Going for broke in gas rich NB

Yvonne was puffing along triumphantly nearing the Chignecto coast as we ended the 2000k journey to VT. He seems to like sea level atmosphere.

Before leaving NB, I gave as a birthday gift enough carbon credits for a trip to Chicago by plane. It’s not exact or even entirely serious, but there’s something to burning carbon neutral waste cooking oil that changes the name of the game. I ducked out of the party early to make the dusty drive over Caledonia mountain where a public talk was taking place on oil and gas developments in NB. Some are concerned with the boom in unconventional gas, i.e. horizontal drilling and ‘hydro-fracking’.

Questioning myself for leaving an amazing display of tasty offerings and conversation, I drove by the wind farm, the forestry activities and the blueberry fields and the farming operations as I neared Elgin. Two exploration drill pads are setting up in Elgin and this brings the hydrocarbon exploration back to Albert County.

We have a history of the petro- resources exploration here abouts. It was lake albert that left the gypsum deposits and hyrdrocarbons in the late carboniferous, that fresh water marine environment responsible for the Albertite and the Stony Creek oil ‘play’. Much of the exploration was abandoned for the lack of feasibility. It’s only a matter of time before it makes sense to go for the small stuff. At some point we’ll reek of desperation in our pursuit of the stuff, and more and more the sense, given my haughty position, is that they, and I mean energy developers including ourselves, are going for broke.

My first stop upon returning to Albert County was an open house put on by Southwestern Energy, a utility turned exploration company who flew spectral photography and has started up geochem and 2d- seismic in a vast part of NB.

They were awarded licenses based on a successful bid for the province’s auction of exploration rights to the land. Don’t be confused, oil and gas has separate legislation than other mineral exploration, so mineral exploration isn’t inhibited. Nor is forestry. I went because I wanted to be informed, and there seemed to be some mystery around this. I don’t know if anyone else attended the open house, there wasn’t a soul outside of the organization while I was there for the hour and a half.

For example, the company has been advertising as SWN. Don’t bother Googling it. It’s the trade name on the stock exchange. Southwestern Energy should net some info. They’ve experience is in Arkansas, NE and I’m curious to learn more about that.

And why is the province so much facilitating the development of these resources? Are things on the table we rural residents aren’t being made aware of? I don’t feel concern is unjustified. For some including myself, the provincial regulatory context and relationships with local entities are problematic. It was interesting to see in the communities in VT, NH, and ME that I visited a comparatively extreme level of local control.

Oh, did you know, stateside, the abbreviated New Brunswick is NK? May be we should do the same with all the US firms going for broke. My petition to John, a SWN geo-analyst, was to set up office in Albert County. Keep it local!

Can I be your imploding star?

I feel as if I'm an imploding star

I think somewhat that is's all of ours

and to see all the time we're closer to the hour

Makes me want to be your meteor shower.

I feel inspired

and overtired

hopeful someday I won't need to be wired

The cartoon expression of being mired

the hero is a little bit oven-fired

But if I were to be your imploding star

We might just find we' could see far

My inertia might be tempered by your four door car

Or all might prosper from the 'passing of the bar'

Oh, restraint.

Where's it found?

The beat of love's drum is a powerful sound

Dear heavenly body

secret and haughty

I AM GOING FROM ZERO TO DOTTY

With regard to humanity

My father made an admission to me the other day that I am only beginning to try to appreciate. He said I've already become a better person than he. Do we struggle to be good people, to be human?

Powerful words to recon with as I encounter challenges in relationships in particularly with one that's failing. I don't know what it is to be truly human and I fear what happens to men in Hobbes' state of nature, where it is (if it is) a "war of all against all".

There are the monsters in us that allow for the release of arrows and ignition of TNT. Tragic events are oft the trajectory of bruising and anger. Why do we yell when we feel pain? It seems a natural response and the well adjusted temper their reactions with civility and - what - is it humility?

Why do we cry when we feel anguish? Why the flight from the undesirable?

I don't know. My uncle told me the story of USAmericans in Argentina who stuck to their own kind. He noticed that the locals who he became part of were very willing to agree to do things, to sign on to a collective idea or activity, unlike the US culture he was used to where everyone's individual needs would need to be accommodated somehow. He remembered how this was too much for many of the USAmericans who banded together in their ghetto.

He likened the resistance to cultural difference and new ideas to an acceptance of humanity, or what I might extend to include the greater constituency. That is, the living world around us. “I wonder if THOSE people are like us?”

I shared with my uncle my thinking that it could be a difference in individual v. community focus. That we have become very much focused on the individual, the ethic of ourselves, as apposed or coincidental to an ethic of the greater constituency. It is the core of advertising that works at the sense of self in pursuit of personal preferenced consumers. It is encouraging to me to see those who treat their actions as if volumes.

I don't know where this leaves the question but I have to share that I see a need for a diversity of approaches to being human, that one species and only one species may be disadvantageous.

Who the American?

Like New Brunswick, place names in Minnesota including the state itself originate with first nations. Cree and other first people are mostly disappeared but their names remain.



The plains of the mid-west USA retain a number of first Nations, or indians as a some prefer to call them, on and off reservation. We passed a reserve marked by a casino billboard where on the highway travelling west of Minneopolis they meet the Minnesota River .



To call them first peoples would seem to be too much of an admission for many I meet and talk with on the subject. Or may be it's just an unfamiliar term. And we here know the common reaction to things unfamiliar.



These are the people who call themselves Americans with whom I've been amoungst for the past 4 dayd. But it was residents of the USA that pointed out to me while visiting the NB Canada café I work in that we are all Americans. Clearly so in the geographic sense.



I don't want to push the envelope on the question and it's desire for an answer - How best to refer to people of the United States of America, but what do we call them if not Americans? It's important it's something appropriate we/they decide upon ourselves..



If people from the USA epitomize what is America, Joan Armatrading is a cynic when in her song she uses the words "U. S. and A", as if the United States and America are distinct.



It's quite clear to me that we are all American. The Halifax, NS band Caledonia in their WE are America album title track possibly sing it best.



"We are America. We are everything she does.."