Saving this screen shot from the Indigenous Services Canada’s page that tracks the progress of getting clean drinking water to First Nations communities in Canada, a long-standing promise of our federal government that never seems to be fulfilled.
A friend asked me what I’ve been up to lately. I said I’ve been in my shop fixing an old school desk that was wiggly because the glue holding it together had dried out. She asked me to send a picture, so I did.
I was going to delete the photo, but then decided it is possibly the best portrait I could ever make of my brain: quite messy but also reasonably organized, full of stuff I probably should have gotten rid of ages ago, practical, a mix of old and new, slightly scattered, but all mine.
I am the cleaner called by the housekeeper who got a text from the valet that a Reagan china plate had been smashed in the President’s Dining Room. As I swept up the red and gold shards I thought of all who had slept there when it was a bedroom, ate there after Jackie turned it into a dining room. I remember the Bush twins flicking cereal at each other when they visited their grandparents. I was new then, and they were naughty, but polite, raised in privilege, but with humility, too. The last family ate healthy meals together. Laughing teasing sharing. Phones banned from the table. In awe of this place. Grateful and light. Always my first name. Hello and please and thank you. As I try to carefully remove the ketchup from the white woodwork The blue and cream rug The handmade gold wallpaper The delicate vases (it went everywhere) I realize we will need experts To do restoration work. The conservators will need to dig deep into their tool chests to find something to remove the stain that the man-child has left. Thumbs constantly rubbing his glass and metal soother, rage and rudeness. He doesn’t know my name. No hello, just grunts and discontent. It’s January 5. Just a few more days.
When I hear a small plane or helicopter approaching our house, I run outside and give them a big wave. I’ve been doing this my entire life, but the little plane that flew over our house just now is the first one that clearly waggled its wings back at me. Never give up.
I used to spend part of each yoga practice gently encouraging Sally the tabby to move off my blanket as she joined me in the weird human thing I seemed to be doing, which often puts me in a cat petting position, but rarely results in feline adoration. Then I folded my blanket a bit differently one day, and she had a place to do the cozy cat while I did the downward dog. Sometimes the best way to get what you want is to give a little.
Just listened to a long discussion on local radio about the staffing challenges some tourism operators on PEI are facing this summer, which are serious for businesses small and large. They touched on lack of transportation, affordable housing, having to be more flexible with lengths of shifts and contracts, and affordable and accessible child care as some of the reasons they have difficulty attracting staff for service jobs.
While this discussion was specifically about labour stresses, I think we would do well to talk more about how the climate crisis is going to change the tourism industry, which is a major economic driver on PEI. I wonder how long tourism will remain a viable business in light of drastically increased fuel prices and the climate crisis. It’s not even officially summer yet, and already over 100 million US citizens were told to stay indoors this week because of extreme heat, and that’s just the most startling of many similar articles I read this week about extreme weather.
How long will it be seen as ethical to encourage people to jet somewhere for a winter break in the sun, or a week on PEI’s sandy beaches? Will tourism become limited to where you can drive in an electric vehicle or on public transport and not round-the-world excursions?
Our ability to imagine and plan for the future is one thing that seems to set humans apart from other animals, but as a society we don’t seem to have changed much about how we balance what we do today against how it will affect the future. I don’t see much change yet, and the clock is ticking.
Our house is still on fire, and we are toasting marshmallows on the flames.
Great Uncle George Harris gets a mention in the June 14, 1922 The Charlottetown Guardian. Nice to know he was well-liked, and not, as you might try to decode, a salesman for the Popular milk company, or from Popular. Pretty sure he worked for himself, milking the cows and bottling the milk.
His improved home still stands on the outskirts of Summerside, the barns that held his milk cows more or less intact. That end of town is still farmland, but not for long, as businesses continue to move to the north end.
My mother stayed at George and Carrie’s house on her way to enlist in the RCAF 79 years ago (Carrie was the youngest sister of my great-grandmother, Eva Hardy). George drove my mother from his house to the Summerside train station in his horse and milk delivery wagon, where she caught the train to Moncton and then on to do her basic training in Ottawa.
Also in today’s 100-year-old paper was the obituary of my friend’s great grandmother. I knew more people in the antique edition that in the one published today!
It is not uncommon to find empty mussel shells in the woods around our home, the two halves still attached to each other but usually missing one piece of one shell. Crows will pick a mussel from the shore, fly up onto a tree branch, hold the mussel with their feet while prying it open with their beak, pick out the meat, and drop the shell when they are done.
Yesterday I spotted a shell in birch and poplar leaves, probably 200 feet from the river. It will soon be completely submerged, slowly releasing calcium and other minerals into the forest floor over the next decades. Forests think and move in centuries, while humans count days and weeks and months and years. Is it any wonder humans can’t see what trees are doing, how they communicate to each other (and us)? They probably feel we need to slow down a little.
Last evening I gathered some dry grass from the shore below our house to use as mulch in my garden. It floats on the river and gathers after storms, a mixture of seaweed and terrestrial grasses. Other things can arrive, too: pieces of wood, branches, dead fish, feathers. As I gathered a few hay forkfuls, I picked out and disposed of a short piece of plastic rope, the plastic top off a coffee cup and a couple of plastic bags.
I left the mussel shells I found in the pile of grass, and they will disappear into my garden, breaking under my rubber boots, split by a hoe, freezing and thawing, rubbed by worms and microbes, catching the rain.
I appreciate more and more the riches I have around me, even if, to some, it’s just a pile of old dead grass. With an endless supply of fallen leaves and grasses, I don’t need to buy bark mulch that is trucked in from far away. The mulch I use would definitely not be welcome in a beautifully manicured neighbourhood, but that’s not where I live. It’s taken a while, but I’m getting more and more comfortable with the rougher look and letting nature move right up to my front door.
The crow and I gather from the shore, apart but together, same-same.
I have been on a journey lately to be a better friend to myself. I have realised that I am much harder on myself than I would ever be with a friend or family member. I seem able to easily forgive others for unhelpful things they do or say, but take myself to task for even the smallest mistake. I’m trying to understand why that is, and to change my inner voice, to be as kind to myself as I try to be to others.
While practicing yoga this morning, one of the moves included placing my hands on my heart centre and focusing on it. As my hands touched each other, I thought what a physical, calming way to put being my own friend into practice, so I held my own hand for a while and said soothing words. We have all probably rubbed our hands together to warm them up, wrung them when we are nervous, even clasped them in prayer or pleading, but have we ever held our hands as we would hold the hand of another we loved?
Hold your hand and tell yourself how much you care, and you might feel the little leap in your heart that I did this morning.
Bask in the warm glow of tubes and the radioactive-looking tuning eye of this 1950s RCA Victor radio/turntable that lives in our basement. I’m certain it is patiently waiting for the return of its original owner, my father’s friend and fellow Lucky Dollar store owner Edwin Bernard, who spent many peaceful hours sitting next to this lovely cabinet listening to sports and music while smoking and reading a big book. I hadn’t plugged it in for many years, and quickly unplugged it after taking a couple of photos as the basement started to smell like electronics, and not in a good way. Rest easy, good and faithful servant, someone will restore you one day.
