This is why I love Canada

The other day, President Biden released 50 million barrels of oil from the U.S.'s reserve in response to gasoline prices.

Today Quebec announced they'd release half their maple syrup reserve to address global shortages.

This is why I love Canada.

Keeping it Light During Societal Collapse

I have been working doggedly at my next novel, and I've reached that half-way point where the flow trickles to a drip and I have to decide if the manuscript is worth pursuing, or if I should fling it into the filing cabinet and run arms flailing from the house. This is the rough patch where I start to question my abilities as a writer, the purpose behind writing in general, the fate of the publishing industry, and whether I should just stick to knitting. It's all part of my usual writing practice. I always have a great initial burst of creativity followed by a period of drought. I'll take a break, get sidetracked by Christmas preparations and Korean dramas on Netflix, and get back into the swing of things when the dust has settled and thoughts have had time to percolate, to refill the well.

I don't write Great Literature. I have no illusions about making a mark on society or profoundly affecting anyone with my stories. I love to write, I think my books provide some entertainment, and I don't expect to win a Giller with them. That's not their role. But this time around, I've also noticed a new element -- the reluctance to write fluffy entertainment while the world is burning. 

I think we can all agree it's been a rough couple of years. I look at the civil unrest, droughts, floods, hurricanes, war, disease, poverty, famine, political corruption, wildfires, landslides, refugees, smash-and-grab crimewave---and I wonder if there is a place anymore for pure entertainment. Is it socially irresponsible to ignore all that and blabber about romance and adventure? 

People do need a break from everything, I suppose. I don't want to write doom and just add to the gloom, because that doesn't do anyone any good. I really want to write about food security and the fragility of our supply chain, compassion for the earth and each other, resilience. And yet I know deep down that I'm a fiction writer. Is there a way to weave that into my novels without turning them into self-conscious sermons? Can you learn to be more resilient through the medium of fiction? I suppose so. I'm trying to think of the traits of fictional characters that have inspired me---perseverance, faith, ingenuity. But am I a good enough writer that I can deliberately incorporate those things into my stories without being blatant about it? 

Maybe when the earth is in upheaval and industrial civilization is collapsing, being blatant is okay. Subtlety doesn't seem appropriate when you're facing an avalanche. As Roy Scranton says, there is an urge to shout at people Look out! Look up!

There is also the slowly-growing feeling that this next book might be my last novel. Maybe it's time to put aside fiction and focus on reality. Maybe I've distracted myself from it for long enough.

Emergency candle at 2:30 a.m.

I woke up abruptly at 2:30 this morning to hear sleet pelting the windows. I'm staying up at the old church we're renovating, and usually it's a snuggly, cozy thing to listen to storms at night, knowing I'm protected by thick, solid walls. But for some reason, this morning I woke thinking, "If the power goes out, I'll freeze." Because this church, while solid, is also vast, and heat dissipates fast. I've been keeping to one room, with an electric heater, and am not heating the rest of the building in order to conserve propane. But even this one room will grow cold quickly if the heater goes off.

So after mulling this over for a while, I got up and melted half a can of Crisco and poured it into a wide-mouth mason jar. I fashioned a wick out of cotton thread I had in my weaving supply bin and tied it to a pushpin to anchor it and lower it down the centre of the jar. I propped a knife across the top of the jar to keep the wick upright while the Crisco cools and solidifies again. (That won't take long. The kitchen is 11 degrees Celsius right now.)

So now I have a candle that should last me many hours. I can surround it by foil pans to cast light, but it's more useful as a source of heat (and I have several rechargeable lights already that I can use). If the power goes out and the temperature plunges, I can wall myself and Brio into the bathroom, which is the smallest room, set the candle on the tile, and surround it with bricks (I have several of those), leaving a few gaps at the top and bottom for air circulation. I have a ceramic casserole dish I can put upside down over the top to form a heater, though according to Youtube, a terra cotta pot would be better. The bathroom can be ventilated, and would warm up fast.

I also have quite a lot of canned goods, peanut butter, etc. that don't require heating to eat. And I have a non-electric can opener. I'm set.

Meanwhile the power is still on, the electric baseboards are ticking contentedly, I have a Malcolm Gladwell book to curl up with, and I don't have to start work for another hour and a half. Life is good.

Weird Parsley and Bias

Last spring, I bought some little pots of Italian flat-leaf parsley to fill in some gaps in the bed of seed-grown parsley in the garden. But as the plants grew, the leaves seemed too big and light green to me, and they tasted funny. The seed-grown parsley started doing well, so I just sort of ignored the strange variety and focused on the good stuff. 

This week, with frost approaching, I cut down all the plants and prepared to mulch all the beds with straw. But the stems of the weird parsley were very thick and crunchy and hard to cut. And then I tasted it and realized: someone had mislabeled the pots. It wasn't parsley at all. It was celery. Lost in the riot of flat-leaf parsley, it had just quietly become what it was supposed to become and I hadn't noticed.

Now, I've tried to grow celery before, and it turned out woody and slim because I didn't water it enough. This year, I missed out on a bumper crop of celery I could have enjoyed, because it was just, you know, weird parsley. 

A sorry lesson in judging and dismissing out of hand because something doesn't meet our expectations. I was so wrapped up in wanting it to be parsley that I didn't appreciate what it really was. My loss.

You know your child is growing up when...

...he gets all dressed up to go to his university class, taking care that every detail is perfect, so that he strikes just the right sophisticated look...and then takes his Nintendo Switch controllers and Magic: The Gathering cards out of his bag so he can pack his textbooks. 

Dr. Seuss's The Lorax is more relevant than ever

I have this awful habit of suddenly popping awake at 3 a.m. with the craziest thoughts in my head. Yesterday it was names I could use for restaurants in the current manuscript. Sometimes it's songs I remember from the 70s (that double negative in "I can't see me lovin' nobody but you" still bugs me).

This morning it was The Lorax. And I know just fine why it's in my head today -- it's because I watched news snippits last night about the climate discussion going on in Glasgow. I once heard someone say they weren't an activist; they were an advocate. And there's a big difference. The Lorax was an advocate, giving voice to those who couldn't speak for themselves. In The Lorax, the story ends with a glimmer of hope. The whole book really echoes what we've done to our planet. Dr. Seuss wrote it in 1971. If we had listened to him at the time, we might have been able to end our story with hope as well. But I think the time for that has passed, and now we're reaping the rewards of our own self-centeredness. 

I keep returning to that achingly poignant phrase in the Book of Enoch: When will the earth rest?

Not until we've learned, at last, to be kind to it. Or until we're no longer here to torture it.