Robert Paterson's Weblog

Sorry about being offline

I have been on vacation - next week regular posting will resume

Leaving - Thinking of all before and after me

As I get ready to leave my home on PEI, I have been thinking of the others who left this place too. We have all been stewards of this magical place. 

Click on any photo to see it larger.

Here is an overview of the connection back to Charlottetown after the building of the railway. The Bunbury Road that now crosses Fullerton Marsh and goes onto Mermaid and points East, ended at the main house. It would have gone up what is now Premier's Lane. The Bunbury Road was in effect the driveway to the main house!

Getting to Charlottetown was not easy then. Before the railway bridge, you would have crossed to Charlottetown by ferries running from either Southport or Kelly's Point. The remnant of the old road to Kelly's point, can be found today at Cotton's Park that runs to the water.

This map below is earlier still and shows the detail of Lot 48 before the railway.

The Brook was dammed to drive a shingle mill. The dam is till there as is the pond but the mill has long gone. This was a full on working landscape then. Not only farming but shipbuilding as well. At least 7 schooners were built here as well. The Bovyer estate ran in 1798 all the way to Kelly's Point on the West and to Fullerton's Marsh to the East.

By the 1930's the farm had shrunk in size but had become one of the most modern and important farms in Canada. J Walter Jones, later Premier of PEI, had married into the family and had developed the best dairy farm in Canada. One of his cows, Abegweit Milady, held the world's record for butterfat production. One of his bulls brought an unheard of price of $25,000 in the late 1920's. In 1931, he was awarded the Master Breeders Award from the Holstein-Friesian Association. It was the first time this award was ever presented to an individual. Jones was also one of the pioneers in the silver fox industry.

Here is how the home farm looked in 1936 at its peak.

The Bunbury Road runs from left to right [West to east] the main drive is in the centre. The small gap at the beginning is a small barn. I bet that this was for winter and the mud season giving access to the main road. What is now Premier's lane runs from the bottom left to the house forming a wonderful circular drive in fron of the old house - which had to be pulled down in 1972. You will just catch the railway line in the bottom left. The Bunbury Station was a few yards away to the west.

Here is the home farm in 1958.

Jones had been dead 4 years and the farm would have been on the turn.

Here is the site today taken by Google.

At this level not much has changed. But at a detailed level it has. The old house had to be pulled down. The new house was buit in the early 1970's by Lloyd and Marion Palmer. They also extended the old barn to the right [East] of the new house - the shiny roof. Lloyd built a half mile horse training track on the green field on the right. I still mow the track and walk my dogs every day there.

The best feature of the site remains the drive way.

Since we have owned the property, we have added a Granny Suite to the West Side side of the house and a Sun Room/Dining Room to the East. We have also rebuilt the barn and made it into a guest house - but I get ahead of myself.

The property now includes the driveway and the wood on the right of the drive and the area immediately surrounding the house. We do not own the fields. But we are as it were in the country.

Here you can see how close we are to town. About 7-8 minutes. You can also see how close we are to the shoreline. In the summer the dogs and I walk there all the time and on hot days even swim!

So what is this place? It is redolent with the history of the Island. It has been loved and cared for by only 4 families since the Bovyers bought it in 1788. What was 895 acres is now only 3.3 but it is the heart of the place. We hand it on in our own turn. 

Many blessings to Jason and Lori.

 

Why I think PEI will adopt better diets - Community

“Anne of Green Gables never change...we like you just this way... “

PEI has more chronic illness than any other province in Canada. We have the fattest kids. We have the highest rates of Type 2 diabetes, cancer and heart disease. 

I think that we all want this to change. 

For 50 years we have followed the advice of the experts. We have given up fat. We have eaten more grains. We have eaten more vegetable oil and margarine. The result is that we have got fatter and more ill. Type Two Diabetes used to be called “Adult Onset” Diabetes, but now many 3 years olds have it. The pounds go on and on year after year. And we get ill. Especially after the age of 45. It seems as if a switch goes off then. On PEI the average man is disabled by the age of 65 from chronic illness. The average woman by 70. 

