There’s a shortage of everything this COVID-19 spring. Everything from lumber to foodstuffs to ATVs and nursing home rooms.

Everything is on back order; everything except – dandelions. There are billions and billions and billions of them. It’s a dandelion world, with those bright yellow petals turning to white seed puffs that hitchhike a breeze and parachute into new patches to create colonies of billions more.

“Dandelion don’t tell no lies,” The Rolling Stones sang.  “Dandelion will make you wise . . . . Blow away dandelion, blow away dandelion.”
Pretty impressive to have the Stones write a song about you.

Even without the musical fame the dandelion is highly impressive, despite being the most hated plant in our manicured neighbourhoods.

 
The dandelion is a plant world overlord, unchallenged in its ability to survive and repopulate. A dandelion plant can live for 10 to 13 years, with each flower head producing multitudes of blow-away seeds every year. A plant with three or four flower heads produces thousands of breeze-riding seeds, many of which can become new plants.

The dandelion’s nutritive roots go deep into history, possibly tens of thousands of years, but certainly back to the times of ancient civilizations in Egypt, China and Rome. Its roots and leaves were important sources of medicine in early civilizations.

It is hard to believe while looking out over a field of millions of them, but dandelions are not native to North America. They were brought here by European settlers for food and medicine.

The plant is believed to have been brought to Canada by French settlers whose name for it was dent-de-lion – lion’s tooth because of its saw-toothed leaves.

Dandelions are said to have more helpful vitamins than many vegetables and were used by settlers for stomach and liver problems and a variety of other ailments. They were used to make teas, root beer, coffee substitutes and salads.

Dandelion tonics remain popular with some people, but their numbers have declined since the home remedy era gave way to the pharmaceutical industry.  

Interestingly, modern research has found that dandelion extracts have antiviral properties, and may reduce the ability of viruses to reproduce. There has been some research and discussion about dandelion extract being able to kill some types of cancer cells but there is no conclusive evidence yet.

Not enough human thought and energy has been spent on finding all the benefits of dandelions and trying to make use of them. 

There have been some important initiatives. Ford Motor Company 20 years ago began using crushed dandelion roots (some species contain natural rubber latex) to make synthetic rubber for auto parts. 

Continental Tires has been using dandelion root in bike tires and other companies are working on ways to make dandelion rubber commercially viable. Soon, the tires your auto rides on might be made from dandelions.
However, most of our time, energy and resources have been spent trying to eradicate them.

Eradication of dandelions is a loser’s game. Not only has the plant a relatively long life, its growth rate is fast. The flower head can go from bud to seeds in a matter of days.

Its leaves thrive in barren habitats, pushing their way through heavy gravel and cracked concrete. 

The painstaking work of cutting the roots with a blade and pulling the plants from the ground is not guaranteed effective. Just a small piece of root left in the ground can grow a new dandelion.

Chemicals are the only really effective weapon for killing dandelions, but many jurisdictions have banned them because of their danger to the environment and human health.

Some weary veterans of dandelion wars are thinking the unthinkable: waving the white flag. They are not exactly learning to love dandelions, just taking a deep breath and accepting them.

Some have joined the No Mow May movement, which encourages property owners not to cut their lawns in May. The idea of the movement, started by the United Kingdom, is to let lawns grow wild with flowering plants that help pollinating insects such as bees and butterflies.

Dandelions, which hit their peak in May, will love that, but the neighbours might have a different view. 

 I am standing at the kitchen window, sipping morning coffee, when he arrives. He is but a tiny bright flash flitting by, nothing spectacular or unusual on a clear and sunny morning. But when he lands on one of the feeders, he reveals his full golden glory and my view of the world brightens. He is the Messenger, this spring’s first golden finch and his message is that brighter days are ahead. His body is small but it is an explosion of yellow optimism reminding us to celebrate the joys of life. His twitters and warbles broadcast hope, guidance, comfort.

