The Big Pharma Model of Health Care

Food is the foundation of health, therefore talking about health care issues is really not off-topic for this blog.  I was just listening to CBC’s “White Coat Black Art” program in which they were discussing ways of streamlining private practices in order to reduce wait time and increase the number of patients a doctor can see in a day.  Of course this all boils down to money – expenses are going up, and since the government limits what a doctor can charge per patient visit, the only way a doctor can increase his or her income is to increase the number of patients seen per hour.

The first doctor interviewed hired a registered nurse to assist in his practice, allowing him to increase the number of patients he sees from 5 to 8 an hour.  Eight people an hour!  That’s an average of 7.5 minutes per patient.  The second half of the discussion was about a new concept of “group appointments” where a doctor brings in 12-17 patients into a room, briefs them about the necessity for confidentiality, and then goes around the room – one by one – and has the patients discuss their health problems.  While the doctor listens, other staff members pull records and take notes.

What a disaster our health care system has become. I feel badly for doctors who are reduced to such assembly line approaches to their practices in order to pay the bills and meet the demands of a population with too few medical practitioners.  Quite a few of my friends and family work in healthcare and every single one of them is highly dedicated to the idea of helping people.  I can only imagine their frustration at having only 7.5 minutes per person in which to do so.

The only way such a system can even appear to be working is through the pharmaceutical model.  Through the idea that there is one pill for each symptom.  Doctors and nurses learn which pill goes for what ailment, and presto, prescription written and off the patient goes to the pharmacy.  We treat symptoms as evil and take drugs to suppress them, believing that to bring about “cure.”  Unfortunately, nothing could be farther from the truth.

It may not come as a surprise that I subscribe to a holistic approach to medicine.  More specifically, I believe in a homeopathic understanding of disease.  The latter argues that symptoms are not disease, but in fact the body’s way of trying to expel disease.  For example, coughing is the body’s way of expelling the bodies of dead cells produced in the battle against a cold or flu virus.  Conventional medical practice is just starting to realize how dangerous taking cough suppressants is, as it stops the body from ridding itself of all this toxic waste.  Suppressing the cough does not cure the patient of a cold; rather, it tends to prolong it.  The same is true for all these cold and flu suppressing drugs we all now pop like candy in order to avoid missing work.  And then, when it takes us 6 weeks to shake off a flu, we blame it on more virulent flu viruses.  Nobody stops to question if trapping the disease within the body through the suppression of symptoms may in fact be the cause of the problem.  I would argue that in many or most cases, it is.

Surgery is another means of suppressing symptoms.  Now in some cases, such as emergency trauma, surgery may indeed be necessary. But most of the time surgery is used to remove a symptom, effectively closing a vent on the immune system, trapping the problem inside.  From a homeopathic perspective, surgery can in fact make cure impossible if the body cannot find a new vent, as is explained in this article.  Yesterday my mother had her gall bladder removed.  She has been having gall bladder attacks, or what appears to be gall bladder attacks, every few months for the last couple of years.  Diagnostics confirmed stones, although  her doctor said they likely were formed when she was pregnant with me.  So why are these stones suddenly causing problems?  That question was never asked.  One possibility is that she has been very healthy of late, and perhaps her body is now strong enough to expel them.  Or maybe there’s something else going on.  We’ll never know as she no longer has this organ.  Whatever the body was trying to do, it can now never finish.  And what it will do instead, only time will tell.

Even a cancerous tumour is the effect of the body trying to fight an imbalance in the vital force.  Of course by the time it produces a cancer tumour, the battle has been raging for so long that often surgery (or chemo) is the only remaining option.  Especially from a conventional perspective.  By that point the body may be too weak and run down to fight, even with homeopathic help.  But it got to this point not because of some magical apparition of the disease in a perfectly healthy person, but rather as the result of a long onslaught against the immune system, likely helped along through suppressing drugs prescribed in those 7.5 minutes through a medical system that sees each symptom as separate from the body and not allowing enough time to look at the whole and see what may in fact be going on.

Let me give an example.  When my old dog Jake was around 5 years old, he suddenly developed horrible skin allergies.  The doctors said it was a flea allergy.  We gave him steroid shots to stop the itch.  It would flare up again about six months later (despite it no longer being “flea season”), and we’d repeat the treatment.  Steroids act to suppress the immune system, to stop it’s response in it’s tracks and shut it down.  It worked like a charm to stop the itching.  Eventually Jake stopped having these outbreaks.  I figured the fleas must have gone away somehow.

By the time Jake was 8, he started having problems with his hind end.  He also developed a horrible sinus infection and would sneeze blood.  Whenever the infection would flare up, so would the pain in his hind end.  Vets said there was no relation between the two, but I started to think otherwise.  We gave him antibiotics for the infection, and that would clear both problems up for a few weeks or months.  Then they would come back.  Several rounds of this and eventually the problems went away.  I was relieved but starting to worry about what would happen next.

Sure enough, not long after Jake came down with sarcoptic mange.  Interestingly, so did my father’s dog.  The two dogs had been living together for a bit and we figured one must have gotten into a coyote den or something while out hiking, picked it up and given it to the other.  More drugs fixed the problem.  The mange went away, but within a couple of weeks, Jake developed horrible abscesses on his chest and abdomen.  His skin was breaking down.  It was horrible!  More drugs were prescribed.  By that point Jake was on antibiotics more often than he was off them.  The skin problems kept coming back and both vets and I were baffled.  At the same time, he became weaker and weaker in his hind end, and was on non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs taken on a daily basis.  By this point he was nearly 12, and the vets concluded that it was a normal progression of old age.  So was the acute  vestibular disorder he developed a few months later.

Not wanting to lose my best friend, I started doing research.  A lot of research.  I also found an acupuncturist who gave him treatments for his hind end.  Two sessions and he was off the pain killers, permanently.  It was amazing!  She also had me stop giving him the antibiotics, and instead gave me a pro-biotic cream to put on the sores.  She said the antibiotics were actually causing the skin problems.  I applied the cream and the sores cleared up within a few days.  After two years of being on antibiotics almost constantly for this skin disorder, I stopped all treatment.  I never gave him another pill, and the sores never came back.

At this point I had also discovered the horrors of commercial pet food.  If you are interested in learning more, the book “Food Pets Die For” is a very good place to start.  This opened my eyes to the importance of nutrition in general, and started me on the path I am still on with respect to food (and health in general).  I started Jake on a homemade diet.

Unfortunately at this point there was too much damage done.  Jake’s kidneys were about 75 percent gone and there is essentially no recovering from that.  Through feeding him a more appropriate diet, keeping him off the drugs and working with a holistic practitioner, Jake lived for a full year longer than anyone ever expected.  He still died several years short of the time I had hoped we’d have together.

