Van Jones - my inspiration for 2009
Photo by luxomedia

I've blogged about Van Jones before, but last night, as the wind howled outside, I listened to a podcast of a talk he gave at a Social Change Forum at Hollyhock on Cortes Island earlier this year. With a powerful mix of humour and truth telling, he describes the confluence of social justice and environmental justice and calls for a new politics that transcends dualities, us vs, them thinking and win/lose outcomes. He also make a powerful point about how our absolute reliance on deliverables, outcomes and achievables makes us liars, as we pretend to be able to tell our donors, funders and stakeholders how we will shape the future. Van makes a powerful point that when we tell the story that we are successful, and hide that fact that half the time we don't know WHAT we are doing, we prevent the ability to learn from one another.

The world is a complex, chaotic and changing place, and what is needed now is not winning against but winning over. We need to invest in prototypes not pretend we know the solutions. We need experiment, relationship and integrity. That is the new politics of activism - it is the new politics period - and it is what I am committing myself to here at home on Bowen Island, and in my work in the world for 2009.

Happy New Year and see you out there.

The wind is howling again tonight, but this time it's a southeasterly gale blowing up the Strait. Power is flickering a litle, and may well blink out although I've been impressed with the extent to which the power has remained on here in Seven Hills during the past could of weeks. Other areas have lost power but other than a few blips, we've been fine. Tonights gales though - winds gusting to 90km/h - may change that, as the wind is coming from the east rather than the north which is how the Squamish blows. There are many more major power lines exposed to the southeasterlies, so we'll see what happens.

But what is really capturing my attention at the moment the above graphic. This current weather map shows a confluence of four low pressure systems rotating around a common core with developing hurricane force winds south of Kamchatka. Whatever that thing is - and I've never seen anything like it - it'll be here in a few days and it fixes to be interesting.

Snow is melting - maybe half gone - but we have huge banks of ice and slush at the road sides, some of them piled up four feet or more.

It's a classic Canadian moment here today. If you don't like the weather, come back in 15 minutes. It rained hard last night, and was a little sunny this morning but then thick cloud rolled in and it has been raining showers of thick drops all day. Just as I'm heading to Snug Cove to get the ferry, it starts to snow again. There is no rhyme or reason to this. It's like some petulant child is fooling with the weather controls - windy, calm, rain, fog, snow. Even the meteorologists have given up. The forecast for the next four days is partly cloudy with rain and snow with occaisional wind. That is covering your ass par excellence.

The thaw is on today as the roads go from sheets of ice to waterfalls. Neighbours shovelling out neighbours is what it's all about now. Especially considering the fact that there is another load of snow on it's way. A sunny afternoon has gioven way to forboding cloud and the temperature has strated to drop again.

You'll be happy to know that the mood is improving in the Cove. The General Store this afternoon was busy and upbeat with war stories shared all round.

One side benefit to helping out neighbours was that I discovered one of them, Lauryn Oates, had a piece done about her in the Globe and Mail last week. In the annals of Bowen Islanders who make a difference it turns out that Lauryn is one of our best. For 15 years she has been tirelessly working on women's right inAfghanistan and she's undaunted in her work and outlook. Read more about her at the Globe.

Back in 2002 my friend Avner Haramati and his family were visiting Bowen Island from Israel. He asked me if everyone was always so nice to each other here. Caitlin replied that, no in fact people were sometimes quite angry with each other and that just the day before, a yelling match had broken out in the Cove over some ferry marshaling issue. She offered to go get the newspaper to show him.

"Wait a second," Avner said. "Two people yell at each other and it makes the news?"

Well, yeah. It's a funny place.

We're usually pretty politic to each other around here, and skirmishes between neighbours are sometimes the only news going. At least it's the news you WANT to hear about, which is why gossip is the high speed internet of small towns.

Today, the weather has warmed up and if it hasn't exactly started raining, everything is melting. And then freezing again somewhere else. What was yesterday a fluffy three foot high bank of joy-snow is now an immovable pile of hate-slush. Getting through it is hard and slow and wet work.

