In the air

Bastion City

2012-01-17T13:06:00.000-05:00

Ecuador: so much to say, no one really to say it to. It's a good place. It's my home place. People here know that, by now, even though I don't look like someone who'd have a home place here. Over there, in the north, it's easy to look like you belong but it never feels like it.

First photos from my trip home.

The name of this place is "Bastion Popular," literally a safe haven for the people. From Doug Saunders' book Arrival City, a look at slums worldwide and their role in urbanizing rural populations and serving as a vehicle out of poverty:

"The arrival city is often barely urban, in form or culture, but it should not be mistaken for a rural place. Urbanites tend to see the arrival city as a simple reproduction, within the city, of the structures and folkways of the village. “Look, on one side villages, on the other side buildings,” the Indian-American writer Suketu Mehta hears his young son observe on first seeing the arrival-city enclaves nestled against apartment towers in Bandra, in northern Mumbai. The father reacts approvingly: “He has identified the slums for what they are: villages in the city.” But this view misinterprets the urban ambitions of the arrival city, its fast-changing nature and its role in redefining the nature of urban life.

"The culture of the arrival city is neither rural nor urban, though it incorporates elements of both—often in grotesquely distorted form—in its anxious effort to find a common source of security among its ambitious and highly insecure residents. It is a fallacy that people move in a straight line from backward, conservative rural customs to sophisticated, secular urban customs. The period in between, with its insecurities, its need for tight bonds and supportive institutions, its threats to the coherence of the family and the person, is often the time when new, hybrid, protective cultures are developed."

I'm reading that book during my evenings, after days spent walking the streets that used to be dirt and mud but have all been paved since my last trip here. The house that used to have a welding shop in it's front yard now has a big fence with barbed wire pointing out, protecting the middle-class car parked in the drive and the surely middle-class TV and sound system inside. The family that owns that house used to take me to their country home once a year when I was a kid. I'd eat rooster and sleep on wood slats and pick mandarin oranges off the trees and walk through mud that was thigh deep for an eight year old.

I've always thought of Bastion Popular as one of the back-ends of global capitalism, a forgotten people working slave jobs in the factories that spit out clothes and plastics for the people on the sunny side of life. The North. The Saunders book is a bit more hopeful, and gives me a new way to look at my home, at least until I actually get past the first few chapters and find problems with his argument.

At least in Bastion, I know too many people who aren't in transition from poverty to middle class stability.They are forced to be stuck: by ties to family members with addictions or health problems or bad business sense. But change is certainly in the air, with the radical left-wing president pushing through reforms at every level, shaking up everything society had taken for granted: mandatory military service, expensive higher education, out of reach health services. When I talk to kids I used to teach when they were in school, I hear that since they've joined the workforce, their work day has improved, from 12 hours down to 8. Though some bosses still break the new laws because they still can.

But the government is gaining strength: "revolutionary inspectors" go out and ask employees at all sorts of companies whether their boss has signed them up for the government social security program (that costs the employee, and the employer, but gives the worker access to health and social services). If the employee says "No," the boss faces jail time. It's a criminal offense, punishable by five years in jail. Even housewives hiring maids, frequently rural girls looking for an in to the city at any cost, have to sign them up for social security. And their wages have gone up: you can't get a girl for $100 a month anymore.

The bosses do not like the president. It's hard to gauge whether the people genuinely love him, or have just been affected by the constant TV commercials and billboards and print products acclaiming his measures. It's all really interesting. I just got here. I'm learning as fast as I can about everything I've missed. (you can't really trust the newspapers: their readers and owners also consist of bosses).

But I'm glad to be home.

Interviewed in alumni magazine

2012-01-02T13:36:00.002-05:00

I do believe the Internet is the best place for journalism to live. It's exciting to watch it grow.

Open publication - Free publishing - More alumni

Sexism is dead, right?

2011-06-07T17:13:00.001-05:00

Not until this asshole keels over:

"Sexism all around us"

Published in Frank Magazine, June 7, 2011 <-- yep.

I get accused of being a sexist pig on an almost daily basis simply because I view women as sex objects.

Not all women, mind you. Just... well, pretty much all of them, now that I think of it.

Let me qualify by saying that women, to me, are many other things. Women are sentient, intelligent beings who have the capacity for good and evil, love and hate, and all of the actions and emotions in between. Just like men, they can be doctors, office assistants, or doctor’s office assistants (OK, those last two are usually women, but you get my drift).

But, to heterosexual men — and, I suppose, lesbians, once the U- Haul is safely packed — they are sex objects on top of everything else.

There’s no getting around it. I see a woman on the bus with a great set of sweater puppies, I lose my train of thought. If I so much as glance at a photo of that voluptuous Greek goddess, Maria Panopalis, I have to spend a few minutes picturing Mike Duffy in the altogether, frolicking in a vat of rice pudding (tapioca also works in a pinch) before my heart rate returns to normal.

For openly admitting I worship the beauty of the female form — and occasionally, against my better judgement, telling a work colleague, sister-in-law or total stranger that I’d give her five bucks for a quick motorboat (over her bra, of course, I’m still a gentleman) — I am pilloried by society. Yet Jessica Napier is somehow respectable. Toronto-based Jessica, whose weekly She Says column can be found in Metro Halifax, whips up stunningly sexist stereotypes with the ease of a Lebanese guy mixing donair sauce. If the Canucks lose, girls, your man will be too cranky to take care of business in the bedroom, Jess tells us in Girls’ Guide to Surviving the Playoffs (May 31). In Zen and the Art of Closet Maintenance (May 17), she advises that if you can wear a different floral print dress for 16 days running, it might be time for a wardrobe cull.

Men are babies, according to Jess in Playing Florence Nightingale to the Man Cold (March 29). Being single sucks. Sometimes I cry at the hair salon. Men are big, dumb, grunting cavemen. Jessica — and many lifestyles columnists of her ilk — is turning the gender relations clock back to 1959.

If I’m a sexist pig, then Jessica Napier is a sexist pig. But you know what?

I’d still give her a motorboat. But she’d have to pay me five bucks.

--------------

I have many problems with this article. It's degrading, pointless, and badly edited.

But as a writer, I dislike it because it proposes a target, a straw 'woman,' that has very little to do with the underlying thrust of the piece.

The points the author attempts to graft onto the body of the argument are products of his pet peeve: women don't want to be just sex objects (annoying, right?). But his points have very little to do with the actual words or actions of the female columnist he targets. She's just the vehicle his pet peeve rides in on.

If this piece had had the benefit of an editor, the following point would have been made: just because you hate this woman—it doesn't mean it's for the same reasons you hate women in general.

I could discuss the author's jokey relationship with his own misogyny, but it's flaws are fairly obvious. And the writing is so bad, I'm not sure he deserves that much attention.

Summer reading

2011-05-20T08:11:00.000-05:00

"The future belongs to the people, and little by little or in one fell swoop they will seize power, here and in the whole world. The bad thing is that they have to become civilized, and this can’t happen before, but only after taking power. They will become civilized only by learning at the cost of their own errors, which will be serious ones, and which will cost many innocent lives.

Or perhaps not, perhaps they won’t be innocent, because they will have committed the enormous sin contra natura signified by lacking the capacity to adapt. All of them, all the unadaptable ones, you and I, for example, will die cursing the power we, with enormous sacrifice, helped create. In its impersonal form, the revolution will take our lives, and even utilize the memory of that which for them remains exemplary, as a domesticating instrument for the youth who will come after.

My sin is greater, because I, more subtle and with more experience, call it what you wish, will die knowing that my sacrifice is due only to an obstinacy which symbolizes the rotten civilization that is crumbling. You will die with the fist clenched and jaw tense, in perfect demonstration of hate and of combat, because you are not a symbol, you are an authentic member of a society which is crumbling: the spirit of the beehive speaks through your mouth and moves in your actions; you are as useful as I, but you don’t know the usefulness of the help you give to the society which sacrifices you."

-the old man's words to Che Guevara, quoted in one of Che's travel diaries and translated in Jon Lee Andersen's biography.

I'm finally reading this biography now. Maybe because school is done, I'm thinking about Latin America more. Latin America, among others.

As revolutions rock the Arab world and the people become civilized "at the cost of their own errors," Obama has now said Palestine deserves its 1967 borders. Not a revolution, per say, but a milestone.

Che thought a lot about revolutions. The breadth of his personal studies in his youth and early twenties, before getting involved in any political activities, is intimidating. He read volumes and volumes of everything from Freud to Faulkner, South American poetry and novels, Bertrand Russell and Jules Verne. He kept encyclopaedic notes about the wide range of topics and philosophies that he found interesting, all the while travelling most of the countries in Latin America. I feel like I should at least be keeping better notes about what I learn about him, in this book, as a half-hearted attempt to keep up.

So this is a note-to-self: Read more. Travel more. Write more and more often.

The Sparks'

2011-03-28T06:24:00.002-05:00

I'm working on a story.

It has a lot of roots in a lot of places, but among them: racist Nova Scotia, patriarchy in black culture, the solitude of childhood, the power of music.

And the systemic failure of our "civilized" institutions.

I'll try to get http://bethanyhorne.com up and running to contain it.

Japan

2011-03-11T07:45:00.001-05:00

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Work

2011-01-29T13:34:00.000-05:00

Justseeds "Work" Calendar. $15.

My calendar this year is a poster-sized, arty, glossy wall calendar about work. What work do we do, why do we do it, and, radically, what does it mean.

I've been grateful for the art in this calendar these past few weeks. I've been struggling with my job: not the work itself, but everything surrounding it that tries to get in the way of, ruin the effect of or remove the meaning from the work itself. Publishing is thrilling, but if the mix of people and abilities is off, then doing the work is really, really hard.

2011 is going to be a year of work. Personal projects and paid employment are just two expressions of that quest for satisfaction and excellence in the practical things that I do. I have a lot of loan to pay off, as of this spring, but I'm going to continue the struggle, even as finances take priority, for the work that I do to be about satisfaction more so than remuneration or the filling of time.

I want to reprint the words at the back of the calendar, because they embody what I'm thinking about as I work throughout this year:

What is work? In a broad sense, “work” is the activities that produce a result; for our concerns, let’s call that “social wealth.” Yet it’s a question that begs so many more—perhaps none more pressing than “What should work be?” We all have ideas of what work shouldn’t be: mind-numbing, exploitative, hierarchical, dangerous, disempowering, etc. Though things get muddled when we try and flip the question around.
When we say that work should be creative, just, cooperative, healthy, and empowering we are laying an ethical, more than practical, groundwork. Ethics alone won’t help us solve questions such as “What share of the social wealth and I due for the time I spend at work?”; “Does my time parenting contribute to the social wealth to the same degree as my work as an electrician?”; “How do we place value on different kinds of work that each contribute to the social wealth?”; “If I choose not to contribute to the creation of social wealth, am I guaranteed any part of it?” These aren’t trivial questions—nor are they entirely new. But before we get too philosophical about it, let’s remember that at the end of the day, the water still has to flow from the tap, we need eyeglasses, and food and shelter are a must. So yes, the struggle to re-envision work is ethical, philosophical, theoretical, and practical.
And if work provides social wealth for all, perhaps we should make a distinction between working to produce for the good of all and working for a paycheck. Is it possible that our economy morph into one based on reciprocity instead of profit motive? Can we erode class society by building institutions and practice that militate against it? Can we create a sense of pride and dignity in our work practices, with a domino effect of solidarity to follow?
So we have before us a calendar produced by the hard-working aesthetes at Justseeds. For every month there’s a new image relating to our topic of work: be it the pleasure of work itself, the hard times, the fight for our rights, the global financial system and its creep into our world of work, or the fight for control over our lives.
Let’s spend this year thinking about the world of work, our own and that going on all around us. And let’s peer into how it numbs minds, exploits, kills, and disempowers and how it could be creative, just, cooperative, healthy, and empowering. Maybe after next year we’ll be that much more prepared to answer the perennial question, “What should work be?”

Homecoming Dalhousie

2010-10-21T09:49:00.000-05:00

"The Dalhousie Gazette speaks for itself. The Gazette is to represent the views of the Students, to advocate their interest and strive in all things to cultivate that love and intensify the sympathy that should exist between Alumni.

The editors are to be little more than judicious censors, to select wisely what shall be published, to endeavour, in a new sense, to practice the art of 'putting things', and by worthy service hope to earn the praise of being faithful Exponents of Students' views.

If among much that may prove dull there be found some sparkling of pleasure or wholesome goods let it expiate the fault. When you find many blemishes, learn to avoid them, and ere you condemn produce a work more faultless, while we timidly suggest the words of Horace: Carmen sequar, ut sibi quiuis speret idem, sudet multem frustraque laborat, ausus idem."

- The Dalhousie Gazette, 1869

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Timeline of G20 ISU media highlights

2010-10-03T13:23:00.001-05:00

Comment on the blog entry if you want to add something—this is definitely not comprehensive, just my first attempt to collect relevant links.

The timeline is meant to examine how the PR campaign of the police forces perhaps changed over time, and how parallels from definitive moments can be drawn to protest policing (and protest policing PR) in other cities, post-9/11.

G20: The Protests, the Police and the Media on Dipity.

Things we're all too young to know

2010-08-15T17:41:00.000-05:00

I wasn't sure, when I headed over, what I was in for. I hadn't seen Chelsey, Clayton or Eva for at least eight months, and Carol-Ann for even longer than that. And last time I had been in touch with Eva on Skype, I kinda blocked her.

(Sorry about that. I think you were saying things that I didn't want to hear. I needed to trust my own experiences for a while. I was mad that you were challenging them. I couldn't handle what was going on in the conversation, so I enforced silence. The only other option would have been to say something I would later regret).

I've been systematically filing away and unlearning memories that contain these people, through no fault of their own. I wanted to get the people back, but I knew I would be opening myself up to the pain I shook off in the process of getting over the memories that contain them. If that sentence is confusing, it's because this whole thing is.

They're much more capable at the process than I am. We had a nice dinner. They are not very different. And they were so incredibly gracious and kind to me, in a way that if I hadn't been hyper-sensitive I wouldn't have noticed. But I'm me, and thus: I noticed.

The nicknames came back. Eva and her Jimmy had to leave early, but I was in no rush. Clayton was thumbing a guitar after all, and I've never left a room when there was even the hint of that, before, so why start now? When the singing started, that's when the melancholia kicked in, and it hasn't really wore off yet.

I used to see a lot of this family when we (Clayt, Chels, Eva and/or Carol-Ann) all lived in the same house. In 2007/08, I was frequently invited to things like weddings and birthday parties, because a lot of them happened at our place. When I said on Friday night how much I missed his parents, Clayt invited me along the next day to go out with him and Carol-Ann to a gig he was playing in Upper Stewiacke, about an hour and a half outside of Halifax. Clayton's sister usually plays the fiddle, with Clayton on guitar, but yesterday morning she was camping, and so the fiddle job was passed to Clayton and the guitar to Gary, Clayton's dad.

C-A, Gordon the dog and I piled into Clayton's tiny car and we drove out to their family home in rural Nova Scotia. I just realized I cancelled on a bunch of people in order to make that trip. But it was worth it. I'm trying to put my finger on why.

C-A, Clayt and me in 2007 ready to eat maple candy out of the snow

Little things, I guess. It's neat hearing different members of the family talk about the things they love about each other. That's so rare, I think.

But they aren't just generous with each other. In a private moment with Gary, I mentioned having dropped out of school in Mexico, and what a low moment that was. And, with the human instinct only a minister could have, he throws out a little thought, a thought he's obviously been thinking for a while, like he was saving it in his pocket for months until the next time he talked to me (but he could have been saving it for someone else, too).

He says, "Bethany, I know this is none of my business, but I've read a lot of biographies over the years. In the story of every life of consequence there is always a bomb-out chapter. It seems to be that if the stakes you lived for were so low you never bombed out, you probably didn't make much of a difference." It's a beautiful gift to give someone, that kind of a thought, and it was given to me by the father of a friend I haven't seen in months. But they're that kind of a family. Always giving you beautiful gifts.

Debbie invited us for dinner, and Rosanna came home and played some music with Clayton. All the while, we heard stories. He heard about the amusing "plogs" Gary mails out to his children in turn, when he has a politically inspired thought to share. He mails them, even to Rosanna, who lives under his same roof. That led to a discussion on the human significance of letters (Bonhoeffer, Gramsci, Marx, Engels and the apostle Paul all relied on them as the writing in which to flesh out their theories). We laughed a lot (Gary's sunscreen-solution to his hair- wisp "wings," Debbie's appreciation of enterprising celiacs).

Carol-Ann spent more than an hour treating first Clayton and then his mom Debbie with Bowen technique, a treatment that relieves pain. I find myself wishing I could have given them some sort of pain relief gift, as well. The visit to their home touched something in me I hadn't even known was hurting. It rolled a thumb over it, and stretched that muscle, and I feel like I'm now laying on the bed, waiting for my body to start to heal itself.

Rosanna and Clayton

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Half

2010-08-05T07:14:00.001-05:00

Amazing sunset over the clouds tonight, flying home to Nova Scotia. Flying is more home than anywhere else, really. Getting places is more familiar than staying.

The last time I saw Northern Lights was in England. We all went for walks on the Loop around the castle that night. We’d finish the loop, come inside to tell others about the billowing sheets of lights draped all across the sky, then go back out for another look. The front hall that night was like an airport lounge, constant bustle, everybody going somewhere good, or waiting in line for a Styrofoam cup of hot chocolate.

