Moths to Flames

This from my friend Roxanne --

"a writer is a device for turning alcohol into words."

How true -- some days more than others. Reminds me of yet another quote from my friends Sarah and Kevin in the upcoming podcast, upon reflecting that most of their songs contain references to alcohol, because they say "alcohol contains the best metaphors". It's like moth to the flame, they say, and the piper always needs to be paid.

Maybe I like these ideas because I want to identify with Dorothy Parker.

Curious.

Gathering No Moss

Well, time to move on again. It's been a very good winter .. got some new things under my belt -- teaching university, modelling for art classes (which I'm almost out the door to do today), some new radio programs and sound pieces, lots of reading, lots of blogging, connecting with old friends ... it's been a full few months.

And now I'm starting to pack up and move out of Windsor ... boxing up things to take back to store at my friend Ellen's place in Hamilton. I'll be back and forth a few times in April and May. Come mid-June I'll be going out to housesit for my friends Hildi and Peter in Vancouver.

Two months on the Pacific coast ... those glorious mountains and salt sea breezes off of English Bay. Takes me back to my mid-twenties, arriving with practically no money and waiting and waiting and waiting for my UI cheques. And every day walking to the UI office to see if my money has arrived, frustrated, yet looking up at those mountains and saying to myself, thank god I'm here.

And ya, it's bound to hurt that this is where Barry lived the first part of our lives together. But I'd been there for a while before I met him, and there was a me out there that was not him. There have been very few places since where I can honestly say I've experienced my separate self and been so happy with her.

And I've got lots of friends to visit in really wonderful places all up and down the coast. And then in the fall, over to India, Sri Lanka and Thailand for an undetermined amount of time. I don't have to be anywhere at any particular time.

You know, my life would be darn near perfect right now if my heart wasn't still so sore. You think you're getting over it, and then it comes back to land another punch in the gut yet one more time.

To put it in some kind of perspective -- my friends Sarah and Kevin have this song that Kevin wrote (I'm working on a podcast right now with a conversation with them and five of their really great songs ... the CD will be out in the summer.)

The chorus of this song goes:

And the preacher is preaching salvation
And the judge and the hangman agree
But the point of this whole sad narration
Is the pain that will set us all free

And then there's the Epilogue, which sums it all up

And the preacher is playing piano
And the hangman is drinking the gin
And the judge is in bed with a barmaid named Fred
Too busy to save us from sin

So ultimately I guess that means we can experience our pain without fear of judgement ... because everybody's all wrapped in their own lives. There's something good in that.

You really have to hear the whole song, and all the others. Great album. (I'll let you know when the podcast is posted) Inspires me to start writing songs again too. I'll have a piano all summer in Vancouver. It really is all good.

Even the painful stuff -- it will set us all free.

Happy Birthday Dad

Seventy three years. He was born in 1934. Thankfully, too late to get shipped off to World War 2 -- he was too young. And early enough to enjoy the southern Ontario booming economy -- after many long years of a secure job (balanced with running a 124 acre farm), both he and my mom have a good pension and have a wonderful life living on the shores of Eagle Lake near South River, Ontario.

On April 9th, mom and dad .. Helen 'n Bill .. will be celebrating their 51st wedding anniversary. There are five of us in the next generation .. Marianne, Dianne, me, Lori and Cindy (yup, five girls). Two grandchildren so far, Emily and Elizabeth (yup, two more girls) and another one on the way the end of June (surprise!)-- THIS JUST IN -- IT'S NOT THE END OF JUNE. IT'S THE END OF APRIL.

One night, Barry and I were having a bottle of wine with my mom looking out over the lake late at night in the old cottage (the one where they spent summers before the new house was built). And I asked my mom what attracted her to him way back when. And what has kept them together all these years.

"Because a nicer man never walked the face of the earth" was her response. Amen to that.

The Next Digital Frontier - part 1

I went out and bought an MP3 player yesterday. I figured I'd better get some personal experience with this method of content delivery to expand my knowledge of podcast and internet audio delivery.

I am discovering a whole new world in the process. And yes, I am looking/listening to my work much differently just in the 24 hours that I've owned this little gadget. It's a whole new world out there. There's a lot I could say about the medium being the message and how I need to change the way I work to adapt to the new universe. But let's start with the practicalities and discuss buying an MP3 player.

