Odds and Sods*, and Canada Day!

*I thought it was one of those odd British sayings that permeated my childhood and stuck with me, but apparently it's the title of a compilation album by The Who.

How odd. Maybe it's both.

In any case.... a post of odds and sods.

Happy Canada Day! I was out in the field, camping with the medieval types - the SCA - so I missed posting on the actual day. No computers in the Viking Age!

Check out my fellow Canadian's blog detailing the ABC's of why Canada is great!



Farmer's Markets are NOT necessarily populated by farmers. A lot of the produce available at the two local farmer's markets nearby are for sale by resellers, who somehow garner foodstuffs cheaply and resell them at market. Often out of season and often driven some godless number of miles to get there. Apparently, this is a really common occurrence in Ontario, and two recently created farmer's markets in Toronto have gone to the trouble of _certifying_ the farmers who want to sell there.

It's a tad annoying for those of us new to Eating Locally, who want to depend on the local farmer's market for food.

Trans Fats: According to Wikipedia, some trans fats occur naturally in ruminants - cows, sheep, etc. And Canada's nutritional labelling laws include the naturally occurring trans fats. So, a product like cheese might reasonably include some natural trans fats. I guess ya just gotta decide on what a reasonable amount is, and how the trans fats most likely got into the product in question.

The Garden: It's a strange year. First, it took longer then usual to clear the last frost date. And then all of a sudden, it's HOT. Freaking HOT, and frequently HOT. The garden has zoomed ahead of all rationality - blooming and dropping flowers at a heartbreaking 'blink and you miss it' speed. I have daises in bloom, and where I am, that's not supposed to happen until August. It's still June!

Playing catch-up then on the pictures: these lovely foxgloves are largely gone now.



Pretty colours.....



And a source of heart-stopping digitalis as well.



Medicinal Herbs: I'm currently growing motherwort, comfrey, sage, echinacea, valerian, catnip, lemon balm, mint, calendula, feverfew and foxglove. While I'm aware that all of these have medicinal uses, I haven't the foggiest on how to actually go about using them. Can anyone recommend some good reading material on growing and using medicinal herbs?

Rest assured, I don't want to be a dabbler. I have no intention of using them until I'm quite certain I know what I'm doing. I've taken valerian as a sedative aid in the past. The vomiting wasn't fun.

Air Conditioning: We caved in to the heat, increased our carbon footprint just a bit, and bought a small room air conditioner. The intention is to run the bedroom temperature down at night to a comfortable sleeping space and shut it off during the day. So far, my sinuses have disagreed with the air it outputs and my ears with the noise. The cooler and dryer air is definitely to the good 'though. I'm hoping that we will all adjust to each other.

One Local Summer: The One Local Summer project has been so successful that Liz has started a new blog to accommodate all of the entries. Check it out here!

Cheers,

Karen

ABC, and webrings, and the Liberals - a very mixed day

"A, your an Amazon
B, growing brave and strong
Clearly and Consciously you C....."

Lyrics from a song from the 70s. Part of the 'radical feminist' experience. Written by the delightful Alix Dobkin. I can't find the lyrics on the web, but you can buy her music at Ladyslipper.

Funny, the more research I do on the web to write anything on the blog about feminism, the more I'm convinced that there's a serious gap in written 'herstory'. Not that I'm volunteering to fill that gap.

Anyhoo....

Cyndy, of Riverrim, asked:
"If you are looking for hits, you could join a web ring?"

I don't know where I fit in. Is there a webring for people who just write randomly about their life?

Often it's about the garden, but heck, flowers make for pretty pictures. Rarely, it's about fibre crafts (or fiber, depending on how I feel like spelling it - I hear the first version is Canadian, eh) but just how many pictures of spinning can one post?

And sometimes it's about Canadian politics. Like today.

I've been watching the Liberal leadership convention today....Stephane Dion won! It's the first time in Liberal history that the front runner in the process didn't win.

