The first sounds of winter’s retreat come from snow melting off the metal sheets covering my woodpile.

Plink . . . plink . . . plink. 

Slow, almost imperceptible. 

Then faster and louder as the morning sun grows more ravenous. Individual drips joining others in a widening pool at the woodpile’s base.

My woodpile looks sadly diminished today, its early autumn bulk considerably reduced. It’s like looking at a good friend wasting away.

Wasting is a wrong word. My woodpile’s bulk has been reduced as it gave up a large part of itself to keep me warm this winter. Given, not wasted. 

My woodpile is a good friend who gives me much. It was once a living tree offering beauty, shade and oxygen while providing protection for small animals, insects and birds.  When it died, as all living things must, it fell to the forest floor for me to find.

My woodpile brings me more than winter heat. It gives me the joy of being in the woods, and the physical exercise of cutting, splitting and stacking it. 

It also gives me mental workouts. I come here occasionally to lean against it and think about life and how complicated it can be.

In the woodpile I see a different world. A world of trees. Also a complicated place, but a place managed far more successfully than ours.

Some Indigenous people believe that trees and other plants are living beings somewhat similar to human beings. Scientific studies have been supporting this, finding that trees, through their roots and leaves, sense and comprehend their environment and communicate information with fellow trees and other plants.

Trees avoid many of the problems that complicate our human world. One reason they do is that trees are patient beings, never rushing to make change.

Trees don’t get angry or yell at each other. They don’t waste time and energy whining about their situations or controls on their lives. They work together to help each other.

Most importantly, they respect and appreciate diversity. 

Their skins are different colours, different textures. Their leaves are different shapes and different sizes. But they live side by side, not discriminating. There is no racism nor social inequality in the world of trees.

The mightiest oak is no more important than the weakest willow. 

Unlike us, they live sustainable lives. They take and use only what is needed, understanding that conserving energy and resources makes life better for all.

We humans are beginning to understand that we are living an unsustainable way of life. Some research indicates that 87 per cent of all our economic activity is unsustainable – in other words not supported by renewable resources.

Understanding that problem is one thing. Solving it is another.

We deal with the symptoms of our unsustainable way of life – plastics congesting the oceans, carbon emissions changing climate, landfills choking with waste. We haven’t yet seriously addressed the root cause of the symptoms, which is consuming much more than we really need.

Nature has dealt with the root cause of unsustainability since the beginning of time. If it hadn’t, we wouldn’t be here. It understands the difference between simply wanting and truly needing. 

We humans see Nature as something nice, but separate from ourselves. We don’t see ourselves as part of it and certainly don’t see that there is much that it can teach us.

When I lean against my woodpile contemplating the world, I often wonder whether the answers to our problems are right here in Nature. Can Nature show us how to live without the anger, hatred and wars we experience now? How to live without discrimination and social inequality? How to fight the diseases that continue to infect us?

It will take people a lot smarter than me to find the answers to those questions.

The positive news is that those people – members of the scientific community – are out there working steadily to unlock the secrets of Nature. As they share what they learn from Nature, it is possible that we all will become as smart as the trees that surround us and the world will be a better place. 

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 It’s February! Time for happy dancing and thumbing noses at the month just expired.

January was wretched. A coronavirus that would not go away. Threats of war between the U.S. and Russia. Continuing ethnic cleansings and other human tragedies in places like Afghanistan.

Then there was the bizarre weather. Unprecedented winter storms, including tornadoes, in parts of the world. Midwinter forest fires in California and Siberia.

There were no forest fires here at home. Just cold and snow. Brutal Arctic-style cold. 

It was the coldest January in recent memory. 

The average high temperature for the month was a chilly minus 6.3. The average low was minus 22.2. The normal January daily high for the Haliburton area is minus 3.8, and the normal low minus 15.9.

Twenty of this past January’s 31 days saw lows of minus 20 or colder. On seven of those days county thermometers dived below minus 30. On the morning of January 21 furnaces and wood stoves worked overtime against a low of minus 38.

