Merry Christmas
Bright sunshine. I watched the sun come up from the river bottom at 9:28, and watched the sun go down at 3:39 from the woodpile. Very fine day when you get to stop and watch both.
A Very Merry Christmas to everyone.
Snow and Cloud
There has been some snow the last five days. It is good to see. Most of my time has been spent on the end of the shovel or plowing the roads in a skid steer.
There are very few people under the age of 35 who like shovelling. Good neighbour Larry says, if there isn’t an app for it they don’t want to do it.
I’ve never minded it, like chopping wood it is good exercise.
***
The District of Invermere (DOI) is off to a bad start with the roads downtown again. We had a wet snow that they neglected to plow so the streets are now rutted. You think they would have learned from last year as they were criticized in the local media and by citizens and tourists for the same situation.
I could care less if the streets are rutted. You would think, however, with the tax money they collect, the fleet of equipment and manpower DOI have at their disposal, that keeping the downtown streets plowed wouldn’t be that hard.
PS The last time I criticized DOI. A few Councillors and the Director of Planning accused me of writing rude anonymous Facebook posts critical of DOI council.
Writing anonymously is not my style. I wrote about the incident in this post: https://palliserpass.ca/2023/06/17/mid-june-2/
***
The world is in a terrible time with two wars. It breaks my heart seeing what is going on in the Middle East. Canada and the US’s support of Israel’s profound disproportionate response to the October 7th Hamas attacks which were barbaric. And now, Palestinian women and children being killed by the thousands. It is sickening. I don’t understand how our government supports this. Are we watching a race of people being wiped out?
Late November
It was good to put the skates on, doubley great to be joined by Cooper and Kelsie even if they didn’t have their skates. Kelsie still thinks it is unsafe. Considering there is still open water not far from shore she is probably right. Still I insist that Lake Windermere has to be skated in November.
It seems, every year, the skates are further down to lace up and don’t seem to go as fast as the year before, regardless the ice still feels good.
Rob
Rob Dunn, who published The Valley Peak passed away last week. He had been battling serious health issues for several years. It still came as a shock to many of his friends and acquaintances. It seemed he had been on the doorstep quite a few times and always battled back. This time, unfortunately, it was not to be.
Rob’s paper, The Valley Peak resembled a coffee newspaper that you often find in cafes. Like a coffee news The Valley Peak contained jokes and ads, however, The Peak was much more. It was usually 8 pages printed on coloured bond paper, published weekly and widely distributed up and down the valley. But what really differentiated it from any other publication was that it contained a lot of Rob.
He promoted many worthwhile causes over the years. He set up a free food bin on one of Invermere’s streets for people in need. He espoused the benefit of gardening, fishing, cannabis use and roaming the outdoors. He often expressed his love for his hounds and the joy of being a dog owner. He and I shared a love of stargazing and that is what we often talked about, as we did when we met in the grocery store about a week before his passing.
Rob was also a self described conspiracy theorist. Since the start of Covid he dedicated part of The Peak to his thoughts on the disease, vaccinations and alternative medicine. He also tackled other subjects such as global warming, woke culture and government interference. He had plenty of followers that agreed with his stance and also many people who did not. Regardless, he always seemed to know where to draw the line as not to piss off too many people, especially advertisers that he had many of. I was always in awe of this skill. Perhaps it was because he was always good natured.
An often theme of his short column Robservations was to treat each other with respect and compassion even when we don’t feel like it or have different views. It is a good message.
It seems the Valley is losing its character and special characters. Rob certainly was a character without replacement. Lisa and I extend our condolences to his family and friends.
Happy stargazing Rob, wishing you clear skies and good fishing.
The Evolution of the Bookstore
Lisa and I made a quick trip to Calgary on Friday. We didn’t have much time to look around. I was able to get to an Indigo bookstore for about 20 minutes. Always a treat for me.
This is what I have noticed about bookstores; it seems every time I go in them they have less books and more of everything else. The magazine section is all but nonexistent now as people now read on their phones or iPads where everything resembles a quick magazine read. Books, as well, are now consumed on line and read on a digital device. I am not there yet, and probably never will be, preferring instead to turn a paper page.
The extra space in the bookstore is taken up with giftware. high end crystal stemware, placemats, picture frames, plush towels, yoga mats, serving platters, art supplies, toys that only an adult would find interesting, games and health and beauty products, Including a little gadget called, The Firefighter Vibrator. It had a ‘Smile Maker’ extra 20% OFF sign beside it and promised ‘strong and focused stimulation of the clitoris’. THIS in the bookstore where they no longer carry newspapers! I guess it is for the women who wants more than to curl up with a good book.
Damn I’m getting old.
A Few Pictures
Mid November
November can be grey, typically not a lot of snow, however it is calm. A welcome relief. It hasn’t been cold, but a thin layer of ice is forming around the shore of Lake Windermere. The lakes in the mountains are frozen over. Not enough that the ice can be trusted. Soon we will be donning skates for a trip on the inner edges. Spectacular if the snow holds off.
