The Good War and Generation Dread

July 27, 2023

The Readers and Writers Festival, last Saturday night’s main stage event was inspiring. Britt Wray and Seth Klein were both addressing the dreadful and dire personal, social and political issues related to climate change.

One mistake Seth Klein makes is to ignore the effects of cutting forests on climate disruption. Oil and gas resource extraction is always cited as the leading cause of Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emissions. Often experts ignore how cutting old growth forests contributes to the causes of climate change. Also, the solution of protecting old forests for carbon sequestration is rarely mentioned.

Here are the facts that I have recorded in my notebook. In June 24, 2021, The Tyee reported that the logging of Old-Growth forests in BC emitted 23% more GHG emissions compared to BC’s energy sector’s 64.6 million tonnes. BC’s cutting of Old Growth emitted 305.3 megatonnes of GHG. BC does not include GHG emissions from logging nor from forest fires in their estimates of how much we are contributing to climate change. They keep forests apart from the environment so that they can pretend that logging is carbon neutral.

We humans need to live each and every moment respectful of the natural world’s brilliant intelligence. Nature knows how to sustain life without our help. We are destroying this planet and ourselves because we have set ourselves apart from nature. Dismantling oppressive global extractive systems begins with seeing our arrogant fearful egos. Submitting our lives to the laws of nature cannot wait until our bodies are finally buried in the ground. One place to start is to fall in love with forests and their plants and wild animals. “Sustaining long term relationships with long-lived plants is a rejection of The End, an affirmation that there will be-must be-tomorrow.” Jerrad Farmer from “A Modern History of Ancient Trees”

Above and beyond lobbying politicians to cut off the huge subsidies to the energy sector, as Klein urges, we need to digest the following important fact. According to Jim Pojar, BC biologist “an undisturbed OG forest will keep on sucking up and storing carbon dioxide for several centuries or even millenia.” An OG forest stores 1,000 tonnes of carbon per hectare. No need for expensive technological solutions to climate change. An OG forest is a superorganism that organizes biogeochemical processes essential to life on this planet, for example “Flying Rivers” are the process of pumping their moisture thousands of miles inland. Drought is caused by loss of forest canopy because not only do trees exhale oxygen, they also absorb light, cool air temperatures and create the essential water cycles. Tragically, monocropped plantation forests cannot withstand fire; global wildfires are increasing and the hole in the ozone layer is expanding.

So, if and when you lobby our MLA Josie Osborne, (Josie osborne.MLA.gov.bc.ca) please remind her of the above and that at the rate of current cutting, we have less than 7 years before all OG forests will be rendered extinct. Not to mention all the forest soils and plants that also absorb CO2.

As Jane Goodall puts it: “Every ancient tree felled, every species that becomes extinct, represents another threat to the future of this planet.”

Jump Start Our Hearts

July 27, 2023

March 22nd, 2007

Jump Start Our Hearts

So finally the workday had drawn to an end. Time to pack up and go. There was a popsicle with my name all over it. Or was there? It seems that the safety light on the back of the crummy, blinking all day, had drained the battery. We were stranded! C.O. Person had to radio back to the jail for someone to fetch us. This had us sitting about for an extra half hour in wait. S.C.O. Wight was on his way and almost conveniently as far as Person was concerned. Wight could then lay eyes on the enormity of our day’s collective effort. We all sat about in the back of the crummy revelling in ourselves for a manly day. Camaraderie through hard work and laughter. Fred leading the way with his keen wit and infectious laugh. Finally Wight showed up. As Person was jumping the crummy, Wight pokes his head into the back and proceeds to tell us that we’re going to have to pull some of the alders further back from the road as he deemed them to be a hazard. He also went further to say that he wanted us to load up the back of his truck with all the rounds we’d stacked roadside. At this point, Fred pipes up, “thanks for the work guys…good job!” laughing as he does. This only provoked all of us to laugh the giddy laugh.

