January Is Done

It seems incredible, but we are done with the first month in 2016. No major or minor disasters have struck upon us, we are still on the enjoying side of this winter. Soon we are walking out the February road and towards springtime. This 30. day in January was showing all its beauty with 2 inches of snow and a blue sky overhead. And look at the sunset right through our living room window. What more rewards could we ask for?

This Morning I Didn’t Know What To Write About, But Then I Saw Something About Norway And The U.S.

Before I moved to Canada, I lived 25 years in Norway. I have experienced the good and the less good in this Scandinavian country. I had moved to Norway, because it resembled Canada in it’s grand nature and northern exposure. When I finally got to Canada 13 years ago, I had reached a major goal in my life. For the last 6 years we have now lived 5kms from the U.S. Border and that proximity as well as 7 years of spending winters in the South-West has given us much more insight into American  society and its daily political life. You might compare that to living close to your neighbour and participating in his life with all its pleasures, worries and potential problems. We have often heard Americans using the word socialism in a hateful negative way. Comparisons have been made with communist countries and it seemed like even people who never got any benefit from the ruling financial elite hated the thought of receiving assistance from government agencies when they would have needed it the most.  Whenever “socialism” was mentioned it appeared to me that the people using the word had really no idea what socialism was. And that is the main reason for me to post an article I found today, written by American Journalist Ann Jones, who actually lived in Norway for some time, before returning to the U.S. Here is her article as it was published  in “The Nation”. After I Lived in Norway, America Felt Backward. Here’s Why. A crash course in social democracy. (by Ann Jones) Some years ago, I faced up to the futility of reporting truths about America’s disastrous wars, and so I left Afghanistan for another mountainous country far away. It was the polar opposite of Afghanistan: a peaceful, prosperous land where nearly everybody seemed to enjoy a good life, on the job and in the family. It’s true that they didn’t work much–not by American standards, anyway. In the United States, full-time salaried workers supposedly laboring 40 hours a week actually average 49, with almost 20 percent clocking more than 60. These people, on the other hand, worked only about 37 hours a week, when they weren’t away on long paid vacations. At the end of the workday, about four in the afternoon (perhaps three during the summer), they had time to enjoy a hike in the forest, a swim with the kids, or a beer with friends—which helps explain why, unlike so many Americans, they are pleased with their jobs. Often I was invited to go along. I found it refreshing to hike and ski in a country with no land mines, and to hang out in cafés unlikely to be bombed. Gradually, my war-zone jitters subsided and I settled into the slow, calm, pleasantly uneventful stream of life there. Four years on, thinking I should settle down, I returned to the United States. It felt quite a lot like stepping back into that other violent, impoverished world, where anxiety runs high and people are quarrelsome. I had, in fact, come back to the flip side of Afghanistan and Iraq: to what America’s wars have done to America. Where I live now, in the homeland, there are not enough shelters for the homeless. Most people are either overworked or hurting for jobs; the housing is overpriced, the hospitals crowded and understaffed, the schools largely segregated and not so good. Opioid or heroin overdose is a popular form of death, and men in the street threaten women wearing hijabs. Did the American soldiers I covered in Afghanistan know they were fighting for this? One night I tuned in to the Democrats’ presidential debate to see if they had any plans to restore the America I used to know. To my amazement, I heard the name of my peaceful mountain hideaway: Norway. Bernie Sanders was denouncing America’s crooked version of “casino capitalism” that floats the already-rich ever higher and flushes the working class. He said that we ought to “look to countries like Denmark, like Sweden and Norway, and learn from what they have accomplished for their working people.” He believes, he added, in “a society where all people do well. Not just a handful of billionaires.” That certainly sounds like Norway. For ages, they’ve worked at producing things for the use of everyone—not the profit of a few—so I was all ears, waiting for Sanders to spell it out for Americans. But Hillary Clinton quickly countered, “We are not Denmark.” Smiling, she said, “I love Denmark,” and then delivered a patriotic punch line: “We are the United States of America.” (Well, there’s no denying that.) She also praised capitalism and “all the small businesses that were started because we have the opportunity and the freedom in our country for people to do that and to make a good living for themselves and their families.” She didn’t seem to know that Danes, Swedes, and Norwegians do that too, and with much higher rates of success. The truth is that almost a quarter of American start-ups are not founded on brilliant new ideas, but on the desperation of men or women who can’t get a decent job. The majority of all American enterprises are solo ventures having zero payrolls, employing no one but the entrepreneur, and often quickly wasting away. Sanders said that he was all for small business too, but that meant nothing “if all of the new income and wealth is going to the top 1 percent.” (As George Carlin said, “The reason they call it the American Dream is because you have to be asleep to believe it.”) In that debate, no more was heard of Denmark, Sweden, or Norway. The audience was left in the dark. Later, in a speech at Georgetown University in Washington, DC, Sanders tried to clarify his identity as a democratic socialist. He said he’s not the kind of socialist (with a capital S) who favors state ownership of the