Starting the woodstove each morning has become a routine task that would proceed much faster if I were illiterate. Then I wouldn’t pause to read each headline and perhaps even the first few paragraphs of every article on a newspaper page before I stuff it into the stove. Or sit on a hemlock block while reading a short article to the end. Longer articles I take back upstairs to read at leisure.
This habit of scrutinizing every page as though it were the map to a hidden treasure delays my fire- starting unduly. By the time my chimney blankets neighbours downwind in a choking cloud of smoke, my neighbours’ smoke rises in gentle wisps like country houses painted by Grandma Moses.
Prior to 2000 when recycling became the topic de jour, instead of pitching newspapers into the garbage after we’d read them, I stashed them in the basement. Eventually the pile comprised several years and rose to a height of two feet.
My reasoning for collecting the newspapers downstairs escapes me. And even I didn’t need that much paper stockpiled for singeing kindling.
Did I fear running out of fire starter? I’m no Boy Scout when it comes to intentionally igniting a fire. Was I compiling my own research library? Surely my squirrelling wasn’t due to laziness, for what goes down, must eventually come up or the basement would soon resemble a hoarder’s home with a mere tunnel leading from stairs to stove. And always in the back of my mind is the thought, “Am I creating a problem for my family to clean up?” That I don’t want to do.
My main stash consisted of Terrace Standards. We also subscribed to The Western Producer, 88 pages printed on fine paper ideal for sparking a flame, and bought The Province brought in daily from Vancouver if the plane had cargo space. And every several months I picked up BC Bookworld at the library, another 48 or so pages of thicker, sturdier paper.
In addition I collected Western People, the magazine insert from The Western Producer with its freelance articles about prairie folk – entrepreneurs, artisans, musicians, artists, inventors and other enterprising folk.
Keeping up with all this reading material was impossible. But reading it now, a few pages each morning, is entertaining.
News articles in the Terrace Standard recall history in the making a decade ago – construction of the new library when the city discovered the job, partially completed, was progressing without proper credentials; startups of businesses that have either flourished or faded into oblivion.
I am reminded of local columnists. Budding authors. Dance groups. Classroom achievements. Fall fairs. Past elections.
BC Bookworld, though published only four times a year, alerted readers to so many books published every year by British Columbian authors I could not hope to read them all. It was in BC Bookworld that this morning I found mention of Mark Forsythe’s “British Columbia Almanac,” a review of his growing up in Ontario and becoming a local reporter at CBC in Smithers, Prince George and then Prince Rupert. His book also offers samplings of listeners’ letters written to CBC while he manned a mic at these B.C. radio stations.
I intend asking the library to bring in Forsythe’s book for me to read if they don’t already have it in the stacks. That’s probably what I intended to do in the winter of 2000, but didn’t follow up due to competing duties.
Unless I start the woodstove more than once a day, I face no shortage of fire-building paper. Ever.
A clever person intent on making better use of time would simply riffle through an issue, pull out half a dozen random pages and get on with starting the stove. Or use a barbecue lighter.