Keeping our own responsibility

 Yes, yes, it is probably a good thing when our governments protect us. 

For sure i am very gratefull to live in such safety.

But like i have said before, maybe we  have gone overboard. More regulations. Were we already have laws.

A friend of mine, who has her own business, send me just such new regulation and asked me what i think.

There is nothing wrong with the new rule. As a matter of fact in all those 30 years she has her business, the event that the regulation is about has fortunuatly never yet occured. 

And when it would, which it could, i know her well enough she would take the right action.

And you might know  me by now, i do  also think of the negative consequence of every regulation, one more tree  has to be cut down for the paper work. even when on the computer. I do not think it is one tree  even. But for sure it is added to everyone's work load, and maybe just an hour . 

To me another hour wasted.

This regulation is about harrasment in the workplace. I am trying to think.

Do we not already know that harrasment is not accebtable!?

And is it not our responsibility if we find ourselve being involved as  bystander, victim or perpetrator , we need to act upon it?

 

Lost

 Nature always provides great methaphors, for life in general, for me. Like the hiking might be hard, long whatever, but the rewards, even in that moment of exhaustion, always incredible. And so when i find myself in a rough spot in life, i just stand still for a moment and... smell the roses so to speak. An idiom like this, reminds me, that thing about nature; being a good methaphor, was/is always known.

So the other day, I was not so much lost, but had completely turned around, and ended up  south-west of the house instead of  south-east.

Right outside of my house is  an aproxx. 300 acres of forest, bordered by the neigbourhood (east), highway (south), firesmart (west) and powerline (north). So all these borders give it quite a bit of security to not ever get lost for long.

So when coming out on the firesmart corridor, we laughed heartily.  And looped back over a beautiful ridge along the highway to come out were we intended to go. We did run into Elk several times, they like that ridge above the highway.

Yesterday, i went in there with the compass again. And came upon our own tracks,  one set of Lynx tracks, and lots of Elk tracks towards the end close to the ridge.

 After 25 years, how blessed I am to still have a forest close-by to get lost in.

And how does that translate into real life?

Keeper of wild places

I am sure i have photographed these willows before, they are always very photogenic with hoar frost.

They are on the beach trail (ancient lake champagne beach).

I walked up here a few days ago, it takes me half an hour to walk to this spot, no people had been there since it snowed,  in those 25+ years i live here, not many  human neighbours do go there, it is a bit out of the way, just beyond the more travelled trails.

gently

  My father was a gambler (stock market) and my mother was a spender.  Of course they were both beautiful people with many more attributes. Also  we  as a family never experienced a lack of any material kind. Yes i hated hand me downs, but didn't we all? And somehow  now all six kids seem to be good with finances. Meaning we know our incomes and know what we can spend. Maybe that is what our parents taught us by example, to not spend more then you can afford. For sure there is also a bit of luck and  a lot of good fortune.

What i am getting at is, that  to be financially ok, a big part is you have to live within your means. yes?

please do tell if you disagree. All good.

But gently, i am trying to get my other point clear. Hoping you will be with me on that one too. Not that is an answer to all the worlds trouble, but maybe a helpful insight.

The one about the shortage of labor some of us are experiences.

 As a society if we agree that a 40 hour work week  is what we find acceptable. ( I personally would say less) but like with an income, i think we all can agree, if your income is $20.000  a  year you have to  live accordingly, if your rent is suddenly  is $2000 a month, that is not going to work. Something has to change.

Back to the 40 hours of work a week. Take a 2000 people, of which 1000 can work. 40.000 hours of work per week.   That is all the hours we have! So by saying we need more nurses, more teachers, more houses, what ever more, when collectively we just do not have the work force to fill  all those positions.

That is what i am trying to say these days.  We have to come up with different solutions when it comes to a shortage of workers.

Do you get what i am saying? I still do not know if i make it clear.

The joy of eating healthy

 it is hard! Of course there are direct and indirect joys; the taste, the preparing, etc and indirect; mother nature's joy and my health. etc 

But i still find it hard.  I do think the Internet does do a good job of pointing out what is proven to be healthy. 

What i like to follow is the  1/2 vegies/fruit, 1/4 grains, 1/4 protein rich foods. the poster we see everywhere. Also the 20/80 rule sounds good to me, like 2 cups of coffee, 8 cups of water.  I consider coffee not healthy and water healthy.

Also i eat a minimum of store bought meats, processed foods and no added sugar in general. oh and a minimum of alcoholic beverages. which all  for me would fall in the 20%. Opposed to healthy foods in the 80%

And as you know i love eating wild foods, daily. They go into the 80% even if not proven ..anything, like many mushrooms that i pick.

I have come a long way, and the joy of it is that i do not miss  sugar for example.

But this morning i tried to make breakfast according to the poster  which for me does not contain  protein rich foods, which to me is ok, because i will catch up later that day. I snack a lot on nuts.

Yesterday we cut down on the grains a lot, after i realized my breakfast often is half grains.  as the grain and protein part is easily filled, i added a big glass of orange juice. and halved the amount of oats.

hmmm ten minutes later i was eating a  slice of bread, whole wheat  and all yes, but still i need those oats, or so it seems. I saw my husband take a big chunk of cheese shortly after. So that did not work.

Is there people out there who do manage to  eat half of the food consumed per day being fruit and vegetables? Maybe you who live in southern climates and have banana trees growing wild in the yard? ( Do banana trees grow wild i wonder now, or is it a typical manmade food like corn.)

So that does make me wonder about living in the north, which  is an point often made here, that we need our wild meat.

Blessed, we did receive some from a neighbour recently. Thank you!

How many people are working for you?

 That is another thing, which would be clearly seen, if we had a tool to calculate it.

But i realize  now i do not even want such tool. It  really is a bit of common sense to imagine that with my lifestyle , a lot of people are working for me.

This idea first came to my attention reading Helena Norberg's work, many years ago.

Now i see it this way; in a perfect society we all share the load, or rather we would all love what we do, and somehow everybody is taken care of. (a self sufficient community, I know they exist)) When we think of a simple society, someone would harvest, someone would cook, built, etc. It would  maybe come out that for a community of say 80 all the work would be shared by say 40 ( kids and elders etc excluded).

I think in our currant society, that is totally out of whack, we have way more people working for us then we actually have, hence the need for foreign workers, coming from countries where they do not even have the amenities, that they will be now employed for for us.

When looking at it, i always find it horrible, worse then slavery, we do not even  care if the person who is the cashier at superstore has housing. Well i think we care, or at least  i do care, but did i ask? would i give him my couch? Housing a problem here in our very wealthy city of Whitehorse.

But the number, lets think about the number.  It is  impossible to sustain if the number of people working for me 40 hours a week extend 1 . One already to many. You know what i mean right? So the cashier works for me, let say 2 minutes, the week before 5 minutes! If we add up all those minutes... inclusive the miner, who had to mine the basic minerals and all to get a product in the store.

And of course this hooks into the land we use for our benefit, i might live on 20 acres, but my parcel is far greater then that, I have to include the ground that has to be mined for my benefit, roads, farms, factories, offices. on and on and on.

Not to make you too pessimistic, i love to hear what you do to minimize your slave driving? Everything counts. I mean it. I think all the little bits help, it is to me where we have to start. The only place we can start.

I will turn this thing off, right now, that is my start (the contradiction of it all).

wildside lake

 The new header; photo taken November17 2022. Takhini river, along the Kusawa road.

In the sunlight you see the hill Jane and I walked over, behind it is Wildside lake, see post October 21 2022

When you see my header, is the photo too big for your screen? I can maybe try to change it if it is bothersome for the viewer.