The goldfinch is a spirit bird that has guided human thinking in many parts of the world for centuries. It has inspired poetry, novels and films and is estimated to have been a central figure in hundreds of paintings during the Renaissance. Goldfinch numbers in North America are in the tens of millions; fewer in Europe where they have been trapped and sold for pets. They were extremely popular as pets in England and Holland. People there often chained them in cages and taught them the trick of drawing water from a glass. The glass was placed below a perch and the bird was taught to lower a thimble-sized cup into the glass and pull it back up. They also were captured and used in a practice called Vinkensport, Dutch for ‘finch sport’. In a Vinkensport contest, cages containing one finch are lined up on a street and timed for how many calls each finch makes in one hour. The finch making the most calls is the winner. The sport has been condemned because of tactics used to make the birds sing more. In early times they were blinded with hot needles to eliminate visual distractions and encourage them to sing more. The sport remains popular today in some European locations where the finches are kept in small, dark boxes, again to discourage distractions. Fortunately, goldfinches are well protected in North America and parts of Europe. Our Migratory Birds Convention Act prohibits capturing, trading, transporting or killing these birds. In the UK, they are protected under the Wildlife and Countryside Act. In earlier times the goldfinch was seen as more than a bright and happy sight on a branch or a bird feeder. Medieval Christians believed the European goldfinch acquired blood red feathers on its face when it attempted to remove the crown of thorns from the crucified Christ. That belief no doubt is enhanced by the fact that goldfinches are very adept at pushing aside prickly thistles to get at thistle seeds, a staple food of the European goldfinch. Ancient Greeks regarded thistles as curative and the goldfinch became to be seen as a symbol for good health. One ancient belief was that if a goldfinch turned its head to the left in the presence of a sick person, that person was destined to die. Goldfinches themselves don’t have long lifespans. Their typical lifespan is two to four years in the wild, nine years in captivity. Paying close attention to your bird feeders can help goldfinches and other birds live out their typical lifespans. Salmonellosis is a common and fatal bird disease that can be spread from bird feeders. It is caused by a bacteria found in bird droppings and easily transmitted in tray type feeders or on the ground below feeders where seed has fallen. Experts say using tube feeders helps reduce transmission and that all feeders should be cleaned weekly with a 10-per-cent bleach solution. This spring a salmonella outbreak has been killing finches and pine siskins along the U.S. west coast. Also, care needs to be taken about what you put in goldfinch feeders. They are fussy eaters; they are vegetarians, the only bird known not to eat bugs. They love Nyjer seed because it contains nutritious oil, which means it is easily spoiled. Nyjer seed needs to be stored in climate-controlled conditions – in temperatures below 80 degrees Fahrenheit. The experts suggest buying Nyjer seed in small quantities and from a dealer known to have rapid turnover of seed. Looking after our goldfinch visitors is important. Without them, our world would be a darker, more pessimistic place. #

Life is full of contradictions. They are everywhere. Just look at our everyday catchphrases: “Silence is golden.” Yet, “The squeaky wheel gets the grease.” 

“The pen is mightier than the sword.” But, “Actions speak louder than words.” 

Those are lightweight contradictions with little or no impact on our lives. Others, however, are heavier, with implications on how we think about human life. 

For instance, there are huge contradictions about human life spans. 

On the one hand we have optimism from all the wonderful things done to allow us to live longer. Advances in science, better medical care, disease control, better education about healthy living all have helped to double global life expectancy in the last 100 years. The global average life expectancy now is 70 years, up from somewhere in the 30s early in the last century. 

People who study such things say life expectancy can continue to get longer. They note that there were about 95,000 centenarians in 1990, then a jump to 450,000 in 2015. Some predict that as many as 25 million people could be 100 years old by 2100 – only 79 years from now. 

On the other hand are theories and studies pointing to increasing threats to our existence. 