So where am I going with all this?  At the time I felt baffled, wondering how this dog could fall apart despite all the care I was giving him.  But now that I look at things from a homeopathic perspective, the path from health to death is clear.  Just before Jake developed his “flea allergy” (I never did find a flea), he had eaten some rat poison.  I caught it right away, gave him some hydrogen peroxide to have him vomit it up.  To make sure we didn’t miss any, the vets had me give him vitamin K shots every day for two weeks, to keep his blood coagulating.  This threw his system out of whack, which tried to expel the toxins out his skin, causing him to be itchy.  Instead of finding a way to support this, or to help his body do this expelling, we shut down his immune system with steroids.  Every time it tried to get back up and going, we’d shut it down again.  Eventually it stopped trying.

However, the disease or imbalance was still in his system and had to come out elsewhere.  I was also giving him yearly vaccines (a horribly damaging and completely unnecessary practice), and anti-flea and tick toxins.  These served to knock his system further out of whack.  Every time his body mounted some kind of response, we stopped it in its tracks with drugs.  Eventually the disease was pushed deep enough to damage his kidneys, and he died.  I killed him through trying to make him better.  Of note, my father’s dog died a few months after being “cured” of mange.  He had developed lung cancer.

A holistic and homeopathic approach to health would have figured out what was going on and supported his immune system rather than constantly tried to fight and suppress it.  Drugs and surgery have this effect, but are the only tools of a medical system that is so overwhelmed and has so little time for each patient.  When I’ve met with a holistic practitioner (be it a naturopath or a homeopath) my initial consult has been 2 hours long. TWO HOURS!  Not 7.5 minutes, or even the 20 minutes conventional medicine allots to annual physical exams.  Two whole hours to discuss your health history, usually along with a detailed 10-20 page form you filled out prior to coming in.  Follow up appointments are usually a solid 45 minutes or longer.

It is only through taking this much time that a healer can really learn about you, can start to see the whole picture, notice trends and patterns, and become aware of links and connections.  For example, when getting more serious, disease moves from the outside inward, and from the bottom up.  Most disease starts with skin problems, as the body is able to keep the imbalance on the surface.  We typically suppress with creams and ointments, and eventually the skin problem goes away (as with Jake) but then something more serious emerges, at a deeper level.  Perhaps you then get bladder infections.  More suppression and something else comes up, likely higher up in the body, and also deeper.

Cure operates in the reverse order. To know if a procedure is curative, you need to watch the direction of symptoms.  When my Ross dog developed a bull’s eye rash and skin abscess in the middle of his back after being bitten by a tick, instead of giving him antibiotics for lyme’s dieases, we treated him with homoeopathy.  The lesion healed, and then appeared again at the base of his tail. That healed, and a smaller lesion popped up at the end of his tail.  The disease was moving down and out his body.  When the last sore healed, he was better.  That was nearly two years ago and he has never shown any signs of Lyme’s disease or any other problems either.

Taking his case, however, took the homeopathic vet more than 7.5 minutes.  It took her several hours in fact.  The result is a healthy dog who has been truly cured, but not a modality of medicine that can make money for corporations.  Homeopathic remedies are only effective when applied appropriately, and there is no “one symptoms – one drug” rule.   Their selection requires the careful study of the patient and a fair bit of research for every individual and ailment.  With holistic practices, the knowledge lies within the practitioner, not in the patented drug.  Homeopathic remedies work wonders, but have no value without a skilled practitioner.  This is why it is demonized by Big Pharma.  They can’t make money off it.  To make money, they need to sell drugs that they have patented, that they own the rights to.  And they need to sell a lot of them.  Their ideal patient is one with a chronic disease who will need daily pills for life.  This is exactly the type of patient you get when medical practitioners only have 7.5 minutes to evaluate.  They don’t have time to really work up a patient’s case, but since drugs are now so effective in suppressing symptoms, they can at least accomplish making the patient feel better in that brief window.  This practice has become so pervasive, that it is now the norm.

Until we are willing to support a system (and that means paying more, either directly or through taxes) which allows medical practitioners to spend more time with each patient – much more time – we are going to stay trapped in the pharmaceutical model of medicine.  And as long as this is the case, we will continue to be a sickly population, riddled by chronic health problems we can neither explain, nor cure.

Pumpkins Galore!

While eating my lunch on Thursday, a friend pointed out that everything I was eating was orange.  I glanced at the array of jars before me (I use mason jars instead of tupperware) and to my surprise, she was right!  I had sweet potato – leek soup, pumpkin custard and pumpkin butter on bread.  But this shouldn’t be surprising of a locavore’s fare.  Just look at this photo I took while out hiking the dogs last weekend – everything in nature right now is a golden orange colour, so it makes sense that food harvested this time of year should be too.

In the past I have struggled with what to do with pumpkin, but this year I can’t seem to get enough of it.  I have already roasted and puréed nearly half a dozen pumpkins and cooked up all of it.  Pumpkin in soup, pumpkin muffins, pumpkin custard, and my latest discovery, pumpkin butter!

Pumpkin butter is a wonderful, sweet spread that provides a delightful change of pace from jam (although I still can’t get enough of the pear-ginger jam I made a few weeks ago!).  This spread has the texture of apple butter, but with a tangy, lemon flavour.  It’s almost like lemon curd.  I can’t really describe the taste, but it sure is yummy.  It’s also a beautiful, bright orange colour and I think will make lovely, novel gifts.  I am going to make a second half-batch to give away, just as soon as I find a few more pumpkins to roast.

Roasting a pumpkin is easy.  I buy pie pumpkins, cut them horizontally in half and scoop out the seeds (which you can clean and roast on a cookie sheet with a little sea salt – yum!).  I then place each half face down in a pyrex dish with about half an inch of water in the bottom.  Place in the oven at around 350-400 until well cooked – a fork should enter easily.  Remove and cool, then scoop out the flesh and process it in a Cuisinart or blender until smooth. One pie pumpkin makes about 4 cups of pumpkin purée, so you will need at least two, possibly three, to make this recipe in full.  Or you can cut the recipe in half:

Pumpkin Butter

- 10 cups cooked pumpkin blended
- Zest and juice of 4 lemons
- Half pound of butter
- 8 cups of sugar (I used 4 cups sugar, 2 cups honey – I would have used all honey, probably 4-5 cups, but we ran out)

Simmer together for about 20 minutes, or until thick.  Do not boil! put into small jars (250ml) and process in boiling water bath for 15 minutes.  Makes about 16 jars.

The Personal IS Political

“Eating is the most political act we do on a daily basis.”  These words, uttered by raw milk farmer and activist Michael Schmidt at a talk I attended in May, 2007, changed my life.  These words came back to me this morning when I read a friend’s post on facebook asserting that “the decision to vaccinate is personal.”  While few give a moment’s thought to the implications, decisions such as whether or not to get a flu shot jab, or – even more mundane – what to eat for breakfast, are incredibly political.  In brief, they state loud and clear whether we’re buying into the system, or not.

