Robert Paterson's Weblog

The Zombie Princess - Coming to your Kindle this fall

My daughter (34) loves Zombies. She is part of a huge crowd that shares her feelings.

My grand daughter (aged 4) loves Princesses. It seems that she too is part of  a huge crowd.

As I talked about this with my daughter a couple of months ago, a crazy idea for a book emerged.

What if there was a Zombie Princess? What if the story of Sleeping Beauty was utterly modernized?

This is a world where kissing the Princess is no easy matter. What caused her to be a Zombie? What terrible reason would cause a boy to kiss a zombie? An enthralling world has emerged for me around these questions. Castles with a past; Russian Oligarchs who ignore their son; Mystery Guardians; Mystery Seekers; A clash between the human spirit and the mind; Dreams that are real; Eternal Dogs and Horses; Swords and Glocks; Magic that could be real; Honour and Betrayal; Courage and Sacrifice; History and Today; Time as a window.

In spite of my work and other commitments I find myself 15,000 words into this now and hope by the end of the summer to have a short book finished. I just cannot stop. It is pouring out of me. A 3 part series is emerging from the story too.

Would you like to know more?

 

Canada House Prices - What next?

I have been saying for some time that Canada will have to adjust - but the housing market keeps going up. (Link to Paul Krugman)

This picture still makes me very nervous? And you?

The Crowd in Turkey Raise $108,000 in no time for ads - The Crowd can get the $

For the right issue, the people can raise the money now. I find this exciting - do you?

Related articles

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What an airport at Bromont might do for the Estrie?

In the new new economy, people can leave the big city and live rurally if they have a good internet connection. It helps to have a good air connection too. On PEI where I used to live, it took 15 minutes for people who lived near Chatlottetown to get the airport. The 6am flight to Montreal meant that you could be in Washington, New York or Toronto by 10am. You could hop to Halifax and be on the evening flight to Europe.

Now for the Estrie, Montreal YUL is close - an hour 30 minutes if there are no accidents on the 20. But an early morning flight means a 3am wake up. If you live in Sherbrooke you have another hour. 

Bromont airport can take a 737. It is 30 minutes from most of the Estrie. An hour clear from Sherborooke. What might be the appeal if say Porter had a daily morning and an evening flight to Toronto? I suspect that the flights would be full right now. And what would this mean for the Estrie? I think that more and more people would consider moving here from Montreal. In time there would be enough demand to offer a weekly  New York Flight on Mondays - maybe a weekly Icelandair flight on Fridays to Europe?

Alfie getting a Biome Booster at the Farm

Note the presence of lots of poo and the suspicious stains on his mouth!

The research is clear. Kids who are exposed to animals when young - poo and all - have better immune systems and few allergies.

When in doubt - more dirt!

Related articles

Our Biome - the next step in understanding our health

My place in Eternity - What my son's birthday means to me

Who are the "New Rurals?" - the smart folks who are leaving the city and moving to the country

This is Knowlton - where I live today.

150 years ago my great grandfather left the family farm and walked to Montreal - where the jobs and the opportunity were. He was early in the powerful trend from rural to urban. Many think that this trend still continues. In the developing world it does. BUT there is a trickle back now that might become as flood as the Job world dies. 

Are you going to be one of these new rurals? In this post you will find the profile. You may find yourself!

This is 30 seconds from the heart of downtown. 

We look at trend in the context of where I live - in Knowlton in the Eastern Townships in Quebec - we are an hour's drive from Montreal. 

The new rurals are not really a retirement group. Nor are they rural folk. They work and they come from the city. 

• 60% of the new rurals used to live in Suburban Montreal
• 92% lived in an urban setting for a significant part of their lives (19+ years)
• They are very well educated - 74% have a university degree
• 83% of the new rurals are 40 years old or older. 17% are young adults between 25 - 39 years of age
• 56% are retired or semi retired - 41% still work
• Among those who still work 68.3% are self employed
• 83% of the new rurals migrated to the country because of the attraction of rural life.
• Access to the web is another key issue

My great grandfather had to put up with a very poor quality of life when he first arrived in Montreal. His main goal was to find work and opportunity and that only existed in the city. 

