

“Through our knowledge, spirituality, sciences, practices, experiences and relationships with our traditional lands, territories, waters, air, forests, oceans, sea ice, other natural resources and all life, Indigenous Peoples have a vital role in defending and healing Mother Earth. The future of Indigenous Peoples lies in the wisdom of our elders, the restoration of the sacred position of women, the youth of today and in the generations of tomorrow....

“We offer to share with humanity our Traditional Knowledge, innovations, and practices relevant to climate change, provided our fundamental rights as intergenerational guardians of this knowledge are fully recognized and respected. We reiterate the urgent need for collective action.”

Between those quotes is a string of practical suggestions, which might or might not restore the planet to viability but would certainly fulfill many desires of greenies and sustainability advocates. Yet this much needed document left me sad. Despite its refreshing refusal to deal with the idiotic constructs of international law, and despite my agreement with its implicit view of recent human history as the story of European civilisation donning seven-league laser boots and stomping the rest of the planet into submission, the Anchorage Declaration saddens me because legions of people like me are not included in its vision. Legions of immigrants and interracial mutts seem to be as invisible to the Summit as indigenous peoples once were to the explorers and colonists who claimed the Americas were “empty”.

This set me thinking about the meaning of indigenous. As we’re planting our gardens this spring, it seems easy to distinguish the indigenous plants, which are native to the place, from the introduced species, which human imported from elsewhere. Yet isn’t it odd that that line of demarcation is congruent with the edges of humanity? In Hawai’i, for example, wild pigs are widely regarded as part of indigenous diet, and the right to hunt them as belonging primarily to Hawai’ians; yet those pigs were introduced by the first humans to colonise the islands, whose only pre-human mammal was a bat. The definition of indigenous fuzzed out somewhere in the last couple of millennia, but no one can say just when the imported humans and their pigs attained indigenous status. Was it five hundred years ago? A thousand? Clearly, the term indigenous does not necessarily mean that an organism originated or even evolved where it is found.

It’s also becoming clear that indigenous and its synonyms (native) and antonyms (foreign, imported) connote a deeply held sense that humans and their actions are other than part of the natural world. If a bear goes over the mountain importing seeds in its coat from Alberta to BC, that is somehow qualitatively different from a human being deciding to move to the coast, carrying those same seeds. The bear’s act is natural; the human’s, unnatural. Try bringing a plant through the Maui airport, or sailing your canoe into any Hawai’ian harbour, and your first few hours in “Paradise” will splendidly illustrate this truth.

Indigenous status, especially among humans, has legal implications. Metis organisations, for example, have gone to great lengths to have their membership included among the indigenous First Nations, because it makes political, rather than biological, sense. The Quebecois embroiled Canada in their insistence on being called a nation—i.e., natives—for decades, a profound struggle signalling that sometime in only five hundred years, their indigenous sense had become their historic reality.

As a first-generation immigrant to Canada, I’ll never be indigenous—never even a native. As a scruffy little kid with her Metis best friend, playing on the banks of the great North Saskatchewan River half a century ago, I thought of families like mine as the Hyphenese—Dutch-Canadians, French-Canadians, Italian-Canadians. Transplants. My forthcoming book of poetry, generation of thistles, explores this very yearning of the displaced to find roots, to become natives of somewhere, great-great-grandparents of humans who will regard themselves as indigenous, creatures belonging to the place they call home.

The Anchorage Declaration illustrates that, like all English documents other than poetry, even documents that try to take off the blinders of legal language are underpinned by the sense that the rest of creation is the Other, that humanity is somehow separate and apart. The Anchorage vision remains a mirage unless and until we recognise humans as just one of many species, albeit a species run amok over the entire face of the planet. Nothing we do is “unnatural”, and each of us is, in the planetary sense, indigenous.

The Anchorage Declaration

24 April 2009

From 20-24 April, 2009, Indigenous representatives from the Arctic, North America, Asia, Pacific, Latin America, Africa, Caribbean and Russia met in Anchorage, Alaska for the Indigenous Peoples’ Global Summit on Climate Change. We thank the Ahtna and the Dena’ina Athabascan Peoples in whose lands we gathered.

We express our solidarity as Indigenous Peoples living in areas that are the most vulnerable to the impacts and root causes of climate change. We reaffirm the unbreakable and sacred connection between land, air, water, oceans, forests, sea ice, plants, animals and our human communities as the material and spiritual basis for our existence.

We are deeply alarmed by the accelerating climate devastation brought about by unsustainable development. We are experiencing profound and disproportionate adverse impacts on our cultures, human and environmental health, human rights, well-being, traditional livelihoods, food systems and food sovereignty, local infrastructure, economic viability, and our very survival as Indigenous Peoples.

Mother Earth is no longer in a period of climate change, but in climate crisis. We therefore insist on an immediate end to the destruction and desecration of the elements of life.