First discoveries: There are so many players available with so many features that it's hard to choose. And there's a big difference in models, probably based on price point, I would guess. First of all, I chose the RCA Lyra because it had a line-in jack. Which I hoped was compatible with a condenser mike (they sometimes are, but not always, worth a try) so I could hopefully use it as a recording device too. Well, no, got it home and found out that the line in jack is not a standard line in jack. So it will only work with the cable they provide. (Which works fine for some applications, but what happens if you lose the special little cable?) I was thinking about keeping it anyway, but I figure it's not a good thing that it seized up many times and I needed to remove the battery to reset it. Nope, not good.

And no manual. I am starting to make a lot of purchasing decisions based on whether or not there's a manual included. In this case, I had to go to a website, use up a whole bunch of paper and ink to print it out, and now I have a manual I don't need.

So I took it back, and got an IRiver. Which I like. I had to make the difficult choice between a model without a radio, but which had a line-in jack (right size this time). They didn't have a model with both. Since I already have a bunch of recording devices I chose the 1 GB T10 Model.

I'm glad I exchanged the Lyra for the IRiver. The difference in sound quality is truly amazing. Truly a pleasure to listen to. And it came with a manual. And it's heftier and sportier -- a pretty blue and it comes with handy things like an armband so you can wear it. You can also look at photos on it (if you really need to look at a postage-stamp sized picture).

Downside -- no line-in. I really wanted that line-in. And it is so tiny that the controls are hard to work with adult sized hands. But that's true of all of them. Cramped hand muscles are the price we pay for the tiny size of the thing. And it was about $40 more than the Lyra, but worth it for the improved quality.

Oh, the other downside. IRiver is solidly in bed with Microsoft, so the only software that will synch to it is Windows Media Player. More about software tomorrow after I accept the reality that WMP is what it's going to be -- I wouldn't mind so much if the software was as easy to use as the software that came with the Lyra. And WMP has a lot of built in features that constantly link to the internet to sell me music I don't want. It's very intrusive.

More about that tomorrow ...

Oh heck, here's one more

Victoria and Arleen Swimming with Frogs 

I've been going through my pictures and I just can't quit. This is another cool place at Au Grand Bois -- known as "The Spa" -- bathing suits optional (why bother, eh?).

Of Coffee and Compromises

Breakfast at Au Grand Bois 

Further to my post yesterday about the beauties of Au Grand Bois, here is another favourite story of mine. (By the way, the picture above is Doug, Darren and Lorne waiting for their morning coffee)

Arleen and Lenny, who are the stewards ("owners", for those of you who prefer the more familiar Western capitalistic jargon) of Au Grand Bois, came to me with a really funny dilemma after we'd all been camping there for a day. The problem was coffee. Serious problem.

Arleen and Lenny are not coffee drinkers. Arleen had made the choice to go with Fair Trade coffee. I drink fair trade coffee almost all the time myself, so this was a decision I supported wholeheartedly (wish Tim Hortons would pay more attention to this issue).

So, about a day into our week, Arleen was running out of coffee. She was absolutely astounded at the amount of coffee we were going through. Not only that, the amount of talk about coffee was something else she had never experienced.

So, what to do .. she had only budgeted for two cups a day per person. No, no, no, this would not do ... these are media people .. and one thing you don't do is limit the supply of coffee to a media person. I mean, how are we going to meet deadline? And even out here in the bush, we had deadlines to meet.

Arleen's first choice was to have me encourage all of us to drink less coffee. Not just for economic reasons, but because she sincerely believes that caffeine is an addiction that we can all kick with a little loving encouragement. Not gonna happen, Arleen. They'll shoot me at dawn. After they've had their coffee, that is.

Or she could buy more Fair Trade coffee and send the bill to us. But I was the organizer and budget-keeper, so I made the typical decision which is made in the hard-hearted North American economy. No extra financial cost.

My compromise -- we will stay in integrity for the morning, I told Arleen, and drink Fair Trade Coffee. I would go out and buy the ethically-compromised coffee for the afternoon. At least we can start the day with a sincere effort to support the impoverished coffee growers of the world.

I reassured her that I would take full moral responsibility for the decision. So to mitigate my on-going guilt about my decision having possibly harmed the Workers of the World, here's a word to all of you -- think of the farmers who grow your coffee. Buy Fair Trade.