But today, IF YOU HAVE THE RIGHT SKILLS, you can work anywhere and the opportunity depends on your network - that may mot be in your city but all over the world. For instance, my son who lives in Montreal is in Minneapolis this weekend  at a conference of his peers. His peers congregate online or at conferences. They do not live next door to him in Montreal. 90% of his peers do not live in Montreal. His work does not anchor him in the city. I think being 33 does - for now!

I live 30 seconds walk from the Marina on a street where the dog and the grandchildren can run around with no fear of being run over. 

Now you can make the quality of life the main issue.

For instance, I met a couple on the trail this week. They had just moved from Old Montreal. They told me that they had not had a proper night's sleep in the 5 years in their old place - it was so noisy. They had made the choice to have a better quality of life. Their dog, mine and another all met on the trail that day. For us it is often the dog and not the child that provides the entree to a new relationship. They are musicians. 

Most new rural migrants work for themselves. They don't commute to Montreal for work. Though they might go to town for fun.

Check us out. What have you to lose? Your life?

(This data comes from a research paper - Nouvel population dans La Quebec rural - Le cas de la municipalitie regionale de comte (MRC) de Brome- Missisquoi 20018 by Guamond, Lauri, Simard and Myriam)

Does big change ever happen from the bottom up? Why you will fail if you try there first

I received an email from a student today asking me to comment on the power of transparency and citizen engagement in the revisioning of Detroit. Many people today believe that this bottom up and fully open way is the only way to start a project now.

My response to her was that this is not how big change really starts. The masses are vital but they enter the game late in the war between the 2 systems. This is the time for transparency. It is their support that drives the Tipping Point. Here is the classic diagram used by Rogers in his book on Diffusion - the science behind The Tipping Point.

The bottom chart - the distribution chart - shows when the masses join. It is around the Tipping Point and not before. 

This is how major change starts. Not with the mass but with the Innovators and the Early adopters. It's all trial and error: for real change is a complex process where the final end state cannot be known. Only people who are comfortable with complexity can do this early work.

The barrier to the new is that the masses need the known. So it is no good asking for their opnion at the outset. They can only see what they know. All they can know is what is now

It's a Cynefin situation.

I think we can lay the population along this spectrum.

The Innovators are comfy with Chaos. This usually means a failure of the old system and a crisis. A crisis such as Detroit no longer works as a city. They act, sense and respond. They use an evolutionary process to discover the new from a hypothesis. This might be that we can grow food in the middle of the city. But the unknown is how to do this in practice. There are no mass of urban farmers yet who have all the rules.

The Early Adopters are comfy with Complexity. They probe sense and respond. Patterns appear and rules start to appear in retrospect. They see what works as an result.

Then come the  Early Majority are comfy with the Complicated. They dig deep and settle the rules when they are hard to understand. They start to make the complicated more simple. With a clear set of rules for what works, it is possible for the next layer to join in. This is when the Tipping Point takes place.

Then the Majority or the mass can play.

This is when you need transparency and mass engagement and not before. If you go too early all you will do is annoy the people who cannot deal with Chaos and Complexity - which is most people!

Isn't this just like evolution?

Here is the detail of what I see as a universal process. 

• You need a crisis - I have found that real change rarely happens until a person or a place gets to the bottom - vis addiction etc - Detroit is the leading urban contender for that in the US. The old system has to have a failure point. You don't get off the Titanic unless it is sinking!

• You need to stop looking out there for a saviour - The next part of this is that people have to give up hoping for "Them" to fix it or them - they have to see it as their own role or no one

• Most people cannot act - they are trapped by inertia and by their mindset or they are attached to the old system and cannot let go.

• Many people have their status and living embedded in the old and will attack the new - even it this means their own "death". We see this so clearly in media where the old guard will fight against the new. We see this in cities that will close down home gardens.

