Memoir of a Rural Sisyphus-Redux

December 30, 2021

Introduction

Memoir of a Rural Sisyphus-Redux

Bill Engleson

www.engleson.ca

For a few years, I kept a diary of my inauguration into the Denman Community. This column, recently renamed Memoir of a Rural Sisyphus-Redux, will extract a few of my observations from a dozen or so years ago and share them. Hopefully, they will have some modern times currency.

Food Thoughts

November 18, 2004

As I resume this modest memoir after taking a few days off from conversing with myself, I should clarify that (for the benefit of any future biographer should there be a need for one, a long shot at best) this opus won’t always have an entry every day. I suspect that months might pass without comment. On those occasions I’ll be observing my life by living it rather then alluding to it in small summations, little packages weaned from the fresh memory of the day.

Some days though will be like this day. I hope you have had at least one and ideally hundreds of days like the one that has just about seen the sun set. For me, a day like today had to have an evening recipe. I love to cook, especially when I have companioned one or two new recipes and I venture into a sweet new territory. Today, I am preparing a middle eastern eggplant and onion dish bathed in yogurt, mint, and garlic and sprinkled (and you know the recipe world loves to sprinkle things) liberally (not a recipe George Walker Bush would embrace) with paprika. As a travelling cohort, I’ve made a lentil stew simmering with, amongst other things, frozen tomatoes from our fall crop. Have you ever sliced a frozen tomato? It’s like drawing a blade across chilled, blood-red, brittle frozen snow.

In addition to meal preparation, I’ve emailed a number of friends with overdue communiqués, sent a pithy letter to the Globe and Mail concerning Carolyn Parrish, rogue parliamentarian, and her views on mad cow disease.

I also have had a fine half hour this winter afternoon in the hot tub. Later, my cat refrained from clawing me once during our scheduled mandatory male bonding session. Things are improving on that front.

All in all, a superlative day.

Letter to the Editor

December 30, 2021

The following statement was delivered at a December 12 livestream event hosted by Unity Project and Global Covid Summit. Dr. Robert Malone and other leading physicians discussed their recent Physicians’ Declaration update, why healthy children should not vaccinated and the associated risks.

My name is Robert Malone, and I am speaking to you as a parent, grandparent, physician and scientist. I stand by this statement with a career dedicated to vaccine research and development. I’m vaccinated for Covid and I’m generally pro-vaccination. I have devoted my entire career to developing safe and effective ways to prevent and treat infectious diseases.

Before you inject your child – a decision that is irreversible – I want to let you know the scientific facts about this genetic vaccine, which is based on the mRNA vaccine technology I created:

There are three issues parents need to understand:

The first is that a viral gene will be injected into your children’s cells. This gene forces your child’s body to make toxic spike proteins. These proteins often cause permanent damage in children’s critical organs, including

Their brain and nervous system
Their heart and blood vessels, including blood clots
Their reproductive system, and
This vaccine can trigger fundamental changes to their immune system

The most alarming point about this is that once these damages have occurred, they are irreparable.

You can’t fix the lesions within their brain
You can’t repair heart tissue scarring
You can’t repair a genetically reset immune system, and
This vaccine can cause reproductive damage that could affect future generations of your family

The second thing you need to know is that this novel technology has not been adequately tested.

We need at least 5 years of testing/research before we can really understand the risks
Harms and risks from new medicines are often revealed many years later

Ask yourself if you want your own child to be part of the most radical medical experiment in human history.

One final point: the reason they’re giving you to vaccinate your child is a lie.

Your children represent no danger to their parents or grandparents
It’s actually the opposite. Their immunity, after getting Covid, is critical to save your family if not the world from this disease

In summary: there is no benefit for your children or your family to be vaccinating your children against the small risks of the virus, given the known health risks of the vaccine that as a parent, you and your children may have to live with for the rest of their lives.

The risk/benefit analysis isn’t even close.

As a parent and grandparent, my recommendation to you is to resist, and fight to protect your children.

