Hero creation at the U of S

Big, bald, bespectacled Robert Buckingham cuts an imposing figure. When University of Saskatchewan security officers waltzed him off campus and out of his job, I would have paid good money to see him shake them off.

It’s unlikely he did so, having behaved with aplomb and integrity throughout the debacle that saw him stripped of tenure, pension, position and his executive directorship of the School of Public Health earlier this week.

It was a bold and dangerous move for Buckingham to publicly question the university’s administrators on the TransformUS process of cost-cutting and college amalgamation. After considerable deliberation among lawyers, academic leaders and others – according to president Ilene Busch-Vishniac – Buckingham was removed from his role. But far from an act of resolute managing, firing Buckingham and frogmarching him off campus was the act of petulant, arrogant and short-sighted administrators.

The resulting firestorm over public speech in academia has partly changed their minds. It wasn’t because they did the wrong thing and tried to right it. It was, like Nixon, because their mistake was caught – by a diligent media and international public opinion.

Buckingham has been partly reinstated, but it’s too late for that to mitigate public fury. Busch-Vishniac, who does not appear to have taken any personal responsibility for the fiasco, will not back down from firing Buckingham as executive director, which is where this issue really rests. Buckingham will not back down from his anti-muzzling essay, The Silence of the Deans, which started the whole thing. We have stalemate, to that extent.

But in the court of public opinion, the knives are out for U of S management, while Buckingham’s freedom of speech stance is garnering enormous support from students, academics, commentators, and apparently the provincial government.

What’s fascinating about this mess is how the U of S has in one mad act compromised the brand it was obsessively trying to defend, by insisting its leadership could not speak out about TransformUS and firing the first manager to do so.  

Their actions may have long-reaching repercussions. They could certainly affect the future recruitment of qualified professors – including Buckingham’s replacement -- and international and Canadian students. Even as the U of S tries to cut costs, such a public relations disaster may also affect the future funding it will increasingly need. These are issues the administration should have evaluated before attacking Buckingham.

Perhaps the entire event is unsurprising in an environment where speaking out, speaking up, or just speaking at all is becoming an increasingly rare act due to fears of reprisal. The federal government, for example, has also taken the approach of managing the message from all of its bureaucrats, and that includes scientists. Heaven help the journalist seeking information from a researcher, who must wade through layers of communications officials before saying anything – or nothing.

The right of the public to know what is going on at all levels of government and at tax-funded institutions is being trampled -- or at least, the effort is being made. If there is a positive outcome to this case, it will be that it shows muzzling policies can come back to bite the organizations that instituted them.

Busch-Vishniac needs to take a page out of Michael McCain’s communications playbook, and quickly. McCain, head of his family’s eponymous meat firm, was abject in his apology over his company’s listeriosis crisis a few years ago. His approach essentially saved his company. The buck stops at the president’s office, and she needs to apologize, personally and absolutely, to even have a hope that this will go away.

The U of S has done much more damage to its reputation than the brave and outspoken Buckingham could possibly have done himself. In the process, it has created a hero.  

Potash, round two

Apparently, potash companies don't absolutely have to charge $700 or more per tonne of pink gold to make some money on their commodity.
Potash Corp. of Saskatchewan managed to have a record-breaking first quarter this year, earning $732 million US, or 84 cents per share -- up from $444 million or 49 cents per share in the comparable quarter of last year.
Indeed, Potash Corp. sold $1.1 billion in potash.
All of this was on the back of a potash price greatly reduced from before the recession. Average sales were $366 US per tonne, applied to 2.8 million tonnes of potash.
The company often made the point, while the price was soaring, that high potash prices were necessary to drive future potash production -- expanding mines, and possibly opening greenfield mines, although Potash has pooh-poohed greenfields when other companies have threatened to open them.
It seemed like a good point, until this year's Q1 results are examined.
I have noted in a previous blog that farmers were finally forced to vote with their feet when the price got too high -- grassroots reaction to global commodity conditions. That did mean, of course, that many fields across the world were pining for nutrients a year or two later. However, it did drive down the delivered potash price considerably, and made it affordable again -- affordable enough to buy and spread.
On one point, the potash companies are absolutely correct, and it's a simple one: if we are to grow enough food to feed the world, fertilizers are crucial. Absolutely true. But farmers must be able to buy their inputs without going broke for this food-growing cycle to actually work.
And it looks like the cycle is even working for the potash miners.