It's not what I expected, or wanted - Gerard Kennedy impressed me with his outspoken opposition to Prime Minister Harper's "Quebecois nation" motion.

But I'm very happy that Michael Ignatieff did NOT win. One just can't leave Canada for 30 years and come back expecting to lead it. It's just not right in my books. I don't care how many books he's written or that he taught at Harvard. Big deal. If the Canadian university system is good enough for me to work in, it's good enough for him too.

Not that I vote Liberal. I generally go with the New Democratic Party. But the Liberals have the biggest chance of stopping Stephen Harper's Conservatives in the future. And that is very important to me.

Karen

Random Thursday

This is random burblings day.

The yard is still a mess - piles of dirt waiting to be shoved back into a flat state of being. Theoretically, that happens tomorrow. And once it's flat again, we can seed the lawn. I'm eager to get those seeds in.

We've bought bulbs and some new perennials half off in the end of season sale - waiting for a day that's warm enough, in which we have sufficient energy to plant them. We had friends over last weekend who took away some of the things we needed to split.

This weekend is the annual Bogenschuetzenfest. It's one of the first events of the largest Oktoberfest celebration held outside of Germany. Now generally, I can't much stomach this annual celebration of drinking, bad music, bad food, and eye-bleedingly bad costumes, but Bogenschuetzenfest is a silly fun archery contest that generally avoids ... well, at least the rabid drinking.

Now, that's the part of the weekend that I'm most looking forward to - there's also pies, various and sundry family gatherings and a bit of Canada's history suggested for the rest of the weekend. I'm just not sure I feel like waking up for sunday or monday.... at all.

And speaking of sleeping..... I finally got to the store that keeps very-short-hours-during-my-workday and bought this light alarm. So far, so good. But I think the devil's in the settings and there are quite a few of them to choose from.

Also on the sleep frontier - we're still considering moving off the waterbed and onto a Tempurpedic mattress. We slept on Tempurpedic mattresses for two nights during the recent vacation and have mixed feelings about them. They weren't as soft as expected and I still woke up with some soreness - just in different spots. Now, there are different models and the ones in the hotels are on the lower end of the spectrum. They can get cushier, and more expensive. Any forewarnings? comments? recommendations? If you have a Tempurpedic, which model do you have?

Karen

Happy Canada Day!

Two weekends behind

Sorry, sorry... let me catch up.

The 20/21/22 weekend was the first long weekend of the summer in Canada, celebrating Queen Victoria's birthday. We're weird that way about the Royalty in Canada.

On saturday, we went to the first camping SCA event of the year. Neil and I just dropped in for a day to teach some Arts and Sciences classes and I got a tad fried by the sun.

Nina asked me to help her out with a class on hedge-row dyeing. I brought some madder for one dyepot....


...and we picked dandelions for the other dyepot.


After a few hours of simmering on the fire, while the people simmered in the sun, we felt like we weren't really getting very much colour out of either pot. Neither of us had remembered to bring a mordant to add to the pots.

So I suggested to Nina, who was camping that weekend, that she keep the materials in the pots overnight and take it out in the morning. I'd hoped the longer time in would give the dyebath more time to leach metal from pots - one copper and one alum.

I've seen the madder results, but not the dandelion ones yet. I'll have to take pictures of both soon.

This most recent weekend, we went up to the Wareham Forge homestead to visit our friends, Darrell and Vandy.

Darrell's goal: enlist big, smelly menfolk to build a semi-permanent smelter and smelter cover in his backyard.

Karen and Vandy's goal: escape from the boys, and go visit some pretty shetland sheep being sheared. Come home with fleece for dyeing, spinning and weaving.

Both goals were accomplished. Details in the next post, when the pictures are ready. They're off the camera, but not yet disseminated, thumbnailed, or put up on the web. Soon, I hope.

Karen

Summary of the recent election

These are more or less random bits of thought in the wake of the election.

