Talent

Seems to me that kids today possess more talent than my friends and I had at the same age. Or maybe because they've been raised in a world with social media, they're less shy about sharing that talent? Whatever the case, I delight in their creative efforts, and hope to share more of their talent here in my moodlings.

The young guitarist featured in the video below teamed up with a vocalist from Scotland, and what you see is a pretty cool international collaboration that features some lovely images of Edmonton, too. Well done, Don and Scott. Love those harmonies!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DI12MmJPUj4

Laudato Si Sunday reflection: Realities vs. ideas

Today's reflection is brought to you by
Sirach 35: 15-17, 20-22, 26.

You,
O God,
are the just one.

We are all your favourites.

But your ears are especially attuned
to those who have been wronged,
and you hear the humble
ahead of the proud.

Perhaps you are hearing your voiceless creatures,
those who are losing their place in your creation
because of human beings and our greed.

Help us,
help us,
help us,
in your kindness,
to do what is just.

Show us how to live more lightly,
to let your creation evolve as you would have it,
and to use technology only as necessary.

Your mercy is as welcome in time of distress
as clouds of rain in time of drought.

Let us trust in your goodness,
rely on your mercy,
and become your justice
through wise choices in our lives.

Make our actions speak louder than our misplaced technologies,
our realities more important than ideas.

+Amen.

* * * * * * *

Over the past two months, these Laudato Si Sunday Reflections fell by the wayside so that I could participate in some climate action of my own. I took a refresher course on waste reduction, helped to plan a Climate Vigil, attended two School Strikes for Climate, and worked for my local Green party candidate. It was an amazing and uplifting two months, for the most part, but there's still so much to do!

When I took this picture,
I didn't realize that Greta
and her Youth for Climate Justice entourage
were just behind me and to the right...

And all the while, I've been walking, figuratively and literally, with Greta Thunberg, the young Swedish activist who is doing her utmost to wake the world to the climate emergency that we find ourselves in. People don't like the truth she is telling, it seems, but the part of our common home that is California is burning yet again, there have been frightening reports of other ecospheric issues, and our lifestyles simply must change to keep our climate from warming more than 1.5 degrees. The polarization in our discourse around how to actually do that is a sign that people everywhere are afraid, for one reason or another. These days, I'm puzzling over how we can move through the fear toward actual solutions.

This week's section of Pope Francis' letter to the world, Laudato Si: On Care for Our Common Home, includes "The Globalization of the Technocratic Paradigm," paragraphs 106-110 . It looks at technology's role in our present ecological crises (the paragraphs can be accessed by clicking here and scrolling down).

For a long while, it seems, we have been dreaming that technology will be the solution to all our problems. We heard that dream again in our Alberta Budget this week when the Finance Minister talked a lot about using "clean technology" to green our petroleum industry -- rather than reduce our use of the fossil fuels that are warming our planet. Clearly, the government has bought into the idea of technology as saviour.

But Paragraph 106 notes that technology depends upon human beings who, "using logical and rational procedures, progressively and rationally gain control" over our surroundings through "a technique of possession, mastery and domination." More and more of us -- especially our young people -- are finally realizing that that there is no "infinite and unlimited growth" when it comes to the earth's energy and resources and their renewal. Mastery and domination are a dead end if we end up overheating the only planet we have.

While it is true that we have come a long way in knowing how to build and create and impose order with our machines and computers and factories, we have not been able to foresee the ways these technological advances have endangered our existence. Technology is just one kind of knowledge, and "technological products are not neutral, for they create a framework which ends up conditioning lifestyles and shaping social possibilities along the lines dictated by the interests of certain powerful groups" (paragraph 107).

And who are those powerful groups? Can we trust them to improve life for all species on our earth? Not so far. When scientists began to notice that our climate was heating up, big corporations produced 'experts' to undermine the truth their own researchers had uncovered. Money and power are more important to them than facing up to reality, so they manipulate knowledge to confuse the public with arguments that climate change is a hoax, wasting precious time we could have been using to find and develop alternate energy sources.

