Remembering - a horse called Lady

Skylar has a very similar horse to the horse with which I grew up. Her horse has reddish (“blood”) spots where the Lady of my youth had grey spots. Paradoxically, Skylar's horse is called “Lady Grey” while my horse was simply “Lady”.

On our tour of the countryside last weekend, Allen and Betty (brother-in-law and sister) drove past the place where my horse, Lady, and I went down the West bank of Edwards' Creek (I had erroneously remembered it as the Vermillion River) on one cold winter's ride. The trail, never very good fifty years ago, is all filled in now. Lady's feet went through the ice and I fell into the water (not very deep). I was riding bareback as almost always and had to find a “mounting block”, a large rock or a fallen tree trunk.

Even though she was frightened and quivering, the horse stood still and let me haul myself onto her back. Her body felt reassuring and warm between my cold wet legs. Away from her body, my blue jeans and underwear froze solid quickly. My feet were ice cubes in my boots. We rode up the almost non-existent East bank of the creek and onto the road that went past Korchinski's and Duhame's. (Now the access to the Ukrainian and Countryfest Site?)

Lady started running as soon as there was open road. I recall feeling relieved that she wanted to run home because I could no longer direct her. I tried to hunker down next her back but couldn't really get much of my body next her heat. My left and rights hands traded places locking themselves in her mane.. I don't remember reaching home but Mom told the story to her friends so often that it seems as though it is my memory, too.

Apparently the horse went to the house instead of the usual habit of going straight to the barn. She stood outside the kitchen window and uncharacteristically stomped her foot. Mom saw me and rescued me from Lady's back. Someone else took the horse to the barn. She said that I was so cold that I couldn't talk (worrisome indeed!), that she had to lead me to the couch and that she had to undress me. She says that she put towels in the oven and brought me a hot water-bottle. Eventually I fell asleep and she didn't move me to my bed because she wanted to watch me from the kitchen.

Dad read the riot act about telling people where I was going when I went for a ride. He started by saying, “Whatever possessed you to go there in the first place?” He rightly concluded that it would've taken some time to locate me if the horse had galloped into the yard without a rider.

The experience cemented my love and respect for Lady! Without over-dramatizing, she saved my life that day.

Remembering......Aunt Kate

There are too many memories – they make me feel lonely.” Kate Fisher, around 1980.

I understand what she meant now because they make me lonely too. The memories that rattle around in my brain are sometimes simple and untold. Of course, everyone has memories that are theirs alone – and some people think that everyone should know their particular memories. Some people have very different memories of the same event – that is true of every significant event in our family's history, largely because while one person remembers the event as a twelve year old, someone else would've been six!

In Dauphin last weekend, my bro-in-law, my sister and I drove around the countryside immediately West of the homestead where our grandfather, our father and his sisters, our generation and a now a third generation lives.

I remembered bringing the alfalfa hay to the yard from the hayfield on the most Western part of the home half section.

I remember age 2 or 3. running around the moving but empty hayrack until our father turned and told us to sit down. One particular ordinary day of bringing in the hay, I sat high behind our father – alone, I don't recall anyone else in the “nest” that he had made for me, a pocket in the top of the hay. I could see over my father's head because he was sitting with his legs hooked over the front of the rack. Lying on my stomach rocking along on top of the hay, I watched the horses plod along; on the left was the dark brown King, with his blind right eye inwards towards Queen. She was red-brown with a red-brown-coloured mane and tail. They flicked their ears back in forth and their necks swayed back and forth in unison with one another and with their buttocks. They hardly ever turned their heads away from straight ahead. They wore “blinders” on the sides of their bridles.

The reins were loosely held in Dad's hands. There was a line of trees across the field North to South, willows and berry trees mostly to the South and a small bluff of mixed trees at the North. There was a small dry creekbed across the road where Dad slowed the horses and reminded me to sit down. After the dip, the road was hard-packed dirt when it was dry. Sometimes, if it wasn't too hot, he would ask the horses to trot and their harness would clink while the hayrack creaked.

But the trees aren't there anymore, the horses died long ago and I can't remember when Dad started pulling the hay rack with a tractor. No one else shares that memory.

Dad used horses for hauling hay long after he was doing other farm work with a tractor. He could get off the hayrack, pick up a hay-fork, put hay onto the rack and then ask the horses to move forward with a cluck and stop again with a “whoa”. A tractor needed a person!

Socialism for whom?

Re: “In a World 'sans Socialism'” - Margaret Wente's column June 21^st, 2011

The puzzling thing about the term “socialism” is its application to various actions. It is “socialism” to have medicare, but not the building of roads. It is “socialism” to have universal car insurance (as Saskatchewan does) but public support for construction of sports facilities – hockey rinks and football stadiums – is not. It is “socialism” to provide government support to low-wage earners but baling out banks or multi-national automobile manufacturers is business. “Privatization” is what happens if a government-run business becomes profitable because goodness knows, we, the people, wouldn't want to be “socialists”.

