By Jim Poling Sr.

(This column is a story I have written and told many times. Christmas without it again would not be Christmas.)

—

Fresh fallen snow protested beneath the crush of my gumboots breaking trail down the unploughed lane. Dry, sharp squeaks, not unlike the cries of cheap chalk cruelly scrapped against too clean a blackboard. 

Skuur-eek, skuur-eek.

The boots ignored the sounds. They moved on, ribbed rubber bottoms and laced high leather tops creating a meandering wake in the ankle-deep snow. To each side of the trail, drifted snow leaned tiredly against the backsides of the bungalows, dropped there to rest by an impatient Christmas Eve blizzard. 

Faint strains of music joined the squeaking as I approached our back fence. I stopped to hear the music more clearly, now identifiable as singing voices escaping through an open window. I shuffled forward and listened to the notes float out crisply and clearly, then mingle with smoke rising from the chimneys. 

Notes and smoke rose together into an icy midnight sky illuminated by frost crystals set shimmering by thousands of stars, and the frosty moon. 

I held my breath to hear better and determined that the music was the Christmas carol O Holy Night, and that the notes came from the window in my grandmother’s room. It was open to the cold because most people smoked cigarettes back then, and at gatherings cracked a window to clear the air. 

They sang the first verse, and when they reached the sixth line, the other voices ceased and one voice carried on alone:

“Fall on your knees! Oh, hear the angel voices! O Niiii . . .iiight Diii…vine! . . . .” 

That’s the part where the notes rise higher and higher until the singer reaches an awesome note.

The solo voice belonged to my grandmother, Louise LaFrance, and she hit that high note while sitting on the edge of the bed that was her prison. She was crippled with limb-twisting rheumatoid arthritis and suffered searing pain and the humiliation of being bedridden, a humiliation that included needing a bedpan to relieve herself and having her son-in-law lift her into the bathtub.

Each time she hit the high notes at the words ‘O Night Divine’, a shiver danced on my spine.

When she finished singing O Holy Night, the other voices started up again, this time with Silent Night and other favourite carols. I went into the house and found Christmas Eve celebrants – my mom, dad and some neighbours – crowded into the 10-foot by 10-foot bedroom that was my grandmother’s world. They sang long into the night, mostly in French because the neighbours were the Gauthiers who seldom spoke English to my grandmother and mother.

The crippling arthritis had attacked my grandmother not long after my birth sixteen years before. It advanced quickly, twisting her fingers like pretzels, then deforming her ankles and knees. 

She took up smoking to ease the pain. Late into the night I would hear her stir, then listen for the scrape of a wooden match against the side of a box of Redbird matches. Then the acrid odour of sulphur drifted into my room, followed by the sweetness of smoke from a Sweet Caporal. 

Sometimes I would get up and go to her door and see the red tip of the cigarette glow brightly as she inhaled and I would go in and we would talk in the smoky darkness. Mostly the talk was about growing up and sorting through the conflicts between a teenager and his parents. 

After the singing ended that night, my mother served tourtière, which I slathered with mustard. Then we gathered at the tree and opened our gifts. 

I have long forgotten what I got that Christmas, and it doesn’t matter. My real gift came many years later, and was an understanding of how that frail and twisted body came to produce such powerful and sweet notes. 

My gift was the realization that those high notes were not solely the products of the lungs. They were driven by something stronger than flesh – an unbreakable spirit. 

They came from strength far beyond anything that a mere body can produce. They came from the will to overcome.

                                                        #

What the world needs now are more dog walkers like Row Iliescu.

Iliescu is the Toronto woman who spends a lot of her time picking up litter while walking her dog in the city’s parks.

Most of the litter is cigarette butts which she sucks up with a handheld battery-operated vacuum. She estimates that on an average outing she picks up 300 to 400 butts.

She also picks up other litter. If she spots a discarded takeout coffee cup while vacuuming butts, she feels she can’t really not pick it up and toss it in a trash can.

I read about her on a blog post and then watched film clips of her on the television news.

Hearing about her volunteer anti-litter efforts got me thinking that we really need people like her in Haliburton County. Then I realized that we do have them.

Kennisis Lake Cottage Owners’ Association has organized roadside cleanup drives, as have other community groups and individuals. Many Saturdays or Sundays you will see someone with a spiked stick and garbage bag working a ditch or roadside somewhere in the county.

And, thank God they are. The amount of garbage we toss out vehicle windows onto our roads and highways is shocking and sickening. If some of it wasn’t being picked up by volunteers, the ditches would be full.