Some things in Halifax change: the market moved, Mary's Place got expensive and less good, the bridge commission put more suicide barriers up, the fountain in the Commons is working. But mostly, the city stays the same and people change. And, because the backdrop of the city is so painfully static, the people playing their parts in it pop out all the more. I was walking Gordon this morning and I saw Simon on a skateboard. I was about to call out to him, to say hi and laugh together about how weird it is to see him on a skateboard, but then I just laughed at myself, instead. Walking a little dog, wearing the bright blue jacket I got at the G20, headphones stuck in my ears under my chopped-off hair, still in pajamas. Simon would have had more to laugh at, if he had noticed me, than I had looking at him.

And when I think about everything that has changed since I was last here, I try to laugh, too.

When the blood started to flow

2010-06-30T16:10:00.002-05:00

First appeared on http://openfile.ca/blog/g20-reflections-when-blood-started-flow

An older version at http://www.j-source.ca/english_new/detail.php?id=5308 has a great comment you should definitely read.

G20 REFLECTIONS: WHEN BLOOD STARTED TO FLOW

Posted by Bethany Horne on Wednesday, June 30, 2010

On Saturday, I witnessed what I think was the first instance of G20-related violence that day, at Queen St. W. and John St. This was before the black bloc split off from the march. A group called No One Is Illegal, which was protesting against immigration policies in G20 countries, tried to break off from the larger group.

In previous interviews with me, No One Is Illegal talked about how the security fence around the world leaders was a symbol of the fences and borders that oppress people every day. For them, it was an important strategy to approach the fence and protest it directly. However, their attempt to move down the street to the fence was blocked by police who didn't hesitate to use batons against those at the front of the march. First one, then another fell to the blows of the police batons.
I was with a good friend who has medical training and helped her get the first man who was injured out of the way of the advancing police line. We had to yell to make our way through the crowd. From the relative safety of the opposite sidewalk, we called for those who were helping the other wounded to bring them to us. I held the man as blood poured out of his head, down his face and onto my friend’s jacket. It drip, drip, dripped onto my pants.

My friend, who could see the man's skull through the deep gash, covered the wound with gauze and told him to hold it. Calls to 911 were fruitless: the ambulance never came. Another man with a head wound next to me was going into shock. The medics with him loudly asked the crowd marching past us to give us any extra clothing they had on in order to cover him and help hold his spinal column steady. People threw us their extra sweaters and t-shirts. The man's eyes stared into nothingness, flickered and glassed over. No ambulance came for half an hour. We called 911 I don’t know how many times. I approached police officers dressed in the green jackets of "Community Relations" and asked them to intervene, to let medical help through the blockades they had set up along all sides of the street. They said they could do nothing.
By that point the march had long ago passed us by. But we heard that police had deployed tear gas and the tail end of the march was doubling back and coming through where we were. We had to make a decision. We decided to move the injured, even though there was a risk of exacerbating any spinal injuries they might have.

We held the first man with the head gash between us and walked him, and another less-woozy guy, to Mount Sinai Hospital, a kilometre or so away. We left the man who was almost unconscious behind with three medics. They were going to use five people to try to move him into a van in order to get him someplace where an ambulance would pick him up. I know it took them a long, long time to accomplish that. We all thought he was going to die. He didn't. (for a full tale of what happened to him, check the comments at the j-source link, above).

The man my friend and I walked to the hospital had weak vital signs and in the end required seven stitches on his head. He couldn't have been any older than 23. I still can't understand why police thought they needed to deal with him in this way.

Getting ready to cover the G20

2010-06-19T06:24:00.001-05:00

This is the "Protest Tip Sheet" Toronto Star reporters covering the G20 were given:

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First off, this is NOT a tip sheet on how to cover a protest. That’s between you and your editors. This tip sheet is about how to get through a protest with minimal pain or injury, culled together by J-- R--- and S--- L--- at the Toronto Star from experiences at WTO protests in Seattle, FTAA in Quebec City, IMF and World Bank in Washington, the OAS in Windsor and attendance at the protester’s own training camps.

· Get a gas mask. Old army surplus gas masks may offer some relief from tear gas, but filter canisters have a limited shelf life. Check expiry dates. Keep the mask concealed until needed. People may want to take it from you, and they won’t ask politely.

· Keep a bandana soaked in vinegar in a Ziploc bag with you at all times. If your gas mask is stolen, or you don’t have it with you, it will be a backup. Place the bandana over your nose and mouth.

· If you are stationed at an active fence demonstration, consider a helmet. Hardcore protesters throw rocks. Again, keep the helmet concealed until needed.

· Ear protection. The sound cannons are new, so the best advice we can offer at this point is get good ear protection, from ear plugs to construction-grade ear covers. The closer you intend to get, the better protection you'll need.

· Water bottle with a spray top. Not just for drinking. If you are gassed, and it gets in your eyes, spraying with water is the only cure. Aim for the corner of your eye by your nose. Water should flush around your eye and clear out the gas. Better yet, get someone else to do it. Not surprisingly, the protesters tend to be good at this.

· How you dress is important. If you look like a protester, you are more likely to be treated as one by riot police. If you don’t dress like one, more militant protesters may surmise that you are a member of the main stream media or police and target you. In Quebec, hardcore guys threw paint-filled balloons at media. It was Barney purple, and very difficult to remove. So, try to strike a balance in how you look.

· No natural fibres. Tear gas sticks to natural fibres, so wear nylon, polyester, etc. The last thing you want is to take that stink home, and we don’t want it here. Consider a change of clothes for going home.

· Hide press credentials until you need them. Protesters often don’t like the “corporate media.” That said, riot police in the heat of the moment may not care if you are press, even if you happen to be Lloyd Robertson.

· Food and caffeine. Carry with you. If the protests get bad, shops will close and you will have a tough time staying fed and caffeinated without leaving the story. High-energy power bars are good.

· Know where you are and how to get out fast. Police in the past have fired waves of tear gas, at varying distances, all at once. This can cause great panic amongst less hardcore protesters and cause a stampede.

· Rubber bullets, at close range, will break bones.

· Don’t pick up a detonated tear gas canister with bare hands. They are hot. Very hot. If you must, kick it away.

· Concussion grenades. These are loud bangs that will make you think a gun has gone off right beside you. They are meant to disorient, and they do. They are also hot, so don’t touch.

· Tasers. Given the bad press for Tasers, we may not see much of them here, but they were used in Quebec City to break up protesters who sat down in the road and refused to move.

· If you get enough of a snoot full of tear gas, you will find yourself on your hands and knees, leaking big time from eyes, nose and mouth. It will be very hard to breath. This is normal. You will be disoriented, but try not to panic, find relative shelter, if you can, and ride it out. You’ll feel like you’re dying but you’ll live. Flush your eyes.

· If at all possible, pair yourself with another journalist and watch each other’s back.

· If you are carrying electronics, beware of water canons. A waterproof bag is a good idea.

· Have a pencil stowed away. In the event you and your notepad take an unexpected shower, you can still write with that. Those big, thick pencils meant for kindergarten classes are best, since the leads don’t break as easily.

Sensitivity to gas increases as the protest goes on. Tear gas can be like bee stings – it gets worse with each hit, so stick closer to these tips as the protest wears on.

You will need a shower after a day of being gassed. Remember, that the gas will cling to your hair (it’s a natural fibre), so the first thing to do in the shower is hold your head back and stick your face into the shower.

Otherwise, the gas in your hair will go straight for your eyes.

Be careful, and alert, and you’ll be okay.

If you are going to the protests next weekend and want to meet a real life Star reporter, to maybe get your picture with them or something, I have created the following professional-grade sketch of one, so you can more easily identify them in the flesh. Keep in mind, his bandana baggie and camera are stashed in his back pockets:

The reporter might also look like this:

Me/Me

2010-06-08T19:05:00.000-05:00

I write a lot. We all do. Emails, chats, tweets, texts, stories and secrets.

I have always written, in one form or another. I probably always will.

Increasingly, what I write will be preserved forever. The love-struck letters to Steven Skinner in grade seven, those I will probably never see again, nor will anybody else (thank God).

But times have changed. The bulk of my letters are no longer on paper. I have a record of every email I've sent for the past five years. I was an early Gmail subscriber for that reason alone: I will never have to delete an email, ever again.

As the glut of writing in my own life increases, I ask myself: how can it be better?

One aspect of good writing is emotional honesty. I've never had a problem writing what I feel. To tap into the core of my current state, express it honestly and accessibly, has been a daily exercise. Every day, I communicate with someone who has been important to me but now lives far away. To do this kind of long-distance relationship justice, I have to be genuine, or else the relationship stays in the past and never grows. I have to be aware of who I am at that moment in time, and convey it.

But there is a skill that is harder than relaying with honesty the truth of what I feel. It's a skill I've thought about a lot lately. The skill is permanence.

What can I write now that I will still believe, in 20 years? That person is harder to tap into than the person who is going through today. That person exists, divorced from the events of this week or month. That person pops up when I'm reading, more often than when I'm writing. That person is better than the other one, I think.

Intern, 3/4

2010-05-29T15:42:00.002-05:00

Ok, at this point in the internship, the whole "writing an internship report" thing is getting old.

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What can I really say to distinguish week three from week two? Drama and conflict perhaps. That usually works as a lead.

There was a virtual fist-fight over OpenFile this week. Actually, the fight wasn't really about OpenFile, OpenFile was more of a MacGuffin in the narrative of the fight, but as a group consisting of living humans with real emotions, playing the MacGuffin for a while was drama enough.

In my Week One round-up of press coverage of OpenFile's beta launch, I neglected to include an article that appeared in the NOW newspaper (or maybe just on NOW's website). The article was opinion, and it argued that OpenFile is going to face the challenges that citizen journalism sites like NowPublic regularly face, and will struggle as a result. Except, the author didn't interview anybody from OpenFile, and apparently didn't read any of of the other coverage that did contain interviews very carefully, because he got a lot wrong about how OpenFile proposes journalism with public participation could be done. Craig Silverman pointed out the errors in a comment. Jay Rosen, a guru of online journalism who teaches at NYU, casually tweeted a reference to the fact that the NOW piece committed errors, and thus the virtual fist-fight began.

This person presents the first of the crazy tweet punches fairly clearly.

Even as Rosen's followers weighed in on the issue in this way, the NOW guy refused to give up! He went from error to slander when he accused Rosen of having a direct economic interest in the OpenFile company. Madness.

Then, some guy in Atlanta picked up on the tweetfight and analyzed it logically. I thought the coolness of the piece would put the matter to rest, but if you read down to the comments, the NOW author chose to continue his feckless campaign to clear his name. By this point, the whole thing made me laugh.

I definitely know how this Joshua Errett guy feels. Which is why I'm trying to not be too hard on him. The Internet is a hard, hard place to project part of your life into. There is no mercy for those who make mistakes. There is no way to control what you broadcast. Everyone is expected either to self-moderate to the point of perfection, or to take refuge in anonymity. I admire those who put their real selves out there into the unforgiving environment, and I feel bad when they are punished as a result.

But back to the office. I'm amazed anybody got any work done as this drama unfolded. My productivity would appear to have dropped, judging by the number of stories I filed this week (only one) but I actually have three stories I'm working on for next week. Hopefully, they will be somewhat ready by Monday or Tuesday.

Different things made writing difficult this week. A lot of people took their sweet time getting back to my phone calls, or they never got back at all. I went to a city council committee meeting, which was so much more stupefying to my neurons than any Dalhousie Student Union meeting I've ever been to. The main reason I got less done: the TTC and the incredible long time it takes to get me anywhere when I need to be there. Also, Thursday morning was spent wandering around downtown, looking for a street person to talk to. Friday afternoon was shortened because I agreed to give an interview to a Ryerson Review of Journalism writer who is covering OpenFile and the future OpenFile heralds.

In true RRJ style, she has pretty much interviewed every single person remotely related to her topic of study. She wanted to talk to me because I am a freelancer who has five stories up on the site, which is more than most people. She didn't know, when she requested an interview, that my output of stories is due to me being an intern. She must've thought I was just an OpenFile nut -- which, I'm on my way to becoming.

P.S. Two stories interested me from a philosophical perspective this week. One journalist took on the research of a rumour about immigration raids which no one could confirm or deny. On OpenFile, that's still a worthy story, because the rumour has had wide diffusion among hispanic residents of Toronto's West End. This story was a good proposal for how coverage could evolve and keep filling the file with new information. Nothing has really come out, yet, to confirm or deny the rumour (perhaps because OpenFile doesn't have wide diffusion in the immigrant community) but I have my fingers crossed. In the future, the site's audience will be bigger, and also bigger then the likelihood that lures like this will attract actual fish.

Secondly, this story about a house captured a quick audience. It's almost a perfect example of what my fiction instructor would call "the human heart in conflict with itself" -- but the human heart I'm talking about belongs to the reader; it's the human heart of the contemporary Torontonian. Because, what should happen when a quadriplegic wants to raze a heritage house in order to build an accessible one she can move around in? It's a competition between two strong but conflicting desires: to preserve something that may have historical value, or to build something that has value for a family with specific and tragic needs. To make the story more interesting, the city councillor has picked a side, and underhandedly commissioned a third-party report that pulls the rug out from under the feet of the family, who are anxious to build their home. The way this story evolved on OpenFile was classic, and one Twitter user agrees: this is how the new journalism could be done!

And it's not citizen journalism, Errett. It's more.

Internship report 2/4

2010-05-26T20:46:00.003-05:00

Week Two (May 17 to 21) I had my act together more often, I would say. I borrowed a cell phone: a key reportorial instrument. I was promoted temporarily to a desk. I ate better, and at more body-appropriate intervals.

Tuesday and Wednesday were my busiest days so far. As a result, and surprisingly at times, they were quite fun.

On Tuesday, I woke up to see the story I was going to be working on that day on the cover of the GTA section of the Toronto Star.

“Damn,” I thought.

One aspect of OpenFile that is constantly pointed out by the skeptics as a possible weakness of the model is the open pitching process. Story ideas aren’t secret. They are public, advertised as “open files” in a prominent banner on the front page. The openness is designed to collect public input on whether a story is worth assigning to a reporter. But even after they are assigned, the files stay in the top banner, continuing to tempt readers from other news outlets to take the story idea and develop it for their own pages. This was the pitch to OpenFile:

“Years ago, I wrote a blog post about the Joy Oil Station building restoration efforts. Fast-forward several years, and while appearing to be fully restored, they remain unused and inaccessible to the public. What is the official plan for these restored architectural relics at Lake Shore & Windermere? When will they open?”

The last time the Star covered the Joy station story was in 2007, around the same time the blog post referred to in the pitch was published. Although the Toronto Star knew the story of the relocation and restoration of the Joy Oil building, I didn’t see why they would cover it now, a week after it appeared as a pitch on OpenFile, unless the open pitch prompted them to do a follow-up. When I saw that Star headline, I thought they’d scooped my news out from under me the day I was getting ready to publish it.

Fortunately for me, they didn’t do much other than re-visit their old story (which far from answered the question posed in the pitch on OpenFile). The restored building façade featured prominently in the Star story art, but their source at the city didn’t know much about the future of the building. I had different sources, and they were able to tell me a little more. When I published later that day, what I was able to write had more information about how the Joy Oil building was included in development plans for the lakeshore area. My story is here.

But I don’t think the fact that I had better sources made mine a better story. I actually think that the open pitch process made the OpenFile version a better story. The background narrative was richer. Somebody (Jerrold Litwinenko, former blogTO editor) was publicly interested in this building. His curiosity germinated in other readers’ minds, while they, too, waited to see what the pitch would produce. Jerrold publicized his curiosity about this building on his personal Twitter feed and in other online and non-online areas of his life, I’m sure. His curiosity was mirrored. A week after his query, both the Toronto Star and OpenFile had answers to his question, and the questions of other people interested in his pitch. It all added up, and on OpenFile, it added up more completely. The Toronto Star article that day did not have a comments section. It did not have links to complete the narrative. It didn’t even have all the information a reporter could have gathered. But OpenFile linked to the Toronto Star, and to Jerrold’s old blog post, and to other relevant pages.

So, it was a good day. The next day, my assignment was very different. I didn’t expect to break any news, that day. I covered the grand opening of the newest public washroom in Toronto. It was a media circus. Mayor David Miller cut the ribbon. In days leading up to the high-tech washroom inauguration, city PR people had been very tight-lipped about the details, and their strategy worked. The Mayor said later he hadn’t seen so many media people at one of his press conferences since he announced a budget surplus in March.

Although the amount of press people there did not encourage me (why bother duplicating all this effort?), it was good experience in terms of observing some Toronto reporters in their natural environment. I tried to calculate how much money was being spent on these people’s salaries for the two hours I was standing there. It seemed like a waste of money. One camera crew, one print reporter, one photographer and one radio reporter could have done the job that needed doing: getting the information and putting it out there. I wish that with these types of spoon-fed stories, we could get away with that, and spend our society's journalistic resources on investigative work. But I digress.

(though, to further this digression, I share a link my editor tweeted yesterday, containing an argument that small scale, collaborative news projects ARE the future of investigative journalism. So maybe it's all connected)

My coverage of the loo story didn’t originate with a pitch. Because OpenFile is still in beta, the influx of pitches from regular users doesn’t yet sustain the story-producing capacity of the site. So, reporters and editors create story ideas too, like in a traditional newsroom. This story idea came from my editor, Kathy.

The timing worked in our favour on this one. Kathy had the idea a week before the press conference, while the PR people were being tight lipped. But we were able to write something that drew on earlier stories from several similar interviews Toronto’s street furniture manager gave in early May to a variety of outlets. So, we had a story the day before the grand opening, hinting that the next day (May 19) would probably be the big day.

