Last Nations

(Warning: a blue collar rant)

Storm Ecstasy. This is the cover photo I’ve chosen for my second novel of the same title.
Brotchie Ledge Light. This marks the entrance to Victoria Harbour where you round the Ogden Point Light and are safe off the strait. I’ve lost count of the times I’ve sailed this way, day and night, in all weather. I miss it! Horribly.
Porthand buoy in a sea of blackberries. Don’t fall overboard.

This morning, while posting my daily Facebook blog, the app. showed my own mugshot to me and advised that this guy and I have nine mutual friends. OK? Lately, they’ve been sending out repeat friendship requests on my behalf to various facebook acquaintances. Interestingly, Facebook has no live complaint department a person can contact. Social media, oh yeah! I’m weary of young girls, and a few men, who want to show me their body parts and are declaring their profound love to this old stranger. I’ve unsubscribed from Facebook in disgust once before, which was a biblically complicated ordeal but I’m close to leaving again. I’d been persuaded that Facebook was the epicentre of social media and e-commerce. I needed to be there to further my interests. It’s the way things are done now. Well, I’ve seen no cheques. Haar! I’m losing interest. If this is indeed one of society’s prime fulcrums, we’re deep in the cack!

La Loo. Organic washroom facility in the local park.
A sign of spring.
Another sign
Feather fungus
Feather Tree
Every bit of colour is appreciated at this time of year.

Perhaps I’m in an advanced state of cabin fever after a long, grey winter. Jill has been ill the whole time, we have tight funds and are restricted to a close-range dull existence. I am frustrated and yes, angry. I do find delight in events like multi-billion dollar jet fighter defense umbrellas being thwarted by simple balloons. I’ve found some fun in inventing scenarios like an explosion in a North Korean condom factory. A friend reminded me that during WWII Japan was successful in sending paper balloons with bombs to North America. Simple wins! So, when an F-69 blasts a carnival because some child lost their birthday balloon….. Yep, it’s crazy out there!

This last week has tipped my canoe. I am tired of feeling like a sub-species because I am an older man. I have lived my biblical span of three score and ten. To make things worse, I am a white male heterosexual, married to a woman for more than six months, and I have earned a living from different BC resource industries. Wot a loser! I have realized that I am a member of the “Last Nation.” Do I sound jaded? Bet yer arse Billy! I’m burned out from years of bashing and smashing myself up in the woods and at sea. That doesn’t compare with the thrashing you take from the squadrons of bureaucratic desk jockeys along the way who cavalierly try to control a person’s existence. I feel tossed out at a time when I have my best to offer. All those years of experience, developed skills and perspectives to pass on and I’m left to feel like a discarded fast-food wrapper blowing in the wind. I guess I never did learn to work clever instead of simply hard. Clever like a donkey. All I can do is try to make a difference with my writing and photography.

Fly Away

Now understand this, I refuse to regard people in terms of age, gender, race or social circumstance. Religion? Believe what you want, just do not try to impose it on me. Part of my spiritual dogma is tolerance, but don’t press your insecurity on me, just show me your better way. As one of my senior employees once told a snippy young government brown shirt, “ Son if I come over there and pull down yer pants, we’re gonna find a belly button and an arsehole just like the rest of us.” His message, in best Redneck eloquence, was that we’re all in this together and nobody is superior, or inferior, to anyone else; not if we’re all doing our best.

Twenty-three years ago I endured an accident and injury which required the installation of a dacron aorta and some other repairs to my heart. Doctors told me I’d never be able to go back to work as I had. The surgeon gave me twenty years to live but the bugger refused to sign a letter agreeing that a severe trauma was probably the cause of the injury. That gave license to WorkSafe BC to cock their leg on me despite all the other medical reports. The union was not inclined to take its feet off the desk and support the cause of one paying labour brother. At a time like that, you don’t have the berries to get up on your knees and fight for yourself. You need a little help. Life is not fair, I’ve made my own way and, for a while, have even gone back to the type of work I was advised to avoid. I’m not complaining although it’s damned tough to survive as a geezer with a tiny pension. Bought a cabbage lately?

What does piss me off is all the folks who seem to think the world owes them something for simply showing up and that the solution for their problems is to throw huge lumps of money their way. I’m damned tired of one ethnic group or another claiming discrimination because someone didn’t get a mortgage as expected, or a promotion at work or a political appointment. Fewer folks in this province now work in a resource-based industry, they don’t actually produce anything. Poking at a computer keyboard a few hours per week has nothing to do with the raw mass we eat and otherwise consume. I’m also fed up with some folks asking me to step aside and bend over because of their personal anomalies. If you choose to marry a duck, and have that bird’s mutual consent and affection, go for it. That’s your business, you don’t need to make it mine. We are all engineered to be heterosexual. That’s how you got to be here. If you have other gratifications, it is your business, not my obligation, to embrace. So, when are we going to have a heterosexual rights parade? We’re normal!