And it has the added benefit of being shade-grown, which means they aren't clear cutting the forest to build mono-cropped plantations of coffee plants (trees? Can't remember if coffee is a tree or a shrub). And it's organically grown, so no nasty chemicals. And just about all the Fair Trade coffee I've had has been wonderfully good.

Yes, better than Tim Horton's. Even if it doesn't come with a Roll Up the Rim cup. That new car would just cause more pollution anyway. (note to my puzzled American friends -- you gotta be Canadian to understand that reference).

Reconnecting

Au Grand Bois in the morning 

Had a wonderful day yesterday full of connections from my recent and not-so recent past.

My first connection was a long phone call with Lenny and Arleen Proust, of Au Grand Bois in the Pontiac Region of Quebec (on the Quebec side of the Ottawa River close to Ottawa). I love the Pontiac -- it's where we had the audio art camp in 2002, and it was a fabulous time. They own 545 acres of woods - owning that much pristine land is pretty close to heaven on earth these days.

Lenny and Arleen used to run a children's camp until they decided they just didn't have the energy for 600 kids every summer anymore. Now they are looking for a new purpose, and they are thinking that they want to develop an eco-village. Which is a nother way of saying sustainable living, cohousing, people living together gently upon this earth. I like the term Intentional Community. I think that sums it up nicely. With 545 acres, there's a lot of room to spread out.

In recent years, I have thought many times that living in community is the way I want to live my life. It makes so much more sense from a lot of perspectives -- economically, socially, environmentally .. after all, we humans are pack animals. I don't think we were intended to live in our own little cages in high rise buildings made of concrete. Even if we do have a balcony garden and a great view.

Whether it's at Au Grand Bois, or in Nova Scotia or wherever, there's something calling out to me.

Oh, I need to get back to the woods ...

Waiting for the Ships

I don't see one yet ... 

The St. Lawrence Seaway opened this week. Ursalla and I took a long snowy walk this morning to see if we could spot our first freighter. Having driven a long way down the seaway, all the way to Riviere de Loup, I'm liking this big bit of water even more. I've always wanted to hop on a freighter and go all the way from the Gulf all the way to the Lakehead.

No boats today, but I know they're down there somewhere. My sister Lori called me from the middle of the Ambassador Bridge yesterday to tell me she'd seen her first one. I'll just have to go for more walks.

The riverfront is one of the best things about being in Windsor. I used to have an apartment right across from Dieppe Park where the Hilton Hotel now stands. It was a really colourful place -- home not just to me, but also a whole bunch of drug dealers, hookers and cockroaches of many shapes and sizes. At 20, I wanted to live where life was really happening, you know, not in some comfortable suburban building where everything is so ordinary. I needed to gather material to be a real writer. I needed to get down there in the gutters of humanity and experience that life was more than watching the soybeans shrivel up and turn brown in the bucolic farmland of Essex County. Yes, there are many stories from my days in the Alvin Apartments.

Je digress .. my point was going to be that I had a fabulous view of the river in that apartment. Best view in the city for $115 a month (lots of onshore entertainment in the apartment building too for no extra charge).

Back to the boats -- focus on the main story, Vic.

The ships were so close you could read the names on the bow. Windsor is the only place I've lived where you get to see a steady parade of ships going somewhere. In Vancouver, they sat in the Harbour. In Hamilton, only a small percentage of the traffic even entered the harbour. I've always felt energized by going places. If I can't go, I still get a real kick out of watching trains, boats and places even if I'm not on them.

And back in those days, I could look at a Canada Steamship Lines boat (which is just about all of them these days) without going, yuck, Paul Martin. Whoops. I forgot. He sold them to his sons when he became Prime Minister. Blind trust and all that.

I'm getting a tad cynical here. Back to thinking about pure pleasure, about sitting on a blanket next to the river reading a book, and seeing if I can decipher what country the ship is from.

I'm probably shipping out from Windsor myself the beginning of June. So I'm hoping we'll have a sunny May and that the trees leaf out real fast. That's another nice thing about Windsor, it's summer down here before the leaves have barely budded in Ottawa.

I'm going to enjoy the last couple of months here.

Car-free living

Wow, those cognitive distortion busting and anxiety management lessons I've spent so much time on are really coming in handy this morning.