I don’t think I’ve ever understood the originally ‘feminist’ assertion that “the personal is political” as clearly as I do now, this morning.  To get an H1N1 flu shot is doing a lot more than taking a precaution against getting the flu.  It is saying to the government – and to the pharmaceutical companies that produced it: “I trust you, and I think you are doing the right thing.”  The same is true with grocery shopping, and with nearly everything else we do for that matter.  The decisions we make support those who have provided the options.  It’s the idea of “voting with your wallet” to the extreme. You vote with every choice that has any interface with the world around you.  And are there any choices that don’t have external impact?  Even going to the bathroom – using bleached toilet paper and publicly sanitized water to flush it all away – is political.  You are following social norms and supporting them.  You are saying “it’s ok to put  my waste in public water; I’m fine with that.”  And speaking of water, drinking it is tremendously political, although many are becoming consciously aware of this today.

To say other than “I trust you, and I think you are doing the right thing” is not easy.  Our system is so hegemonic, so all encompassing, that we rarely even consider that what we are doing on a mundane basis through our small, everyday practices, has any impact beyond ourselves.  But we each are doing our part to uphold the system in which we live.  Even by eating, drinking and defecating.

I had never considered any of the above before hearing Michael Schmidt talk about his struggles to sell raw milk, over two and a half years ago.  Or should I say, only two and a half years ago.  For the previous nearly four decades, I was completely oblivious to the part I played in perpetuating the system in which I live, even when I felt things needed to change.  I am extremely grateful for this new awareness, although it makes my life difficult.  I am acutely aware of the implications of many of my daily actions and decisions and often struggle with what to do.

Despite my awareness, I still do my part to carry on capitalism and the destruction of our environment.  While I buy recycled toilet paper, I still use the flush toilet system.  I drive.  A lot.  And buy gas (far too frequently).  Heck, I work.  If that isn’t participating in the mainstream system, nothing is!  And not only do I work, I teach.  The ultimate act of perpetuation.  The education system is the belly of the beast when it comes to perpetuating the norms and practices of our way of life (especially capitalism).  Why do you think the first thing colonizers do is set up schools in developing countries?  To training young minds to fit in, to think things are great, to learn how to participate in capitalism.   I do my best to wake my students up and at least be aware of how they are doing this.  But very little of it sinks in.  I can tell by the blank stares and hostile vibes I receive as their worldviews are probed and questioned.  They like their state of complicity.  It’s comfortable, and easy.

I do think there is a growing awareness in the population that things need to change, and that includes our habits and practices.  However, the capitalist system is quick to co-opt such movements.  Not happy with chemical cleaners?  Well, here’s a new array of biodegradable detergents!  Don’t like pesticide covered apples?  Here are six varieties of organic ones!  Worried about eating chocolate produced by child slave labour?  Just buy products with this fair trade label and you can eat away to your heart’s content, feeling warm and happy about the safe children in Africa.

But do these choices really change anything?  Perhaps.  I don’t know.  They do let the system know that we’re not happy, but they don’t require any change of habits on our part.  We still carry on shopping and otherwise supporting the status quo. New companies pop up, old companies change ingredients, and to a certain degree, some of their practices.  So now food may be grown with fewer pesticides, but that entails more manual labour.  Are these labourers paid a decent salary?  Are they given good benefits and work conditions?  Or are they migrant works coming up from the south, living in trailer parks, paid a pittance and deprived of healthcare and time off?  Is this better than pesticides?  Can we justify these changes by claiming these people now have jobs of some sort at least?  Is this what I want to support when I buy that organic apple imported from California?

It is all but impossible to live outside the system, here in Canada at least.  Those trying to do otherwise end up on the streets, and then often in institutions.  I suppose one could go up to Crown Land and try and make a go of being a hermit, but life would be solitary, nasty, brutish and probably short.  The long and short of it is that we really must participate in society, in this capitalist power structure that dictates so much of what we can do.  But this doesn’t mean we must be complacent.  Indeed, this situation demands that we become hyper aware of our impact, of how political our personal choices really are, of what message we are sending when we flush that toilet or drive that car.

Where I do have a choice, I choose carefully and do my best to send a message I believe in.  It cost me a fortune to figure this all out (some are very lucky and instinctively get it without spending a dozen years in university), and now I have pay it back. This means I have to work, which in turn means I have to own nice clothing and a car.  Can I walk away from it all?  Not without severe repercussions that extend beyond me, as I have co-signers on some of my student loans.  I am trapped – have trapped myself – in my current situation.  That’s ok.  I’m relatively happy and enjoy this work (even if I am damning future generations to the same fate) and I admit that I love my little car, flush toilet and house in the country.  To drive less I’ll need more property, so that I can raise sheep and train and exercise my dogs at home.  That will require more work, more money, more purchases.  There’s really no getting away from it.

So what is my point, you ask?  My point is that it is still important to be aware of the consequences of our actions.  I don’t think the system we have is terrible; there are many good things about it.  But there are also many things that need to be changed.  How we eat is one; how we run our healthcare is another.  Don’t even get me started on the education system.  These are all aspects of our social practices that I can impact through my choices.  While it requires a lot of effort on my part, I can choose to eat outside the international agro-industrial complex, and through long hours of study and a lot of searching, I have found healthcare practices that truly heal, and that are not run by Big Pharma.  As for education, I do my part by bringing all of the above to the attention of my students, even if they don’t like it.  Some do, and that makes it all worth while.

It’s All in the Planning

To continue on yesterday’s theme, a subcategory of the locavore’s biggest struggle is the need to plan ahead.  I have never been much of a planner (as my very erratic and eclectic life clearly reveals), and that has had to change over the last couple of years.  For if I don’t plan ahead, I often can’t eat. There is no quick food in this house.  Nothing instant, nothing pre-packaged.  Here are a few pictures of our fridge, pantries and freezer.  Note the lack of corporate packaging and logos.  Pretty much everything has been processed in this house (and I think all the produce was grown by my roommate).  This represents an awful lot of planning, time and work!

 

 

 

 

This has required not only a lot of time, but also planning.  I need to actually schedule time in for canning and cooking.  Even on a daily basis, I have to make sure I leave enough time before I get really tired at the end of the day to decide what I’ll be eating the next day.  What needs to be taken out of the freezer?  What needs to be soaked?  Does the sourdough starter need to be fed?  The sauerkraut burped?  The milk turned into yogurt as it’s threatening to soon turn sour?  (by the way, the large pail in the fridge is milk, which we got last night and will be put into smaller jars at some point today to keep it fresher and minimize fridge space).  The fastest food I have is toast, which is only fast if I’ve gotten around to making bread!  I need to keep a constant watch on my supplies and always be thinking ahead.