Person started bending Wight’s ear about how productive our day had been as a perfect lead in to complaining about our woefully inadequate lunches. It just so happened that we got burgers today, which is what we really desire, but only due to Paul from the kitchen sneaking them into our cooler under the shitty sandwiches of which we are to a man unmoved by. Person said to Wight that with the solid work we do a better lunch is not only needed, but deserved. At this point, Wight asks if there are any sandwiches left, as his voluminous gut was seemingly growling. A perfect opportunity to have him taste such lacking fare. When he motioned to Fred to pass him a sandwich, he pulled out two and said, “have a second one, on me!” Giggling his signature laugh. Again, we all joined in. It was apparent that we were feeling beyond reproach given our efforts of the day on top of being delayed from our routine by the failure of jailhouse equipment. Wight took the sandwich, bologna and processed cheese on white, and after a precursory inspection proceeded to peel away the bread and dispassionately pitch it out the door of the crummy. This only served to confirm opinions of our pitiful lunches drawing further laughter from within the crummy.

Finally boosted the focus shifted to getting the hell out of there, but there was still the matter of filling Wight’s truck with the wood and cutting away the protruding alders from our neatly stacked roadside piles. This much we did, but not without Fred’s joking. At $3.50/day, we were officially done work 45 minutes earlier and because of a dead battery, were now having to do more work. Within earshot of Wight Fred said, “I’d like to put in for a raise!” Official-like in delivery, if not for his infectious smile and contagious laughter. Not two minutes later, as we’re continuing to do the S.C.O.’s bidding, Fred says to Peters, loud enough for Wight to hear as he was approaching, “it sure would be nice if we got a raise!” Again, riotous laughter. I don’t think Wight knew how to take it. Why was everyone so invigorated and in such affable spirits? I conclude because we all got our hearts pumping blood through a solid effort of work. Nothing more, nothing less. The only downside to the afternoon was that we didn’t stop for a popsicle on our way back to jail, due to running late. C.O. Person lied to us!!

Jenin Jenin

July 20, 2023

Jenin Jenin by Sally Campbell

I remember our hosts making and bringing us lunch on the rooftop garden of The Freedom Theatre (TFT) in Jenin Refugee Camp after they gave us a tour of their black box type theatre. We were there with Eyewitness Palestine. (It was 2014, just when Hamas & Fatah reached a Unity Agreement, just before that summer’s brutal siege of Gaza, killing the fragile unity in its wake.) There were several Europeans in temporary residency at TFT, teaching lighting, sound, film. Plays of TFT are original writing, based on stories told by Palestinians, or adaptations of established plays. Friends of TFT, based in New York & London, also mentor and support financially. Our Palestinian hosts, who run the Theatre, were born and raised in the Camp or elsewhere in the occupied Palestinian territories. They proudly recounted the history of TFT, inspired by the work in Jenin Refugee Camp of a Jewish-Israeli woman named Arna. As a young woman, she was part of an Israeli militia, the Palmach, participating in the ethnic cleansing of Palestinian Bedouin from the Negev. She later married a Palestinian from Nazareth and they had 3 children. She wanted to create a space for children to heal from the violence and to learn their own history, not a history written by the new State of Israel. Arna won the Alternate Nobel Peace Prize in 1993, and her son Juliano Mer Khanis, then the most famous and most controversial actor in Israel, encouraged her to use her prize money to build a small theatre. She did that, then died in 1995; Juliano re-established it as TFT in 2006. By this time, Jenin Refugee Camp had been devastated by the Israeli military during the 2^nd Intifada.

Jenin has long been a place of resistance to Israeli control over Palestinian lives and dispossession of their land. Jenin Refugee Camp is about 1 square km., housing 15,000, mostly people (& their descendants) driven out of Haifa by Zionist militias in 1948. Haifa at that time had a Palestinian population of about 70,000. Only 4,000 remained after the Nakba. Their homes, businesses and lands were taken over by Jewish immigrants to the new State of Israel, and the Palestinians – neither consulted nor compensated – have never been allowed to return, even to visit.

The utter failure of the Oslo Accords in the 90’s, with loss of even more land to Israelis, plus the non-realization of the promised Palestinian State, created pre-conditions for the 2^nd Intifada (“shaking off”). With no military, and ownership of weapons by Palestinians illegal under Israeli law, some of the most desperate Palestinians resisted with their lives, as suicide bombers. Many of these came from Jenin, and consequently Jenin Refugee Camp became a prime target of the Israeli military. The Camp’s virtual destruction in 2002 was seen as collective punishment by many. The 2^nd Intifada was harsh and ineffective, with 5,000 Palestinians killed and 1,400 Israelis.