There are no accurate statistics on how much litter is dropped, or how much is cleaned up, every year in Canada.  Without a doubt hundreds of thousands of pieces of litter are dropped on our roads every year. And, roughly three-quarters of people asked in various surveys have admitted to tossing a cigarette butt, or dropping a gum wrapper or other piece of litter onto a roadside.

It’s a blessing that we have volunteers trying to keep our roadsides clear of litter. But the real answer to having litter-free roads is to find ways of stopping the litterers.

Most litterers don’t think about the serious problems caused by litter. Yes, it is unsightly, but it also is dangerous. A study done back in 2004 found that road debris and litter causes as many as 25,000 vehicle crashes a year on North American roads.

Litter is especially dangerous to cyclists, who are using highways more than in the past. A cyclist moving deeper into a traffic lane to avoid roadside litter risks being struck by a car or truck.

Animals run out onto roads to get discarded food products and end up being run down by a car or truck. Or, they eat discarded food gone bad and become ill.

Cigarette butts, cigarette packages and other items related to smoking are among the most littered roadside items. A discarded cigarette butt takes 12 years to break down and in doing so leaks cadmium, lead and arsenic into the environment.

These chemical components are taken in by plants, insects, animals and marine life.

Beer and pop cans also rate high in litter counts, and aluminium cans take centuries to break down. The U.S. non-profit organization Keep America Beautiful reports that its 2021 study found roadside beer container litter has increased 27 per cent since 2009.

Personal protective equipment such as masks and gloves also are becoming major litter items since the COVID-19 pandemic began.

The frustration of litter is that there is no need for it. Laziness and carelessness are two main causes of littering. To get rid of those causes you have to change people’s attitudes.

That’s no small order, especially in Canada where we live surrounded by incredible natural beauty but ignore it, often living like pigs.

The World Bank has estimated that Canadian waste generation is the largest of any country in the world. It has estimated Canada’s annual waste total at 1,3235,480,289 metric tons. That’s roughly 36.1 metric tons per person each year.

The World Bank also estimates that global waste generation will increase by as much as 70 per cent in the next 25 to 30 years.

Canadians should be leaders in eliminating waste, but we’ll never be seen as leaders when we continue to allow our roadsides to become garbage pits.

                                                        #

From Shaman’s Rock

By Jim Poling Sr.

The wind off the lake is furiously slapping the flag on the pole anchored in the little flower patch out front my place.

There’s nothing noteworthy about a flag moving in the wind. Except that it seems to be happening more often these days.

My flag is seldom still, even in the evenings when you expect it to be still. It often flaps during the night, waking me on occasion.

There’s no official data on whether we are experiencing more windy days, but we do know that wind speeds have been increasing. Researchers report that the global average wind speed has increased six per cent – from 7.0 to 7.4 miles per hour – since 2010.

Increased wind can be bad news. It can cause visible damage such as fallen trees and damaged buildings. There are other less visible, but serious, implications such as soil erosion and water evaporation.

The good news about more frequent, stronger winds is that we finally realize wind is an important energy alternative to pollution-producing fossil fuels.

It took us a long time. American naturalist Henry David Thoreau realized it almost 200 years ago, writing:

“Here is almost incalculable power at our disposal, yet how trifling the use we make of it! It only serves to turn a few mills, blow a few vessels across the ocean, and a few trivial ends besides. What a poor compliment do we pay to our indefatigable and energetic servant!”

Today, using wind to make electricity is a growth industry. The wind power market is up an estimated 14 per cent in the past 10 years.

The Global Wind Energy Council has reported record growth in the last two years. But the council says the industry is not growing fast enough to meet climate change goals set by governments.

It is not that there is not enough wind. The challenge is harnessing and distributing it.

The International Energy Agency says there is enough offshore wind to produce all the world’s future electrical power needs 11 times over. However, we don’t yet have ways of harnessing offshore winds and distributing the electricity they produce from miles out in the ocean to land-based power grids.

Wind energy may help reduce fossil fuel use and its environmental impacts. It does have its own environmental problems, however.

Environmentalists are concerned about the noise created by wind turbine blades. They also worry about visual aesthetics – wind farms spoiling views of beautiful landscapes. Large wind turbines are visible for 15 to 20 miles in clear and relatively flat areas.

Birds and bats flying into turbine blades is another problem. Joel Merriman, a wind specialist working with the American Bird Conservancy, says that 1.17 million birds are killed each year by wind turbines in the United States.

The is not much evidence to show harm to other wildlife, or to humans living near wind turbines. Some people believe that low-level turbine noise results in headaches, irritability, fatigue, dizziness, tinnitus and even more serious health problems.