And so, on Wednesday, when I went to the press conference, we already had a file started on the site. By the time I got back to the office after the event, all I had to do was plug in some new info, use the old story as a nut graph, add the photos I took, and the file was ready, and updated, way before many of the other print/online stories were.

The TV stations had been broadcasting live, even before the first flush, but when TV viewers went to the internet to find more info, OpenFile was best prepared to capture those clicks. Kathy pushed this story on Twitter quite a bit, and it ended up getting three times as many page views as the Joy Oil story.

So, even though I’m doing the same kind of reporting I would do if I were interning for a newspaper or a radio station, I’m learning different ways to use the internet to build and acknowledge the existing community around a single story.

I’m also learning about Toronto, as a side-effect. Torontonians are starved for good public washrooms. Torontonians are proud of their neighbourhoods. Torontonian transit drivers won’t stop the streetcar unless you pull the yellow lead, even if you’ve made it abundantly clear you want to get off at this corner, through other cues. I have two more weeks to go. (edit: one and a half)

So far, so good.

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My internship report, first of four

2010-05-17T10:21:00.002-05:00

I've been extremely lucky to find myself amongst the furor of the first week of OpenFile's live website launch. Up until May 11, OpenFile.ca consisted of a blog with idealistic but vague posts, and links to Facebook and Twitter pages. Things quickly got more interesting when, on my first day in the office, their beta news site went live.

If you haven't been keeping up with the buzz, you might need to know that OpenFile is the newest guess at what the future of journalism will look like. They are betting that it will look local, with an open and collaborative story development process, and that the stories will be community driven, freelancer-produced and curated by experienced old-media talent.

So, what sets this start-up apart from all the others who are claiming to have divined the future?

Well, first of: they pay freelancers really well, and really quickly. As a result, they are building a fan base amongst the unemployed writers, photographers and media people in Toronto (and even some of the employed ones) whom they will need in order to build up the story stable on the site.

Secondly, they have some money. And they have enough for three years, apparently.

But that's not all. Word of OpenFile has spread thanks in part to the brand-value of the people associated with the project. Kathy Vey, the EIC, is a well-known Toronto Star alumnus. Wilf Dinnick was a TV correspondent for all the big North American stations. The only name I knew before applying for the internship, and the most well know in the internet world, in Craig Silverman, whose 2,200 Twitter followers certainly haven't hurt the start-up's efforts to get the word out about themselves.

Also, OpenFile have, in a way, combined the buzz concepts of the current online world, and successfully conceptualized how these concepts (open processes, discussion, conversation and crowd-souced information) could fit into a journalistic model. Silverman wrote about how a tipster, a reporter (me) and an editor carried this off in his second blog post after the launch: File Function.

During my first three days there, OpenFile has garnered the coverage they were coveting. There were upbeat articles about them in some prestigious publications. The Globe and Mail article was the first, and might have prompted many of the others (that's the thing about old media: influence). Every time another article about them broke, the small staff would chatter gayly with each other, levy violent threats in vain at anyone who dared say anything negative, and give each other virtual high-fives in Twitter-land. (edit: it was stimulating event to be around. I wish I had ownership over a new project I was this excited about. Tune back in to my life the the new Dalhousie Gazette gets started in September.)
Here is a round-up of the kudos:

National Post

Globe and Mail

Business News Network (one and two) -- these are good clips to watch if you want to know about how the money aspect works

Nieman Journalism Lab

And more bloggy-type coverage:

Techvibes

Torontoist (which included a very nice photo gallery in which I appear - take it as proof that I'm attending my internship, perhaps)

blogTO

Toronto Life

J-source.ca

Mondoville (who've exhibited a bit of snark and a lot more skepticism than the other sites)

Predictably, a lot of the positive response to OpenFile has come from journalists. Some of the more personal responses, emailed directly to the editorial team instead of expressed publicly on Twitter or Facebook, were unexpected.

But despite all the hype, OpenFile has hurdles to overcome. The Halifax Daily News and the New York Times experimented with the hyper-local model, planting reporters in specific neighbourhoods and attempting to benefit from that involvement with the grassroots community. Their experiments failed. Maybe journalists don't have the most active imagination when it comes to local news. Maybe, like my prof said, there is a problem in "defining news by where it happens instead of what it is."

I see a possible disconnect between the audience they are ultimately aiming for, and the audience they are currently reaping. They need to have a big number of unique visitors in order to satisfy their funders. They won't get those numbers by leeching from the established Toronto blogs and Twitter feeds, or by attracting only disenfranchised journalists. I don't see how the site can create a comprehensive portrait of all the Toronto neighbourhoods without some targeted street outreach work promoting their site.

Another question I have is: what is their argument that the internet is the best medium for neighbourhood news? Don't people who connect to the internet generally have more education, more money, more options, and thus more of an interest in the things outside their own neighbourhood? And perhaps, is neighbourhood news not best garnered from the neighbourhood itself: the local flyers, the notice boards, the conversations at the grocery store?
But maybe I'm destined to miss the appeal of hyper-local internet news, because I've never really felt connected to any neighbourhood. It has been 14 years since I have lived in any one house for longer than a year. I use the internet to feel connected to things I can't walk to, or call on the phone. Maybe I spend too much time with the hyper-international? So, I'm not the target audience of hyper-local sites.

OpenFile's overwhelming strength is that they are taking it slow. They have capital funding for three years: it has taken them less than one to get where they are now. They are smart, well-connected, experienced journalists. They have fully thought-out the project they are working on, but they are not rigid. They expect to morph over the next weeks, in order to keep up with what they will need to become. They are open to suggestions. I think the bookies are still undecided on what will happen to this gamble.

What I do

2010-05-14T13:17:00.001-05:00

FILE FUNCTION: HOW ONE CITIZEN’S CONCERN BECAME A TIP, A FILE AND A STORY

In short

2010-05-10T07:06:00.000-05:00

Thanks

Good

Big

Weird

Bye

The quit

2010-03-10T14:46:00.000-05:00

“If at first you don’t succeed, try again. Then quit. No use being a damn fool about it.”

—W.C. Fields

It's the only decision taken in the past few weeks that, when taken, gave me a sense of empowerment. It's the only future that, when considered, doesn't suck me into some curious darkness.

The word "quit" has such negative connotations. Perseverance is the virtuous path. "Sticking with it" is admirable in out culture. You don't know how hard it has been for me to come around to this choice. At first, I just dismissed the option. I don't quit. But the stuff kept piling on, and taking ownership of The Quit was the crutch that kept me standing.

I have to let myself do it. Other people have to let me do it. It's a failure, and admitting that burns. But it has to be the right thing, because it feels like life again.

taking applications.

2010-03-05T23:08:00.001-05:00

As a result of recent events, I am currently accepting applications from people who wish to lend me their couch and their friendship while I attempt to reconstruct myself from the little pieces that are left.

Applicants must include in their reply:

name and marital status (broken-hearted's will be prioritized)

whether they welcome a dog

average current temperature of the city they reside in

as everything falls apart

2010-03-04T16:58:00.000-05:00

life can change in a week. i remember when i used to believe in love - it wasn't too long ago. i was so cocky as to talk about love with others, compare notes and laugh about it's dark side. but now i think that when two people talk about love, they are talking about two totally different things. when you take away your insecurities, you secret hopes, your flaws, your fairy tales, your fear of loneliness, and your desires, what remains? there's nothing left behind to call "love"which is understood to be the same by both people. there is no shape for "love" in Plato's world of ideas.

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i also used to believe stuff about myself, which i don't anymore. where i was going, and what i wanted from to get from the journey. that all has to change. everything is upheaving at the same time. except in the world of ideas, i don't care about school, i don't care about journalism, i don't care about myself, whether i get up in the morning or don't. it's a struggle to care about other people, even. its a struggle to care about the dog.

i used to think that when people screamed underwater in movies, the character did it because it made for a cool shot. but now i know: sometimes, it's the only thing left.

Human journey

2010-03-01T22:45:00.000-05:00

"He said, essentially, humans are alive for the purpose of journey, a kind of three-act structure. They are born and spend several years discovering themselves and the world, then plod through a long middle in which they are compelled to search for a mate and reproduce and also create stability our of natural instability, and then they find themselves at an ending that seems to be designed for reflection. At the end, their bodies are slower, they are not as easily distracted, they do less work, and they think and feel about a life lived rather than look forward to a life getting started. He didn't know what the point of the journey was, but he did believe we were designed to search for and find something. And he wondered out loud if the point wasn't the search but the transformation the search creates."

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Donald Miller, A Million Miles in a Thousand Years

The day after yesterday

2010-02-28T10:44:00.000-05:00

Those of you who understand Spanish: I updated in that language over here: http://alisgravenil.blogspot.com/

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Know thyself

2010-02-14T09:49:00.001-05:00

So, one week has passed in Colima. Twenty more of those to go.

Someone wrote on my Facebook wall yesterday: "Bethany, you should be used to moving new places by now. Don't worry; things will get better." And I wrote back something that I feel and have felt very strongly this past week: Yeah, I'm used to moving. It's the staying part that is proving difficult.

The first day here was fine: I flew in to a strange airport; found my way to public transport; travelled three hours by road to a second strange city; found my way to my lodgings and went to sleep. The next day: I found my way to the University; found each office I needed to know about; explored the campus and the surrounding areas; ate adventurously and went to sleep. It was Day Three when the loneliness began to weigh on my, and by Day Four, I was so desperate for an escape I looked into plane tickets out of here.

The food here is pretty good. Cheap, interesting, flavourful. But I can't enjoy it because: eating alone really sucks.

It sucks more when you are consistently eating alone at the same place, just because you finally figured out which words on their menu don't mean stir-fried cow brain, and you begin to read your own self-pity in the familiar faces of the person serving you your usual order. Eating, because it happens alone, has become a chore.

Going to class is another, more burdensome, chore. Lectures start late because the prof or students don't care to be in class on time, and there is never a notice if a class has been cancelled or moved. The model of learning often involves forced participation by way of the students taking turns regurgitating last nights readings. This way, the prof ensures that everyone did them, and that those who didn't at least hear the regurgitations of them and can get the basic idea. The profs expect us not to do the readings, and so they do not prepare a lecture that is any addition to them. They can afford them selves that luxury, because attendance is obligatory.

Yes, that's right. I missed the first week of classes because I wanted to attend the graduating class of 2010's convocation ceremony, in Ecuador. Nobody told me this when I asked if I could arrive a week late, but I need to attend 80% of classes any given month in any class I am in at the University of Colima, or I lose the right to take the midterm. Thus, I fail it. Thus, I started out by pre-emptively failing midterms, because I missed the first week across the board, and also missed some classes the second week because I didn't know my schedule yet (the University of Colima does not have an online Academic Calendar or Academic Timetable, you have to do all that in person, by yourself because they do not have academic advisors).

It's basically academic hell, especially when I think back fondly to friendly University of King's College, and all the work Kelly Porter in the Journalism office, Tara Buksaitis in the Registrar's, and Sharlene Salter in Student Accounts did on my behalf last year so that I would be able to stay in school and not go broke or crazy. I want to send them a fruit basket and ask them to take me back.

And look:

I started this blog entry to talk about the pretty things:

the weather,

and going to the pool with a fellow ex-pat of multiple countries,

and the parade of riders on horseback that held up traffic in the downtown yesterday,

and the Valentines Day vendors who clogged up the sidewalks while the horses clogged up the streets,

and the flowers, fountains and fruits all around.

But I couldn't, because all those things were just a distraction from the dominating narrative: the unbearableness of Being -- right now -- Alone.

Two for two

2010-02-07T22:16:00.000-05:00

By 5 a.m. in Toronto, Gordon had made it through customs and was ready for his first flight.

By 9 a.m., he was airborne. And squooshed.

After one landing and another take off, he was ready to enjoy the trip. But by then, it was almost over.

We were landing in Mexico. And so we did. And three hours later, we were home.

Ecuador

2010-02-03T15:32:00.000-05:00

Well, I'm back. During my last week in Ecuador, I had so little internet access there was a day I didn't even get a chance to check my email. My only alternative on some days was to borrow a friends smartphone to glance briefly at my Gmail before going back to real life.

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So it shouldn't be a surprise that I'm writing a summary blog entry about my entire visit, instead of a series of short ones.

I spend only two out of thirty-three nights in Ecuador at the beach. One time, in a tent on the sand. The other, in Dale and Janet Horst's guest bedroom. It was hard to get away from Guayaquil, mostly because if I went to the beach, I wanted to do it in company of people I loved. And I got lucky, because both times, I did. And I met up with some loved ones, there, too:

Old Kuma is riddled with ticks, but still standing. It might have been my last goodbye from this former Horne.

The beach is always good to my soul. I spent time with Raul, Karen, Daniel and Heather Moore that time there, and felt the foundation of our long friendships under my feet, even though it had been three years since I'd spend time with Karen, and a year and a half for the rest. That reassuring feeling keeps me going back to a place that is harder and harder to call home. Going back reminds the hold it has over me, though. And who I am, because of that.

I also spent a lot of January with the kids from the graduating class of 2010. Five of them finished at the same inner-city public high-school, and I went to their convocation ceremony. I have known some of them for twelve years, since they started at our school in Guayaquil. I cried. How could I not have? Freddy: the middle child of eleven offspring. His mom was in a literacy program a few years ago and I do not know how much progress she made, and his dad works construction. In his numerous family, Freddy is the first to graduate from high school.

Rebecca: she was adopted as a baby, but only found out a few years ago that her mom is not her real mom. But out of all her immediate and extended family, she, too, is the first to finish high school, and she did so with an 18.55 (out of 20) average.

Jennifer: the only daughter in a family of 6, the day she was going to accept her diploma on that stage her father had told her he didn't care about her goals in life or what she made of it. She is also the first in her family to graduate from high school, as neither of her parents nor her older brothers did.

Francisca: After her fathers death this year, an older sister is the only person with any sort of income in Francisca's household. But "Panchita" is so driven to succeed, she has already found a full time job to do during the day while she continues on to university studies, night school. She'll be getting up at 5:30 to get to work by 7, then after getting off at 3 she will travel to her classes which will start at 4 p.m. and go, on some days, until 10. I sure wouldn't study if that was what my life was going to look like.

Francisca asked me to be her graduation godmother (Photo by Nikki Horne).

I also spent some time during the month with old friends from high school, and news friends from the internet. It was a good month, somewhat tinted by being away from Paul and feeling out of touch with him. It is an old life, my life in Guayaquil: there are so many parts to it. It was easy to feel 16 again, 18, 21 and even 8 or 9, when I climbed up a mango tree for the fruit. I am, however, 24 now. Next time I go back, I will have to have a job waiting or a project to work on. This time, my project was a scholarship application process for the graduates, and a freelance story I never finished researching (the story itself isn't really done happening,yet). But I feel strongly that I want to go back for more than social visits, in the future.

Award winner

2010-01-18T07:52:00.000-05:00

Last night, my "Dawgfather v. the police" story that was published in The Gazette in September won a Canadian University Press award for excellence in student journalism, a Johnny. The prize comes with a $500 cheque, and an inscription on the CUP News Writing winners plaque.

Anyway, because the Gazette website hasn't been updated since last year, and my story never made it up there, anyway, due to a delay of web work at the beginning of the school year, I'm posting the winning story here, so it can be read somewhere, at least. The story is missing the excellent photo of the Dawgfather holding a bike, which was printed with the story and shot by Pau Balite, but here is a photo of the man I found on the internet:

I said ‘There’s pizza men at my door pretending to be cops. She called me back and said ‘No, they actually are cops.’”

The Dawgfather v. the police

Police fine street vendor/cyclist $1,300 in two minutes

by Bethany Horne, News Editor

Dalhousie Gazette 142-03, Sept. 25-Oct. 2

The man selling hot dogs in front of the Student Union Building knows his rights. As a black Muslim in a city with ingrained racism, he says he has to.

Every student at Dalhousie knows him as the Dawgfather. The Halifax Regional Police department knows him as Gerry Arthur Reddick. They know him as the man ticketed, in the space of two minutes, for eight different bicycle violations on the night of Sept. 15.

The fines on the eight tickets add up to $1,316.

But the story Reddick tells about that night is very different from the story as it is recorded in pencil scratches on the eight green slips of carbon paper.

The police department can’t comment, because the matter is before the courts. But they confirmed that eight summary offenses were handed out to a man on a bicycle between 8:00 and 8:02 p.m. on Sept. 15.

According to the tickets, the episode begins at the corner of Shirley and Robie Streets, just south of the Atlantica Hotel.

Each ticket has a number in the top right corner. The first number is 4240230.

“Riding bycicle without wearing bicycle helmet complying with regulations,” the offence box reads, in block capitals.

The ticket is filled in with Reddick’s driver’s license number, home address, as well as the exact section of the Motor Vehicle Act violated, and the time and date Reddick is summoned, to appear in court. The officer wrote “2000,” or 8:00 p.m., as the time the offence was allegedly committed, and signed Cst. J. Murphy 0484 on the line at the bottom.

The next ticket, 4240231 in the top corner, places the action at Quinpool and Vernon, two blocks north and two blocks west of where the first offence is alleged to have occurred.

“Riding bicycle without chin strap of helmet securely fastened under chin,” is written in the offense box on this one. The time slot says 8:02.

See all eight tickets at www.flickr.com/photos/thedalhousiegazette

After this, the numbers in the top corner start to make less sense. The next few are still written down as occurring at Quinpool and Vernon, or Quingate and Quinpool, just across the street. But 4240237, the last one apparently written, carries the heaviest fine of the bunch, $222, and is written up as having occurred back at Robie and Shirley, at 8 o'clock.

