Index

I'm blessed/cursed with a pretty good memory and I recall the time in 1974 when the Feds in Ottawa declared that Canada was heading down the metric trail. Having traveled in Europe and having seen the SI, alias metric, system at work, it all seemed like a good idea to me. So here is a lady on the telly this evening telling me that a Swiffer has a three-foot extension, and I find myself talling her that that would be about 91 centimeters to those of us in Canada. Of course the ad was being aired from a Canadian station and most of us continue to lead at least something of a dual life with a foot (a real pedal extremity, or at least a figurative version of said pedal extremity) in the worlds of U.S. and SI measures. In the end, it doesn't matter to those who are conversant with two or more systems, but there seems to be a real gap between the official story and what's actually happening. Thankfully, I don't spend a lot of time thinking about it and I certainly don't lose any sleep over it. I do, however, recall discussing with a room full of 12 year-olds the results of a misunderstanding where one NASA contractor was using SI units and another, working on the same project, was using U.S. measure without either outfit bothering to do any conversions, the result being that a space probe missed it's target and ran off into deep space.

The whole local branch of the family went to the multiplex yesterday for the last session of the annual Winter Wonderland family skate. I believe it was the first time that Jade had been on skates, and you could see right away that Theresa's time in Ontario was not for naught. Chris acquitted himself well but owned up to being grateful for the stroller. Joshua thought it was all fun, loved the lights and thought daddy did a fine job of driving. Erica convinced Jade that it just might be fun to strap on the old blades, and Theresa saw to it that she came away with a positive outlook. Jade was impressed that she didn't fall, not evenonce...or twice.

Kiribati lawyers short on wigs

I was awake earlier than I really wanted to be this morning, so I went to the living room, put on the overnight service on CBC, stretched out on the couch and promptly went to sleep. At some point, I recall hearing something that seemed quite surreal and it stuck with me, so much so that I went looking around the internet just now to see if it could really be so, and found this:

Since the broadcast was from Australian radio, I suspected that Kiribati had to be somewhere in the South Pacific, but the name didn’t strike a familiar chord, so I had to go find where it is. As it turns out Kiribati is the Gilbertese name for the Gilbert Islands, with which I had become passing familiar in my extensive childhood readings about the American amphibious landings of reconquest in the war against Japan between 1942 and 1945. The island of Tarawa was the site of a sharp and bloody struggle, I believe in 1943.

The gist of the item was that there were problems arising from a shortage of wigs in the islands, not those worn by socialites or cancer survivors, but those worn in court where the (I guess) British tradition of bewigged barristers persists. The picture of lawyers shuffling in and out of the court because they only have, say, two wigs for the three of them, is perfectly Pythonesque. Of course the thought of lawyers being so penurious as to be unable to afford a wig strikes me as being as absurd as the notion of wearing a wig in the first place. but that has to do with my own jaundiced views on the legal profession and the cultural context in which I find myself.

It’s also comforting to think that, as ocean levels rise and some of the islands disappear below the waves, there are concerns about the coiffures of the court.

Chris is back at work, Theresa continues her studies, and Jade and Joshua are racking up the frequent childseat miles between Sixth Avenue and Bush Stree. Here are a few pictures from the last day or so, not showing the "blueberries" that Jade found in our yard (they"re actually salaal berries and Oregon grapes). We did take a trip to the local blueberry farm earlier in the week, but neither of us thought to bring a camera. Jade loved being able to slide in under the canopy of the bushes and pick the low-hanging fruit while Erica and I picked higher up on the bushes. Jade, somewhat contrary to expectations, diligently placed almost all the berries she picked in the buckjet rather than in her mouth. We saw more of this in the vlunteer time that she spent with Erica at the local tghrift shop, and in her stint helping to make applesauce, where she grabbed the handle of the Victorio strainer and turned it around and around until all the fruit was strained, then stirred in the sweetening before sampling. She can be a very persistent little person. Joshua is walking everywhere, falling only occasionally and loves to hang out with his grandmother on the couch with either the Truck or the Farm book.

Of course, this is not an infrequent occurrence, but with Chris having been on holidays the last little while, we haven't been the constant baby sitters we have been over the last few months and will become again in another couple of weeks. Both kids were in good humor and we had a lot of fun playing in the yard with balls and wagons and looking at the chickens. Jade even got so bold as to accompany Erica into the chicken run to get the eggs before retreating to the upper part of the lot to play hide and seek, including a couple of instances where she told me where to hide before going off somewhere to count the required ten. Joshua was slimbing in and out of the folding chairs in the shade zone of the lawn when he wasn't crawling bare-kneed across the cement of the driveway. He also has started to navigate on two feet between some of his favorite locales in the living area. Jade requested that we pull out the train set which had disappeared into the office. It was at that point that Chris showed up, having managed to install a new toilet in the upstairs bathroom while Theresa beavered away making the basement a more habitable and welcoming place to be. Joshua is staring at a little container of sunflower seeds, a new experience that he found much to his liking. We all had a great afternoon.

No-Knead Bread

While Erica has been off at a wedding in Kelowna, I've been left to my own devices. This means that I've spent time reworking the former strawberry patch into a new lettuce bed, all planted, and one of the major garden beds, planted mainly into cole crops as we wait for more clement weather. I also stayed up late the other night finishing some silly mystery novel, but still was up at 4:30 yesterday morning, which might explain the silliness of putting together a batch (one loaf) of this no-knead bread. We've been experimenting for years to try to get something that resembles the kind of chewy-crackling crust and big-bubble crumb that seems common in many Eruopean breads, and this recipe seems to be the real deal. I think it was Chris's freind Ryan who sent us the link (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=13Ah9ES2yTU) to a video article from the New York Times via YouTube with which we have had much success. So I let this sit for the better part of 24 hours and baked it this morning. For a guy whose record at baking is less than stellar, I'm feeling pretty smug right about now. The pictured result wasn't quite as tasty as the couronne that we had for a picnic along the Dordogne in 2000, or the quarter of a pain de campagne we bought just a couple of days later in the market in Thésée-les-Romains, but it's close enough to be dangerous. Of course, this all speaks volumes about what seems to be something of a family preoccupation with food...