Category: Nature

Reporting from the front РMarilyn Med̩n

Hi, friends, and some relatives.  This is what I did today. (Thursday November 29th)

Up Burnaby Mountain to The Protest

 

Just go! I thought as I tried to find information about where to go, how much walking, what to expect.  Just show support by arriving … somewhere.  But Burnaby Mountain covers a large area, and if I went up it the way I knew, up to SFU, the only satisfaction I might have would be that I tried.  Not much support for the protest against Kinder Morgan.

After much trial and error I found a map.  Park near Curtis and Ayrshire, and just head UP, and UP, on a paved walkway, across Burnaby Mountain Parkway, and UP a little further to an information tent where you are told where the action is.

I saw Karl Perrin [of the Unitarian Church of Vancouver] at the tent.  I had heard he was arrested the day before.  Was he out already?

The drilling had moved, and the gathering was now down a very steep deeply muddy path, slippery, winding, intersected by thick roots and unexpected holes.  People said it took 10 to 15 minutes to get to the gathering.  It took me at least 30 minutes of hanging on to branches, tree trunks, people. The demographic was young.  A guy tore a dead tree limb from the ground and handed it to me for a walking stick. Everyone wanted to help.

I could hear drumming: the First Nation presence.  Speakers. Singing of an adaptation of We Shall Overcome. 

Sliding, slipping, holding on, I reached a place where I could see the yellow ribbon.  To go past that meant arrest.  Gentle arrest it seemed.  The police were friendly.

Someone was speaking.  She was telling of her arrest the day before.  The police carried her to a van.  Solidarity Notes had been singing, and some of them were arrested at the same time.  There was singing in the van.  Singing again in the room they were taken to, and yet again in individual cells.  Kraft dinner was provided.  She signed a statement. I gather that at that point they were released, with trial was set for January 12th.  That was it.  I could have done that!  But what would the arrest mean?  Would one then be a “person of interest”?  Well, if I could interpret it as interest in not having oil pipelines, in avoiding oil, that would be all right with me.

I headed back up the trail.  Home to wash my mud soaked shoes and pants.  Home to warm up.

 

Marilyn

 

 

PLEASE NOTE COPYRIGHT FOR THE ABOVE POST BELONGS TO MARILYN MEDEN

GLD

The Good Little Dood lived up to his moniker, doing the two things he’s best at, being adorable and farting pretty much continuously.

I held him while the homilist sang Angels Among Us and he smiled at me. He thought very hard about what was appropriate before he unfurled his brow and gave me that “your mirror neurons will go nuts” look.  I suspect he came into the world with a rather solemn but undemanding temperament. Time will tell.

Autumn Cat has landed! Poor Margot.

DSC01373

The very edited version

So around 12:30 we went over to see Autumn.  I left Jeff to commune with her and cut Paul’s hair.

He approves; in a couple of days we’ll get custody so the young person living with her gets a proper goodbye.  This also gives us a chance to somewhat catproof the house, as we’ve been living with a cat that couldn’t jump onto a counter unless a JATO bottle was strapped to her ass, and I suspect from her build and the evidence of my own eyeballs that she is gonna be one impressive jumper, like top of the fridge with no apparent effort jumper.  We’ll keep her in for a couple of days and then, she’ll be an outdoor kitty again.

Then Jeff and I helped with their move (they were both there and heaving and what not, and I mostly did useful but not as move-y type things). Jeff worked like a navvy there for a couple of hours.

Then Keith and I picked up Katie’s shower gifts and had a very pleasant time there.  Nita and Mike were there, and it was lovely to see Nita. The GLD was in fine form, being passed from hand to sweaty hand without showing much signs of being bothered by it.  Ah, Alex.  His facial features are more defined and his eyes really look at you now.  He’s mothering strong.  I didn’t take pictures because it wasn’t really that kind of gathering; we were making real memories, not digital ones.  Really good to see the folks.

Then Keith drove me home.

and a thinky thought or two plus a review.

 

I never really expected to get this old. Even as a teenager I expected something like the singularity to happen; not that I would necessarily conquer death but that the essential part of my brain that apprehends and manipulates the world to make art would still remain.

