Well, I suppose it is more convenient.

I got a mail key today.

Our mail gets delivered to the post office, not to individual houses. When I moved here, they were all out of mail keys, so I would just ask for my mail at the front desk. I got to really liking it. Sure, I had to stand in line and wait a little, as plenty of other people would do the same thing. It’s usually pretty relaxed and social, and I liked running into people, or bantering with the postmen. It made for a nice break in the day.

Today, there were signs posted at the registers. Effective next Monday, we can’t ask for our mail at the front desk. We have to use our keys.

I apologized, said, I don’t have my key, I’ve never had a key. I thanked the clerk for getting my mail for me, and as he was setting me up with a new key, acknowledged that it must be an awful lot of extra work running and fetching mail. In typical fashion, as we were chatting, he assured me they didn’t mind at all, and would be happy to keep doing it, except the rule-makers found they were spending too much time at it. He showed me my new box and gave me my keys, and said he’d miss seeing me in the office.

Disappointed as I am by the policy, I left smiling. I mostly do, after getting my mail. We have some of the kindest and friendliest postal clerks I’ve ever known. If I’d had a key all along, I would have missed out.

I think I will make certain to mail all of my letters at the front desk.

 

Food in the news

Nova Scotians have a hard time affording healthy foods. 120 000 people missing out is a lot, in a province of under a million. For myself, I do all right. I spend probably close to $150 per month. I do eat meat, I do make a habit of choosing unprocessed and inexpensive things, but I don’t scrimp. I’m uncomfortably aware that even my graduate student stipend leaves me with more grocery money than many have.

I ran out of flour on Sunday. I need to buy milk too. 10kg of flour and 2L of milk will cost me almost twenty dollars. Last year, I would have paid half that. The last bag of flour I bought, last summer, cost me six bucks, because it was on sale, down from $8. Milk has gone up too.

Accessibility to grocery stores is another underreported issue. What do you do when you have no car, limited mobility, and the sidewalks outside are covered in ice and snow? Don’t forget that bus fare adds the price of a loaf of bread, or five or ten pounds of potatoes, to the cost of groceries. And, not all transit is accessible, either. I’m not advocating slapping a new grocery store down on every other block, but it’s worth pointing out that the cost of travel or convenience is another barrier to affording groceries. It’s hard to buy in bulk when you can’t haul it home.

Globally, the food crisis is so much worse my mind just overloads and shuts down. I have a hard enough time grasping 120 000 - and most of those 120 000 aren’t actually going hungry. The latest statistic, 100 million people who are hungry now (but weren’t six months ago), is just incomprehensible. How about this? “It’s going to take human life.”

I honestly don’t know what to do.

 

Bothered by the food supply

I’ve been thinking a lot about speculation lately. I’ve had recent opportunity to learn a little about the mining industry, which has had me learning about economics. Interesting stuff. I’ve heard several times that the recent increase in food prices is linked to an increase in commodities. So, the more oil and metals get traded, the more people get excited about trading corn and rice, and the price goes up.

I’m not comfortable with it. That’s not fair trade. It’s a free market, sure, and go ahead and make money where it doesn’t hurt anyone - but when people can’t afford to buy locally-produced staples anymore, something has gone wrong.

Greenpa’s got a good roundup of recent articles, which turned me from feeling vaguely uncomfortable to downright bothered by food speculation. He makes a good point: We don’t allow the same thing with water. Why food staples?

In local news, the price of flour has nearly doubled to around $14 per 10kg bag. I can’t find my favourite Red Fife wheat flour at all. Milk went up a couple of months ago to $7.11 per 4L jug. I haven’t felt the pinch yet, in part because the end of term has brought me extra tutoring money, but I’m uneasy.

What I can do: I will pray. I will make sure that the money I give this month goes to fighting hunger. I will talk to friends and see if anyone has any good ideas, and I will write to my MP. I’ll continue to make an effort to eat locally-grown foods, and get involved in our brand-new community garden. I’m very bothered by people starving because we’ve priced them out of the market. Me growing a few tomatoes isn’t going to change it, but if I don’t make an effort to live sustainably myself, I’m a bigger part of the problem.

I’m a little scared, but I’ve got to try.

 

Homemade laundry soap

This is one of the easiest things to make - easier than no-bake cookies. It saves money. It reduces packaging. It’s not made from petroleum by-products. I’m no multitasker, and I made some last night, on my hour-long dinner break, between heating up leftovers and doing the dishes and taking out the recycling. It’s that quick and easy.

This is my method. All measurements are so approximate that if your dog or four-year-old child decides to “help” when you aren’t looking, the soap will probably still turn out.

Ingredients:

• 1/3 to 1/2 bar of soap (say 40g or so)
• 1/2 cup borax
• 1/2 cup washing soda

Look for borax and washing soda in the laundry aisle of large stores. Sobeys is the only place I’ve found that carries washing soda locally. Use any soap you like. My latest batch used mango soap from Ten Thousand Villages. Decadent, yes, but I got a lot of soap last Christmas, and thought I might as well enjoy it.

Instructions

Put a pot of water on to simmer (amount: 1.5-2L). Grate the soap into it, and stir occasionally over low heat until the soap has melted. Remove from heat. Stir in the soda and borax. Dump into the container that will hold your soap, making sure it’s cool enough to touch. (This is because I am concerned about plastics leaching when filled with hot things.)

That’s all. The soap will turn into a gel as it cools. The less time it is heated, and the more water you add, the softer the gel. A softer gel dissolves more easily in washing machines. I think this dissolution is the principal advantage of a gel soap over simply adding soap flakes, borax, and washing soda to the laundry.

