BP (Better Practices) in Our Use of Petroleum Products

The environmental disaster (nightmare) in the Gulf of Mexico has forced me to consider my lifelong relationship with oil. From the opening credits to The Beverly Hillbillies to the many years (age 10 to 22) working in family owned service stations and auto repair shops, I've been around a lot of oil.

I've pumped tens of thousands of liters of gas and changed the oil on hundreds of vehicles. As a kid we played on the oil soaked (a dust suppressant) streets of Clifford, Ontario. We didn't always exercise the most responsible disposal or cleanup methods, either. Many a gallon of old oil was thrown carelessly behind the garage or burned in the wood stove. Gasoline spills were often washed down the storm drain, sometimes so much that vapours would rise from a neighbour's kitchen sink.

This was the 1970's - we didn't know any better and no one was rushing to provide information and education about safe petroleum handling practices!

I like to think that I've evolved, at least a little, over the past thirty years. I have a gas mower, but it has been abandoned in favour of a reel mower. I'm even working to put back in service a vintage reel mower found in my father-in-law's shed. Instead of the two-cycle weed wacker I've been using a 12 volt trimmer for nearly three years. Both alternatives are gentler and quieter - I don't need to announce to Eagle Place in Brantford that I'm grooming the Demerling acreage.

When I change the oil on our vehicles, I save it for disposal at one of the monthly household hazardous waste disposal events at the local landfill. Yes, going to the dump is an event, just as it was when I was a kid.

And for the first time in a number of years I have a bicycle, and am taking great pleasure in the brief and not frequent enough rides along the trail system near our home.

I hope everyone is rethinking their oil dependency (addiction) and finding small ways to lower consumption so that one day (if we don't use up our nine lives in the process) we can avert environmental catastrophes like the BP disaster.

Going Full Tilt into Community Carnival Season

This week marks the unofficial start of the community carnival season. Soon the bright lights wild rides of the midway will set up in fairgrounds and parking lots across the country, as the carnival comes to town!

In Brantford where I live, Campbell Amusements, family ran in the Telephone City since 1967, annually sets up the midway in the Civic Centre parking lot. Tonight you could ride the midway for just a buck a thrill!

When I was a kid the midway was a big deal. The only time I remember attending one in Clifford was during the 1974 Centennial. However, we would always make a trip to the fall fairs in nearby Harriston or Hanover. I wonder how the midway rides rank with kids today? With 3-D television and lifelike computer and video games, perhaps the carnival is old-hat?

I watched my daughter Rachael tonight as she mustered up the nerve to ride Full Tilt with her big brother. Throughout the ride she was white-knuckled and visibly nervous, and from the ground I felt for her. But she wanted to ride again!

Keep your Halo and 3-D. There is no greater thrill than riding the Scrambler or the Zipper to pounding rock music and the background bark of a carnival huckster. When the carnival comes to your town this season, don't hesitate to visit it with your family.

A Cow Can Be Your Friend on Twitter

When I was a kid, my Uncle Howard had on his farm a herd of milk cows. (His definition of a herd was probably no more than seven or eight!) He was an avid woodworker as well, and I was always impressed by the name plates he had mounted in the stall for each of the cows, and a little befuddled by the fancy crate that contained his milking machine, which I'm sure he never used.

Uncle Howard also gave us the opportunity to try our hand at milking the cows, something few Canadian kids have experienced. Michelle Ruby writes in the Monday, April 5 edition of the Brantford Expositor about a Brant County farmer, Chris Vandenburg, who is participating in a one-year "Dairy Diary" project coordinated by the University of Waterloo, where the milking activities of selected Holsteins are followed on Twitter through a 'tweet' triggered by a robotic milker.

Social networking with your favourite bovine is intended to educate us about the sources of our food and help transform our perception of farming - more than 80% of Canadians are urbanites and will never set foot on a farm. I'm not sure how successful Uncle Howard was as a farmer, but he certainly succeeded in giving me an education and appreciation of the value of the family farm.

(And if Uncle Howard had ever owned a computer, I'm sure it would be stored in a finely crafted crate!)

Hamilton Plays Itself in Woody Harrelson Film

In Defendor, Woody Harrelson plays an offbeat super-hero who dons a shoe black mask, black tights and a duct-taped 'D' on his chest to defend The Hammer against the evil Captain Industry. Yes, in this film the gritty City of Hamilton, belching smokestacks and all, is the star.

It is refreshing to see a city with as much character, tradition and integrity as Hamilton portrayed as is. "All the money in Hollywood could not give me this setting. You cannot recreate settings like that" states director Peter Stebbings.

It is important that communities acknowledge and embrace their identity, and to not pretend to be someplace they are not. In Hamilton, the escarpment waterfalls and the steel mill wharves can share equal billing.

Read Mark McNeil's article in Saturday's Hamilton Spectator, and be sure to catch a special Hamilton screening of Defendor at the Westdale Cinema this Friday, March 26.