More resistance was created by the violence and destruction, and so the cycle goes. Out of the ashes rose once again The Freedom Theatre. It has served as a place for numerous youth and young adults of Jenin, living unfree in the cramped squalor of the Camp, to work through their trauma, to find purpose, to learn skills and be mentored. It is like a beacon of hope in a pretty bleak environment. When parts of the Camp were rebuilt after 2002, our hosts from TFT told us that Israelis made sure the roads were wide enough for Israeli bulldozers and tanks.

And now in June & July, 2023, Jenin has been not only invaded again by land, but bombed by Israeli drones & Apache helicopters, causing a level of destruction not seen since 2002, which locals remember as the “Battle of Jenin”. The latest incursion began in the middle of the night with over 1,000 Israeli military entering the Camp in tanks, holding people at gunpoint while forcing 3,000 people to leave their homes, moving on the rampage from one occupied house to the next. 12 were killed, over 100 injured. Power, water and sewage networks were damaged; roads were completely destroyed, perhaps to prevent ambulances from getting through*. Bombs were dropped indiscriminately from the air, damaging or destroying almost 80% of the buildings. (Jewish Currents, Unpacking Israel’s Legal Fictions, 14 July, 2023.) Every boy the Israeli military found over 15 years of age was arrested. (Mondoweiss Podcast “Unpacking Jenin”, 11 July, 2023.) Journalists were once again targeted by snipers, ostensibly to prevent their reporting.** Then after 2 days of mayhem, the military upped and left the Camp. Go figure.

*The Israeli military has a long history of preventing help for the injured enemy, in contravention of the Geneva Conventions. See Thomas Suarez’ Palestine Hijacked: How Zionism forged an Apartheid State from the River to the Sea (2023), describing Jewish militias’ guerilla attacks against the British in the lead-up to 1948: “As was their habit, the militants mined the approach road to blow up anyone coming to the victims’ aid”. (p.139)

** This practice has been documented & condemned by the International Federation of Journalists.

(Next week: Part 2)

Green Wizardries with Maxine Rogers

July 20, 2023

Green Wizardries, Chickens in the Country by Maxine Rogers

We keep a flock of Buff Orpington laying hens. This is a heritage breed from England, from the town of Orpington in Kent. The birds are large and heavily feathered with golden feathers. I saw a Buff Orpington rooster at a Fall Fair when I was a small child. The rooster was a little taller than I was, or so I remember it. He was a beautiful deep-gold colour and from that day on, the Buff Orpington was the only breed for me.

The Buff Orpington is a new breed of chicken, dating back only to the 1880’s. The first Orpington chickens were the Black Orpingtons. The breeder, a Mr. William Cook, wanted a good laying hen and a heavy meat bird. He succeeded in his goal and his new breed of chickens rapidly became a favourite in the UK and the US.

Not content with the Black Orpington, Mr. Cook went on to create the Buff. To get the golden colour he wanted, Mr. Cook drew on some golden Cochin chickens and some other breeds to get the excellent colour and the very thick feathering. There are other colours of Orpingtons, including the lavender and the splash, but the Buff has remained far and away the most popular variety.

The Buff Orpington is an excellent bird for cold weather but they require shade in the summer to thrive. As soon as the sun hits our hen yard, all the Buffs depart for the shady interior of their house.

The Buff Orpingtons have a reputation as being good mothers but this is, sadly, not the case anymore. This breed, and so many other breeds of chicken, have been reared in incubators for so long that breeders have not selected for good mothering ability and some of these birds have almost none left.

Last year, we were very pleased to have one of our Buff hens sit on a clutch of eggs and rear them all with mothering skills more often seen in Bantam breeds. This summer, we set her to breeding again and again, she chose to sit on the eggs. She was very focused and every time we checked n her, she was screwed down tight on that nest. We kept listening at the door for the first peeps which would tell us the chicks had hatched.