If we had proportional representation in this country, the makeup of the House of Commons would look entirely different.

Snipping a bit from Fair Vote Canada's assessment of the election results:
"Had the same votes been cast under a proportional voting system, Fair Vote Canada projected that the seats allocation would have been approximately as follows:
# Conservatives - 36.3% of the popular vote: 113 seats (not 124)
# Liberals - 30.1% of the popular vote: 93 seats (not 103)
# NDP - 17.5% of the popular vote: 59 seats (not 29)
# Bloc Quebecois - 10.5% of the popular vote: 31 seats (not 51)
# Greens - 4.5% of the popular vote: 12 seats (not 0)"

The links to the various party websites inside the quote are something I added. I apologize to all the english only speakers out there on behalf of the appallingly rude Bloc Quebecois, who apparently couldn't be bothered to have an english translation of their website. You would think they would want to make their point of view available to the rest of Canada, as part of the process of cordial separation.

Good Gods, even the fledgling Green Party website is fully bilingual, and my computer geek husband assures me that full bilingualism in a website is no cheap endeavor.

But I'll leave the issue of Quebec seperation for another day, when I'm truly bored in the middle of winter without my garden and pics thereof to keep us all entertained.

Memorable bits:

- The sick to my stomach feeling of encountering what can only be described as Hate in the middle of an otherwise at least superficially polite all candidate's debate. In Canada. We of the world-wide reputation for politeness. Unless, apparently, you are gay.

- The admiration/compassion/something listening to the lesbian woman who stood up in the midst of it and challenged attitudes.

- Joe, the political guy at work, who more or less said that 'The Man' wants us to become disillusioned with the process, to give up and stop participating, to feel like we can't make changes.

- The ...."it's okay to be afraid of our country becoming like the Right Wing World-Dominating USA*, but it's not okay to speak of it to the public at large" thing that gripped us. The Liberals were rounded criticized for their fear-mongering ads against the Conservatives.

*My apologies to all the Americans out there who are just as disgusted with their current Goverment as the rest of the world.

- The feeling that the whole lot of them need to stop acting like children and grow the hell up. But that would be that disillusionment that Joe spoke of again, wouldn't it?

- Vote Marriage Canada claims that 'over 60%' of their 209 endorsed candidates were elected. When I compared the list of their endorsements to the list of newly-elected Members of Parliament, I got closer to 53.8%, but what's a little quibbling here and there? That means that approximately 112 of the 308 elected MPs will vote against same-sex marriage when the Conservatives fulfil their promise of having a free vote in Parliament on the issue. Now, just because the other 196 winning MPs weren't endorsed by this organization, it doesn't mean that they disagree with it's stance, but it seems unlikely that same sex marriage will be disallowed so shortly after being made legal by the previous government.

- Still being pissed off with Jack Layton, the leader of the NDP for making the call to side with the Conservatives on a vote of confidence and bringing down the previous government. I didn't want this election to happen in the first place.

- And finally, back to where I started commenting on the election a few months ago - I want to decline my vote. I want to be able to walk into a polling station, accept my ballot and say 'I decline to vote. I do not support any of the Parties at this time, but I continue to support this process.' I want my ballot to be counted separately as the civil act of protest that it is. I don't want to have my ballot counted amongst the spoiled ballots, the ballots of people too stupid to mark them correctly.

There, I think I'm done.

I promise to return to more peaceful topics shortly.

Maybe I'll even get off my butt and post a picture of something again someday.

Karen

the day after the night before - the Canadian Election

So.... there's good news, and there's bad news in Canada today.

The Conservatives won. That's bad news.

But they won a minority government, and a truly smaller minority then anticipated. That's the good news, such as it is.

Minority governments tend to be fairly short-lived and unstable in Canadian governments.

The conservative candidate that I ranted about in the last post won in my riding. That's bad news.

The NDP increased their seat count by a third again, so that's good news.