Example: The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists has set its famous Doomsday Clock at 100 seconds to midnight. That’s the closest the clock, created in 1947, has been to midnight, the time when supposedly our world will end. 

The clock is reset annually, forward or back, based on increased or reduced threats to humanity. 

The threat most often cited by the scientists has been a nuclear holocaust. Anger, hatred or simple misunderstanding could have some folks pushing nuclear buttons, reducing the average life span to zero. 

New threats are joining the old to contradict optimism about longer life. We now add biological warfare to the nuclear threat. 

Besides man-made threats such as nuclear war, there are natural threats that have been with us since the beginning of time. Super volcanic eruptions, earthquakes, droughts, floods and pandemics like the one we are now experiencing have killed hundreds of millions of people. 

People who pay attention to these things are more concerned about the dangers we humans are creating for ourselves. 

Cambridge University in the United Kingdom has a centre dedicated to studying risks that could lead to human extinction or the collapse of civilization. It says the greatest threats to our world now are man-made. Climate change from global warming is high on its list. 

Both the World Health Organization and the World Economic Forum agree, listing climate change among their top risks. 

We hear about global warming and climate change every day but there is another new threat that gets little attention among the general public – AI, the acronym for artificial intelligence. 

Algorithms already can beat humans at complicated games like chess, they can spot some cancerous tumors faster than a medically-trained human can. They can drive cars and translate languages. 

The big fear among some scientists is that if AI systems become super-intelligent, they could start to out-compete humans in everything and take unforeseen disastrous actions. 

If AI becomes the world’s Big Boss could it start doing bad things to us? Or, could we start doing bad things to each other by using AI? 

AI-controlled automation could cause huge job losses. Algorithms with bad data could send you to prison, or take away your driver’s licence. 

A major worry is the use of AI systems to manipulate audio and video. Machines that recognize voices and likenesses could produce audio or video clips of a person saying something they did not say. 

For instance, a clip could be made of a politician making racist or sexiest statements, which in fact he or she did not make. This type of manipulation could alter elections and change governments. 

Misinformation and disinformation already are being used to alter our democracies. The last thing we need is Artificial Intelligence being used to make things worse. 

Hopefully we will be smart enough to find ways to control AI so it benefits human life without destroying it. As for all those other man-made threats, we have the power to eliminate, or at least control them. If we act intelligently. 

When the gates creak open on our pandemic prison I plan to take a long, peaceful road trip. 

When I think long road trip my mind usually swings south. Trips like Route 66 with all its great history and its wonderfully varied scenery. 

The Canada-U.S. dollar difference sometimes dampens enthusiasm to travel in the States, but the Loonie has been gaining strength against the Greenback over the last year. Auto fuels are cheaper down there. So are motels and food, and the people who serve you smile and make you feel welcome.

However, I’m a bit down on the U.S. these days. Actually, I’m a lot down on the U.S. these days. 

It’s a place that seems to have lost its sense of purpose. Some days it looks like a country gone insane.

The politics have become so radicalized and polarized that you wonder whether the United States should be two countries, instead of one. Longstanding biological racism, and now growing cultural racism, are tearing the place apart. 

It used to be that if you stayed out of ‘bad’ places in the U.S. you didn’t have to worry about being caught up in violence. That’s no longer the case. There is so much violence, much of it gun violence, that you could become a victim anywhere in the country.

The Gun Violence Archive reports there have been 14,500 gun deaths in the U.S. to date this year (roughly five an hour) and 180 mass shootings, which is more than one a day. 

Just staying in your vehicle during a U.S. road trip will not guarantee your safety. There are roughly 100 traffic deaths every day in the U.S., a large part of them attributed to texting and to impaired driving. 

But that’s negative stuff. Positive images are pulling me toward a Canadian road trip. 

Positive images like those brilliant Newfoundland travel TV ads - flowers dancing gently in an ocean breeze, people hiking spectacular coastlines and kids exploring caves built by Vikings. Images of colourful houses, colourful people and happy calm.