A couple of days ago, I heard some peeping and went in to find the area around the nest to be littered with six unconscious chicks. I ran and quickly set up the incubator and got a basket to gather the chicks in. We went in and picked them all up. Some seemed dead but the rule with hypothermia is you are not cold and dead until you are warm and dead. Once in the incubator, they all revived.

We went back and lifted the hen up and collected the remaining chicks and the eggs, some of which were pipping, that is, the chicks inside were breaking their shells to hatch. Our hen may have lost her mind at the end but she did such a good job of incubating the eggs that we got eighteen chicks from twenty-two eggs which is a very good rate of hatch and would have been even better if she had not managed to smother one chick as it was hatching. Only one of the eggs was infertile which tells us our rooster, Admiral, is a good breeder. The chicks spent something like 28 hours in the incubator and then went into a brooding box with a heat lamp and are all doing very well.

I mention this because the other way to get chicks is to order them from Rochester Hatchery in Alberta and have them flown over. This is stressful on the chicks and some always die in transit. Rochester is good about this and puts in a few extra chicks to make up for the expected travel losses.

I would rather breed my own birds here as there is no danger of importing disease and the savings in fuel are astronomical. Flying our chickens in from Alberta is kind of pants on the head madness. I get to choose what my hens are eating to get them ready for breeding and this makes a difference in the strength and resilience shown by the chicks.

Having roosters on our islands is essential for food security. There was some lunatic idea from the Trust, some time ago, that roosters would be banned from Denman and Hornby. They seem to have mistaken our rural islands for the suburbs of some large city. Luckily, the backlash from that proposal was fierce and they gave it up.

I feed my birds a mash every day of soaked alfalfa pellets, kitchen scraps, a bit of milk, any animal fat I have extra, and their usual ration of layer pellets all soaked in hot water to make it more palatable. We also soak their hen scratch in water to ferment for three days before serving it. This makes the scratch much easier to digest and it has more nutritional value from the process of fermentation. They also get heaps of lettuces and other greens from my garden, dandelion greens being a perennial favourite.

The chicks are thriving on a diet of unmedicated chick starter, home-made cottage cheese and finely-chopped greens. The future is uncertain. Having some hens in your back yard may be the best investment you will ever make.

Letter to the Editor – Keith Porteous

July 20, 2023

In a recent Letter to the Editor, I referred to advice from Stephen Malthouse that I had thankfully ignored. When we later spoke on the phone, he asked me what I was referring to. Nearly nine years ago, there was a Pertussis outbreak on Denman Island that went undiagnosed for a long period. My 4 month old daughter was hospitalized with Pertussis, but fortunately she had already received her first Pertussis shot from a public health nurse, saving her from brain damage or worse. Contrary to his claim, Malthouse did have one early appointment with my newly born daughter, weighing her, and advising me against vaccinations. Now, in last week’s Letter, Malthouse violates the privacy of our phone call and is not honest about its content.

Pertussis is not a dangerous disease to everyone, but can be very dangerous to newborns. In his most recent letter, Malthouse admits that the Pertussis vaccine can reduce the symptoms. These are the very symptoms that threaten a newborn’s life. Malthouse’s claim is that my issue with him is that he promotes anti-vaxx views. I was very clear with him on our phone call that this was not the case. And when he claims that I believe his views led to the Pertussis outbreak, he is being dishonest. I told him that he has every right to his view on childhood vaccines, just as I have the right to my own. I have always believed, and still believe in the principle of vaccine choice, where every person has the right to make decisions regarding themselves and their children.

I told Malthouse that I believed that the most critical public health issue currently in our community, is that we have become more acrimonious in our differences. Some best friends and neighbours no longer speak to one another. Neighbours viciously smear one another, and some have lost their jobs over the COVID19 issue. In attempting to bridge these unhealthy divides, I encouraged him to publicly share what he had told me of his own mistakes when the public health emergency was first declared. It would show a conciliatory tone that might help us reconcile divisions with a demonstration of humility. Three times he asked for suggestions of what he might say, and each time he simply refused to acknowledge what I had given him in specific suggestions, even when I repeated his own admissions to him.