Submitted by Amanda Hale, December 26, 2021

Letter to the Editor

December 30, 2021

I feel I should correct an inaccurate interpretation by Doug Rennpfred of my comments about COVID-19 vaccines. He stated I said two doses of mRNA [COVID vaccines] “are enough.” In fact I said two doses are the initial vaccination treatment and that we will have to have booster shots (as are now being offered).

It’s also not correct that protection drops off “after roughly two months” as DR says. They provide strong protection for at least four months after the second dose – maybe more but it will depend on variants.

It’s absolutely wrong that vaccinated people “are transmitting the virus far more due to their unimpeded travel and gathering.” Firstly, fully vaccinated people do not enjoy unimpeded travel and gathering. More importantly, they are far less likely to contract COVID-19 than unvaccinated people. If they don’t contract an infection, they can’t transmit it to others.

I said in my letter that unvaccinated people are at greatest risk to themselves, and some of the restrictions help protect them. They are still a risk to others, however, as they are far more likely to contract COVID.

The best explanation I’ve heard of how the COVID-19 vaccines work is that they erect the equivalent of two walls: the outer wall prevents infection; the inner wall greatly reduces the likelihood of hospitalization and death. Unfortunately, the Omicron variant is proving effective in breaching that outer wall. That’s all the more reason to become fully vaccinated and get a booster dose as soon as we’re eligible. That’s also why we all need to follow the other pandemic protocols as well.

I make my comments as a communications manager with a provincial health authority (the First Nations Health Authority). I’ve been working with colleagues for a year now to provide accurate information about COVID-19 vaccines. I’ve heard clinical colleagues, including Dr. Bonnie Henry, refer to the vaccines as miracles due to their effectiveness and the speed with which they were developed (due to unprecedented global cooperation that built on many years of mRNA research). This isn’t language scientific folks use often!

It’s frustrating to hear people dismiss vaccines in favour of wildly inaccurate claims. I urge people to get information from credible sources, such as the BC Centre for Disease Control.

I am not a Nazi, a fool, a scoundrel, or a mindless tool (tool being used to what end I wonder what folks like DR think?) I am simply someone near broken from working to promote safety and wellness – for us all.

In peace and goodwill,

Stephanie Slater

Letter to the Editor

December 30, 2021

Letter to the Editor

Recent correspondents have stated that vaccinated persons can harbour and spread the Covid virus. This is not wrong, but knowledge of the entire process is necessary to reveal the complex meaning of the statement.

The Covid virus, like most viruses, is sterile on its own. Just as the malarial parasite needs the mosquito to complete its life cycle and would be extinguished without this helpful little insect, a virus needs an organic host to reproduce. The only ‘purpose’ of a virus is to reproduce, which it does by using the generative machinery of the host’s cells to replicate itself, killing the host’s cells in the process. The host population should be as large and social as possible to make sure the virus population thrives. Any sickness brought about by viral infection is collateral damage. This viral play book is true whether for polio, measles, mumps or Covid. Very crudely the number of your cells destroyed by the virus determines whether you suffer a lot or a little and whether you live or die.

However vaccines differ in their ability to reduce viral load. Some ,such as the smallpox and measles vaccines, give sterilizing immunity which means they both prevent the disease breaking out in the individual and kill the virus entirely—no transmission possible. Others such as the Hepatitis B and the rotavirus vaccines protect the individual from the disease but retain the infective virus in the individual’s body. The rotavirus vaccine is an interesting case because it still allows infection by the vaccinated but reduces significantly the viral load and thus the level of transmission. A 10 year (2006-2016) study indicated that positive tests for the rotavirus dropped anywhere from 74% to 90% after the vaccine was introduced in the U.S. As it takes a long time to measure AND interpret transmission rates and vaccine lifetimes the jury is still out on the Covid vaccines. But it does appear they do not have sterilising immunity, they do reduce the viral load in vaccinated people, and they do offer good protection against effects of the disease. The vast majority of vaccinated persons, if not already in compromised health, usually suffer no ill effects or, at most, a much milder version of the sickness associated with the virus. And vaccination ensures that any virus spread by a vaccinated person will be significantly less potent.

