Baggies, Bottles, and Boxes

       We are pretty vocal these days about two plastic products that MUST GO! We  herald stores and countries for their decision to ban plastic bags and we faithfully bring our cloth grocery bags with us to the grocery store (and, if you’re like me, forget them in the car). Some of us carry stainless steel or glass water bottles. We campaign and sign petitions on FaceBook, tweet our disdain for mega companies sucking up our aquifers to sell us plastic bottles of a product that should be a human right. We make a good attempt to recycle even though we all wonder if our carefully sorted stuff doesn't end up in a landfill somewhere anyhow. These campaigns and practices are all worthy, a start in the right direction…BUT…

I’m quite sure I’m not the only person who has noticed, plastic packaging is on the rise. It’s everywhere - fruits and vegetables, baked goods, individual packets for lunches, vitamins, batteries, coffee pods, beer carriers, tools, toys - the list is endless. Heavens, just try to get some toys out of their moulded nightmarish packages! And under that poured on covering -  teeny weeny plastic high heeled shoes, purses, dresses, action figures, capes, tiny guns. If I didn’t have a scissors or a knife there are many items that would remain in their packages forever.

We aren’t going to get rid of plastic anytime soon. It’s a good product and has innumerable uses in industry, construction, electronics. Just have a look around your house or office, even your patio.  - it's pretty much everywhere! Packaging though, that's another thing. There are other ways to package things, or not package them in the first place.

We have made a start. Bottles and bags are a beginning. I’m thinking our easy acceptance (forced really, there’s no alternatives in many cases) of plastic packaging may be the next “not really necessary”  plastic use to address on social media and in the marketplace. If stores had to take back their plastic packaging I suspect we’d see less of it. There are some zero packaging stores now. We need more. The need for convenience, for consumer and/or distributor, can be overcome by conscience.

-30, and Dropping

I wrote this story well over 20 years ago, came across it while cleaning up (downsizing). It is a work of fiction but, having spent many years as a sheep rancher in our erratic northern Alberta climate, it is grounded in reality. Today we are experiencing our fourth less than -30C cold snap. It’s expected to jump to +4 tomorrow, only to drop back down the day after. 

-30, and Dropping

By ML Tipton

Shelly stood, splitting maul held high over her head, about to drop it on a stubborn piece of pine, when she heard a worried “maaa, maaa” coming from the sheep feeding area north of the barn. “My God,” she thought, “it can’t be, not now, it’s far too early! The lambs aren’t supposed to come for another month!” But again she heard the high pitched “maaa”, so distinctive from the deeper toned “baaa” of the older sheep. After years of lambing she was in tune with that tiny plaintive sound. Like the cry of a baby, it pierced her consciousness even while she slept. It was a lamb alright, a month early, -30, and dropping.

Shelly abandoned the wood pile and headed at a fast clip around the end of the barn. There he stood, mom nowhere in sight, crying for food, for comfort, for warmth. The moment she picked him up, however, mom showed herself, coming to claim and protect her baby. A speedy look around and she found the lamb’s twin, dead and frozen, in the hay nearby. Shelly quickly carried the live lamb to the barn with the ewe following, holding him near her hip, his hind end near the ewe’s nose so she could easily identify his smell. Leaving the ewe captive inside, she rushed the lamb to the house to inspect him more carefully and warm him up. But it was too late. His ears and both hind legs were frozen solid. A familiar sadness came over her. It was no use. She would have to let him die or shoot him. After choosing the second alternative, she went back to her wood splitting task. “At least someone can be warm in this Godawful weather,” she mused.

January had ushered in the heaviest snowfall on record, over 80cm, and now February was breaking records for extreme cold. The farm calendar said lambs were coming in mid March. “What happened,” she thought, “I don’t remember the ram ever getting out!” But tossing theories around did not alter the fact that the ewe had lambed, whether she was supposed to or not. Since the lambs appeared to be full term, an immediate adjustment to management needed to be made if the next lambs were to live. Shelly set to work trying to find panels to make 4’ X 4’ claiming pens for the ewes and their lambs. Finding only two Shelly thought, “Well, Roland will be home tomorrow. Maybe he can slap a few together.”

Shelly’s husband, Roland, worked off farm, canting at a sawmill in the bush. A camp job, he only came home on weekends. They’d hoped to avoid working out this year but unexpected breakdowns and repairs took a toll on their small earnings. The dollars just wouldn’t stretch the distance. When Roland returned to the farm from the bush he was tired and grumpy. He only wanted to rest, enjoy the warmth of the fire, watch TV. Coming home to catastrophes, unexpected work or unforeseen expenses quickly pushed him into a dark mood. The simplest statement could spark a futile argument.

The weekend passed with no new lambs coming. Roland found the time to make four more claiming pens. Shelly went to town for veterinary supplies. Tempers were short fused, the cold weather continued to sit heavily on the land, and Shelly and Roland hardly said good-bye when he headed back to the bush. Shelly checked the flock frequently. At night the ewes burrowed deep into the straw in the barn, their breath rising like smoke from a chimney in the frigid air. She moved the beam of her flashlight slowly through the flock but saw no sign of new life. The ewes’ eyes glowed green as they turned their heads towards the bobbing light, but they were no longer startled into motion by its nightly intrusion.