In my view, some of Stephen Malthouse’s actions during the pandemic were irresponsible, and exacerbated the divisions in our community on what should have been personal and private health matters, just as I believe that the 20 local Doctors who promised herd immunity as a result of COVID19 inoculations have been irresponsible, having never admitted their mistakes. This demonstrates critical flaws in all of our local caregivers, and their capacity for reason. Malthouse doesn’t listen well, and his hubris impedes him from the compassion required to be an effective public health advocate. He is, however, a very capable Spin Doctor.

Sucking the Oxygen Out of Affordable Housing Solutions – Keith Porteous

July 20, 2023

Sucking the Oxygen Out of Affordable Housing Solutions

The threads of text about the Local Trust Committee’s Housing Advisory Planning Committee appearing on the Denman Island Bulletin Board, reveals that which is not well understood, and conspicuously, not even contemplated. Much of it is finger pointing at local governance and its rules by some of the same people involved with the APC, while never considering that residents can get together in an ad hoc effort to discuss housing and human health services without involving the same institutions they believe are impeding needed improvements. Instead, the loudest voices wade back into another slow and bureaucratic process, even Chairing its appointed housing advisory committee, then publicly complaining that the process and its enablers are flawed. Perhaps we have identified the problem in addressing needed changes.

We have been through all this before without producing the result of increased access to affordable housing, even when the Local Trust Committee has amended some bylaws. It may be faint praise, but to the Islands Trust’s credit, they have suspended bylaw enforcement of some non-conforming housing. What is not understood by many, is that Islands Trust has no legal jurisdiction as a housing authority, where they are limited to zoning and land use only. They have no power to enforce rent controls, or initiate any development of housing, affordable and not. The major impediments to affordable housing development are Provincial laws relating to water and septic and setbacks from riparian areas, and of course the funding needed to build it. Whatever changes the APC may recommend, it will have no effect on these Provincial laws.

So what is all this self-righteous grandstanding about? Doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result? Hopefully, Denman Green will be built, and some people will be housed affordably, following what will amount to a 10 year effort. And then we’ll still be faced with many of the same access to affordable housing problems, with nearly no rental vacancies, residents with low incomes, and some human health issues that contribute to an individual’s capacity to find comfort in a safe and affordable home. We don’t need (god), The United Nations, or the Islands Trust to tell us what needs to be done. And all the self-congratulatory and performative backslapping is completely unnecessary, as are more surveys.

We will have to accept that simply changing local bylaws is not necessarily THE solution, or at least not the only solution, or even the presumptive best solution! Many people with housing issues need different kinds of help, and we should be addressing the deficit in local support for health and human services. Looking at these issues from a different perspective starts with supporting people’s needs based on their personal circumstances. We already have some zoning for small secondary dwellings, without the intended outcomes. Entering into yet another cumbersome, bureaucratic, one size fits all process that will take months and years, and has an extremely low probability of creating fundamental change, is a fool’s errand.

Heat Waves and Tipping Points – Gwynne Dyer

July 20, 2023

17 July 2023

Heat Waves and Tipping Points

By Gwynne Dyer

“What we’re seeing is climate impacts that scientists thought would accompany certain temperatures happening far more rapidly, with far more devastating effects than had been forecast,” said Dr. Simon Nicholson of the Forum for Climate Engineering Assessment at American University.

“We didn’t think that the Arctic would crash by now, and yet it’s almost gone. We didn’t think we’d be seeing these wildfires in Australia and the United States and elsewhere with the frequency and severity that they’re being seen.

“Given that we’re at about one degree Celsius [+1.1°C, actually], we thought those were far-distant prospects. So 1.5 degrees Celsius of warming above pre-industrial averages could turn out to be far more devastating than had been imagined when that target was set as the threshold for international action.”

Last month was the planet’s hottest June on record, and probably the hottest in about 12,000 years. This month is shaping up to be the hottest July, and there’s a good chance that August will also break the record, because the relentless upward creep of global heating is being supercharged by the return of the cyclical El Niño phenomenon in the eastern Pacific.

It’s not just very high temperatures – more than one-third of the US population is now under extreme heat warnings, and the city of Phoenix is having its 18^th successive day over 110°F (43.3°C) – but the heat lasts into the night, too.