It looks as if the experts have been wrong.

A few Islanders have taken their health into their own hands. They have rejected the Official Expert Advice and are trying something new: that is ironically very old. They are eating a diet that our ancestors ate. A diet that suits us and that helps us stay well as a matter of course. 

Some call this the Paleo Diet. Others call it Ancestral Eating. I call it just eating what we are designed to eat to keep us well. 

So what is going on? What are the results? What are people doing? How is this spreading?

The important thing is that it works. Here are a few quotes from a recent survey.

“I've dropped about 80 lbs., and I haven't felt this good in 20 years. My blood sugar is now under control without medication.” 

“Lost approximately 30 lbs, pain/discomfort in my shoulders is completely gone. The pain in my right elbow is tolerable. not as moody. virtually no burping or farting unless I overindulge in grains. More energy - I actually have the energy to cook the foods I need to eat!!! Oh, & I lost 1/2 a shoe size!!

“Increased energy, better sleeping patterns, less mood swings, general increased feeling of 'wellness', improved body fat % At 26 years old was suffering from out-of-nowhere major joint inflammation and pain. Doctor wanted to prescribe Celebrex, which I turned down. Deciding to begin eating 'Paleo', and shortly thereafter all symptoms cleared up.”

“Lost weight (now at stable weight), no acne now, HIGH ENERGY, stable moods, happy!”

These people have lost weight. But more. They are feeling better. Less depressed, less arthritis, less tummy and digestive problems. 

Most people start to be better within 6 months of starting. Most come off most of their medication. 

What these people are doing is the OPPOSITE of what we have all been told to do for the last 50 years. 

They eat no grains. They eat no legumes. They eat no vegetable oil and no margarine. They eat saturated animal fat such as butter. They eat meat. They eat fish and veggies but less starchy ones. They eat much less or no dairy. When they eat dairy, they eat high fat milk and yoghurt. Many eat fermented foods such as sauerkraut.

It’s not easy to give up the foods that we like and the foods that the “Experts” tell us are the healthy foods. It is not easy to not take your doctor’s advice.

So why and how are these people doing this?

Because they see people that they know doing well. They do it because when they start, they feel better very quickly and they lose weight very quickly. It’s all about your friends and peers.

Why are the experts wrong? The history of medicine is all about the experts being wrong. Medicine did not embrace the idea of germs. They attacked people like Pasteur. Surgeons hated anesthesia. The experts have all their status tied up in what they have been telling us for decades. They dare not change now.

So how is this revolution taking place in spite of the experts? It is very much an Island thing. 

I was in the parking lot of the market when  friend who had not seen me came up to me with a worried look on her face. “Hi Rob. You are so thin, I hope you are well?” She thought I had cancer. It was the only way that she could imagine me losing all that weight so fast.

Each Islander who starts this, amazes herself and her circle of family and friends. Like a pebble dropped in the pond, the ripples flow out.

As the Experts tell us that we are wrong, our family see us get well. After a year, the evidence before their eyes raises the doubt to the point where they believe what they see. Then they try it too and they feel better. They not only lose weight, but their pain goes away. Their digestive problem goes away.

Then they start to get angry. They start to realize that the Experts are part of the problem. Then they are noticed by their circle and the ripples in the pond become waves. 

This is how PEI will change this.

Death and Rebirth? Leaving PEI

Our driveway - When the previous owners left this property, she hugged every tree along our drive. I know why now and will do the same. This is a magic place. So why leave?

We are in our 60's now. And we know how time flies. We will look up and we will be 70. We do all the work here and, while it is no problem now, if one of us falters it will be too much. We did not want to be one of those couples where the kids talk about "What are we going to do about Dad?"

We have 3 grandchildren. We want to be part of their lives as they grow. This for me is like all the times that I have moved for work. They are our work now. Helping our own kids directly is what I think is true grandparents work.