I'm just laughing. There's nothing else to do about it (except for political action, more on that later). My insurance broker got back to me and told me they would insure me but would raise my rate from $77 a month to $425 a month.

I laughed at my broker when she told me. And laughed and laughed. The idea that I would give an insurance company $425 a month when I don't have to is just absurd. And said, I guess I'm going to be living in the city then and bike and bus and take cabs and rent cars when I want to get out of town. And then I gave her a lecture on how not having a car was going to keep us alive longer anyway. And how the insurance companies wouldn't be able to get away with this if more of us decided to give up our cars.

I was nice to her, though. Really I was. It's important to depersonalize these things a lot of the time.

And then I told her that, since I won't be driving anywhere I'll have lots of time to lobby for public auto insurance.

I'm just glad I have the choice in this.

The larger picture does bother me, though. My insurance agent is in South River, an area not known for availability of public transit. And an area where many, many people are barely scraping by just to support their families. One accident (and a minor one at that) has the potential to impoverish a family.

When visiting South River, I have heard many people refer to South River as the "welfare capital of the north". Well, hell if people can't afford to go to work, what choice do they have? I know, this isn't a problem that's limited to South River -- I am only using them as an example. And I'm not picking on my insurance agent because their only control over this is to go into another line of work .. But this was also heavy Mike Harris/Ernie Eves territory, and we know that neither Harris or Eves really cared all that much about the plight of the welfare mother who can't get auto insurance. And somebody voted them in. So in that sense all the South Rivers in the province and the people who voted for them are responsible.

As for me, I am fortunate that I have the choice. Maybe I'll move to Halifax and just rent a car every now and again to get out to the shore. Or maybe I'll move to Ottawa which is a cool city with great bike paths. I have options .. if I do decide to go further with this, it will be mostly for the benefit of those people who don't.

And of course to blow off some steam in a socially productive way.

Nationalize the Buggers!

I haven't done a political rant in a long time. So please indulge me.

I've been looking at my various options, figuring out where I want to live for the next little while. Still want to go to Nova Scotia and live a life of rural bliss. I may end up in the city, which I'm not totally adverse to as long as it's a liveable city. Rural Nova Scotia would be my first choice.

Here's the obstacle -- I schmucked my car in December. My fault, I admit it. But nobody was hurt (except the insurance company's bottom line, that is) The other woman's car only had a paint smear on her pretty white SUV. My passenger doors got punched in (the picture in on a previous blog entry here). They wrote me a cheque and said "your first accident won't have that big an effect".

Well, I'm not so sure. My own insurance company isn't even getting back to me. And on-line quotes are ranging anywhere from $2200 a year to $5700.

Well, I will be damned if I am going to allow myself to be held hostage to these thieves. One accident. And not even a big one. Come on.

On the other hand, this hands me an opportunity to put into practice one of my beliefs -- that if more people found alternative ways of living, like going car-free, we would have a cleaner, more sustainable environment. And a car is also a very expensive habit, both in terms of money and our health (so much healthier to be biking and walking)

And if more of us said "No, that's fuck YOU" to our insurance companies and said, hey, we can live without you, maybe they couldn't continue these extortionate rates.

Well, that felt better. I'm now going to walk the dog .. it's a beautiful day. And then I'm going to call my MPP to ask "hey, time to put public auto insurance back on the table".. (no high hopes here .. my MPP is an NDP, but the NDP did wuss out on public insurance when they were in government, so ...) But at the very least, taking political action does make me feel less powerless.

oh, ya, another thing. The accident will come off my record in ten years. But then they'll continue to be able to charge exhorbitant rates because I haven't had insurance for ten years. Under the current system I can see no immediate way to win this one. So I'm going to have to look long term and do some political action if I want to see any changes.

The State of the Airwaves

This is a repost of a message I put on Airdaily, the listserve of the Association for (of?) Independents in Radio in the States. This is a good read for anybody who is interested in radio, music and/or cultural nationalism.

******************************************

Hey folks -- if you're interested in finding out how commercial radio is faring in Canada, the latest submission by the Canadian Association of Broadcasters is a fascinating read.

"That Was Then .. This is Now" can be found here.

Even if you're not specifically interested in Canadian broadcasting, the summary of how all the different kinds of audio delivery are affecting commercial radio can be applied to other national contexts as well.