Stupid turkey

Don't believe what you read in the recipe books. Or online.
Turkeys, especially frozen ones, have minds of their own -- even though they're supposed to be among the stupidest creatures on the planet.
The weekend before Christmas (OK, admittedly, I was leaving things a little late) I sallied forth to purchase the festive bird. I went to Safeway.
The wonderful Joan pointed me to the amazing 99 cent sale, and advised me to buy a certain brand that she had had considerable luck with. (Thank you Joan...you are in no way responsible for what was to come.)
It was in fact a frozen turkey. Normally, I'm much more organized and buy fresh fowl of whatever kind, but had not had time to order a fresh turkey...so there it was, in my cart, the frozen one.
On Wednesday -- having been advised to thaw the thing three days ahead of time in the fridge -- I removed the turkey from its freezing spot and placed it, in its wrapper, in a pan, in the fridge.
Friday, I ventured down mid-afternoon to poke it. It was like granite. No perceptible thawing at all.
So, I bathed the beast in icy cold water for a couple of hours, trying to spur some thawing. It did, in fact, begin to soften a little. But we were on our way to Mom and Dad's for Christmas Eve events, and back the bird went into the fridge.
Saturday morning, full of hope, I returned to the fridge.
Rock hard. Yikes. You've got to be kidding, I told the bird.
Out it came, and back into its cold bath. We changed the water religiously every 30 minutes, rolling the bird around, hoping against hope it would thaw enough to place in the oven by 1.30. Dinner was at six. Time was of the essence.
At noon I panicked and called a close friend with my dilemma.
"Oh," she said, "that happens to me every year. Don't worry, it will thaw enough, and eventually cook enough, to serve."
She always takes the bird out of its wrap after a few hours, to hasten the process. This did, in fact, help. I moved the legs, ran cold water into the cavity, cut my hands on the internal ice and FINALLY -- by about 1.30 -- it was at least thawed enough to stuff and cook.
Somewhat relieved, I slid my festive offering into the oven.
It browned. It smelled delicious. Things were looking up.
Well, they were until 5.30...when I tested the temperature and realized it still had 40 degrees to go. How long was THAT going to take? And the interior of the leg was bloody red. Bloody hell.
A quick check with Mom proved disappointing...yes, it had to be 180 degrees. So we waited, and waited. 160. 170. 175.
An hour later, it finally reached 180 -- and sure enough, the juices ran clear. It was done! But was it dried out like, well, an overcooked turkey?
Ken took over to make the gravy and carve the bird while I finished the buns and vegetables. The meat landed on the table, neatly arranged on its platter.
And it was delicious...tender...even, in spots, juicy.
But first it put me through nine hours of hell. Next time, fresh bird!! Next time, add an hour to the cooking time!! Next time, make roast beef!
Don't believe everything you read.
Happy new year.

Forests and potash

I haven't been good about blogging. Bad, in fact.
I'm working on this new thing -- I think it's going to be a newsletter, although it might become a website. Still working out the details on that, but it's kept me away from the blog and focused on the new product.
I think it's going to be directed at women in the 45 to 65 age group (pre-retirement, but in sort of middle age.) I have these theories, and I've been collecting stories in my head about women as they begin to gently age, and it's turning into a thing. I hope. Jan (Mrs. IV!) has been helping.