‘Natural’ immunity creates the same defence antibodies a vaccine does. But the virus has much more time to get to work replicating and destroying cells while the immune system takes time to recognize the virus’ protein, notify the immune cells to create antibodies, and finally gets busy doing so. In that extended time the virus is busy reproducing by killing the host’s cells. If you survive an infection without vaccination, you have now become vaccinated. The Black Death is seen as an historical artefact, however an outbreak in Madagascar in 2017 left thousands infected and 170 deaths. With a minimum death rate of 30% I leave it to your imagination as to what reliance on ‘natural’ immunity to the Black Death would produce if public health providers were not allowed to ameliorate its effects by placing antibiotics in the body’s ‘sacred’ temple and instituting widespread sanitation procedures.

Simply stating that vaccinated persons can spread the virus is meaningless without the full viral story and doing so bolsters an unstated belief by assuming that the reader will see it as a reason for believing vaccines are harmful. The out-of-context bias is very common deflective trope. It is an example of what Freud called externalisation. Perhaps the most egregious trope of this type is the projection of your own faults onto others—Rush Limbaugh was an expert practitioner of externalisation when he endlessly spoke of femi-nazis and the drive-by-media as being guilty of name calling. Conspiracy theorists do the same in accusing their opponents of lacking ‘critical reasoning’ while they build their fantasies with illogical reasoning. Mr. Rennpferd’s letter in the Grapevine of Dec. 16^th maligning his opponents by quoting Dietrich Bonhoeffer is a classic example of this form of externalisation. The Nazis made widespread use of denial of reason and falsification of facts as first conceived by Hitler as “the big lie”in Mein Kampf . Bonhoeffer, a pastor whose short life was dedicated to resisting Nazis would be horrified to find his words being used to attack the very people he would consider as allies.

Lee McIntyre in his book “How to Talk to a Science Denier” lists five tropes commonly used by conspiracy theorists. The most interesting one is “a belief that if science isn’t perfect, then it is wrong.” Science has never claimed perfection; indeed its exponents have endlessly upheld its existence as an ongoing process subject to change. But it appears to be this particular belief in perfection that lets our anti-vaccine correspondents dismiss entirely all real vaccine evidence. The viral cycle is so well known that it should be accepted by both sides in this controversy before they even begin to put forward their arguments for and against vaccination. It is the result of the ‘critical thinking’ we are endlessly encouraged to use and therefore one of the known facts on which we could begin to come together, as some of your heartfelt correspondents have so earnestly requested us to do.

Oakley Rankin

Islands 2050 public input letter

December 30, 2021

Dear Friends,

I’m contacting all Island Trustees and the executive to implore you to have the subject first reading postponed pending suitable engagement. Why the rush while we are still in pandemic mode and particularly given that this document has been pushed out of the door with indecent haste?

Existing public consultation has been totally flawed and the document is more total rewrite than simple revision. The 2019 consultation survey was a perfect example of narrowly asking only the questions the executive wanted answers to. My reply to almost all of the questions was “this is not the issue” or “why not ask this” or even “allow the answer to be clarified.” Instead we got the classic “I’ve stopped beating my wife” dilemma! Paternalistic in the extreme.

Major features of the original policy statement have been discarded and the individual character of our local OCPs ignored for a one-size-fits-all emphasis on a narrow view of just three criteria. We spent decades refining those plans – yes it’s always good to review things but it hurts that our work has been totally trashed. It seems to me as though residents (many belonging to families that have lived here for generations), their businesses and livelihoods are just inconveniences to be legislated out of existence.

All with no attempt at a balance between communities and the environment. A balance that is recognized all over Canada. The Gulf Islands are special but then so is the whole of BC, as are its residents – why do we get to live in a museum while paying our local government to act as curators?

From the tone of the document are we even going to be allowed to live here?

We’re pretty much all committed environmentalists – we wouldn’t live here otherwise, but our IT executive don’t have a monopoly on defining the meaning of the word – there are inputs on Federal and Provincial levels and locals’ “way of knowledge” deserves recognition. It is not like the place had been badly managed both before and after the IT was created. In part the only reason there is anything left to preserve and protect on our islands is down to the wisdom of previous generations of property owners. On Saturna development was slow and measured, forests were retained or selectively logged and in the end massive sections of land were donated as a park. Half our island is protected so I guess we must have done something right. We have just 330 residents in a 35km2 area – hardly evidence of over-development.

