'educated radio pirates’

There is a new radio program on the coast of Labrador called ‘All Indigenous Power Hour’.


No, it is not another power to the lord or Christ or even Jesus or Allah [not that there is anything wrong with that].


If the two host have their way it will be power to the people.

Now that is a novel concept, I am sure it will give the creeps to certain power brokers within the Nunatsiavut Government [my words].

One of the hosts, Tj did an interview on CKOK yesterday and both hosts, Tj and Jea were on CBC Labrador Morning this AM. [I will link to it when it is up]

Tj referred to themselves as ‘educated radio pirates’. I can’t comment on the pirates bit but they sure come across as educated.

Both admit to being media neophytes with education backgrounds in Aboriginal studies, psychology and political science.


Being only aired in Makkovik at 4 pm Sundays will limit their audience, but with today’s technology and the two hosts youth, education and enthusiasm I would predict it should not be long before the program will be up on the internet, it least that would be my hope.

At the moment they have a facebook page by the same name, here is a description from that page

Description:

A local radio show about issues regarding Indigenous communities locally, across turtle island and globally.

CIML radio in Makkovik, Nunatsiavut. We encourage all Makkovimmiut to listen in and hear a different perspective on current issues such as violence against women, development, education, language, land rights, treaty rights, health, government and everything in between.

Tune in Sundays at 4 pm. 99.5 FM

Tie me kangaroo down sport.

Well not his one sport. Both man and canine were on the lucky side wouldn’t ya think, the bloke seems to have an appreciating attitude of the whole incident.

Meantime back in the kitchen; I had some left over pastry in the fridge, as is my want I do not like wasting pastry so I knocked up this apricot jam and raisin tart.




Harping back to yesterdays post; a sight like this would not look astray in this environment we have here would it?

Solid walls with a series of small windows would fit nicely with our temperatures, not to mention the pristine clear Sky's.

We can always do better!

I was listening to a radio program from Australia on CBC overnight; one of the pieces was about an award winning design for a recreation hall built in a little rural town called Berry down the south coast of NSW. I’d like 5 bucks for every time I drove through than little ol town, beautiful sleepy little spot it was back then, still is going by Google earth, but I digress.

On the show they interviewed the lead man on the design team, seems pre design he had taken a trip to the town and spent a couple of days.
He said he was overawed by the clear pristine sky, especially at night with the stars shining brightly unencumbered by any big city ambient light.

The project was one funded by the state government and as is governments want had to be built within a very tight budget. In the past this had resulted in a series of like buildings being constructed in a very generic way, most looked like brick and metal boxes.

Luckily for Berry this guy had some vision and gave a shit about what he does. The designers came up with an amazing concept so that the sports building melded into the surrounding area. The 500 odd small windows built into the concrete wall blend in nicely with the night sky.
Even durring the day the sun penetrating the multi colored windows adds to activity inside, young children invent ways to interact with the suns light on the walls and floors.

If you click on the images here they enlarge, bloody amazing really, and all for 1.3 million bucks.

This brings me to the gist of this post. I always wonder why buildings up this way have to be all build in the wooden square box concept. There is no vision, no thinking outside of the box, just wood frames with no thought to renewable energy or trend setting anything.

Even the new NG building is a wooden box with cement block veneer around the bottom floor. The only thing that takes away from the box look is triangular looking appendages on three sides.

When I was involved with the construction of the OK media center I tried my best to introduce some different building techniques [for up here]. I was stymied at every turn, especially by the architect and the design engineers.
Sure cost was a factor, though a minor one in my opinion. It was the status quo that just did not want to do any real work for the money they received.

For the evening meal it was roast chicken and veggies cooked in salt beef, or my version of jigs dinner.
Having never cooked or eaten figgy duff I decided to give it a try instead of stuffing [that’s the result in the white bowl].
I used whole-wheat bread instead of white, and I did not measure any ingredients just eyeballed them. I boiled it for two hours in a cloth bag in with the salt beef.
Sure it looked a bit dodgy and the taste was a mixture of sweet and heavy on the herbs but it passed the test as Fran gave it her seal of approval.

No wind to speak of yesterday, so a nice day for a walk around.

Some people are thinking it may be a long fall, which in the local vernacular means mild temperatures resulting in a late freezing of the sea ice.
It also may mean a lack of snow falls of substance resulting in a long period of grayish, yellowish, dirty white hues.

Still it was nice walking around in the near stillness of a Saturday afternoon. Only a few people out, not many kids doing what kids do.
There was indeed lots of action amongst the more affluent imbibers of the community, but they just go from house to house by vehicle and don’t bother too much.

The pertinent question has been asked, wont hang by the short and curlies waiting for the answer.

Sourdough rye.

As requested, my favorite sourdough rye recipe taken from my bible of bread making 'Beard on Bread". No lumps and not rubbery, lucky or not I do not know.

I went back to doing some ‘northern transport’ lobbying yesterday. It takes time to put together an e mail worded correctly along with some of the research done over the years. Then one has to be diplomatic ya know.

This was done in the absence of any feed back [anyone is aware of] emanating from all the correspondence and photographs forwarded to the government of NL, Nunatsiavut Government and our member of the house of assembly this past month pertaining to the marine shipping debacle of this season.

Granted the e mail was only sent to our member Patty Pottle, I do not see the point in sending anything to NG as they just do not reply and I have no knowledge of the of new temporary WST minister and his staff.