The financial crisis in the United States -- and therefore much of the world -- had its roots in a much earlier time than folk think.
My theory is that following commodity markets gives you a pretty sharp look into the economy's future. Maybe this isn't rocket science, I don't know; but if we had looked more closely at the Canadian lumber industry's crash, I wonder if we would have figured out that something was seriously amiss in the American real estate market well before everyone had to take a bath on their mortgages.
Lumber demand had been drooping substantially well before big companies like Weyerhaeuser starting closing mills, including those in Saskatchewan way back in 2006. Part of the problem was certainly the softwood lumber agreement, but even that likely emerged partly due to sagging demand for board feet. The US government was protecting what was left of its own lumber industry.
So, no one (ok, I exaggerate) in the US was building new houses, at least as far back as 2005. Why? Glut on the market? Or could Americans not afford such things? Either way, something was changing, even in the days when the American consumer was still, big time, king of the world from an economy-driving standpoint.
Then, sub-prime mortgages began to emerge. At the loss-leader lower interest rates that lured homebuyers into ownership and therefore through the door of the bank, they could (if marginally) afford homes. The big American dream was saved. For the time being.
Another thing that some open-minded economists are arguing is that Americans were not specifically going broke because of that home in the suburbs. It was because they still had to drive to work, and were spending stupid amounts of money on energy. No one can afford to live downtown or even near downtown, so they're out in the sticks and filling up the truck every week. Brilliant theory, actually. If they could have walked to work, they may have survived the financial collapse.
Everyone more or less knows the rest. All hell broke loose. Foreclosures continue to climb, to the point where banks aren't even putting all their newly-repo'd houses on the market, for fear such a glut would drive prices down even further. (The Globe and Mail reported on this this week.)
(Interestingly, things seem to be the worst in traditional tourist states like Nevada, Arizona, Florida and California (along with a few others). Maybe the values were just the most inflated in these regions; or maybe other recession weary-nations weren't sending their citizens off to warm American climes.)
Anyway, I've been musing that the Canadian forestry industry might have been the canary in the coal mine in this case. I've also been thinking that economists and forecasters may not put quite enough emphasis on the end-user when they make predictions.
Take the potash price crash of last year. Prices were at historic highs -- and they were very, very high. When the recession came along, farmers couldn't afford potash. Period. They tried other fertilizers that were less expensive; they grew crops that required less potash; they did other things like create business groups to buy fertilizer in greater volume, to cut prices.
How was it amazing that the price fell, along with demand? The recession hit in 2008. In 2009, millions of farmers around the world voted with their feet, walked away from potash, and gave everyone a very clear view of how grassroots market forces react.
Just like homebuyers walked away from new homes in the mid-2000s.
As an addendum, there's something seriously amiss in a society where people can't afford to live near where they work, and can't afford to get to work to pay for where they live. Parts of Canada are like that, too.
I don't know what exactly the nub of the problem is, but it's serious and it's going to take a long time to work out.

Darn

Oh, darn. So much for clairvoyance.
I had my fingers crossed for the speaker of the house, but the PM ignored my advice and chose David Johnston for Governor General instead!
I'll get over it.

Our roof is done, our roof is done. Somehow they managed to squeeze it in between storms, bless them. Maybe we'll stay dry now! Best of luck to everyone else coping with water, especially with flooded basements and swamped fields.
I wonder if Saskatchewan farmers have ever seeded fewer acres, at least since the Depression? At least 12 million acres are reportedly under water, about a third of the usually-planted acreage.
This is going to be a simplistic estimate...but if you multiply that by $5 per bushel of wheat times, say, 40 bushels per acre ($200), that's $2.4 billion -- a ridiculous amount of money coming out of the farm economy. And other crops like canola often bring more, so this could be conservative. Meanwhile, farmers still have to pay for their inputs. It's mind boggling.
Considering the average farm only brings in $17,000 to $22,000, depending on where it is and which figures you use, this could be a tragic year for agriculture.
For those who do have crops in the ground, if we get some warmth and the frost holds off, there could be some amazing yields. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that Mother Nature throws us a bone.