means of production. The Norwegian government, on the other hand, owns the means of producing lots of public assets and is the major stockholder in many a vital private enterprise. I was dumbfounded. Norway, Denmark, and Sweden practice variations of a system that works much better than ours. Yet even the Democratic presidential candidates, who say they love or want to learn from those countries, don’t seem know how they actually work. Proof that they do work is delivered every year in data-rich evaluations by the United Nations and other international bodies. The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development’s annual report on international well-being, for example, measures 11 factors, ranging from material conditions such as affordable housing and employment to quality-of-life matters like education, health, life expectancy, voter participation, and overall citizen satisfaction. Year after year, all the Nordic countries cluster at the top, while the United States lags far behind. In addition, Norway has ranked first on the UN Development Program’s Human Development Index for 12 of the last 15 years, and it consistently tops international comparisons in such areas as democracy, civil and political rights, and freedom of expression and the press. The Nordic model starts with a deep commitment to equality and democracy, because you can’t have one without the other. What is it, though, that makes the Scandinavians so different? Since the Democrats can’t tell you and the Republicans wouldn’t want you to know, let me offer you a quick introduction. What Scandinavians call the Nordic model is a smart and simple system that starts with a deep commitment to equality and democracy. That’s two concepts combined in a single goal because, as far as they’re concerned, you can’t have one without the other. Right there, they part company with capitalist America, now the most unequal of all the developed nations, and consequently a democracy no more. Political scientists say it has become an oligarchy, run at the expense of its citizenry by and for the superrich. Perhaps you’ve noticed that. In the last century, Scandinavians, aiming for their egalitarian goal, refused to settle solely for any of the ideologies competing for power—not capitalism or fascism, not Marxist socialism or communism. Geographically stuck between powerful nations waging hot and cold wars for such doctrines, Scandinavians set out to find a middle path. That path was contested—by socialist-inspired workers on the one hand, and by capitalist owners and their elite cronies on the other—but in the end, it led to a mixed economy. Thanks largely to the solidarity and savvy of organized labor and the political parties it backed, the long struggle produced a system that makes capitalism more or less cooperative, and then redistributes equitably the wealth it helps to produce. Struggles like this took place around the world in the 20th century, but the Scandinavians alone managed to combine the best ideas of both camps while chucking out the worst. In 1936, the popular US journalist Marquis Childs first described the result to Americans in the book Sweden: The Middle Way. Since then, all the Scandinavian countries, and their Nordic neighbors Finland and Iceland, have been improving upon that hybrid system. Today in Norway, negotiations between the Norwegian Confederation of Trade Unions and the Confederation of Norwegian Enterprise determine the wages and working conditions of most capitalist enterprises, public and private, that create wealth, while high but fair progressive income taxes fund the state’s universal welfare system, benefiting everyone. In addition, those confederations work together to minimize the disparity between high-wage and lower-wage jobs. As a result, Norway ranks with Sweden, Denmark, and Finland as among the most income-equal countries in the world, and its standard of living tops the charts. Nordic countries give their populations freedom from the market by using capitalism as a tool to benefit everyone. So here’s the big difference: In Norway, capitalism serves the people. The government, elected by the people, sees to that. All eight of the parties that won parliamentary seats in the last national election—including the conservative Høyre party now leading the government—are committed to maintaining the welfare state. In the United States, however, neoliberal politics puts the foxes in charge of the henhouse, and capitalists have used the wealth generated by their enterprises (as well as financial and political manipulations) to capture the state and pluck the chickens. They’ve done a masterful job of chewing up organized labor. Today, only 11 percent of American workers belong to a union. In Norway, that number is 52 percent; in Denmark, 67 percent; in Sweden, 70 percent. Thus, in the United States, oligarchs maximize their wealth and keep it, using the “democratically elected” government to shape policies and laws favorable to the interests of their foxy class. They bamboozle the people by insisting, as Hillary Clinton did at that debate, that all of us have the “freedom” to create a business in the “free” marketplace, which implies that being hard up is our own fault. In the Nordic countries, on the other hand, democratically elected governments give their populations freedom from the market by using capitalism as a tool to benefit everyone. That liberates their people from the tyranny of the mighty profit motive that warps so many American lives, leaving them freer to follow their own dreams—to become poets or philosophers, bartenders or business owners, as they please. Maybe our politicians don’t want to talk about the Nordic model because it shows so clearly that capitalism can be put to work for the many, not just the few. Consider the Norwegian welfare state. It’s universal. In other words, aid to the sick or the elderly is not charity, grudgingly donated by elites to those in need. It is the right of every individual citizen. That includes every woman, whether or not she is somebody’s wife, and every child, no matter its parentage. Treating every person as a citizen frees each one from being legally possessed by another—a