It seems to me that the term is used pejoratively and in a limited way to describe activities that prevailing corporate think tanks and private enterprise want to control.

Definition of “socialism” from my Apple computer dictionary: “a political and economic theory of social organization that advocates that the means of production, distribution, and exchange should be owned or regulated by the community as a whole”.....(it) ”necessarily implies an opposition to the untrammelled workings of the economic market”. Why did our banks and mortgages not fail when the US went broke? Because Canada's regulatory system is better than that in the US...oh dear, socialism at work!! Does anyone remember that we, the people, once owned PetroCan - but it was making money! What is so wrong about our government making money off of something other than its people?

I, for one, am tired of seeing my tax dollars supporting the already wealthy, corporations or just plain monied. Going to companies that make fictitious airplanes and helicopters to be delivered in the far distant future to do what? Paying elected representatives to "sell" Canada abroad - translate advertise Canadian manufacturing goods and Canadian resources abroad so that capitalism can continue to work - which means that we continue to believe in endless growth in a finite world! Who is crazy? And how do we, the ordinary citizens, get control of the media to break the addiction to pap and talk shows, educational systems so that our children are not told the lies of the colonial capitalist past, monetary system so that we are not paying the cost of the international gambling ring that trades up in nanoseconds, health care so that we are not sold pharmaceuticals for fear, our environment so that we can really smell the roses!

Time to look after myself and go for a bike ride!

Manufacturing Doubt

Manufacture of Doubt

There is an industry for this!! There is probably an industry for everything but in this case, a book called “Merchants of Doubt” (2010) has been published which outlines the ways in which the public relations (PR) industry has systematically sought, trained and paid scientists and politicians to cast doubt on research on such varied issues as dangers of cigarette smoking, pesticides and ozone depletion. A few years earlier, Devra Davis mentions the “maturing of the science of doubt promotion” in the forward to her book The Secret History of the War on Cancer (2007).

How does it work? A 1969 memo from a tobacco company executive states "Doubt is our product since it is the best means of competing with the 'body of fact' that exists in the minds of the general public. It is also the means of establishing a controversy".

The public relations industry creates doubt, uncertainty, and confusion. Be it tobacco, exposure to radioactivity, the dangers of DDT, acid rain or global warming – the doubt industry is having a heyday. Witness the scientists who currently eagerly walk to centre stage to stow doubt in a willing public about global warming.

After all, if global warming is a threat, then we might be required to change something. Human beings – even those who live on the edge of adventure and imagine themselves to be flexible, nimble and contrary to mainstream thought – find that change, internal and behavioural is not an easy thing. “A potent subset of the scientific community leads the world in denial” and, the world, eager to believe that it does not need to change any fundamental beliefs happily and vehemently complies.

The most pressing issues of our era are skewed by manufacturers of doubt. Global warming, radiation from nuclear power plants, and rising cancer statistics become mired in complex arguments between people who otherwise agree – because something has led them to doubt the findings of their comrades and fellow travelers.

The woman who speaks out about the dangers of radiation, Dr Rosalie Bertell – with impeccable credentials – is “an old lady and a nun at that”. The mathematician, Dr. Gordon Edwards, who has voluntarily spent decades researching nuclear power, has “a personal axe to grind”.

In 2009, I had the privilege to represent the Saskatchewan Medical Association (SMA) at the Uranium Development Partnership hearings. The SMA is a conservative organization, slow to change and most members were quite supportive of the nuclear power, Saskatchewan was openly supportive of and a recipient of enormous grants from Cameco, a uranium mining global giant. My presentation had to reflect the organization, the board of the SMA approved it so it did.

It questioned regulatory bodies, reviewed the literature with respect to radiation exposure and concluded that more studies should be conducted including a baseline health study of Saskatchewan residents who might, in future, be affected by a nuclear power plant. It said nothing about whether or not radiation was harmful and nothing about my personal beliefs.

Nevertheless, the president of the Saskatchewan branch of the Canadian Nuclear Association (CNA) phoned the SMA the following morning before 9:30 am and asked him if “Dr. Dewar had represented the organization appropriately” and if “everything that Dr. Dewar had said had been approved by the SMA”. I know this because I phoned at 9:30 am to debrief with the executive director. Later the Sk CNA person wrote a letter to the SMA casting doubt on the material that I had presented to the SMA. The SMA appropriately forwarded the letter to me and I responded immediately, closing my letter with “please provide the exact nature of the research which is questionable”. He never responded. He didn’t need to because it didn’t matter – the only thing that mattered was the doubt cast upon me and my presentation.

