troubled

I am troubled.

I have not The Television at home, but it exists in multi-channel, widescreen, HD format at my mother-in-law's house, and I stay there twice a week for work. There, The Television trumps all things, so I end up hearing quite a lot of it.

Last night, on a US television show I know not which, two female presenters were discussing the STAGGERING fact that in the UK just recently, a magazine advert with Julia Roberts in it had been pulled because it was considered too airbrushed.

The presenters were falling about with laughter over this nonsensical behaviour from English people "Haven't they got better things to discuss?" they said, after a forty-minute programme entirely devoted to how much Hustler is offering Tot Mom to pose. "OF COURSE it's airbrushed. If it were me, you bet I would want it airbrushed!"

They showed pictures in magazines of themselves, that had been airbrushed, to prove how true that was. One of the two is a singer, and she showed her album cover. "You know why I chose this picture?" she said. "Because it doesn't look anything like me! I'm three years younger and three years skinnier there!"

"See how much better we look?!?!", they asked us.

"Apparently," they managed to squeak out around their laughter, "in England this issue was raised in parliament!!!!!" (actually, they didn't say parliament. They called it the English Legislature).

Then this morning, in my 'book biz round up' email at work, I got a notification of an interview with Maurice Sendak in Vanity Fair. This is the cover of Vanity Fair that popped up:







Oh, I beg your pardon, I said. I seem to have been accidentally linked to Maxim instead.

John Green, on his blog and on Nerdfighters and all those places where his vlogbrothers videos go, is talking about The Great Gatsby these days. In his first video - conveniently for this post - he reminds us about the bit when Daisy describes finding out, in the delivery room, that her new baby is a girl:

"I hope she'll be a fool--that's the best thing a girl can be in this world, a beautiful little fool..."

And this has all been said before, in better ways and more erudite ways and I have nothing new or different to add, except another voice to it. At least officially, at least in public, some UK MPs (sorry, some Representatives in the House of the English Legislature) are too.

the flu post

Hey, remember that time the NDP and the Liberals and the Bloc put on their big girl boots and went to see the headmistress and told her they didn’t like the class bully any more?

For non-Canadians: this happened around November last year. Prime Minister Stephen Harper had been running things here in such a way that meant every time he wanted to pass legislation, the other parties had to either vote for it, or force an election (this happens when you attach a confidence vote to everything). Naturally, nobody wanted to force more elections – which are costly and get people’s backs up – so a lot of legislation got passed.

This worked for quite a long time. Until it didn’t. Eventually the other three parties went to the Governor-General and said a) they didn’t like being pushed around and b) the government didn’t seem to have much of an economic plan, so c) the PM had lost the confidence of the House. They proposed a coalition. (the coalition would be the Liberals and the NDP – the Bloc wasn’t going to be part of it, but supported it).

It may not appear so from my rather pedestrian summary here, but dudes, it was a massively exciting few days. Leaping from largely symbolic head-of-state to political superhero in a single bound, the Gee Gee had the fate of the country in her hands.

She had the following choices:

1. Dismiss the PM and force an election.
2. Suspend parliament and give the PM time to get his act together.
3. Officially ask the opposition if it was ready and able to form an effective government, and hand it power.

Given the opposition had already been to see the Gee Gee and told her it was ready and able, it actually seemed Option 3 was a probable step.











Option 2 seemed unlikely, because at the time we were all in the clutches of the Global Economic Crisis (ah, remember that?) and not only did the government not have an effective plan in place, but having no parliament sitting at the time would surely just compound the problem. And if she wanted to dismiss the PM, the opposition was already raring to go, rendering the election in Option 1 unnecessary.








In the end, though, she went for Option 2.

But we all learnt a new verb that day: ‘to prorogue’. ‘To suspend,’ in parliamentary-speak: the Gee Gee decided to prorogue parliament. Suddenly we were all using it as if we always had done in regular everyday conversation. “Oh, we were going to paint the house, but we’re proroguing that till spring.” “I might prorogue my cup of tea till after this episode of McLeod’s Daughters has finished.”

