Reflections on turning 72

I've spent a lifetime ignoring both my birthday and advancing age, mostly convinced my family to do so as well, so it still comes as a bit of a reality check to find that Facebook has rendered this heretofore effective strategy inoperative.

So here are some reflections on turning 72:
1. The best comment I received all day came from my brother-in-law, Mike Dawes: “Happy birthday, Justus! 72 is a special number, palindromic when written in prime power notation as 2^3 * 3^2 . So for today it doesn't matter if you don't know whether you are coming or going.” He's obviously been thinking about this, as he's working on the same number himself. I always suspected his rather rarified area of study had to have a practical application in it somewhere, and here it is: useful advice, given when it exactly describes the situation.
2. It pretty much had to happen. My paternal relatives seem particularly long-lived as a group, having survived both the war and its aftermath with both luck and connections and living long lives after. By the same token, I can count only three times when I, by the odds, probably should have died. That leaves three more, right? I should probably resolve to be more careful.
Besides, most of the time I still feel only about 50. Maybe even less.
3. I'm now officially off the fingers in counting the number of my contemporaries who either are no longer with us, are exploring the various manifestations of dementia, or have suffered some kind of debilitating condition that makes seeing the positives of life difficult. There doesn't appear to be a straightforward connection between living a recommended lifestyle and longevity: the deserving don't necessarily live longer, or even better.
4. My parents appeared to love being grandparents, yet always seemed grateful when they could resume their lives without us. I now know exactly how they felt. I'm a bit taken aback by how much I love interacting with our children as adults, and love watching grandchildren growing up. I love the life Sandy and I have together even more, even if she isn't likely to ever retire!
5. Still, shit happens. My parents were exemplary in organizing their affairs in case someone else had to take over unexpectedly. That didn't happen in that when my siblings and I took over, very gradually, they were both quite elderly. The result was that when first my Mom died, and then my Dad, the procedures for dealing with those deaths and their affairs was very clear and straightforward. We have followed their example, and our children will, one day long into the future, thank us.
6. When statistics are cited that claim people over 65 cost the health system substantially more, they aren't exaggerating. I find myself in robust health, am able to do almost anything I've always been able to do, but have a persistent cough. The result is that, in chasing down these not-particularly-significant symptoms, I've seen more of my doctor, various specialists, and the Emergency Department than I did in all the years up to age 70 combined.
My dad almost died when he was leading up to 72. Turns out he had an unusual case of late-onset Celiac-Sprue disease, and when that was figured out, within a week he was no longer in danger and ultimately died when he'd been 99 for several months. If there's a message here, it may be this: some say that if you pass 65 you're home-free, but I think you probably have to revise that upward these days. 72 seems like a good number.
7. I think I may break the habits of a lifetime, and throw myself a party when I'm 75.
No I won't: I'll guilt the children into doing it. Surely that's one of the privileges of older age!

Wasted

Last February, over a period of several weeks, I witnessed a clearcut of several hectares of forested lands.
I'm a fairly devoted walker of logging roads in our area, so over the years I've seen similar shows regularly.
And I'm not at all opposed to logging: it's what we do here, and an important part of the local economy.
I'm not even that put out by the fact that most of these logs will be sold to foreign buyers, without further processing.

But I'm increasingly appalled by the waste.

The area in question this time is just off the Erikson Main, behind the airport. It's private land, owned and gated by TimberWest, which is (primarily) a forest company that contracts out the actual logging show to local contractors.
The logging is done by one or more large machines that fall, limb, and cut the logs into lengths, pile those logs onto trucks, and gather most of what's left over into huge piles.

In this particular case, 14 huge piles, several over 20 feet high.
Most of the area was replanted in March.
It's all pretty impressive!

But here's the thing: when the neighbouring several hectares were harvested in February of 2015, the same procedure was followed. So I know how this turns out:
Next December a team of guys will come in. They will torch the piles, which will burn for at least a week or two. Finally the burned-over areas will be replanted.

When I look at those piles, increasingly I see gigantic, unsustainable waste.
The company has no incentive to do something productive with the massive amount of usable wood left over; I just hate to think of the tons of CO2 that will be produced for no good end by each of these piles.
And the show on the Erikson Main is just one among hundreds on the Island.
The Main is gated at both ends, so although a few pickups have been in to cut firewood, to most people these piles are inaccessible.
Ironically, Campbell River is home to a “co-generation” power plant, which sells its power to BC Hydro. It was built in the 1990's, when we still had a functioning sawmill and pulp mill, and so had lots of waste wood to turn into electricity. 
These days it runs on natural gas, piped in from north-eastern BC and Alberta, and nobody is requiring them to burn the wood that is still readily available.
Or to employ the local people who could transport it to the plant and process it for use.
It's pretty disgusting.

