It's the time of year marked by the turning of the leaves and ushered in by the institution known as the Albert Cty. Ex.
This 97th annual exhibition brings it another year closer to a tradition a century in age. Wow. That will be a milestone. And despite all the challenges for rural NB, it has held fast. It offers inspiration for hollowed out rural NB.
Let the A.C.E. stand as testament to the tenacity and resurgence in vibrant rural traditions.
Now can we bring back the dances?
(here is the events schedule for the Ex. online: schedule
Wednesday, September 15, 2010
Sense of Pace
I’ve lost someone. I’ve lost someone I want back so very badly. Not far from the dairy town is a small place called Picadilly that, for a landmark, has a mountain by the same name. This is her home. The Picadilly Road wraps around the mountain like I feel she winds around my heart. I’d like to tell you about part of my trip walking from Alma to Picadilly, some 50 km give or take a few, to see this special someone off.
Most of the walking behind me on the highway, I changed into my running shorts and began a jog of the Negro Bk. Road. The weight my clothes added to the hydration pack made it swing more than I liked so I tightened things with my thumbs as I ran. I ran past the Whaeghlenbrauh farm without stopping to talk to the farmer in the field along his dirt road. This is the last residence on the road for a long stretch, and I ran on under early afternoon shade from the tall maples along the road.
The ascent began in earnest when I turned on to the Thompson Road. This was the beginning of the least certain part of the trek. All I had to go on was my memory of the aerial photo on Google maps I’d studied. It’s an even less traveled road as was apparent from the grade and water runouts. I gained a couple of hundred meters of elevation over the stretch of this climb before dropping off into a clearcut and down over a cliff to meet the Law Road. Not far from there is where the Urney Road meets the Picadilly road.
After the descent and walk through the nearly dry riverbed, past a pond, along some tended trails, and on to the Law Road, I walked on dirt, a stretch of pavement on the Urney Road, and then back to dirt on the Picadilly road.
As I was walking the road that would take me to her farewell, I was wondering all along what I was going to say, and what to write for a farewell on the card in my pack. The pebbles had accumulated in my shoes, and when the Picadilly road turned to pavement again, I stopped and rested. I snacked, drank and changed into acceptable visiting clothes again. At this spot is where she and I had done a snowshoe trek the previous Christmas holiday. There was nowhere comfortable to settle in to writing a card so I carried on.
The road gets more densely populated the closer you are to town, as roads do, and It wasn’t long before I was flanked by close mown grass shoulders. When I realized I was within view of the farewell festivities, I set down on a nice grassy shoulder looking into the valley, my back to the mountain, and set to focus on the card. I had made it and could make out the children playing on the road at the party.
I wrote about journey, experience and sharing them, since this is what was on my mind. What a rich experience to be in all the places you would only see at high speed, places you would not have seen at all, were surprised to learn you could navigate.
It feels remarkable to connect to places by a different route. It also is remarkable to do so at the human pace. Those for whom ‘super-human’ comes to mind, you need just ask an old-timer about walking treks. Do bring a compass like I did, just in case.
Most of the walking behind me on the highway, I changed into my running shorts and began a jog of the Negro Bk. Road. The weight my clothes added to the hydration pack made it swing more than I liked so I tightened things with my thumbs as I ran. I ran past the Whaeghlenbrauh farm without stopping to talk to the farmer in the field along his dirt road. This is the last residence on the road for a long stretch, and I ran on under early afternoon shade from the tall maples along the road.
The ascent began in earnest when I turned on to the Thompson Road. This was the beginning of the least certain part of the trek. All I had to go on was my memory of the aerial photo on Google maps I’d studied. It’s an even less traveled road as was apparent from the grade and water runouts. I gained a couple of hundred meters of elevation over the stretch of this climb before dropping off into a clearcut and down over a cliff to meet the Law Road. Not far from there is where the Urney Road meets the Picadilly road.
