Earth Day

So what’s with Earth Day? Seems it was started as an educational event in the States during the 70s, spread internationally in 1990 and in 2009 was officially recognized by the United Nations. There are now Earth Day events in more than 175 countries. That is some impressive marketing and networking!

I’m all for environmental awareness and green initiatives. I had Earth Day marked in my calendar, but when today arrived I realized I didn’t actually know what Earth Day is. Perhaps it is, like most things, what you make of it.

I could've gone to an Earth Day party tonight at a cool local yarn store since I contributed to an Earth Day window display organized by the store, Wabi Sabi, and CPAWS - the Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society. The pictures in this blog are from that display – a very impressive collection of hand-crafted animals and birds. My bird is very sad – in the bottom picture it’s the brown knitted bird that is doing a face plant into the branch. (I’m surprised it even made it into the display, given the artistry shown by the other contributors.)

But knitted birds aside, should I be doing something more to mark Earth Day? I feel like I should have planted a tree or collected garbage on the side of a highway. I’m ashamed to admit that I barely even spent any time outdoors today. (V had the day off work, so he joined M and I at the seniors – nice for him to get to see what it is we do each week and meet a few of the residents. M was a big hit as usual and there was a new resident she connected well with.)

In the afternoon V cleaned the eaves troughs on the garage – which maybe we could spin as an Earth Day activity since it’s all part of the plan to put in a rain barrel – but sadly I was indoors typing away, burning energy.

We do continue to try and do our part – cfl bulbs, cloth grocery bags, composting, recycling, gardening, buying local, cloth diapering, etc. If you look at it that way, any day can be Earth Day.

Let's get tough on the prison agenda

I haven’t done a rant lately about justice issues – but this great cartoon from the Toronto Star has inspired me to vent again. Well, that the way the Conservatives keep drumming out ‘tough on crime’ rhetoric that flies in the face of research, reports and basic common sense.

Crime rates have steadily declined over the last 10 years and yet so many candidates in this election keep emphasizing how they are going to fight crime and get tough on criminals.

Even if crime was they kind of large-scale problem they would like us to believe, certainly it would make sense to implement practices that have been proven to actually lower crime rates. But no, our government seems intent on building more prisons and filling them with more people - even though incarceration is not as effective in lowering crime rates and recidivism compared with prevention, treatment, and community-led programs.

Corrections Canada currently spends just over $2,200,000,000 a year on prisons. And now there are plans to build 2,700 additional prison beds at a cost of $2,100,000,000 ($800,000 per bed). This makes no sense and Canadians should be outraged.

Be even more outraged when you look more closely at who exactly we are spending these billions of dollars on to warehouse in prisons. In provincial jails, close to 60% of the people in prison have not even been convicted – they are awaiting trial and may be found innocent or guilty of a crime not deserving jail. We keep clogging up the system with more people and paying $100,000 to $200,000 a year to keep them in jail while they wait. So much for due process or innocent until proven guilty.

Kim Pate of the Canadian Association of Elizabeth Fry Societies points out that over 80% of women in prison are incarcerated for poverty-related offences. Additionally, 82% of women who are federally sentenced in Canada have experienced physical or sexual abuse, 75% have less than a junior high school education, 34% are Indigenous, and the majority live with mental health issues.

It would be wonderful if during this election campaign Canadians challenged their local candidates and party leaders to present strategies for actually fixing our justice system.

I felt good

Tonight I went to a needle felting workshop and discovered the fun of sculpting with wool. It was so easy to do – just use a little fish-hook like needle to shape the wool – but also challenging in a cool, creative way.

The workshop was set up so we would make a little Easter bunny in a cave. In the past I’ve been sceptical of creative workshops where everyone makes the same thing. I guess I kind of thought it would be like paint-by-number and proudly imagined I was beyond that.

But it was quickly obvious that 7 women produce 7 very different rabbits and it was neat to watch the creative process of other people, see how we all work with an idea and make it personal. I can imagine if we’d experienced, confident felters, the diversity would be even greater.