Through our knowledge, spirituality, sciences, practices, experiences and relationships with our traditional lands, territories, waters, air, forests, oceans, sea ice, other natural resources and all life, Indigenous Peoples have a vital role in defending and healing Mother Earth. The future of Indigenous Peoples lies in the wisdom of our elders, the restoration of the sacred position of women, the youth of today and in the generations of tomorrow.

We uphold that the inherent and fundamental human rights and status of Indigenous Peoples, affirmed in the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP), must be fully recognized and respected in all decision-making processes and activities related to climate change. This includes our rights to our lands, territories, environment and natural resources as contained in Articles 25–30 of the UNDRIP. When specific programs and projects affect our lands, territories, environment and natural resources, the right of Self Determination of Indigenous Peoples must be recognized and respected, emphasizing our right to Free, Prior and Informed Consent, including the right to say “no”. The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) agreements and principles must reflect the spirit and the minimum standards contained in UNDRIP.

Calls for Action

1. In order to achieve the fundamental objective of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), we call upon the fifteenth meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the UNFCCC to support a binding emissions reduction target for developed countries (Annex 1) of at least 45% below 1990 levels by 2020 and at least 95% by 2050. In recognizing the root causes of climate change, participants call upon States to work towards decreasing dependency on fossil fuels. We further call for a just transition to decentralized renewable energy economies, sources and systems owned and controlled by our local communities to achieve energy security and sovereignty.

In addition, the Summit participants agreed to present two options for action which were each supported by one or more of the participating regional caucuses. These were as follows:

A. We call for the phase out of fossil fuel development and a moratorium on new fossil fuel developments on or near Indigenous lands and territories.

B. We call for a process that works towards the eventual phase out of fossil fuels, without infringing on the right to development of Indigenous nations.

2. We call upon the Parties to the UNFCCC to recognize the importance of our Traditional Knowledge and practices shared by Indigenous Peoples in developing strategies to address climate change. To address climate change we also call on the UNFCCC to recognize the historical and ecological debt of the Annex 1 countries in contributing to greenhouse gas emissions. We call on these countries to pay this historical debt.

3. We call on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, and other relevant institutions to support Indigenous Peoples in carrying out Indigenous Peoples’ climate change assessments.

4. We call upon the UNFCCC’s decision-making bodies to establish formal structures and mechanisms for and with the full and effective participation of Indigenous Peoples. Specifically we recommend that the UNFCCC:
a. Organize regular Technical Briefings by Indigenous Peoples on Traditional Knowledge and climate change;
b. Recognize and engage the International Indigenous Peoples’ Forum on Climate Change and its regional focal points in an advisory role;
c. Immediately establish an Indigenous focal point in the secretariat of the UNFCCC;
d. Appoint Indigenous Peoples’ representatives in UNFCCC funding mechanisms in consultation with Indigenous Peoples;
e. Take the necessary measures to ensure the full and effective participation of Indigenous and local communities in formulating, implementing, and monitoring activities, mitigation, and adaptation relating to impacts of climate change.

5. All initiatives under Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation (REDD) must secure the recognition and implementation of the human rights of Indigenous Peoples, including security of land tenure, ownership, recognition of land title according to traditional ways, uses and customary laws and the multiple benefits of forests for climate, ecosystems, and Peoples before taking any action.

6. We challenge States to abandon false solutions to climate change that negatively impact Indigenous Peoples’ rights, lands, air, oceans, forests, territories and waters. These include nuclear energy, large-scale dams, geo-engineering techniques, “clean coal”, agro-fuels, plantations, and market based mechanisms such as carbon trading, the Clean Development Mechanism, and forest offsets. The human rights of Indigenous Peoples to protect our forests and forest livelihoods must be recognized, respected and ensured.

7. We call for adequate and direct funding in developed and developing States and for a fund to be created to enable Indigenous Peoples’ full and effective participation in all climate processes, including adaptation, mitigation, monitoring and transfer of appropriate technologies in order to foster our empowerment, capacity-building, and education. We strongly urge relevant United Nations bodies to facilitate and fund the participation, education, and capacity building of Indigenous youth and women to ensure engagement in all international and national processes related to climate change.

8. We call on financial institutions to provide risk insurance for Indigenous Peoples to allow them to recover from extreme weather events.

9. We call upon all United Nations agencies to address climate change impacts in their strategies and action plans, in particular their impacts on Indigenous Peoples, including the World Health Organization (WHO), United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) and United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues (UNPFII). In particular, we call upon all the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and other relevant United Nations bodies to establish an Indigenous Peoples’ working group to address the impacts of climate change on food security and food sovereignty for Indigenous Peoples.

10. We call on United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) to conduct a fast track assessment of short-term drivers of climate change, specifically black carbon, with a view to initiating negotiation of an international agreement to reduce emission of black carbon.