Letter to friends and troops

As you know, we just completed a short expedition that had us in Fort St John over the long weekend.
That journey was pretty uneventful. We took the car and cruised happily at or just above the speed limit the whole way, even when we ran into a snow storm between Chetwynd and Dawson Creek.
But the car was rattling rather unsettlingly at the back, and one time, while we were negotiating the gravel road that leads to Robin and Mike's place with four of us in the car, there was a sound that resembled two manhole covers, banging together. We put the car in Mike's new garage, jacked up the back, and I crawled under.
Nothing seemed out-of-place or broken or even unusual.
So we drove back to Campbell River, at speed, via the Duffy Lake Road(!)
And did I mention that the brake squeal, which I've been unhappy about since last December? When I took the car in to find out why it was doing that, the verdict: Intermittent, just brake squeal, probably rust on the disks.
OK, no issue then.
The morning after we got back I phoned the VW dealer and described the symptoms. "That sounds like a broken spring or springs," said Michael, the service guy I usually deal with. "We need to deal with that right away; it could be dangerous."
So last Saturday I took the car in, had both rear springs replaced, (presenting my VW-issued credit card in payment!) and drove home.
No rattles whatsoever, and the brakes have stopped squealing.
I can't decide whether to be impressed by the car driving at least 2500km on broken rear springs, or to be annoyed that those springs -- which haven't had hard use at all -- broke at all, or to be astonished that the VW techicians didn't pick the up the problem either originally or when I had my regular service in March...
Regardless, I like the story, and it ended well.

To which Mike Hayes replied:
"As one who has travelled at high speeds on washboard roads with WJ Havelaar at the wheel, my knuckles white as they worked away at my worry beads, I think I can understand why the springs gave out."

And I riposted:
"But that was the van, which is relatively used to gravel roads, and still has its original springs and shocks.
The Golf, on the other hand has led a far more urban lifestyle. I cannot recall when it was off the pavement, before FSJ (and other than the Mount Washington parking lot!) and that was only a matter of two blocks...
So yours is an engaging theory, but lacks verisimilitude."

Yet another unpublished masterpiece

Sirs,
The editorial (The many flaws in the Liberal plan) in today's Globe misses some important information: The only party that advocated for FPTP in the last election was the Conservative Party. It got less than 33% of the vote. Prominent in all the other party platforms was a promise to change the system, although each differed on what that should look like.
If that wasn't a referendum for change, it's hard to imagine what would be.
Furthermore, although over 57% of voters in BC failed to pass the government's arbitrary 60% threshold, that was a direct consequence of the very complicated system the government's "consultations" had produced. Had we been offered the system the federal Liberals proposed during the election -- the system that just elected the new mayor of London -- I'm confident BC would now be the example we apparently need to prove that electoral change can improve democracy.

(By the way, that method produced our first Social Credit governments in 1952 and 1953. And no, there was no referendum to either implement it, or to revert to FPTP for the next election.)