A body is entirely necessary for this, I have learned. Nothing else is as efficient. I am stuck with it, as well or as poorly as it functions inside the haphazard collection of coincidences that any human body is. I am thinking along those lines because of a documentary I just watched.

Jeff and I’ve just watched the second episode of Your Inner Fish, which is so superior to most contemporary documentaries that it’s hard to pick the most excellent bits out for comparison.

Let us start with the script. Lively, engaging, colloquial without any sacrifice of accuracy, it moves along at a goodly clip and only recapitulates at key points. From there we proceed through the outstanding use of three dimensional modeling to render the evolution of various features common to everything that’s come along since fish. The soundtrack is pedestrian without being annoying, which is all I truly ask of a documentary. The closeups of the various fossils are mindblowing. There were critters I had no idea existed; some have been found with so much detail that you’d be forgiven for thinking they were recently deposited. Some of them are tiny, no more than the size of a paper clip, and yet that tiny critter — with a brain half again as large as anything else then alive of that size — or something very like it, was the ancestor of every human being you have ever loved or hated.

Your Inner Fish showed science as tedious and glorious, backbreaking and cerebral, fun and scary, but mostly it showed science as the kind of thing a passionate and intelligent human being can throw every aspect of the self into; as you peer into the research of each scientist you see what it is about what they are doing that makes it good work, and get a sense for how the research is connected.

You travel from New Jersey to the Arctic, and from Nova Scotia to South Africa, which is where the best bones from the transitional periods between fish and amphibians, and amphibians and reptiles can be found, so it’s a bit of a travelogue as well.

I am really looking forward to seeing the conclusion.

blergh

I have now invested large chunks of many days in a row in Paul and Keith’s move, and I’m finding it rather a trial.  For me a move is something other people get to show up at for one day.  That means you pack everything, etc.

Too much on my plate today – Church, then moving, then cat acquisition, then Katie’s baby shower.  It’s the story of my life, nothing for months and then everything piles up in one day. I have met the cat (her name is Autumn) and she is stunningly gorgeous, exceedingly athletic, and very clever.  Margot’s gonna wonder what hit her if Autumn meets with Jeff’s approval.  She needs to leave where she is because she is one cat surplus to the landpeer’s okay and she really is an outdoor cat, which she can be here, as Miss Margot is an outdoor cat.  She shouldn’t be – you know it and I know it – but she is.

2020 says Autumn was male.

I was hoping to get out for a nice dinner tonight but I will probably curl up in a fetal ball and collapse instead.

My hot water bottle perished and voided itself on me this morning.  I managed not to get any water on my computer or me, by a special mercy of providence.

The nerve of that guy! Jeff won’t take me to breakfast unless I change out of my pjs.  Thank you Jeff for yummy noms.

 

Church & Happiness

Church was very, very good this morning. The homily was on how rationality is not anywhere close to being the most important thing about a person, and how presenting a reasoned argument is no way to win one.    I had a lovely long chat with a newcomer, and did a shop afterward, learning that Halloween candy is GASP 75 percent off.  And Downton Abbey is back so I’m all happy.  I’m happy to hear that Hell on Wheels is getting another season, but they are splitting the air dates out to 2016.  Boo, hiss.  See how frequently my mood swings? My mood swings, let me elucidate their prolix fluency.

The rest of the day included a roast beast dinner and Margot making weird noises and asking prettily for her treat.

I vacuumed the kitchen and washed the rugs, heaven knows they needed it.

No writing today, but much musical noodling.

Alexander’s First Thanksgiving.

Comments having nothing to do with Alexander:

Margot likes babies.  She doesn’t even leave the room when they cry.  Every time I think I know my cat she reveals unexplored depths of character and personality.