And now, here we are a year later, and H1N1 is upon us, and everyone is coming unglued because there aren’t enough vaccinations for everyone right now and people’s access to them has been, as it were, prorogued. Why? Ah, well, you see, they stopped producing the adjuvanted vaccines, because (until last Friday) they thought the non-adjuvanted ones were better for pregnant women, so they stopped the line of adjuvanted ones to produce more of the other kind.

Why yes. Adjuvanted. Wasn’t that always part of our lexicon, just like prorogue was?

It is comforting that at times of political and social crisis, we can all take a moment to expand our vocabularies.

parallel importing

This article, while possibly spending slightly more time on chooks and utes than is strictly proportional in the overall issue, sums up quite well what's going on in the Aussie book industry right now.

I don't do well at explaining this whole thing, which is one reason I haven’t touched it here, but the Guardian nutshells it neatly. The other reason I haven’t written about it is that every time I get into it I lose any articulate expression all that education carefully engendered in me, and start going “No. Just no. Because no. Because. No.”

So instead, you can find many thousands of spectacularly well-chosen words on this issue right here. Start with this (ignore what he says about booksellers. He doesn't mean all of us, and you can find submissions from indies too - for example, and some figures). See this. And then, this, especially because it addresses the allegation of protectionism. This, too, because it also addresses figures, or the lack of them. It’s livelihoods, and industryhoods, and culturehoods.

If nothing else, if you’ve read the US version of Don’t Call Me Ishmael you will know how maddening a North Americanisation of a novel can get. Reading it over here is bad enough. Reading this version in Australia would make me want to weep. And break something.

(This is a different-but-related thing, but I loathe that Americanisation suggests North Americans can’t access a novel unless it’s written for them, with cultural and linguistic references of anywhere else removed or changed. It’s insulting. Canadian friends, if I were you I would be spectacularly pissed off with the implication I couldn't interpret what a ute is from the fact that someone’s driving it. In DCMIshmael, the big debate was over ‘dag’. There isn’t really an equivalent over here. But I'm guessing you could probably have got it from the context.

Finally, and what I think is more worrying, is that a generation of American kids could grow up thinking the world is really like that – a) completely tailored to them and b) all the same. An American kid reading DCMIshmael would have to surmise that Australian high schools have a thriving American football culture. American kids aren’t stupid. But if they’re not given the chance to be informed, well, could you blame them if they were to grow up being bemused every time everyone isn't just like them?)

in pain

This morning, I’ve been shown the brochures to the world of regular people, and been asked if I want to book in and become a member.

I’m not sure I do. It is a frightening place.

Specifically, it is a world in which regular people own cars. It appears, because of my job, that I now have to consider becoming one of them.

The ownership of the car is not in itself too scary. Find a used car, get it inspected to ensure it won’t fall apart the minute you drive it away, pay the money. Own car.

But it transpires that Ontario is the most expensive province in Canada for car insurance. Add to the mix someone who’s never owned a car in Canada, never been insured, is completely off the record in automobile-related terms…and the annual cost of even the most basic insurance is almost as much as I was intending to spend on a car.

This is very scary bananas indeed. It has all made me extremely shaky and no longer in the frame of mind to even start looking for a vee-hickle. How do regular people do this?

I am also in a world of actual, as well as mental, pain. Some of you know I can be highly-strung at times, with a great deal of nervous energy fuelled by large amounts of tea and biscuits. Well, the other day in the carpool we got to talking about spiders and wetas and long-legged beasties. You know how talking about those things makes your skin kind of super-sensitive and you imagine there’s a redback climbing up your leg at every moment?

Later that evening I sat working at the computer, and one of the pins that was holding my hair up slid out slowly down my neck.

To my over-prepped, hyper tea-fuelled mind it could clearly be nothing less than a black widow making her deadly way down my shirt, so naturally I freaked the frack out. My left hand flew up to the back of my neck at the speed of light to remove the beast. This had the effect of flaying every last tendon in my left elbow, causing me more pain this week than the actual spider bite would’ve.

Especially bearing in mind that the spider was, in fact, a hairpin.

But what should I do about the car? My carpool buddies say I can keep paying them fuel money. But are they just being nice, and they’d rather I properly pulled my weight? Do you think this insurance thing is just something that needs time to sink into my mind, and after a week or so I’ll be okay with it and ready to take the next step? Could I come round to the idea of making monthly payments on a consumer item (on insurance, for crying out loud), which by the way is also a world that I have never inhabited?