A more recent similar episode occurred this past winter after the Ottawa Citizen published an opinion piece written by Dr. Caldicott and myself. Our piece was fully referenced (which the Citizen published on line). The Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission in the person of Mr. Binder wrote a reply claiming that they had more than 150 peer-reviewed studies in their Port Hope Synthesis Report which proved that “there was no danger to radioactivity in Port Hope”. Who besides those of us who have read the Synthesis report know that there are only 120 references and that, of these, less than 50 are studies, none of which are “peer-reviewed”?

When the Merchants of Doubt get such publicity, how can truth prevail?

George "Must-be-Bought"

George “Must-be-bought”

On March 14, George wrote “as long as the following four conditions are met, I will no longer oppose atomic energy.

“Its total emissions – from mine to dump – are taken into account, and demonstrate that it is a genuinely low-carbon option.

“We know exactly how and where the waste is to be buried.

“We know how much this will cost and who will pay.

“There is a legal guarantee that no civil nuclear materials will be diverted for military purposes.”

None of these requirements have been met yet on March 21^st, George was unequivocably convinced that nuclear power would save the world from global warming.

The nuclear industry has huge pockets – Cameco gave a million dollars to the Federation of Saskatchewan Indian Nations (FSIN) allegedly on the sole condition that they make no statements in opposition to uranium mining. The FSIN did not need to support mining, it merely had to quit squeaking about such little things like environmental assessments, potential water pollution, and loss of traditional land use.

Total emissions – from mine to dump – are not “green” but estimates of the full cycle are much lower than coal or gasoline, closer to that of natural gas as a source of electricity. Hydroelectric, wind and solar outrank nuclear power. And conservation would cut needs and use by a whopping 25 to 40%! Even if it were a long term viable choice for the environment, it takes an estimated 10 years before one plant can go into production and we would need to be building more than 400 NOW to tackle global warming.

There are better cheaper more environmentally friendly choices.

As for George's other assertions, nothing comes close. The natty little problem of waste disposal remains, no one knows how much decommissioning or waste disposal will cost and, of course, while there is a legal guarantee that civil materials won't be diverted, there are no means of enforcing it.

There is absolutely no reason for George to have changed his tune except that he was bought. His credibility is seriously undermined.

Osama bin Laden

Osama bin Laden

We received the news of his death on May 2nd as we were preparing to leave Iraq. No matter which language of the t-v channel, news of Osama bin Laden's death was the headline. People celebrating in streets, politicians frantically positioning themselves, Obama declaring it a “great victory” for the United States – a tiresome litany.

Hmm.

Who was Osama? Was he, in fact, the leader of al-Qaeda? Did he order the destruction of the twin towers where 2500 civilians were killed? Is al-Qaeda a centralized organization or a loosely knit of collection of men who espouse a brutal Islamic fundamentalist jihad on the West?

Whoever he was, he was summarily executed by US hit-men. Do we believe in justice, the court of law and the opportunity to open a crime to “the facts”?

Ah. That is exactly what the United States, and others who manufacture and supply the world with guns and ammunition, do not want. The release of Saddam Hussein to his executors before hearing him on the witness stand, before hearing about those who supplied the means by which he betrayed his own people and about undercover agents who played roles in, and supplied weapons for, wars with Kuwait and Iran is highly suggestive of a trend to muzzling inquiry.

What could Osama have told us? Would we have learned why his family was spirited out of the US after 9/11 when almost every other plane on continental USA had been grounded? Perhaps we might have learned more about his actual role in the 9/11 incident – still believed by many academicians to have internal US involvement just as did the Gulf of Tonkin incident. A legal process would have served to demystify him, debunk his cause and undermine the brainwashing of his followers. An opportunity lost. As we were leaving Iraq, echoes of his elevation to sainthood was already occurring. We can expect the “blow-back” to be extensive.

It was an extra-judicial killing, outside due process of law, carried out unitlaterally by agents of one country (as far as we know). Sadly, the media is now hailing vengeance as an instrument of justice.

Motherhood's silent scourge, Globe and Mail, 14.4.11

While governments ignor them 2.6 million babies and 400,000 women die annually. Since “the problem exists largely where there is rampant poverty, no education and poor housing”, there is a solution.

Poverty must be reduced. In the face of the human and economical costs of these deaths – to say nothing about environmental, emotional and spiritual costs – every political party should have plans to reduce poverty. Not pie in the sky plans – evidence based plans.