For many of us, knowledge and technology have become so integrated into our daily existence and so indispensable in our daily tasks that "It has become counter-cultural to choose a lifestyle whose goals are even partly independent of technology, of its costs and its power to globalize and make us all the same" (paragraph 108). But where technology and its particular kind of knowledge are destroying habitats and species, we need to stand against it, to be counter-cultural.

But it's never easy to buck a trend, is it? This week, I succumbed and joined the cell phone universe -- but only for texting my kids and making the calls I would have made on our now non-existent landline. I refuse to live through cellphone technology because I tend to agree with the last line of paragraph 108 -- so many of the motives behind our technologies are about power, and "Our capacity to make decisions, a more genuine freedom and the space for each one's alternative creativity are diminished" by such power.

And what is this power? Jesus knew. He talks about it in Matthew 6: 24 when he says, "You cannot serve both God and wealth." Our society is hung up on wealth and materialism, and the economy has become the bottom line to the point that we've lost the big picture -- that we were put on this earth to look after one another. As the Pope and friends say at the end of paragraph 109, "We fail to see the deepest roots of our present failures, which have to do with the direction, goals, meaning, and social implications of technological and economic growth."

Paragraph 110 says it straight out: "technology makes it difficult to see the larger picture." And that larger picture is life as we know it, "appreciation for the whole, for the relationship between things, and for the broader horizon" that shows us our place in the vast goodness of all that God has made. Technology is not "the principal key to the meaning of existence" but by thinking that it is, we have come to a place of "environmental degradation, anxiety, a loss of the purpose of life and community living."

Electronic waste at the Edmonton Waste Management Centre

So how do we put technology in its place? Perhaps we can begin by turning it off more often, and by living with less of it. Here I'm talking about the devices that surround us -- phones, computers, TVs, things that distract us or divide us from our families and communities. We can also give more thought to the use of all the machines/technical components in our lives.

Are our time- or labour-saving devices really saving us time or labour? Or have we been brainwashed into believing that they make a difference in our lives as they guzzle gas or energy and create unnecessary pollution? (We often forget the pollution it takes to manufacture these items... never mind the waste when they stop working.) Do we really need the latest techie gadget or gizmo, or is it one of those market items that will end up in our landfills sooner than later? How many single purpose appliances are filling our cupboards and using unnecessary resources? Is that whisk-o-matic doohickey for frothing my hot chocolate really necessary? No matter what our sense of entitlement or our marketers tell us, we need to consider the realities of our lives and whether our knowledge or technology will really work for us -- or against our earth.

"Realities are more important than ideas," say Pope Francis and friends in the last line of paragraph 110 -- and they are 110% right.

A glass half-full and getting fuller

October 21-27 is an important week!

Last week, I finished a Master Composter/Recycler "refresher course." It was well worth the time and effort to attend ten classes, two of them full days at the Edmonton Waste Management Centre and Compost's Cool.

When I became an MCR in 2007, things were quite different. Edmonton's Waste Management was considered world class, with an amazing system that saw Edmontonians using blue bags for recycling, Eco Stations for Household Hazardous Wastes and bulky items, and our garbage cans for almost everything else. The City had a pretty incredible Composting Facility that was able to separate the organic and inorganic materials in our garbage without us worrying about it.

But in 2017, the City discovered that the Composting Facility had structural issues related to the high temperatures and moisture that are byproducts of composting. The roof of the structure was found to be unsafe a few years earlier than expected, and the facility had to be closed for the safety of its workers. Since then, most of our garbage has gone directly to our landfill, which is 80 km away near Riley, AB. That's a long way to truck garbage, and it's giving us a good opportunity to take a hard look at our waste.

