Special Season

Special season is upon us. All I want for Christmas is A Pattern Language (Christopher Alexander). I don’t need much.

Discover that the more we reduce consumption the happier we are. I can prove it. Now that I know this, I can get on with the special season. You’re all getting wine corks for Christmas. Hallelujah!

Every so often I torture myself with a trip to the mall at x-mas time. It’s great imagery and food for thought on the commercial designs for life. The happy, beautiful, people on display in the storefronts remind us we are ourselves the gods of shopping. Not Santa as the Chinese have come to believe.

He’s the coca-cola god.

I love how men, myself included, often whistle grotesquely over the holiday tunes on the Public Address (PA) system. Like noise canceling headphones.

It’s almost like being here gravitates me back to the earth from the lofty place of design oriented intellectual thinking. Successful places have a popular appeal. And they have a photocopier within a stones throw of a comfy chair to make a copy of your personal low-action climate plan survey for the city.

I mean, personal climate action lowering plan.

Also, we are engaged in the sometimes blatant such as in the case of the Bell phones kiosk attendant named Scott appeal to let our consumer choices be influence by inner wants and emotional need in the image of modern designed individualism. We do the work the companies might once have. I appreciate the Telus Kiosk attendant’s appreciation of the human scale.

I don’t intend to foretell of the consumer beast unleashed. Rather, I want to share the sense of place enlightened by the designs of City planners that would see the mall go elsewhere and residential mixtures of uses replace it.

On a messy precipitation day like today, folks sure seem to appreciate the climate control and the design of being catered to. What a space to congregate, chat, people watch, walk and shop. This for obvious reasons is a successful place-making endeavour. A dead mall doesn’t need a PA.

What sort of design would provide a replacement that responds to the current bustle of activity, with as much public appeal?

Publish Post

heavy rains

I hope this bridge I built over the flood prone Saunder's Brook is doing well after the heavy rains this November in Southern New Brunswick. Something like 150mm fell over a weekend in some places.

It's flood prone because the catchment area (the watershed) has less and less forest to slow the movement of surface water movement. It's due to development. So what happens is rainfall rushes right to the brook without delay by trees and the like. It also receives the storm sewers of a number of subdivisions.

It's an increasingly impacted watercourse. Could it someday be put into pipes and paved over like so many others?

From the planet

Commenter Commenter, affairs junky man, make me a post as fast as you can

Do we really want to be a clean energy super power and a dirty one at the same time, as one can extrapolate on the clean energy claim by this Canadian Press article?

NS is working on a problem of fossil fuel dependence for generating electricity. Many stand to benefit from the modest clean energy fund. It would be positive if tidal generation where found to be acceptable (to Bay stakeholders) in terms of ecological impact at the level of future expansion. Positive IF it offsets the dirty generation. NOT meet increasing demand. See what I mean? Paramount is the need for reducing need. Why?

It's no plan for new green generation to be installed to keep up with a burgeoning electricity draw. 'green' generation will litter the landscape soon enough. The problem for everyone is how to develop so as not to depend on/demand increasing amounts of cheap electricity, and of course, other forms of energy.

Increasing scarcity of easily accessible liquid energy enters in to this. How? For those not blessed (or cursed, whichever the case may be) with plentiful hydro-electric, clean burning gas could be fueling thermal electric plants instead of getting piped to growth markets or making steam for extracting syncrude.

Does the challenge of meeting our needs warrant a serious look at the converging problems of increasing scarcity of cheap oil and climate change? I argue yes, there is an elephant in the room.

Sometimes I just can't let people have the last word. The 'fact' that the world needs new sources of power, according to WilliamStevens in their comment, and fast, is a real indication we're hell bent on maintaining a particular notion of progress (for the whole world?), more than it is an indicator of actual needs. What the world needs now is not power, sweet power. We need food and the means to make it where we live. We need transportation. Streets need to move people and goods, not necessarily cars.

Why can't people talk openly about the downward trajectory of energy consumption we're facing in the developed world? We're going to need more are we? More (clean) energy is being used to extract the dirty energy to keep our oil underpinnings standing. We use natural gas to make the steam that liquefies the syncrude. More energy to squander on luxuries we've come to expect?