11. We call on States to recognize, respect and implement the fundamental human rights of Indigenous Peoples, including the collective rights to traditional ownership, use, access, occupancy and title to traditional lands, air, forests, waters, oceans, sea ice and sacred sites as well as to ensure that the rights affirmed in Treaties are upheld and recognized in land use planning and climate change mitigation strategies. In particular, States must ensure that Indigenous Peoples have the right to mobility and are not forcibly removed or settled away from their traditional lands and territories, and that the rights of Peoples in voluntary isolation are upheld. In the case of climate change migrants, appropriate programs and measures must address their rights, status, conditions, and vulnerabilities.

12. We call upon states to return and restore lands, territories, waters, forests, oceans, sea ice and sacred sites that have been taken from Indigenous Peoples, limiting our access to our traditional ways of living, thereby causing us to misuse and expose our lands to activities and conditions that contribute to climate change.

13. In order to provide the resources necessary for our collective survival in response to the climate crisis, we declare our communities, waters, air, forests, oceans, sea ice, traditional lands and territories to be “Food Sovereignty Areas,” defined and directed by Indigenous Peoples according to customary laws, free from extractive industries, deforestation and chemical-based industrial food production systems (i.e. contaminants, agro-fuels, genetically modified organisms).

14. We encourage our communities to exchange information while ensuring the protection and recognition of and respect for the intellectual property rights of Indigenous Peoples at the local, national and international levels pertaining to our Traditional Knowledge, innovations, and practices. These include knowledge and use of land, water and sea ice, traditional agriculture, forest management, ancestral seeds, pastoralism, food plants, animals and medicines and are essential in developing climate change adaptation and mitigation strategies, restoring our food sovereignty and food independence, and strengthening our Indigenous families and nations.

We offer to share with humanity our Traditional Knowledge, innovations, and practices
relevant to climate change, provided our fundamental rights as intergenerational
guardians of this knowledge are fully recognized and respected. We reiterate the urgent
need for collective action.

Agreed by consensus of the participants in the Indigenous Peoples’ Global Summit on
Climate Change, Anchorage Alaska, April 24th 2009

RETHINK—Re(de)fining Our Reference Points

by Kevin Abrams

It seems many of our most accepted “reference points” may still be left open to re-interpretation. To navigate in life, valid, functional “reference points” are key.

In Nourishment Home Grown, Dr. A.F. Beddoe defines matter as energy – “congealed light energy” – “the process of biologic ionization – i.e., the putting together (ionizing) of light into matter.” Dr. Beddoe refers to biologic ionization as “the study of creation” or “how energy becomes matter,” and asks, “How can the gardener and farmer directly benefit from this…?”

For example, to remain commensurate with evolution, Louis Pasteur’s germ theory of disease shuts out his contemporary Antoine Beauchamp’s theory that the microbe functions according to the terrain as the “reference point” for modern medicine and agriculture—the mutating cell is still the benchmark for treatment of cancer. However, as quoted in “Cancer Is a Fungus, Italian oncologist Dr. Tullio Simoncini states categorically, “Genetics and cancer have nothing to do with each other!” Different reference points!

Entering a pasture of sacred cows, authors Dr. Jerome Corsi in Black Gold Stranglehold and Professor Thomas Gold in The Deep Hot Biosphere proclaim that “decomposed dinosaurs, plants and petroleum, [also] have nothing to do with each other.” Corsi claims, “The Russians have known this for 60 years.” Diamonds, graphite, coal, methane and petroleum are all hydrocarbons that behave differently at various depths and temperatures – carbon after hydrogen, helium and oxygen, being the fourth most plentiful element in the universe. Gold calculates, “The pressure needed to reach the domain of diamond stability is approximately 40 kilo bar, or 40,000 times our atmospheric pressure…. Diamonds must represent enormous gas (methane) blowouts, presumably from a diamond-forming depth of 150 kilometers.” He reports graphite’s crystalline structure is identical to diamond. The only difference he explains, is whereas diamonds have been propelled to the earth’s surface and have cooled rapidly, graphite has risen slowly and degraded from diamond into graphite. Control of access and drilling technology are the main factors. Petroleum, Corsi and Gold explain, is abiotic… non-biological.

ESOTERICA—The Spirit of Aloha

Hawaiian Huna is a sacred teaching, the secrets of which have been passed from teacher to student for countless generations. The practitioners of Huna are known as the Kahuna, the searchers and seekers of light. They are the healers, teachers and leaders of Hawaiian shamanism.

In the Hawaiian language the word Huna means “secret”. It is the term used to describe the mysteries behind the teachings that were the spiritual way of life of the ancient Hawaiian people.

The word Huna can also be translated as, to rise to the light, and Kahuna, one who rises to the light.

And what is light?