There’s a wonderful book I’ve been reading (well, I read half quit a while ago and have not quite gotten around to finishing it, but I hope to!) called Kitchen Literacy: How we lost knowledge around food and why we need to get it back.  In it, an 19th century American woman’s life is described, based on the careful notes found in one New England woman’s diary.  In it, she plans her food a year in advance at times!  While I don’t have to go to nearly that extreme for many things, certainly I must take advantage of what is available when, or – like the pears I never got around to canning this fall – I have to do without for a year.  Of course, unlike the woman in the story, for me this is by choice. I could certainly go to the grocery store and pick up anything that I missed putting by during the harvest, but generally I chose not to. In most cases, I’d prefer to go without than to buy something industrially produced.  And I’d rather stay organized than do without.  So I plan and work at improving my self-discipline.

Doing so has actually been a really fantastic experience for me.  I have always enjoyed living more on the Bohemian end of the spectrum, but planning ahead and staying organized is dramatically reducing my general levels of stress and anxiety, and increasing my productivity in all areas of my life.  Who knew?!  I’m sure this is not surprising to many, but it certainly is a pleasant discovery for me. I find that being organized around food requires being organized in other areas of my life.  What a great side effect!  One more reason to stick with it.

 

A Locavore’s Biggest Challenge

Two and a half years into this project, I am still finding major challenges to eating locally.  When I first started out, I encountered four major barriers to eating outside the agro-industrial food chain: 1) finding local and sustainably produced foods; 2) being able to afford these items; 3) learning the skills of canning, preserving, and cooking from scratch; and 4) time.

Sourcing food is essentially no longer a problem.  I can find really great, sustainably produced food that covers all my basic needs: meat, dairy, eggs, veggies and fruit galore.  I really don’t find anything lacking other than spices, tea, coffee, olive oil and lemons.  Ok, and from time to time, rice, coconut and most recently, bananas.  But I use these items rarely and have been able to find all as fair-trade, organic products (except for the coconut which is just organic) for these occasional indulgences.  All in all, finding food outside the corporate food system is pretty much a routine now, instead of a challenge.

The actual cost of eating local, sustainably produce food is no longer a challenge either.  Now that I have found good sources for all my staples, mostly buying directly from farmers, cost is probably about the same as buying at a grocery store, or perhaps even less.  I pay only $1.50 L for organic milk, and $2.00 a dozen for free-range organic eggs (where I can see the chickens running around in the grass).  I don’t eat a lot of meat myself, so that is not much of an issue.  Feeding the dogs is more expensive – probably my biggest expense.  Nearly all of the meat I buy for them is at locally produced, and if not organic, at least pastured at small farms until grained before slaughter.  My goal is to switch to grass-finished meat for 100% of their food, but that will have to wait until I am working full-time, or am able to produce it myself!  So there are still some compromises and always room for improvement.

So neither cost, nor procurement are a big challenge anymore.  As I have written even very recently, acquiring the necessary skills to prepare all my food from scratch and without industrial ingredient (such as making bread from wild yeast instead of store bought yeast) continues to be a challenge.  But I have figured out most of the basics.  I can now make my own bread and yogurt, I can staples like tomato sauce, jams and relishes, and blanch and freeze various veggies to use in winter.  There is still much to learn (like more about lacto-fermentation and dehydrating techniques) but I now know enough to comfortably get by and eat well.

The only really consistent challenge I encounter these days is the last one: Time.  There simply never is enough time.  Here it is, 4:20 pm, and I have yet to do anything academic for the day.  I just finished making enough bread for the next month (I ate my last slice yesterday) and baked some pumpkin custard for the week.  Over the weekend, I roasted pumpkins and squash to get them into the freezer, blanched and froze brussel sprouts and leeks, made a big beef stew and so on.  I also spent time driving around the countryside picking up said veggies, eggs and so on.  Finally, there’s a lot of cleaning involved since nothing comes in packages.  Everything I make is stored in glass jars and containers, and each one requires washing and tending to.  Veggie scraps go into the compost which must then be layered from the yard waste pile, 25 feet away (due to short-sighted logistical planning).  I still waste a lot, but  I’m doing my best to reduce this.  Reducing waste means more effort, and more time.

Every now and then I wonder why I keep going.  Why not just go back to grabbing pre-made, processed foods that I can pop into the microwave (which would entail buying a microwave since I gave mine away a long time ago)?  I almost wish I could.  But I can’t.  I simply know too much now, and can’t even bear the thought of eating most of what is found in the grocery store.  I look at the ingredients and see all the GMO corn, soy, and wheat (at least one of which is found in 70% of all processed food in North America), or I look at the meat and picture high density feed lots and horrific chicken houses full of debeaked, featherless birds.

Have you read Margaret Atwood’s Oryx & Crake?  A wonderful tale of where we might be headed with all this.  Once upon a time we created visions of the future that were peaceful and inspiring, depicting the wonders we are capable of (think Star Trek).  Now our futuristic visions consist of Attwood’s chickie-nobs (a genetically engineered chicken-like creature that produces only legs and breasts, with a hole in the middle in which you pour food) or the obese floating screen zombies of Wall-E.  This change has happened only very recently, as we become aware of the destruction we are bringing down upon ourselves.  Hopefully can stop the madness, and I am trying to do my small part in this through my choices around food.  So when I start to waiver, wondering how on earth I am going to make it through the semester with my crazy schedule, and finish this dissertation while eating bread that takes three days to make, I think of chickie-nobs and realize I have no choice.  And so, I carry on.  Speaking of which, I need to feed the compost and then get down to work.

H1N1 Vaccine Madness – History Repeats Itself

Edited to add: Please be aware that, for liability reasons, healthcare professionals who disagree with this vaccine program are being forbidden by the institutions they work for from voicing their concern.  Specifically, if someone takes their advice and does not get vaccinated, and then becomes ill, they could sue the healthcare practitioner or the institution they work for.  As one side of this story is being silenced, we are not getting a balanced view.  I assume the same is true of the mainstream media.

For additional information on vaccine concerns, here are a couple of links.  The first is an article written by a friend of mine how has a PhD in physiology.  It discusses how vaccines work, and how this vaccine can serve to in fact reduce your immunity to future viruses:

http://issues4science.wordpress.com/2009/11/07/the-biology-of-influenza-and-vaccination/

And here is an indepth documentary on vaccines in general:

http://informationliberation.com/?id=13924 (Vaccines: the hidden truth)

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Today Canada rolls out it’s largest vaccine campaign in history.  I, for one, will not be lining up.  I am not a fan of vaccines in the first place, and I think this campaign is absolute madness.  Why?  There are many reasons: 1) Over time, they weaken our immune system; 2) they can cause adverse effects ranging from low-level chronic health problems to death; 3) serious adverse reactions occur in at least 1:10,000 people or even more frequently; 4) they can make sick people much sicker; and 5) they contain highly toxic substances such as mercury and formaldehyde.