As my regular readers know, I also have a very dark view of what is to come. I don't know when and I don't know how but things will get very bad. The extended family is the only organization that I know of  that is capable of coping with that kind of social trauma. Our family is not here.

I have not faith even in money. I am convinced that a good plan is to downsize dramatically for our old age. Freedom 55 is not having a lot of savings but having very low costs. This implies a much smaller footprint. It implies sharing. It demands very low use of energy and a very small link to the larger systems of society today.

So what about PEI, my home for 17 years. The place where I have invested so much? I could not attract my kids to live here in spite of doing all I could. But PEI is my home. My home by choice. PEI has welcomed me and made me part of it. I think I have done a bit for PEI too. Islanders know the strength of blood and family. I hope they will understand.

Letting go - Books #Moving

We are moving. More in that later. One of the reasons for leaving is to scale right back. I mean really scale back. Scale back to be able to live in less than 1,000 square feet.

A few years ago, I went with my old room mate at Oxford to clear out his mother in law's room at the home where she had just died. It took us less than an hour and we could fit it all into his car. We start out in life as ana adult with very little and then accumulate tons of stuff. We end it with almost nothing. That is the path I am on now. And my move is the first big culling. 

As a book maniac this has meant a rethink. At my peak I had over a thousand books. I will leave with maybe 75. What goes and how and where?

I have donated hundreds over the last 3 years to the Library. 

I have given most of my business and personal growth books to the Queen St Commons. It now has about 100 books in this category for members. 

Most of my fiction and the more current of my history books, I have put into the Barn which is our guest house that will remain a rental property. I also added all our children's books and most of my DVD's . It does rain now and then and I have found that visitors like to browse and find stuff.

So what am I keeping? Mainly my collection of books on food systems, chaos and complexity, architecture, Rome and WWI. Plus a few very personal books - mainly poetry. And if I could take only 5 books, they would all be by Christopher Alexander. 

We are doing the same with everything - clothes, furniture, pictures. It's fascinating to be ruthless. What do we really need? What are we really attached to and why?

New PEI Food Guide for Schools - A disaster

This is the new food guide that will become policy for Schools. It is a well intentioned effort that is totally wrong and that violates all the new research on food and health. If we go ahead with this, we will set Health Back by a decade.

Core are grains - Breads pizza dough muffins - hello does anyone understand insulin? A donut which is banned is the same - what don't you understand about starch?

Low fat milk - the highest is sugar - canned milk which is ALL sugar - Insulin? Chocolate milk is allowed - do you know what is in it? 

Tofu and Soy - possibly the worst food we can eat. Drives estrogen - do you know the difference between soy and fermented soy?

Peanut butter!!!! Peanuts are not nuts and are among the most inflammatory foods we can eat. Do you know that a peanut is not a nut but a legume?

POPCORN! Pure sugar - don't you know this

Juice - has as much sugar as pop and worse is 50% Fructose - why don't you know this?

Who is the policy person who advised this? None of it makes any sense. 

Why when this has been the conventional wisdom for 30 years and has given us what we have now does anyone expect any result other than more illness?

 

Networks and Trust - The New Evolution

Last week, prompted by pressure from my son to be more clear about networks in my upcoming book - You Don't need a Job - You need a Need a Network - some new thoughts pushed their way to the front and I wanted to share them with you in sketch book form.

Please help me get them more clear.

The Network Effect and the Trust Network Effect - There is a difference that is important. In the standard network effect, the value of the network to each member is linked to the growth of the connections. It is transactional. So the more phones that are connected to the network, the more valuable the network is in utility to each member. This is the mechanical approach to networks.  

For many people that I see using social media, this is their only goal. Many try and get as many "friends" as possible. If you are a real A lister - this works - you have influence. But for most people, having 7,000 friends on Facebook or Twitter doesn't mean a thing - IF YOU NEED SOMETHING.

