Saturday August 31 2013

Saturday August 31 2013

There are days—not infrequent—when I am gobsmacked at my good fortune.  This is one of them.  I was sitting here on the aft deck of Bob…

Don’t think I’ve mentioned yet that the name of my boat is “Bob.”  There are several reasons for this: 1. I love the name; its simplicity and versatility, and its palindrome-ity.  2.  It makes me smile every time I hear it because of a comedy skit on an album—yes, album—put out in the late 60’s by a group known as Firesign Theater.  It was weird stoner king of stuff, and the “Beat the Reaper” skit was one of the weirdest.  The premise was a game show where contestants were injected with some deadly poison—pretty funny so far, eh?—then had to answer a skill testing question to be given the antidote.  The first contestant—you’ve probably guessed this already—was Bob.  After the master of ceremonies has explained the rules to Bob, he is injected with the poison, and given his question:  “What, Bob” says the MC, “is your name, Bob?”  Then you hear a loud clock ticking off seconds in the background while Bob tries desperately to guess the answer.  Bob dies.

Like I said, it was stoner stuff.

Anyway…

Here was I, sitting in the shade on the aft deck of Bob, a cold apricot ale within reach, working on a story for next week’s paper.  It’s a sunny late summer afternoon on the west coast, the sea is calm and glistening, and the tourists are dispersed.  Predictable, for I am not one to take life’s graces for granted, a wave of happiness, dare I say contentment, washed over me.  What a lucky galoot am I! 

To fully appreciate my circumstances, I stopped typing, opened another ale, put my sandaled feet up on the gunwale, and allowed a smile to grow until I almost swallowed my beard.  Then I just sat here smiling and nodding to passersby until finally my face got sore.

That’s when I started writing this. 

Seems enough for today.  Oh, except I should mention Butkus.  He just showed up, and he’s smiling too.  Well, maybe not a people smile, but certainly a dog smile.  At least it looks like a smile because of the traces of dried white stuck around his jowls.  He has been, obviously, off doing good works which in his case, on a day like this, involves relieving small children and gullible adults of their ice creams.  The kids, especially the toddlers, seem to get great pleasure from sharing their cones with him—one great big sloppy lick for Butkus, one tiny taste for the toddler.  This usually goes swimmingly, with all involved having a grand time, until a parent/grandparent/uptight germaphobe sees what’s going on, and shrieks in horror.  Inevitably, this leads to the entire cone going to Butkus by default, the toddler getting a lecture about how dog’s mouths aren’t really cleaner than theirs, and Butkus trotting off to find his next friend.

Life is good.

Thursday August 29 2013

Thursday August 29 2013

Didn’t get around to talking about my day yesterday, but next Wednesday will be the same, so I’ll do it then.

Thursdays are production/printing days for The Shoreline.  There was a time when I would have to pack all the page layouts into a box and drive them to the printers a little more than three hours away.  Could have saved half that time by taking the ferry, but because I have more time than money, the choice was simple. 

Anyway, that’s all moot now thanks to the internet.  These days all that fussing and driving is replaced with a click of a mouse and a few answering a few email questions.  Despite that, Thursdays seem to fill up with last minute ad submissions and changes and my compulsion to make the paper as perfect as possible.  Fortunately, there is still a printer’s deadline so that eventually—that being around 2 o’clock on Thursdays—I have to let the latest edition go.   Used to be that I’d show up at the printers  shop after my three hour drive with a set of finished galleys in my hands and a completely rewritten front page story in my head.  This would be followed by frantic begging (on my part) and furious head shaking (on the part of the printer).  Eventually, I learned that the best strategy was to find a typewriter, in the really old days, and type out what was in my head as quickly as possible then rush to the production room hoping to make it to the typesetter before the plates were burned.

But like I said, that’s all moot now.

The rewriting, however, is still a factor.  So today, for instance, after I’d sent of the files, it occurred to me that the story I’d written about flagging lumber markets needed a tweak. 

Have to stop.  Someone’s yelling my name from the wharf.

Wednesday August 28 2013

Wednesday August 28 2013

This blog will stray from its focus on my life in Midden Harbour when something in the news beyond my little town resonates in a way that I cannot ignore.

Today that something is the response to the use of chemical weapons in Syria.  The claim that they have been used seems uncontested.  The culprit, however, has yet to be determined although current evidence points to the Assad Regime.  But it is not who used the chemicals or if they were used that caught my ear and mind, but rather the tone of condemnation, particularly from the American government, about the horrific suffering of those attacked.