So even though Detroit is at THAT place - most people cannot participate at ground zero in making it a new one. Bottom up mass participation AT THE OUTSET is a fantasy - I can think of NO example of this taking place in history or in nature. We like to think that it does but as Rogers shows, that is just not how real change happens.

So what is the process that does work? Here we look to the process of evolution

• There is a crisis - It has to be clear that the old does not work anymore. This offers the space for the new to emerge. Think of a forest that had had a fire. If the old system is still vibrant, the best that can happen are a few experiments. If Detroit had been vibrant, there would be no space for gardens or tiny businesses. The costs would be too high. The old system would be too vigilant.

• Start small - A small group of people who are not trapped by inertia who can see ahead for a period of years and who can imagine what they have never seen - Think Columbus - Think Pasteur - try some small experiments. When and if they fail, they modify them - they keep on. 

• Experiment - Several of these start to work - we see for instance in Detroit that urban food systems are working - micro farms - using land and buildings that are derelict - micro businesses in derelict or abandoned buildings or in space that is next to being free

• These successes attract attention. In some cases bad attention where the authorities use old bye laws to stop this. In many cases good attention - here is the evolutionary part - others tell the story and others copy them. The meme starts to spread.

• NOW the next layer of people start to see what they could not see before and they might get involved. Not as founders but as members and users

• Now the official part of the city has to get aligned. This is where Detroit is now. All the old laws that govern the city often work against the new. They impose too high a cost on the tender new. The question now is will the new admin kill the baby?

• There will be a fight - Often the old forces still have more money and resources than the new. The desire to raise tax revenues might kill the new off. 

• This is where the larger group of people need I think to be engaged - now it is possible to show them the choice of the old or the new

Think of this process in the context of how America was founded.

• The masses did not get on the boat until 1880 when the place they went too had been built and the way there - though hard - had also been built

• The early explorers were nothing like the people who came in 1880 - they also came to a place that had yet to be built - many experiments were tried - most failed - Innovators and Early Adopters - America was still Chaotic and Complex

• The early towns and states were the expressions of the success of the early adopters - the probing and senseing

• They then had to break with the old to expand properly - the War of Independence - a democratic act - but recall that 1/3 of the people did not want this and there was in effect ethnic cleansing - the Empire Loyalists went to Canada - the old had to be beaten back

• Now the big expansion west began - they had been locked in the East before - the same process all over again - Explorers, pioneers and then wagons and then trains

• Then Civil war between the culture of the old and the culture of the new - The new never seems to win without a bloody fight. This happens late when the leaders of both sides have access to their own mass movement. 200 years of religious wars in Europe are an example. 

• With the war done - the new was on the front burner and the west was opened up and the state ethnically cleaned the native population in the way. In that case the old had no power. Now it was simple for the masses to come to America and the masses came - all 50 million of them between 1880 and 1914.

The same process works in all fields - look at medicine

• Until 1860 the big idea in medicine was that disease was spread by smells - the Miasma theory - made a kind of sense but was wrong and meant that as millions came off the land and moved to the city, as a result of the agricultural revolution in the early 1800's, they were mainly condemned to die of cholera and typhoid. Life expectancy in London was less than 25. But no one questioned this: even though the situation got worse - Just like today, when no one questions our own approach and the epidemic of chromic illness grows exponentially

• In the 1860's ONE doctor, John Snow proved that cholera was spread by something in water. Even though his proof was conclusive, and he was the Queen's doctor, the official theory held

• The London sewers were built to stop the smell after a crisis that affected the elite - the Thames stank so much that the MP's could not use the House of Commons

• But while the sewers were being built people like Pasteur were discovering germs

• In the meantime, the system persecuted doctors who suggested that infection was not caused by anything other than by smells - Dr Semmelweis etc - Ideas have immune systems - it takes great bravery to step outside the norm - the people who hold onto the old are not stupid they are trapped in a system and they will fight to the death to defend it

• Whet changed the system was that MOST people could now see for themselves that the new was better - THIS again is the time when the mass of the people count

• The sewers + Pasteur + Lister = success that all can see so all can now change the system - the old guard have to go along

 

Related articles

Rebuilding Detroit by tearing it down

Detroit Rock-Bottom City (Apethetic Destruction)

Our Biome - the next step in understanding our health

In the 18880's we discovered germs. We saw them as universally bad. Now we are starting to understand that we are in reality a huge ecosystem of bacteria. It may be that the health of this ecosystem is the most important aspect of our health. A healthy Biome = a healthy me.