husband, for example, or a tyrannical father. Which brings us to the heart of Scandinavian democracy: the equality of women and men. In the 1970s, Norwegian feminists marched into politics and picked up the pace of democratic change. Norway needed a larger labor force, and women were the answer. Housewives moved into paid work on equal footing with men, nearly doubling the tax base. That has, in fact, meant more to Norwegian prosperity than the coincidental discovery of North Atlantic oil reserves. The Ministry of Finance recently calculated that those additional working mothers add to Norway’s net national wealth a value equivalent to its “total petroleum wealth”—currently held in the world’s largest sovereign-wealth fund, worth over $873 billion. By 1981, women were sitting in parliament, in the prime minister’s chair, and in her cabinet. American feminists also marched for such goals in the 1970s, but the big boys, busy with their own White House intrigues, initiated a war on women that set the country back and still rages today in brutal attacks on women’s basic civil rights, healthcare, and reproductive freedom. In 1971, thanks to the hard work of organized feminists, Congress passed the bipartisan Comprehensive Child Development Bill to establish a multibillion-dollar national daycare system for the children of working parents. In 1972, President Richard Nixon vetoed it, and that was that. In 1972, Congress also passed a bill (first proposed in 1923) to amend the Constitution to grant equal rights of citizenship to women. Ratified by only 35 states—three short of the required 38—that Equal Rights Amendment was declared dead in 1982, leaving American women in legal limbo. In 1996, President Bill Clinton signed the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act, obliterating six decades of US social-welfare policy “as we know it,” ending federal cash payments to the nation’s poor, and consigning millions of female heads of household and their childrento poverty, where many still dwell 20 years later. Today, even privileged women, torn between their underpaid work and their kids, are overwhelmed. Things happened very differently in Norway. There, feminists and sociologists pushed hard against the biggest obstacle still standing in the path to full democracy: the nuclear family. In the 1950s, the world-famous American sociologist Talcott Parsons had pronounced that arrangement—with the hubby at work and the little wife at home—the ideal setup in which to socialize children. But in the 1970s, the Norwegian state began to deconstruct that undemocratic ideal by taking upon itself the traditional, unpaid household duties of women. Caring for children, the elderly, the sick, and the disabled became the basic responsibilities of the universal welfare state, freeing women in the workforce to enjoy both their jobs and their families. Paradoxically, setting women free made family life more genuine. Many in Norway say it has made both men and women more themselves and more alike: more understanding and happier. It also helped kids slip from the shadow of helicopter parents. In Norway, both mother and father in turn take paid parental leave from work during the child’s first year or longer. At age 1, however, children start attending a neighborhood barnehage (kindergarten) for schooling spent largely outdoors. By the time kids enter free primary school at age 6, they are remarkably self-sufficient, confident, and good-natured. They know their way around town, and if caught in a snowstorm in the forest, how to build a fire and find the makings of a meal. (One kindergarten teacher explained, “We teach them early to use an ax so they understand it’s a tool, not a weapon.”) To Americans, the notion of a school “taking away” your child to make her an ax wielder is monstrous. Yet though it’s hard to measure, it’s likely that Scandinavian children actually spend more quality time with their non-work-obsessed parents than does a typical middle-class American child being driven by a stressed-out mother from music lessons to karate. For all these reasons and more, the international organization Save the Children cites Norway as the best country on earth in which to raise kids, while the United States finishes far down the list, in 33rd place. DON’T TAKE MY WORD FOR IT This little summary just scratches the surface of Scandinavia, so I urge curious readers to Google away. But be forewarned: You’ll find much criticism of all the Nordic-model countries. Worse, neoliberal pundits, especially the Brits, are always beating up on the Scandinavians, predicting the imminent demise of their social democracies. Self-styled experts still in thrall to Margaret Thatcher tell Norwegians they must liberalize their economy and privatize everything short of the royal palace. Mostly, the Norwegian government does the opposite—or nothing at all—and social democracy keeps on ticking. It’s not perfect, of course. It has always been a carefully considered work in progress. Governance by consensus takes time and effort. You might think of it as slow democracy. Even so, it’s light-years ahead of us. Ann Jones mentions the impact Scandinavian women had on the market economy when they too started working. The very same can be said about the impoverished millions of Americans, IF they could participate in the overall market economy. Truth is, minimum wages do not allow to make major purchases. Consequently, millions of sales tax Dollars and proceeds of higher income taxes are not flowing into the public economy. The tyranny of the superrich, Ann Jones is mentioning, is preventing this to happen.  Socialism does not preclude the development of free entrepreneurship, but it is preventing ruthless exploitation of the working population. There has been one U.S. President who acknowledged the Norwegian form of Democracy. That President was Franklin D. Roosevelt the very same who had his summer residence on Campobello Island. And here is the video to proove it: https://youtu.be/YfnnK76nVt0 Currently under discussion in Canada: http://www.theglobeandmail.com//opinion/time-for-another-look-at-a-guaranteed-annual-income/article28439737/?cmpid=rss1&click=sf_globefb

