HomeMy WebLinkAboutThe Citizen, 2015-01-08, Page 5THE CITIZEN, THURSDAY, JANUARY 8, 2015. PAGE 5.
Icome to sing the praises of a simple, even
brutish, habit of mine. As a pastime it is
physically exhausting, mind-numbingly
repetitive, potentially limb-threatening,
and eco-ethically tainted if not downright
impure.
It is chopping wood.
There is an ancient Chinese proverb
that says: chop your own wood and it
will warm you twice. I once repeated
that to an old Finlander I knew in
Thunder Bay. He smiled and shook his head.
“Seven times,” he said. “It heats you seven
times.”
Once, he said, when you trekked out
into the bush to find a likely tree;
twice when you chopped it down.
Three times when you trimmed the
branches and bucked it up into rounds.
Four times when you hauled it back to the
house. Five times when you unloaded it in
your yard. Six times when you split
and stacked it. Seven times when you
lugged an armful into the house, put it
in the stove and lit the fire.
“Seven times” old Charlie Pelto nodded and
winked at me. “Good deal.”
There are some simple truths you learn
while chopping wood. Soft wood splits
less cleanly than hard. Dull axes are
dangerous. Don’t try to chop through a knot.
Wear eye protection. Dry wood splits better
than green.
Except...
Where I live there is a beautiful deciduous
tree called the arbutus (madrona to
Yanks). When it’s dry it burns like a
dream – hot and bright, with almost no ash
residue. You don’t want to try and burn
it when it’s green but that’s when you
want to split it. Green arbutus is a
woodchopper’s wet dream. It flies apart
at the bite of an axe – when it’s green.
Swinging your axe at a piece of arbutus
that’s dried out is like trying to chop
a cement block crossed with a rubber traffic
pylon.
Eco-purists look askance at the practice
of burning wood for warmth – and by
extension, at the act of chopping wood to do it.
They have a point. Wood smoke undeniably
pollutes the air and falling ash besmirches the
landscape.
So sue me. I am in love with the smell of
wood smoke and I can think of few more
cheery, life-affirming sights than a curlicue of
grey smoke undulating up from a house
chimney against a backdrop of Canadian
winter sky.
I haven’t even mentioned that ultimate
woodchopper’s payoff – the rosy, drowsy-
making glow of a roaring, well-laid fire.
That’s a pleasure you’ll have difficulty
extracting from your electric baseboard
heater – or your solar panel, come to that.
A good fire is close to good sex. A fellow
by the name of Charles Dudley Warner
once said “To poke a wood fire is more
solid enjoyment than almost anything in the
world”.
Mister Warner was right – but first you have
to get the wood into the fireplace. Now if
you’ll excuse me, I’ve got a cord of green
arbutus in my front yard that’s crying for
attention. As the Inuit say: “Yesterday is ashes,
tomorrow is wood. Only today does the fire
burn brightly.”
But only after you chop the wood.
Arthur
Black
The woodchopper’s bawl Shawn
Loughlin
Shawn’s Sense
As I quickly approach my 30th birthday
(in a few month’s time), I find that I’m
having less and less patience for
wasted time.
Maybe it’s the feeling of the ticking clock of
mortality, maybe I’m just getting crabbier as I
get closer and closer to some notion of true
adulthood (from an age standpoint) or maybe
I’ve always been this way and I’m just now
finding an excuse for it, but wasted time really
frustrates me.
First off, let me explain wasted time: wasted
time is time spent doing something that should
either not need to be done or could be done
quicker.
Spending an afternoon in an easy
chair with a good book or watching a
stupid movie is not wasted time if you’re
enjoying the activity.
What I’m talking about is cleaning up a
mess that could have been prevented, fixing a
job that wasn’t done right the first time, or,
for the purposes of this column, listening
to the same arguments time and time again
with no one offering any kind of new
information.
I first started writing this column shortly
after the municipal election last year, but, in
light of the fact that new councils take some
time to get going, I decided to hold off
on it. Now, however, the training wheels
should be off, the practice gloves come
off and it’s time to deal with the reality of the
job for which they have put their names
forward.
I’ve been privy to one full term of council
for North Huron, a part-term of council for
Morris-Turnberry, a smattering of meetings for
Central Huron and two full terms of council
for Ashfield-Colborne-Wawanosh and, after
the amount of time spent reading agendas,
listening to personal agendas and witnessing
the proverbial beating of a dead horse until not
even a glue company would want it, I’m more
than comfortable in saying it’s time to get
something accomplished.
Heck, if you add it all up, since I started my
career, I’ve probably attended 14 years worth
of council meetings all together.
Whether it’s the servicing negotiations
between North Huron and its neighbours,
fire negotiations or any other cross-
border issue in this area, it’s time to stop
thinking insularly and start looking at these
issues on a larger scale.
Municipalities need to look at dealing
with these issues as part of a larger system
instead of having an us-versus-them
mentality.
Maybe that means looking at water and
sewer systems not as belonging to a certain
municipality, but finding some way to “buy”
the owning municipality out so that it can be
shared and owned by multiple municipalities.
Maybe that means putting aside all of the
previous discussions, decisions and prejudices
and starting again with only new councillors so
that the previous decisions and attitudes of
council will have no place at the negotiating
table.