Every single ticket is filled out in detail, listing Reddick’s address, driver’s licence number, and the time and date he is scheduled to appear in court. Every ticket says either 8:00 or 8:02 as the time the offence was allegedly committed.

But the ticket numbered 4240236 is the most controversial, to Reddick. It also carries a fine of $222.

It alleges Reddick committed the offence of “failing to obey a peace officer.” It says he was “ordered to stop for having no helmet while riding a bicycle.”

“You can’t have a time where you don’t have a helmet, and then you don’t have a strap,” the Dawgfather says. But his main problem is with the “failure to obey” allegation. And the police officer’s main problem might have been that, as well.

Photo illustration by Paul Aarntzen

How he lost them

The timeline on the tickets does not correspond to how the Dawgfather tells the story. He says he was riding north on Robie Street, in the west lane. A cruiser going the same way, but on the eastern branch of the road, slowed and the cop inside yelled over to him from across two lanes of traffic.

“He said ‘Yeah, you gotta walk that bike without a helmet.’ I’m like, yeah, right whatever buddy.” Reddick says.

He was wearing a helmet at the time, but his turban obscured it.

“I know he’s gonna turn on Quinpool and try to catch me at the corner of Quinpool and Vernon, which he did,” Reddick continues.

“When he saw me there, he said ‘pull over.’ I said ‘For what? I’ve got a helmet on, I ain’t pulling over.’ He says ‘Pull over cuz I said so.’ I said ‘Not since 1982, buddy, that don’t work no more.’”

The Dawgfather was citing sections 8 and 9 of the 1982 Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, which protect citizens against “unreasonable search or seizure” and grants Canadians “the right not to be arbitrarily detained or imprisoned.”

So, as the police car made its left turn from Quinpool to Vernon, Reddick rode on into Quingate Place, already late for prayers at the mosque. The cop car makes a U-turn, goes through the lights and into Quingate, in pursuit of the man on the bike. When the car parked and the cop got out, the Dawgfather says he turned his bike around, crossed Quinpool again and went through the Tim Hortons parking lot.

He watched the cop car head west on Quinpool before he re-crossed Quinpool, heading north, free from the unwelcome tail. That, he says, was the only interaction he had with the cop.

Until 5 a.m. the next morning.

How they found him again

“Five o-clock, a knock come on my door, pretending to be Randy’s pizza,” he says.

“I didn’t order pizza. I say, ‘go upstairs, they probably ordered it upstairs.’ But it’s five o’clock in the morning, I know nobody ordered pizza,” Reddick says.

The man outside says, “Well, somebody did,” and that he will leave the pizza on the step. “He thinks I’m gonna open the door for free pizza!” Reddick says. “Once he realize that didn’t work, a few minutes later [knock, knock, knock]. ‘City police … can I talk to you?’ I say ‘We’re talking, I can hear you.’ He says ‘Can you open the door?’ I say ‘No.’”

“So, I called the police and reported them. I said ‘There’s pizza men at my door pretending to be cops. She called me back and said ‘No, they actually are cops.’”

When he opened his door hours later, the eight tickets fell to the floor.

If Reddick’s story is true, the non-consecutiveness of the numbers on the top corners of the tickets makes sense. J. Murphy’s exact knowledge of when Reddick will be expected to appear in court also makes sense, if the summons were delivered after the fact. 5250 Spring Garden Rd., courtroom 4, the morning of Nov. 13.

What doesn’t make sense, is why an officer of the peace is visiting citizens at 5 a.m., announcing themselves as a pizza delivery, to deliver summons. Also, Reddick says the police officer was never close enough to the bike to see whether or not it had a horn or a bell (ticket #4240234, $135.75) or front lighting (ticket #4240234, $164.50).

The Dawgfather says he has had many run-ins with police, but this one was the last straw.

“This one here, I’m not going to let them get away with,” he says.

“These guys are so out of control. And we don’t fear them the way the average person fears them. We, in our community, are fully aware of [the Charter of Rights and Freedoms],” he says.

“We exercise our rights, because for the longest time we didn’t have any.”

The conspiracy of the artists

2010-01-08T23:42:00.000-05:00

"I had no respect whatsoever for the creative works of either the painter or the novelist. I thought Karebekian with his meaningless pictures had entered into a conspiracy with millionaires to make poor people feel stupid. I thought Beatrice Keedsler had joined hands with other old fashioned story-tellers to make people believe that life had leading characters, minor characters, significant details, insignificant details, that it had lessons to be learned, tests to be passed, and a beginning, a middle and an end.

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As I approached my fiftieth birthday, I had become more and more enraged and mystified by the idiot decisions made by my countrymen. And then I had come suddenly to pity them, for I understood how innocent and natural it was for them to behave so abominably, and with such abominable results: They were doing their best to live like people invented in story books. This was the reason Americans shot each other so often: It was a conveniently literary device for ending short stories and books."

Kurt Vonnegut, Breakfast of Champions.

Sentences about the end of exile

2010-01-02T07:45:00.000-05:00

My body fills out its own space again. All systems are a go: the senses peak; the circulation spikes; the water flows. I can feel the health of my composition coming back with every warm hour that passes.

To be back in a house where my name is still scrawled in pencil on a pillar next to the front door.

To walk a neighbourhood where every step could lead to being spirited away by an enthusiastic thirteen-year-old, and then treated to lunch and three hours of socialization.

To greet with sweaty hugs and kisses. I must've given and received fifty cheek kisses already (there's this cool move where you can do both at once).

See, my blood is worked into the paint on these walls. It's there in the form of the little murdered mosquitoes and the splattered contents of their bellies.

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The children I used to teach are now adolescents, and the adolescents I used to lead in youth groups are now teenage parents. Time passes. Lives are condensed. Many die young, but those left behind love younger, too, to make up for the losses.

To have a dollar in your pocket and eat for two days. Not because life is that cheap, but because poverty makes for generosity. And you're surrounded. By both.

Free press, or free people

2009-12-25T12:58:00.004-05:00

When journalists write about journalism they can reach such rhetorical heights. Oh la la, la presse libre! To comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable. To keep power accountable. To communicate the truth. These are lofty goals, and wonderful words. And when journalists have to write about the principles that underscore their daily grind, they easily revert to these grand concepts, as if all journalism ever done was cut from that cloth.

I'm not condemning the poetic authors of new treatises on the honours of journalism, though I do wonder how out of touch with their own profession they are. But reader, be wary. Those concepts let off some powerful fumes, and there is danger of intoxication.

I am writing, specifically, about the case of a new law that the legislative assembly of Ecuador created. It's a law that would regulate the media. The Inter American Press Association warned it would "affect press freedom and free speech by breaching inter-American principles on the public's right to information." The BBC correspondent in the capital said that the law is so bad that from all "across the political spectrum, journalists and members of civil society are opposing it." The Reuters article is so down on it, that they've earned some extra special attention from me, below the jump.

See, I think these outsiders are trusting too much in what they are reading. All of their sources are the very outlets whose hegemony over information in the country is threatened by the new law. The powerful newspapers, TV and radio stations say they can regulate themselves, that anything else is censorship. But I’d argue that this campaign for “free speech” they are waging is a perfect illustration of why some sort of regulatory law is needed. Right now, they hold the talking stick, and by the power vested in them by MONEY, they are the only voices getting through.

Carlos Vera, a former television journalist, led two rallies against the Communication law this month (the rallies happened to coincide with the launch of his new book). His rallies received extreme coverage, taking up whole front pages and in some papers, more pages inside. He has thus made himself the poster-boy of the privileged, established communicators in Ecuador who hide under the shroud of "freedom" when the only freedom they care about is their own. [read a translation here of blogger Galo Benítez’s interpretation of the mainstream media: “What irks the media elite is that there is no law that infringes on freedom of expression as such, but to the freedom of private businesses, which are affected by the scope of the bill which seeks to make certain reforms to democratize in part the right to communicate.”]

The Reuters article in the NYT is an example, of the oversimplification, and opinion, that has been reaching the international press, instead of the true story. The comments attributed to Correa are not about the TV station the story discusses. They are about the new law. And the only reference Reuters made to the new law is:

"The suspension came as the country's lawmakers are debating creation of a government-controlled watchdog with powers to punish journalists in a measure critics say is a crackdown on media freedoms."

Thirty-seven pages of legislation, 104 articles and several resolutions boiled down to that? "Government-controlled watchdog with powers to punish journalists" – Reuters manages to make the proposed body sound like a re-incarnation of the Spanish Inquisition. But the “council,” as it is to be called, isn’t that scary at all. It's actually fairly similar to a body Canadians are familiar with:

"The CRTC regulates all Canadian broadcasting and telecommunications activities and enforces rules it creates to carry out the policies assigned to it ... The CRTC reports to the Parliament of Canada through the Minister of Canadian Heritage,"

Shocking! A government controlling the airwaves! How can this be allowed!

Ok, so the law is long and the debates surrounding it are complicated. Both of the international outlets that covered the story latched on to the familiar narrative: freedom. But freedom of the press is an empty concept in a media environment where journalism does not serve the public interest. “Journalism” in Ecuador does NOT follow the same ethical precepts I was taught in journalism school. There are no standards of attribution, accuracy, or accountability to the reader.

According to one set of numbers, 43% of journalists in Ecuador say that they consider that the corporate interests of their outlet are weighed above the freedom of expression. 44% have abstained from including information in an article out of fear or out of direct pressure from the owners of their paper (according to a representative from the International Centre of Latin American Higher Education in Communication, or CIESPAL by its Spanish acronym, who is in a clip nine minutes in to this gov't-sponsored PSA).

To enumerate the excesses of the media would take up an entire article (actually, there are blogs already dedicated to that task). Also, I will have to write about more specifics of the law later, when I’ve had a chance to finish reading it (or, when it comes up for debate again in the House of Assembly, January 5).

So I will conclude with some words attributed to Rousseau I’ve seen tossed around in this debate, which capture it well:

“Between the weak and the strong, it is freedom which oppresses and law that liberates.”

Ah, and I forgot: Happy Christmas to all.

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Need feedback

2009-12-22T16:26:00.005-05:00

Trying out some new blog features. Let me know what you think of them.

Change

2009-12-21T17:27:00.001-05:00

If I wrote poetry, now would be the time. But I don't posses that power of simplification.

It's just the shortest day of the year, and I just said goodbye to Paul and Muddy for what could work out to be several months. Yes, I might see them in a week when I fly out of Toronto en route to Guayaquil. And, I may see them at the beginning of February, between flying in from Guayaquil and leaving again for Mexico. But, the little nucleus Paul and I have have had for the past couple years is gone.

We'll now communicate via email. We'll eat different meals from each other. We're out of arms reach.

I was going to invent a new website to hold the record of my adventures in Ecuador and Mexico, but I like this old one, so I will just change some things and step up my posting. This year, I have to figure out what kind of journalism I want to do in the immediate future. Not just what type of media to create, but what language to create it in, who to aim it at, and what style to adopt. There are a lot of options. Forgive me as I test them all out and subject you to the failures and successes.

Kind of crazy

2009-11-07T15:01:00.001-05:00

I am the kind of person who keeps as much stuff as I possibly can. I'm not a DSM V-disorder hoarder, but I do have a few good sized boxes filled with photos, old journals, letters and assorted memory aids which wouldn't make sense to anybody else.

Today, as I do from time to time, I went through some of this ... my "files" I guess you could call it.

I was looking for photos of Freddy Vinces, Jennifer Santos, Rebecca Montoya, Jose and Luis Velasco, Karla Endara, Erica Robles, Danny Pincay (perhaps) Lionel and Carlos (whose last names I forget all the time), Francisca Pincay and David Cobos. Why? Because December 20th is their last day in high school. And I remember when they were in kindergarten, little fighters: José distinguished himself from his twin by using more swear words. Running around in yellow, red and blue t-shirts two sizes too big, with a squirrel on the front. I remember their first day of high school, too: clean uniforms, tidy hair. Dad drove them there, all packed into his white van. He was proud. They were, too.

I was, too.

Welcome back to me

2009-10-19T02:56:00.001-05:00

It is October 19. Summer is well over. In fact, November is less than two weeks away. Almost as soon as we got back to Halifax after our travels across North America, I started school. I studied Radio at University.That course started earlier than the regular term, and ended a couple of weeks ago. I came away from it having recorded my first radio news story, a minute and 13 seconds long. It wasn't bad.

Paul and the dogs and I moved out of our co-op house in the North end of the city, and into a flat in Spryfield, which is a good long bus ride outside of town. Spryfield is as poor an area as the North End is, but sans the art-school kids and struggling musicians. It is just poor, as opposed to being poor and hip. But here, we can walk half a kilometre to the West or to the East and we are walking through woods. When a dog escapes, we're chasing him through underbrush and fallen leaves, and not through a cementery and chain-link fences. Its quieter, but we did have a unshot the other night. We have had two black-outs, lasting hours. The bus shelter has a smashed roof. The library is bigger and has a communiy centre attached to it. The grocery store is just as far away, but doesn't have a liquor store next door. The only thing I really hate is the long bus ride into school... during rush hour, the traffic jams can make it last an hour and half. But the house itself is nice, I like not having to climb a flight of stairs to go to the bathroom. But we wont be here long. I couldn't sleep last night, trying to think of ways to be in Ecuador during the month of January. I get an extra long school break this winter, because I'm taking my second term at a Mexican University. Their school year doesn't start until the first week of February. My parents are talking about being in town over Christmas, but after that: I want to take off. Be in Guayaquil for New Years. Do a four week unpaid journalism internship at Ecuavisa, channel 2. Go home, for a change, instead of just going more and more places. Go home in between going more and more places. Mexico: I'll be living in Colima, the capital of the province of the same name. In my studies of the Mexican Revolution, Colima had no part to play. It's just a tiny province tucked in between the big ones that raised revolutionary armies, agrarian reformists, skanky politics. It's on the west coast, and the city is an hour away from the Pacific Ocean, so it is a similar location to what I have know, but the city itself is tiny. Probably even smaller than Halifax, from what I hear. I'll be studying one journalism course, while I'm there, and three electives, none of which I have picked. I'll also be expected to create a feature story (either online, radio, audio or multimedia) about a topic related to water. I'm thinking about collecting people's stories and memories about El Niño phenomenons through the years, but I don't know yet whether that region is affected by the current. I don't really have any hard-hitting investigative ideas. Maybe one will come to me when I am there. I'll also be doing another writing course, via distance, with my professor Stephen Kimber. Creative Non-fiction. If I am in Ecuador in the period between school terms, I might do research while I'm there for stuff to write while in Mexico. I have a Jack Russel terrier that might be keeping me company on the trip to Mexico. Paul says he will come a few months after I go, maybe in March or April. He wants to record an album and finish up his Masters courses first. He wants to do so in complete isolation, in a cabin on an island or something equally as remote. Muddy will stay with him. And I've gotten this far without mentioning the Gazette! That's amazing. I am the news editor at the student newspaper of Dalhousie University. We are a wicked paper this year, check us out: www.dalgazette.com

Go here!

2009-04-29T18:37:00.000-05:00

I have officially started posting more often on White Bus Black Dog. I will not post on In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida suring my summer adventures. If you want to keep following me, go here and subscribe. Highlights so far: The day Paul and I got our bus converted to run on vegetable oil The day Paul and I adopted a Jack Russell terrier The day Paul heard the shipyard BOOMing The day we built a bed inside a bus I promise to respond to every comment over there! I can't promise I'll respond to comments here on this blog over the summer. Happy adventures!

Paper art

2009-04-15T11:28:00.000-05:00

Fascinated by this woman: I Don't Know from ATO Records on Vimeo. Lisa Hannigan, famously from Damien Rice's ever-impressive O

Time to regain goodbye

2009-04-12T21:25:00.002-05:00

Just read Elena Poniatowska's Massacre in Mexico (La noche de Tlatlelolco). I read it in Spanish, and it made me realize how foreign Mexico is... At some points, I couldn't understand 1 out of every 4 words! A lot of it was political, so there were lots of names, acronyms and nicknames I had no chance of getting, but some regular words would escape, me too. Living there next year will be completely new and exciting, I feel: I wont approach it like an Ecuador, though the spanish will make me more prone to enjoy my time learning. A year ago I was in Ecuador. Paul and I got there on April 11 in the early hours of the morning. A year is so long, but it is going to be longer before I can be back. I have been defending that to many friends lately.

They have started to ask, in emails, on Facebook and on MSN, "when are you coming back, when will we see you again" in droves, like they had co-ordinated the onslaught on my nostalgia and my regret. The thing is, the ones I can talk to, I don't have too much trouble with. I miss them, but it is manageable: the infrequent chats and emails do enough to assuage my memory of them, and my obligations to staying in their lives. Its the others that kill me. The kids. The fact that I know exactly zero about what kids like Jessenia Munoz, Alexandra, Francisca, Freddy Vinces, and others are doing. The fact that I left Titi so distaught a year ago and nobody, NOBODY, has been able to tell me a jot about how he has been doing since. I don't know if Alexis is back at Tarqui, or if he is following his dream of switching to a trade school. I don't know how Luis Bravo, or Miguel, are doing. Jessica Montiel, and Johanna: total misteries. It drives me crazy to not know. Knowing isn't really a matter of exchanged sentences with an intermediary, either, it is a matter of contact: the content of my chats and emails can't re-assure me that my friends are ok, or that they are happy, safe or content. I couldn't recite to you the latest news in their lives. It is just the contact that means something to me right now. Just being able to touch them, however impersonal the brain-to-fingers-to-keyboard-to-internet-to-screen-to-eyes-to-brain-touch actually becomes, it is at least immediate, it involves the two of us. Being away is unforgivable, and I feel guilty every day. But then I remember how completely alone and wounded I was to leave Ecuador the last time, after having been there almost a month. It was not enough, it wasn't what I wanted to do. I gave myself just enough time to go in, feel frantic, catch up, feel angry, and leave before becoming fully reconnected, which in regards to some people, was good, but in regards to others, was agony. I dislike living anywhere in that sort of context, but I guess I'm doing it again to myself this summer: a blitz tour of everywhere, without time to set down any roots. It is going to be geographically exciting, but potentially colturally alienating. Also, a blitz catch-up with some important people is planned. I think it is because I NEED to re-see those people, that I am allowing myself to do it in such an unpermanent and impractical way. Ideally, we would share more complete adventures together, but I don't know when life would allow for that, so this summers short versions will have to do. It will be one LONG and complete adventure with Paul and Muddy, that's for sure. We need to give ourselves some new environments. I speak for myself, but Halifax is getting old. Muddy is running out of things in our yard to tear up, but the world is still completely new to him when he gets out on a walk. I want to see a whole bunch of places I don't have to miss once I leave. What a luxury! I hope it works.