1/2 cup is plenty for a normal sized load in a top-loading washer. I add extra borax if it’s a load of whites, because this soap won’t scrub whites as well as commercial detergents. It does fine on coloured loads, though, and you can always keep a box of regular detergent for whites that need freshening.

A batch this size does me about 10 loads, or two to three months. Scale it up freely if you do a lot of laundry. Two 90g bars of Ivory, and a large (10 oz) mugful each of borax and washing soda, dissolved in 7-8L of water, is a good large-scale batch.

 

A new baby sweater

Pattern: Trellis from Knitty

Yarn: Bernat Lana (discontinued), 1.5 skeins

Specs: 6 month size, a few minor modifications (changed cable directions to mirror left and right, made a plain rather than shawl collar). Buttons are these nice wrangly little numbers I picked up the other day. I like the stars at their centre.

I’m quite pleased with how this sweater turned out. I am hoping it is useful to its new owner, who is still too small for it yet. I think this is the first baby sweater I have ever made - I tried this pattern once before, but I didn’t finish it - and I got a kick out of how fast baby sweaters are to knit up, compared to full-grown human sweaters. I did all the knitting in a weekend.

The finishing took me a long time, because I wanted to do a good job and my finishing skills are not very advanced. I learned some good seaming techniques and took my time, and I’m pleased with the results. Patience is definitely a good tool - if you spend many hours knitting pieces of a garment, it’s worthwhile to invest several more hours in learning how to assemble the resulting pieces in a manner that is structurally sound and neat. I will not confess how long it has taken me to learn this.

 

Earth Hour results

Earth Hour resulted in modest success in Nova Scotia. I am pleased. I could only see one neighbour from my window, and wasn’t sure how many people were observing it around here.

It was nice. I turned off everything except my answering machine, because I would have lost the saved messages if I unplugged it. It was very quiet, and dark, but I didn’t mind. I can’t say I learned a lot, or that it’s encouraging me to change my power consumption habits, but I guess I like the idea of becoming more aware of power usage along with people around the world.

My eyes don’t focus too well in low light, though. I need more than a handful of tea lights to read or knit by comfortably…

 

Earth Hour

I’ll be turning out the lights tomorrow night after all. Goodness knows we had enough power outages last spring that I learned to spend time without, anyhow.

When I first heard about the event, I didn’t think I’d bother with it. I’m not very faddish; I don’t like doing things on a clock; and my personal energy reduction for that hour makes precious difference in the end. I suppose it was seeing that my parents intended to be involved that caused me to re-think matters. I can imagine them and my siblings getting excited and involved in thinking about environmental impact, and that mental picture motivated me to reconsider.

Really, I’m not that green. I try in all the easy ways: I compost, use cotton grocery bags almost exclusively, use CFLs when appropriate, eat as many locally sourced foods as I can, and so forth. I consider this a decent start. On the other hand, I’m considering buying a car within the next two years, and moving into a larger, brighter, less-insulated apartment. I’ve let the thermostat creep up to 20 degrees a lot lately. I use conventional electricity, which, like most of Nova Scotia’s power, probably comes from coal, and heat is often from oil.

I have been wanting to learn about my reliance on electricity, in part to determine what I actually need, versus what I have habituated myself to. In the end, perhaps that’s the best reason I have for participating in Earth Hour. After all, during the last prolonged power outage, I confess I walked to the nearest still-lit pub, and sat under electric lights with a couple of pints of Guinness.

 

I’ve been quiet, because I stopped trusting my voice and started feeling like I hadn’t got anything worth saying, or didn’t know how to say it. Of course, the more I feel this way, the harder it is to say anything at all - but I want to say things, to record the things that are bringing me peace or joy or neat ideas, and be able to share it with others.

When I go for a walk, I am very often thankful that I get to live in such a peaceful and beautiful place, and I want to enjoy it for all it is worth.  Below is a picture I snapped on Saturday when I was out for a walk. I walked along the railroad tracks until the rain came, and then turned around and went home along this road until it ended. It was lovely weather, very warm (12 degrees), and mist and fog were moving about.

I have this picture set as my computer’s desktop background. Seeing it makes me stop and relax just a little bit, and know that no matter how hairy things get, this spot is close by and I can get to it again anytime I need to.

 

Winter walk

The other night was brilliantly snowy. When it died down, I went for a walk along some nearby trails. The wind somehow never seems to penetrate much to ground level there. Everything around me was quite still - but not quiet. Above was the sound of wind in tall trees, and loud creaking of branches.

The many shades of light upon snow meant I didn’t miss the lack of fall’s colour at all; nevertheless, there were reminders.

The creek is still alive and mostly unfrozen, though ice is creeping over. It’s less obtrusive than usual, due to the high snow all around.

The snow is knee-deep, and for the most part, the only path was a light one formed by a skier, so I got to be one of the first to break a path and see the trails after the snow. I stopped to look at many things, and took an immoderate number of pictures (more are posted on Flickr).

My most fun discovery was that if I ran really fast, I didn’t sink as far down into the snow as if I just walked. So I sprinted a good way, and jogged, and then ran really fast some more after catching my breath a bit. I went even faster than I would run if there was no snow, because there was no danger of catching my foot on a rock, and only a very small danger of encountering another person. It was good fun. I felt like a little girl, in my kids’ snowboots, and long johns, and my skirt flying up to my knees as I ran along.

a quickr pickr post

 

Seasonal

February started with cold sunshine, but has already turned warm, rainy, and windy, with ice pellets. My apartment started flooding. It’s a pain, but it’s livable. I try not to store things on the floor anyway.

Imbolc, Candlemas, Groundhog Day, the Feast Day of St. Brigid: today is a day for weather and for candles. There was certainly plenty of weather today. The warm rain teases of a spring three months away; but, the days are getting longer, and a candle in the window helps welcome the darkness while it would stay.