Our Daily Bird 66: What the Duck?

See, I don't hate all birds.  I am rather fond of ducks.  Especially ducks who are struggling professional photograhers.

Mom's Gonna Snap

I bought this shirt for Wendy a couple of weeks ago after seeing it mentioned on Twitter.  Shipping was expensive ($15 to Canada) but she loves it.  According to the site, Super-soft organic cotton, relaxed fit tee with a slightly longer body than most t-shirts.  It had me at the double entendre.

I'm not hungry (just a little self-absorbed)

Today the NFL and the NFL Players Union are fighting a media war over who is the greediest.  Like all professional sports labor disputes, it's billionaires fighting with multi-millionaires over who gets a bigger percentage of the billions. There are speeches, insults, unfair labour complaints and even banned commercials (don't click on any of those links, they bore even a hardcore football fan) and for some reason it dominates the media.  As does the Grammy's, Justin Bieber's $750 haircut, Charlie Sheen's porn family, and whatever it is the Kardashian's are doing in Manhattan. 

Around here, I have been reading about more of those evil birds that show up here daily, looking for some cool examples of micro architecture and what I am going to give Wendy for Valentines Day (a loose leaf tumbler - not sure how it works but Wendy seems to like it).

Meanwhile in Tunisia, Algeria, Egypt, and even in Saskatoon, people are are struggling to find food.  In 2008 record high food prices started riots and unrest in over 30 countries. This year prices went higher and people hit the streets. While the media was attributing it to Wikileaks, a passion for democracy, or because of a dictator, we forgot that people all over the world can't afford to eat or if they can, they can't find food to buy.

I take food for granted. How can I not, I live in Saskatchewan. Wendy works for the same Safeway I worked at seven years ago. The shelter I work in has a fully stocked commercial kitchen. Our kitchen manager, Ryan, is a gourmet cook and you never know what masterpiece he will cook up. Several times I have made rushed phone calls to Wendy to tell her to come down just to taste the awesomeness that Ryan has created.  Wholesalers come by with samples and by virtue of harassing them when they come in and having my office next to Ryan, samples and trade show invites often make their way into my office. The cooks are friendly and while the occasional knife has been thrown at me after some wisecrack (one stuck in my arm) and a Big Mac was once beaten to death, they let me grab a snack whenever I can get away with it.

It's enough to make me forget that since food and fuel prices have surged in 2008, our meals served have grown from 40,000 meals served in 2007 to over 100,000 meals served in 2010. It's not just us. The Saskatoon Friendship Inn, a local soup kitchen has started a capital campaign to double the space they have to serve and prepare the food. A report card put out by Canadian food banks showed March 2010 had the highest usage ever with food banks in Canada seeing an increase of 20% since 2009.  At our shelter, each day we put out three large tubs of almost stale bread that is donated to us from a Co-Op and Safeway and each day when I go home it is gone. The bread walks out one or two loafs at a time carried by the countless streams of people who come in with the same question, "Can I please have a loaf of bread?".

As I consume media, food, and items that are considered luxury everywhere else in the world except for the west, it's easy to forget that over half of the world lives on under $2 a day. They aren't worried about which DSLR to purchase or if they should switch from PC to a Mac, they are worried about making it through today on less then $2 a day.

That includes 97 percent in Uganda, 80 percent in Nicaragua, 66 percent in Pakistan, and 47 percent in China, according to data from the World Bank. What makes this problem even more complex is that we are reaching the point where more people are raised out of poverty and more of the world strives after the standards of living that the west enjoys, the more resources they consume. What we are are slowly understanding is that there may not be enough resources to go around for all of us to live like this. Heck, there isn't even enough grain to keep the world fed right now.

While there are some signs that this was a one off thing (Ten million acres of Saskatchewan crops lost to flooding last spring and is likely to lose a lot of acres this upcoming year) while China's food imports are surging:

China’s wheat harvest may drop by 4 million tons this year, Alex Bos, a London-based analyst at Macquarie Group Ltd., said last week. Output may have fallen to 114.5 million tons at the last harvest, from 115.1 million tons a year ago, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

Demand also may be boosting prices. Egypt agreed to buy 170,000 tons of Australian, U.S. and Canadian soft wheat in a tender, General Authority for Supply Commodities Vice Chairman Nomani Nomani said Feb. 11.