Warmth

2009-04-03T06:00:00.000-05:00

Story from North America from Kirsten Lepore on Vimeo. Paul and I are in the market for a video camera. We are planning ahead for the summer. We want to create a multimedia blog with writing, video and pictures of our trip. Unfortunately, that will mean In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida will be mostly empty during four months... May to August! I hope you will not abandon me in that time. I might still post stuff here that is trip-unrelated, or that I just make up so that In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida doesn't lose it's 8 or 9 daily visitors. -Bethany

Wading into a pool of infirmity and sludge, looking for gold

2009-03-22T06:04:00.000-05:00

I swore I'd never get involved in campus politics, but now I'm writing about for two classes, so I might as well get my juices going here, too. Students Mobilize for Action on Campus is a Dal group that has stated shaking things up a bit at the student union level. I started writing about SMAC for Kimber's class, except I didn't really start writing because I leave everything to the last minute, so I took on the assignment for my Research class as well (the end product of that was a very different thing than what I am now writing for Kimber, but it got me started, which is what I needed). I finished the story for Toughill by March 11: SMAC had been gearing up for a Dalhousie Student Union meeting on March 11. Even though I was done the news story, I needed to attend the meeting for the narrative story, and I was still in news-writing-gear, so it was an excellent feeling. I was going to be able to capture it all! I wasn't going to have to parse it down to 800 words, and I would be able to write it in an interesting way! Unfortunately, the fates were against me. Because any time I am excited about something I am bound to get dragged out of it by police. (OK, "dragged" is an overstatement. I've been saying "escorted out," though I'm pretty sure the police quit escorting me before I was fully out... I'm wishing now I had doubled back and sat down). So what now? You can't possibly write about the meeting now, after missing the most important parts of it! Well, you sure can. You sure can. Kimber thinks this was an excellent development (story -wise, he means... media-justice-wise, not so much. The King's J-school profs have written a formal letter to the DSU, as has the King's Student Union). And now, I sit at my computer early in the morning, to write. The sun is bright through the crack in the curtains. I haven't opened my mouth since last night, and it feels like it is full of white glue. Backpacks and dirty plates are piled up behind my computer screen: I pushed them forward to leave me some working space. I'm going to go to the bathroom now and I promise to come back. I promise to come back to start writing for Kimber! ---- Update: 400 words completed! I feel a bit dizzy, vertigo/car sick-like. I wonder if it is the thrill of finally getting some solid work done on an assignment that has been hanging over my head since January 5? Or it could just be hunger. -Bethany

What the heck

2009-03-21T08:16:00.000-05:00

You thought you knew someone...

Big problem

2009-03-05T11:12:00.000-05:00

I've realized the flaw in my master plan, but this is a good thing. In my life, I am learning about two major things right now: journalism (reporting on news for the purpose of creating public information and record), and activism (using vigorous action to bring about political or social change). I do journalism because I believe it is powerful, and can do the job of activism sometimes better than activism itself can. Activism tries to get sympathetic people involved in campaigns that are a step outside of their comfort zone. The end goal, of course, is to get enough people to be moving in a certain way so as to manage to change the world. I believe that journalism can reach a broader segment of society than activists can. It isn't targeted at those that are sympathetic, rather it broadcasts information freely, on public airwaves and on popular web portals. This information has the ability to affect the consensus of a big population. Depending on the degree of the consensus, changes happen as result. Activism and journalism work at different paces, though: I am not sure which is faster, at this point in my life, which is why I do both. I am aiming at a career in journalism because I believe this. I am aiming at doing journalism in a Spanish-speaking country because I believe Latin America is a place that needs to see a lot of changes in the next couple of decades. I was talking to my Ethics prof today about nothing in particular, and I said my ultimate goal is to do journalism in South America. This is not a new thing, I say it to everybody, all the time. But then it hit me (and this is the flaw in my plan). In activism, I subscribe to the belief that changes should happen from the bottom up, that the minds that need to change are those at the bottom, because their power would be the power that would truly transform all levels of injustice. In journalism, I am primarily a print journalist: I write, and read, to get my news. I have very little broadcast training or experience. But in Ecuador at least, the literacy levels of the general population (the ones, who, according to my activism education, are the ones from whom the most powerful and true changes would be coming) is not high. The population in Ecuador that I am interested in affecting, as an activist, would be very different from the one I would be affecting, as a journalist. Written journalism in societies with low literacy levels is a forum for the elite: it is about politics that nobody on the bottom cares about, trends that nobody in poverty is privy to, cultural events that are not important to the masses. If I concentrate on print, in a South American context, this is the audience I would have: an audience, my activism education tells me, which is already lost. An aaudience that will not make any changes unless they are forced to, by the mobilized masses. So, in this conversation with my prof, I thought about two options: go into radio, or make print journalism relevant to the masses. I think you all know which of the two ptions appeals to me more.

The Armies of the Night

2009-03-03T08:01:00.000-05:00

I've been reading "Armies of the Night", by Norman Mailer. It is about an anti-war protest in 1967, when masses converged in Washington to March on the Pentagon. Maybe it is depressing to find the mistakes of the past repeated in tiny, derivative, timid, inconsequential ways in the mistakes of the present. It might be impossible to "learn from the past," because history is a scam (Mailer writes this book as a novel precisely to indicate that when dealing with events so charged with politics, and with hundreds of thousands of attendants, and multiple fronts of action, to render the story as a history is to be unfaithful to the reality: everything that happened that day was subjective to the person to whom it was happening), and in the same way, it is impossible to be "doomed" to repeat it, because to do so would be an improvement on the present. I don't know explicitly know how the past is an improvement on the present, but at least the mechanics of resistance seemed much clearer then. Mailer describes the confrontation as a battle, with fronts and attacks, ambushes and strategy. His "armies of the night" could have achieved their symbolic victory, according to Mailer's analysis in Book 2, if they had been more strategic. He chalks their failures up to the lack of common ground between the pacifists and the revolutionaries. But, if Mailer thought there was fragmentation in the Left in 1967, he should've been active now. Now... now... now... God! If he defined the factions then as Old and New: now, there is every age in between that, and some who lie about their age and say they are immortal. Some of the factions in the current Left hate each other as much as they hate the Right. As different as the eras are, I see so much now of the broad themes that Mailer outlines, around resistance and protest. He certainly describes the guilt accurately. For example, on page 193: Mailer and many others have been arrested. The protest started with a peaceful rally, after which those who chose to could challenge the war-makers more directly by marching from the rally site (the Lincoln memorial, in Washington D.C.), across the river and towards to Pentagon. Those who wished for even more confrontation provided by the March separated themselves from the mass of and tried to break through the line of military police that were containing the protest group to the street. The end goal was to break into the Pentagon itself and hold a sit-in. Those who tried to get that far were all arrested. See, I can understand this frustration. This group of thousands feels alienated by their government, morally soiled by their government's actions, implicated in the murder of the innocent. It would be tremendously ironic and lobotomizing to carry our a protest of this situation with the endorsement of the sickening government one is so disgusted by. I, too, would find the whole exercise disappointing unless I finally broke through the line of police, finally challenged directly one of the arms of the corrupt creature. However, in their prison cells, another moral dilemma presents itself: the protesters are offered a deal. They are to plead "No contest," accept a suspended sentence of 5 days, and a $25 fine, on the grounds that they agree not to return to the Pentagon for the next 6 months. This is a good deal, people get out of jail within hours. But is it moral? Tuli Kupferberg didn't think so. To agree to not return to the Pentagon for six months would mean collaborating with the government, the same corrupt, murderous machine they were trying to combat. He told the judge he would not promise to stay away, and so had to serve his 5 day sentence, instead of being released like the others were. His stand was not popular amongst the other prisoners. He turned a glaring light on their desires to go home. But Mailer's analysis of the situation turned this into more than a conflict between desires and morality: he sees it as a continuum, every step step simultaneously carrying you closer to righteousness and closer to disappointment. Read this: "Mailer listened to (Kupferberg) with a dull ear. He hated to become enmeshed in these unmanageable connections between politics and personal morality. To a part of him, Kupferberg seemed absolutely right ... there was a definite taint of an unholy desire to get out." However -- Mailer's internal narration continues -- what is really at stake here? "Prison could be nothing but an endless ladder of moral challenges: each time you climbed a step, another higher, more dangerous, more disadvantageous step would present itself. Sooner or later you would have to descend. It did not matter how high you had climbed. The first step down in a failure of nerve always presented the same kind of moral nausea. Probably he was feeling now like all the people who had gone to the Pentagon , but had chosen not to get arrested, just as such people, at their moment of decision, had felt as sickened as all the people who should have marched form the Lincoln memorial to the Pentagon, but didn't...One ejected oneself from guilt by climbing the ladder - the first step back: no matter where, offered nothing but immersion into nausea. No wonder people hated to disturb their balance of guilt. To become less guilty, then weaken long enough to return to guilt was somehow worse than remaining cemented in your guilt. " And so, Mailer rejects Kupferberg's path because the shame of giving up now would equal the same of giving up eventually. Finally, he judges that remaining cemented in your guilt is better than leaving it momentarily only to return to it out of weakness. I know people in my own life who have taken this stance. I know, too, the self hatred that returning to your guilt instills, the contradictions of a life hating the establishment carried out within the establishment. I don't know if Mailer regreted his decision to leave New York to go to the protest: to begin that climb up the ladder. I haven't read anything he wrote other than this book, and I haven't read anything more comprehensive about his life than the eulogies that appeared in newspaper after his death. So I am forced to assess his words on their own merit: and I reject them. I know for me, there is no option to remain cemented in my guilt. Nor do I feel very attracted to the idea of turning into a parrot of myself, living in limbo with irreproachable but suspended ideals. The only way for these continuous incursions away from ones guilt to be better, than, are for them to accomplish something concrete. Which brings me back, as always to the same question: what am I going to DO!?

Summer in February

2009-02-14T07:43:00.000-05:00

I can't wait for this school term to be over. I'm not just talking about the age-old-desire to be free of the deadline mill, though I look forward to the end of that, too. I want this term to be over because I am looking forward to our adventure. The famous bus: Just a plain, old, ugly, white half-school bus with all it's insides ripped out and intermittent battery problems. Right now, we use it to take the dog up to the tip of the peninsula, and to deliver newspapers on Thursdays. It is a bus that is not living up to its potential. Soon, however, we will be meeting with Perry, the oil conversion genius, who is going to turn this diesel guzzling monster into a veggie oil chugging clean-machine. We already have seven buckets of grease lingering in the back of this bus, waiting for their glory moment. After what I perceive as the Big Fix, we will be free to imagine more mundane ones. The reliance on diesel is the worst aspect of this big machine. It is expensive, stinky, and it kills things. I foresee a relieved conscience after we are able to convert it to run on WASTE vegetable oil. After the bus is ready to run on WVO (and after we have learnt how to filter and clean the dirty french fry bits out of the WVO), we will start building living arrangements around the fuel system. My favourite part of living, is eating, so naturally, how to cook while on the road is something that is important to me. Paul did the bulk of the work to find out about rocket stoves and solar ovens. This solar oven is made with about $5 worth of materials, and can reach 130º C, or 266º F (don't worry, we wont be cooking any meat). There are a million different kinds out there, though. The Fun-Panel Rocket stoves are nifty little things, too. We already have a few of the materials needed to make one (Paul found a design where we don't have to mix, shape and kiln our own bricks. Thank goodness!) Once the eating part of the adventure is taken care of, the Internet will be the next priority. We want to record Podcasts and keep posting blogs while we are on our trip. Maybe we'll try video posts and photo essays. Paul might start up a short-story sharing website. Whatever we decide, we will need power... SOLAR POWER! This part is a bit tougher to figure out. (and pay for) But we can dream!

2009-02-05T08:08:00.000-05:00

If you judge it visually, I deserve an A+

2009-02-05T03:18:00.000-05:00

It is 4:18 am. What a dead time. It is the only time when you can meet the world in peace and quiet, though, and peace an quiet are what I need to write stupid essays I don't care about. I would like to think that if I were writing something that had more of my heart in it, I would be able to focus on it despite the thrills and clamour of daily life. As it is, I had to find a space outside of life to complete this task: 3 to 5 am. In this house, hopefully even 3 to 6. I need these hours. Deadline approaches. I am writing an essay about a book about writing novels. Cruel punishment, to make someone write dry boring academic constructions about the full, satisfying life of an artist. As much as I dislike the novelist book, I am more sympathetic to it than I am to my essay. I suppose I should have given myself more time. I always say that: truth is, I just don't care about the homework enough to give it more time. I have other homeworks and other professors that I want to work for. Even sleep was more important yesterday. I should never try to work at night. I should always set my alarm for 3 am and take advantage of dead time. I should never feel guilty about going to bed at 9 pm. I should give up the pretense of trying to string words together after my brain has shut down, after my sympathies are halfway to dreamland.

2009-01-25T20:02:00.000-05:00

Ignore the most recent video post, I'm trying to accomplish something for a school assignment. I didn't get very much done this weekend. It saddens me, more that it worries me, becuase it means that one of these nights this week when I am to come home from school with a bad headache, I will have to sit down and read 20 pages of a boring book before I get to go to bed. I am falling behind in 2 out of 5 classes. S.K. I love you, but 3 books reports, weekly readings and a 4,000 word narrative non-fiction article is just not a nice thing to do to someone all at once.

2009-01-09T08:42:00.000-05:00

I have an overabundance of Journalism classes this term. Forced to produce content in so may different formats (television scripts and reports/print news pitches and stories, not only for my Research prof but for the Gazette, and maybe the Coast/opinions essays/a 3,000 word narrative non-fiction story), I think I will implode come March. But in the meantime, I will be doing me very best to keep everybody happy. The hardest job will undoubtedly be staying free of self-plagiarism. Every prof wants original ideas, ones that haven't been pitched to other editors or teachers before. But I will have 6 or 7 people demanding untainted originality from me within the same 4 month time frame! I think sustaining originality in ideas will be impossible for such a quantity and variety of outlets, but hopefully I can stretch ideas across various classes and publications in a way that isn't unethical or illegal. Fortunately, I am taking Journalism Ethics this term. If in doubt, I will knock on his door and present each case as it comes up.

2008-12-22T20:21:00.001-05:00

We walked the Unsilent Night through downtown Galt tonight. Eerie music, lightly falling snow, and no wind. Dad and I managed to steal enough CD's to recreate the experience on our own (the effect is created by overlapping tracks of specially composed musi). The creator describes it as a "free outdoor participatory sound sculpture of many individual parts ... played through a roving swarm of boomboxes carried through city streets. Bring your own boombox and drift peacefully through a cloud of sound that is different from every listener's perspective." There weren't enough boomboxes, but we still heard some of the sound, some of the time, and the weather was kind to the event. I think the sound sculpture will help me concentrate during my school work and exam studying next term. If I even have exams! I didn't have any this term, and it was real nice. I write about this because the main event of yesterday I still find too traumatic and heartbreaking to examine. I finished East of Eden, and it left a deep impression on me. I can't compare it to Grapes of Wrath, I probably still like Grapes better, but I feel much more emotionally involved in Eden right now. I can't talk about those people, they are still too dear to me. Oh, my heart.

None of the last 20 people to visit my blog were in Halifax

2008-12-14T23:43:00.000-05:00

Ireland

Bray, Wicklow

Greece

Athens, Attiki

Spain

Madrid

Ukraine

Kiev, Kyyivs'ka Oblast'

Spain

Torrevieja, Comunidad Valenciana

Brazil

Curitiba, Parana

Malaysia

Kulim, Kedah

Venezuela

Maracaibo, Zulia

Sweden

Eslv, Skane Lan

2008-12-14T16:43:00.000-05:00

When I sit down to write these days, it is to write about my dog. Emails, blog entries, personal journals, he is in all of them. It isn’t that I find him to be of inexhaustible interest, but his constant puppy presence completely overtakes my thoughts, whether I am reading, writing, brushing my hair, or trying to sleep. He demands persistent sensory stimulation, and I am the only one who belongs to him enough to provide this service. The sense he most enjoys exercising is that of taste, so I am always on edge, waiting to hear the crunch of his teeth on my mother’s plants, kindling, or Christmas ornaments so I can spring into defensive action. But I do think that if I could capture his idiosyncrasies, they would be worth writing about in earnest. It is delightful to watch him prancing through the room with some new object in his mouth. When he has kidnapped a sock from the laundry pile, or a slipper from under the bed, he walks quietly with his head down, because these favourites he knows are forbidden to him, and his moments with them are borrowed time. This private joy lasts only until he is noticed and chased to justice. However, when he has some new object in his mouth, something he has never found before, he can’t know for sure that it is forbidden. He trots around with the object like a flag, testing the waters. He is bluffing, hoping the confidence with which he carries himself will trick us into letting him have that banana, or the fridge magnet. What could you humans possibly want with this CD, he says with his sparkling eyes. Just let me take care of it.