All those temperatures were recorded by an Environment Canada co-operating private site at Haliburton Village.

The cold seemed to keep heavy snowfalls away. There were no large snowstorms in January and when the month ended there were only 36 centimetres (14 inches) on the ground in most places.

There was no January thaw this year. Usually we see one – a day or two above freezing – in the last half of January.

All this was much different from January last year. The average daytime high temperature in January 2021 was minus 2.7 and the average low for the month minus 12.3 – much warmer than the month just passed.

And in January 2021 there were no days minus 30 or colder and only seven of 30 days in which the thermometer fell to minus 20 or a bit lower. The coldest day in January 2021 was minus 28.

But all that is history. The main interest now is what weather we can expect in coming weeks, and whether we will be treated to an early spring.

Things aren’t looking good so far. January’s cold continued into early February with signs of some slight warming this week. Most of the morning lows in the first week were in the minus 20 range.

A variety of weather sources are predicting day and night temperatures below freezing for the first three weeks of the month. Nighttime lows are forecast to be in the minus double digits for much of the month.

The Old Farmer’s Almanac forecasts more cold followed by snow storms – some of them heavy – for later in the month. That almanac has been around for 230 years and claims an 80 per cent accuracy rate for its weather predictions. 

Some people question that percentage, but the almanac was accurate in its forecast for this winter. It predicted the winter of 2021 – 2022 would be “a season of shivers.”

“This coming winter could well be one of the longest and coldest that we’ve seen in years,” the publication’s editor Janice Stillman said last fall.

At any rate, none of the forecasters are predicting spring-like weather for the rest of February. They seem to agree that the first three weeks of this month will see constant below freezing weather, plus snowfalls pretty much every day.

The better news is that most forecasts predict settled, warmer weather in late February and early March. Long-range forecasts for spring and summer see warmer weather with above normal rainfall.

Who knows? Someone once said the most accurate weather forecast is obtained by looking out the window.

And, whatever we get, we get. Despite all our advances in science there is nothing we can do to change the weather, at least in the short term. We can, however, start living in ways that reduce global warming and climate change.

Besides, there really is no bad weather. Sunshine is great, Snow can be pretty and provide fun. Rain is refreshing and wind can be bracing. 

Or, as Alfred Wainwright, the famous British walker and author, wrote in one of his books:

“There’s no such thing as bad weather, only unsuitable clothing.”

 By Jim Poling Sr.

From Shaman’s Rock

I shouldn’t have had that extra glass of wine before going to bed. I savoured it while watching the news, forgetting that late-night wine and late-night news combine to give me nightmares.

News of the Russian takeover threat to Ukraine, plus the truckers’ anti-government protests must have triggered my bad dream.

I dreamed that Russian president Vladimir Putin and China’s president Xi were smiling, shaking hands and agreeing to invade not just the Ukraine, but the U.S. and Canada. They said autocracies make the world a nicer place.

The invasions went smoothly. Canada and the U.S. succumbed within a couple of days.

This was easily accomplished because the Canadian forces had no arms or ammunition, having donated it all to the Ukrainians. American forces were either too sick with COVID-19, or too busy arguing whether to support Biden or Trump, to offer any effective resistance.

Immediately after the takeover, Putin appeared on CNN reassuring Americans they would be treated well and their former presidents would be given opportunities to rebuild their nation.

“Donald Trump has been appointed minister responsible for Remaking America Great Again with Communism,” Putin announced.

Joe Biden was assigned to see that all Afghans were returned home to Afghanistan.

George Bush was given the job of ensuring that evangelicals understand that Communism is an improvement over white supremacy.

Bill Clinton was put in charge of state birth control and Jimmy Carter was assigned to head the new Communist Peanut Co-operative.

Barack Obama was ignored because the Russians said he had a weird name.

Meanwhile in Ottawa, China’s top People’s Liberation Army general addressed the protest blockade on Parliament Hill.