Regardless of how it happens, change is
necessary.
The decisions being made are holding up
development that could enrich the lives
of ratepayers in all the municipalities and
I’m not just talking about new tax revenues.
We could all be benefitting from new
businesses, new restaurants, and new
opportunities if decisions could be made
with the entire area in mind instead of seeing
those outside of municipal borders as
opponents.
Now, don’t get me wrong, there are times
when municipalities are going to be competing
with one other.
Securing funding, applying for grants and
attracting and inspiring economic development
are definitely going to be areas where
municipalities will have to compete with each
other.
Competitiveness, outside of those forums,
has to end.
Regardless of how the in-fighting started,
regardless of how it’s continued and regardless
of who was pulling the strings and pushing the
hot-button issues and whether they are still on
council or not, it all needs to end and
councillors need to remember why they are on
council: to better their community.
The word community covers all sorts of
sinners and saints, but for the sake of
municipal council members, I think everyone
needs to understand community does not mean
a geographical area between borders.
For the sake of municipal council,
community means the area that has the people
that voted you in and all the surrounding areas
because there are very few people who will be
able to get everything from groceries to
medical care to education in the same ward or
municipality.
Sure, a North Huron councillor needs to
represent the people who pay taxes in
North Huron, but how many of those people
shop in neighbouring communities? How
many of those people are employed in a
different municipality? For that matter, how
many of those ratepayers are businesses whose
employees commute from a different
municipality?
We aren’t in an age where travel is a barrier
to employment, shopping or education
anymore so our thought process needs to
evolve alongside the technology that has made
that possible.
So I’m calling on you, councillors,
to put aside the gripes and groans of
previous meetings and look to the
future unfettered by the antiquated notions
that have held us back. Your community
doesn’t end at a county road or line in the
sand, it ends when you hit a municipality
you have no dealings with whatsoever
(or water if you’re travelling west, I
guess).
These cross-border decisions need to be
made quickly, made together and shouldn’t be
held hostage by the attitudes and grudges of
the past.
Denny
Scott
Denny’s Den
A pressure cooker
I’m sure that I’m not alone when I look at
the relationship between those of colour
and police officers in the U.S. and feel like
it’s hurdling towards getting worse before it
gets better. I even hesitate to use the word
“conclusion” because I’m not sure a situation
like this can ever truly end – it just dies down
and then is reignited.
In many ways, race relations, especially with
police officers, are like ongoing conflicts with
a spouse. Conflict A may get resolved at the
time, but when Conflict B arises, all of the ill
will and feelings from Conflict A return – a
cycle that is destined to continue forever.
The two major incidents at the heart of the
recent unrest are the shooting of Michael
Brown in Missouri and the choking death of
Eric Garner in New York, both at the hands of
police officers. After both incidents were
investigated, no charges were laid on the
officers involved.
These decisions have resulted in protests all
over North America, especially in Missouri
and New York, as well as riots and further
clashes between protestors and police. They
have also sparked two popular catch phrases,
for lack of a better term, that have
encapsulated protests. There are some who
believe Brown had his hands up at the time he
was shot, prompting protestors to adopt the
phrase “hands up, don’t shoot”, while Garner,
while being choked said “I can’t breathe”
which has been adopted as the rally call for
protestors in New York and beyond.
Then there was the execution-style murder
of New York police officers Rafael Ramos and
Wenjian Liu, who were said to have been
killed in retaliation for Garner’s murder. A
police officer in Florida was also shot. This
prompted many police officers to wonder if it
was “open season” on those in law
enforcement, especially considering the two
officers were simply sitting in their cruiser in
Brooklyn when they were both fatally shot
without warning.
Police officers have since held “protests” of
their own. First in the form of a statement from
the St. Louis Police Officers’ Association,
which said officers felt it was inappropriate
that NFL players supported the hands up,
don’t shoot gesture before a game in St. Louis,
asking that the players be disciplined. Then at
the funerals of both New York officers, some
assembled department members turned their
backs on Mayor Bill de Blasio when he spoke.
Members of both sides have denounced the
protests of the other. Police officers have said
that protestors don’t know the full extent of
both the Brown and Garner situations, while
protestors have accused police of abuse of
power and grandstanding, saying their priority
should be to protect and serve.
On one hand (and as the son of a 33-year
veteran of the Toronto Police Service), I can’t
imagine the internal struggle of a police officer
who feels his life is threatened and has to
chose whether or not to use his gun on a day-
to-day basis, but on the other, seeing video of
the Garner killing, it’s hard to understand why
the techniques used were warranted, and if so,
why in such a lethal manner.
The unfortunate aspect of this struggle is
that there are very few ways it can get better.
The more vocal one side gets, the more vocal
the other side will be in order to defend itself.
And as more people get killed, whether they be
on one side of the debate or the other, tensions
will creep ever higher, putting both sides on
high alert, creating a pressure cooker
environment where paranoia will reign and
bad decisions could be made as a result.
Other Views
A time to be looking forward
Be always at war with your vices, at
peace with your neighbours, and let each
new year find you a better man.
– Benjamin Franklin
Final Thought