I have been working a lot recently using Indiegogo and observing people who seek to raise money using crowd sourcing.

In every case that I have seen so far, the campaigns that worked had activated their core circle of trusted people who themselves had such a circle - who had such a circle and so on. It was this inner circle that did the work. The campaigns that just threw the ask out to the general network, tended to fail. There was no power to the general ask for help. 

Why is this? If I have 3,000 friends on facebook - why don't they help me - they say they are committed but they don't act?

I think of my own behaviour. I will only act if a few people that I know well and trust ask me. For the rest, the answer is always no. How small is this group? Maybe 8 and no more that 30+ depending on the context.

This is my real network. I only act on strong ties not weak.

It may extend further on occasion to people who used to be in the inner circle but for whom time has passed and they have moved further out. So an ex close colleague or friend can call out of the blue and I will be ready to act. They remain people who have been trusted, Any of you who have served in the military will know this. When a ex shipmate or buddy calls, you go back immediately to where you used to be in trust.

I am seeing that this inner circle of trust is the "leverage". You have to pay attention to your reputation and to your inner network. To get you have to give. It's all barn building. 

A high quality inner network is the goal.

This quality is all based on trust. So if I am right, then the drive for many friends is a waste of time and is based on the simple view of the network. We are not simple, we are complex humans! No Trust - No Commitment or Action.

The New Super Trust Leverage - Trust Platforms - What is new then and what I think is the Highland Park Game Changer - are platforms that create this level of trust among people who have never met!

Airbnb is a good example. Here is a platform that enables you to offer your place for rent to strangers. Etsy is another. Here is a platform that enables you to sell your crafts to strangers. Amazon is enabling a new publishing system for the "small" author. Visa is another. Visa is a platform that enables a retailer to take your money safely.

They key to all of these platforms is that they mediate and maintain high levels of trust. Thus enabling us to DO THINGS with small vendors and to be small vendors on a global scale.

They also do this at a very low cost. No Budget hotel chain can compete with Airbnb in price and value. No storefront with Etsy. No publisher can do what Amazon is doing for the small author. This trust mediation gives both sides of the transaction a deal that is impossible for the Factory model to replicate.

There is also a huge secondary impact. That is, as each of us buys from another in trust platforms, the trust that was at first mediated, becomes real. We tend to go back to the same places on Airbnb because we get to know and like each other. We get in touch with authors who use Kindle and start to have a real relationship with them.

So what I see is that the product of each successful transaction in trust platforms is the exponential increase in trust. This in turn increases the utility for all. The line between provider and consumer becomes blurred. This then is when an author can get crowd funding to help him write the new book! This is when the farmer can pre-sell his crop or meat in the spring for delivery in the fall.

The value is not confined to the connections alone but to the overall trust in the system.

This is the game changer. This is a much much better deal for all than the Highland Park system. It was Highland Park that overthrew the old local and artisan system because it was then a better deal for all. So I think Trust Platforms will overthrow the Highland Park world. 

Highland Park was the new factory that Henry Ford opened in 1910 that had all the new features of the Production Line installed. It was the DNA of the process that would be at the heart of all modern institutions. Mass Production killed the small and the local because it could offer a car for much less money than one made by hand by artisans. It also gave a large unskilled work force much more money than a day labourer job could. Both sides of the mass market were created.

This better deal meant that The small and the local got pushed to the fringe. The family farm nearly died. The local paper died. The bakery, dairy, butcher, general store, iron foundry all died. The local banker who knew everyone was no longer needed. The local doctor who had a stake in the health of his community was no longer needed. The local diner that held the community together was no longer needed. All were replaced by Highland Park. And so we ended up Bowling Alone - for as community died, so did Trust.

All became simple transactions. 

We all came to depend on a few vast organizations for all that is important for us. Vast organizations that not only do not care for us but work only for their own needs now. For the Highland Park Contract has been broken. Now most of us have the wages of day labourers, if we are lucky! Now most of the products and services are of low quality or worse, hurt us. 