This is in a province that should be entirely self-sufficient in all ways. We should be exporting much, much more than we import. It seems to me that a lot of folks are very detached from basic reality and have ridiculous expectations. Not fitting into this new world order, and I don’t want to fit, leaves me feeling that I am a member of a group that is indeed a “Last Nation.” And to all of you self-appointed “environmentalists” who live somewhere in a multi-level condo within the biggest clear-cut in the province, commonly called the “Lower Mainland;” quit all your consuming and go learn something about what it is you say is so precious to you. Otherwise, go to hell. How’s that for politically correct?

Wha daur muddle wi me?
Home. It may be humble but there’s no mortgage.

Considering so many other places on the planet, we are all so very well off here. We’ve no real clue about suffering, deprivation and discrimination. So, when I hear from a group wanting to start a special appeal for funding research about women’s heart health, or someone complaining about not getting a mortgage because of their ethnic tone….Jeez Louise. REALLY? If staying alive meant accepting the implant of a black male pig heart, would you turn it down? You cannot have equal rights and special rights at the same time. I’m beginning to clearly understand the discrimination that seniors endure living in a condition towards which we all progress without choice. Just remember, don’t piss us off, we don’t have much left to lose! I worked hard to get here and I will not be dismissed as a minority.

A jungle view.

I do worry about ending up in a hospital bed, plumbed with a macrame of tubes and wires, staring endlessly at a poo-brindle beige ceiling while waiting for the lights to go out and knowing I still had much more to give. I’ve been there; it’s horrible. I’d prefer to die in the saddle, trying to still do something positive and meaningful.

A beauty on the beach. Work on the base is fantastic.

I refuse to watch those ridiculous TV wilderness survival unreality shows, but I’m wondering about one for not-so-sexy geezers doing the same sort of thing. Remember the story about the old bull and the young one? Upon discovering a herd of heifers, the young bull wanted to run over and make love to one. The old bull suggested that by walking over, they’d have enough energy to make love to them all. We could call the program the “Last Nation.”

Remember when poor people lived by the sea and ate fish?
Old Chinese Cemetery on the waterfront in Victoria.
Cemetery altar. Our culture no longer honours our ancestors and elderly

In a few days, I’ll travel to Astoria, Oregon. For the first time since Covid reared its ugly head, we are meeting again in person. It is a gathering of professional mariners, especially fishermen, who write, read and sing some amazing material about their life at sea. Check out fisherpoets.org. Love to see you there, or have you listen on the various radio taps available.

Wind building against tide building. Trial Island on a blustery day.

We may have all come on different ships,

but we’re in the same boat now.”

– MARTIN LUTHER KING JR.

Pop Went The Wonton

You’re kidding! It’s a BALLOON we’re looking for!

To break the humdrum of winter, China has provided us with a little comic relief. Aviation has been my fascination and passion for all of my life. I no longer maintain my pilot license but I still hold a keen interest in all things to do with flight. When I learned that a high-altitude Chinese balloon had trespassed through Canadian airspace, I was instantly fascinated. At the time the story first broke, the aircraft was already over central Montana and being born toward North Carolina. The US Airforce shot it down there just after it had drifted out over the Atlantic and away from causing potential civilian damage on the ground. At least that’s their story.

One of the military bases the device had to have passed over was the Canadian fighterbase at Cold Lake in Alberta. It is where we train our F18 pilots and surely they would have loved a real target to practice on. Whether it was a meteorological flight, or a surveillance mission, it was a simple balloon! The media speculated that balloon was at an altitude of 60,000 feet and possibly beyond the service ceiling of Canadian and US military aircraft. It think it is a hilarious, embarrassing bungle. We spend billions annually to maintain a super hi-tech defense umbrella. It was completely comprised and had been passed by before we little people learned of the air invasion. Old Nostradamus warned us to “Beware the yellow peril.”

Clearly he knew his business. Maybe “keeping it simple” is a clever new military strategy.

My warped brain imagined the radio com yesterday between base station and the assault aircraft. “Eagle defense, eagle defense, clear to engage.”

Roger base, firing one. Oh shit, oh no, there’s writing on the target! It says, “Woo Li World Famous Wontons.” POOF!

We all saw news footage of the deflated silk envelope fluttering earthward. I imagined Putin saying to his boys, “So that’s what they’re sending to the Ukraine. They can even shoot down balloons! Imperialist devils!” And think of the thousands of miles it travelled without burning a single drop of fuel! Green Wontons Rule! Suppose they’d had one of those American hostages aboard. He was trying to win his freedom by taking photos, tying the SIM cards to pigeons and heaving them overboard. Wars have started over less. There will be a bad movie, or two, out soon.

Oh yeah, have you heard? We’ve just learned of a serious program being developed to defend our planet against asteroids. Uhuh?