In terms of the language of this report, you will find a lot of similarities to the position and tone of the NAB (National Association of Broadcasters, the lobby group for the commercial stations in the States). I am very thankful that up here in Canada, the CAB and commercial radio does not have a lock on the airwaves like they do in the US. They're still trying, though.

The CAB's position papers always start with the premise "the sky is falling". And if it's not already falling, well then, it's about to fall. And of course they resist any kind of regulation .. unless of course it's to their advantage and then hey, save us Big Mommy Government.

Fascinating reading, even if the whiny tone is real annoying ...

Vive la Canadienne,
Victoria

Soft Focus

Self Portrait 

Some would say this isn't focussed clearly but I really like this picture ...

Lots of snow

Snowy days in South River 

This is my dad. My mom took this picture to try to entice us to come up to visit them. It's the snowiest year since they moved up there in 1992.

I love snow and snowmobiling, so this is a good idea. They've got a nice place that's almost like a resort up there on the lake and it's really beautiful. And I can let the dog off the leash and she really likes that too.

Hope it doesn't get mild before I get up there.

Looking Upriver 

Dog and Ice Floes 

Becoming an Eye Person

Learning to See 

For years I have resisted working with visual images. I've always believed that it is too optimistic to think we can do everything well. I've been hesitant about venturing outside of audio expression because if I spend time on the pictures, will I still be able to do audio just as well?

I've had a change of heart ... I figure I've been doing audio now for over 20 years, so if I spend a little time learning something else, it won't detract from my sound work.

And so last summer I went out and bought a video camera. And yesterday I got a cute little Canon still digital camera. It's probably very simple by professional standards but to me it has gazillions of features and makes me ask "where do I start?"

And I answer, like I would tell anybody asking me how to get started in audio, you just go out there and do it. You learn by doing.

That's what I did today. I took pictures of tree bark (as you can see above), shards of ice piling up on each other, some of the historic buildings in Olde Sandwich Towne.

I even have a little 30 second video mode on my still camera and was able to get a sheet of ice on the river scraping the edges of another sheet of ice. The sound was also remarkable ... I am inspired to go down there again and get some more ice floe images.

It's a whole new experience -- I know what kinds of sounds I am drawn to because of all the years I've spent sound gathering. I've always used my microphone to try to hear beyond the obvious. To really work my eyes and see beyond the obvious is the next step.

And yes, there is a film in the works. It will likely take me about five years but it is happening. It's a theme I started working on back in 1999 as an audio documentary. The images are so stunning and startling that to do it in sound alone will only tell part of the story.

That, I think, is an important idea -- if you don't need pictures, don't use them. If you do, it doesn't honour the story to tell it halfway by leaving them out.

It's energizing to be exploring new ways of telling the story ... however it wants to be told.

Cheering on the Team

Do they look like me? 

These are my two adorable nieces Emily (the little one) and Elizabeth (the almost-a-teenager one).

My brother in law Mikey sent this picture and a note:

"In anticipation of the gold medal for hockey later today, my girls are pumped!!"

Maybe next year we'll get Elizabeth and Emily on the ice!

Go Canadian women, big and little!

The Language of Aggression

Oh no. I'm a warmonger.

After my last post about militarism and peaceful protest, this is a really ironic thing that I'm writing about.

For the past few weeks I have often caught myself using militaristic language. When I'm in a situation requiring me to be large and in charge, my language changes. Examples of recent turns of phrase that I've used -- "I'll just blow it out of the water", "subtle as a hand grenade", "pinging off problems one by one like ducks in a shooting gallery".

Hardly peacemaking and gentle words. I am trying to notice when I do this because it does reflect when I'm preparing to go to battle over something. They're very little battles, mind you. But my language shows when I am in a "power over" , rather than a "power with" mindset (these are phrases used by Starhawk , who is a really wonderful witch (pardon me, that's "Wiccan") from California who does really great social change work)

Fascinating. Good example of personal change through linguistic awareness. Goes to show how our mind affects our words and our words affect our mind ..

Why I'm Holding an Anti-War Sign

What good does it do? 


I went to a vigil a couple of nights ago. That's the soft word for a protest.

I don't do this an awful lot. My last public demonstration was in the volatile days of the Mike Harris Reformatories. (The Hamilton Protest was amazing .. the best in the province).