Southern Europe is the same from Spain to Turkey, with daytime temperatures in the low forties Celsius and little relief at night. Europe, which keeps better records on this than the United States, counted 61,000 heat-related deaths last year. This year will be much higher.

South and Southeast Asia had their heat waves in April and May (45°C and up in India and Thailand), and now it’s time for torrential rain and landslides in Japan, Korea and China. (That’s really due to the heat, too: high temperatures mean higher evaporation, which means much more rain.)

All quiet in the southern hemisphere, where it’s still winter, but El Niño probably means record bushfires in Australia by December. Worrisome, because they have just discovered that the 2020 fires were big and hot enough to drive the smoke up into the stratosphere, where it started destroying ozone and expanding the ozone hole again.

El Niño-linked droughts in South America and southern Africa, of course – and did I mention that there are still 500 wildfires burning in Canada?

Well, what did you think that ‘global heating’ would be like? No surprises there, except that what the scientists thought would be happening around 2030 is happening now.

2029 or 2030 is when we were scheduled to breach the ‘aspirational’ never-exceed level of 1.5°C higher average global temperature if emissions continued on the current track, but somebody forgot to allow for the fact that there’s an El Niño every three to seven years. Oops!

Now the World Meteorological Organisation is saying that global average temperature is likely to exceed +1.5°C at least once, but perhaps a number of times, between now and 2027. How likely? 66% likely.

“It’s the first time in history that it’s more likely than not that we will exceed 1.5°C”, said Adam Scaife, the head of long-range prediction at Britain’s Met Office Hadley Centre. And that means that we will be getting into the territory where the ‘tipping points’ may be lurking.

Ever since 2015, we have been operating with two ‘never-exceeds’. The big, flashing red lights, with sirens blaring, are at +2°C, because after that we would be crossing lots of tipping points: Arctic sea ice gone, Amazon forest turning into savannah, methane coming out of melting permafrost, lots of things causing rapid, unstoppable further warming.

But they also set the lower, ‘aspirational’ never-exceed target of +1.5°C because they were worried that some of the tipping points might activate even before +2°C. ‘Aspirational’ because even in 2015 it didn’t look very likely that we would be able cut our emissions that rapidly.

That’s what we are heading for right now, and the forecast is that we’ll be in zone for extremes past +1.5°C until 2027. Then, if all goes well, the El Niño will have been replaced by the cooler La Niña, and the global average temperature will fall back to normal. Well, to a new ‘normal – say, +1.3°C.

That would be nice. If we have been really efficient about reducing our emissions in the meantime (miracles do happen), we might not see +1.5°C again until the early 2030s. But if we cross some tipping points in the next few years, they won’t go back to ‘normal’ afterwards. Unfortunately, it doesn’t work like that.

Abyss – Gair

July 20, 2023

MacCrew #2

July 20, 2023

March 22nd, 2007

MacCrew #2

Work today was good. Real good. We went up the inland Island highway to the Port Alberni turnoff and turned around to get onto the southbound lane. There were a bunch of 4-5 year old alders peppering the bank which needed removing. The slope upon which we worked was reminiscent of many a tree-planting day. I always get into my work but the challenge of the slope only upped my zeal to rip it up. Actually, it was Fred who ripped it up seeing as he was on the chainsaw.

We picked up where we left off from yesterday’s work, again, without the disabled chipper. A crew of six of us, one saw, one hellacious slope that the others weren’t too adept at navigating, and the alders. I just rode Fred’s hip on high and let it all hang out! I’ve numerous times been complimented on my work ethic and high rate of output by several of the C.O.’s I’ve toiled for. C.O. Person not excluded. Further to that, I’ve been told how appreciated my efforts have been from time to time, because it helps to bring up the efforts of the others who can often exhibit indifference to the work. Having 15 years of tree-planting under my belt, I’m all too aware of this phenomenon. Nobody on a tree-planting crew likes to be seen as not pulling their weight. A jail house crew is a different breed, though. Many times I’ve heard a fellow inmate say, “don’t work so hard, you’re making us all look bad.” A comment I thought was the sole domain of union workers. My efforts don’t and shouldn’t have any bearing with the others on the crew. At the end of the day we all make the same pittance. As I’ve stated before, I’m just looking to pass my time as quickly as possible. To sit around dog-fucking only prolongs the agonizing drag of time to my mind, so I may as well work. And work I do. Especially today.