Listening to Secretary of State, John Kerry, express outrage, I could not help but wonder where that emotion was in 2003.

On March 19 2003,  the United States military, augmented by George Bush’s “coalition of the willing” began the invasion of Iraq with what Defence Secretary, Donald Rumsfeld gleefully called “Shock and Awe.”  What Shock and Awe consisted of, at least in part, was the bombing of Bagdad, including residential areas.  Untold numbers of innocent children, and women and elderly and entire families were decimated by this action.  The tragic poster boy for this was Ali Ismail Abbas (pictured below), a 12 year old who lost both his arms, his parents, a brother, and 13 other members of his family when an American missile hit his home.

I wonder what Mr. Abbas, now 22, thinks when he hears Secretary Kerry’s outrage?

It was a regular Wednesday at The Shoreline, and in Midden Harbour.

Tuesday August 27 2013

Tuesday August 27 2013

Started to tell you about Midden Harbour yesterday.  Maybe too much detail on the bit I did, so maybe an overview would be better at this point.

Beecher Street is a good place to begin.  It’s the main street I mentioned yesterday, the one at the end of the alley from the marina.  Beecher street runs north to south, and the alley runs into it from the east.  The cove where the marina is lies east as well.  The Pacific is to the west and to the north.

As the spit on which the town sits broadens out to merge with the mainland, several things happen.  The run of commercial buildings that dominate Beecher stop abruptly, and there are a couple of side streets with the beginnings of Midden’s residential section.  Then the street turns east and heads inland. 

Before it starts to climb into the coastal mountains, there is one final paved road, off to the left heading North.  This is Cannery Row.  Not Steinbeck’s Cannery Row but Midden Harbour’s.  It’s a dead end that run’s part way along the inside of the cove, ending at a cluster of large, old grey buildings.  This is the sawmill, the business the employs most of the town’s workforce, and is the mainstay of the economy.  The reason the road is called Cannery and not Mill comes from the fact that that cluster of buildings, most of them anyway, were originally built to house a fish processing plant.

After this, Beecher stops being a street, stops being paved, and becomes a sandy, washboard road.  It also stops being flat and starts to climb up into the coastal mountains.  On its way it pauses for a wending mile or so and lies flat across a bench.  Here, unlike the beaches below and the cedar studded slopes above, the ground is cultivated into fields. On both sides, long narrow driveways lead to homesteads.  The first of these, running north (left) ends at a massive house.  It’s the kind of house that would be considered a mansion in any other setting.  The kind of house that would be made of cut stone in the old country.  This is the Snow home. 

I’ll tell you about the Snows later.

Beyond the bench Beecher becomes a forestry road and disappears into the mountains.

That’s it; the large picture of Midden Harbour.  Hope you’ll get to know it better over time.

Monday, August 26 2013

Great evening.  Ran with the wind up the coast for a few miles and out into the strait to a bay tucked behind a small island where we can always get some crab.   Only took a few minutes to jig for bait, cut it up and drop the trap over the side.  Nice big hamburger for Butkus, crab and a chilled bottle of pinot gris for me.   Turned on the anchor light and my headlamp and read for a while and that was it.  Simple yet satisfying.  

Little twinge about how nice it would be to share an evening like this with a lady, but…

Like I said yesterday, Mondays isn’t a work day, so free to dawdle.  For me, a quiet day never involves sleeping in; never has.  Even when I was a kid, I’d be the first one out the door on a Saturday morning.  Luckily my friend Stewart, two doors down and with St. Vitas Dance, was an early riser too. 

Anyway…

Was up at dawn and had my morning dip and the coffee made before the sun broke over the hills on the mainland.   Leisurely sail, tacking to save gas, and was back in Midden Harbour before noon. 

Decided to walk down to the office to check email.  Refuse to have it on the boat, partly because of cost, but mostly because when I’m out in places like Blubber Bay, where I was last night,  I don’t want it.  Ten minute walk from the marina to The Shoreline building,  most of it along an sagging boardwalk that was built decades ago to move fish.

Probably a good time to tell you a little bit about Midden Harbour.  If I’m going to be detailing my life on this blog it might help for you to have some context.  Maybe I’ll post a map at some point; right now that is far beyond my limited technical capacity.

The marina is on the inside of a curved peninsula; the town Is on the peninsula which is actually little more than a sandbar with a hump in the middle.  The curve protects the harbour from open water making it safer in rough weather.  It also made it easier to unload fish when the cannery, which was the town’s original business, was in operation. 