Neutral but interesting - the Green Party finally qualified for federal funding, even though they didn't win a seat anywhere, because they got 4% of the popular vote, nationwide.

Altogether annoying - the Bloc Quebecois, who only run candidates in the province of Quebec, got 51 seats from their 10% of the popular vote (because the popular vote is calculated over the whole of Canada), while the NDP running candidates all over the country found their 17% of the popular vote translated to 29 seats.

I need to compare the winnings in each and every riding against the Vote Marriage folks who endorsed candidates in 209 ridings so I can get a picture on whether the same sex marriage legislation will stand or not. It's an issue that's important to me.

Overall, the Left has a breathing moment to regroup. Things won't go downhill too quickly because the Conservatives have to play very much to the Centre to keep their government in power. If they govern well in the time that they have, they stand a better chance of gaining a majority rule (and considerably more raw power) in the next election.

Paul Martin, the former Prime Minister, and leader of the Liberals, resigned as leader immediately last night, although announcing that he will continue to serve as the MP for his riding. So it's in the Liberals best interest to not play havoc with the Conservative minority on any given issue too quickly, until they find a new leader and give him/her a chance to get comfortable with the public.

Feel free to ask questions, if you're not familiar with the political system, or something doesn't make sense. I'd be happy to answer what I can.

Karen

Canadian Election Politics and me

Well, that was depressing.

I have this old fashioned idea that a responsible voter gets to know her candidates before voting. So I went to the local all candidate's meeting tonight.

The NDP candidate is an inarticulate idiot. This distresses me because their Party's platform is the closest to my point of view.

The Green Party's candidate is .... well intentioned, but unformed.

The Liberal candidate is the incumbent. He's slick. Well practiced at the art of politics. And a typical Liberal - self-centered, self-righteous, arrogant.

The Conservative candidate sickens me. Mind you, I'm pre-disposed to be sickened by Conservatives, but this guy.... and the support he got in the room, suffice to say that this is the reason I found the debate so depressing.

For those of you who don't know - the previous Liberal government recently legalized same-sex marriage in Canada. I support this idea, hell, I celebrate it as a move long overdue in a humane society.

The Conservative Party has stated that they want to review this decision. I'm afraid that it will be reversed. That gay folks' right to marry will be taken away.

Some Conservatives are only in the party for the economics, and are socially liberal. A long time ago, back in the days when the Conservatives used to call themselves Progressive Conservatives, before the right wing first split off and drove the party into the ground, and then chased them off, these types used to be considerably more numerous and were called Red Tories. "Red" because the Liberal party colour is Red, left-leaning economically conservative. I understand that, I grew up that way.

Nowadays, most of them are all Conservative, all the way. This candidate is one of them.

But there was a bright moment - a women in a 16 year, 3 children, lesbian relationship got up and outed herself and challenged the Conservative candidate to explain himself. I was moved by the support she did get in the audience(not as much as the candidate, depressingly) and by her courage to speak up in that room. I thanked her personally afterwards.

Anyway....

I went home and ate some comfort food and hugged the puppy and took a skein of yarn off the spindle. Things look a little brighter, the world is a little warmer. It'll be okay. Maybe not in this election, but someday...

The weaving, by the way, is getting better. Anti-V suggested spray starch and it seems to be working.

Karen

Not much to see here

On things fiber-y:
I've been naalbinding quite a bit. The sweater might be turning into a poncho for me instead. I can't put my brains to figuring out the sleeve holes on a sweater. If I don't abandon the project altogether because it appears stiff. I can't imagine it draping properly, and I don't want to waste that much wool. And I've been making hats, because they are easy. The socks... sucked. So I haven't finished them.

There's also fiber and a drop spindle sitting on the coffee table waiting to be picked up and spun.

Other then the above, I don't have much on the go.

I guess that means the weaving has managed to put itself in the background again. *sigh*

On things election-y:
The NDP (New Democratic Party) has come up with a fun new thing for tonight's english language debate. I wonder if they have any idea just how easy it would be to turn this into a drinking game. Hey, it's a friday night... no work tomorrow.