Light is the potential of the human spirit, the light that exists within all of us. It is the source of the universal knowledge, awareness and power that is inherent. It is the intelligence of the potential that awaits to be awakened and expressed.
The Kahuna work towards the achievement of oneness with and within themselves, to become a living expression of the light of their potential.

The Kahuna work to enlighten and empower themselves by working in alignment with sacred principles and practices that reflect the secrets to the nature of light.
The purpose of Huna is self–empowerment—achieved through the practice of its sacred teachings. These include breath, energy work, meditation and chanting.

One of the most important of the sacred of practices of Huna is chanting. Chanting builds vital life force energy called mana. The goal of the student of Huna is the development and accumulation of mana, the mysterious essence of the light of the spirit within.

E ho mai, aloha mai, lani mai e
I na mea Huna, manakahi, o na Hawaii e
E ho mai, aloha mai, e ho mai e
Bring to me the love from heaven
Bring to me the sacred light of the secret teachings of Hawaii
Bring to me the love of the spirit of aloha

Chanting invokes the light of the spirit of the heart, which in Huna is known as the spirit of aloha.

Aloha is a beautiful word and it has many different meanings and applications. It’s most common use is to say both hello and goodbye.

Hello, love welcomes you! Goodbye, love goes with you!

Aloha is a state of mind, an attitude and an intention. Aloha is a way of being and relating to the world. It is an option and a choice. Aloha is an expression of good-will and blessings and an acknowledgement of the spirit of aloha within.

Aloha can also be translated through its root words, alo and ha. The root word alo means, in the presence of and ha means, the breath of life or spiritual breath. Aloha then means, to be in the presence of the spiritual breath of life.

What a beautiful thing to say when simply saying, hello or goodbye!

Kawika David is a Kahu Huna, a teacher of the sacred spiritual teachings of Hawaiian Huna and the developer of Kahililani Ranibow Huna. He will be in Powell River to present The Spirit of Aloha! workshop, May 30 & 31. For further details visit his website at www.thewaveoflight.com.

ESOTERICA—How Soon is Now?

by Michelle McCann

Cycles within cycles—on this we agree. The circle shape is the most efficient storage of energy. Bubbles are so naturally round, as is the earth, the planets, the conical shell. Spiraling ever closer to the center of its “circle”. The Galactic-Centre alignment on 12-21-2012 isn’t going to be so much of a panic as we are already in. We are at the nexus of the zero-point field, quantum style. Well, this is it, we are at 0; refer to the conical shell, the phi ratio’s centre. (Google Fibinnaci it will explain in better terms.)

We are at the beginning of times, the eleventh hour, the end of darkness. The light is bright; to some, blinding; to others, not seen, as they have chosen to sleep and remain blind (in this incarnation they are working a different time line). For the lightworkers—and you know if you are one—yes, you do!—let’s look at the growth spurt in the last ten years, even the last ten days. For many of us this has become something like a teenage crisis. For we want to do it all right now!

Thr feeling is just like a holiday morning when you’re six. Oh, and nothing’s a coincidence for there is none. When we are awake, we see so clearly and so naturally what we want. At once, we want all the many creative ideas that rush through our heart-centered thought consciousness to manifest physically and immediately, because we know it’s all right there, at hand, and it’s so darned exciting!

In some ways just a glimmer of the light is like LOVE at first sight. Oh, then we are feverish, so divinely passionate! To be of service and to live in bounty and to love! Above all else, to become a co-operating community. To be one with diversity, unity and self-sustainability, at once independent as well as interdependent. Yes, socially sensitive, yes, co dependent. The pendulum is swinging ever slower to its centre, to the middle way, as Buddha teaches, the way of balance, balance of all dichotomies. So our urgency is born of the ego, wrestling for the control that we are giving up. Light is forcing foresight. To seed, the need to spread everything that is new and fresh, these chaotic emotions are just like a first love.

Now, having gone on that journey with me, keep in mind that, in your mind, you have the power to think your way into positivity. You can snap your fingers and change your feelings right now, your NOW, in an instant. It takes only pure intention. You know this, and you are living it in some fashion. Once you realise it, it is truly and solely your movie. You are writing directing and acting in your microcosmic universe. The script changes in nanoseconds as you decide. Just “be the cause”, because the effect will take care of itself, as do all things organic.

This is a time of no time, dear hybrid human angel. Of late, we are feeling the pull of the old energy of “scare city”—scarcity and old power, which is over, finally over, although it clings perilously, like a kitten to the teat while the mother wearily yet gratefully walks away. Panic may or may not set in. She knows. She has provided enough to know full well that her kitten will eat again, most likely getting the nourishment out of its own round bowl.