It doesn't look like a short term trend.

China is on the brink of a "new era" of corn importing which will see its intake surge from, effectively, zero to 15m tonnes within five years, a leading analyst has said.

The world's second-ranked consumer of the grain, whose return to imports in the spring sent Chicago prices soaring, has "gotten to the turning point" where it will regularly buy abroad, Hanver Li, the chairman and chief executive of Shanghai JC Intelligence, said.

Imports will grow from 1.7m tonnes this year to 5.8m tonnes next year, and to 15m tonnes in 2014-15.

It's an incredibly complex problem that involves economics, politics, unethical agricultural and foreign aid policies, and a culture of corruption in many countries who desperatly need honest brokers. Whenever I get frustrated I loan out some money via Kiva. Is that making a difference or does it help someone consume even more, making the problems worse for their neighbors? I am trying to consume less and use locally grown food and goods but the One Tonne Challenge taught Canadians one things, personal virtue may be a good thing but it's hard to bring about real change.

Whatever the solution is going to be, the events of the last month have made me re-evaluate many things in my life that I have never thought that much about.

A Hermitage in the Woods

My son Mark has an independent streak and he likes his own space.  When my two year old was born, Mark offered to move out and in with his uncle if we needed some more space.  While he loves spending time with us, he dreams of having his own pad.  A couple of years ago I was surfing the web with him and he saw this hermitage and he fell in love.  He even offered to share the space with his younger brother.

This hermitage is a tiny retreat in a 64 sq ft footprint.  It has a twin bed, a desk area, a storage closet, a basic kitchen area and 32 sq ft of covered deck space.While I love the concept, something looked wrong to me.  It was the roof, I realized I would slope the roof towards the back of the cabin rather than the front.  Luckily the plans are simple enough that it wouldn't be a big job to change things around.   For only $17.00 you can purchase an ebook that not only includes the blueprints but also shows you how to construct your own little hermitage.

While not as refined at the famous Hermit's Cabin by Arvesund Living AB, it did let me know that a project like this is within reach and pretty affordable.  Once insulated, the body heat from two boys, a dog, and a small space heater should be enough to keep it comfortable in anything but the most severe Saskatchewan winter night.

My Oasis: more small living

I have lived in Saskatoon since I was ten years old.  While we always had enough food on the table and a roof over our heads, there was never enough money for vacations and outside of a yearly day trip to Waskesiu in Prince Albert National Park, we never vacationed. Instead there was a small second hand book store that would sell a 2 cubic foot box full of books for $1 and a couple of times a summer I would go over with my mom and get one. While that made the summers bearable, it wasn’t a vacation.

My mom had a dream of owning a Boler trailer. I am not sure how the four of us would have fit inside one but it never happened. Later in life, I became a bi-vocational pastor in Spiritwood, Saskatchewan while living in Saskatoon. I drove for two hours back and forth from Spiritwood each weekend and made several other trips up and back each month. On top of that,  I had a full time job in Saskatoon, our first child and Wendy who worked opposite hours from me all of the time. I spent a lot of time wanting to get away as a family and not knowing how to do it.

A couple of years ago I found myself working as the Residential Coordinator of the Salvation Army Community Services in Saskatoon. The Salvation Army has been great to work for but the job involves being on 24/7 call and can be stressful. I was at a point in my life when I could start looking around for property on the off-chance we could find a place to get away to.  I saw this cabin by the founders of Hive Modular made out of two shipping containers in Minnesota and was inspired to go looking for a place of my own.