Is the glass half empty, or half full? Depends on how you look at it. I like to think that the prohibitive cost of replacing the metal roof of a building the size of almost two and a half CFL football fields is giving Edmontonians a chance to consider the true costs of our garbage and how we can create less waste from the get go. We've done well in the past, but we can do so much better in the future!

On our MCR class tour of the Edmonton Waste Management Centre, we came across the graphic to the right. It tells us that most of Edmonton's waste comes from our need to have tidy yards. The fact is that sending grass clippings and yard waste to the dump is a huge contributor to our city's overall waste budget. If we could "leave it on our lawn" as the "Go Bagless" waste reduction promotions suggest, we save our environment a lot of wear and tear in terms of fossil fuel emissions required to haul all that good, compostable green stuff out to the EWMC, where it's put on long-haul trucks and sent to Riley for the time being. We'd also save on our own personal wear and tear if we stopped dragging our grasses to the garbage! See my old moodling about the other benefits of going bagless!

Misplaced recyclables and Eco Station items account for another almost 20% of our waste. If you're not sure what to do with an item, try the Waste Wise app (click here to find it.) It has plenty of helpful information, and a fun little game for the kids in us all.

All that's left is the almost 45% of garbage and food scraps. Within the next year, the City will be asking residents to adopt a new way of separating their garbage, effectively cutting it in half. We'll still have blue bags for recyclable items, but a black bin will take the 22% that is un-recyclable and non-reusable items, and a green bin will take the other 22% that are compostables, and both will be picked up by mechanical means so that our waste collectors won't get so worn out (the average collector lifts between 14 and 22 metric tonnes of waste per day, imagine!)

Besides protecting our collectors by separating our garbage at the source, we are all challenged to waste less and compost more. And that's important because it means that maybe we aren't buying excess stuff that only goes to waste, and we are returning to the earth the food scrap nutrients from natural resources that we can't eat, so that more good things can be grown.

I have a neighbour who loves to complain. His complaint is that he's going to have to separate his own waste and work harder for the same waste disposal service provided by the city. What he's missing is that we were spoiled by the City for a long time. His parents and grandparents had to do a lot more to take care of their own waste than we do now. By separating his own waste, he'll only be doing his natural part to contribute to a much better, less wasteful, waste service.

Soon we won't be sending as many reusable resources to the landfill or spending as much energy as it took the old Composting Facility to compost our waste. We won't be sending so many garbage trailers to Riley, and spending so much fossil fuel. And hopefully, as Edmontonians learn more about the new system, we'll find ways to reduce our waste overall. I'm excited by the idea that I won't have to throw out so many plastic garbage bags that take thousands of years to break down (I can put garbage directly in the bins without plastic bags!) And did you know that 1 in every 3 residences is already composting their own kitchen scraps and yard waste in one way or another? We're becoming more earth-friendly (and soil-friendly) all the time!

That, to me, is a glass-half-full-and-getting-fuller approach to life.

What Edmonton's new residential garbage set out will look like:
A black bin (for garbage), a green bin (and cute little kitchen compost bucket for compostables),
compostable brown paper bags for yard waste, and a good ol' blue bag for recycling.
Household hazardous waste (think paint, batteries, vehicle fluids and chemical cleaners),
electronics, and bulky items will continue to be accepted at Eco Stations.

Ralph

When you become friends with an 88-year-old neighbour, it's probably wise to tell your heart that the friendship won't last as long as you'd like.

My dear friend, Ralph, died recently, and my heart is broken. We became friends in September six years ago, and I am very grateful for those six years. I continue to be grateful for his wife, Lidia, who is struggling with widowhood after 65 years of marriage.

Ralph's actual name was Raffaele, so much more poetic than I realized in all the time I knew him. And what a delight he was to me. The day that we first met under his plum trees, I thought him to be a bit gruff and unsmiling, but that first impression was incorrect. Within minutes, he had invited me into his home for coffee and Italian cookies, and we gardeners became fast friends, sharing produce and swapping garden stories. Lidia taught me how to make minestrone with squash blossoms, and makes me laugh when she says, "I speak English like minestrone!" All mixed-up, in otherwords. I fell in love with these two neighbours, no question!