Lights are still on

Here's the thing about being the person who stayed home.
During the summer, everyone comes back to visit.
In my generation, people left Saskatchewan like they were being cattle-prodded or fleeing a hurricane. (This year, I'm considering it myself. No one told me the earth shifted and we are now in monsoon territory.)
It is wonderful that people come back for holidays, however short. Jennifer came home for a few days -- she still has family here -- and we spent two wonderful long lunches talking about everything, the way we always have. As we have become older, some of our conversation has become sad, some of it wonderful, some of it much too real; but it's always meaningful and instructive and supportive, and I wouldn't want to live without it. She has lived 'away' for something like 25 years, and I still miss her. I still get teary when we say goodbye and you'd think I'd be used to it by now.
The only consolation is that Jen writes the BEST emails.
My cousin will make her homeward sojourn later in the summer. My aunt's niece (I won't explain) came to visit her, and I lucked into lunch.
But it wasn't just my generation, entirely, who left. Sue, my friend Jan's mom, retired on the coast and has come back east (isn't that weird? Saskatchewan is east of somewhere) to visit friends, return to the lake, and attend a granddaughter's wedding in Alberta. It was great to see her, but also her friends, many of them Gateway Players stalwarts. Visiting with them was incredible; they are such vital, amazing, interesting people..but it also drove home the sad event of Gateway's demise.
I also got a call out of the blue that two women who attended Rosthern Junior College with my first mother were in town, and did I want to meet? One of them I had never seen before. Thanks, Dixie and June, for the visit. You are both remarkable.
Every summer, and often at Christmas, I get these pangs of missing folks and wondering if I've done things right. I'm not sure if it's because I stayed home, and wonder if I should have tried other places; then I could be the one coming home to visit. (That's a great big burbling bagful of what ifs, I tell ya. There was a time when Ken and I had the big talk about whether we should leave this place before it was us turning out the lights as we drove away. Didn't happen, but it looked a little bleak there for a while.)
Or, maybe I just think all my friends and family should all live here. Visiting is nice, but having your old friends in the same town is better.
I'm beyond lucky that my sister and brother and his family have come back to live here after years away. Life is better, rounder, richer and much more full of love with them nearby. My parents are also here (they stayed! thank goodness) and having the entire family in one spot is...well, wonderful isn't quite adequate, I think.
That being said, it's a heck of a good thing some folk come back to visit. If we wanted to visit everyone we love once a year or every two, we'd be flat broke. We would start in St. John's and basically not stop until we hit Victoria. We need two perpetual tickets to everywhere Air Canada (or WestJet) flies.
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Which brings me to the lottery thing. I've actually started buying lottery tickets. I feel like an idiot every time, but you know, you can't win if you don't buy a ticket! You won't win anyway, but if you don't buy a ticket, you do realize, it is hopeless.
I'm not big on gambling, and generally think it's not very good for folks, and don't much like casinos. I don't mind a friendly family game of poker, where the highest bet is a quarter.
But I seem to be a lottery convert....because, if I ever win, I won't need the tickets everywhere Air Canada flies.

He must be reading my blog

Is Stephen Harper reading my blog?
Weeks ago, I suggested that Speaker Peter Milliken would be a fantastic candidate for Governor General (or even prime minister). Now, it appears that Canada's longest serving speaker will not run in the next election, whenever that will be. Speculation is swirling that, indeed, the PM might name him GG in the very near future.
I'm feeling clairvoyant. Either that or I have much more influence on the decisions of the PM than I thought.
If he does select Mr. Milliken, Mr. Harper will make an excellent, and non-partisan decision.

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One should blog regularly. Trouble is, we've been on the move the last few weeks and a bit overwhelmed.
First, we opened the cabin. Then, we were in Winnipeg for an important birthday (Mum turned 80!) The following weekend, we flew to Victoria for a wedding (congratulations Jan and Bart!) and while on the island, headed to Tofino for a couple of days.
The highway to Tofino is insane. Wild traffic most of the way to Port Alberni, then a spectacularly scenic but slightly terrifying winding way up and down a few mountains. But Tofino was everything Jan said it was...so beautiful, so peaceful, so elemental.
We stayed at the Chesterman Beach B&B, and here is my unconditional testimonial for this charming, well-run, and delightfully small (three suite) establishment. Go there. But stay longer than two and a half days.
We'll be back.