Partly my participation was about the need to do something, anything .. because the road ahead looked very scary (it was). And I had also hoped that large numbers of people would send a message that the the government had to listen to. (They didn't -- they just dismissed us as saying we were all little bad union members who were the puppets of our big bad union bosses.)

So, okay, back to Friday night and the picture above. And what were we protesting. Or vigilling. What we were doing. I didn't know. There was a military conference happening inside the Windsor Armouries. So we were there.

Now, I'm not usually a fuzzy thinker about these things and there I was anyway. Even though I wasn't clear on the agenda -- was it an anti-war conference? Or one of those funny ones where everybody says they're against war but then start talking about how we can stop war by giving more money to our armed forces and finally buy those new helicopters or whatever the army wants today ...

I didn't know. And I didn't spend the time to find out. Because, in the end, it wasn't about the conference and its agenda. It's about our agenda. And I think the the reasons why I went say a lot about my beliefs about why we go to demonstrations, and their value.

See, what happened was this -- Ann, a friend who organized the vigil, felt really strongly that there needed to be a presence at this event. She was getting a really lukewarm reception from others and whether or not we should be there. The reason why I went was because the thought of her standing outside in the snow, one person with a picket sign was brave. And committed. (And kinda sad too). So I went to stand with her.

I needn't have worried -- twelve other people came through. Maybe because they (unlike me) understood the agenda of the conference and felt the need to be there. or maybe, like me, they were there to support Ann. Or both.

I don't think it matters. Do the people we are trying to reach really care that we are standing out there with our "no war" signs and candles? Probably not. What protesting, or vigilling, or demonstrating, or whatever you want to call it, does is give us space to be with each other. And to support each other in the struggle.

Maybe we are just small voices calling out in the wilderness. But remember -- it's an old premise of the social empowerment movement that our voices get stronger when we put them all together. And being with people working together for a common goal helps make it easier when we get up in the morning all by ourselves and work yet another day for the good of the world and its inhabitants. The people around us who support us make it possible for us to keep on going, especially when we are tempted to say what the point?

So that's why I was carrying an anti-war sign. Even if I wasn't clear about what was going on at the conference itself.

(By the way, the picture above is me, and my friends Shawn Hupka and Mary Atkinson.)

Happy Valentine's Day everybody -- for those of you without sweeties out there, your best sweetie is yourself anyway. Go buy yourself some chocolates. Or whatever you want to do to show yourself how much in love you are with the person you are.

A Passage to India

I have been burying my nose in travel books and web sites trying to get a handle on my itinerary. My good buddy, Dave Kattenburg of Earth Chronicle Productions has just scored another grant. We've worked together lots of times before and last fall he asked me if I wanted to be part of his project. This time, he said, he'd really like me to do some of the international travel to gather material. In the past, it's been me doing a lot of the domestically focussed research and he's the one who's gone overseas.

I told him I thought I'd like to go to Asia. Part of the reason is that India has just now opened up the airwaves and I really want to meet some people who are trying to put community radio stations on the air. Also, because there are a lot of good environmental stories, especially in the Himalayas.

We just got the word last week that the application was successful. So it looks like I am going. Not until the fall -- my teaching gig isn't up until the end of April, and that's when the hot, hot summer starts in Southeast Asia. Followed by the monsoons. So it will likely be September or October before I shove off.

This will be a much different than any other experience I've had before. I've been to England alone, Holland alone, out to BC, to many of the States -- I think I am a more seasoned traveller than some. Anybody who has ever travelled to India has told me that none of the rules of the rest of the world apply there. They often invoke words like "overwhelming" and "chaotic".

While checking out hotel prices, I've noticed a few selling points that are unusual for North America -- cold AND hot running water, bacteria-free filtered water, a choice of air conditioned and air cooled rooms .. have to check out what the difference is.

I have also been told that despite the difficult conditions, there is also a vitality, energy and spiritual base that we just can't match here in North America. I have been told that there are 330,000 Hindu gods and goddesses. Even though India is a big country, that's still a lot of gods and goddesses per square mile.

And so my research continues. I have to start lining up some stories before I know for sure where and when I'm going. I hope to do some stories in Sri Lanka and Thailand too.

Some of this will also depend on what I have going on over here. If I don't have much happening, maybe I'll end up staying for a few months. I can write and edit just as easily from over there as I can from here.

Ah, yes, this nomadic lifestyle has it charms and its challenges. Overall, it's very cool.