I Never Had Lunch Outside Up North On January 28 And Gracie Was Visiting For A Few Hours

Have a good look at the thermometer.  Well, it was out in the sun, so it is not the temperature in the shade Yet it reads real 15C or 60F. That made me a real happy camper. It sure felt like spring had sprung when I rigged up a lawn chair and had my lunch and coffee outside. Too nice to pass up such an occasion! However, 2 hours later the sun had vanished behind a cloud cover and the temps have gone down to 7C or 43F. Yet, still no reason to complain on January 28. I used the Day to haul in more firewood. It’s been such a blessing that they cleaned out underneath the power lines this fall.  After lunch, Bea got home with little Gracie in tow. The cute little girl’s owners had to go on a day trip and little Gracie needed some entertainment and motion over the day. Gracie was dressed appropriately with a woolen sweater sporting colourful hearts for decoration. Gracie was greeted by Molly and we always marvel at how well they get along with each other.     Thanks again for taking a peek!

Sunday, Sunday….Beautiful Day

The bright sunshine became too tempting so I headed out to Herring Cove Beach. I took a lot of pictures and I will let them speak. No comments necessary.            Lake Glensevern – frozen              High Tide and the water is nearly swallowing the entire beach.        F.D.R. Cottage

Seems We Are Having A Normal Winter, But I Remember A Very Cold Morning In Alberta

Not that I am any expert on “normal” weather if such a thing as “normal” does exist at all, but so far we haven’t had any extremes, no extreme cold, no extraordinary amounts of snow nor even extreme storms, though we have had strong winds. But strong winds can be considered  “normal” in a coastal area. I mean anybody with a brain would EXPECT strong winds along the coast. My expertise on Canadian winters is based on only a few (5!) winters and those were endured in Alberta, which is far removed from any coast. All the other winters were spent in the Desert South-West. Remembering those Canadian winters, the 2. we had was the closest to what I perceived as an extreme. Eight months earlier we had moved into an old house (we are always ending up in old houses) and hadn’t even managed to get the bedroom ready, so we had rigged up our beds in the living room. Well we woke up one morning and I felt that something was very wrong. It was too COLD and I couldn’t make out the hum from or furnace blowing warm air into the house. When I got up I saw that the inside thermometer showed +8C (46F) only, and yes the furnace was quiet. So I wandered to the entry door where we had an OUTSIDE thermometer. Problem was I couldn’t see the red Mercury, not at first anyway. But then, I discovered a red spot wayyy down in the bottom. Our thermometer read –53C (-63F). A cold feel crept down my spine. Could it be…? Could it be that our furnace was frozen??? Nah…it wasn’t the furnace there was something wrong with. It was the PROPANE which was missing. Propane stops flowing at around –40C (-40F), normally the regulator quits first. Anyway here we were up the creek with a broken paddle. But we had a wood stove in the kitchen, so that was where I was headed next. But it took a while before the house was back up at livable temperatures. Two days later the propane had just come back, I opened the door and was surprised by the mild weather. But when I checked the thermometer it still showed –35C (-31F)!  And that was the single most impressive experience with the weather I ever had. The difference from –53C to –35C is phenomenal and beyond our imagination. I still have that crazy hat… Out here at the coast we hardly ever reach that far down temperatures. Surrounding waters are taking the role of a mitigating factor, keeping us out of extreme cold during winter but keeping us cool in the summer. By the way, the current snowstorm “Jonas” pounding the eastern seaboard of the US, is bypassing us alltogether as it will move out to sea, and we can’t be more thankful for it.