Some Poverty reduction steps:

1. Tough on Crime = Getting rid of crime.

While I feel like drawing and quartering a rapist or pulling a child killer apart slowly on the “rack”, I have to good sense to realize that these methods have been tried and do not decrease the occurrence of those crimes.

What does work?

While there will be sociopaths for whom there can be no trust and psychopaths who can never be safely medicated, the vast majority of rapists and killers perform their crime spontaneously, heedlessly and often under the influence of drugs or alcohol. The vast majority have mental health problems, have been abused themselves, and come from poor backgrounds. Studies of Canadian inmates indicates that almost half should be in a treatment facility, not a jail. Recidivism is more likely to occur amongst the unemployed and uneducated prisoners.

Sweden has been experimenting with entirely different jail incarceration - prisoners are sent to a facility which is a cross between a college, a spa and an army boot camp. Result? A recidivism rate of less than 15%!

Treatment instead of incarceration doesn't mean the the prisoner is in the community. The whole point of being a prisoner means that movement and activities are restricted.

Action: Decreasing recidivism – which means decreasing crime – should be the goal of the criminal justice system. Build more rehabilitation and educational programs for criminals.

2. Education:

Early childhood development programs, adult literacy programs, grade X equivalency, and college preparation courses are either underfunded or not funded at all. Most European countries fund post-secondary education. Canada increases tuition fees.

Does education make a difference to poverty? Of course it does.

Action: Increase investment in education at all levels.

3. Housing.

Government, municipal or reserve-funded houses always have slipshod construction, paper-thick interior walls and thin-skinned exterior walls. They are always drafty. Is “always” too strong a word? As an itinerant physician in Northern communities in Saskatchewan, and across the sub-Arctic, and having friends who live in subsidized housing, “always” is what I've seen.

It would marginally increase the cost and greatly increase the energy efficiency if skilled workers and experienced building contractors constructed quality housing which, in turn, would decrease the incidence of discomfort and disease. Decreasing disease and disability decreases health care costs. Decreasing disease and disability also increases the ability to attend school and get an education.

Action: Build better houses. Create a national housing plan.

4. Tax.

While we do need an entirely different economic system because this one is failing – has done so once and is back on the same trajectory – an intelligent step could be taken right now. The passing of a bill by the Canadian government to institute a “Tobin Tax”, a tax on the cash accrued by “flipping” currency, occurred on March 24, 1999 but was never enacted. This is a form of institutional gambling for which we all pay. Since the vast majority of Canadian citizens stand to benefit from this tax, there should be no problem ratifying the bill.

Action: Enact the Tobin tax. Increase the government's coffers!

5. Military.

The Canadian military is the most costly of all government programs, delivers the least benefit to the tax-payers and spends its money badly.

Most Canadians want a cadre of well-trained young people with good equipment who can respond international and national emergencies. Most Canadians also want peace-keepers and even the hawks are uncomfortable with the current schizophrenic military mandate. We have ample evidence that violent conflict resolution does not bring peace or stability. Besides loss of life, it is environmentally unsound and wastes an inordinate amount of petroleum producing a gargantuan carbon footprint.

What would a peace-keeping military look like?

The airforce would have pilots and planes and helicopters that can search, rescue and operate under extremely inclement conditions. It should have large transport planes for troops, equipment, housing and hospitals and highly maneuvrable transport helicopters capable also of carrying large numbers of people.

The navy would also have reinforced and stable ships for personel and equipment. It would have ice-breakers and should have aircraft carriers for search and rescue and surveillance planes and helicopters. It would have research submarines.

The army should be capable of digging a major city out from a blizzard, locating people during an ice storm and searching for children and others lost in wildernesses. Its personnel would be well-equipped with skills and discipline in mediation and nonviolent action. They should be physically fit, mentally stable, mobile, and probably young.

For all the armed services, a personnel plan should be developed so that replacement officers have trained for a peace keeping militia. A wide open communications network would end secrecy and promote timely informative dialogue among personel. Any new government-provided housing would be energy efficient. Health care for personnel and their families should be paramount. They should receive appropriate exit interviews, special access to educational opportunities after a specified length of service, and continued access to counseling and family services. Did I mention pension plan?

Action: Immediately start meeting the needs of the veterans and their families. Tackle the change from attack mode to life-saving mode one item at a time through spending choices. Increase the role of such trainers as those who teach in the Department of Peace and Conflict Studies at Kingston and the many others who work in non-violent conflict action.

Will this Action Plan provide enough money for the programs that are needed to change rising poverty levels to decreasing poverty levels? By reversing the slide into poverty, the federal budget would reap the benefit of reduced crime rates, more jobs and more people to pay taxes. An ascending cycle of prosperity!

Final result: Less mothers dying in childbirth, less babies dying as newborns and a lower incidence of stillbirths. A happier world.