2008-11-29T18:07:00.000-05:00

Out in the cold Pendleton Place's closure threatens the lives of Halifax's most vulnerable street people, say homeless advocates. By Bethany Horne A deal between the provincial government and an organization that runs some of Halifax's homeless shelters could end up endangering the lives of homeless people this winter, front-line workers say. In October, minister of community services Judy Streatch announced that Pendleton Place would not re-open this winter due to an agreement her department made with the Saint Leonard's Society of Nova Scotia, Pendleton's parent organization. Pendleton was a seasonal co-ed shelter on Brunswick Street with a harm reduction mandate targeting the hardest-to-house homeless: those under the influence of drugs or alcohol, or those with severe mental disorders, as well as others who are banned or don't fit at the other shelters. The province is re-directing Pendleton funding into more bed space at other St. Leonard's shelters---Metro Turning Point Centre for men on Barrington Street, and Barry House for women, on Wellington Street. In October, St. Leonard's director Jerry Smyth said the existing shelters would be able to manage the demand for winter shelter, and that the same harm reduction services Pendleton provided would now be in place at Turning Point and at Barry House. "No one will be turned away," he said. But this month two people have already fallen through the cracks in the new system. A male-to-female transgendered person was turned away from the women's shelters, and was unwilling to stay at the men's facilities. And, a man with a mental health condition was banned from Turning Point after threatening a female staff member. He has already been banned from the zero-tolerance Salvation Army men's shelter on Gottingen Street. Both people were on the street Nov. 19, and are now temporarily staying in motels. The community workers who know them say they are in extremely precarious situations. The governments' actions "are vicious," says Paul O'Hara, a social worker at the North End Community Clinic. "They are placing people in very precarious circumstances." O'Hara fears someone might die before the warnings from the community are heeded. It's hard to know how many people are negatively impacted by the shelter changes, says Kathy Bourgeois, a staff member at Adsum House for women. Before the provincial deal, Barry House was a zero-tolerance shelter. To maintain a safe space for women with children, or women recovering from addictions, Barry House staff would turn away women under the influence of drugs or alcohol, or anyone they thought could be a threat to their current residents. But women who used Pendleton were not always "dry," and when Pendleton bed space shifted to Barry House, Barry stopped being a zero-tolerance shelter, overnight. Adsum has been using the harm reduction philosophy since 2000. Bourgeois says it took Adsum staff and clients a lot of work to adapt to the harm reduction model. Eight years later, they still struggle to get it right. "The idea of going from zero tolerance one day, to harm reduction the next just seems impossible. I don't know how Barry House is going to do it," she says. Concerned service providers have formed a group to come up with a plan for a new emergency harm reduction shelter, but their time is running out as the nights get colder. O'Hara says an as-yet unnamed organization has agreed to run the facility, but they still need to find a space and the new shelter will need provincial funding. He endorses protest as a way to put pressure on the provincial government to provide funding. "The only reason we got Pendleton Place was the direct action of the Halifax Coalition Against Poverty, who went to city hall and turned the city council meeting upside down." November 3, the Halifax Coalition Against Poverty stormed the DCS building on Gottingen Street and stayed until police forced them to leave. Two weeks later, 150 people marched to the legislature to demand a variety of solutions to poverty, including an emergency winter shelter. O'Hara hopes the pressure builds up enough to force government's hand. "It will be on the department of community services, and indirectly on St. Leonard's society, if someone dies on the streets this winter," O'Hara says. http://www.thecoast.ca/Articles-i-2008-11-27-152839.113118_Out_in_the_cold.html

2008-11-24T06:12:00.000-05:00

I think I am here because I need to remind myself that I am a writer, that I can use this tool of creation for my own enjoyment, instead of just to fulfill the requirements of a class assignment, or to get published in a paper. I was looking at some of the stuff I wrote last summer, before I started journalism school, and I really liked it. I wonder if I will ever have such clear headed, expressive prose again? I guess I feel a similar fondness for my essay about violent movies and military non-fiction, which was a more recent thing. As much as I like writing, call myself a writer, feel most comfortable writing, there are very few instances that I can pin point where I have written something that I liked. That might be a matter of bad memory, but most likely a matter of being sucky, and yet persevering. Journaling is what most satisfies me. Any other format seems forced, but is that a bad thing? Is that not to be expected, for someone who has been journaling and writing letters consistently for years? I feel like feedback I get on writing I do that I don't particularly like is not necessary negative, nor more positive than the feedback I get for the journaling I myself like best. But yesterday, somebody read an anonymous ad that I posted on Kijiji and called me up, asking if I had posted that ad. She recognized my style of writing, she said. That, even, was an encouragement to me. But it was puzzling. I wanted to ask: My style of writing? What is that, exactly? Can you explain it to me? I would really like to know.

To marry or not to marry? from Charles Darwin's journals

2008-11-20T13:00:00.000-05:00

Marry Children (if it Please God) Constant companion (and friend in old age) who will feel interested in one Object to be beloved and played with. Better than a dog anyhow Charms of music and female chit-chat Not Marry Freedom to go where one liked Choice of Society and little of it Conversation of clever men at clubs Not forced to visit relatives and bend in every trifle Expense and anxiety of children Perhaps quarrelling Loss of Time Cannot read in the evenings Fatness and idleness Anxiety and responsibility Less money for books etc.

***

The choice seems clear to me.

I hope it rains coffee on the countryside

2008-11-20T07:04:00.001-05:00

I had forgotten how much I loved this song. By Juan Luis Guerra originally, but covered here by Café Tacuba and Alejandro Flores. It has such a cornucopia of agricultural events. Oh, to climb down the hill of shelled rice, y continuar el arado con tu querer. It's quite untranslateable, actually. Sorry, I tried.

2008-11-13T22:00:00.000-05:00

Guess what time of year it is: Kaley Kennedy is homeworked. Courtnay Clair Sedgwick has a killer headache and is trying to learn. Angela Horn is definitely freaking out. Too much to do :S . Katheryn Horne is tired! Bedtime! Anna Stewart ..my head it tends to stray away, sometimes I can't see clear. Katheryn Horne wishes she had time for life. Becky Tulloch is workin on theology..again.. Lexie Arnott is getting her head on straight!

2008-11-11T07:41:00.001-05:00

Open again!

Latest night out on the town

2008-10-31T02:29:00.001-05:00

This week is Atlantic Fashion Week in Halifax, but last week was the Pop Explosion, and Paul, Eva and I went out to see Josh Ritter. Apparently, it was his birthday. Paul ran into Josh in one of his trip to the bathroom, and reports that he is a real nice guy and a gentleman. We all had a great time.

Bush and Capernwray

2008-10-30T09:56:00.000-05:00

Is the only thing worth talking about politics these days? Well, no, as I was reminded by two dear apolitical friends in the past week. And yet, I sit down to write this new blog entry about politics, again (I'm sorry). As the Americans approach a historic decision, I sit and watch with unpardonable interest. I feel the guilt one feels after showing interest against ones will in the headlines that greet you in the grocery store aisle. "Angelina: she cheated on him! Jamie Lynn Spears, pregnant again!" - it is terrible to be temporarily entertained by such voyeuristic filth, and why are these people worth caring about? Because they are arguably talented? I wish I didn't care to sneak a peek at the American election. After all, both candidates will manipulate facts to make their opponent look bad, they will both capitalize on insignificant circumstantial flaws to draw broad conclusions about the others capacities. If elected, both would produce similar policies, they will both break promises, to deal with the unavoidable recession. They would both disappoint us. They will both fail the international community. But I think one thing that gives me some closure is that President Bush is universally put down, loathed and considered a handicap to the Republican campaign. It is a pejorative, to be said to be "the same as Bush" ... finally, this view enters the public domain! Eight years too late, and that is the tragedy. And my evil mind rejoices, because I will never forget November 2004, when one of our guest lectures at Capernwray, in England, asked the auditorium of 170 people, 100 of whom were American, "How many are voting for Kerry?" and NO ONE raised their hand. I think he then asked the students of other nationalities to raise their hands if they WOULD vote for Kerry if they could, and there were dozens of arms in the air. And I remember seeing the American's mail-in ballots arriving in our little cubby holes, and the temptation to destroy their irresponsible choices was enormous. I fought with people during that month, verbal sparring. I held my tongue an equal amount, but it killed. Obviously, my debates always ended with me being hurt because there were just so many of them, they were bound to exhaust me and overpower me. Election day I barely left my room. People were gloating, gloating... "Bush won" ... it was too terrible. I was depressed for a week afterwards. Maybe two weeks. It was my darkest week at that school. I couldn't believe that the world was in for four more years. I was unconsolable. But NOW! Now I feel much better. And I wonder how many of those that were smug after Bush's win are voting for Obama this year? I wonder, because it would just make me feel so vindicated if they were. Acknowledging ... "we were wrong" ... if Obama wins, does that rescue Americans, in our mind? Should we forgive them?

2008-10-14T06:25:00.000-05:00

After weeks of seeing this link pop up on my friends Facebook accounts or MSN signatures, I actually checked it out, and it is brilliant! http://www.voteforenvironment.ca/ Not only does it contain a lot of useful information about the Canadian election today, but the interface is delightful to use. It integrates poll data, platform analysis, informed predictions, a message board, and interactive map, postal code look-up and more: and it is effortless to use. Effortless! I think this is what websites should work like. If you are voting in Canada today, I strongly suggest you check this site out FIRST. The idea behind it is to not split the anti-conservative vote. In my riding, I am perfectly justified in voting NDP, but in Ontario it is a tougher choice. So vote smart!

Norman Mailer- from his personal letters, 1950-1999

2008-10-11T07:15:00.000-05:00

". . . It’s a peculiar thing about being a radical—the years go by and lo and behold there comes a time when the phone calls don’t come in any longer from one’s more elevated social friends. I think simply that one’s become a luxury to have as a friend, and unless they care for you very much—which none of my social friends do—you just slowly are dropped from the orbits of their circulation." "I don’t care if people call me a radical, a rebel, a red, a revolutionary, an outsider, an outlaw, a Bolshevik, an anarchist, a nihilist, or even a left conservative, but please don’t ever call me a liberal." "the Republicans are a psychotic monstrosity. On the one hand, they’re God, flag, and family—although few of them would know Jesus Christ if he were standing at the next urinal pissing along with them—and an astonishing number never served in the armed forces nor heard a bullet, and being politicians, they cheat like jackrabbits on their wives and families. But all right, what’s the use of being a politician if you can’t make a living at being a hypocrite? The point is: the Republican Party is schizophrenic: on the one hand, they are, as I say, for God, flag and family, but on the other, they are for the unbridled expansion of capitalism, and thereby leave out something that might still be important to you which is that Jesus, like Karl Marx, thought money leaches out all other values. Indeed, it does. If the whole country is going to pot, and it certainly is, I think you could graph the decline not only in morals, but in a sense of social éclat and social standards—I think you could plot the decline right next to the rise of the Dow Jones—the higher the Dow, the lower the standards. Money destroys all other values. I can even respect the right wing Republicans for holding to a few standards, as they do, but they never take on capitalism which, unbridled, is the worst scourge of human value that we have right now. There may have been a time when Communism was a worse scourge, but now we’re the leaders, and I suggest you consider living with the notion that the party of your choice is paralyzed in its moral centers."

I guess if I were an American, Canada would look good in comparison.

2008-10-09T17:53:00.000-05:00

2008-09-27T15:11:00.000-05:00

My stomach, my eyes and my brain are all unsettled right now. I couldn't understand why, so I have systematically begun to go through possibilities. Typical sources of stress are usually: Christmas- Easily dismissed because I have informed my whole family that I don't want/won't be buying gifts this year, and I booked the ticket to fly to Ontario yesterday. With Muddy, so I can't be stressed out about what to do with the dog. But: We don't have a crate big enough for him anymore, and he isn't trained to feel comfortable inside one. So maybe I am worried about this? I don't think it can be the whole reason. The rats- Katie has them right now, and yes, I am worried about them, and about what to do with them over Christmas while I am gone. Possible fragment source of residual uneasiness. Schoolwork- Always present. I tried to calm my sense of unease by going through my course calender and writing down my upcoming deadlines. Nothing big for another weeks and a half. But this led me to discover a large source of my unexplainable feeling of worry: I haven't had any grades back from any of my profs so far this year, except for one lousy news quiz. How is this possible? Are all my courses so end-loaded that I am going to die come the last weeks of November? I try to force myself to get things done early, but then the monstruos quantity of things that will eventually have to get done overwhelm me, and I don't know which one to concentrate on now, when nothing is urgent. The Gazette: It is pretty much proving to be exactly what I thought it would be, and although I exist in a constant state of catch-up, with impossible to prove suspicions that everybody talks about me negatively behind my back, I don't quite care enough to change anything drastically right now. I have more important concerns. Politics: Maybe, maybe. Oh, this is pointless, I still can't put my finger on it and I am sick enough of the computer already without spending frivolous minutes on it.

Ordinary folk and the arts

2008-09-25T18:12:00.000-05:00

This was written by Margaret Atwood:

"On Tuesday [Prime Minister Stephen Harper] told us that some group called “ordinary people” didn't care about something called “the arts.” His idea of “the arts” is a bunch of rich people gathering at galas whining about their grants. Well, I can count the number of moderately rich writers who live in Canada on the fingers of one hand: I'm one of them, and I'm no Warren Buffett. I don't whine about my grants because I don't get any grants. I whine about other grants - grants for young people, that may help them to turn into me, and thus pay to the federal and provincial governments the kinds of taxes I pay, and cover off the salaries of such as Mr. Harper. In fact, less than 10 per cent of writers actually make a living by their writing, however modest that living may be. They have other jobs. But people write, and want to write, and pack into creative writing classes, because they love this activity – not because they think they'll be millionaires.

Every single one of those people is an “ordinary person.” Mr. Harper's idea of an ordinary person is that of an envious hater without a scrap of artistic talent or creativity or curiosity, and no appreciation for anything that's attractive or beautiful. My idea of an ordinary person is quite different. Human beings are creative by nature. For millenniums we have been putting our creativity into our cultures - cultures with unique languages, architecture, religious ceremonies, dances, music, furnishings, textiles, clothing and special cuisines. “Ordinary people” pack into the cheap seats at concerts and fill theatres where operas are brought to them live. The total attendance for “the arts” in Canada in fact exceeds that for sports events. “The arts” are not a “niche interest.” They are part of being human."

Read the whole article here while it is still up (the Globe and Mail takes the articles down after a few days).

Hockey Moms Against Sarah Palin

2008-09-20T09:22:00.001-05:00

Shocking revelations

The World on Wednesday

2008-09-10T09:08:00.000-05:00

Maybe it is my fault for not paying close enough attention, but don't you think this possibility should have been wider publicized, just in case?

I feel like I was cheated out of my right to walk around yesterday charged with sentimentality, with a newfound appreciation for the smallest leaf, the simplest scent of perfume in the air, the heat of another human being's body. News casts should have popped up as a separate window in every website visited (nobody watches TV anymore, so the "Breaking News!" scenario probably wouldn't do much to spread the awareness).

Ok, so it is Wednesday now, and we have survived. I just feel let down because I never knew I was in danger -- real danger. I'm kinda glad we all lived, Earth, because yesterday was NOT a worthy end-to-the-world.

And what of those kooks that are butting in to your thoughts right now, and reminding you to live EVERY day as if it were your last!

Well, they should have gone ahead and invented a big bang machine. Done something practical to spread their saccharine tripe.

Maybe all these Swiss scientists ARE the live-every-day kooks. What they are really after is imbuing the rest of the world with an impending feeling of doom, in hopes of radically energizing social and personal change.

Thank you, Switzerland!

2008-08-31T17:51:00.000-05:00

Ah, writing. A storm has been rumbling all day over Halifax. The rain and wind are a cold couple, and the thunder is a trumpet call. For what? Well, the times are changing, of course. I finished my job with the YMCA on Friday. My job as Opinions Editor for the Dalhousie Gazette "started" a while back, but has gone to top priority now that the summer gig is up. I don't miss the kids, but I do hope I run in to them sometime ... knowing Halifax, I will. I'll keep my eyes open in grocery stores and movie cinemas from now on. My wisdom teeth come out on Tuesday and classes start on Thursday, so tomorrow is the last day in a long time I will be able to enjoy both empty time and solid foods, together. I intend to make the most of it. And journalism! I find it so hard to pick courses that aren't journalism related, and yet I get so many electives! I don't know what to do. If Dal had a fine arts department, I would take something creative. I don't want to have to write an academic paper, ever. Clayton and Paul's professor from the History department has been staying with us this weekend. She is cool, but the way she talks about Clayton and Paul's research papers ... I don't think I can do it. I don't have the attention span or the concentration. And yet I would hate to be bad at it, so I would kill myself to write a good one. In my mind, it does not sound like a pleasurable experience. It is a skill I would like to have, but not really as urgently as I would like to learn mandolin, crochet, welding, photo developing, quilting, farming and portuguese. Academic writing: not top priority. You can quote me on that.

This is complaining

2008-08-04T16:36:00.000-05:00

This is not in pain:

This is in pain:

This is about being born human. This is about baby soothers and whiskey soothers and chewing on fingers.

This is about waiting at least a month for a removal. This is about being scared.