Maybe all of us should be thinking Canadian road trips. Or, better still, thinking more Canadian, period.

Canadian culture is not as strongly definitive as it should be. It’s like a tulip struggling to grow and be noticed under the thick canopy of an oak forest. And that canopy is the suffocating American culture spilling over from the south.

We have the same language, similar geography and some of the same customs as Americans. On top of that we listen to American music, watch huge amounts of American television, drive American cars, eat American food, follow American sports teams and buy huge amounts of American goods at American stores like Walmart. 

Canada is ranked one of the highest countries for education, yet only a small per cent of educational book publishers are Canadian. 

Especially worrisome is the trend toward less Canadian produced and reported news and more news from the U.S. A mix of news sources can be a good thing, but my guess is that Canadians probably watch more news from CNN, ABC, NBC and other American networks than they do from Canadian channels. 

Canada’s newspaper industry is failing and a couple of major American newspapers see opportunity in that. They see readers and revenues in the news deserts created by the closure of 250 Canadian newspapers in the last seven years. Cutbacks in Canadian journalism resources increase by the day. 

Both The Washington Post and The New York Times have been increasing Canadian coverage. Their digital editions easily let them direct Canadian advertising at Canadian readers, therefore eating the lunches of our news outlets. 

Canadian news, reported on Canadian news outlets by Canadian journalists, is a lifeblood of Canadian culture. 

We all need to think about how we can start doing more to stop American culture from washing away our Canadian culture, and how we as individuals can strengthen our culture. 

When Covid is over I intend to do that with a Canadian road trip and by spending as much money as I can in small Canadian businesses that have been suffering so deeply under the many restrictions made necessary by this terrible disease. 

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 There is no greater power on earth than stories. Stories help us to understand the world around us; understanding makes it easier to cope.

There is much to cope with this spring. The sickness, deaths and economic destruction brought by the unrelenting Covid virus are overwhelming. Fires from mass cremations in India can be seen from airplanes flying high above the earth.

Thankfully, there are positive stories to help us cope.

A good place to hear them and see them is during a short walk in the woods. But go lightly and quietly. The spring woods are delicate because Mother Nature was pregnant and the signs of birthing are appearing. 

One birthing is a stem with three delicate leaves pushing through the damp rubble left by winter. It is a trillium and it, and the thousands of others bringing new life to the forest, has an important story to tell. 

There are five species of trillium found in Ontario, where it is the official flower and provincial symbol found on official documents such as driver’s licences and health cards. Most trillium flowers are white, but some are red-purple, depending on where you live. 

Trillium root was used for centuries as an antiseptic, diuretic and as an aid to menstruation. North American native tribes used trillium root to facilitate child birth and other female issues. It was a sacred female herb spoken about only among female medicine women. 

An important part of the trillium’s story is that you don’t have to be big to be important. It is a tiny plant compared to the colossal oaks, maples and beeches that tower overhead. Yet while the big trees continue to sleep it pushes through the thawing earth to announce renewal of life and hope for the future. 

Also, trillium flowers produce fruit – small berries with seeds attached to a nutritious fleshy substance called elaiosome. Ants love the substance and carry it and the seeds off to their nests. They eat the elaiosome and discard the seeds, which germinate and produce more trilliums. 

Again, small things doing important stuff.

The trillium’s story also is one of patience. Its seeds take two years to germinate and another seven to 10 years to produce the first early spring flower.

Not long after the trilliums begin to bloom something else small but miraculous arrives in the forest. It is the velvet hum of a hummingbird, carrying its amazing story of migration.

Hummingbirds travel thousands of kilometres a year between their summer homes in the northern U.S. and southern Canada and their winter homes as far south as Central America. They fly during daylight when they can see good places to stop for food.

They need a lot of food energy, much of it sugar, for those long trips. They feed five to eight times an hour, licking nectar with their long, forked tongues. Some research shows they lick 10 to 15 times per second.