“There is no need to protest about your rights and freedoms,” the general shouted into a loudspeaker. “You don’t have any. There is no need for that stuff in a People’s Republic.”

As he finished speaking, bulldozers and cranes cleared the blockade of trucks and garbage put up by the protesters. Then a flatbed truck carrying a rock band appeared, blaring music that drowned out the Peace Tower clock chimes as it drifted past the Parliament buildings.

The lead singer appeared to be Anne Murray belting out a revised version of Janis Joplin’s Me and Bobby McGee.

“Freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose,

Nothin’, that’s all Justin did for me

But feeling good is easy pal, when Putin makes me free

And feeling good is good enough for me . . .

Good enough for me under President Xi.”

I woke up sweating and yelling but soon calmed down, happy to be back to reality. I went downstairs, made coffee and turned on the morning TV news.

There was little new from the night before. The truckers’ revolt continued in Ottawa and other cities, shutting down manufacturing plants and putting people out of work.

World COVID deaths hit 11,000 a day and now totalled almost six million. Iran was close to having a nuclear bomb. A gun violence site reported U.S. gun deaths now are running at more than 115 a day.

Another item reported that 50.5 million children under five are acutely malnourished, many because global warming was killing agriculture. It also said that in Asia alone, as many as eight million kids are being forced into begging and child  labour because their parents cannot afford to buy enough food. 

Meanwhile in Canadian news there were reports of teens killing other teens, rampant drug abuse, a shocking rise in mental illness and an even more shocking rise in the prices of consumer goods.

Then there was a video clip of Trump endorsing the truckers’ revolution and calling Trudeau a far-left lunatic who ruined Canada.

There was no rebuttal from Trudeau, who had not been seen since Groundhog Day. Some commentators said he had seen his shadow, which forecast six more weeks of trucker blockades.

I clicked off the TV and poured the coffee down the sink drain. Then I did what seemed a reasonable thing to do in a world gone mad:

I reached up into a cupboard and pulled down a new bottle of wine.

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I am proud to report that I was one of the journalists covering that heroic highway convoy. It was a courageous event that demonstrated the strength of human spirit.

 
It happened without me being verbally abused, or spat upon. Reporters were treated with respect.

As it crossed the country, gaining cheering supporters along the roadsides, I realized this was a powerful story that could change Canada and Canadians. It changed me.

I’m not talking about the truck convoy that travelled to Ottawa to protest health restrictions to control the COVID-19 pandemic that has killed six million people worldwide.

 
The convoy I covered was 42 years ago when a 22-year-old curly-haired kid with an artificial leg decided to run coast to coast to raise awareness and money for cancer research. 

In 1977, Terry Fox, a Port Coquitlam, B.C. university student, was diagnosed with cancer. His right leg was amputated. Doctors told him that medical advances gave him a 50-per-cent chance of survival, up from 15 per cent because of research.

Fox endured 16 months of chemotherapy and practised running on the artificial leg. He ran with difficulty but determined he would run a Marathon of Hope to collect money for more cancer research.

On April 12, 1980 he dipped a leg into the Atlantic Ocean near St. John’s, Newfoundland, then began running west toward the Pacific. 

 
The pain never slowed the odd hip-hop gait that carried him roughly 42 kilometres (26 miles) a day. Until it did, on the eastern outskirts of Thunder Bay. An ambulance carried him to hospital where he learned the cancer had spread to his lungs.

Terry Fox ran 5,373 kilometres (3,339 miles} in 143 days. He didn’t whine. He didn’t curse and shake his fist at government action or inaction on health matters. He just ran his heart out in a fight against a deadly disease he believed could be defeated. 

Ten months later I was at a Port Coquitlam hospital when Leslie Shepherd, a talented young reporter stationed outside Terry’s room, sent me a pre-arranged signal. I fashioned her signal into a wire news service bulletin and sent it out to the world: Terry Fox was dead.
 