You leave the marina by walking along the cannery’s old boardwalk and that leads to a short, narrow street—more of an alley—that runs  into the side of main street.  Not called Main Street, though.  A tribute to the imagination of the founders.  It’s called Beecher Street, not after the Simon and Garfunkel song, but after the street in New York, the city where Ingram Snow, the main pioneer came from.

Have I confused you enough yet? 

That’s probably enough for today. 

August 25 2013

August 25 2013

Might go for a sail today.  Love Sundays…and Saturdays and Mondays, and Tuesday afternoons.  And most of the time, Fridays.  Love them because they’re not work times.  The rest of the week is.  Sort of.

But today’s Sunday.  

Lots of boats leaving this morning.  Annual wooden boat festival was this weekend;  dozens of meticulously restored boats with polished brass and white lines (ropes for you non-boaters) all coiled neatly.  Irony is that a lot of these are old work vessels—tugs, fishing and supply boats.  They would never have looked like these weekend versions; not even when they were new, leaving the ship yard.  What  was here this weekend were tarted up fantasies of their rich owners.  Kind of ironic that with all the money and time invested in them they probably couldn’t do the job they were designed for.  

There’s something about this process that pisses me off, something that is a reflection of what’s happened in western society over the last…Rant alert!...three decades.  The jobs of the working class, particularly the blue collar working class, have been shipped around the globe in search of ever lower wages so that the wealthy can buy the tools they’ve made idle, and use them as toys.

Bastriches!

Well, so much for a calm Sunday morning.  Fuck it, come on boy, let’s go sailing.

Woof.

August 24 2013

One of the costs of being a liar is that, over time, you forfeit the ability to be spontaneous. 

 

In the pre-dawn fog of sleep and darkness, this clear, simple thought marks the start of my  day.   That and the muffled sound of a small, muffled marine diesel being pursued by seagulls.   Lovely way to start the day.

Gentle rolling breeze means calm seas.  Silence says it isn’t raining.  Been a hotter and dryer summer than usual, but those sorts of things are all relative.  Other places are getting flooding and wildfires and massive storms.   If this is our version of global warming, I can live with it.

Aroma of coffee tells me the timer on the aged coffee machine has worked one more day.  Took me years to figure out that stumbling around in a half conscious state, trying to pour water and spoon ground coffee into tiny compartments was a poor way to start a day.

Haven’t opened my eyes yet, but I know Butkus is staring at me.  One of those “Dog things.”  Like the stories you hear about dogs who go to the end of the driveway long before their master’s car comes into view.  And how dogs often seem to know an earthquake is coming.   Butkus knows when I’m awake even if I don’t move.  

 Think of stroking his head, but two things stop me.  The first is the thought of exposing my arm to the cool morning air;  not appealing yet.  The second is my adolescent response to the word “Stroking.”   Maybe I’ll just stay here a little while longer.  This is a signal for Butkus, perhaps embarrassed, to leave the room. 

Still too early for most of the marina to have stirred.  The engines I heard a while ago were the fishers heading out.  Rest of the boats are still shrouded in hangovers that won’t begin to dissipate for hours yet.  So when I climb on deck carrying a large towel, wearing nothing but goosebumps there’s no one to be shocked. 

One foot on the gunwale and a quick plunge into the Pacific.  It’s a morning ritual, a habit established over years.  I tread water just long enough to for the initial shock to fade and to add a bit of saline to the Pacific.   

For all the years he’s been watching this, Butkus has never come to understand it.  As usual, he peers over the stern barking at me until I pull myself out of the water.  When he was a puppy, he would dive in after me, driven by his Newfie lifesaving instincts, but he was too smart to keep that up for long.  

Back below, toweled off and coffee cup warming my hands, I’m thinking about lying.  Here I sit, naked and grey, on the threshold of stepping into old age, and I can’t help but conclude that my whole life has been a lie.  The two features publically celebrated as central to my identity, my bachelorhood and job, are sad disappointments.  

On that cheery note, think I’ll put some shorts on.

August 11 2013

Sunday August 11 2013

Had thought to make this a daily post, but couldn't get motivated.  Maybe I'll ramp up over time.

Anyway...

Had started to introduce myself before was distracted by a rant about the age thing.  Have been running The Shoreline for 20 years.  Before that my working life had been eclectic and erratic, meaning that I worked in many places, none of them for longer than a year or so.  Counted them once, and was able to identify 63 different jobs over the course of my life. 