The pandemic has been a massively distracting crisis not seen since WW2 so we’ve not had the usual opportunity to thrash out changes in numerous town hall meetings. I find it particularly sinister that “shall” replaces “should” throughout the document with no allowance for interpretation. It’s like suddenly waking up to a bunch of new draconian laws with no chance to mount a challenge. Yes democracy allows us to choose our representatives but it shouldn’t allow a small number of them to ram through legislation without consultation. Postpone the reading and talk to us when congregation is possible. I don’t trust you to sort it out at subsequent readings. It won’t be “all right on the night.” It’s a mess.

People are part of the environment.

Dave Paton, Saturna Island

Understory

December 30, 2021

Understory

by Thomas Provençal

Eagles nest around me

in a canopy of dreams.

Deer amble through the forest

but life ain’t what it seems.

Mycilea communicate

the messages of plants.

The understory is alive

with grubs and worms and ants.

Microscopic harmony

rejuvenates the soil.

Every being plays a part

of mother nature’s toil.

If we could leave the miracle

alone, just let it be,

existence could incorporate

into our family tree.

Green Wizardries, Staying Healthy in a Time of Omicron

December 30, 2021

Green Wizardries, Staying Healthy in a Time of Omicron, by Maxine Rogers

I have found it puzzling that Public-Health authorities have chosen some measures to publicize and avoided talking about others which would be of great benefit to all of us. I am sure the strategies I suggest will be helpful in addition to all the usual measures suggested by Public Health officials.

The first and, most glaring, omission is their failure to promote the use of Vitamin D as a dirt-cheap method of improving immunity. Up North here in the winter, the sun is at too great an angle to do us any good in the way of Vitamin D production. Vitamin D deficiency is very common. There is a blood test to determine one’s level of Vitamin D but BC Medical will not pay for it. I say, go and get one; it is money well spent.

Years ago, I was getting the symptoms of Seasonal Affective Disorder, SAD for short, in the spring when I was working outside all the time! My Doctor suggested I take the blood test even though I was taking 4,000 IUs of Vitamin D a day. The test came back showing that I was well below the minimum level of Vitamin D so we went to 10,000 IUs a day and tested again in 6 months. At that point, I was at the top of the normal range for Vitamin D. I have tested the same several times in the following years so I am right where I want to be with Vitamin D levels.

High blood levels of Vitamin D have, right from the start of the pandemic, been shown to correlate with very mild or undetectable cases of Covid 19. In Stockholm, Sweden, a full 40% of the first people to die of Covid 19 complications were Somali people. Somalis are very dark and they are not as mad keen on herring and other oily fish as the Swedes are. The Scandinavian people get most of their Vitamin D from eating oily fish. The Somalis, being so dark, were less able to make Vitamin D from the thin Swedish sunshine than the Swedes were. So they were very Vitamin-D deficient and despite being only a tiny fraction of all the people living in Stockholm, they died in much higher numbers than anyone else.

It also happened at the start of the pandemic that Doctors working in the National Health system in Britain got sick and died very quickly. They were, mostly, darkly-complected Doctors who worked inside a lot. They were Vitamin D deficient. The lighter-complected Doctors and Nurses did much better, because they had more Vitamin D in their blood. Vitamin D really does help immunity, not just for Covid but for colds and flu too.

If you have been vaccinated then I would still say that having a good level of Vitamin D is essential as any vaccine has to work with your own immune system. I was listening to Physician from the States, a specialist in Internal Medicine who runs an ICU and has done so through the whole Covid 19 episode. He said that he sees the vast majority of patients in his ICU with Covid 19 complications that are sadly deficient in Vitamin D. He has seen only a small handful of similar patients who have high Vitamin D blood levels.