Sincerely,

Dilbit unicorns

Premier Rachel Notley has made headlines for the last few weeks, peddling pipelines.
Apparently they're the solution to not only Alberta's financial problems, but also to Canada's.
She's so invested in this proposition that she's now even arguing for Enbridge's Northern Gateway, the one she earlier rejected as undoable and the one which in any case cannot happen if the Prime Minister's vow to ban tanker traffic from BC's north coast is actualized.
Well, she's an Alberta politician and Alberta politics demand she make the case. I get that. And I have no problem with her view that it's the rest of us being parochial.
It's a case she makes in spite of the fact studies  have shown that Alberta would be better off relying less on fossil fuel revenues and more on a provincial sales tax.
Kind of like all the other provinces.
However, just because Albertans cannot see the world beyond their borders and perceived self-interest, doesn't mean the rest of us need to buy in, even if Notley is the last standing NDP premier and has, unlike any of her recent predecessors, started the difficult but essential job of turning her province towards reality.
Here's an interesting fact, brought to you directly from that notoriously socialist rag, the Globe and Mail: “Canada sent a record 3.2 million barrels a day of gross crude oil exports to the United States last year, up 10 per cent from 2014.”
What? Alberta has actually increased it's export of oil and is still in dire financial straits? That seems counter-intuitive.
The article does go on to say, “A lot of the discount for Western Canadian Select pricing has to do with [Canada’s] limited transportation options,” but then points out “...Canada generally produces heavy crude oil that is well matched to processing capacity in the U.S.” In other words, not every refinery is set up to process dilbit, and those in the US that can are increasing their consumption of Alberta's product. The article also goes on to note that the increased use of Canadian product in the US replaces other “heavy oil”, like that from Venezuela and Mexico.
Which of course means Venezuela and Mexico have heavy crude sailing the seas to find other buyers.
So when Rachel Notley and others like her make a case for pipelines to tidewater, what they're really asking us to believe is that the difference in price between what US refineries will pay for dilbit and what refiners in the rest of the world will pay (minus the considerable cost of shipping and handling, of course) would be the wellspring of Alberta's and Canada's economic future well being!
In other words, the dilbit sent through a maximum of three unusually expensive-to-build pipelines loaded on a couple of fleets of oil tankers cruising through some of the most difficult maritime conditions in the world and processed by the few refineries that can handle it is the key to our economic future.
That's an absurd proposition; you'll pardon me if I don't buy any of it.
And we haven't even begun to explore the environmental consequences of such a plan!

Letter to Rachel: Bill C-14

Dear Ms Blaney,

I'm quite confident you and I are on the same page on Bill C-14, but I thought you might like some of my thoughts anyway:
I'm convinced the bill, as presented, is unnecessarily bureaucratic, but I'm going to assume those bumps will prove to be sufficiently annoying they will eventually be ironed out.
However, there's really no excuse for ignoring all those people who, fearing that dementia will make them incompetent, clearly express a desire to have an assisted death at some future date when they can no longer request it.
That's just cruel, and doesn't protect anyone: if it should happen to me, I don't want to be forced to blow out my brains while I'm still able to hold the gun but before I'm fully demented.

Sincerely,

Dear Rob Fleming

Willem,
On Tuesday I joined 900 parents in a crowded Osoyoos school gym to demand that Christy Clark keep their town’s schools open.
They’re not alone. In towns all across BC, people are standing up to stop school closures.
But they need our help.
Sign the petition to stop these school closures.
The move to close schools doesn’t make sense with enrolment rising.
Right now more than thirty schools are at risk of being closed as a result of cuts and underfunding by the Christy Clark’s government.
This week I’m visiting communities across our province that are facing these school closures. I need your help to build this campaign and stop these school closures.
Please sign the petition to stop these school closures right now:
http://www.fightforkidsbc.ca
Thanks,
Rob
Rob Fleming
Spokesperson for Education
BC's New Democrats

Dear Rob,
As a retired public school teacher who watched colleagues lose their jobs and schools close as a result of Christy's most spectacular education budget slash, I'm sympathetic to this campaign.
Really, I am.
But that first slash was in 2002 and 2003 when she was merely the Education Minister and her animosity towards public education could possibly have been misinterpreted as something else.
However, now she's the Premier, has won two elections, and there's no longer any excuse. Anyone who couldn't see this coming has been willfully ignorant.
While I'm sympathetic, I note that Boundary-Similkameen elected BCLiberal MLA Linda Larson by a considerable margin (7%) and that Osoyoos is the constituency's most populous community.
So here's my message to the voters of Boundary-Similkameen:
Votes (and absentions!) have consequences, people: if you don't want what's on offer, me signing a petition isn't going to help.
Only you can do something about it.
Best of luck.
--Justus

5 Facebook posts from Costa Rica

Some Havelaar adventures in banking...

I'm a Credit Union kind of guy and, thankfully, so were my parents.
Which is a short way of saying that almost all my “banking” experiences, even those involving other people's money, have been positive, even exemplary.
That is best illustrated by a brief anecdote:
My mom did the finances, and when she died and my dad started to make a hash of his financial life, he and I agreed I should take over. So we went to his Credit Union and arranged for him to do his banking online. Which effectively meant I did his banking online and got cash from the machine as needed, very convenient for both of us.
After this had been going on for some time, and knowing there was a Power of Attorney on file and that some of his investments needed to be converted into cash, I dropped in to see one of the customer service people. During the course of our conversation I got too comfortable, and mentioned this arrangement with my dad, which I instantly realized broke all sorts of financial institution rules. Fully appreciating the situation, all she said was, “I can't actually hear that.”
And that's the very definition of personalized customer service!