It wasn't long before I kept an eye out for them every time I walked the dog past their house, and I would stop to say hello if Ralph was in his garden or greenhouse. I didn't really see him and Lidia very much over the winters. It's only been the last two years or so that I've made a point to go and visit them more frequently, including through the cold, dark, non-gardening seasons.

This year, I've tried to visit at least once a week, mainly because if I didn't, Ralph would come looking for me to be sure that I was okay. During planting time this past spring, I missed a week or two and was surprised when I arrived home from running some errands to find him standing in the middle of my backyard, saying, "It's been a longa time since you came over."

That's when I knew that I wasn't the nuisance neighbour who showed up and drank his coffee in the mornings, but a beloved friend who was missed if she didn't turn up on a regular basis. It made my day! But I was also very aware that it was a major effort for him to come looking for me, so I started letting him and Lidia know about my schedule and when to expect my next visit. I didn't want to be the reason for him to have any sort of accident, vehicular or otherwise.

One morning in August, on my way past his garden with the dog, I noticed him sitting rather listlessly on his back patio, and when I climbed the steps to say hello, he barely cracked a smile. Uh-oh. He mentioned that he was having pain in his left abdominal area, and he winced a few times as I sat with him and he told me about the tests he'd gone for.

The following week, when I came to the door, Lidia answered. I asked how she was, and she said, "Bad." We had a whispered conversation right there about liver cancer and how radiation or chemo were out of the question for a 94-year-old man. But Ralph was in fairly good spirits -- the doctor had given him some painkillers, and he was only taking them when it hurt too much. He was feeling okay, he said. Lidia complained that he wasn't eating her cooking, but he waved her off, saying he wasn't hungry, so I ate lunch with them that day to take some of Lidia's attention off his lack of appetite.

For the past few weeks, I was surprised each time I visited by how much Ralph had declined. The man who bragged about partying at his grandson's wedding until 1 a.m. was fading away. He had always impressed me with his robustness for a man in his nineties, but now his lack of appetite was clearly taking its toll. My last visit with him, he sat slumped in his kitchen chair, and he looked very pale. It was the day of his brother-in-law's funeral, and he wasn't feeling up to going. So we sat and visited and drank Lidia's espresso, but Ralph didn't have much to say, other than to tell me that he'd finally met his first great grandchild, named for him.

I was chatting with a visiting nephew (Ralph and Lidia often had visitors) when Ralph announced that he wasn't feeling well. Lidia and I watched him closely and did what we could to make him more comfortable. She kept insisting that he drink some orange juice, but I suggested that if he wasn't feeling good, something acidic might not be the best idea. She plopped a cool cloth on his forehead, but looked like she was going to teeter over herself, so I encouraged her to sit down, and took the cloth to wipe his dear old face.

Ralph's colour returned, and I laid the cloth over his forehead, kissed his cheek and told him that I had to catch a bus to our local Climate Strike, but that I'd see him again soon. That evening, Lee and I stopped by with some gingerale for him, but he was already in bed, so we had a little visit with Lidia, her son and his wife.


Monday morning when I returned from walking the dog, there was a message on my answering machine. Ralph's son called to let me know that he had died on Sunday afternoon. I had a little cry, then walked over to see Lidia, and we cried all over again. And I imagine we will for a while.

I miss my neighbour -- his quiet and gentle way, the way a smile would slide across his face when I teased him about being a magic gardener, his laugh when I told him that his lavatera plant was a tree compared to mine.

Thank you, Ralph, for six years of friendship, gardening companionship, and generous hospitality. Thank you for the tomato and squash plants and seeds you shared with me. Thank you for all our little garden visits. I would have enjoyed more time with you, but I am grateful for the precious memories you've left me.

We'll meet again in God's garden, I'm sure.