Seriously, is this the kind of thing you regular people do? And are you still able to sleep?

the smaller the mammal, the more likely it'll kill you

Periodically in the news, we read how someone with a more than somewhat tenuous grip on reality climbed into the lion enclosure at London zoo carrying a Sainsbury’s medium frozen chicken or a kilo of steak as kitty-appetiser. The individual invariably gets his or her head ripped off, and the papers barrage the zoo spokesperson with questions about why there aren’t more deterrents to stop people climbing into lion enclosures. The spokesperson grits her teeth and explains “Seriously, dudes, we were more or less working under the assumption that the large predatory carnivores with big claws and teeth would be deterrent enough.”

This week, the WWF’s attempt to film the world’s rarest rhino in the wild hit a bump, when mummy rhino spotted the spy camera and charged it, smashing it into a million pieces. Wild animals don’t like us, and that is le fact, viz, the beard-stroky truth that a swan can break your arm and a wombat will snap your legs like a couple of toothpicks as soon as look at you.

Well, out-of-control wildlife violence is apparently no longer restricted to large exotic species. A report from the New Zealand Herald this week tells of another clearly well-adjusted lad who’s been fined 500 bucks for battering a teenager with a hedgehog.

It was a heroic kamikaze effort for the hedgehog involved. Police said it was unclear whether or not it was dead at the time of being lobbed through the air as a missile (though eyewitnesses report hearing a tiny voice squeaking “put some spin on me, bro’!” just prior to the attack). The NZ Herald’s online poll prompted by the incident asks: ‘Your Views: Is a Hedgehog a Weapon?’

Other reports include a snowshoe hare glassing someone in a Halifax bar “for looking at my boyfriend funny”, and an otter deadlegging a kid in the schoolyard for his lunch money.

Where are you from? You sexy thing!

Exam season’s over, so the red pen's put away for another year. Not at all depressed by the standard of essays this time round. What is depressing is the choice of books that are the stalwarts of the 16- and 18-year old English Lit reading list canon. High school English courses are absolutely at the root of Western society’s nutcase attitudes to sex, because if teenagers had a normal and straightforward approach to it before reading these texts, they’re certainly going to be screwed up for ever afterwards.

Take the Great Gatsby. Daisy is utterly wet and a weed, with a voice that “drips money” and a husband who cheats on her and also does a neat sideline in breaking women’s noses. In A Streetcar Named Desire, meet the wife-beating rapist whose loony-tunes sister-in-law seduces underage boys having previously prompted her gay husband to shoot his brains out. In 1984, the outcome of sex is to be stomped on by rats until you swear you’d rather have them eat your lover alive to spare you the torture. Enter the Quiet American – “you can have her interests, I just want her body”, and the classic good-times game of having a political rival assassinated just because he stole your bird. The Color Purple, please let’s not even; Of Mice, Men and Vaseline gloves; Death of a Salesman and those infernal Symbolic Stockings, the dutiful wife knowing all about the nameless mistress but standing by her man. Sons and Lovers, for crying out loud!! Oh, and Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? Me, me, and thrice me.

Every instance of sex in the whole pack of them is, I’m sorry, but absolutely batshit crazy. Apparently the only way it can be done is by beating each other up, shooting ourselves out of the closet, degrading and hating and objectifying each other.

Could we put on the syllabus one book where people have sex – even, call me crazy, a relationship!!! - because they like each other? One book. It’s not much to ask. Submit your ideas please.

fair enough

Just about the best we can manage here in Canada on Saturday will be to drink a smug cup of didn't-I-do-the-right-thing tea, because in the world of fair trade, we're a bit behind. Notwithstanding Ten Thousand Villages, of course; they are the bestest, but otherwise we're poor performers in fair trade terms.

New Zealand ramps it up on us a bit with TradeAid. In Rotorua, they're practically next door to the bookstore, which meant that during my Time Of Woe in the wet midwinter (that is now of course fast approaching again), I bought and ate a chocolate bar from them every. Single. Day. Every day. TradeAid, my sanity thanks you, and I miss you much.