On things Christmas-y:
I'm almost done. Enough that I'm not feeling anxious about what I still have left to do before the holidays. Pies, tarts, more pies. Organizing the pizza lunch for the staff that stick it out 'til the very last day. Buying a few more presents for the nieces and nephews, and Gram, Mom and Dad, and the Brother.

Although I suppose I should get on the Bro's present sooner, rather then later. He's off on the other side of the country. I really wish he'd come back to Ontario - I miss him.

I'm even reasonably resigned to the travelling to other people's houses for multiple Christmas events. A month ago, projecting this travel in my head had me in a really foul mood. I'm a curl up at home with the hubby, dog and cat kinda gal.

Speaking of dogs and cats... you should go and check out Diane's new friends at Piffle. Adorable. :)

I am so looking forward to sleeping in tomorrow.

Karen

more election mutterings

Admittedly, the Political Science degree is many years behind me and I haven't been paying attention to the details lately.

So imagine my annoyance when my darling hubby found this little tidbit on declining ballots with a judiciously applied google search.

Google is my hero. I worship Google.

Now I don't mind terribly that my hubby found it so much as that the good people on the phone at Elections Canada couldn't answer my question after all, and tried to tell me that Section 284 actually did cover it.

The long and short of it is that one can not legally decline one's ballot in Federal elections. It's an option that simply isn't available in the legislation covering Federal elections. Most provincial governments have this option, but not the Federal government.

So now I'll have to make an actual decision on election day. Phooey. None of them deserve my vote.

And apparently, the current government has been in power for 18 months or so. Longer then a year... like I said, haven't been paying attention.

On the fiber front - I've been naalbinding a fair bit. Hat, socks, and now ...maybe, a sweater. Wish me luck on that one. I've never met anyone who's tried to naalbind an object as large as a sweater.

Karen

Current Weather Here is...

The current weather in south-western Ontario is.... colder then Iceland. Alda says it's only 3°C in Iceland. It's currently -7°C here, with a windchill factor making it feel like -16°C.

Doesn't it just kill you? Iceland. The name says it all.

Anyway... the current political weather here is no better. The dofuses-that-be have decided that Canada should undergo yet another federal election. There's nothing quite so heartwarming as politicians wasting our tax dollars on elaborate popularity contests, twice in one year.

I've been a strong supporter of the New Democratic Party for years, but I fear this time I'd rather decline my ballot then vote for any of them.

Interestingly enough, I was on hold on the phone with Elections Canada, attempting to find the section of election legislation that deals with declining one's ballot in order to link that bit in the paragraph above, when a coworker dropped in and said "vote Liberal".

When I asked why, the answer was "so the Conservatives don't get in".

*sigh* While I do sympathize, because I don't want the Conservatives to win either, I want to vote positively. For the party that best reflects my views.

That used to be the NDP, but it might now be the Green Party - I'll have to make myself more familiar with them.

Although I do have to admit that it might be nice, just once in awhile, to vote for a party that might actually have a hope of governing someday. While the NDP has managed to win elections and govern at the provincial level, it's yet to have success with federal politics.

I could go on - I did my degree in Political Science after all - but why bore you? Everyone's got an opinion.

On the bright side, my coworker and I just put up the Christmas tree in the lobby. So, it's official now....

"It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas...."

Come on and sing along.... you know you want to. :)

Karen

the Girl card

Spent the holiday (that's Canada Day, on July 1, for the non-Canadians out there) quite pleasantly. Where else? In my garden. :) I was in an incredibly zen place with the weeds and spent hours pulling them without the least bit of frustration. I filled up a rather large size plastic tub with weeds. We really need to get a composter going.

Saturday on the other hand, wasn't exactly what I'd call pleasant. But I am left with a feeling of achievement and dozens of sore muscles to prove it.