One huge sky One tiny balloon

If black boxes survive air crashes, why don’t they make the whole plane out of that stuff?”
– George Carlin

Quiche

Anchor watch. Ho hum, just another day waiting for a berth in Vancouver. Too cold to paint, God knows how they pass their watches. For once there are a few minutes of sunrise.

Another dreary winter day, snowing again. It’s a left-over quiche kind-of afternoon. Every other day it’s leftovers. Cook one day, warm-up left-overs the next. Some foods, like soup and stew, often taste better after they’ve been left to ferment overnight. Blah month, blah weather, blah food, blah attitude. Seen one, seen ’em all. Where’s that bottle of hot sauce?

Between the sleepers. Toadstools grow on our abandoned railway.
“Now, THIS is an old growth tree.”
“Yeah, beats the heck out of a mulberry bush.”
This old workshop is one of my favourite buildings in Nanaimo. I like to imagine that it was a blacksmith shop. I can hear the clang of hammer on anvil and smell the coal smoke belching out of that old chimney. One of the cornerstones of photography is to take the picture when you see it. This building is being outflanked by new subdivisions. It’s a matter of time and the rain-wet added something special.

One of the good things my mother did for me was to get me cooking at a very early age, about three as I recall. I soon learned about hot stove tops when I’d stand on tip toes on the kindling box at the wood stove and stir up a batch of porridge or some other blupping concoction. I was lucky not to be seriously scalded or loose a finger splitting firewood.

Having a reasonable understanding of basic meat and potato cooking has served me well at times. I always had a place working on the tugs because of my culinary skill. Savoury, plentious meals are deemed a due of the job and woe to anyone in the galley who produces slop. You knew you’d done well when conversation around the supper table fell silent. The crew was too busy stuffing their pie holes. A skipper once offered an accolade, “you’d make a good wife if you weren’t so f―king ugly!” Terms of endearment, right?

The dog watcher. Now the salmon are gone a little dog must look tasty on a cold winter day.
Joined at the hip. I have become completely smitten with these two little rascals.

I have a lot of funny anecdotes about cooking at sea. Full-time cooks on the coastal tugs were rendered redundant. Deck hands were then required to prepare one meal a day on the day watches, lunch and supper. Apparently grub often improved over what the cooks had been producing. I took the mate’s watch, twelve to six because on the night watch I often had a few free hours to write. The crew worried who I was writing about.

Heron Beach winter afternoon. As the tide ebbs the ducks work the retreating shallows to scrounge for edible tidbits.
High fungus. Edible? Smokable? Dunno. I’m not going up there to check it out.
Under the volcano, 91 miles/147 km away. Mt. Baker from my house.
Another telephoto view taken with my mobile phone. Amazing I think.

One afternoon we had been very busy putting together our tow. I did not have the time left to put together a full effort meal so I slammed two cans of chicken soup into a pot, added some vegetables, lots of spice and a little seafood. While that was simmering up on the back of the big diesel stove I knocked together a quiche with lots of spice and a little seafood and bacon. I often referred to this meal as “Quicky” and to hell with what real men eat. The skipper expected his supper served on time, so he could eat without rushing to his watch in the wheelhouse at 18:00.

At 17:30 hours I was hauling the quiche out of the oven just as he was stepping into the galley. “Wots that shit?” he queried in great suspicion with his usual screeching voice and weary red neck perspective.

It’s uh,,,tugboat pie, skipper, something new!”

Looks like freakin’ quiche to me! Jeehesus!” Just then our new engineer was stepping into the galley. He was a sweet young fellow from Kitsalano. “QUICHE? I LOVE quiche!”

Keehrist” Exclaimed our captain. He made his way up to the helm with a bowl of soup and a plate of peanut butter sandwiches.

On another trip, with that same old red-neck captain, a new deckhand had come aboard and was clearly determine to make a good impression on his first-ever trip. He stowed his gear in the foc’sle and was putting a few cookbooks up on the galley window sill. Into the galley stepped old “Turkey Neck”, our nickname for him. “Jeesus! Cook books! Wot kinda freakin’ cook are you? Cook books?” Most novice deckhands would have been quivering at that point. This boy calmly looked the skipper in the eye with determined insubordination. “Skipper, when I come up to the wheel house I’m going to find drawers full of charts, collision regulations, tide books, sailing directions and lord knows what all else. Tell me sir, what kind of freakin’ captain are you?” Those two got on famously for the entire trip. Every ship needs a cat but this kid wasn’t it.

The spider web
Just reach in
Troll’s throw. When you turn away you may get cracked on the back of the head.
In the troll’s den
Still too wet to plow
I buried Jack here a year ago today. Feb. 2nd
How I miss my beloved friend Jack. He will be a part of me forever.

Never trust a skinny cook.” so saith the Fred