The UK is absolutely all over it; you don't visit a special little shop with tea and coffee nicely presented amongst wicker baskets, it's just in the supermarket and the high street and all over everywhere. They're so far into it that now they're coming out the other side and everyone's wondering if fair trade is really all that fair and now there's even different types of fair trade, and everyone's standing in Sainsbury's with fourteen different packets of sugar trying to figure out which is the fairest of them all. Even crumbly old Marks and Sparks sells organic cotton t-shirts, which is even more important than fair trade t-shirts, because it's all very well paying people half-decent money to grow cotton, but if they're *dead from pesticides* it won't make all that much difference.

Anyway, you have to do the best you can with what you've got.

My other means of being fair is to get stuff I can get locally, locally. (Which for some people is the dichotomy, and mostly you end up doing a bit of both and hoping the karmic gods see that you're trying your best). So my tea is modelling Saskatchewan-grown alpaca sock yarn, which I grant you is not local to me now, but it was a couple of weeks ago.

Sock yarn this lovely, when it comes in skeins, is the epitome of joy and despair, in yarn terms. Most people agree it's best to wind the skein (long oval yarn) into balls (compact round yarn - still with me?) to use it. In practice, with a yarn this clingy and fine, you get about three quarters of the way through (the big ball on the left) before the weight of what's left behind isn't enough to keep it straight. It tangles itself up in a big knot, and I end up cutting it in frustration and starting a new, smaller ball, and on and on till I get teeny bits I probably won't end up using. Despair. But the sock is already looking so lovely. Joy!

The other thing about buying locally-made yarn over your standard, imported from some giant faceless foreign yarn-making corporation (what a concept), is that is costs about double. So in fact I'll probably be keeping the little endy bits and they'll be useful for darning when the socks eventually fall to holes, because ain't no way I'm throwing these out.

And I didn't even need a fair-trade chocolate bar to help me regain my sanity on that one. I'd better have one anyway though. And, hey, on Saturday? Grab a cuppa, won't you?

lessons learned

I meant to talk about this earlier, because *WOW*. It's lately been confirmed that the World's Biggest Lesson was exactly that - in official world-record-ese.

The Global Campaign for Education set up a good, good thing. The Lesson was 30 minutes, to be held at one of 3 different times during April 23rd (to account for the time zones), ending with a test to see how much people had learnt. The topic was quality education as a basic human right, and in many of the countries that took part, the Lesson was taught by kids (sometimes by kids who are currently excluded from formal education) and attended by adults, celebrities, politicians - even the King of Cambodia.

Participating groups then reported back to say how many attended, and the count was taken, and although it's still rising, the world record has officially been set, with over 7.5 million people learning the same Lesson at the same time.

You can check out the photos here, and they make that inarticulable Thing well up inside me. That Thing we all have that makes us want to cheer and cry at the same time and that is really much , much more than just that, but that is generally -as I say - inarticulable. Where you feel power - 7.5 million!! - and powerlessness - only 7.5 million in the whole world?? From let's do this!! to where do you even start??

I got to be a highly-educated woman (notwithstanding the fact that if they did qualifications in your actual common sense, I'd barely scrape a GCSE) in a world in which one in four of us (women, that is) is illiterate. I'm constantly reminded, with events such as these, that I'm lucky enough to make a living editing a newspaper rather than delivering one. The only difference is my education.

Given that, according to GCE's estimations, 72 million kids worldwide are missing out, 7.5 million - and that's altogether; it includes the attendance of the already-educated politicians and celebs and general adult population and kids who are in school - seems like a bit of a drop in the ocean. But it's a start.

footprints

Notwithstanding a couple of barnstorming worldwide emigrations, I’m a pretty low-carbon-footprinted person in general. I haven’t owned a car in many years, preferring my trusty fifteen-year-old bike and good old Shanks’s pony. (well, when it’s minus forty, “prefer” is a bit of a strong term; “suffer” is more accurate, but I damn well do it). I turn off the lights and turn down the heat, etc etc.

What I do have is a Stuff footprint.