It was so good to feast the folks, including Mike and Casey.  The meal consisted of (because mOm will want to know, not because I am a food porn type): Roast turkey stuffed with parsley, one head of garlic and a lemon, boiled and roasted yams, brussels sprouts parboiled in chicken stock and sauteed in butter, sauteed parsnips, iceberg lettuce salad, stuffing made in the crockpot (sadly lacking onions, but still damned good), boughten cranberry jelly, homemade gravy and possibly the worst – the most gluey and lumpy – smashed potatoes I ever made.  Everybody else ate them so it’s not like they were inedible, they just weren’t choice.  Absolutely no sweets, but white and red wine, plus beer, to go with the meal. I did promise Paul his mother’s lemon snow recipe for dessert but that will wait for our next meal together; he very kindly did veg prep and ran people ’round town and brought wine glasses and suchlike, for which I offer thanks and praise.

Keith got off work early; Katie turned up around 4, so we all sat down together around six.

The carcase, less the sandwich making leftovers, is in the stockpot; I made beef and bean burrito fillings yesterday as well, so I don’t think I’ll have to cook for a while, yay me!  I mean apart from deboning the soup ingredients.

Around 8 Katie got toothpicks, and Casey was in the same boat, so Paul took them home.  For another hour Mike, Jeff, Keith and I sat around downstairs and watched Archer, and then since the boys both work in the morning, off they went.

It was not a spectacular meal, but it wasn’t one that anybody else in our group would have WANTED to cook, so I’m glad I stepped up.  After I could sit down, I had a lovely evening.

 

And Alexander was there.

 

Alexander disapprovesHappy Grandma

morning walk

This morning I had a remarkable experience while walking.  As I stepped out to get a coffee at Starbucks (and strangely, their coffee still sucks) the sun was struggling skyward into a golden haze. One half of the sky was dark and brooding; the other was brilliant gold and white and blue.  I could hear raindrops falling all around me, plinking on leaves and plunking on cars and splatting on sidewalk and asphalt, but nothing fell on me or my phone.  Then of course it started raining heavier but it wasn’t unpleasant to walk.  As I turned onto 6th I was walking almost directly into the sun, and the big juicy raindrops came down like meteors all around me, streaks of white and silver, and none landed on me.  I felt like I was playing a very sophisticated game of dodgeball with the whole universe.

Yay! Tammy is coming for Christmas!

I had such a lovely time with her the last time she was here and it gives me something fun to look forward to. She’ll have Katie’s baby to chuck under the chin too, inshallah.

Strangely, though I do collect moose, this morning was the first time I’d heard of this.

First draft of the novel is on track for completion second week of September.  Then my mother and I are going to edit the hell out of it, and then I’m going to pay a professional to edit it.

 

My god, feline, what HAVE you been eating

Miss Margot jumped up on the bed (she rarely snuggles) and curled up right next to me and permitted me to skritch her and tell her she was pretty. (I can’t tell her she is smart, that would be a lie.) She edges her bum closer and closer to my face, and just when I’m thinking she might settle in for the night, she drops a couple of SBDs and jumps down when I burst out laughing.

Truly, I have the cat I deserve.

Later…. she came in, jumped up on the desk and started knocking shit off. Cats are assholes.

New victims

Poor Margot. We’ve locked the cat door and Keith and Paul let her out last night not knowing she wasn’t going to get back in again until I got up around 5:30 (a good night’s sleep).

I have discovered that I am a lot more sentimental than I thought.  Keith got me a Mother’s Day card, which would have been sufficient, but also a gift card.  I burst into tears.  It’s just so nice to be loved.

Then we exposed them to Rick and Morty. NEW VICTIMS.

I am full of plans about what I’ll do when I’m off work again.  I do feel a lot more confident about the job hunt; I was doing things wrong and I admit that now, so it will go better.  I have a lovely new resume which should help, and I’ll be tailoring it a lot more.  It’s true, the bots looking through resumes don’t give a shit about me, and the po faced mental midgets who sort through them after the bots have done their jobs can’t assemble a sentence without turning into bleating morons.  However, it’s a game, it has rules, and I can’t win if I don’t play by the rules.  The rest of this paragraph has been erased on the strenuous and plaintive request of counsel.

On my list of things to do is a concert at Wreck Beach.  Don’t feel bad if you’re not invited.