We need less energy. Less is more as we go into the future. I'm not interested in helping a floundering notion of progress pin down our prospects for prosperity in the future.

Peak oil is hooey, but we like soft things

Shanna got them all going with her comments denying peak oil and expounding on conspiracies and assassination theories around those challenging the oil industry and it's capillaries, here.

Good point Shanna! There have been some major discoveries oil deposits all over the world. Most notable are those found very deep under the ocean floor. Peak oil must be a lie especially when they have to drill several Kms below the surface of the ocean to access deposits that don’t bubble up in farmer’s fields. After all there’s no major difference between drilling at the bottom of the ocean or in Leduc, Alberta… unless there’s a little leak or something? But hey, it’s not like we’re fishermen or ducks or anything!

I, of course, had to weigh in with my own brand of sarcasm:

Peak oil exists because I will it with my powers of attraction (there also being a sort of consensus), and I think it is senseless to attempt to do anything but responde by ramming that wall at full speed. No half-ass’ed attempt at collapse for me. It is more power I need and to quit this waste veg oil fuel business forthwith. It's my energy destiny! Soo sad if you’re left behind in the rubble.

Really, I can’t think of an energy machine conspiracy. I feel it’s favourable to some to keep conspiracies alive for the distraction – they’re attractive thoughts: "the good hand that feeds us knows what's best and will surely step in with alternative energy machines if there's ever a problem with meeting our needs". ’cause we all savour this unlimited growth. It's a pretty good thing we've got going here. Catch my drift?

‘SPIN’ could be lurking anywhere. The you-tube viral ‘plastic to oil machine’ would be GREAT if we could just fuel it on abiotic plastic or an endless supply of recyclable petro plastics. Here, by golly, is an example of keeping faith in our ‘progress’ alive, aimed at those on the edge of a conscious reduction in energy intensity. No wonder they go viral.

I don’t believe in all the official stories. Like 9/11. It’s true. I don’t believe. I said it.

People and persons under the law just have interests to maintain. That’s all. And they’re willing to massage things into position. It’s called community design. The foremost designers are those with the foremost interests. It's the nature of the creature: it is willing to act to a degree commensurate with its level of investment.

Hmm, what has changed fundamentally in the way we move in the last 100years? the way we eat? The way we build? Oil got us here. And some powerful interests have sold us on a progress that’s made oil the architecture of our age. Indications are it’s time to change up, even if it’s only an exercise to shore up our confidence.

And the only viable alternative oil is the oil we don’t consume. It’s the only soft path. And we like soft things. Right?

the Greensnake trail, Alma NB

If you've been looking for the Greensnake Trail site, here's an update on the situation.

Domain wise, greensnaketrails.ca has seen its demise as the Grensnake trail web home. I'm no longer interested to pay for web or domain hosting.

The Greensnake trail itself exists in administrative ether-space. It's accessible to the public, like any crown land, but there is no official trailhead. the Fundy Recreational Trails Project is long since defunct and the Village of Alma is most of the time reluctant to take any ownership on the problem. It remains accessible via the 45 road access.

My suggestion that we the Village Council put the map up on villageofalma.ca site got marred in uncertainty over who's trail it is. But a letter from the land owner who no longer wants to provide public access from the Village sealed the proposal's fate.

Was the Green snake a Village project? Louise refutes it was ever a Village project. I however confirmed from DNR it was a Village license of occupation (LOO) during construction in 2003. She hardly shrugged at this. And, the Village acted to the contrary when Greg, the property owner allowing Village access to the trail, asked Council to no longer allow trail users access.

The property owner wrote a letter to Council saying he was concerned about liability and that he plans to develop the property and asked signs be removed. The mayor went to talk to him and asked if he didn't want the business at the store, not knowing the store had sold. Everyone knew this! The signs are now in the possession of the Village.

Prescriptive rights could likely be argued successfully if a trespass ever saw court. It's been many years in use. I mean heck, the atv's are using the access across Greg's. Don't know if the atv clubs and federation got the same letter. The village access issues abound. Turns out, RCMP don't make exception for OHVs on highways, even in Alma, NB.