When we departed New Zealand, the minimal Stuff we accumulated was donated to the Salvation Army. This was effectively because I didn’t make time to find a similar organisation to whom I would prefer to donate it. I usually avoid the S.A on the grounds of its tub-thumping staunchness on how gay people are going to hell in a pink handbasket (see also Work Of The Devil, loving-the-sinner-and-hating-the-sin, aka patronising the marginalised and being smug about it in an intolerant, tambouriney, and not-at-all-Romans-14 sort of way). But on this occasion I allowed my belief that some of those they help need stuff more than I need to make a point, to prevail. (incidentally, as tolerant people – do we have to tolerate their intolerance? Philosopher friends, you know who you are; answers on a postcard).

Prior to that, I departed Canada, leaving Stuff with Community Living and the MCC, (some of whom are at least freakin’ talking about it, which is encouraging).

Now we’re back, Stuffless, and although we don’t accumulate a lot, have paid homage to the church of Ikea and begun building up again, with at least a couple of chairs, something to sleep on, and something to drink tea out of. But I feel a bit like countries with a space programme must (should?) – dropping off space junk willy-nilly and leaving it about the place. (Admittedly, I don’t think space junk goes to any intergalactic MCC, but you know). We’ve left a Stuff trail.

Although our current furniture ain’t going on the Antiques Roadshow in two hundred years, some of this lot might, I hope, see us out – or at least close to. I’d feel better, because although I’d bet people are getting use out of our discarded stuff, I can’t know for sure.

One thing at least is certain: thousands of years from now, when our civilisation is unearthed, archaeologists will write doctoral papers about the unusual conglomerations of small bendy allen keys found around human habitations (except in countries that had no Ikea, of course). Now that’s a footprint.

shame

It's been a while, and I'm sorry. We went to Wellington (on which more in another post when I do the photos). Then we left the computer's power cable in Wellington. And we've been waiting for it to be mailed back to us. So, not a lot of juice left, but I have to share with you quickly my shame from yesterday.

I don't go to Starbucks often. There are local coffee and tea places with good, regular tea that's called "tea". A couple of them even make chai, though not with tea leaves like in Saskatoon or at home, just with chai powder, which is okay. And they call it "chai".

Anyway, for one reason or another, yesterday we went to Starbucks. And now I feel sort of deflated and as if I need a wash. Aside from the fact that it's Starbucks, there is all the following to contend with:
1. My drink was named a "blackberry green tea frappucino (with the copyright mark) blended cream" which meant it took longer to say than to drink. This has got to be the epitome of crazy Starbucks names.
2. It was made with green tea powder and blackberry syrup, so it saw neither real tea nor a real blackberry in the making. It was bright green.
3. Although I did not have a pile of whipped cream on the top, they still gave it to me in a takeout plastic cup with one of those balloon-shaped tops they have for protecting your pile of whipped cream.
4. I drank it with a plastic straw that had been wrapped (though, at least, in paper).
5. The whole thing cost more than six dollars. (although obviously, six bucks NZ is about 50 cents Canadian or US; still, that is the most ridiculous amount I've ever handed over for a drink of tea; in fact, a drink of any kind).

and
6. It tasted pretty good.

I'll be over here, wallowing in my shame.

...or an ambulance down in the valley?

It’s been a few weeks now since the government announced that, in order to honour its Kyoto commitments, it would need 10 billion dollars over the next six years. And since that’s just plain ridiculous, they’re not going to do it, they’re not going to try, and you can’t make them. So there.

I mean, we can’t do it. Right? 10 billion dollars. Where do you find that kind of money?

Oh, wait a minute. What was that in last year’s budget speech? That Canada recorded a budget surplus in 2003,04 and 05, and is projected to do so again in 2006 and 2007? I think I heard some trumpeting to the effect that in fact, Canada is the only G7 country to do so. And that we have the lowest national debt of all the G7 countries too. In fact, in 04-05, our surplus was 1.5 billion. The projected 05-06 surplus is 8 billion.

Hey. I’ve got an idea. Why don’t we use that?

Okay, I know – silly me. Things just ain’t that simple when it comes to budgets. I’d better look at it in a bit more detail to make sure I understand it properly.