The story did not end there. Terry Fox’s fight against cancer has raised nearly $1 billion for cancer research in the past 40 years. That’s money that has saved or prolonged many thousands of lives.

That’s why it is heartbreaking to see the protesters mock the Terry Fox memorial near Parliament Hill, draping it with anti-vaccine signs and upside-down Maple Leaf flags. Some were reported to have danced on the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier.

Most heartbreaking is that protests against COVID-19 precautions are prolonging the pandemic, overburdening hospitals and delaying cancer treatments Terry Fox ran so hard to have improved.

Some have called the convoy truckers and their supporters heroes. They are in fact anti-heroes who lack the courage, fierce determination and hope that shone from Terry Fox’s eyes every step along his Marathon of Hope. They are the worst of the self-centered in an increasingly self-centred society.

“It took cancer to realize that being self-centered is not the way to live,” Terry Fox once said. “The answer is to try and help others.” 

We are all tired of the pandemic and the restrictions it has placed on our lives.

 
Terry Fox was tired of being without a leg. Tired of months of cancer treatments. Tired of thoughts of dying.

But he refused to succumb to bellyaching and a “woe is me” attitude. He stood straight on his artificial leg and ran. Ran in a battle against a terrible disease. Ran to improve life for us all.

“I just wish people would realize that anything's possible if you try,” he said. “Dreams are made possible if you try.”

The truckers’ convoy didn’t bring dreams to Ottawa. They brought Nazi banners, Confederate flags, anger, hatred and other relics of American Trumpism.

This is a country that neither needs, nor wants Trumpism. It’s a country that needs respectful protests, positive actions, much better leadership and appreciation of its heroes.

Terry Fox, the young man who refused to let disease consume his spirit, is a true Canadian hero whose memory deserves our utmost respect

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 I have a confession to make: I am an addict. 

Not tobacco. Not drugs. Not alcohol.

I’m addicted to a television show.

It’s odd, because I’ve never particularly liked television. Too many annoying commercials. I mean how many times can you watch some bozo telling a client that his competitor’s car mats are not as good as his butter tarts?

I think he said butter tarts. Maybe he said his car mats. I’m not positive because when the commercials start, I turn off my hearing aids.

At any rate, I am addicted to a TV show. 

It’s a cop shop show. Not your typical bad guy, good guy, shoot’em up drama. It’s an artful ongoing drama that shows cops as human beings and often carries a message about life today. 

Law and Order: Special Victims Unit is the longest running live-action primetime series in American television history.  It recently surpassed 500 episodes and I’ve seen most of them. 

I love the show because it dramatizes the ugliest sides of human nature while recording the toll that ugliness takes on law enforcement people. It has serial rape, pedophilia, unthinkable crimes against the disabled and elderly, and sexual crimes most of us cannot imagine. 

While telling these awful stories SVU gets viewers thinking about issues such as racism, gender identity, sexual preferences and equality rights. Many episodes are taken from real life crimes.

The acting is consistently sharp with detectives like Odafin “Fin” Tutuola (Ice-T) and John Munch (Richard Belzer) providing one-liners and acerbic wit that help lighten the heaviness of the crimes they encounter. 

The premier star of the show unquestionably is Mariska Hargitay, who plays Olivia Benson who over 23 seasons has risen through the detective ranks to become captain of the Special Victims Unit. She is an uncompromising detective with a compassionate side often seen in her deep brown eyes.

Hargitay, 57, had a tragic past, as do many of the young victims in SVU. She is the daughter of Jayne Mansfield, the 1950s – 60s blonde bombshell celebrity killed in a car crash in 1967. Mariska was in the car with her mother and was injured but survived and was raised by her father, former Mr. Universe Mickey Hargitay.

Acting as Olivia Benson on SVU has had an impact on Hargitay’s personal life. Benson is a strong advocate for sexual abuse victims and in real life Hargitay has become a trained counsellor for rape victims. 