I did not receive any response by e mail but within half an hour of hitting the send button Patty called.
We had a good discussion; Patty is aware of most of the issues and is understanding of all the frustrations up here. Alas she is part of the Danny government [my words] and despite Patties points to the contrary WST people on the ground are as incompetent, or at best milquetoast, as all get out.

I took notes of the conversation, I would prefer an e mail response but the situation is what it is. More to follow, in what form is in abeyance.

In the meantime a knocked up a quick cottage pie of no particular recipe, just what came to mind as it was being cooked, not too bad, there is still half leftover, think I will add some cheese to the top for tonight’s meal.

I also did some pricing of camp stoves; one has been requested as a Christmas gift. The best buys are in the states, but then shipping, duties and exchange rate knock the savings all to hell there.

On the local front; there is a ‘world-famous’ brand, two burner giving 20, 000 btu’s available in three stores here.

Price range is from $135.99 [correction $155.99] at Northern to $113.98 at BigLand to $105.00 at Haynes general store.

Odd that; the largest store with the largest buying power is 30 bucks [correction 50 bucks] more than the little locally owned store.

On a personal note: we do get 10% seniors discount at the two larger stores but I am leaning to paying the $5 more at Haynes than what it would cost at BigLand with the discount.

The winner was; Haynes.

There is not much that gives one a more comforting feeling than the aroma of home cooked meals. This is especially true when entering a home where cooking is taking place or even passing a home while out walking.

I particularly noticed this yesterday. On taking a batch of bread out of the oven we promptly left for the shops and a walk. [We have to stick to a tight schedule, Siutik gets antsy and people notice the timing of our meanderings it seems]. Just kidding.

Any way back to the aromas, on re entering the house the smell of fresh baked bread was overpowering, so overpowering I just had to hack of some and smother it with butter, real butter that is.

I sure hope Tom in NS has had breakfast before he reads this post.

The forecasted ‘wind bomb’ did not eventuate yesterday. It topped out at 71 clicks, way short of the 90 predicted.

The occasional time I make fish cakes, or salmon cakes, or fish patties or whatever, I have always added the egg as a binder in with the ingredients when mixing.
Yesterday I came across a different way to cook them. After mixing all the ingredients you chill it for a couple of hours in the refrigerator, then after forming the patties you dip them in the egg then bread crumbs and fry about 4 minutes each side.

Doing them this way makes the outside crunchy and the inside is not soggy but soft and nice and tasty.

I served these with tinned peas [this is the north] and pureed [mashed] turnip and parsnip.

I admit to being a little sceptical about the patties not holding together without the binder in the ingredients. If you make sure the patties are well formed, once you dip them in the egg it helps keep things tight, after dipping in the brad crumbs things hold together really well, I did not have any break up while cooking

In the category of the weird and bizzaro:

I had an e email early in the AM notifying me of an incident late last evening.

I had not noticed it, but some time yesterday afternoon the council had placed a new communal garbage box across from us. Nice new plywood painted spruce green.
Now I have no issue with these boxes, except if they look like the one it replaced and are creating an environmental and health issue.

The incident; well an axe wielding female apparently has her own issues with garbage boxes, or maybe just this particular garbage box.
Said female was noticed hacking into the box with great gusto, about 14 to 15 hits were rendered before becoming exhausted.

The close up shot shows that the 14 to 15 hits maybe just about correct.

The noise was heard in our house, I guess we are so used to strange noises emanating from the neighborhood at night that we don’t bother to investigate as a rule.

So we did not get the ‘snow bomb’ as some describe snow storms these days. In keeping with the trend of the last several years these storms seem to track south of Nain and even south of Natuashish.

Some one is Sweden is reading the blog in Swedish, makes sense if your Swedish I guess, but then who’d a thunk it.

An anonymous commenter wrote ...not to mention the $$$$'s spent on their repairmen and operators!.....on the Nov 14 post.
Actually I did briefly mention the “many man hours and many dollars have been spent” but it is a good point and one that has not been discussed in any detail, or virtually at all.

The reason for the fire was released as being “fuel line wearing on a part of the engine above the manifold”. To my knowledge no one has pursued this further, at least not in the public domain.

I keep thinking back pre fire to when the new plant was announced and the following construction. At the same time there were big staff cut backs and lay offs announced by NL hydro province wide.

I am not certain of the exact numbers but Nain lost at least one operator with reduced hours for the staff left. Plus the mechanic who was stationed here was transferred to Goose Bay. The NLH rational was the new plant was computerized and it could be monitored from St. John’s.

During a public meeting post fire the regional manager for NLH promised a permanent lineman would be stationed in Nain during the re build, to my knowledge that was carried out. Many at the meeting asked the question “why was there not a lineman stationed in Nain on permanent basis”.
Seeing as many of the power outages stemmed from distribution problems, this seemed a legitimate question.

Then during the re build there were the extra operators who were brought in on a rotation basis. Then the engineers who choppered in on a regular basis. The crews of NLH and contractors who were rebuilding and repairing all the damage, the ones working on installing the new unit, the cost of getting replacement units in and then removing them and on and on and on.

The cost of overtime must have been horrendous, not top mention the cost of accommodations, food and transport for the ever changing crews.

All this keeps me wondering if the pre fire cut backs comes under the ‘penny wise pound foolish’ category.

I wonder if we will ever see an accounting of the costs for all this?