To begin, our immune systems are our best lines of defence against illness.  For this reason, keeping our immune systems healthy and strong is what we need to be focusing on.  The best way to accomplish this is through plenty of good, fresh food (i.e. organic and non-processed), low stress and plenty of rest.  It is sad that in a country as rich as this, only a very small percentage of the population actually has access to all three of the above.  Most of us lead crazy busy lives where we have to eat on the run, consuming fast food as a result.  We don’t get enough sleep, we’re constantly stressed, and we eat horribly.  And then we get sick.

We see getting sick as a nuisance; it keeps us from being able to keep up with our busy lives.  We refuse to see it as what it really is: our bodies telling us to slow down.  Instead, we turn to drugs to mask the symptoms and push onward.  We end up run down and more susceptible, get sick again, more drugs, and the cycle continues.  It used to be that the average person’s health would start to break down by the age of retirement, or in their 60s.  Today, by the time  most people are in their mid- to late 30s now, they have chronic health problems: irritable bowel syndrome, chronic fatigue, sleep apnea, fibromyalgia (chronic pain and stiffness), anxiety, obesity and the list goes on.

Vaccines add one more layer to the above.  They are being sold to us as a way of avoiding missing a week of work.  Instead, we are to put more chemicals into our bodies.  Don’t worry, they assure us, it’s perfectly safe.  But I have done enough research (over many years, not just since the Swine Flu has been an issue) to be quite convinced of the opposite.  Adverse vaccine reactions occur at a much, much higher rate than the official “1 in a million” chance they advocates of this campaign keep touting.  The discrepancy comes from how they define ‘vaccine reaction.’  Most vaccine reactions are dismissed as not being related to vaccinations.

Before discussing this issue further, let me explain how vaccines work.  The idea is that a small amount of a virus, killed, or modified in such a manner as to ‘inactivate’ it (although sometimes this can spontaneously reverse and it is possible to actually contract the disease from the vaccine) is injected into the body so that the immune system can experience it and develop antibodies and memory cells for this virus.  Then, should we encounter the virus in nature, we are prepare to fight it. The theory sounds good, and some even argue that it follows homeopathic principles. Let me clear that one up – it doesn’t!  Not even close.  But that is another discussion…

Studies have found that when a dead virus is injected into the body, the immune system doesn’t typically respond.  I’m not sure why this is. Perhaps the immune system recognizes that it is not a threat, or perhaps it doesn’t know it’s even there because the main systems of defence (the mucous membranes in the mouth, nose, eyes etc., through which a virus would typically enter the body in a natural situation) were bypassed.  They serve as a sort of alarm system, letting the body know that a virus is trying to get in.  When they are bypassed through injection, the alarm system doesn’t get triggered.

To resolve this problem, an adjuvant is included in the vaccine.  Adjuvants are designed to stimulate the immune system, to pull that alarm so to speak.  The effect is like putting a screw driver in an electric socket.  The body goes from snoozing to a four alarm fire with no warning.  The immune system comes screaming in, ready to attack anything and everything foreign it finds.

This is one of the ways vaccinations can go wrong.  While the intention is that the immune system will attack the injected modified virus cells, there is potential for it to attack other things too.  Many of these viruses are cultivated in tissues of other animals.  While these tissues are of a foreign species, the cell components are the same in all creatures, humans included.  So if, for example, the virus is cultivated in monkey nerve tissue and a very tiny amount of myelin (the fatty protective substance that insulates our nerves so that they can conduct signals properly) ends up in the vaccine, the immune system might find and attack that too.  It may then develop antibodies to myelin, and start attacking the myelin present in our own bodies.  The result is a demyelination of the central nervous system which can lead to paralysis.  In India, as many as one in 300 people who receive rabies vaccines after being bitten by an animal end up with this reaction.

You can find many scientific journal articles about this here if you are interested.  And here is a journal article explaining this phenomenon in dogs presenting symptoms of Gillian-Barré syndrome, the one vaccine reaction officially acknolwedged as possible as a result of the flu vaccine.  Regarding Gillian-Barré, in 1976, 46 million Americans were vaccinated for Swine Flu.  The vaccine campaign was halted after 25 people (“allegedly”) died from reactions to the vaccine.  That’s roughly 1 in a million chance of dying, not just having a vaccine reaction.  4000 other people launched a class-action law suit against the government after being seriously injured by the vaccine, and the government ended up paying out millions of dollars in damaged.  That’s roughly 1 in 10,000 people who were damaged, not 1 in 1 million.  The World Health Organization states that drug reactions in 1 in 10,000 is an unacceptable rate.

And of course this would only represent those very seriously damaged.  Resulting illnesses such as chronic fatigue syndrome and fybromyalgia – still asserted to be fictitious by many in the medical world – that crop up months later don’t even make it into the picture.  Or more subtle yet are resulting mental disorders, such as chronic anxiety.  None of these are attributed to vaccines, at least not in the mainstream literature.  But there is considerable “anecdotal” data out there to at least suggest a very strong correlation, if not prove causation.  We need to be looking more seriously at these issues, but they are completely dismissed in today’s discussion of H1N1.  I have to say I am deeply disturbed by how the CBC is acting as a mouthpiece for this campaign, doing their best to dismiss people’s fears without acknowledging that where there is smoke, there is fire.  I thought good journalism was about presenting both sides, not just the one funded by pharmaceutical companies.

Speaking of which, even the pharmaceutical companies are worried about this vaccine.  They insisted on blanket immunity from any adverse reactions before they would release the vaccine to the government.  The CBC had a discussion on this a few weeks ago, and if I can find it again, I will link it here.  If the company won’t back it’s product, then how can the government be so sure it’s safe?  And why aren’t they making this issue more public?  There used to be 25 or more vaccine companies in the US around 20 years ago, but because of all the law suits from people claiming adverse reactions, most bowed out of the industry. Today there are only 5 companies who make shots, and they won’t stand behind their safety.  Hmm…..

The adjuvant can be problematic in other respects as well.  As I mentioned before, it serves to bring the immune system’s attention to the injected virus.  Now, if your immune system is busy doing something else, perhaps dealing with some acute or chronic illness, and you divert it’s attention, you are in danger of getting really ill.  Your immune system can’t fight more than one battle at a time.  It has been standard practice for years that you never vaccinate someone who is under the weather.  So it baffles me to no end that they are making people with chronic health problems first in line for these vaccines.  I am very concerned that the result will be a lot of very sick or even dead people.  Of course the medical community will attribute this to their previous conditions, and not to the vaccination.  And that may be true, but the vaccine will have weakened their immune system, allowing the previously existing condition to get a stronger hold.

To my great horror, I just learned that a friend with cancer actually received a vaccine while undergoing his chemo treatment!  To me this is absolute insanity.  I know of several cases of dogs who developed very aggressive cancer within weeks of being vaccinated, suggesting a pre-existing condition that their bodies were managing but after the vaccines were no longer able to hold back.  My hope for my friend (and all the other cancer patients receiving this protocol) is that his immune system will be simply too shut down to even notice the vaccine.