This is where Paleo hits science. The aim is to eat what makes our gut healthy.

I follow this with Michael Pollans's NYT article that will tell you more.

Here is the lede: (Full Link Here)

"I can tell you the exact date that I began to think of myself in the first-person plural — as a superorganism, that is, rather than a plain old individual human being. It happened on March 7. That’s when I opened my e-mail to find a huge, processor-choking file of charts and raw data from a laboratory located at the BioFrontiers Instituteat the University of Colorado, Boulder. As part of a new citizen-science initiative called the American Gut project, the lab sequenced my microbiome — that is, the genes not of “me,” exactly, but of the several hundred microbial species with whom I share this body.

These bacteria, which number around 100 trillion, are living (and dying) right now on the surface of my skin, on my tongue and deep in the coils of my intestines, where the largest contingent of them will be found, a pound or two of microbes together forming a vast, largely uncharted interior wilderness that scientists are just beginning to map."

I end with a link to a short book that has the whole story up to now. This short book is very easy to read and is short. You will know a lot in an hour. 

Here is the blurb

"To paraphrase famed biologist Theodosius Dobzhansky, “nothing in nutrition and health makes sense except in the light of the gut microbiome.” In Honor Thy Symbionts, the lens of our evolutionary past is focused on modern issues of obesity, GMO foods, diabetes, the rise in C-section births, ecology of our gut microbes, our African microbial origins, government dietary recommendations, probiotics vs. prebiotics, food poisoning, and more.

This collection of 21 short essays is not organized as a single book – with a beginning and obvious end. But a collection of musings ranging from 600 to 2,000 words in length. Though a wide range of topics is covered, a microbial thread connects all of the essays. This decidedly Darwinian (evolutionary) perspective is a nod to the reality that ninety-percent of the cells in the human body are not even human, but microbial. This makes humans super organisms – however, more microbe than mammal. This biological truth is reframing the scientific and philosophical conversation around Who are we? The ultimate questions of health and disease in our modern world will hinge on the speed at which we discover and accept that we have always lived in a microbial world and much that ails us is in fact discordance with the once symbiotic relationship we coevolved with these tiniest forms of life.

Jeff Leach is the Founder of the Human Food Project."

Related articles

Humans: 10% Human and 90% Bacterial

Some of my best friends are germs

Say Hello to the 100 Trillion Bacteria That Make Up Your Microbiome - Michael Pollen

Microbes: The trillions of creatures governing your health

Say Hello To The 100 Trillion Bacteria That Make Up Your Microbiome

Medicine - the leading cause of death and injury in the US

I knew that the situation was bad but this? (link)

By using the following classifications to guesstimate the iatrogenic toll in the USA, Null et el reported: “The most stunning statistic, however, is that the total number of deaths caused by conventional medicine is an astounding 783,936 per year. It is now evident that the American medical system is the leading cause of death and injury in the US.” 

1. adverse reactions to incorrectly prescribed drugs 
2. adverse reactions to correctly prescribed drugs 
3. errors (wrong site, wrong procedure, wrong patient) during surgery 
4. medical error 
5. hospital-acquired infections 
6. bedsores 
7. malnutrition among hospitalized patients 
8. unnecessary medical procedures 
9. failure to properly diagnose 
10. misdiagnosis 
11. failure to correctly treat 

So not only does it not cure us from the effects of chronic illness but it is the source of nearly a million deaths a year.

Why I wrote my book - You Don't Need Medicine to Get Healthy

Related articles

Why doctors will not give you your patient file - same reasons as medieval church burned printers of the bible

Gut Biota Never Recover from Antibiotics: Damages Future Generations

Rita McNeil died of an infection she caught in hospital - Why & what to do

Dreamed of Jay last night - The last of the Silesian Bandersnatches

Do we see those we love after death? We do - In our dreams - last night I met Jay again in my dreams - it is a rare wonder but all the more important.