In fact, the only off-putting Credit Union experience I can recall happened in a Caisse Populaire, Quebec's version of the Credit Union movement. We had an account in the Caisse in Beauport, because we were spending the year in Quebec City. We had arranged that our Credit Union would transfer money every month to our account at the Caisse, and we picked up the week's allowance every Thursday. So far, no problem. And then, one Thursday I had a cheque from my very part-time employer in Quebec to cash. Probably a rebate for expenses; I no longer remember. The lady at the guichet noticed that it was made out to “Justus Havelaar”, and that my full name wasn't that. How was she to know I was the cheque's “Justus Havelaar” and not an imposter?
I do believe Sandy lost her temper, that time. In French, of course, which is a splendid thing to witness: “And just how many Justus Havelaars have accounts at this caisse, Madame? Never mind in the whole of Quebec?”
We must have eventually convinced someone and cashed the cheque, and it seems funny now. But at the time we had four kids and no money, and really needed that infusion.

In the very late 70's, with only two very young offspring, I did a teacher's exchange to a school in Islington in London. We'd discovered that there was a branch of the Bank of Montreal just off Threadneedle Street in the City, so we arranged that our Credit Union would make a monthly deposit in a Bank of Montreal account in Campbell River, and that they would forward that money to London. What we didn't know was that banks in England – at least at that time – were nothing like those we were used to. For one thing, they were hardly ever open, and I was always working at the times they were, which meant that Sandy had to shlep two infants to Bank Street Station on several tube lines every time we had bank business. For another, they were set up to make it as difficult as possible for one to access one's own money.
And, as if to trump the peculiarities of the bank service, when we arrived the post office was on strike and electronic transfers had not yet been made available to British banks.
It took us months to get a handle on this. Fortunately, we had credit cards that saw us through the worst. And we finally convinced the Bank of Montreal to forward our money to a Barclay's close to where I worked. As long as I didn't take out too much money in any week (yes, there were limits that did not even try to correspond to the amount of money in the account!)  that proved viable.
That part of the London experience was memorable for all the wrong reasons, and we were extremely grateful, the last time we spent time in London, for the ubiquitous bank machines.

Although we never had any problems with the Canadian branches of the Bank of Montreal, our relationship nonetheless ended in protest of the Bank of Montreal Mastercard Loyalty card issued to an anti-abortion group.

We got involved in a minor way with the Royal Bank when one of our offspring, having achieved some financial difficulties, needed me to cosign a loan. That would be easier if I had an account, so I acquired both a savings account and an investment account. To be completely clear: the local staff I dealt with were never anything but pleasant and professional – sympathetic, even, when we were unravelling the relationship – but that relationship nonetheless ended badly a few years ago when the Royal Bank not only outsourced its IT department to contractors in India, but had the gall to have its Canadian IT staff train their Indian replacements before they were made redundant. 
The bank representative who responded to my letter by phoning to encourage me to keep my very modest portfolio where it was, claimed that all banks were doing the same, to which I was able to respond, “Maybe, but my Credit Union doesn't!”

My most recent Bank encounter just happened a couple of weeks ago in Costa Rica, where banking customs are obviously very different. From my record, written at the time:
We walked into town so I could go to the bank because I thought I wanted to change some US dollars into the local currency. That went like this:
The guard at the door asked why we were there. So I mentioned “American dollars” and “colones”. He wanted to see my passport. Then the money. Then he let me in by myself, leaving Sandy outside, and indicated I should take a number and wait in the only open chair. So I sat in the line of chairs. Two wickets were open, although there were tellers at five. Two people finished, then another… I eventually figured out that the number being served was on a screen. When I discovered this it read 35 and after another half an hour it had arrived at 40. I was 46. As people left, the empty chairs were filled, but several people, obviously much more experienced, arrived from outside as their number came up.
So I finally opted to leave, and went to the machine instead, where the service, while undoubtedly more expensive, was almost instantaneous.

Letter to the Globe, December 16

Sirs,
The headline on Lysiane Gagnon's column on the French elections (Dec 16, 2015) claims "a victory for moderation".
However, had the French used our electoral system, we'd now all be talking about the French extreme right winning a massive victory, taking advantage of their "win" to press forward with their xenophobic, anti-European-values platform.
But they don't share our ridiculous system, so instead the majority wins, and the French deliver a firm rejection of this party and those values.
Surely this implies some useful advice to Canadian voters!
Sincerely,