Another concern about the vaccine is that evidence has now been found that those who received the vaccine last year are twice as likely to get Swine Flu this year.  Why is this? In a nutshell, we need to get sick to build our immune systems.  Every virus has many proteins on it, and that is what our immune system learns to recognize.  Each new virus will have many of the old proteins, and a few new ones.  The more often we get sick, the greater the diversity of proteins we can recognize and thus the greater the diversity of viruses we can attack and get rid of without getting seriously ill. Being injected with a dead or attenuated virus does not provoke the same immune response.  Vaccines prevent us from getting these illnesses, and thus from developing this broad diversity of memory cells.  A friend of mine who is an immunologist predicted that people who have been previously vaccinated for influenza will be more likely to get sick – and get really sick – in the future, and that is exactly what these studies are now showing.

I could go on and on, but will just raise one more point for now.  Vaccines are preserved with very toxic substances, such as mercury or formaldehyde.  How much of these substances is safe for injection into humans?  Arguably, none.  If you want to learn more about the side effects of formaldehyde, read this.  Now consider if you want that intentionally injected into your body, even in “trace” amounts.

In sum, if you are considering getting a Swine Flu vaccine, or any vaccine for that matter, I strongly encourage you to do a lot of independent research before agreeing to the jab.  Make sure to read sources that are not funded by the pharmaceutical industry, and be acutely aware that doctors today get nearly all of their information from the drug companies.  These drug companies have a great interest in proving that their products work and there is plenty of evidence that they omit studies that prove otherwise.  So do your homework, and if it doesn’t feel right, just don’t do it!  Heck, even Obama is not vaccinating his daughters.  We thankfully live in a country which allows us to make such choices.

Finally, if you are really interested in this subject, click here to watch a very thorough and eye-opening documentary on the subject of vaccines.

Seeking Community

It’s Friday.  Again.  The end of another looooong week.  Where do the days go?  I know I keep mentioning how much driving I am doing, but to give you an idea, I filled my tank on the way into work yesterday morning, and had to fill it again this evening on my way home.  That’s over 600km of relatively “local” driving in 36 hours, or 20km every hour.  Crazy!

I worked very long days both Tuesday and Thursday, teaching 6 and 8 hours on each day respectively.  While I really enjoy teaching, doing these long stretches is exhausting.  I don’t know how grammar and college teachers keep up with the all-day long, daily teaching they must do!  But I am enjoying getting this much experience and am learning exponentially as the weeks fly by.

Wednesday, as well as this afternoon, I drove to Waterloo to conduct research interviews.  I am immensely enjoying the process of my data collection.  The people I am interviewing are fascinating, and I come away from these discussions inspired and full of hope.  I already have tons of ideas swimming around in my head and am looking forward to being home for the next three days to start trying to make sense of it all.  (Ok, I am immensely looking forward to being home for the next three days period! )

Overall, life is going very well.  I really enjoy the work that I’m doing, my dissertation is moving forward, and my new home is a wonderfully welcome place in which to live.  So I find it a bit odd to feel rather down tonight.  Really, I think I am just lonely.  I interact with many people during the week, but it is all at a formal level:  students I am teaching, supervisors I work for, experts I am interviewing, sales associates I am buying from, etc.  I’m trying to think if I’ve had any face to face interaction for social purposes at all this week…

Nope, I don’t think so.  The only social interaction I’ve had has been a couple of long distance chats on the phone, and discussion via the internet.

Tonight I came home to a cold, dark house.  Again.  Thank goodness for the animals, as at least someone greets me when I come through the door.  I’m too tired to get the wood stove going, as I’ll be in bed within the hour and don’t want to waste the wood.  Besides, I’m not comfortable having it burning away when I’m in bed as the landlord has yet to have the chimney cleaned.  Death by chimney fire (the chimney runs through my bedroom) is not in my plans if I can help it.

My roommate is working even longer hours than I am these days, and I think I’ve seen her for less than 5 minutes a day this week.  She is often gone before I get up in the morning, and home after I go to bed.  The latter has been because for social reasons.  She at least has local friends.  I have to do a 2 hour drive to have coffee with a friend.  Last week I was invited to what I’m sure would have been a delightful party, but again, it would have been a 2 hour return trip, after doing that drive 4-5 times in as may days before.  Once home for the weekend, I simply do not want to go back to London.  Or anywhere for that matter.  It’s tough living this far from where the rest of my life happens.

It takes a very long time to establish yourself in a new community.  It was months – or longer – before I had any really good friend when I lived in London, and there I had much easier ways of making friends.  I had classes and close-proximity neighbours who were also newly arrived to town and looking for friends.  By the time I moved last June – after living in the same place for five whole years – I had a really busy social life, almost too busy!  And now I’m back to square one.

I have met quite a few people in this area, mostly through my efforts to eat local, and through my roommate.  But as of yet, none of the people I’ve met seem interested in developing anything more than a superficial or economic relationship.  I think part of the issue is that many people around here belong to one of several different religious orders (Mennonite, Amish, Quaker etc.) and seem to stick pretty close to their own.   Building community is neither simple nor quick, especially for me as I have very unique interests and strong opinions.   This experience is a good lesson for me, and one that will make me think carefully about where I live next.

Speaking of which, I have to say that I am really enjoying getting to know the Kitchener-Waterloo area.  Today I spent some time exploring the  main drag in Waterloo, and discovered a really wonderful healthfood store: Eating Well Organically.  This shop has a number of organic – and better yet, fair trade organic – items that I have not been able to find elsewhere.  Bananas, for example.  Fair trade, organic bananas.  The first I have come across, and thus the first bananas I have purchased in 2.5 years.  How exciting.

I also bought some raw milk parmesan cheese from Québec (ok, not exactly local, but an exception I am willing to make for such an impossible to find, high quality product that really fits my eating ethic: specifically, a raw milk product), new varieties of fair trade, organic teas and spices, organic coconut and a local, organic pie pumpkin from the Healthy Organic Produce Enterprises cooperative (H.O.P.E: an Amish Farming Co-Operative located near Aylmer, ON).  This last item will give me enough pumpkin to make the pumpkin honey recipe I was hoping to make this weekend.

I also discovered a second hand clothing store called Twice is Nice that had some great clothing.  For $10 I bought awool sweater that will help keep me warm while I write this winter.  The clothes are in fantastic shape and very nicely displayed.  The items are more expensive than what you’ll find at, say, Goodwill, but the quality is much higher.  The Goodwill stores in London seem only to carry worn out, flabby, synthetic items making shopping for clothes there very discouraging (I do, mind you, regularly find useful, decent quality household things there).  Apparently there are other high quality second hand clothing stores around the Kitchener-Waterloo area, and I look forward to finding them.

