Springtime in the Rockies

     Welcome to Spring.  Up here in the Canadian Rockies, today’s official start of Spring does not really mean anything as far as the weather is concerned.   Spring is a season of weather changes as part of Spring’s transition, and we are certainly experiencing that.  After many days of rain, this morning we woke up with snow covering the ground.  At present, it is raining again.

    The cartoon is one of my early ones, probably drawn in the first part of the 1980’s.  No doubt it was inspired by a more extreme weather transition, than we are getting today.

    I took the photo below this morning on my walk around the pond.  The pond ice is melting around the edges, and this shows the open water on its way to the pond’s outflow.  The remains of the old fence is part of the fence that existed in the 1970’s when we bought our property.  I didn’t take it down when I had the pond built.

Take a look at my paintings :  davidmarchant2.ca

Population

        Back in 1970, I remember reading a book called “The Population Bomb”, which discussed the fact that the human population was growing faster than the food supply, and that meant big trouble ahead.  The book got quite a bit of buzz, and so did the phrase, “Stop at Two” that encouraged people to not have any more than two offspring.  Both the book and the phrase are long forgotten, and in the 50 years since then the population has doubled in size.

        Population is at the root of so many of the world’s problems today...hunger, poverty, wars, and environmental degradation, but it is rarely discussed, because it might upset people’s religious, and cultural beliefs.  Religions and cultures that give all the power to men are one of the basic causes, since birth control can be available throughout the world.

        Everyone alive deserves the same high standard of living that is available in the developed world, but statistics tell us that presently the US alone uses up 25% of the worlds resources.  There are just not enough resources in the world for everyone to live the way North Americans do.  It spells mega problems ahead for everyone, except the ultra-wealthy.

       I have  read that the number of people living today, is greater than the total number of people who have ever lived, and died, on this planet.  That scares me, because there seems to be no apparent concern or solutions.

        Tragically, there are prominent and powerful people today who are actually pushing for increases in population (preferably for them: the White population).  Men, like Elon Musk and JD Vance are two proponents of more people.  Today’s world, with all of its increasing limitations, brought on by climate change, leaves our earth struggling and unable, to provide for all of its current population.  The last thing the only planet we can survive on needs, is more people.

View my paintings at:  davidmarchant2.ca

Where Do The Cartoons Come From?

         n the little Robson Valley community where I live, I am usually introduced as “the guy that draws the cartoons in the paper.”  That seems to be my claim to fame.  One of the most common questions I am always asked is, “How do you come up with all those ideas?”

        It is a complicated question to answer, because there is no single answer to the question.  The ideas come from everywhere.  Things I see, things I hear, sometimes, things just pop into my head, and I have even gotten ideas in my dreams.   Most commonly, the ideas result from something that happens to me in my life.

        In the cartoon above, you might be able to figure out where the idea for the cartoon came from.  Basically, what happened was that our cat Lucifer was so eager to get into her fresh litter box, that she jumped into it when I laid it down to take my boots off after cleaning it.  She did not even give me a chance to put it in its spot.  Usually, I just take a humorous situation like that, and make it more extreme.  That is what I did in this cartoon.

        I used to do a cartoon every week for the local paper, in 2013 a second local paper asked me if I would do cartoons for them also, so I was doing two cartoons every week.  The second paper disappeared, and last year the local weekly paper went down to just publishing every two weeks, so there is a lot less pressure to come up with a cartoon for me. 

        If I can’t come up with a cartoon, I can always redo one of the many old cartoons I have drawn.  I have discovered that after three years, people don’t remember the cartoons anyway.

You can take a look at my paintings at:  davidmarchant2.ca

Wind, Then of course, a Power Outage

     Yesterday, was day of strong winds and blowing snow.  Eventually the snow petered out, but the wind kept blowing.   Because we live in a rural area with a lot of trees, when we get strong winds, that often causes a tree, somewhere along the long power line that feeds our house, to blow over onto the line, resulting in an outage.  So I wasn’t entirely surprised late yesterday afternoon when our power went off.