My brother and I started to look around. We found a garden shed sized cabin at Waskesiu for $400,000.  I doubt it was 250 square feet. We found some land by Mout Nebo for $100,000.  I wasn't sure if I could afford the taxes, plus I wasn't sure if it was a lake rather than a glorified slough.  I had kind of given up on the idea until one day a friend who is the Executive Director at a camp and conference center emailed and said he had what he called a rustic cabin really cheap.  I bought it on the spot.  Then I asked him to send me some pictures.  I realized that I hadn’t told Wendy about it yet and so I called her on Skype and said, “Guess what? I bought a cabin and no I don’t know what it looks like yet”.  There was silence on the other end of the call.  Then she said, “I would appreciate it if you would not purchase property without letting me know you were thinking about it.”  Some friends at the same lake owned this cottage and I said, if it’s the same size or bigger than Dennis and Wilda’s cabin, we can make this work. 

Wendy didn’t sound convinced but I was on a roll.

We had some friends out there and they checked the place out for rot and structural issues and later that day I got the photos.  The cabin was 14x18 feet with a a 8x12 add on that was divided into a master bedroom and a storage closet.   348 square feet.  2 adults.  2 kids.  1.5 dogs.  That Boler was looking spacious.  The first time I showed Mark the cabin, he wept (to his credit, he thought we were moving out to it).

I have always loved microarchitecture and here was our chance to see if it would work for a family and a dog that is like a bull in a china shop. Three years and some renovations later, it’s been an adjustment.  We took out a wall and two 7x7 rooms in favour of a big common room, we painted, we tossed out most of the old appliances and made do with a convection toaster oven and microwave.  We added on a $100 gazebo that gave us an additional 100 square feet of space and a quiet space to drink coffee in the evening. 

Our fire pit was the inside of a washer machine surrounded by stones that we pulled out of the lake. Our washroom/showers are a half-block away in one of three different locations that are shared by a bunch of camera owners and campers.  It’s not great at 2:00 a.m. but it works.

The great part of living in a small space is the cost. The appraised value of our cabin is $6000 and $4000 of that is the land. The bad part is that we have around 1/3 the room as our house (891 sq. feet over 1 1/2 stories). It is not a quiet weekend getaway  as our boys at ten and two years of age, have yet to embrace the contemplative lifestyle. 

Along the way we put together a weblog to track progress of the renovations and the changes to the cabin. We discovered a community of people who were seeing how they could live or at least get away with less. Not only that but there are architects who are designing smaller and more cost effective places all over North America.

Finding them has been a lot of fun and while it won't replace Our Daily (evil) Bird, I'll take some time to post some fun examples of micro architecture over the next couple of months.  Hopefully you can find some inspiration for your own oasis.

Small Living

The Boston Globe covers a class from Green Mountain College that built a 8x12 cabin for under $2000 using all reclaimed materials.

According to the Globe:

Students settled on a rectangular building with one low corner to create a curved roof that rainwater can pour off of and be collected. A sloped back wall helped make the home feel more spacious and a loft, furnishings and lighting fixtures were also designed and constructed by students. Sheep wool was even added for insulation into the window casing. Construction took two months.

Can you really live in 96 square feet? Well, according to this house tour on Apartment Therapy, a family of four and their dog do quite well in this 180 square foot cabin situated in British Columbia's Gulf Islands.

Like a lot of small projects, economics played a big role:

We started off with grand plans. We thought we'd take out a small loan and pay a local company to design and prefab a bigger cabin right away. We even went so far as to have the plans fully engineered (we still have them; they're awesome). The entire thing cost us about $3,000. But then the economy started to deflate and we realized we didn't want to have a loan hanging over our heads. That's when we decided to start over with a new, more modest plan and DIY the whole thing, with the help of our aforementioned awesome friend Stefan.

Initially, we made the deck way too small. It was only 4 by 10, and it made the cabin feel claustrophobic. We realized that we needed to expand the outdoor space so that we could just throw the doors open and have one large 10 by 22 foot area.

Here is what they learned:

Even out in nature, kids need toys. Don't get me wrong. Our boys are happy to do their fair share of digging, playing with sticks, pestering insects, throwing rocks and whathaveyou. But after a while they want to kick back and chill out with a pile of Legos. We've built up a discreet stash of toys for these occasions. We've also realized that even kids need their own space, which is why our next project is a sweet little playhouse in the trees.