See you my dreams - my dear boy.

 

Here is his strange history - the last of his breed.

 
Some of you have asked me what kind of dog is Jay

He is a very rare breed - a Silesian Bandersnatch. Silesian Bandersnatches were dogs bred in Silesia to help Silesian Postmen ride their bikes from door to door without been bothered too much by the many guard dogs that Silesian Households used to have. So, as Dalmatians were carriage dogs, SB's are bike dogs.

They have to look fierce but be very nice - especially with children. After all, you don't want to be the postman who frightens the children.

SB's look very odd as puppies - they are all ears.

 
The large ears enable them to listen to the bike while keeping their eyes out for guard dogs or for children.

One of the reasons that SB's are very rare is that they tend to have odd ideas about mating.

 
This confusion can get very extreme - hence so few Silesian Bandersnatches today

 
Another reason that they are so rare now is that they can only eat human food and only on a bed with a human.

 

So I was very lucky to have a specimen of this very rare breed. In fact the last of the breed entirely.

 

Live in or near Knowlton? Love to Drum? This is for you

More here on Christian - Link

Here is a description in Wikipedia of Djembe

A djembe (/ˈdʒɛm.bɛ/ jem-be) (also spelled djembé, jembe, jenbe, djimbe, jimbe, or dyinbe^[1][2]) is a rope-tuned skin-covered goblet drum played with bare hands, originally from West Africa. According to the Bamana people in Mali, the name of the djembe comes from the saying "Anke djé, anke bé" which translates to "everyone gather together in peace" and defines the drum's purpose. In the Bambara language, "djé" is the verb for "gather" and "bé" translates as "peace".^[3]

The djembe has a body (or shell) carved of hardwood and a drumhead made of untreated (not limed) rawhide, most commonly made from goatskin. Excluding rings, djembes have an exterior diameter of 30–38 cm (12–15 in) and a height of 58–63 cm (23–25 in). The majority have a diameter in the 13 to 14 inch range. The weight of a djembe ranges from 5 kg to 13 kg (11–29 lb) and depends on size and shell material. A medium-size djembe carved from one of the traditional woods (including skin, rings, and rope) weighs around 9 kg (20 lb).

The djembe can produce a wide variety of sounds, making it one of the most versatile drums. The drum is very loud, allowing it to be heard clearly as a solo instrument over a large percussion ensemble. The Malinké people say that a skilled drummer is one who "can make the djembe talk", meaning that the player can tell an emotional story. (The djembe was never used by the Malinké as a signaling drum to send messages.)

Traditionally, the djembe is played only by men, as are the dunun that always accompany the djembe. Conversely, other percussion instruments that are commonly played as part of an ensemble, such as the shekere (a hollowed-out gourd covered with a net of beads), karignan (a tubular bell), and kese kese (a woven basket rattle), are usually played by women. Even today, it is rare to see women play djembe or dunun in West Africa and African women express astonishment when they do see a female djembe player.^[4]

How to live with no money - in community

Spain is one of the worst hit countries. But in this village life just keeps getting better and better. A lesson for all of us?

 

The good news is that there is a huge drop in kids eating sugar - what about your family?

I saw this today and was encouraged - maybe like smoking 30 years ago, the change is taking place and it is happening in the right place - the home.

Link here.

"That's particularly true for kids. NPD reported these shifts in behavior for children younger than 18, last year vs. in 1998:

• Drank fruit juices 16 fewer times than in 1998.

• Ate cookies eight fewer times than they did 15 years ago.

• Ate ice cream seven fewer times than in 1998.

• Ate cake five fewer times than 15 years ago.

Not that some sweets aren't on the increase. Yogurt consumption, for example, is way up. Kids ate yogurt on 23 more occasions in 2012 than in 1998. And they ate fruit rolls four more times last year than they did 15 years ago.