After the descent and walk through the nearly dry riverbed, past a pond, along some tended trails, and on to the Law Road, I walked on dirt, a stretch of pavement on the Urney Road, and then back to dirt on the Picadilly road.
As I was walking the road that would take me to her farewell, I was wondering all along what I was going to say, and what to write for a farewell on the card in my pack. The pebbles had accumulated in my shoes, and when the Picadilly road turned to pavement again, I stopped and rested. I snacked, drank and changed into acceptable visiting clothes again. At this spot is where she and I had done a snowshoe trek the previous Christmas holiday. There was nowhere comfortable to settle in to writing a card so I carried on.
The road gets more densely populated the closer you are to town, as roads do, and It wasn’t long before I was flanked by close mown grass shoulders. When I realized I was within view of the farewell festivities, I set down on a nice grassy shoulder looking into the valley, my back to the mountain, and set to focus on the card. I had made it and could make out the children playing on the road at the party.
I wrote about journey, experience and sharing them, since this is what was on my mind. What a rich experience to be in all the places you would only see at high speed, places you would not have seen at all, were surprised to learn you could navigate.
It feels remarkable to connect to places by a different route. It also is remarkable to do so at the human pace. Those for whom ‘super-human’ comes to mind, you need just ask an old-timer about walking treks. Do bring a compass like I did, just in case.
Friday, September 3, 2010
Voters in Albert County can vote Green
I’m a candidate in the Albert riding for the Green party in the upcoming general election. I had been asked to run well in advance of the election at which time I had said I wouldn’t, as I wasn’t up to the task. That didn’t stop the party from pestering.
I rescinded when party leader Jack MacDougal took up the campaign to bring me aboard. He’s a successful campaigner! With his blessing, I agreed to run knowing that I mightn’t be present for the entire election. I am what you might call a paper candidate.
What swayed me was lunch with a fellow constituent who, unknowing of any potential candidacy, said she would vote Green or spoil her ballot. I didn’t want her or anyone to have to spoil ballots, and without a Green candidate, this is what she was saying she would do. And this comes from a former staunch Liberal.
For some, being a paper candidate is not acceptable and I would wish to impress upon anyone with this outlook that it is still important to grow the things we believe in.
Don’t get me wrong. I don’t take the job lightly. For, if voters choose to give me the job, I am more than happy to take my seat in the legislature and give it my 100%.
I have a lot to offer New Brunswickers and those in my riding and I agree whole-heartedly with the Green Party of NB platform. Our vision just makes good sense for the rational and equitable development of our province.
Also running in his riding of Quispamsis is my dad, Mark. We are the only father/son combination in the province that I know of! Go dad!
And, We have a higher percentage of women candidates running in the election than ever before, in all of Canada!
I rescinded when party leader Jack MacDougal took up the campaign to bring me aboard. He’s a successful campaigner! With his blessing, I agreed to run knowing that I mightn’t be present for the entire election. I am what you might call a paper candidate.
What swayed me was lunch with a fellow constituent who, unknowing of any potential candidacy, said she would vote Green or spoil her ballot. I didn’t want her or anyone to have to spoil ballots, and without a Green candidate, this is what she was saying she would do. And this comes from a former staunch Liberal.
For some, being a paper candidate is not acceptable and I would wish to impress upon anyone with this outlook that it is still important to grow the things we believe in.
Don’t get me wrong. I don’t take the job lightly. For, if voters choose to give me the job, I am more than happy to take my seat in the legislature and give it my 100%.
I have a lot to offer New Brunswickers and those in my riding and I agree whole-heartedly with the Green Party of NB platform. Our vision just makes good sense for the rational and equitable development of our province.
Also running in his riding of Quispamsis is my dad, Mark. We are the only father/son combination in the province that I know of! Go dad!
And, We have a higher percentage of women candidates running in the election than ever before, in all of Canada!
Monday, August 30, 2010
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!
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!
Monday, August 23, 2010
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
Sunday, August 22, 2010
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.
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.
Sunday, August 15, 2010
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.."
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.."
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