Lisa and I were out scouting around. We picked out a Christmas tree. It is still too early to cut. I will come back in December. The walk will be much longer and tougher as there should be at least a foot or two of snow by then. The small tree will be harder to find covered in snow. Lisa said we should have brought a bright ribbon to tie around it. Since we didn’t have a ribbon I suggested she hang her panties off of it. She didn’t like that idea.
The next day we walked around an area of bush that had burned during summer. The underbrush having burned away made walking easy. Willow and Lola ran chasing rabbits and rodents. The dogs were out of luck with so many hiding places on the scorched earth. The roots of the trees catch fire and can burn for months leaving tunnels where the roots once ran. The trees blackened, but still sturdy will start falling in the brisk winds of spring. Many people have died from burnt trees falling on them.
The burnt mountain is eery but beautiful in its own way.
Our grandkids slept over Saturday night. We had a nice dinner and watched a movie. They were up early Sunday with energy I can only dream of. A very fine weekend.
Conjunction
The moon and Venus looked great today next to each other in the morning sky. I have read the moon occulted Venus in the Southern Hemisphere. That would have been something to see. I was off to work before it got lighter which may have made for a better photo. Regardless, the clouds rolled in as dawn advanced.
Lisa popped out this morning when she saw a few Bohemian Waxwings feasting on the frozen berries. These birds will gather in large flocks and strip the trees of berries in no time, even getting drunk on the fermented fruit. It’s something to see!
It’s a little foggy!
Fog, rain, snow. It’s a little bit of everything. I was hoping to get in one more hike into the mountains with the kids from work, but it doesn’t look good. Today brought soft wet snow in the high country. If the sun decides to shine and the temperature drops we still might get a chance. A few years ago I took out a young couple from Scotland in mid November. It was a brilliant clear cold day and they got to see some sites from the top of a snow blown ridge.
***
Willow and I were out on Sunday driving the backroads. We managed to bring back a load of pine firewood. The roads were muck and very slippery, Lisa would have hated it. My father used to call those roads ‘gumbo’. I switched the beast into four-wheel drive and managed to keep it between the ditches.
***
As I get older I wonder if I will succumb to the many conspiracy theories that are so prevalent and popular these days. I say this, because so many of my older friends have bought into the many out there.
I don’t spend much time on social media so I am not being bombarded with bullshit. Older people have more time with some of these platforms such as Facebook.
It’s possible that a good conspiracy is easier to believe than the truth. Conspiracy wraps things up nicely and also puts blame or vilifies an organization or government. God knows some are not trustworthy. However, let us not forget, they are mostly incompetent thus making them trustworthy in what they can and can’t actually pull off.
It is upsetting to see people who were once able and healthy skeptics believe nonsense. I think it is human nature to want to understand events. Unfortunately, many events, illnesses, etc are random.
I will use the moon for an example of randomness. From earth we only see one side of the moon, because it takes the same amount of time to orbit the earth as it does for it to spin on its axis. That is quite a coincidence. It also appears about the same size as the sun in the sky. It almost completely blocks the sun in a solar eclipse except for a thin outline. Yet the sun is massive and much further away. What a coincidence that just the right distance and size allows for this coupling. Are we to believe such random serendipity? The mathematical possibilities of these facts are, well, astronomical.
Or would it make more sense that the moon is projected onto the roof of the sky? And we are just living in a giant dome? And? And?
Although I am making fun here, it does bother me to see people who were once so sharp not able to see when they are being fed bullshit.
I will no doubt be there one day. One thing for sure, there is no shortage of bullshit in this world and people peddling it.
Late October
Chilly at -9°c this morning. The window scrapper I bought seems to work good. A skiff of snow here and there. Nasty roads going to work last Friday. Quite a few vehicles in the ditch. The first touch of winter can be that way with people learning how to drive icy roads again.
***
British Columbia and Canada had a bad forest fire year in 2023. Locally we had several fires burning close by, however I have seen worse years. Still, it has been reported, BC had one of the worst years in history, if not the worst.
Smoke engulfed many American and Canadian cities making breathing difficult for residents. In our part of BC the smoke wasn’t too bad. I guess it depends on the winds. We have definitely had worse.
Here is a scary statistic; according to Natural Resources Canada forest fires caused triple the amount of CO2 released into the atmosphere, then from all other sources in Canada, including the burning of oil and gas. Most would have come from BC.
Wildfires are considered a natural source and are not counted towards Canada’s emissions or climate targets.
In other words; Canadians could achieve net-zero emissions by 2050 and we could still have run away global warming due to the forest burning and other natural disasters.
I also fear British Columbia Foresters could use these statistics to cut down every tree in BC. They are well on their way to doing it regardless.
***
Considering these statistics, even if we were to stop burning oil tomorrow we had better figure out how we are going to live on a warming planet. It is beyond humans control now – if it ever really was in our control.
Palliser Pass 