The hubby and I went up to his mother's place to help re-shingle the roof. My advice for all the middle-aged out there? If anyone asks you to volunteer to re-shingle a roof - just say no.

Unless of course, you actually enjoy hard physical labour in the sun for hours on end. If so, then it's right up your alley.

All in all, I think I spent 6-7 hours on the roof. And for the most part, I was the only girl and probably the oldest person up there.

At supper-time, I changed into real clothes* and played the Girl card. You know, the one that lets you off of hard physical labour on account of being a Girl.

Then again, Neil** and I spent the next hour or so chainsawing up some broken limbs in the mother's yard, which is in and of itself physical labour, although not quite so demanding as roofing. But it was on the ground. And safe. Relatively speaking.

On sunday, I spent most of the day on the couch having a sinus reaction to something - either dripping, doing that whole body sneezing thing, or napping (because sleeping is the only time my sinuses would go anywhere near clearing). Fun, Wow. I figure it was a reaction to a combination of altitude change, hard labour, heat exhaustion, and the septic tank that overflowed the morning before we went to do the roofing.

* Real clothes being defined as clean and Girl-like.

**Neil played the Bad Knees card to avoid going back up on the roof again after supper.

Mixed reviews

On the Political Front:

Yeah! We don't have to have two freaking elections wasting our tax dollars in the same year. Now maybe Stephen Harper will sit down and shut up.

On Conservative MLA Tony Abbott:

Apparently, the man apologized (both publicly and privately) for his remarks about Belinda Stronach. Kudos to the man for 'fessing up to his own rudeness.

On the Garden :)

I took bunches more pictures last night and I promise I'll have some of them up soon.

I also sprayed the veggie garden with a total wipe-out to kill all the weeds, prepatory to planting this weekend. The product says it has no soil action whatsoever, so there's no need to wait for a long time before planting seeds.

I think next year 'though I'll lay down newspapers and mulch in the fall, so the spring weeds can't pop up at all. It seems like a much more environmentally friendly thing to do.

We can't really rototil in that garden since the 100+ year old maple's roots run throughout that area.

I am itching to plant! And the grass sorely needs to be cut. We've been so busy lately, and the weather temperatures have been sucky until recently, that I haven't had much chance to do the planting. But now it's the official last frost date weekend and I'm raring to go!

I asked Neil to remind me next year not to buy so many plants so far ahead of time, and the poor lad just choked on his snort of laughter. :)

Karen

behaviour - a word I just stuck in to find out which language the spell checker is presuming we all speak. American, apparently. I should have known.

Time

All I need to do is to quit my job for a little while, and then I'd have the time I need to spend in the garden.

Unfortunately, that's not very likely.

The hubby took me to the nursery last night to buy some annuals. He wanted to get them before all the crowds on the long weekend. It's as likely a story as any. :) I think he just likes to feed my habit. I can see his delighted smile when he watches me finding some new pretty thing to ooh and ahh over.

Unfortunately, I think the crowds had already largely gotten to this nursery - two of the annuals that I wanted were already gone, and they were out of coco baskets in the size I need.

Now on another topic - Belinda Stronach quitting the Conservative Party? It's about damned time. In my opinion, she never belonged there.

But don't get me started on the misogyny being displayed by our so-called civil servants in their varying reactions so far. My favourite is (and I paraphrase in absence of a documented quote) "she's just a little rich girl whoring herself out to the Liberals". This from fundamentalist christian Alberta MLA Tony Abbott. One might tend to think that he'd have more respect for women, as his church at least pretends to espouse.

Diminishing, demeaning, rude and crude. Hmmm...it looks like I got started.

Never mind, that's why I garden. It reduces my blood pressure.

Karen

Good news!

The government isn't Evil, only devious.

Turns out I almost missed something on my taxes and where I thought I'd end up owing them too much money, I get a small refund instead. :)

Of course, if they didn't make the damned forms so complicated...

Life is good.

Karen