So Vitamin D is only part of the answer but it is a large part and that is why I am surprised that Public Health Officials in Canada, The States, Britain and Israel are not promoting this very inexpensive and helpful way of boosting people’s immune health.

Another very large part of a rational response to Covid 19 would have been to get people to lose weight. Being overweight is terribly hard on the body and this is reflected in an under-performing immune system. The Covid 19 patients with the worst outcomes have been obese and or diabetic patients. I know that a lot of people have put on weight during the last two years but I have managed to lose over 20 lbs and my health has greatly improved because of it.

I found losing weight very difficult until I read Dr Jason Fung’s books on fasting. His books are available at the Public Library and are interesting and well written. His guidelines are simple and easy to follow.

I came to fasting with a certain amount of trepidation as I thought it would be similar to a reducing diet only worse. Typical reducing diets such as Weight Watchers leave me starving, weak and miserable. Fasting leaves me bright, energetic and easily satiated.

Even severe Type-Two Diabetes responds well and quickly to fasting days and a program of eating one meal a day on the non-fasting days. This gives great results of increased insulin sensitivity and weight loss. If a person is on Diabetes medications, they have to have their Doctor’s support in fasting because their medications must be reduced.

Fasting and eating one meal a day (OMAD) has been shown to rejuvenate people by increasing growth hormones and reducing the symptoms of many of the diseases of civilization such as high blood pressure, obesity, Alzheimer’s and of course Diabetes. I guess the bottom line is that we all eat too much, too often for optimal health. Fasting is the cheapest, easiest cure for disease that has ever been invented. Why are Public Health Officials not talking about this?

I think that Public Heath officials locking people down in their homes and encouraging a climate of fear has been enormously counterproductive, if they had the good of the public in mind at all which I am beginning to doubt. A program of asking people to go out for a run or a vigorous walk every day and to drink lots of water and get eight or nine hours of sleep a day would have been a better response. Such activities boost the immune system and overall health.

photo: Randy rogers

The best news I have is that the data out of South Africa shows that the Omicron variant is very easily transmissible and results in something very like the common cold. I am hoping this strain will help naturally immunize anyone who has not already had one of the other Covid 19 variants.

Gratitude for an Abundant Christmas Hamper Season!

December 30, 2021

By Liticia Gardner, DICES

The Christmas Hampers this year were overflowing with the abundance that this incredible community has to offer- from handmade bowls, to whoopie cushions and locally grown vegetables. The weirdness and wonderfulness of Denman showed this year and it wouldn’t have been without the help of the many hands and hearts that make it all possible by donating, money, time and gifts. The DICES Council and staff would like to offer a huge thank you to everyone who contributed to the Christmas hampers this year.

This year we delivered 46 Christmas hampers brimming with locally baked breads, local veggies, holiday treats and hand matched gifts by our staff elf team. Speaking with the recipients of the hampers, we know that your generous donations are deeply appreciated, especially during these trying times.

In spite of the tumultuousness of Covid this winter season we had a seamless day of packing, wrapping and delivering- topped off with a hefty dose of cheesy Christmas tunes and incredible locally baked goodies from the Guesthouse. A big thank you to Donna & Sheldon and their team for not only providing us amazing goodies, but also supporting us with coordinating donations and providing a number of lovely gifts.

A HUGE thank you to Jen, and the entire team at the General Store- this was Jen’s first year taking over Christmas Hamper organizing and we can’t thank her enough for hustling to find us deals and donations in the wake of floods and food shortages. We would also like to thank DIRCS (the Community Hall) for letting us use the community hall as our venue this year. We luxuriated in their new heating system and breathed easy behind our masks, knowing they’ve recently installed a new ventilation system to keep us all safe. A thank you to Evan Penner for providing us with sturdy boxes, the Denman Island Hardware Store for hosting the gifts drop off box & donation jar, Abraxas for hosting our donation jar, and the Times Colonist Christmas Fund for their generous contribution to the Christmas Hampers.

We would also like to thank all the businesses that donated to the Christmas Hampers; Cold Star Solutions, QF Caseco, Tree Island Yogurt, Vassili’s Bakery, and Saputo.

See you all in the new year!