2008-08-03T07:01:00.000-05:00

I don't like war movies. I think it was in grade 11 film class, my teacher said that to film a Hollywood military sequence you have two options: buy your own tanks, or borrow the army's. Weapons being one of the most expensive props to acquire, most choose to borrow. But the military has to then approve you use of them in the film. They can censor scenes, lines or plot elements that don't portray them in a positive light (Paul, you will like this list of films that didn't get funding from the Pentagon).

Thus, we watched Top Gun that year, as an illustration of my teacher's point. The sexy heroes shooting the nameless, foreign masked villains that talked weird. The army recruitment booths set up outside the cinemas on opening weekend.

Even though Apocalypse Now didn't exactly have army-recruitment-booth potential, I didn't enjoy it. I don't like movies about men in uniforms: can't keep them straight, can't care about them as characters. The battle scenes are disorienting, dark, miserable, and repetitive. I can keep track of battle scenes in LOTR mainly because the combatants are of so many different species. Even Star Wars battle scenes confuse me, as the clone armies switch alleagiances half-way through the series.

Maybe it is because war movies are always about MEN. I don't mind movies about one man, or containing several, but the central theme of war movies and the military in general is manhood. What is is or isn't, how it expresses itself, what an all male culture looks like, what relationships between men can be when the people are stripped to the bare minimum of who they are, when they are tortured, when they die or kill.

It just isn't INTERESTING to me anymore, this permanent study of males. As a theme, I feel it has been exhausted. Because war is always portrayed as riddled with dichotomies... right/wrong, good/bad ... there are only two ways you can go (or, four: it you count good but appearing bad, and bad but appearing good on top of the regular old good and bad guys). Even when the movie doesn't answer the question, the question is old.

I hate how Hollywood defines how we think of wars. It is the most horrible thing we humans are capable of, and we don't even know the truth about this part of our souls. But there is some sick cultural fascination with it.

I said yesterday I might give another war movie a chance someday if it weren't made by Americans (or Canadians). I only remember seeing one Polish movie, about pilots in WWII. And one French movie about Christmas in the trenches of WWI. But they didn't redeem anything in my mind, although they didn't make me sick to my stomach, at least.

I think it is the combination of love of country and pride in malehood that just make the war genre unsavory to me.

I can't put my finger on it completely. Any thoughts?

2008-07-09T17:41:00.000-05:00

I had forgotten what a complete universe your life is when you are a kid. The present is all-important, you are constantly mid-adventure, and you have little time for logic. "Yes, I threw the ball at him first, but can't you understand how completely terrible it is to my life that he threw the ball at me? This crime has to be dealt with now, I do not care about the greater scene of fairness, or a punishment that you say might occur tomorrow, tomorrow is too far outside of my world. I want justice now!" Canadian kids fight so much! And they hate games! And they are such cheaters! And then they fight about who cheated! Maybe it was the deep-seeded element of competition, but kids in Ecuador were way better at grasping the rules of a game, and participating enthusiastically. Here, one girl wants to sit on the ground and moan, one wants to make bracelets, a group of boys want to see how often they can throw stuff at each other before they get stopped by a counselor, and how violently, and the rest are just trying to cheat. Actually, that is not true, the kids that speak English as a second language are total dears, participate readily in all planned activities, solve disputes among themselves, don't tattle or lie, and don't steal beads from the camp bin. And they don't scream (yet). I sat watching them all on the playground today, trying to remind myself what adults can do to totally captivate children, and make them thrilled to do what you want them to do. Is it a quality that is just innate, some have it and some don't? Or is it a way of talking, is there a secret look you can adopt. I tried to remember what the adults I was gaga over had in common. Also, I tried to figure out how to explain that games are fun when rules are followed. Breaking a rule ruins the whole imaginary universe you enter in to. You spoil the fantasy. I hate it when one kid spoils things for a whole group. As I said before, it is difficult to bring this point up with them and explain that they are not the centre of the universe. At that age, you are. But it is good work, good learning, good efforts. I think if I ever discover how to be one of those magical adults then the whole summer will be worth it. It boils down to the desire to mean something to them. To make something better for them, to allow them a different perspective.

Cross-post

2008-07-07T19:44:00.000-05:00

From Joey Comeau's blog:
"The problem with a lot of the people I've met who are "romantic" is that they don't really treat the object of their affection as a real person. More like a prop in the romantic fantasy! This is all fine and good as long as things go fine. But if not, well! That's when the anger comes out, and you can see little traces of the cognitive dissonance going on behind the scenes! But I love you, you stupid fucking whore! "

2008-06-26T19:16:00.000-05:00

Busy week. Paul and I are now parents to a labrador/rottweiler puppy named, as of 2 hours ago, Muddy (Waters, and because of the unusual brown splotches of fur on his mostly black body). We adopted him through Litters and Critters, a foster-based shelter here in Nova Scotia.

Here's Muddy (7 weeks, 8 pounds):

In a world of ideal pirated internet connections, I could upload a cute video of him eating dirt, or my toes. Alas, the internet has not quite reached that level of sophistication in this isolated corner of the world.

Speaking of this corner of the world:

Thats us. I am sure with a wide angle lens I could have worked wonders. I apologize profusely.

Correction: actually, that is not us. We are 2403. But ours looks very similar, sans barby.

I have also started to train to be a YMCA Day Camp counsellor I always spell that word wrong, and don't trust spell check).

2008-06-18T22:49:00.000-05:00

Through the process of unpacking my boxes, i ran across all of my old journals, plus a lot of papers that didn't make it into one of the main "volumes," but were small pieces of the puzzle. I flipped through, looking for all the January 1 entries... looked for the 3 am entries... for the pre- and post- transatlantic journey entries. Even some that didn't mark milestones contained those twisting reminders of oneself.

What would i say then about myself now? Would this have been enough to satisfy the young's thirst for substance?

I found the latest journal I wrote in... and wrote some more. I think my writing has been so disorganized lately. I'm not really blogging it, not really writing fiction (just re-writing), not even putting it in the private collection where it all used to go. Is this growing up? "Fragmented" was a word I used to Paul to describe how I feel. Perhaps the internet or the old journals... concentration dispersed, future questioned. Well, not really, I know I want to do journalism school, but I want to know How I am going to do it. Not questioning the possibility, but the whole thing in itself : How are you going to be, how are you going to continue to be?

Passion is still so important to me. To write clearly, like in a journal, without fear of judgement or without even feeling like you have to make sense... because it is just for you, at this moment in time. It is easy to be passionate when there is no pressure to make sense. I read the old writings and I want more, now. I want integrity. I want concordance. I want it to mean something.

(maybe that is why I am more careful about what I write)

Worth Repeating

2008-06-10T15:10:00.000-05:00

Words inside square brackets are, I assume, modifications of the text by my dear Heidi. "We live in a society where people are able to have more and more material things. The net result, however, has not been to make us perfectly happy. Quite often what lies behind affluence is a spiritual void. This doesn't mean that wanting to have [a good income, comfortable things, and a lover] is wrong or shameful. The spiritual void wasn't created by wanting things. It was created by turning to externals and expecting them to do what they can't do. Externals can't fill spiritual needs. The saying that a rich man has as much chance to enter heaven as a camel does of passing through the eye of a needle isn't a condemnation of wealth. It simply points out that money has no spiritual value. Money isn't the gate to paradise. The wizards have always taught that desire must be seen as a path. In the beginning, desires are about things, like pleasure or survival or power. But in time, the path of desire leads beyond these gratifications. They are not baser desires, but earlier ones. Just as a child outgrows toys at a certain age, the desire for more and more will eventually lead a person into a natural phase where the desire for god becomes all-important. "Don't worry about becoming a seeker after god," Merlin said. "You have been a seeker since birth, only at first the god you sought was toys, then approval, then sex or money or power. "All of these you worshiped and wanted with great passion. Rejoice in them when they are the desires of the moment, but be prepared for them to fall away. The great problem you will face will be not desire but attachment, holding on when the flow of life wants you to let go." The exercise for this lesson is a pure thought experiment. Imagine the thing you want most passionately right now. Perhaps it is a certain car or a life of wealth or some kind of love. Try to pick something you're still pursuing so that you can feel how powerful the pursuit of desire really is. Now, back up to a desire or wish in the past, one that has already come true. It might be your last new car or successful project. Compared with your current desire, this old one will feel different. You won't feel so keenly the hunger to pursue the old desire because you've already tasted its fulfillment. What you are experiencing in this contrast is how life pushes you forward. Yesterday's desire had its own impulse for fulfillment, which has now shifted to today's desire. This forward-moving impulse isn't random. It has carried you from an infant's wants to a child's to and adolescent's to an adult's. If a positive model of desire is established early, then the baby will grow up with natural desires that match its true needs. A psychologically healthy person, in fact, can be defined as someone whose desires actually produce happiness. But if the baby is imprinted with the opposite notion, that its desires are shameful and are only grudgingly met, then desire won't develop in a healthy way. In later years the adult will keep searching for fulfillment in externals, needing more and more power, money, or [lovers] to fill a void that was created in his or her sense of self as a baby; the person's very sense of being is judged to be wrong. In extreme cases desire becomes so distorted that its need turns into a need to kill, steal, commit violence, and so forth. These desires can cause untold harm, both personally and socially. yet no one knows, seeing a murderer or thief, where his or her values went astray. To a wizard all desires begin in the same place, at that point where life simply wants to express itself; it is the obstruction or condemnation of desire that creates the problem. Unhealthy expressions of desire simply reflect unhealthiness in a psyche that desperately needs to know itself, just as all of us do, but has--at least for the time being--failed. Therefore, it is vitally important to come to terms with the nature of your desire, to realize that in the divine plan all your desires are meant to come true. God isn't blocking you from having anything and everything you want. It is you who believe deep down that you don't deserve anything and everything. Such self-judgment creates blockages in the natural flow of life, but once they are removed the path of desire becomes a joy, because is is the shortest and most natural way to god. No desire is trivial, because every desire has a spiritual meaning. Each is a small step leading to the day when you desire the highest fulfillment, which is to know your own divine nature."

A day

2008-06-01T21:02:00.000-05:00

Well, we're here. I will show you pictures sometime. I will show you our portly blue house, squished between two of its twins. I will show you our piles of boxes, our space under the stairs where many of our piles of boxes will likely sit, unpacked, for weeks, while we get motivation to look into them.

I walked to Gottingen to pick up a half litre of milk today at a little convenience store/meat market. Gottingen St. is a boarded up store front, white paint peeling off a graffiti mural. It's a dirt path that cuts through an empty lot littered with lottery stubs. It's a library, a YMCA. It is lined with crack-houses and art galleries, cafés and shelters. I used to go to one of the drop-in centres to hang out, but stopped going because there was nothing there for me to do. Things are ok on Gottingen St., people have their own routines, they know the routes they walk. I don't know if it is in my head, but there is a bit of a look of the hunted in some eyes.

This morning was our first at this new place. Paul went out on the bike this morning, and on his way back, a block away from home he passed a taped-off crime scene. A homicide, an old man, stabbed in a school yard at 3 am. I don't want to live here without living here, you know. We have chosen a neighbourhood where it is imperative to know your surroundings, to get to know your neighbours, to learn your own routes, good routines. It is important to be trusted, to be seen and to fit in. I think it is a good thing to force ourselves to do: this country is built on neighbourhoods where you can safely get my knowing none of your neighbours. It is in the inner city that your likelihood of thriving, of even staying safe, is very dependent on your connection to the community around you.

I think this is a good thing.

2008-05-31T04:58:00.000-05:00

I am taking a hiatus from the internet. Phone me. Nine oh two, four two five eight one three nine, as of Tuesday or Wednesday. Ok?

Moving

2008-05-29T14:55:00.000-05:00

I didn't burn water today, but I came pretty close: soy milk. In our favourite/only medium pot.

"Incinerated" Paul says. "It doesn't even exist anymore!" Paul says.

Yeah. I know! I'm the one who has been scraping the bottom of the damn thing for 15 minutes!

Things are a bit crazy figuring out things to take/buy/sell in preparation for moving. We have scavenged some wood to make a bookshelf out of, and have been riding the Kijiji hard looking for a circular saw, cordless phone, single bed, drill, french press and other accoutrements. Check out our new bike kart:

We will still build one, eventually, but it is important to be able to get groceries in the meantime.

COMMENT HERE/EMAIL ME IF YOU WANT MY NEW MAILING ADDRESS

Stevie Ann - Toxic

2008-05-27T19:08:00.001-05:00

Drills

2008-05-21T11:01:00.001-05:00

Today, I went to the dentist, and am only waiting for the freezing to dissolve to discover whether the trip's lingering effect was disaster or deliverance. One deep cavity, two baby ones, drilled out and dressed up in ceramic plastic. He said once I recovered feeling in my tooth that had the deepest cavity I might be in pain, in which case to call immediately and they would fit me in to the schedule. For what? I wanted to ask. More drilling? An extraction? A root canal? Yesterday, I signed for an $80 wisdom tooth consultation (a fancy x-ray and advice from a "professional" about which wise molars would get pulled when). I have three that need out (one which is urgent), and each tooth costs $250. Glory! I don't know if it is only dentists, but these medical examinations felt so dehumanizing. I didn't know what to ask, what to express. I almost cried in frustration at the dental surgery office yesterday, and it wasn't only the money. It just felt like something had been taken from me, in a sterile, officious way, and I was backward for wanting it back.

2008-05-01T16:36:00.000-05:00

I couldn't find a picture from this trip that communicated HEAT, but these two, taken together, communicate much of what the past week has been like for me, otherwise.

Different places, different people, but the general combination of a couple of people and a private place have made for many good conversations recently. Today Alexis was over (finally!), and we talked for a good chunk of time.

The heat: One day, I was talking to Julia for about five minutes on my way into the shower. Eventually, I got into the bathroom, undressed and into the stall. When I turn the water on, ten cents drop off my skin and on to the tile floor. It was hot enough that a dime would stick to me for five minutes (at least) and I would have no idea. Sometimes, you just feel so sweaty and dirty it doesn't matter, I guess. Often I rush home in between engagements for a quick turn in the cool flow of water... I feel like an addict rushing towards my fix, like I am going to die if I don't get that sweet relief in less than 5 minutes. It can be so good.

Yesterday was the only day since I have been in Guayaquil that I didn't have at least one shower. There has been rain every night, even thunderstorms, it is like the rainy season has been reborn. Yesterday I had a bad day, and I wonder if maybe it was because I was denying myself that return to freshness. Even 24 hours is too long for anyone to hold out in that climate.

There wasn't much sun today. It is a gentler existence. I still deserve my fix, though, and I am off to get that now.

2008-04-23T06:56:00.000-05:00

A heavy rain last night. Finally, it was warm and I could let it soak through my shirt. I wanted one of those while I was here. And the rain pounded the roof as Janna, Paul and I scooched in for a cheese-soup-movie-night. The sacred event demands warm soup and rice, landing in an empty belly and warming a cool night, settling while a story unfolds in front of you. "Atonement" was a good choice for the evenings entertainment section. Today is Paul's last day. Weird, I know. Time is so capricious. We made it to the beach for three nights, and to the mountains for just as many. Peace and rest are natural responses to both environments, but we managed some adventures as well. I swear I didn't come back to Ecuador just for the food, but I sure enjoy it while I'm here: fresh fish and shrimp at the beach, great meals shared from friends kitchens, the expert vegetarian chefs in Banos, the risky adventures of street vendors. It's all good, and no food poisoning/water parasites/Hepatitis A symptoms have reared yet. On the intellectual front, I have finished True Crimes, a biography/anthology of Rodolfo Walsh, an Argentinian journalist and activist. Great gift, Clayton. I hope to write a more comprehensive piece about my thoughts on that shortly, maybe in May, after the 12th and before the 30th when we have to move. Or maybe in June, after the 1st and before the 24 when I start work.

2008-04-09T21:39:00.000-05:00

So farewell, farewell to Nova Scotia's charms For it's early in the morning I am far, far away.

2008-04-09T06:43:00.000-05:00

I did this to myself, really. I scheduled a flight home to Ecuador for the day after my last class. I didn't know then that it would be the day after my last school deadlines. I knew I had no exams, and I could have predicted this, but I did it anyway. More exciting. The way it will work, is that I will have no time to think before I am whisked away on a plane to another continent. When school is done, and you have a long holiday ahead, all you have to wait for are your final grades and you know there is nothing else they can do to get you anymore... they can't dictate how you spend your time, they can't torture you with worries or threats, they are finished, and you survived. You survived it! But by scheduling my flight for tomorrow, I deprived myself of that floating feeling, that relaxation of the shoulder and neck muscles. I hope to find THAT at the beach, on the sand in the sun, or sitting on a bed somewhere, sweating already at 6am, listening to the trucks go by. I can wait, I do not regret my decision, I am just saying what it MEANS. I am very excited to be in Ecuador. I made no plans, because that is the best way to do it. Paul and I land in Guayaquil Thursday before midnight. Janna asked if we wanted to go to the camp on Friday ... she was probably serious, too. I'm not even going to make THAT plan until I get there. That is just how it has to be. It is wonderful, wonderful, wonderful to be done (says the girl who still has to finish writing her chapter). It will be wonderful wonderful wonderful to go back, and Paul: you are going to love it.

2008-04-06T06:17:00.001-05:00

I hope that I don't miss too much in Nova Scotia politics while I am gone.

Something makes me believe, however, that little will change. Nova Scotian progressives ridicule Rodney MacDonald (and, indeed, refer to him with the diminutive, familiar name "Rodney") in much the same way liberal Americans ridicule Bush. It is just too easy.