Everything about hummingbirds seems to be fast. Their little wings flap 15 to 80 times a second and during migration their heart beats up to 1,200 times a minute. Even during rest, a hummingbird takes an average of 250 breaths per minute.

They really have no low energy speed but have so much maneuverability that they can even fly backwards. 

All that speedy maneuvering consumes huge amounts of energy. It has been estimated that a person weighing 77 kilograms would have to eat 60 kilos (130 pounds) of bread a day to keep up to the energy output of a hummingbird.

Part of the hummingbird’s story is a lie. For years people have spread the myth that ruby-throated hummingbirds ride on the backs of geese and other birds during their migrations across the Gulf of Mexico.

It’s a non-stop flight across the Gulf with no place land and rest so someone decided that these tiny birds could not possibly make such a long, arduous journey without hitching a ride.

The fact is that they do make the 800-kilometre flight entirely on their own.

Both the trillium and the hummingbird are positive stories that bring colour and joy into our lives at the end of a winter of discontent.

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Canada is a much lesser country than it used to be.

COVID-19 has done that. We Canadians have allowed COVID-19 to reduce our country to a third-world type player barely able to look after itself.

We have stood by and watched the politicians fumble and stumble through the greatest medical crisis of modern times. They decided to play a compromise game with the virus and they lost.

They tried negotiating a deal that would see the fewest number of Canadians sickened and killed by the virus with the least amount of harm to the economy. We stood by and watched.

Viruses don’t negotiate. They need to be killed before they get into the game.

To be fair to the politicians, they had an unenviable task. An unenviable task made impossible by a hyper-partisan political climate that puts election, power and re-election above all else.

They allowed politics into a place it should never be – a widespread medical emergency.

Job one of our elected representatives in a national medical emergency is to pull people together to understand what has to be done, accept what has to be done and join the effort to get it done. To pull the general public on side, politicians need to have their trust.

The public gives its trust to those who show strong knowledge and command of the problem that needs fixing. Neither Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, nor Ontario Premier Doug Ford, showed any strong knowledge of the COVID-19 virus and its pandemic potential.

In the 14 months since the pandemic was declared, neither man has done one thing to stop COVID-19’s spread. Trudeau has done nothing but tell us about the millions of vaccine doses he has ordered. Ford has done nothing but tell us what a poor job Trudeau has done in getting vaccines distributed.

The fact that Canadian politicians were so unprepared for this national emergency is inexcusable because Canada had a wealth of virus knowledge gathered during the SARS pandemic of 2003. The SARS outbreak was small compared to COVID-19, sickening a known 8,000 people worldwide, killing close to 800. However, it left us important lessons on how to prepare for and battle the much-predicted next killer virus outbreak.

Canadians and their politicians choose to forget, or simply ignore, the lessons of SARS.

The Ontario SARS Commission, appointed to investigate the outbreak and make recommendations for the future, found that the most important lesson of SARS was about the precautionary principle.

Here’s what the commission wrote in its final report:

“Perhaps the most important lesson of SARS is the importance of the precautionary principle. SARS demonstrated over and over the importance of the principle that we cannot wait for scientific certainty before we take reasonable steps to reduce risk. This principle should be adopted as a guiding principle throughout Ontario’s health, public health and worker safety systems.

“If we do not learn this and other lessons of SARS . . . we will pay a terrible price in the face of future outbreaks of virulent disease, whether in the form of foreseen outbreaks like flu pandemics or unforeseen ones, as SARS was.”

This was not the first time that Canadians and their politicians had heard this. The same warning was issued by the Krever Commission into Canada’s tainted blood supply in the early 1990s.

The message was clear: when public health is seriously threatened, do not wait for all the evidence before taking action. Hitting fast and hard with stringent lockdowns and other unpopular tools would have lessened the virus’ spread.