Spirit is like this mother cat, our higher selves, the I AM presence, all knowing. We are all now both kittens and the mother and father cats. So, slow down, stretch, yawn, breathe and snooze as often as possible, whenever possible. For it is time to act on and believe what you know. There is no time, and there is no where, there is no why and no when. The here is only now and in the immortal words of Kurt Cobain, it’s a “big long now.”

Yes we have missions.

Yes, we are waking up. So stop; take a look around and breathe. While you listen to the inner stirrings of peace within, nourish this, know that this is a top-priority vibe to send and receive joy, trust and love.

We started this beautiful new puzzle hundreds of years ago. Flip the pillow over to the cool side and smile inside; breathe and chant, “I am Infinite Being”; with FAITH! You have earned this, and so it is! Embrace the wisdom of the cat along with the kitten’s innocence. There is no rush to get to “now”— now is the pause before.

Our mother-father god exhales. Slow down; the journey is beautiful. Being a lightworker means just that; a LIGHT worker, as in Lighten up; lighten the load (on ourselves). Let go as you shine your light among your brothers and sisters. Blessed may you all be. I will leave you now. Here is a quote that may soothe manic light workers, environmentalists, earth keepers, keepers of the sea, and all other spiritual lightworkaholics.

Love and Beams of Violet Light.

“Stop seeking. Where is there to go? Everything you seek is already inside you” –Author unknown
”If you find a good solution and become too attached to it, the solution may become your next problem.” –Robert Anthony

COVER STORY

by Eva van Loon

“Water is best,” goes the ancient Greek proverb. As a teen, I thought it a dumb saying. The best as compared to what?

It stuck in memory as I learned that water covers 71% of the planet, that 97% of the water is ocean (not counting polar ice!) and people consist mostly of water, 55% to 78%.

An alarming discovery was the short time it takes for a human being to die of thirst as opposed to hunger: only three or four increasingly painful days, while we can last for weeks without food. Drinking seawater or urine only makes things worse. Where drought is marching across the land, as in Somalia, people are already dying of thirst every day, while on the Sunshine Coast we go about our lives, swilling down coffee, soda and juices as if there’s no tomorrow, forgetful that each human life depends utterly on ingesting two to three litres of water every single day.

Put so starkly, that fact sends me straight to the cold-water tap with a “Thank you, Dr. Suzuki,” for pointing out recently that our tap water is a wonderful healthy blessing and that, while we can still call this treasure our own, we neither need nor want bottled water trucked in.

ClimateWizard is a new online toy that will predict changes in temperature and precipitation—precious water—in a given area for 2050 and 2100. For now, it’s mostly good for the US, but even so, the expected desertification is mind-boggling. Not that I didn’t know that places like Australia, Maui, and California are already burning up, or that there are predictions out there that the West Coast will lose 30% of its annual precipitation, but it was a shock to see that big red knob of heat and dryness on the map, right up to the Canadian border. We’re fools if we think nobody’s going to be panting after our water.

I pour myself another glass of today’s vintage of agua pura and wonder if the will of the people will prove strong enough to keep our fresh water out of dry, grasping corporate claws and uncontaminated by the globalist claptrap economy. Maybe it’s too late—certainly it’s late in the day. Few now question the fact of global warming—global heating, as it’s more accurately called—certainly not James Lovelock in his latest book, The Vanishing Face of Gaia:

“There is no tipping point, just a slope that gets ever steeper. Because of the rapidity of the Earth’s change, we will need to respond more like the inhabitants of a city threatened by a flood. When they see the unstoppable rise of water, their only option is to escape to higher ground. We have to make our lifeboats seaworthy now [and] stop pretending there is any way back to that lush, comfortable, and beautiful Earth we left behind sometime in the 20th century.”

On a true-blue warm day in Powell River in 2009, plates of local prawns, cherries, berries and greens set before us, none of us wants to agree with Lovelock. Isn’t our Earth the same as ever? Okay, spring was late and the mason bees too early—stuff happens. All right, the economic downturn is pounding us into the ground, financially. But we can eat. We meet. We contemplate our famous sunsets over the wine-dark sea, and we plan futures for our community and ourselves, beyond mere survival.

Lovelock would call us lucky. He’d think Powell River is one of the lifeboats that can conceivably carry humankind through the next century. If we get smart, of course. If we go beyond sustainability and think deeply about where we are, who we are, and what we want for the children. If we pick our battles. If the water fight is part of that future, it is a battle we shirk at our children’s peril.

Water is best when it belongs to the earth. The same goes for humanity. Without water or belonging, we’re history.

OPEN INFO—Community News and Views

ART

New Working Studios on Marine Avenue

by Corey Matsumoto

Skylight Art Studio & Supplies is an exciting new venture of David Perun. The bright, spacious studio space at 4482 Marine Avenue (downstairs from the bowling alley)is open to children of all ages for art classes, and to adults for art jams. The mission of Skylight Art Studio is to provide children and adults professional quality art materials and instruction in techniques to develop their artistic expression.