Overall, this region strikes me as being very community oriented and caring.  The mere fact that there is an abundance of easy to access free parking downtown sets the tone.  In most cities, parking downtown is such a hassle that one is discouraged from shopping there.  Not in Waterloo.  I was able to park and browse the shops, many of which were independent businesses.  At 6pm on a Friday evening, the area was bustling, with pubs bursting at the seams.  I look forward to getting to know the area more.  Who knows, perhaps it is a place where I could finally find community.

The Great Pear Experiment

**Edited to add: at the end of this post I put an update on how the jam turned out + the exact proportions I used for future reference**
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As I’ve now lamented in several posts, life has been quite busy of late, leaving me too tired to prepare lunches to take to work with me on some days.  On the upside, I have actually been doing a half decent job of eating well at home.  I have some early planning to thank for this.  Throughout the summer, when life was less hectic, I did a fair bit of cooking and put the extras in the freezer: soups, sauces & stews.  I have been eating them up this last couple of weeks.  Tonight, for example, I cooked up some locally made noodles (from Aylmer, ON), chopped up and sautéed a local sausage, opened a jar of roasted tomato sauce from the freezer (which I remembered to put out last night, along with the dog meat, to thaw), and mixed everything together with some grated local cheese.  Simple but delicious.  For lunch tomorrow: lettuce soup.

I have eaten up most of my stores, however, so I hope life will slow down soon so that I can get back to cooking.  Tomorrow I pick up my first box of veggies from Fairmeadow Farm and I’m sure that will inspire me to get back to food prep beyond canning.  In fact, now that I think of it, the main reason I have not been cooking up meals is probably not because I’ve been so busy, but rather because any cooking time I’ve had I’ve spent canning, blanching or fermenting.

Take this evening, for example.  I had 11 quarts of pears that simply had to be processed.  I had wanted to can pears but thought this batch of seconds were probably too beaten up for canning.  Now I’m wondering if I made a mistake.  Instead of canning them (they were extremely delicious and would have made fantastic eating pears), I tried turning them into jam.  Pear ginger jam to be precise.  It was a recipe that I’ve been wanting to try for some time now as it sounds so yummy.  I searched the internet and came up with this recipe (from the blog Free Range Living):

• 4 cups chopped pears
• 2 tablespoons lemon juice
• 1/3 of a cup of finely minced fresh ginger root
• 1 package of pectin
• 7 cups of sugar

“Put the pears into a pot and mash (or take an immersion blender to the jam after it’s cooked a bit, taking care not to splash yourself). Add lemon juice and ginger; bring to a boil. Add pectin. Slowly stir in sugar. Cook until jam sheets off of the back of a spoon. Ladle into sterile jars and process (about 15 minutes for 1/2 pint jars).”

I modified the recipe, of course.  I can’t seem to bring myself to put that much sugar into anything I make.  In fact, I didn’t want to put any sugar in it.  I used honey instead.  I chopped up the pear and ended up with 16 cups worth, or enough for four times this recipe.  I put in four times as much lemon, about 1 cup of ginger (that’s all I had, and I think that might have been too much), and four cups of honey.  That’s one cup of honey per batch, instead of 7 cups of sugar.  I can only imagine how sweet the original recipe must be!  That said, I do find you only need to use a quarter to a third as much honey as sugar for most recipes, at least to my taste buds.

I wasn’t going to add any pectin but the resulting concoction was simply too thin.  As I couldn’t imagine eating that much ice cream topped with pear sauce, I raided my roommate’s canning stores and added four packages of pectin (which I will replace next time I am near a store!).  I really should do some research into the relationship between pectin and sugar.  I have so far found that jams made with honey instead of sugar simply do not set, regardless of how much pectin you mix in.  I don’t know why, and if I did, perhaps I could do something about it.  At least I’d understand why my efforts aren’t working and perhaps give up!

I spent the first hour of prep on the phone with a good friend who was driving to a sheepdog trial.  He was keeping me company while I chopped, I was keeping him awake while he drove down the dark highway.  As I sit now by the well stoked woodstove (I managed to get it up and running nicely this evening), I don’t envy his cold, rainy weekend outside.  I was supposed to go to a different sheepdog trial this weekend and had to pull out because of my workload.  Considering how cold it is supposed to be and that I would have been sleeping in a tent (albeit with four warm dogs), I guess I am grateful for the 160 exams that sit around me, still awaiting their grades.  There’s always a silver lining!

Once my friend arrived safely, I got off the phone and continued with my cooking, this time to a movie.  I propped my little computer on the counter, plugged in my new speakers (without which I cannot hear anything while I cook), and watched “Dial M for Murder” while I finished my jam.  What a great movie, and a lovely way to spend a Friday evening.  Especially with the warm woodstove heating the house and making everything smell nice.

The result of my pear experiment is a substance that looks much like apple sauce, sweet but with a serious kick to it.  I’m not sure if it will even come close to setting, but at least it is thick enough to spread.  I suppose it if stays fairly soft, it can also be used as ice cream topping, or mixed into yogurt.  I’m not sure if I like the taste as it’s pretty strong.  If I try this again, I’ll probably use less ginger.  That won’t be for a while, however, as I have 16 jars of it to get through.

Maybe these will be my Christmas presents to people, along with the slightly burned peach and pepper relish.   Really, I shouldn’t be allowed in the kitchen.  I find it endlessly amusing that my life revolves around food when I am such a terrible cook.  I really have no talent, patience or instinct for cooking.  I spend time in the kitchen for ethical reasons and not because of passion for good food, and this is reflected in what I produce.  Good thing, I guess, that being single I am the only one who eats it!  And there’s that silver lining again…

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Update on the pear jam: It’s fantastic!  Yippee!  Maybe I’m not such a clod in the kitchen after all.  It just  needed a little time to mellow and for the flavours to mix.  It’s amazing on my sourdough, but even really yummy just with a spoon.  A definite keeper.  Here are the exact modifications I made to the recipe above, using honey:

- 4 cups chopped and pealed pears
- 1 /4 cup puréed fresh ginger
- 1/2 tablespoon of lemon juice
- 1 package of pectin
- 1 cup of honey

Combine and cook.  Purée with a blender once pears are tender.  Simmer until thickening.  Pour into sterile jars.  Process in hot water bath if you are really worried (I don’t bother with jam as it’s so sweet I’m fairly certain pouring boiling jam into boiling hot jars is sufficient).  Makes 4 small jars of jam (250ml).

Rough Day!

Phew!  Another crazy long day.  It started this morning with my usual dash out the door to make it to campus before 9:30.  This means leaving by 8:15.  The power went out last night at some point, so my alarm didn’t go off.  I woke up at 7:30 (I’ve been working until 1-2am most evenings this week) and of course was immediately behind in everything.  Cutting corners where I could, I ended up eating breakfast behind the wheel once again.  Only this time, wearing gloves for the first time this seasons, I clumsily spilled half of it on my lap.  Oatmeal and yogurt all over black pants.  Of course I had to stand up on front of a classroom today.  And no, there was no options for changing.