But overall, children are reducing sweets consumption at a faster rate than grown-ups. "Parents are clearly controlling the amount of sweets their kids are eating," Balzer says.

Parents like Charlene Florian.

Before she had kids, her favorite treat was a Häagen-Dazs coffee ice cream cone. Florian hasn't just mostly cut out ice cream. Since her 8- and 9-year-old daughters were born, she has eliminated virtually all refined sugars from her diet and her family's. When her kids do eat sweets, it's usually things sweetened with honey or unrefined maple sugar.

Little wonder neither daughter has ever had a cavity: no refined sugar.

"I will never let it come in the house," says the skin care business owner who lives in Newport Beach, Calif. "If they decide to eat it when they're older, that's up to them. But they both accept that as long as they live at home, they won't have sweets."

She makes occasional exceptions — outside the house. And when she makes those special treat trips to Häagen-Dazs with the kids — and they get the cookies-and-cream ice cream — she forbids toppings.

As for those sweet treats that her kids bring home from birthday parties or on Halloween, "I'll eventually toss them in the trash, and they won't even notice."

 

Related articles

14,500 diabetes patients on PEI - so why is the Diabetes Association working against their interests?

Diabetes? What does your doctor tell you to do? What should you do

Kids are more talented than we think - be blown away here

 

This video was made by the staff and kids at Amesbury School - my old prep school. What a wonder this is. 

22 Years ago - How time flies

Here we all are in Toronto. It is 1991. I have 3 years more as a member of the job world. Robin has just graduated from U of T as an adult. James is about to leave school and go to art school and Hope is ending her high school years. Huge changes ahead for all of us.

 

Diabetes? What does your doctor tell you to do? What should you do

Your doctor will likely put you on a diet. This link is to a post I made on the PEI Diabetes Association site that shows you the official diet and what it means - It will make your diabetes worse - it is in effect a high sugar diet!

Your alternative is to take a low sugar diet seriously - that means you have to cut most of your simple carbs out and find a diet that you can sustain for the rest of your life.

Here is what it is like to do this ansd the typical Doctor response (link to more here)

"Yet another story from a person with type 2 diabetes, who has tried an LCHF diet:

At an appointment with my doctor, after being on an LCHF diet for one year (diabetes checkup):

The first thing she asks me is…. “What have you done?” – with a big smile.
“I started eating an LCHF diet”, I say.
“I just knew it had to be something like that!”, she says.

All numbers are good. Blood sugar normal, cholesterol numbers good, blood counts…. everything that can be measured is great (all was not good a year ago). My waistline has shrunk by 5 inches, and I have lost more than 30 pounds (have acquired more muscle mass too, so my fat loss is probably significant).

In addition I have completely stopped taking some antidiabetic medications (don’t need them anymore), and am currently taking half the dose of the last remaining antidiabetic medication that I take daily. I don’t need more than that when I eat an LCHF diet.

Then comes the funny part (or the not so funny part). She tells med that many of her patients have changed their diets to an LCHF diet on their own. And they all lose weight, they all improve their health markers, become healthier and feel much better.

“Isn’t this amazing?!”, she says, adding “And I am not allowed to recommend this to my patients, because we have to follow the official guidelines. Our whole society is sugar-poisoned.”

Congratulations!

The doctor’s idea that she is not allowed to recommend an LCHF diet is a common urban legend, that is spread by ignorance. As a physician in Sweden you may certainly recommend an LCHF diet. I have done so to appropriate patients more or less daily for the past six years, with results similar to the above.

Previously on diabetes"

 

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The Secret of Health for Canada's First Nations - Return to the Old Ways of Eating - It's Working

14,500 diabetes patients on PEI - so why is the Diabetes Association working against their interests?

The Diabetes Time Bomb

14,500 diabetes patients on PEI - so why is the Diabetes Association working against their interests?

Here is the meal example that the PEI Diabetes Association recommends.

This meal plan will drive a large challenge to your insulin - which is what Type 2 Diabetes is - when your insulin has given up due to too much load. 

By the end of this post you will see that this diet will make your diabetes worse. This raises important questions for me as to what is going on at the association.

