these Jonah days...

for those avid Anne of Green Gable fans out there, you will know what the above reference means... for those you who don't know, Anne referred to bad days as Jonah days... remember the Old Testament prophet who's days never seemed to go right? first disobeying God's orders to go to Nineveh because he (Jonah) didn't want them to repent and trying to run away from God (I guess he didn't you can't do that), then being swallowed by a whale and being barfed up after three days, finally going to Nineveh, preaching, and waiting for God's judgement to fall on them (if Jonah had lived today, he would've been the old fashioned "hell fire preacher")... and then complaining because the tree that had grown to give him shade had been eaten up by a worm and he had to suffer in the hot sun... poor Jonah...

and so to make a long story short, don't we all have those kinds of days when we feel like Jonah?

for me, today was one of those days... today was one of those weeks... I've been mowed down by a bad cold that lasted ALL WEEK... not until I made an appointment with some Jaggermeister last night and today is the first day I feel better...

... needless to say I wasn't "up" on the news and what was going on in our small community as I usually am, because I stuck at home for two straight days. yesterday I dragged my butt to work because I had to get something done.

... did I mention that our deadline, instead of being Monday like it usually is, was today, Friday, because of the long weekend? I didn't? funny how that is, BECAUSE NO ONE MENTIONED IT TO ME EITHER! here I get to work today, thinking I have an easy day just wrapping up stories and then spending tomorrow outside snapping pictures of Canada Day celebrations...

I was very wrong. the deadline for the paper was today. but not knowing that I only have a few stories written and a few photos taken. not enough for a newspaper. and apparently none of the other guys who usually write for the paper did any stories... you see where I'm going here... so suddenly the few articles that I have written are all that is constituting the paper so far... so I spent the whole day trying to get in touch with people but only got their voicemail... Why? because it's the Friday before a long weekend! Who is going to be in town? No one!

... but the good thing about it is that they finally HAD to print this one story I wrote a long time ago about fish farms being opened at the mouth of the Skeena River (the main river up here) where it meets the Pacific Ocean. people up here are crazy about fishing and people come from all over the world to fish for the wild salmon that is so plentiful up here... but if the Norwegian multinational corporation PanFish opens up their proposed fish farms, all that abundance could be lost. wild salmon are very vulnerable to the diseases and sea lice that are so prevalent in farmed salmon (because they're raised in pens with thousands of fish - kind of like the cattle farms in the states). not only does fish farming kill off the wild salmon, it also seriously harms the marine life and environment around them... I could go on...

... one more thing that kind of creeps me out and has made me vow never to eat farmed salmon again - and I do urge everyone to check it out and make the same commitment... farmed salmon is not naturally pink, so they have to add colourants to the food to make the flesh pink. there is actually something called a SalmoFan so the farmers can pick exactly what colour they want the salmon to be and the colourants are added accordingly.

...that is definitely what I want to be cooking up on my bbq this summer...

... I had heard about this awhile back and wrote an article, because the sport fishing industry is so big out here, and goodness knows this region needs to diversify as much as it can and because I feel very strongly about the environment...

to make a long story short, they had never printed it... but because of the shortage, they had to pull it out and print it, and I also wrote my column on it... hopefully that will spur people to action to protect the beauty of nature and wildlife that we enjoy so much out here...

so maybe there is a happy ending to this Jonah day...


if you want to check out more info on wild salmon and farmed salmon, go to the Friends of Wild Salmon website:

here