When Campers Were Small And Cute

If you have been around for a while you will probably remember the camper trailers of your youth. Campers in the fifties and sixties were small and cute. They were also very colourful, some had even “wings” and they were towed by regular cars, Fords, Chevys, Studebakers and many others, most of them not around anymore. Fancy SUVs had not yet been invented and pickup trucks were work trucks and not commonly used for private vacation outings. I get totally excited whenever I see a surviver camper of those days, and there are actually companies around which restore old vintage trailers to their early glory. Even in a non-restored state they are not cheap. Many have a dream of owning one and since they are light-weight they still can be towed by regular cars.  So far so good. It has remained one of my dreams to own one and put it behind our 1972 Ford LTD. One day I was perusing the book of faces, when I discovered a beautifully painted water colour image of an artist in Saint Andrews By-the-sea, New Brunswick. Her name is Simone Ritter and she and her husband Markus are from Germany. While Markus is running his own renovated EUROPA INN & RESTAURANT, Simone is an accomplished artist, which doesn’t mean that Markus is not an artist. It is just that his art can be eaten. If Markus is not in the reception area it is because he is busy in the kitchen preparing world-class dishes brought to perfection with European Taste and refinement. Now, Simone Ritter, has developed a faible for small cute campers, and YES, she owns one too. It inspired her to start painting many of these old trailer models and make an entire series of it. They are finished in water colour and make very nice gifts for RVers. Simone has already sold many originals and also had a sale of calendars. You can find details on her blog and her website.     When I spoke to her last week she agreed to me putting her trailer paintings on the American-Traveler blog. Apparently, she has painted a hundred of them. I will post more of her trailer cuties from time to time. Every trailer has a description with model name and year. If you would like to order an original, calendar or prints you can contact me and I will bring your inquiry on to Simone or you can contact her through her website.

A Winter Day Spent On Campobello

A bright winter day is a great time to see and experience Campobello Island. The air is clear and like always fresh, maybe even a bit more fresh than in summer, at least it is a bit colder. You can observe the fleet of fishing boats as they run out to catch scallops or when they come back home with a load of lobsters. Quite a show really!                        Beautiful Town of Lubec, ME Or you can undertake a nice walk along a lonely beach, returning through the troll-forest of Campobello Provincial Park.             Christmas Tree is still standing And of course, we are always ready to take you on a grand tour with all the history and up-to-date information. If you are into photography, we know the best places where you can get your shots of a life time. We are more than happy to assist you with the choice of your best photo motive. Motel and Restaurants are open in Lubec and hey, No waiting time at our friendly border crossing!   Today, we took a walk out to Head Harbour Lightstation. What a view to see the beautiful buildings perched high on the rocks surrounded by snow.   And 2 fishing vessels were out on the water, one coming in with his catch, the other just running out to find the catch of the day. Being a lighthouse keeper has always been a tough job and here on Campobello we have lots of stories about it. The hardships were most noticable during ongoing storms and inclement weather, which has always been part of life out here. One would think that most lighthouses are automated today. Yup, that’s right MOST lighthouses are, but not all. Here’s a video worth to look at. It shows how crew is exchanged at a lighthouse along the coast of France. A few other lighthouses off the French coast can be seen in a REAL storm here.