Let's look at what this means.

Breakfast - The core of it is cereal and toast - all grains that have a very high "sugar" load. The result will be to challenge your insulin even more. An orange - high fructose load - more challenge and goes straight to the liver and is converted to fat. Low fat milk - the lower the fat the dairy, the higher the lactose load. Lactose is a sugar. Peanut butter - peanuts are the most allergenic of any food you can eat.

There is almost no protein or fat in this meal that means that you will be hungry an hour after you eat it. 

Lunch - the core is bread. Again a huge load of sugar

The meat is low fat - it is not animal fat that is the problem it is vegetable fat.

So the recommendation to use margarine versus butter is the opposite of where science stands on fats now.  Carrot sticks = high sugar - grapes high fructose.

Low fat yoghurt is low fat becuase they have replaced the fat with corn starch. Corn starch is a high sugar load food. Low fat dairy has a high lactose load too and drives a challenge to your insulin.

Such a meal will cause you to be hungry very soon after.

Dinner and snacks - all low fat = high sugar - crackers = sugar. Or fruit = high sugar. Potatoes have a high starch and so high sugar load

So here is my question. Explain to me and to others how a high sugar diet helps? Explain to me why you are not current with the research on metabolic syndrome? You say to avoid sugar - but this diet is mainly sugar - explain why you are confused?

Related articles

Diet - we have done what they told us to do and look what happened!

My place in Eternity - What my son's birthday means to me

It is my dear son James' birthday today. He is 33. I will be 63 next month. He has a young son, Hugo, who is 1+. Recently, we have been talking a lot about time. James no longer feels like a kid in any way. He can also see that I am not even middle aged but on the edge of being old. 

We are thinking more about the long chain of all lives rather than just our own. When I buried my father, James who was the same age as Hugo is today, stood by my side with his little hand in mine. I knew at that poignant moment that one day in the future, one of us would bury the other. I can only hope that it is me in the grave and James and Hugo looking down at me.

Today, on his birthday, I think of my own father. I am now 8 years older than he was when he died. I am the same age as his father was when he died. I see the line of our people trailing back. Trailing back not just over the last 100 years but way back. Trailing back to our family coming to Canada in 1765. I wonder what were their hopes then?

I look back further. I look back to the times of the Covenanters in Scotland who upheld a new sense of God. I look back to my mother's family of Vikings who settled Orkney. What was life like for them? How could they have imagined us today?

My story and yours is a miracle isn't it? We are all descendants of a long line of people who successfully raised a child who then had a child. Think of the odds against us!

And the line goes back further - so much further. It goes back to before we were human. It goes back to when we were hominids; little mammals; bacteria and to when we were stardust.

All had to be aligned to bring each one of us to life. That is the miracle. Every element had to be right. The slightest deviance from the required norms, and we would not be here today.

This miracle, makes me wonder about how much we waste life too. Do we take this miracle for granted? With such a miracle behind us, do we live our lives accordingly?

It is a miracle that needs no proof either. The proof is me and you. I need no religion or faith to be grateful for my life.

Each of us, lowly or high, are the result of a miracle. We are stardust shaped as people.

And what of the future? James and Hugo and Hope and Alfie and Sophia are my hope of a human future. They have my own story locked in their genes. They have my humour and my hands. Their DNA has a biography of 4 billion years. And if they are the end of our family line. It is not the end.

For just as we all start with stardust and bacteria, we surely all end back there too.

There is always home ahead.

A friend offered these words from the Lord of the Rings at my father's memorial. They sum up everything for me:

The Road goes ever on and on

Out from the door where it began.

Now far ahead the Road has gone,

Let others follow it who can!

Let them a journey new begin,

But I at last with weary feet

Will turn towards the lighted inn,

My evening-rest and sleep to meet.

How many of us will live in the future - Tiny House

If you have a small income and no job, if you are retired and have few savings - this will be most of us soon.

So how do we live?

I think like this!

Old social status - A BMW - New Status - Freedom!

I would rather be poor and free and rich and a prisoner. Been both and know from experience.