At dawn on the 12th day after the arrival of the first lambs, Shelly spied a shivering wet lamb standing in the midst of the ewes, its mother not apparent. Moving closer to the lamb her worst fears were realized - against the west barn wall were two dead lambs. “Triplets, what a terrible loss!” she thought. “But at least this one seems okay.” She wove her way through the sheep to the live lamb and its mother came instantly to his side. Armed with livestock marking spray, she quickly applied a big green stripe on the ewe’s back. Now to get the lamb warm, quick.

She submerged the lamb in warm water in the kitchen sink, towel dried him and lay him by the kitchen fire. His ears were frozen but his legs were good. She went back outside to put the green striped ewe in a pen, and when her baby was dry they were happily reunited. The remainder of the day was uneventful, but on her 10:00 pm rounds worry set in. Doing her usual check for hypothermia, she discovered that the new lamb’s mouth was cooler than it should be. Should she take it in? Echoes of the past rang in her ears, taking lambs in and out of the cold can cause problems, the temperature difference is stressful for them. Their moms sometimes rejected them. Still… “I’ll take it in,” she decided, popping the lamb outside the pen. But the lamb appeared strong, his mother called and he called back. “No,” she thought, “he’ll probably be okay,” and back in with mom he went. The next morning at 6:00 am Shelly moved cautiously through the dozing sheep to the lamb pens. The new lamb was a hidden deeply within the straw. “Good,” she thought, “what a smart mom to cover him like that.” But he was awfully still and when she climbed into the pen to check him out she found he was dead. A string of expletives exploded in her brain. “Damn, damn, damn!” Shelly muttered to herself. “Another one! When will this weather break? This is impossible! What am I to do?….Sleep out here?”

Two live, healthy lambs and one disaster later, Roland returned home for the weekend. On Sunday the sun finally began to eat away at the cold, the icy north winds at last subsided, and the thermometer registered a balmy -5. Both Roland’s and Shelly’s mood mellowed with the weather. Leaning against the fence, soaking up rays of delicious warmth, they shared the joy of the birth of healthy twins, casting aside the gloom of past weeks.  “Sure hope this was the last cold snap,” said Roland as they stood watching the lambs seek their mother’s milk supply. “I don’t think I could stand another one this winter, do you?”

To Shelly’s pleasure, the thermometer continued to hover 5 degrees above or below freezing. It was as if the full moon joined hands with the cold, taking it away as it waned. The lambs came more frequently now and losses were few. The earth and its inhabitants breathed a sigh of relief. Break-up was in the air, water dropped from the eaves, and, as always, winter at last gave way to spring.

Time for Change

I’ve come to realize that the “Me Too” movement is just the tip of the iceberg. “Me Too” speaks of sexual harassment, actual rape, unwanted touches, threats of consequences “if you don’t comply”, and inappropriate sexually tainted language. But I’m thinking if we included uncomfortable social situations in which women feel pressured to look the other way, pretend they don’t hear or understand innuendoes, quickly remove themselves before things get out of control… well there’d be an even louder cacophony of sound arising around the world. Then, lets just add those times in which men exercise “male privilege”, not just in the work place but in the home as well, those times when women are simply told to hold their tongues, when they are told their opinions are stupid, unwanted, un-needed. Those times when the cornered man, even though he may recognize that he’s in a weak position, simply “puts his foot down” and gets away with it. Well, it is time for an attitude change.

In thousands of little ways, women unknowingly perpetuate the privilege that men have become accustomed to expect. We love them. They work hard. We make our homes a sanctuary from the world, a cozy, comfy place to be at ease. We do everything we can to make their lives a little less difficult. We willingly become their unpaid servants showering them with countless, largely unnoticed, entitlements.

This subservient role may be more prevalent in women of older generations. Economic and educational levels may also effect male/female relationships. Nevertheless our society is patriarchal. Our social organization is marked by the supremacy of the father in the family, the legal dependence of wives and children, and the reckoning of descent and inheritance in the male line. It is controlled by men who have a disproportionately large share of power. Nearly every society on earth falls under this category! For centuries women have struggled to get an equal piece of the pie, but those in power, especially when threatened, cling to their status like an apple to its peel.

Most of the women I know would be happy if their contributions, along with those of men, were simply recognized and respected. They’d be happy if their ideas and observations were considered to be as valuable as those of men, providing a different, not worthless, perspective. It would be genuinely wonderful if our society did not equate worth with the ability to earn money, leaving women who do not earn (and for the most part cannot earn equally) in a subservient role. Can we not have respect for one another, respect our differences, our accomplishments, our strengths? Is there any reason, beyond the application of power, protection of status, for men to immediately disparage ideas, thoughts, or plans that are brought forward by a woman?  And, if a woman happens to have more to contribute, shouldn’t she be able to do so, without being told she is acting like a man? 

In many respects, men do not have it all that good. “Me Too” has almost become a witch hunt. They are being called on the carpet for words, not just actions, some of which may simply be flirtations, ground testing a woman's interest. And it needs to be said, women can make it very difficult for men to ignore their sexual attributes. I can't help but notice the half bare breasts and plunging “necklines” of some of the Hollywood women crying “Me Too”. Nevertheless, the “behavioral norms” of the past are no longer acceptable. It is definitely time for change.

Winter Wonderland