She has received much fan mail seeking autographs but over the years more letters came from women sharing their stories of sexual abuse. These moved her to form the Joyful Heart Foundation, which says its mission is “to transform society’s response to sexual assault, domestic violence, and child abuse, support survivors’ healing, and end this violence forever.”  

What makes SVU better than other cop shows is its attention to life issues linked to crime. For instance, the traumas caused by mental illnesses are shown in an SVU episode in which a bipolar disorder lands the daughter of SVU Detective Elliot Stabler (Christopher Meloni) in jail.

The only way to save the teenage daughter from a long prison term is to show a judge and jury that she has a serious bipolar disorder inherited from her grandmother Bernadette Stabler, played by veteran actress Ellen Burstyn. It is an outstanding show that provides information on a serious disorder, which can be controlled if diagnosed early and properly treated.

Past episodes of SVU run on a couple of different channels and I tape them. That way I fast forward through those annoying commercials, which take up roughly one-third of the show’s airtime.

Taping past episodes makes it difficult to follow the SVU timeline. Tonight I might see an episode from 2004 and tomorrow one from 2018. The characters change over the years but I manage to keep track of who’s who and what’s happening to them. 

I like to think SVU is great because of a Canadian connection. Ted Kotcheff, a long-time SVU director and producer, was born in Toronto, graduated in English literature from the University of Toronto and early in his career was the youngest director on the staff of CBC.  

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The kids are back in school, which is a good thing. Excellent education without COVID-19 infections is the hope of all.

Canada has good education systems with teachers dedicated to giving students the best education available. However, curriculums established to guide teachers on what to teach are outdated and do not address what our children must learn to face the future.

Their future will be challenging, to put it mildly. Realistically, their future could be catastrophic.

Today’s children, and tomorrow’s, face a future of more COVID-like viruses, devastating changes brought by global warming, and massive political upheaval. They will encounter crises that will test the limits of human capabilities and require the dynamic leadership not seen today in many countries, Canada included.

Most serious is climate change that can bring diseases and people migrations, which can worsen current political instability. And, anyone questioning why we should worry about political instability close to home should look to the United States where talk of civil war has moved out of the shadows and into everyday conversations.

Presumably we are teaching our children about global warming, its causes and the impacts on our weather, and therefore our lives. But is our education system providing a thorough understanding of biodiversity and its critical importance to future life?

A United Nations study has reported that one million animal and plant species face extinction over the next few decades because of climate change, habit loss and other human activities. Loss of species lowers biodiversity, which leads to changes in landscapes and creates conditions for new diseases to attack animals, including humans.

There is probably no better lesson on the importance of biodiversity than the story of the Yellowstone National Park grey wolves. Wolves were exterminated in the park because humans hated them and refused to acknowledge their important role in nature.

The Yellowstone wolves fed on elk which flourished without them. Growing elk populations destroyed river bank willow stands, which beaver need to survive. Fewer beaver changed the river systems.

Wolves were reintroduced the park to balance elk populations. The threat of wolves kept the elk on the move, leaving them less time to browse riverbank willows. Willow stands recovered, beaver populations grew and nature’s balance was restored.

A full story of the Yellowstone wolves can be found at: https://www.nps.gov/yell/learn/nature/wolf-restoration.htm 

Today’s children need new mindsets, knowledge and skills that will help then find solutions to the problems they will face. They will be charged with finding how humanity can occupy the planet’s spaces without dominating and degrading them.

To achieve that they will need to learn how to live differently, ensuring that biodiversity does not continue to be degraded. Without strong levels of biodiversity there is no future.

They also will need to learn life changes required for the future. So much of life today is focussed on the individual and individual things such as money and status. The future will demand more collective thought and collective action.

Individual actions always will be important for creating change but the issues looming for the future demand dedicated collective action – people working together on critical common goals.

They also will require strong leadership focussed on collective goals and free of political thinking. 

Collective thinking and collective action, directed by strong, unbiased leadership, have helped to find solutions to other serious human problems. 