This morning I desperately tried to dig the car out in time for Caitlin to make an 11:00 am water taxi to Vancouver. I couldn't get out in time, so Caitlin hitched a ride to the Cove and made it off the island. I continued on and with the help of a friend - thankfully a former pro basketball player and member of the Slovenian national women's team - I got out.

Turns out Caitlin was one of the few to find an escape pod from Fortress Bowen. The ferry isn't running today due to a problem with the ramp on this side - almost certainly to do with the melt-freeze-melt-freeze dynamic that is all the rage. We did finally make it to the Cove and it's a mess there. Cars everywhere, piles of snow all round, people trying to liberate one from the other with small shovels and strong backs. If the last few days was otherworldy and downright magical, today is some kind of shadow version of hell, where everything is frozen and wet, and it's not looking like things will be clearing up any time soon.

All of that perhaps explains why there is much grumpiness and just pure asshole-type A behaviour this morning on our fair and happy Island. For example, the caretaker at Village Square, who I don't know, was going ballistic at people trying to shovel out cars. He screamed something about trying to get the place ploughed, but people kept driving in and parking. I don't know what his problem is this morning, but taking it out on folks who are just trying to do their best is not the way to go. He put a damper on the whole mood around the Ruddy Potato and Phoenix. In general, mean people suck, but mean people yelling at random strangers for no reason takes you from "mean" to "prick" in an instant.

So we transacted some basic business in the Cove and climbed back in our car to head home. Not sure whether I would be able to get back in my driveway, I parked on Miller Road with my hazards flashing and took a run at shovelling out the bottom of the driveway so I could get the car off the road.

Now don't get me wrong, I have nearly unending admiration for the job our plowmen have been doing the past two weeks. But I discovered the end of my admiration this morning. As I am gamely trying to hack away at the foot of frozen slush that the plow left, who comes barrelling down the hill but the plowman himself, resplendent in his big yellow truck with gaily flashing light atop. He leans on his horn, swerves around my car heads straight at me and coats me from waist to boot in ice mush. Nice. Merry fucking Christmas to you too.

So if you are on Bowen, stay home. If you are not on Bowen don't come here today, unless you are coming over to hang out with the Manns at Seven Hills B&B. The island has awoken from a lovely week of indulging itself in winter, and the hangover isn't pleasant. We're not at our best, so please move along and come back later, when the snow is gone and the rainforest is awash in new year's light as the fog hangs in tendrils on the douglas-fir canopy of our peaceful Island home.

Another 15cms today. It's starting to get wet and heavy now and large branches are breaking around the island. Helped clear two off of Lenora Road in Deep Bay this afternoon.

Once the rain arrives - and it will arrive - we can only hope that the water will find its way to the ocean before doing much damage. Us, we have no basement, and the roof sheds water and snow beautifully - if a little alrmingly - so we'll be fine. Caitlin and Finn are clearing off the trampoline right now so that it doesn't succumb to its transformation to a lake.

Not sure what normal is anymore, but I think we'll be returning to it soon.

Boxing day and the snow keeps falling. Yesterday we got a break from it, and we were able to travel into Vancouver to celebrate Christmas with family. On the way, the ferry was a veritable floating party and I found myself wishing that the journey would take an hour, just so I could catch up.

Brad Ovenell-Carter reported that the snow fell Christmas Eve at the rate of an inch per hour, and all told, I'm pretty sure we took 18 inches or about 50cms of snow. This morning it is falling heavily again, although today or tomorrow we expect it to start turning to rain.

Power is still out on the west side of the island, and they have been in the cold and dark for a couple of days. Other friends at Xenia are at the end of a private road that has two feet of snow on it, so they are only going somewhere with snowshoes.

In the early morning quiet, there are lots of birds around - towhees, juncos, chickadees, nuthatches, and bigger birds like ravens and a lone eagle which spends its mornings down by the water. There are glaucous-winged gulls, crows, Canada gees and mallards on the bay and occaisional sightings of common mergansers and grebes at the lagoon.