Here’s a good bit in the “Budget Overview”. The Treasury plans to “restrain the rate of spending growth” in government offices “to save 1 billion in both 2006-07 and 2007-08”. 1 billion plus 1 billion makes…er…

No. It can’t be that easy. We need that money for other important things. In fact, thank goodness we’ve got it, because I see that we’re increasing funding of the Dept of National Defence by 5.3 billion over the next 5 years. Let’s have a look at what it’s for.

1.1 billion is to “rebuild Canadian forces”. Since they plan to put 5,000 more troops in front-line positions, they’ll need to fill the gaps back home. After that, we’re going to “initiate establishment of territorial battalions in major cities”. This means 14 Canadian cities will have “territorial response bases” in case of terrorist attack and/ or natural disasters. The funding will also go to provide “equipment to support combat-capable Canadian Forces”. (by the way, there is an additional 101 million tagged to create “safe and open borders”, which is then defined simply as arming our border officials).

Finally, just over a billion is going to “defend national sovereignty”; in particular, our Arctic sovereignty, to which end a Northern Sovereignty Support Centre will be built and staffed in Goose Bay, Newfoundland.

And this brings us to Hans Island.

Since 1973, this half-mile square bit of barren Arctic ice has been the site of a territory dispute between Canada and Denmark. “This land belongs to me!” “No, this land is my land!” Denmark has periodically sent naval forces to erect a Danish flag on the island. (see also “sticking your tongue out”). Then in 2005, Canada sent its own military to build an Inuksuk and erect a Canadian flag (see also “flipping the bird at”). Not only that, but Defence Minister Bill Graham (and some of the media) accompanied military personnel to the island, presumably to stomp his feet and wave his arms and shout “Mine! Mine!” (an unconfirmed report states that he also threatened to “scream and scream and scream until I’m sick, and I can too” unless sovereignty was awarded to Canada).

Since then we have all calmed down a bit and agreed to talk to each other nicely and not rough each other’s hair up or call each other names (although every time someone issues a balanced, grown-up statement about it, they finish it with “but it’s still ours, so there”). Either way, we still had to spend a heck of a lot of cash sending all those people back and forth to the island to show off.

But here’s why this is all so significant. Hans Island itself is no use to either country. What will be of use is the nearby (and also disputed) Northwest Passage and other linked waterways in the Arctic. Why “will be”? Because they’re no use now. They’re frozen. They “will be” of use…when global warming turns them into waterways.

Yes – we are pouring money into our Arctic Sovereignty plans in active preparation for when we have poisoned the globe enough that the Arctic becomes politically and economically important! We are preparing for the time when our purposeful refusal to ratify the Kyoto Treaty makes the Arctic available for our use. I don’t really need to add “instead of putting the money into making sure the disputed currently-frozen waterways never become unfrozen”. But why would governments come up with systems to do so, when as Marilyn Waring says in her book Counting for Nothing, “no economic model provides the means for understanding how both economic growth and environmental sustainability might be possible”. Although she wrote these words in the 1980s, how chilling that enough has stayed unchanged that it is still relevant.

It’s interesting that we’ll spend on “response units” in case of natural disasters, because these have a direct and measurable economic impact - the cleanup, the physical rebuilding, the tourism adverts. But natural non-disasters, like the ice caps not melting, and us not ending up living on small islands, breathing through masks, surrounded by warm shallows blooming with toxic algae, are economically immeasurable by current systems. (Incidentally, in comparison with the 5.3 billion in Defence funding, only 64 million is going to fund anti-terrorist prevention activities, such as investigating and stopping terrorist funding at the source). A fence at the top of the cliff, or an ambulance down in the valley?

This brings me back to Lucy Wanja and her knitting. She isn’t economically countable for her subsistence work. Nor is the ice that stops the globe from flooding economically countable. Nor is the oxygen produced by trees that are growing, although once you make them into lumber there they are, in the UN System of National Accounts: labour, product, export, money. It is because this internationally-agreed System doesn’t count those things that they’re not going to spend that 10 billion on the fence of Kyoto, and instead spend it on the ambulance of Arctic Defence. There’s no economic value to legislating for the environment, just as there is no economic value to legislating for Lucy and her colleagues. So there’s no reason to change it.

an owl counts

An owl recently appeared on our bookstore countertop. It’s a knitted owl, grey and brown and owly in a cute knitted way, and it retails for $26.99. And you know what it made me think of?