Following the precautionary principle more than one year ago would have been unpopular. Businesses would have been shut down, jobs lost. There would have been pain, but we probably would not have suffered the way we are suffering now with one million-plus cases, 24,000 deaths and a completely shattered economy.

Yes, we are a lesser country now and we will continue to be until we begin to choose leaders who have the knowledge and strength needed to build the trust needed to bring us all together in solving our problems. Leaders for whom re-election is a lesser goal than getting done what needs to be done.

I love when spring cleaning uncovers a treasure of the past.

There it was among the rubble of a long-forgotten junk box: a once valuable tool and an important piece of history. A true treasure, totally useless today except for its memories.

It was my BlackBerry, tossed aside years ago; another victim of a fast-moving world that waits for nothing, or no one, to catch up. I hold it fondly, reflecting on the ingenuity that created it and how we need more ingenuity in these troubled times.

My BlackBerry’s history is fascinating, and inspiring. It once was the smartphone, controlling 50 per cent of the U.S. smartphone market and 20 per cent globally. The Business Insider website reported that at its peak in 2011, BlackBerry sold more than 50 million units.

BlackBerry Limited (formerly Research in Motion) was created in 1984 by two Ontario college engineering students – Mike Lazaridis and Douglas Fregin. In the 1990s they invented a two-way messaging system which grew into the BlackBerry – a pager capable of email and a telephone.

Everything about the BlackBerry was quirky. First, it had a QWERTY keyboard instead of an alphabetical key arrangement. The QWERTY keyboard has those six letters starting the first alphabet row of the keyboard instead of the ABCDEF on the first manual typewriters.

Even the BlackBerry logo was quirky – seven of what appeared to be seeds from a black berry. (Actually, they are drupelets, but explaining them will get us deeply into botany terminology).

One really cool aspect of the BlackBerry was the way it fit into your hand. It was small, but had a solid feel; not too heavy, not too light. It operated nicely with one hand, sitting comfortably in the fingers while allowing the thumb to operate the keyboard and most of the controls.

I find today’s iPhone clumsy and awkward. I need two hands to operate mine properly and still make many typing mistakes. But maybe it’s just me.
My BlackBerry also had a cool case. It clipped securely, but unobtrusively, to my belt. It had a flip down magnetized tab that prevented the unit from falling out of the case.

All in all, BlackBerry had a simple design, was easy to learn and easy to use.

The Apple iPhone collapsed BlackBerry’s market. Apple kept introducing new versions, adding features that grabbed the attention of consumers.
iPhones were more of a fun toy. They had games and personal apps, and of course, very serious cameras. Even today they are more about entertainment than getting serious work done.

Obviously, today’s iPhone and other smartphones are used for work, but my view is that they are more personal devices used mainly for casual chat, games, and personal apps.  

Certainly, they are an important part of our lives. Most people have them and I’d guess that most people would prefer them over the old-fashioned BlackBerry.

The question now is what do I do with a long-forgotten BlackBerry retrieved from a hidden junk box? I decide to consult Google – on my iPhone, of course.

There is no shortage of suggestions. One wag suggested coating it with peanut butter and giving it to your dog to play with.

Another suggests gathering a group of friends, who also have abandoned BlackBerries, and hold a skeet shooting party.

I have an idea of my own. I am going to mount it on my desk next to my laptop. There I will be able to touch it fondly every time something goes wrong with the laptop, or one of its programs or apps, or the internet service, or when I receive scam emails.

My old BlackBerry will be like a crying towel. When things go wrong in this wonderful technological age (which is pretty much daily) I will reach out, caress it and yearn for a return to the days when most things worked well, and if they didn’t, you could fix them yourself.

And, I’ll yearn for the ingenuity of those two college kids who invented a machine that changed the world.

A lack of their kind of thinking has left us fumbling and stumbling through a predictable pandemic that is taking millions of lives, ruining many others and destroying our economy.