Class went relatively well, despite the stained pants I tried to hide with a long draping scarf.  After followed by a line-up out the door all through my office hours of students wanting to talk to me about their impending essay.  From there I went straight to the writing centre where I met with back to back students until 4pm.  Next, I caught the 4:05 bus across town to meet a professor from a different department who needed me to do some marking.  The expected 1.5 hours of work quickly stretched into nearly three, and there I was standing at the bus stop in cold and dark at 7:20 pm with 160 more exams in a box to take home and grade (ideally) tonight.

The bus didn’t come.  Did I mention it was cold out?  Darn cold.  I did have the foresight to bring a hat, scarf and gloves, and as such was not completely underdressed.  But my body has not yet acclimatized to the downturn in the ambient temperature, and standing out in freezing weather was not fun.  I waited and waited and waited.  Still no bus.

At 8:10 it pulled up.  I was shaking uncontrollably and had been on the verge of tears – and of being sick to my stomach – for some time.  Turns out there is no 7:30 bus because that’s when the driver gets his dinner break.  He clearly felt bad and spoke kindly to me as I chattered my teeth all the way back across town to where I had left my car.

This is the first time I’ve reach the point of wanting to cry from frustration in a long time.  I have been doing a pretty good job of keeping my workload, and therefore my stress, under control.  This is very important for me to do because my body lets me know pretty quickly when I push it past it’s ability to cope.  I get sick, or my energy level drops through the floor and I become unable to do all the things that I need, and want, to do.  I hate being like this and so am very careful with myself.  Tonight I teetered on the edge of that boundary.  I think, however, that I tipped myself back on the right side, the side of good health and sufficient energy.  I do have a sore throat and can feel the beginnings of  a cold trying to set in, but that will be gone after a decent night sleep I’m sure.

The drive home was easy but long.  I noticed something in the air as I went along in the dark, tiny things flying through the beams of my headlights.  It looked like insects.  I thought that was strange because it’s too cold for bugs.  Perhaps I was seeing things.  As I continued on my way, however, the cloud of “bugs” got thicker.  Then I started noticing it in oncoming headlights.  WIth so many bugs, why weren’t they hitting my windshield?  Was I seeing things?  Were my eyes giving out from too much strain?  As I turned off the main road and onto one of the country back roads, I turned on my highbeams.  Then it was clear what I was seeing…

Snow.  Snow?  SNOW!

Holy crap, it was snowing out.  No wonder I was cold waiting nearly an hour for the bus with just a leather jacket and shoes.  I don’t remember  seeing snow last year until the day I drove home from the last sheepdog trial of the year, around the 25th of the month. So this is really early.  I don’t expect there’ll be any accumulation, but I have a feeling we might be in for an early winter.  I had best finish up putting my garden and yard to bed this weekend!

Once home, I let my poor, suffering dogs out to pee.  They had been locked up since 8:15am and it was now 9:30pm.  I am a horrible dog owner.  I don’t deserve the wonderful companions who sit locked up in my room all day and then are happy to run around for a few minutes, then curl up in bed and wait until tomorrow to play.  As I type I have three on the bed curled up to me  for warmth and one of the cats on my chest.  You can blame any typos on her as I am having trouble seeing the screen over her head.

The house, having been empty all day, was quite cold when I got home.  We run the furnace just hot enough to keep pipes from freezing, but it doesn’t work well and burns gas in far greater proportions than it heats.  The woodstove is the main way of heating this house, and so I tried to get it going.  My roommate is out of town for the weekend so this was my first attempt to get it going.  I failed miserably.  I know I could have worked harder at it and probably have had success but by this time it was 10pm, and I was exhausted and ready for bed.  I took a hot shower and climbed under the covers instead.  I’ll fight with the woodstove tomorrow when I need it going all day while I mark exams.

As I stood shivering at the bus stop earlier this evening, I had plenty of time to think.  Not surprisingly my thoughts were rather negative and cranky.  Now that I am in my warm bed, things don’t seem anywhere near as bad.  But I do have to say one thought stuck with me – it sucks to be on your own when thing get rough.  What I wouldn’t have given to have had a friend (or ideally a partner!) I could have called to pick me up at that frozen bus stop.  I wracked my mind for someone I could have called and came up with no one.  I also have no one who can let my dogs out when I’m gone for such long days.  While I have many wonderful friends, they are scattered about and far away, especially from where I now live out in the country.  The few good friends I have in London either don’t have cars, or have young children they can’t leave on short notice.  On a day to day basis, I have no one I can depend on to help make my life easier.  And while often the acts of strangers can help with this, where I was waiting at the bus, no such help was offered.  A taxi said where I wanted to go wasn’t far enough to be worth his while, unless I wanted to overpay.  When I asked a bunch of students standing nearby if they knew when (whether?) the bus was coming, no one answered or even made eye contact.  Cold, hungry and carrying a box too heavy to walk far with, I felt alone and helpless like I haven’t felt in a long time.  I really look forward to settling into a community where I can put down some long-term roots, and perhaps even find a partner.  Oh, that would be so nice…

None of this will happen until I finish my degree, so I had best stop whining and start writing faster.

Vandana Shiva coming to Waterloo Oct. 21st, 2009

Oh, how exciting!! Vandana Shiva is coming to Southwestern Ontario to give a talk to promote her new book “Earth Democracy.”  I’ve read quite a few of her books and find her arguments persuasive and powerful.  She is an ecofeminist extraordinaire, a powerhouse fighting against corporate control of natural resources, especially of seed, and fighting for the small farmer and local communities, as well as human rights in general.  She is my hero.

Here’s a little more info.  For the full blurb, click here:

LECTURE: Wednesday, Oct. 21, 2009 at 8 p.m.
Humanities Theatre, J.G. Hagey Hall of the Humanities, UWaterloo
No ticket is required, but free registration is appreciated here

“In India, Shiva established Navdanya, a movement for biodiversity, conservation and farmers’ rights. Navdanya means the nine crops that represent India’s collective source of food security. She also launched a school for sustainability on the Navdanya Biodiversity Farm in north India.

As well, Shiva is the founding director of the Research Foundation for Science, Technology and Ecology, a network of researchers specializing in ecology, health and sustainability. She serves on the boards of the International Forum on Globalization and the World Future Council. She is the vice-president of a global movement called Slow Food International.

Shiva, who completed her PhD at the University of Western Ontario in 1978, is a physicist and philosopher of science, as well as an ecologist, activist, editor and author of many books. Her most recent books are Earth Democracy and Water Wars.

Shiva was a recipient of the 1993 Right Livelihood Award – considered the Alternative Nobel Prize. The award recognizes “vision and work contributing to making life more whole, healing the planet and uplifting humanity.