As the name suggests, art supplies are also an importanty aspect of the business. To accomodate both business models in the same space, Dave has structured the store hours to eliminate art lesson distractions by restricting open hours to 11am–1pm. Among the great selection of art supplies is the availability of canvas by the foot for custom frame dimensions.

David Perun’s art training includes a Bachelor of Fine Arts at the University of Quebec in Montreal with a major in sculpture and a minor in printmaking. He spent 14 years as a Property Master in Vancouver’s film industry working on props for over 30 hollywood productions. He and his family discovered and moved to Powell River in 2005.

Perhaps one of the best aspects of Skylight is the wide open space and the ease of accesibility and interaction. During art jams, particpants are welcome to use paint or clay (all supplies are provided—just bring your painting clothes). Visit www.skylightart.ca for the weekly time schedule and for information about birthday party bookings.

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5th Avenue Studio and Gallery openned this summer at 4712A Marine Avenue. The Gallery hosts the work of two artists, Janet Blair and Donna van Eeghen.

Janet, originally from Barrie, Ont. moved with her family to Montreal during the Second World War where she grew up in the shadow of the Musee de Beaux Arts. Janet attended drawing and painting classes at the museum and then majored in painting and sculpture at Concordia University. Janet went on to run a successful gallery in Old Montreal for several years. She moved to Powell River in 1997 and hasn’t looked back. “Powell River has been kind to me and I hope my local murals reflect this.”

Donna, born in Powell River, was a local potter for 25 years and involved in the art scene for over 30 years. She hosted one of the first art exhibits in Powell River to showcase the work of local artists in 1978. She is president of the PR Fine Arts Association and past secretary of the Arts Council. “I waited all my life to discover the joy of colour. I consider myself a ‘naive outsider’ as I have never taken painting lessons and prefer not to be slotted into a genre.” Her work reflects her love of the ocean, “I love living here, where I can look out my window and see its immense and changing beauty.”

  Janet and Donna invite everyone to come down to the gallery to visit.

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BOOKS

Invitation to Join the Beyond Survival Think Tank!

by Martin Rossander

Our ship of state did spring a leak, although festooned with bells and whistles. Who could have dreamed of such a glitch to well laid plans by free-trade tycoons? Were affairs not assured, in full-blown knowledge that market value knows what’s best? For all? CRASH! The Titanic—no less.

So came today’s “Meltdown”, reminiscent of the 1929 stock-market crash. Had you been there, as I was, you’d still remember the lean years that followed: a full decade of hunger amidst plenty, the destruction of produce to bring back prices, the situation finally rescued in great smears of global violence and waste known as World War II. Nevertheless we were repeatedly assured, “Prosperity is just around the corner. Have faith!”

Naughty! Must not point the finger! When one finger points at another, three fingers point back. Why blame elected officials for a situation engendered by grassroots apathy? Politics has neither imagination nor elbow room to cope with anything beyond routine and taxes.

Hear now this clarion call to jumpstart a new initiative: Beyond Survival, last known as a one-hour weekly talk show broadcast by JUMP radio in Powell River, feels obliged to switch to the printed word and invites the community to join in creating think tank #2.. Artists, writers, thinkers, children, housewives, mothers, recyclers, bankers, and bill collectors, give us your thoughts! To all salespersons engaged in furthering consumerism, in an idle moment, jot down your impressions, your “druthers” in a positive vein for inclusion in a soon to be published book—to be published entirely in Powell River! (PR has a new cottage industry—community publishing!)

For instance, imagine a crowded lifeboat, filled with a mix of age, gender, language, culture, and nationality, adrift of the high seas. The sky is overcast, offering no clue to navigation for a boat minus motor, minus oar, minus leadership. The very silent man aboard is suspected of being the captain of the submarine whose torpedo sank the rescued passengers’ vessel and brought them to this apparent dead end. To break the hours of boredom, a parlor game erupts from time to time, for evidence, for admission. Should punishment be meted out? What form of “justice” would now apply?

I offer this lifeboat metaphor for comparison with whoever failed to cry out a warning or who is otherwise implicated in the current world-wide crisis. Sweet vengeance, to those who foresaw that we were on the way to turn our heaven on earth into hell and did anything to prevent it, is short-lived. To what end can energies now be best directed? How about a think tank?

Welcome aboard!

Send your submissions in the form of articles, essays, poetry, or short fiction (maximum 3,000 words) to editor Eva van Loon: email mettalaw@gmail.com; mail to 6799 Cranberry Street, Powell River, V8A 3Z3; or call 483-4940.

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POETRY—Peace Like a River

by Eva van Loon

Englese or English, Chinese or Chinglish, Pidgin or Polish—whatever your language, its poetry flows over your soul like a river of peace.
Let us present a little Water Music from the youngest entrants (Grades 1-3) in this year’s Youth Peace-Poem Competition. These poems are included in PRIPPA 2009: Can You Hear Peace? Get your copy—why not start inventing music around our children’s lovely words?