I am frankly quite appalled by the immature and vindictive role staff and the mayor had taken on trails related assets and development. Council fussed their way out of a seat at the Fundy Biosphere Reserve trail project out of spite, just as they reacted to the biosphere reserve project at the onset.

My opinions of Village administration aside, good things continue to happen. So the challenge is "can anybody officially advertise the trail". I've been hoping that the Chignecto Ski Club group could pick up the slack in some capacity. And may be a regional trail group could step in.

Here is an idea: Get public access and move forward on trails in the Village. the Ski Club group can lobby the Village, who ultimately needs to partner, to agree to provide access via mill walk then design a project and get a LOO for an event like a trail building day to build it.

Ciao

PS Check out IMBA Canada's blog post and its comments on the Greensnake trail. Way to go Fundy park!

Learning optimism from the Greens

The election results came as a bigger surprise than I might have expected. Many predicted the PC majority and yet there was an optimism needed to grow the fledgling Green party. We candidates knew it was just the start. Optimism was required in order to step up to the plate, but it leave a mild depression in the aftermath. If there was a hope in hell, it was a long stretch for me.

Albert Riding's MLA Waynne Steeves was the first to be declared elected by CBC in their televised coverage of the election. And this meant that my mug shot made it on to screens as the third place candidate. Someone said this was after two polls reported. He walked away with the lion's share of the votes. "Give you head a shake", some had said about running for the Greens.

What had I hoped for aside from a distant third place? Well, I hope for a change. I hope discussions keep going. I hope for the exchange of ideas on their own merit. I hope the Green party becomes a bigger part of the discussion so that we may we can shake what it is that keeps a natural development in New Brunswick at bay. I hope we can confront the things that are easier to see "just ain't so".

Will Rogers said, "it ain't the things we don't know that trouble us, this the things we do know that just ain't so."

We showed it's possible to speak openly about the challenges facing NB communities i.e. media concentration, unbalanced policy, broken bureaucratic attitude towards local government organization, etc.. We've shown there is a way to be hopeful while in full recognition of these challenges. By sticking out our necks, we've put a name to it.

Tossing your vote to the Greens

The 57th New Brunswick General Election is upon us without a clear front runner and we've got lots to mull over about our future.

Unprovoked, I’ve had long time faithful Liberals say they would vote Green. When a retired Albert resident who’s husband raised hogs and who’s family continued in the beef business had told me she’d vote Green or spoil her ballot, I decided I would see to it she had the opportunity to vote Green. I’m aware that people can step out of conventional thinking when in the company of unconventional thinking, but I’m confident it’s genuine. And all sorts of people are saying the same things.

Albert is a unique riding. Recall the COR party. A green vote no matter the caliber or riding makes a statement. New Brunswick’s vested interests are clearly not in sea change, and the front-runners in the election aren’t talking about this with its citizens. However, accountability and breaking the cycle are a big part of the weight on voter’s minds in my opinion. We’ve got a good thing going in Albert, but those willing to make a statement by ‘throwing their vote to the Greens’ are asking for a greater stake in NB’s future.

In my experience government lead involvement of NBers exists at the bottom of the scale, with rural planning, with resources, with community development. At the bottom is placation and slightly better is keeping us informed. At the top is partnering and engaging participation. For example, youth want a seat at the table in this province. Not just a handshake and a “welcome aboard”. It was a little more than a year ago that an exceptional cluster of New Brunswicks from the Fundy region attended a Youth Forum hosted by Fundy Enterprise in Picadilly. The event netted energetic discussion and timely debate facilitated around youth questions. Some of the things I took from the discussion include the need for increased opportunity (and not just the paid kind) and feeling valued, an unease (even knowledge deficit) surrounding the structure of rural local government, a shroud of conservatives and apathy. These continue to be timely. You can help by voting Green.

My experiences in municipal government and ‘keeping my ear to the S. NB ground’ have hardened my case for a need for action to address what is ‘unique’ about NB’s political climate. In the last few moments leading up to casting your ballots, please use your informed opinion, plus a view of the future NB landscape, to make your decisions. Don’t succumb to an inclination to be on the winning team. It’s time for action. “Tossing” your vote away to the Greens is a way to take that action.