We are ready for something better and something better is here. 

It's early days. It is maybe the equivalent of 1920. But I see Trust Platforms taking over the role of Highland Parks. They will do this because they are a better system. They offer more value to all. The evolutionary Tipping Point is 20%. Each time the trust platform takes 20% of the gross out of the sector, the Highland Park alternative will fall. 20 employees at Craigslist did this and look what happened to the mass production newspapers.

When 20% of kids  choose the Platform rather than school, most of the universities will fold. When 20% of us stop going to the doctor for our chronic illness, how will they and big pharma cope? Coming will be a local food system that is based on trust and real food. When 20% of us buy all our food locally, how will Big Food cope?

Highland Park is trapped by their fixed process costs. With a 20% loss of gross and a trend of lower gross as the network grows, they cannot stand.

Evolution will work quite well and has a good chance of solving what seems to be the impossible world situation in front of us.  

Why Modern Medicine is a Fail for Chronic Illness - And What will replace it

Why has modern medicine failed to stop the chronic illness epidemic? My quick answer is this. Modern Medicine has been captured by a simple linear idea of how the world works. It can only deal with local and simple problems. It cannot comprehend complex problems. It keeps trying to use simple tools, a pill based on one pathway that are based in the simple idea of cause and effect.

This all came from early success. 

Joseph Lister created a breakthrough in medicine in the 1860's when he discovered that you could prevent infection in major operations by washing your hands and spraying the site with carbolic acid. Of course it took more than 10 years to be accepted but by the 1890's surgery did not mean a high chance of dying from infection.

Lister solved a problem that was simple and local. Keep the wound clean. Keep all that touch the wound clean. Keep the room where you treat the wound clean. Jenner did the same with small pox. Vaccinate with a close relative and you create immunity. 

That is progress. But it is also the problem. Ever since then medicine wants the simple answer. It's early success in treating the simple has trained it to see only local cause and effect. 

This is why it has failed and can only fail in treating chronic illness. For Chronic Illness is a complex problem brought on by interactions between your ancestry, the food you eat, what you do with your body, how much time you spend outdoors, your social status and how much sleep you have. There is no local cause. There is no one cause. There is only many variables interacting over long periods of time that result in emergence of disease that in turn result in the emergence of more disease.

You become obese, then you might develop Type 2 Diabetes, then heart disease, then eye problems and so on. Or you might get depressed and then get an auto immune disease such as IBS or worse. 

Modern medicine treats each new disease as a stand alone. Much of the treatment drives further disease.

Our failure to see the difference between what can be seen as simple and local and what is complex is what is at the root of our failure.  Now chronic illness is an epidemic. Every decade in the 20th century it has got worse. Since 1980, the epidemic has accelerated exponentially. Billions of dollars has been spent in "research". The entire medical world has been looking for answers. And they have failed. Why?

I had a flash this weekend as I was doing a final edit for the first book of my series You Don't need a ..." Modern Medicine, like all of our industrial institutions, has a machine design. All are based in a core process that ends in the sale of a product or a procedure.

Modern medicine is a linear world where the pay off is in the sale of a drug, a test, or a procedure such as an operation or a Botox shot. No one gets paid to work with complexity. So no one does. 

All of Modern Medicine is focused on finding direct cause and effect pathways that end in a transaction that is based also on a mass market model. So in this world, depression can be "cured" by one pill. 

If I am correct - what do you think pile in please - then we cannot expect any results from medicine. Medicine is captured by the fallacy that all linear institutions share of the world being linear and so reducing all interaction to a single payoff - a classroom with a teacher - a newspaper with a journalist - a pill with a doctor.

All the money you raise to go to this research is wasted. All the money we spend in this model is wasted. Investing more in the study of epicycles is not going to make the Ptolemaic system work any better.

So what to do?

Dave Snowden's Cynefin model says it all for me. Modern Medicine lives in the right hand quadrant but our chronic illness lives in the left hand side. 