    Initially, our power went off, then came back on, then off, then on, in a rapid repeat.  I knew that sort of thing can play havoc on electrical equipment, so I went to our electrical box and just flipped the breaker for the whole house off.  I figured I would leave it off for about twenty minutes, hoping that by that time, things would have settled back down.

    Twenty minutes later, I flipped the house breaker back on and was surprised when nothing happened.  At first I wondered if something had happened to the breaker, but then realized that more than likely, we were experincing a power outage.

    I got my cell phone and went to the BC Hydro (our electricity provider) website to see information I could glean.  It took what seemed like forever for the website to load, because McBride just has G3 phone connectivity.   Once the site loaded, I found out that yes indeed, a tree had blown down across a power line.    The power outage had begun shortly after 4:00, and the website said a crew was on its way (they have to come from one hour away) and it was expected that our power would be back on by 6:00.

    Six o’clock came and went, but the outage continued.  By 7:00 the temperature inside out house was starting to get cold (17°C, 63°F) because our electric baseboards weren’t working, so I built a fire in the wood stove to warm things up.

    Every time we have a long outage,I become aware of just how dependent we are on the internet to pass the time.  We can use our phones, but as I mentioned, with just G3, everything takes forever to load.  Fortunately, I had a downloaded eBook on my iPad, so I was able to read about 4 chapters, while we sat in front the fire in our wood stove waiting for the power to come back on.

    Finally, at 8:00, we heard the beeps of our electrical equipment, alerting us that they again had electricity.  It is always such a treat to finally get things back to normal.

Take a look at my paintings:  davidmarchant2.ca

Snow Now, Lots of Rain Later

     Last night we were pounded by strong winds and blowing snow.  The strong wind even blew my snow shovels that were hanging on hooks in the carport off, and onto the ground.   At present, it is still snowing and we are living under a snow warning, but that is to change later in the day when the temperature rises, and the snow turns to rain.  I would rather it just kept falling as snow, since that is easier to deal with, than slush.  

    There is an “atmospheric river” moving into BC from the Pacific.  Vancouver and the Lower Mainland will be hard hit, and are in for a real drenching for days.  Even up here in the middle of the province, our forecast calls for rain and showers until the weekend, when some flurries, are forecast.

    March is generally characterized with a lot of changeable weather, but I wish a little more sunshine was mixed in to those changes.

You can see my paintings at:  davidmarchant2.ca

Evening Sun on Beaver Mountain

     We go visit our friends, the Milnes, every Saturday night.  Last night when we headed to their house, we sure noticed the recent time change.  Instead of making the trip at dusk, last night the sun was still above the Cariboo Range of mountains on one side of the valley, illuminating Beaver Mountain, a prominent peak just east of McBride, on the opposite side. 

    Of course seeing the snow-capped mountain glowing in the direct sunlight, delayed our trip to the Milnes because I just had to stop several times to take photos.  Here are two of them:

You can see my paintings at davidmarchant2.ca

Wild Looking Kona

     Although poor Kona is looking pretty wild in this photo, she is no longer able to be the wild dog she used to be.  Now crippled with hip dysplasia, she can no longer even move herself from room to room, and she has to depend on me to pick her up and carry her from place to place.  She is on a lot of pain-killer pills, and although I know she is often hurting, she doesn’t complain.

    Despite her drugs and pain, her instincts are still very active.  The other day when I carried her outside to pee.  When she was sitting in the yard, a deer who was not paying much attention, came meandering out of the woods heading for the bird feeder.  Although the deer didn’t see Kona sitting in the snow, Kona sure saw the deer, and began barking in a fit of outrage, hobbling in the deer’s  direction, scaring it back into the woods.

    Kona didn’t really get very far, and quickly just sat down and waited for me to pick her up and carry her into the house, but kept barking even though the deer by this time was deep in the woods. 

    Kona still has spirit and craves our affection, something we are happy to provide.

Tae  look at my paintings:  davidmarchant2.ca