The purging is neverending. Things creep over to the cabin from our home in the city, and every so often we have to do an audit of what gets to stay. (In fact, John wanted me to point out that the Ikea Bekvam stool you can see in the top photo has been brought back to the city. That's how ruthless we are. Even poor little stepstools can get cut.)

The Daily Shave

I hate shaving and am always looking for a way to improve it. Saskatchewan is dry (we invented the term dry cold), wind swept, and my skin is always irritated. To deal with this I am always using some skin conditioner which means that I smell like aloe or something else all day when what I really want to smell like is The Old Spice Guy (Who knew? Marketing works). A couple of years ago I thought I came up with the perfect solution, I would grow the bald man ponytail and a lumberjack beard. Not only would I not have to shave but I would always have a place to store my wallet and cell phone. Well, Wendy vetoed that idea (she won't let me rock the mullet anymore either) and I was back trying to find a way to improve my shave.

One of the things I asked to get for Christmas was a shaving brush and some shaving soap. Jon Armstrong  mentioned it to his wife Heather Armstrong (creator of Dooce) a couple of years ago as a great Christmas gift and I was wondering if there was a good alternative to smelling a like I lived in an aloe plant every time I shaved.

On Christmas Eve I opened my stocking and found a Wilkinson Sword shaving brush and soap. Later that night I tried it out -  running some hot water, getting the brush wet, lathering up some soap, lathering up some more, getting a little carried away with it, making a mess, cleaning the mess up, and then realizing I had left the hot water on the entire time and had fogged up the mirror. By this time Wendy was mad that I was wasting water, Mark had to go to the bathroom and all momentum was lost.

Fast forward to Christmas morning and I tried again - this time with less mess and pretty good results. The brush helps hydrate the shaving cream in order to form a thick rich shaving lather. Using a brush to lather up helps get the shaving cream up under each whisker which results in better, smoother shaves.  At that point my face cried out in a chorus of joy. It felt good, really good.  Not only that but I didn’t smell like a plant and over the next couple of days I realized I didn’t need to use any after shave skin conditioner either. There is something to be said for kickin’ it old school. Now if I can only find my Zubaz pants and my Tony Hawk skateboard.

Since I was reinventing my shaving time, I decided to see if the razor needed an upgrade.  Now I know a real man would get himself a straight edge but I like my Schick Quattro Titanium and my jugular veins enjoy not being nicked up.  After looking at some Gillette products and seeing that a blade is now over $3, I went cheap and picked up a M5 Magnum five blade razor. Its blades cost  half the amount that the Quattro blades do and are a fraction of the Fusion Pro Glide blades. I thought to myself, “How bad can they be?”.  Well it’s not as good as the Quattro but it’s not horrible either. I got a better shave then my old  Gillette Sensor 3 razor but it wasn’t as comfortable as my Quattro. For whatever reason I have found that many razors included in the original case are of lower quality than the replacement blades (which has never made any sense to me) so I won’t make my final decision for a couple weeks but unless things change, I will relegate the M5 Magnum to my dopp kit or to the cabin.

Next week’s old school trick? Downgrading your web browser.

My To Do List: Publish My Own Book

Indie Publishing: How to Design and Publish Your Own Book I don't know how you did with your 2010 New Years' Resolution (mine was to be less cooperative and I did really well at it) but in 2011, I want to publish my own book from start to finish. It's something that I've wanted to do for years and is the brick and mortar equivalent to building a web site from scratch.

When I get around to it (ETA is 2015 at my current pace), Ellen Lupton's Indie Publishing will guide me through the process.  It's only 170 pages which is good because I want to publish a book, not read about publishing a book.  It covers the basics of indie book publishing: typography (just a hint, don't use Comic Sans), cover design, binding types, and examples of different designs with different kinds of books.  For you ezine creators out there there is a section on handmade books.

Once you get your book published, then it's off to the next thing on your life list, beating Super Mario Brothers.