There also is concern that with the growing number of wind turbines some could end up in locations that interfere with radar systems. These systems are widespread across North America and are important tools in air traffic control, weather forecasting and national air defence.

Numerous studies are being conducted to document any serious negative effects of wind energy, and how they might be mitigated. Finding turbine sites where good wind energy can be produced with minimal impacts on wildlife, humans or radar systems is a key part of that research.

It might all come down to having to accept some negative effects in exchange for a less polluted world and the increased destruction expected from continued global warming.

Environmental activist David Suzuki accepts that bird and bat kills are a part of creating necessary alternative energy. 

“Global warming will kill birds and bats, as well as other species, in much greater numbers than wind power,” he has said.

There’s a lot of thinking and work to be done to sort all this out. Thankfully, none of it has to be done by me. 

On nights when the wind blows hard, threatening to keep me awake, I’ll simply lower the flag.

                                                        #

     

 Who will stop the Russians?

From Shaman’s Rock

By Jim Poling Sr.

If I throw stones at my neighbours relaxing on their backyard patio, other neighbours witnessing the crime will rush in to stop me.

If I take wire cutters and cut the power lines bringing light, heat and electricity to cook food, police will take away my cutters, put me in handcuffs and drag me off for punishment.

Sad Vlad Putin continues to fire hundreds of missiles into Ukraine, killing thousands of civilians, but Ukraine’s friends and neighbours have done nothing to stop him. 

Some countries have imposed sanctions, but these are aimed at damaging the Russian economy and have not stopped the killing. It’s like taking credit cards away from a mass murderer.

More than 6,500 Ukrainian civilians have been murdered by Russian armed forces and their weapons since Russia invaded the country in February. That figure comes from the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights.

The Ukraine prosecutor general says that 437 children have been killed and 853 wounded in the Russian onslaught. Another 200 to 300 have gone missing and thousands have been deported to Russia, some of them put up for adoption.

Nicholas Kristof, a respected American journalist, reported last week that some Ukrainian children were enticed by Russian occupiers to attend a free summer camp. They were taken to Russia and not seen since.

This is a war against Ukrainian civilians. Putin wants to eliminate their country, their language and their culture. (Sound familiar?) 

He wants them to be Russians living on land transformed into Russia. 

The Kremlin admits it is making civilians suffer, but only because their government refuses to submit to Moscow’s wishes.

Putin is bombing and shelling Ukrainian apartment buildings so the people have no place to live. He has bombed infrastructure that provides light, heat and water. By depriving them of food shelter and warmth he hopes to terrify them into accepting Russia.

As of the first week of November, 7.8 million Ukrainians have had to flee their county, according to the UN. This has created Europe’s largest refugee crisis since the Second World War.

No country has taken any direct action to stop Putin’s massacre for one reason – fear. Putin has threatened nuclear war if any country tries to stop him from overrunning Ukraine. We are all terrified that he will start setting off the Big Ones.

Maybe he will. Maybe he won’t. But we should not let his nuclear bomb threats stop the world from taking whatever action is needed to end Russian atrocities in Ukraine.

If Putin’s nuclear gambit is successful, and he destroys Ukraine without other countries trying to stop him, he will have encouraged other nuclear-armed totalitarian states. 

China continues to threaten Taiwan. North Korea continues to threaten South Korea and others by test firing missiles capable of carrying nuclear warheads to North America.

The longer Putin is allowed to get away with his Ukraine savagery, the more these others smile, thinking: “If Putin can get away with it, so can we.”

Yes, stopping Putin could start a nuclear war. 

We’ve been living with nuclear fear since the 1962 Cuban missile crisis when the Soviet Union began installing nuclear missiles sites in Cuba. Our nuclear anxiety heightens as more totalitarian regimes, ruled by psychopaths like Putin, develop nuclear capabilities.

The question for the world is clear: Do we continue to tsk, tsk the Russian killing, maiming and overall horrid suffering inflicted on innocent Ukraine civilians and their children? Or, do we step in with military or whatever else it takes to stop Putin’s massacre and risk nuclear war?

It is immoral to stand by watching the horrors of Russia’s war on Ukrainian civilians.

World leaders appear to be hoping that Russians themselves stop the war against Ukrainians.

There is an anti-war movement in Russia, but anyone hoping it will stop Putin is only dreaming. Restrictions on protests, including arrests and jail time have resulted in it being ineffective.

Many Russians who do not support the invasion of Ukraine have moved from their homeland because they cannot speak out against it. Close to one million Russian citizens and residents are said to have emigrated, many fearing criminal prosecution for opposing the invasion or being conscripted to fight in the war.

                                                    #