Love, as rainbows love rain,
as mice love cheese, as boots
love splashing in puddles,
as blueberries love pancakes
—Morgan LaBree, Grief Point School

Times with April
Swimming with April
at a peaceful time of day.
Drying in the sun.
—Matthew Ure, Grief Point

Solitary Fun
Peacefully fishing
Here I watch the fish pass by
I have fun fishing
—Joey McCullough, Grief Point

Dolphin
Blue sea
Dolphin swim fast
Something blue jumping there
It is fun swimming at the beach
Water
—Camryn Infanti, PR Christian School

Peaceful Swimming
Swimming in the lake
Sand squishes between my toes
Scared fish dodge away.
—Sarah Shelton, Grief Point

FICTION—...and Not a Lick to Lap

by Major Furry

I nearly thirsted to death in Nanaimo. That gave me paws. Panting, I considered humans’ strange relationship with water.

Imagine wearing a thick black fur coat like mine in the summer sun, with nothing but your long, sweaty tongue to cool down sixty kilos of wolf body! That was me at the end of a long, sticky afternoon on the pavement outside the Nanaimo library, waiting with my Pack Leader for the third member of our mini-pack to emerge from that deliciously cool building—I could smell the coolth every time the door opened.. We hung around hot, dry downtown on such a day, instead of swimming and socialising with more sensible humans and canines.

“You can’t go in there,” said Pack Leader, pointing to a picture stuck to the glass doors. “See? No dogs allowed.”

I’m not going to take out a book, I explained. I’ll just visit the water closet for a long, clean, cold drink.

Pack Leader was absorbed in reading poems stuck to the windows. I decided to handle my own problems.

You could smell the harbour from the library plaza. I could just toddle down to the water’s edge and be satisfied with a sweet-and-sour drink. Harbour water tastes weird from all the pee and gasoline from the humans’  floating dens. Ten minutes later, I’d probably be thirsty again, but some moisture’s better than nothing. I took matters into my own paws and trotted away.

Around the corner a powerful aroma appeared like a vision of dinner, overpowering all thoughts of water. Hot meat! Eggs! Soup! Somebody in that building was cooking up a feast!. On impulse I slipped through the doorway.

The kitchen pumped its heavenly aromas down a long hall to my nose. I sidled quietly along the wall, careful not to let my claws click on the slick floor. What culinary delight awaited me? Bison burger? Curried chicken with blueberries? Steak tartare aux canneberges? I forgot all about my humans left behind on the hot street. I would have forgotten my raging thirst, too, but for an opening in the wall—water closet!

There were four cubicles, all pristine. Sinks, too, on a fairly low counter. I put my front paws up and stuck my muzzle under a tap—magic! No sooner did clear, cold water flow over my nose and muzzle—deelish!—but  I soon lost my grip. I decided to try instead one of the conveniently placed toilets.

At my size, using the handicapped cubicle is mandatory. How did the gods who designed these water closets imagine anyone over thirty kilos could pretzel oneself around these dumb doors, never mind store one’s hindquarters somewhere while taking a long, healthy drink? Ridiculous! For my milkbone, only the God of the Handicapped had a brain.

Humans seldom take a drinking position in the water closet. Nine out of ten humans have sore backs and avoid bending, and many are too plump to see their toes, let alone bend over for a drink. I’ve escorted Pack Leader into many water closets, and can tell you almost all humans close the cubicle door before deciding what to do inside. My nose informs me, however, that almost no human, except maybe their very young puppies, drinks from these clever, self-refreshing fountains. Why humans go to all the trouble of creating these fountains in their own dens, only to perch on top of the fountain, widdling and defecating into all that lovely fresh water, puzzled me for years—until insight dawned! Unlike us, humans can’t squat or raise a leg very well! They need to sit! Then they simply bring in fresh water, in case the next user prefers drinking.

So there I stood, philosophising and beginning a happy lapping session, my tail lagging out the door, when a small brown human entered the water closet and let out one of those screeches only the females can yowl. “Ai yi yi! Demonios! Lupo negro!”

Excuse me, I gave the shaking woman a friendly nod as I did the proverbial high-tail out of there. Business calls. My appetite wetted and whetted, I headed for the kitchen, where half a dozen chattering humans were dishing out din-din. I stood politely in a corner until someone should acknowledge my request.

“Holey--!” is the word I heard most in the next two minutes. Holey this; holey that. (Why startled humans perceive holes in whatever startles them is beyond me.) Conversation proved difficult. “Is that a wolf?” Well, duh!
“Don’t eat me!” I never eat a hand that feeds me.
“Where’s the fire extinguisher?” Huh? I’m not on fire.
“Throw it something to eat so it’ll leave us alone!” Now you’re talking!