In the 1950s smoke from burning coal was destroying life in London. The air was made cleaner by finding alternatives to burning coal.

In the 1970s, smog was destroying life in Los Angeles. The invention of catalytic converters for automobiles helped to clear the smog problem.

Today’s children can live in a safer future world if they are taught the importance of how all lives are critical to nature’s balance. Even small, seemingly useless lives.

One life no longer aiding nature’s balance is the ivory-billed woodpecker. The bird is believed to be the inspiration for Woody Woodpecker, the iconic cartoon character with the famous Heh-Heh-Heh-HEH laugh.

The ivory-billed woodpecker was declared extinct in September of last year, a victim of industrial logging. 

Woody Woodpecker gone from our world forever. And that’s no laughing matter.

 How sad that the sweetest dreams never last long, or come true.

Just the other night my fantastically happy dream evaporated into the shrill ring of my mobile phone. The sleepy smile and warm, fuzzy feeling generated by the dream went with it.

Cruellest was the fact that this wonderful dream was ruined by a cell phone. Cruel because the dream was about not having a cell phone, nor other electronic devices such as laptop computer, tablet, television, or so-called smartwatch. 

Not to forget the automobile smart screen that tells me 1,000 things I don’t understand, don’t want to know, and don’t need to know.

When my cell phone’s screeching ruined it, my dream had taken me back to ancient days of pens and paper, real time visits to a library and research done with hardcover books. Those days when you needed to communicate with someone, you got up off your gluteus maximus and spoke to them face to face.

My dream of life without electronic devices was set off by a magazine article I was reading about a tiny Italian place without the signals that feed cell phones and the Internet.

Galliano di Mugello is a medieval village in northcentral Italy, somewhere between Florence and Bologna. It is listed as a “very white zone,” an area without reliable cell phone signals and Internet service.

When the 1,300 village residents want information, they resort to activities abandoned by much of the rest of the world. They read newspapers, and talk to each other.

They live lives free of digital toxins spilling from the hyperbolic social media world. None of the Twitter nastiness, nor the silliness of Facebook. No YouTube videos of people saying the Jan.6, 2021 armed insurrection in Washington was a normal tourist event.

And, no pets in funny hats on Instagram.

Not only were digital devices absent from my sweet dream, so were the geeky annoyances that accompany them. When you have digital gear, you have to suffer the aggravations of an increasingly omnipresent geek culture. 

Geek talk. Geek thinking. You know the stuff. Like when you call a techie line looking for help and 10 minutes later you are staring into your telephone and yelling: “What in God’s name are you talking about? Speak English!”

Many Galliano di Mugello citizens are happy living without cell phone service and the Internet. Their lives are less complicated and more peaceful without them. In fact, some are promoting the village as a tourist destination for people who simply want time away from the digital world.

Others, however, are starting to protest not being able to make a cell phone call, text friends or search for something Google. Many have cell phones but can’t use them because of weak service signals. 

The village mayor is campaigning to get the place fully online, suggesting that Italy’s federal government pay mobile phone companies to provide service to the community. Those companies haven’t wanted to provide reliable service because they don’t think it is worth the cost. Too few people, too little profit.

The mayor and his supporters say that digital communication is a basic necessity. They say it is must have, especially in case of emergencies like earthquakes or floods.

I suppose they do have a point. Digital devices improve our lives in many ways, but there are days when the exasperations seem to outweigh the benefits.

The nights following those days are the ones when I have the dream about not having any digital devices. Having true liberty from all the time-consuming frustrations they carry with them.

The mayor of that little Italian village notes, however, that total freedom from the digital world is not about not having digital devices or the signals that light them up.

“When I went to the beach for 15 days in the summer, I turned off my phone,” he said in the magazine story. “The true liberty isn’t about not having a signal, but about being able to choose when to switch off.”

Point taken, but too many of us are so addicted that we can’t summon the nerve to click the things off and spend some time with life as it used to be.

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