The United Nations System of National Accounts. (you can click this - it's a link)

The bookstore in which the owl currently sits is one in which I spend something close to 40 hours a week. I do things like ordering books and putting them on shelves, talking to publishers, giving schoolkids tours, holding events for teachers, helping grandmas find the right book for their four year old grandson, dealing with invoices, checking what’s selling and what’s not, adjusting the balance accordingly, planning fun book launch parties, writing a monthly newsletter. Outside of my 40 hours I read 5-6 books a week so I can recommend what’s good to teachers and teenagers and parents and kids. For all this, I receive an income that indicates that I am productive and part of Canada’s economy. I have an economic value and thus I appear in the UN System of National Accounts – my government knows I exist because of my productive contribution.

When I go home, I knit. I’m still visible in the economy, because I pay for the wool at a wool shop, which markets a product that has been in some cases imported, in all cases created by shearers and washers and graders and carders and spinners and dyers who have been paid to make it. However, once I make my sweater or shawl or half-finished sock, my work drops off the horizon. Unless I sell my sock – which frankly is unlikely – if I use it only to clothe myself or my family – the work I have done is not accountable by the UN System.

“Subsistence” work like that doesn’t have economic value. Let’s be honest – I’m not making knitted clothes and socks because I or my family need them, but knitting or sewing to clothe yourself or your own family is “subsistence” work. If I had grazed my own sheep on grass and on hay made from my own pasture, shorn and washed and graded and carded and dyed and spun and knitted, my work would be off the map altogether. No money out, no money in.

The owl made a trip of over 8,000 miles to get to a Saskatoon bookstore. He started life in Njoro, Kenya, where his creator, Lucy Wanja, is classified by website http://www.kenanaknitters.com/ as a “rural woman”. Her husband farms; she works at domestic subsistence level: collecting water, cooking for and feeding a family, raising a vegetable garden for food, making clothes.

The owl as a product that has been exported several thousand miles can be counted as having value to Kenya’s economy. Money has changed hands. In the same way, the animals Lucy’s husband raises have a concrete economic value, because they can be sold for meat and milk. The vegetables she raises don’t. The animals are a cash crop, the vegetables, subsistence.

As a rural Kenyan woman, the chances that Lucy is involved in what Marilyn Waring calls “shitwork” – that is, making fuel from animal dung – are high. (Waring discusses all this, and the UN System, in a lot more detail in her books). This job involves collecting dung, making it into packed briquettes at a mixture that emits the least smoke, drying it, and storing it. Dungwork, needless to say, is also absent from the UN System’s account.

But here’s the thing. Fuel is expensive. With the world running largely on fossil fuels, many countries have to import those fuels in large quantities and at great expense. If not importing it, they are extracting it, at an economic cost of billions of dollars in equipment, transportation and manpower (productive people who have a market value). When Lucy and her colleagues do dungwork, they save the government from having to build and pay for an infrastructure by which they could get fuel to remote communities, save them from importing expensive fuels from other countries, save them from using up limited and expensive resources. Her vegetable garden does the same thing. She saves the government money by being a producer of product that has direct daily usage right where she is.

And still, the UN System of Accounts is for her a System of No-Account. Until she started knitting owls for Saskatonian children, she was off the economic map.

The Kenana Knitters website stresses that Lucy will directly receive our $26.99 for the owl, and that this will give her valuable income in a world where she is marginalized and prevented from earning money. At the same time, it says that knitting is an ideal job for the Kenana women because it can be fitted into their regular day “in snatches” – ie you can grab a pair of knitting needles and do a row while you’re waiting for the water to boil on the stove. So though her owls have economic market value, her “real” work still does not. And while Kenana is undoubtedly a Very Good Thing, it doesn’t solve the fact that Lucy and her colleagues can only be “counted” – like a Canadian housewife could only be “counted” – if they make a product that appears in the market.

The United Nations System of National Accounts has been created by economists, academics, political scientists, and is an internationally-agreed “best-fit”. So how do we expect governments to create legislation that benefits people who, by the UN’s account, simply don’t exist in the method by which their country is valued?

I’m coming to a point. It has to do, among other things, with Hans Island. I’ll see you tomorrow.