A man in a tall, white, poufy hat pointed one of his minions to a mound of steak tartare on the counter. “Feed it that—wolves eat raw stuff, don’t they?”

A little slave female cowered and shook as she flung me a pawful. Yum! I inhaled it and moved to thank her. She screeched, too, and shrank away. Someone threw me another pawful and I ate that, too. Again I tried to thank my hosts, to no avail.

A door opened at the other end of the kitchen and a well-furred woman clacked in on those weird paw-raisers some females like to wear on their hind paws. She smelled like a flower garden. “What’s this?” Then she saw my face. “Oh! He’s beautiful!”

All would now be well. Quickly, I bent my gnarly knees and sat down so that I could shake a paw, struggling to remember which was the right one. I was ready to win her over with a pawshake, a lick and a lean against her knee.

“Aww. You are such a gentleman!” She took my paw in her own tiny furless one. “Didn’t anybody give this good boy some water?” And a shining silver pan glinting with pure water was in front of my muzzle in seconds. At last! A human who values water as we do!

Eileen was her name. We had a very good time in that hotel. I had a chance to ask some long-held questions on harbours, water closets, and why humans are muddying the waters—not that I received satisfactory answers, but philosophy is always fun. When the fire engines came by, I sang for her and the lobby audience, who tried to join me on the chorus. As I took my leave, Eileen ushered me handsomely out the front doors. There was Pack Leader, waving at me frantically, far down the street. “Come back for a visit anytime,” said Eileen.

I confess to kissing this sweet-smelling Keeper of the Waters goodbye. Right on her muzzle. Yum. Can't hardly wait for our next trip to Nanaimo!

FOOD

Year-round Local Food

by David Parkinson

The fourth annual Powell River 50-mile eat-local challenge is over until next summer. We kicked off the 50-day event this year on August 9 with the first-ever Edible Garden Tour, showcasing thirteen local gardens, from Lund down to Lang Bay, thrown open so that the public could wander around, ask questions, and see firsthand how friends and neighbours are producing their own food in backyards, front yards, and community gardens, using a variety of techniques. This completely free tour even raised a bit of money for the Fruit Tree Project, which sends teams of volunteer pickers to people’s homes to pick otherwise unused fruit.

I’ve been producing a weekly podcast series featuring conversations with local food champions who work hard to support the local food economy:  Jeffrey Renn of Bemused Bistro, Nia Wegner of Loaves and Fishes Catering Company, Melissa Call of Sunshine Organics and Ecossentials, and Amy Sharp of Manzanita Restaurant. There’s one conversation for each week of the challenge. You can find the podcasts online at http://pr50.podomatic.com. Also take some time to visit the official blog of the Powell River 50-mile eat-local challenge at http://pr50.wordpress.com/.

What struck me this year is how many people say that they are already eating as locally as possible all year ’round. For this reason, it’s harder to get people to sign up for the eat-local challenge. After all, if this is the way you eat all the time, why sign up as though it’s a special thing? How much has changed in the four years since Lyn Adamson decided to try a local version of the 100-mile diet! All kinds of people  now understand the importance of eating locally, for all the right reasons, not the least of which is the economic boost we give our own farmers and food producers when we spend our money closer to home. More and more people are doing this, not just as a fun summertime activity, but as their normal routine.

What about the other 315 days of the year? How are we doing? Certainly we have a long way to go before a meaningful segment of the regional population is eating even 25% of its year-round diet from local sources. Without large-scale production of grains, beans, oilseed crops, meat, dairy, poultry, and some of the more common storage vegetables such as carrots and onions, we simply can’t feed ourselves throughout the year. Without a much larger value-added food industry creating juices, cheeses, breads, wines, pastas, and all the other staples of the typical North American diet, we still rely on imported foods.

Most people assume that the supplies of food coming into the region will continue forever at the current level of abundance. Even I believe that we are not likely to see major interruptions anytime soon. Could we ever produce food in quantities and at prices close to competing with the global food industry? Should we even bother trying?

The participants in the eat-local challenge, signed up or not, obviously believe we should. They believe in creating a powerful local food economy strongly enough to spend more time and pay higher prices to put food on the table. Many garden, can, freeze, dry, swap, barter, and order their lives around food to a much higher degree than the average person. Such people could probably survive for weeks out of their pantries, freezers, and gardens, and could whip up a good meal out of odds and ends. These skills and attitudes, once taken for granted, are lost to many, but now more people are keeping them alive.

Just maybe, the idea of a local food economy is starting to spread, and the idea is taking hold that, the more self-reliant our region becomes, the better off everyone is. Even if the ferries continue running forever, those eating local food will have the advantage of eating the best food on earth. Here’s hoping we’ll have enough for everyone.

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