Our Daily (angry) Birds: 47

I know that Our Daily Bird is one of the most popular parts of The Hedge Society but I just need to come out and say it, not all of us are fond of birds. Despite being 6'4" tall and large enough to play the defensive line in football, birds freak me out. They swoop, they have scales, they eat worms, they lay eggs... my dog is even bred to hunt them. Whatever the reason, I may or may not be afraid of them as well. Every time I think I am over it I end up jumping in my brother's lap because a bird came to close to our table.

It's not all my fault. The birds can't all be trusted. Look at the bird lobby and their special interest groups in Washington.  They even got a bird onto Sesame Street and look at the trouble him and his "imaginary" friend Mr. Snuffleupagus cause. Not all birds are nice. Like these ones below.

Genus Aves Iratus (Angry Birds)

Years ago while in Toronto to see the Barenaked Ladies in concert, I wandered into a Second Cup for a coffee when I made a near fatal mistake and ordered a crumbly muffin. As I stepped outside, I was immediately surrounded by sparrows. Keeping my cool, I told myself if this gets bad, I can probably take them and I casually kept eating my crumbly muffin. Then out of nowhere, a one-legged seagull came swooping down and landed awkwardly on one leg before falling over (like I said, he only had one leg). He gave out a call and then there were hundreds (it was more like millions) of seagulls landing all around me and all wanting a piece of my crumbly muffin.  

There are a lot of stories about what happened next but I did what any normal person who had a deathly fear of birds would do; I threw my crumbly muffin as far as I could in one direction, tossed my coffee on the one-legged seagull, and then ran as fast as I could the other way, ignoring the laughter of my wife and about 50 strangers.

I hate birds. Why can't this site celebrate something less evil like Beagles?

A Sacred Home

Automatism by Lori Langille has long been a favorite weblog of mine.  She recently featured this long abandoned church that had been converted into a second home in Cape Town, South Africa.

It brought me back to a wonderful church conversion that was done by This Old House in San Francisco in 1997.

While some have turned old churches into wonderful summer homes and cottages, I have a simpler dream. I would love to convert an old church into a private library with the walls covered with books (and of course the obligatory rolling ladder).

Once the books are in place, give me a coffee table with a tabletop radio, a place for my dog to nap at my feet, a reclining chair to read on, and a comfortable sofa (for when I decide to join the dog for a nap).  I can't imagine a more enjoyable way to spend a winter storm in Saskatchewan.

Making the perfect cup of coffee

Aerobie Coffee MakerI grew up Methodist which means that I really have no vices that anyone admires. To overcompensate so I can fit in with those that have interesting vices, I tend to be elitist about coffee and hope no one really notices.  One thing that has really helped me with this is the Aerobie Coffee Maker. Yes, the same Aerobie that makes those flying disks that when you miss them go for another hundred yards. They also make an amazing coffee maker.

I am not a coffeetologist but even I know, you want the flavor from the coffee but none of the bitterness (although at work, the people I work with seem to feel the opposite is true).  I am told that in your average pot of coffee, there are compounds such as chlorogenic acids, trigonelline, furfuryl alcohol, and even caffeine itself which lend bitter flavors to a pot of fresh coffee.  Aerobie set out to solve this. Rumors are that the first coffee maker they made just went a really long distance and make a mess of the house and yard.  Later incarnations made better coffee and less mess (but don't travel as far when you throw it).

According to several coffee/nerd sites, the coffee is better because of the lower temperature and short brew time which means that the the acid level of the brew is much lower than conventional brewers.  According to coffee nerds who have actually tested it, lab pH testing measured the Aeropress' brew acid as less than one fifth that of regular drip brew.

As for French Press, people see some similarities as both use total immersion and pressure. But the similarities end there. The filter in the French Press is at the top of the mixture. Because coffee floats, the floating grounds clog the filter and makes pressing and cleaning very difficult. Users are instructed to use only coarse ground coffee. But this reduces the amount of flavor that can be extracted from the coffee and necessitates long steeping times which extract bitterness.

Here is the Aeropress in action

You can find them for around $25 all over the interweb.  While you are it, get yourself some Luwak coffee to have along with it.