Started out delivering groceries with my friend Norman at the age of 8.  We were entrepreneurs, Norman and I,  although when we launched our business back in 1954 I doubt that word had much meaning.  Our gig was to stand in front of the local grocery store--no "super" in markets back then-- and be as cute as we could manage while asking every person going in if we could carry their groceries home.  Best customers were grandmothers.  We'd load Norman's wagon and haul the bags a few blocks before packing them up three flights of tenement stairs.  For this we'd receive a dime and a smile.  Sounds like indentured child labour, but you could buy a hamburger for a quarter at the time. 

Where was I... Jobs!

So from that inglorious beginning, I went on to become many things, ultimately, at least so far, an indentured  newspaper owner.  What that means is I own a business that produces a newspaper but little income let alone profit.  Result is I run a business that keeps me poor, and can't be sold because it doesn't make any money.  I'm trapped.

Now, having said that, it's a nice trap.  My life is easy.  I've got my boat and Butkus.  People treat me well. And I get to live in a beautiful place. 

Still, I'd give it all up for the chance to move on.  Always thought I'd figured out how to avoid being stuck in a rut when I walked away from 9 to 5 forty years ago.  Was working in advertising back east; good job, well paid and with a future.  But was having lunch with our regular group at our regular table in our regular tavern one day when one of the regulars, who had been frothing at the mouth about how shitty his morning had been, suddenly stopped.  Took a moment o realize he's stopped because of the din from other tables and because most of us hadn't really been paying all that much attention.  But eventually we were all staring at him--can't recall his name;  older guy, probably in his mid forties, seem to remember him as having dark, curly hair;  don't know why that would stick in my mind.  We were all staring at him, and no one else at the table was talking.  Then, all of a sudden, he said in a clear, quiet voice, "I sure as fuck wish I was doing something else."  More silence while everyone chewed on that statement, and then someone said, "Well it's too fucking late now, isn't it?"  And the table went back to normal. 

The table did, but I couldn't.  Couldn't get the "Well it's too fucking late now, isn't it." to stop recycling through my brain.

Got to stop now.  Butkus is pacing.  Time to go for a walk.

Monday August 5, 2013

Started off abruptly last night.  Suppose there should be some sort of prologue to all this.

Starting this blog because a young woman I mistakenly took on as a summer intern some time back says we need it.  Thought I was supposed to be the mentor, teaching her a few things about the real world of small town journalism.  Turns out she thinks I need to learn a few things too.

Anyway, introductions:  Name is Duncan.  Live in Midden Harbour, a small coastal town.   Own the local newspaper, The Shoreline, and serve as its publisher, editor, reporter, ad salesman, paper boy and trash taker-outer.  Am a senior, whatever the hell that means.  Discovered my senior-ness a while ago when a ticket taker gave me a discount.  Now it’s entrenched.  Ask for discount everywhere, and get it.   Could be offensive to some people; not me. 

Don’t get the age thing.  Last important birthday was turning 20.  No longer a teenager.  Had to be an adult.  Still an adult, or as much of an adult as needs be to get by.  Rant Alert!  Amazing to me that age gets as much attention as it does.  Who cares how many years you’ve been on the planet in your current form—dust to dust, and all that.  Either you’re well or you’re not well.  If you’re not well, doesn’t much matter what age you are.  If you’re feeling fine, same applies. 

I’m feeling fine.  Haven’t been to a doctor since I slipped off the wharf and cracked a couple of ribs 10 years ago.  All she said was “Can’t really do anything for that, Dunc.”  Haven’t been back.

Live with my companion Butkus, a 150 pound Newfie/Lab cross who never leaves my side.  Tried marriage a couple of times, but was dismal at it.  Dog’s better; former wives think the same. 

Right now, like every summer, home is my boat. Big enough for Butkus and I and the occasional guest.  Older wooden ketch that keeps me sanding and painting.  In boat years, she’s a senior, but doesn’t really matter because like me, she’s fine.  

That’s enough for today.

Sunday, Aug. 4/2013

Tired.  Long weekends are too long around here.   Love to sleep but the boats around me are wide awake.   They’ll all be gone tomorrow, and Midden Harbour will be home again.  Home again, clippity clop.  Tired.

At least no one will come knocking on the bulkhead looking for beer at 3am.  Imagine they’ve all heard by now about the guy who tried to come aboard last night.  Butkus went to greet him.  Heard the splash then the yelling then his buddies hauling back up on the dock.  Silly bugger.  Still, be a story for him to tell when he gets back to the city.

Sleep now.  Make it come by picturing a long, close hauled tack.  Precise set of the sails, whistling wind, tilt of the deck, all in balance.  Easy to let go.

Good night, boy.