Simultaneously, social services are being eroded, private-public partnerships are strengthened, real progress is being traded for artificial inflations of the economy. Whole industries are disappearing, and the band-aids distributed by the federal government are received by the provincial one with whoops and whistles. I haven't seen any recent reports on those $35 million that are going to help the forestry and manufacturing industries that are hemorrhaging jobs in this province.

Rodney was loving those millions in the press. More critical minds, of course, wondered how such a small sum could do anything for the numerous communities gutted by mill and plant closures. Liberals and New Democrats were disgusted at the politically motivated payout- only the party in power can effectively bribe its way to winning a hypothetical election.

While covering this story for my journalism beat, I was disgusted mainly by Rodney MacDonald, reading his blind comments and his daftly positive proclamation (much in line with the "My government would leave no Nova Scotian behind" statement that brought him so much flak in the home-heating debate).

However, I can't believe that ridicule is going to get us any further fighting MacDonald than it did fighting Bush. I think public denouncement would go much further than mockery. I think this is serious and scary at times.

That said, Kate Beaton does a great job at making fun of him (her familiarity with Rodney is a bit more understandable, as they both have homes in Mabou, Cape Breton).

2008-04-03T20:02:00.000-05:00

Nobody says anything about my new glasses, they just think I am PALE. Well, don't worry, I am going to South America in a week and don't plan to wear any sunscreen. None. Unless there is a homeopathic version. (Just kidding, I don't wear sunscreen. I like sun. And I don't care if my skin ages prematurely. I think that is a lot of hooey)

Latest Photography

2008-04-01T10:29:00.001-05:00

"Please Don't Pee!" - Bethany Horne, 2008.

"Anyone Could Mistake This For Affection" -Bethany Horne, 2008.

"Paul's Favourites" - Bethany Horne, 2008.

"The Only Way To Get Lyra To Stay Still" - Bethany Horne, 2008

Yes, I am procrastinating a little bit. But what can you do when you can't write? You can't write!

Ten minute blog

2008-03-17T14:21:00.000-05:00

I don't know, I just felt like it. This is what I've/we've been doing.

Some sewing:

Some singing:

Third background voice

Some schooling:

Classes I have picked so far for next year include

Central America to 1979 - HIST 2382 with John Kirk

The Creative Process - CRWR 2000 with Andrew Wainwright (year long)

Indigenous Mvmt in Latin Amer. - HIST 3393 with J.P. Heilman

I have to pick two journalism courses, too. I might pick four. Unfortunately, I can't get too cocky about that schedule being definite, because I likely won't know what my major will be until May or June.

Ten minutes are up! I have to go to class!

Feedback

2008-02-29T08:25:00.001-05:00

A tough lesson to learn.

A room darkened by a blanket pinned over the window, dozens of the Doppler-effects of moving cars traveling the space between my ears, a bright computer screen: this is my "zone." The repose of the room's mess lends geography to the wasteland of my imagination.

"A chapter," he says. "Somewhere from 1000 to 3000 words," he says. Our will and wildness must take us the rest of the way.

Today is leap day. This makes it feel special to me. Why do we have leap years? You may know the partial response to that, but maybe not the full one:

From The Straight Dope:

The leap year is a contrivance so that the calendar year (usually 365 days) doesn't get too far away from the solar (astronomical) year. You say: huh? Well, the astronomical year – the time it takes the earth to go exactly once around the sun – is not precisely 365 days. The ancients estimated it as 365¼ days. That wasn't bad as calculations go; it's actually 365 days, 5 hours, 48 minutes, and 46 seconds.

Now, you may think that crummy little fraction (almost 6 hours or 1/4 of a day) doesn't matter much. But every four years, the calendar would lose a full day against the seasonal year. Christmas (Dec. 25) would start to come a little earlier each year. After about 20 years it would come before the winter solstice; after 200 years or so, Christmas would come in the autumn (since the seasons are tied to the astronomical year, because they depend on the earth's slant relative to the sun) . . . and then in summer . . . and . . .

To prevent this drift between the calendar year and the astronomical (seasonal) year, we add one extra day every four years. Thus, over the four year period, we have 1461 days, not 1460, for an average of 365.25 days per year. That pretty much makes it come out right.

This innovation was imposed in the year 709 AUC (ab urbe condita, after the founding of the city), when Julius Caesar regulated the calendar. Nowadays, we refer to it as 45 BC. The Nicaean Council in 325 AD adopted that calendar for Christendom.

But it still wasn't precisely right. As noted above, the astronomical year isn't 365 days 6 hours (365.25 days), it's 365 days 5 hours 48 minutes and 46 seconds (365.2422 days). So as the calendar went along with its jolly add-a-day-every-four-years pattern, it gained about 11 minutes 14 seconds every year. After every 128 years, that was a full day. Note it's going the other direction – Christmas would fall LATER in the season each year.

This anomaly was corrected by Pope Gregory in March 1582. By that time, the calendar year was 10 days off the seasonal year. ( The real concern was not Christmas, but Easter, which had to occur near the vernal equinox and according to the lunar cycle, but that's another story.) They made two corrections. The first was that they just dropped ten days. The day after October 5, 1582 became October 15, 1582. (Some countries adopted this change later, in some cases centuries later.) This restored the equinox to its rightful place. The second change was to reform the calendar to prevent slippage in the future; and we use that same calendar system today, called the Gregorian.

(Footnote: The Russian Orthodox Church still uses the Julian calendar. Christmas comes out about January 7 in their calendar. About every century, the Orthodox Christmas slips one more day against the solar calendar. Currently there's a 13 day lag that by 2100 will become a 14 day lag.)

How does the Gregorian system work? We still have a leap year every four years, to accommodate the almost 6 hour difference that was known in Julius Caesar's time. The Gregorian correction is that every hundred years, we make it NOT a leap year. Thus, 1700, 1800, and 1900 were not leap years, even though they would have been in the normal four year cycle. Thus, every 100 years, there are 24 leap years, not 25. So that lets the calendar year average 365.24 days each year.

Does that do it? Sadly, no. There are still those extra seconds – the astronomical year is 365.2422 days. So every 400 years, we DON'T NOT add the extra day (double negative intended). So 1700, 1800, 1900 were NOT leap years, but 2000 was.

If you've followed the math, that gets us very close. Over a 400 year period the calendar will contain an average of 365.2425 days per year.

Every 4,000 years (the first will be the year 4000, then 8000, etc.) we make the century years NOT leap years again. And that gives us an average of 365.24225 days per year over a 4.000 year period. Still not exact, but the calendar year won't vary by more than a day from its current place in the seasonal (astronomical) year in two hundred centuries – close enough for practical purposes.

So the rule is:

Every year divisible by 4 is a leap year (adds an extra day to February),
EXCEPT the last year of each century, such as 1900, which is NOT a leap year . . .
EXCEPT when the number of the century is a multiple of 4, such as 2000, which IS a leap year . . .
EXCEPT the year 4000 and its later multiples (8000, 12000, etc) which are NOT leap years.

So, we had a special leap day back in 2000, and we didn't even know it. When will the next century year be that is a multiple of four? I wont live that long, that's for sure.

The crux of this blog entry, and back to the picture at the beginning, is that I have needed an extra day this year. Because a lot of the work I have chosen to do has demanded creative brain work (writing for Choyce, sewing, some aspects of journalism, letter writing to people far away)... and a lot of this "work" I have not learnt how to force. I have not settled into a routine, nor developed the discipline (like Paul) to be creative consistently and forcefully, to be productive even when the "zone" is not working.

So what has the extra day meant this leap year:

Last night, another night spent trying to scare-off 3D visions of zippers and pockets and seam allowances... trying to find sleep. Waking up slow to
another morning of sitting in the dark, trying to focus thought, pursue flighty inspiration.

But I can't do it alone. The headwork is all me trying to find places in my brain that contain the knowledge so I can do things alone... but I can't. "You need feedback"...

The internet is a double edged sword is these situations. Yes, I can surf around, find pictures of the steps people take to construct bags with liners and patch pockets... but two hours later, I have sewn nothing. I can look up features of geography and be absorbed by Wikipedia articles about history, looking for good descriptive details, but click click click and I am reading about Robespierre, who has absolutely nothing to do with a South American city in 1998. I can start journalism research on the internet, but will I really benefit from reading an article about the MMR vaccine and it's implementation in the UK? No. I will not write about that. I am wasting time.

So, feedback: from other people. Not the internet equivalent. I have asked my dad about details that will help me create a character. I have decided to focus on advice Anne gave me yesterday about the pocket, instead of trying to understand every aspect of the construction. I will let Paul read my chapter this time before I give it to Lesley Choyce. Hey, maybe even the prologue. Who knows.

And if there are any typos or mistakes in this here blog-post, please let me know.

2008-02-21T09:06:00.001-05:00

Paul has put up a song on MySpace and on his website. Finally! I thought another one was going to go up last night, but no luck. Maybe tomorrow. In the meantime:

Go here to listen to it: http://www.myspace.com/paulartson

And here if you want to download a good version for home listening, putting on CD mixes, iPods, playlists, independent movie soundtracks, etc: http://www.paulartson.com/

2008-02-16T17:00:00.000-05:00

The rats are a full time job these days. Matilda (the new one) went from having the sweetest disposition of any, to developing an insatiable appetite for escape, and now she seems to have a taste for lesbian practices.

I spent the whole morning trying to outsmart her, putting barriers in innovative places to try to limit her geographic area. To no avail. She spends all of her time looking for holes which she can squeeze through or enlarge, and she also has learnt how to jump. She jumps out of everything. She even jumps into roofs I put over her enclosures to stop her from jumping ... the thumps of her little head on the cardboard roof makes me feel so guilty, I remove it, but then I am back dealing with a little Houdini rat.

Today I introduced her to the others. She was very, umm, taken by them. Lots of strange mounting and wrestling. Curious.

This is little Matilda:

2008-02-15T15:26:00.000-05:00

Chebucto², Halifax, NS

2008-02-15T10:03:00.001-05:00

Kingston, ON.

2008-02-08T07:24:00.001-05:00

A Softer World

This is for my friend Luke.

I think you might like this better than the previous comic I posted, which was a bit too Canadian.

2008-02-03T10:17:00.001-05:00

I'm loving the Kate Beaton these days (great for chuckles)

Fester

2008-01-27T13:30:00.002-05:00

Lyra goes for the treat.

No, she didn't do that herself, but I thought if I hid treats among the debris I could blame the mess on them.

----

In other news, I got the Ogrant (thank you, all), and have started sewing. Pajama bottoms. Nothing fancy.

I have been torturing myself lately about topics that are worth writing a novel about... a story that could be developed, a character that would be worth that much writing... I feel very inadequate for the task. So many sentences, so many stories need to be invented! I don't generally develope ideas that deeply... I consider myself unable to complete a story that complicated in any meaningful way. How can you craft details to complement each other perfectly, and have some sort of combined meaning? I don't like to think about it. I have been studying the elements of Creative Writing for months now, but still think of the work of writers as some magical concoction, for which I possess neither the correct ingredients nor a recipe for combining them.

And I recently tore up a book. It was a slow process, and forced me to read fragments of sentence, chapter headings, words... In conclusion, books are not mystical, many people write them, they are made up of paper, ink, and printed with combinations of 26 letters, ten numbers and nine or ten punctuation marks... but that doesn't help me figure out how to create one.

I've had nightmares of plot outlines, character flow charts, prologues. And I am feeling very antagonistic at every thought of Lesley Choyce. I had to remove his book of short stories from my bookshelf and turn it around so that the spine would face the wall, to avoid the negative thoughts that surge up from within when I see the name.

If I could hide in a friendly white tube, I would, but the swamp of words beckons.

2008-01-22T14:46:00.001-05:00

I loved explodingdog today.

Another article

2008-01-19T08:02:00.000-05:00

I don't like this article I "wrote", but figure I can at least get a blog post out of it. January 17, 2008

Unions unite for city students

Bethany Horne Staff Contributor

Mitch Gillingwater, Tara Gault and Mike Tipping want to write a tenancy policy for students as part of the new Halifax student lobby group. / Photo: Josh Boyter

Students in Halifax are now members of another lobby organization run by their student unions.

The student unions of Dalhousie, Mount Saint Vincent University, Saint Mary's University, Nova Scotia Community College and the Atlantic School of Theology decided to combine their efforts and represent students at the municipal level.

The student union executives formed their own group, the Halifax Student Alliance (HSA), in November after learning Mayor Peter Kelly's roundtable on violence would go ahead without any student representation, says Dal Student Union President Mike Tipping.

"They'd given out a survey on that, back in the summer when the students weren't here," says Tipping, one of the group's founders. "We thought that was very unfortunate. The students are a huge population here in Halifax and their voice needs to be heard on issues that affect them everyday."

The HSA conducted an online student survey about crime in Halifax and presented the results on the last day of the roundtable discussion in late November. The group hopes municipal policy makers will take note of their student survey when drafting new rules.

The DSU is already part of two other lobby groups, the Alliance of Nova Scotia Student Associations (ANSSA) and the Canadian Alliance of Student Associations. But Tipping says those groups only focus on federal and provincial post-secondary education issues.

"There are issues that exist only on a municipal level that are very important to students," he says. "Things like transportation, safety and housing. There wasn't really a collective student voice on that until now."

The group hopes to draft a tenancy policy, Tipping says, because a lot of students are uninformed about the rights they have when renting their own places.

"As you probably know if you've rented in this town, it is stacked toward the landlord, and students often have a difficult time navigating that," he says. "I think there needs to be a bit more openness in the process."

"There are organizations right now that work on poverty issues and housing," says Tipping, mentioning the Halifax Coalition Against Poverty and the Ecology Action Centre. "We would be focusing more on specifically student issues, although in some ways they overlap."

Mitch Gillingwater, president of the SMU Students' Association, says students make up 2.5 per cent of the city's workforce, which he says is "very significant." He says it's important students are represented on the municipal level.

There are no students, aside from union executives and council members, involved in the new lobby group. Gillingwater says members will try to attract more student volunteers "once the organization grows." The group doesn't collect student fees and currently has a tiny budget and a 400-member Facebook group.

Engineering student Dave Cormier, a member of the Facebook group, says he would try to get involved if he could make room in his "ridiculous" schedule.

"It's one of those things, once you get [it] going on, it will have to pick up," Cormier says. "Most students aren't really informed about a lot of things."

Keith Stevens, a third-year political science student, says he hasn't seen a particular "grassroots" call for another student lobby organization at Dal, but that it's worthwhile for student leaders to represent generally less-informed student bodies.

"Our city council doesn't really get a lot done, in my opinion, but it's worth a try to get something done," he says. "There's potential in it (the HSA). Similar organizations didn't have a lot in the beginning," he adds, comparing the new union to provincial lobby group ANSSA.

"Holy ANSSA Jr., Batman!" Stevens commented on the HSA's Facebook page.

The Halifax Student Alliance is only the second municipal student lobby group formed in Canada. Student unions of public universities in Edmonton made the same move in August.

I forgot to ask you-all

2008-01-15T10:00:00.001-05:00

I entered a Grant competition . Clicking on any of the pictures will take you there.
If you have a Canadian University email-address, please register for the site and vote for me, there are only three days left in the competition and I am first, but only by a couple of votes.

Update:

The competition is over. We'll see how it goes. I won the rating process by 19 votes. Good stuff!

Rats!

2008-01-09T14:09:00.000-05:00

Pip, Nicodemus and Lyra's new cage came yesterday. I was glad it was my day off, because it took me most of the afternoon to set up and decorate. Paul helped quite a lot. Pip, Nic and Lyra were quite unhelpful.

But they do seem to enjoy their new habitat. I think the dryer-vent tube is their favourite, with the cardboard box coming in close second.

New Year's Eve Wedding

2008-01-05T07:51:00.000-05:00

NYE is always a day I look forward to. In Ecuador, it is the most important day of the year. Many traditions, superstitions, visions and transitions hinge on it. It was January 2nd, 2007 that Katie and I left Ecuador. It was January 2nd, 2006 that I decided I wasn't going to be a tool of a certain contingent of well-meaning, noxious friends anymore.

This year was no less significant. In the realm of personal mind-shifts, those close to me would probably be able to identify some. As far as Great Parties and Great Changes, Chelsey and Clayton's wedding takes the (post-modern) cake.Gary in the back, Carol-Ann, Bethany, Emily, Meaghan Eva, Fred, Paul and Devin around Chelsey and Clayton

Though initially skeptical about the whole idea, not THEIR marriage, but marriage as an institution, I have been converted to recognize the beauty of a simple promise, and a powerful union. If the wedding wer simple a lavish party to celebrate the fact that Chels and Clayt are together, it would have been worth it. But I think the most moving part for me, and others, was the ceremony (I didn't see that coming, not even at the rehearsal).

It was just such a thunderbolt. Clayton's father did a wonderful job. Every time he was dangerously close to tears he would pause, press a smile, first with his lips then push it into his eyes, then shake his head. Apparently it worked for him, but it made me want to to weep every time, because the emotion was just released into the crowd. The vows went smoothly, with Carol-Ann tearing up gently to my side, but something snapped (according to accounts) in Chelsey first, and then in Clayton (spactacularily), Fred, Eva and others during the giving of the rings. The rest of the promise-making after that was just throbbing with environmental emotion, and you didn't know which surge would send whose sobs into overdrive.

Oh, but it was SO GOOD! Who knew that a promise could mean so much! Who would have predicted that stating the obvious could wake such feelings! Who could have given so much meaning to those words we have heard too many times, tarnished and polluted by usage and by sarcasm... only C + C. So, thanks guys. For that. And for what is to come.

I had fun.

Bethany and Paul heading off to the party