I don't think that the profession of medicine will welcome this insight. After all they all make their money and gain their status by their investment in the fallacy.

But we can help ourselves. For the systemic causes of chronic illness are all rooted in our lifestyle and in our ancestry. While complex they have only 4 quadrants.

1. Diet - Eat real food - give up all processed food - give up all grains and sugars - don't eat any food that has a chemical in it that you cannot read aloud
2. Be Active - Don't sit for more than 3 hours a day - Do physical work - be outside for at least an hour a day - get a dog - garden - get a standing desk
3. Get a Tribe - You will thrive when you have a real place and status in a  social group - we are primates - we have to groom and be groomed
4. Sleep More - Sleep is not just a mechanical time out - it is a vital part of keeping us renewed and well - we need 8 hours a day - have a dark room - light is the enemy - don't watch TV in bed - don't read in bed - don't get stimulated before bed

There is then one variable about how all of this interacts and that is our ancestry. The closer you are to beig a Hunter Gatherer, the worse the outcomes of breaching the evolutionary norms for these quadrants. That is why First Nations People, Polynesians and Scots and Irish do do badly in the chronic illness spectrum. 

There are no doctors in this picture are there? There will be a new research world though. A Big Data Crowd Sourced world. Where millions of us will share data about who we are - the ancestry variable and what we are doing and then we will start to see the emergent truth of what works best for you and for me. 

Emergence is the new research frontier. But the powers that be will hate that because there is no transactional payoff. There will be no pill. There will be no procedure. There will be only the knowledge that what you and I are eating or doing is working or not for us as individuals. 

We will have to find a new way of setting up this kind of research. 

Trillions of dollars of cost will go away. There will be a true revolution in health and in human society. 

Much more later this fall when I will release "You Don't Need a Doctor" I am still on track to release "You Don't Need a Job" and "You Don't need a Banker" at the end of June.

Real Food is Tipping - Chipotle & Hyatt #pasturemeat

People are waking up and are demanding meat that is free from drugs. Pork is the leading edge but the rest will follow. Here is the opportunity for PEI. (link)

It's no longer just foodies at farm markets or Whole Foods buying antibiotic-free, pasture-raised meats.

Increased demand is coming from lots of big players, includingHyatt Hotels; institutional food providers such as Bon Appetit Management Co., which caters to schools and companies; and the fast-food chain Chipotle Mexican Grill. And it's changing the game.

In fact, this year, Chipotle, which is growing so quickly that it's opening about three new locations each week, will slowly braise and sell about 120 million pounds of naturally raised pork, chicken and beef that meets its antibiotic-free standards.........

Lopez says this month Hyatt announced it will offer antibiotic-free, naturally raised meat, poulty and dairy options at all of its hotels. The chain decided to expand these options, in part, after it saw the success of a natural burger on the menu. Meyer Natural Angus supplies those burgers.

"When they [consumers] were given a choice between just burger, and burger that was naturally raised and hormone-free, 30 percent paid a premium, a couple of bucks" to get the antibiotic-free option, Lopez says.

The list of retailers making changes is expanding. Wal-Mart sells a number of antibiotic-free beef and poultry products.

And as demand grows some farmers and suppliers are scrambling to adjust.

One sign of growing pains — temporary hiccups in the supply chain. Hyatt's Lopez says just this week his favorite all-natural chicken supplier — Palouse Pastured Poultry — told him it is temporarily sold out. "I'm in a dry spell," Lopez says. "Their next slaughter is scheduled for the last week of June or the first week of July."

Lopez says the good news is that there are more farmers ramping up this kind of production, so he'll be able to buy antibiotic-free chickens from another farm this month.

As for Behr, and the contribution of his "Lost Taste of Pork" article that helped chart a new course for Chipotle, I called him up to ask him about it.

"This is the one huge piece of good I've done through writing about food," he said with a laugh. "The one, huge, thing!