Of the numerous incarnations of Crew #2, its many different assemblages of inmate, today’s was a roll-your-sleeves-up group. Peters is the only one who maintains a ‘methodical’ approach to his day. A byproduct of his being here for fifteen months, no doubt. Rick and Brandon are new and I gather don’t realize that slacking is an option. Fred is an experienced saw guy who knows how to work and young Richie, my old roommate with Troy, is a steady, determined worker in his own right. The way I saw it, being the one mainly on the bank with Fred, I just tried to keep up with him. As he dropped the alders which ranged up to 20 feet in height, I proceeded to toss them down to the others so that they could stack them for chipping at a later date. The key to stacking them for easy chipping is to have the butt end of them closest to the road. To simply toss them down haphazardly would only add to the grief of the guys stacking them and slow down progress. So I made the effort of delivering them in the orientation necessary, This required using the ol’ Caber Toss technique. By lifting each tree vertically and then flipping them into the air, the steep slope afforded me a handicap of an extra 50 degrees over your typical Highland Games participant which had me looking like a rising star in the sport. Without that 50 degrees, I wouldn’t have conceived of donning my ‘prison issue’ kilt for the day. Admittedly, it only takes some green beer to make me Irish for a day so culturally I guess I’m a bit easy. Anywho, my goat-like abilities and a combination of balance, strength and a keen feel for touch and physics, had me keeping up with Fred’s saw work. The result of my extra efforts not only helped to facilitate the work of the others but I suspect that they too got caught up in the blistering pace of it all. We kicked some serious alder ass today. Each of us easily did the work of two, without question, and from my perch I could see the smile on Person’s face grow as the day wore on. He was impressed to the point of not being able to contain it. I could tell that he was recognizing Fred’s and my efforts were drawing the others along for the ride. And ride they did. Given the fact that we only average around $3.50/day, our crew’s output was a sight to behold. Over lunch, Person said that he intended to stop on the way back to jail and get us all a popsicle. An obvious show of his pleasure as I’m sure it all reflects on him to his superiors. It’s becoming clear to me that I’ve gained the respect of Person for my approach to work and I’m fine with that. He sees enough duds and dolts roll through his watch, I suspect, and my capabilities register upon him. It’s just like tree-planting in that respect. Okay, it ends right there, admittedly. The pay is in no way similar and I’m still a red to his blue, but once the work starts I’m more of a peer in his eyes. I think he’s to the point of astonished. It makes me laugh actually. I’m likely challenging any preconceived notions he holds about inmates. Purely out for the easy money. ‘Thieves, dealers, fraud artists. All looking for maximum return from minimum effort.’ Well I wouldn’t think of giving anybody the satisfaction of confirming such suspicion. Least of all the ‘heads’ that run this place. Hell, they are all in jobs that drain them of any motivation to work. They just sit around all day and look at us. How agonizingly boring! The midsections of the majority of the C.O.’s here tell of this. I could outwork any of them, hands down! “Who’s looking for the easy pay now?” It’s my way of turning them all on their heads. And I enjoy that!

Trapped Rat – Alan Black

July 20, 2023

trapped rat

There is a rat trapped behind my washing machine.

I can still see its dark grey tail when I shine my small black multi use flashlight behind the machine.

I don’t want rodents in my house; I once woke up to a rat in the kitchen dragging an avocado across the kitchen lino like a character from Goodfellows who was doing a debt collection.

In the recent past I have killed them with traps but taking this rodent head on would bring killing rats to a much more personal and disturbing level.

I don’t own a gun which is the most convenient of killing machines although even a twenty two would be messy and likely put a hole in the floor.

I could probably batter it to death with my blue acrylic pool cue but this would be rather unpleasant for both of us and I would not ever be able to look at the cue the same way.

I have sent a text to my wife and wait for further instruction.