There is something so satisfying about working with my hands – whether its knitting or painting or needle felting like tonight – or even sometimes doing some chores like weeding, ironing and home renos. There is a great sense of accomplishment in seeing something take shape or transform right in front of me. So much of my day is normally spent typing letters so words appear on a computer screen. Sure there are processes and outcomes with this that I enjoy - but it’s a different feeling from creating a little creature or tidying up a scraggly flower bed.

It’s been a busy week for me and if I had stayed home I likely would have spent much of the evening working away on my computer. On Monday a friend invited me out to a meditation class with her and similar to tonight, I had the feeling during and afterward that this is really something I need to do more often. It felt so good to be grounded in my body for awhile, to be stretching and moving these tired stiff muscles that get locked in my routine.

Twice in one week... maybe there is a lesson a need to learn here. Perhaps a reminder of how good and necessary it is step off the treadmill now and again and remember to breath, move and create.

Two years old!

Today we celebrated 2 years in the life of Miya – and 2 years of being a family, of being parents.

Last night as I was getting ready for bed, I found it strange to think that 2 years ago I had been getting ready to give birth. How much my life has changed since then. How full it now is.

To be honest, sometimes it feels over-full. Parenting can be overwhelming – so much responsibility, so much to try to understand. I think of the many conversations I’ve had with other parents over the last couple years in which we try to understand our children and figure out how best to respond to them. How to respond to a baby that doesn’t sleep, to a toddler who melts in tears for reasons we can’t understand? How do we respond at 6 a.m.? At 3 a.m.?

Two years in, I know there is still a lot I don’t know about being a parent. There is still a lot to learn. But at the same time I can feel proud of the journey we come through together so far, of all the things we’ve learned together – V, Miya and I. She learns from us. We learn from her. We’re all in this together trying to do the best we can.

V and I both took the day off work today to hang out with our daughter. I asked her where she would like to spend the morning and, not surprisingly, she chose the nature museum. She also chose what she would wear – a fun new outfit from her Grandma.

When we were at the museum I took her into the gift shop and let her pick out a new toy. Out of all the different animals, she chose a penguin and then spent the rest of our visit showing the penguin around the museum.

For her birthday dinner we invited her closest little friends and their parents to join us at a nearby diner. It wasn’t exactly relaxing to eat a meal out with 4 toddlers, but it was fun in the chaotic, multi-tasking way that has come to define so much of these rich past two years.

Pilgrims book excerpt 7 - arrival

I will not remember much of these last few hours before reaching Santiago. During the final push to Santiago, I unearth and expend the last ounce of strength I possess. Every step hurts and it takes all I have to keep walking. Yet Santiago is also a force that keeps pulling me, like the current dragging at my feet.

When we crest a hill and see the city spread out beneath us, it is a disappointing mess of billboards, cement towers, tightly packed houses and city streets. Alex races on and I stumble behind, blind to everything around me, mechanically putting one foot in front of the other. We finally reach the heart of this ancient city. Our walking sticks grate and tap on uneven cobblestone streets. The Camino is poorly marked here, which is strange. I’d almost expected streets of gold.

Then finally it is before me – the cathedral’s towering stone walls adorned with statues, turrets and spires. In the central spire stands St. Jacques, cloak thrown back over his shoulders, staff in hand. My own joy is dull and weak.

I shuffle into a dim interior packed to bursting with people. I am straining toward the voice of the priest, but the crowd is so thick that soon I can go further. My legs give way and I sink to the floor, slumping against a marble pillar.

I am only vaguely aware of the lofty room filled with gold statues, frescos and ornate decorations, the lilting voice of the priest. Most real is the cool stone against my cheek, the deep, deep fatigue of my body.

I remember those who asked me to pray for them and see them again in my mind’s eye - the kind old priest at St. Michel, the woman whose husband had Parkinson’s, the man who gave Armand and me fresh cherries. In what way I can, I form a prayer for them and add my own words of humble thanks. Tears unchecked stream down my cheeks, completing the prayer of gratitude I cannot put in words. When I open my eyes a beam of sunlight is streaming down from the high cupola directly to where I sit.

Amazing product placement

Watched the Amazing Race tonight and was amazed by the degree of product pimping, I mean placement.

There was one recent episode where the winners of a leg got to be the first to try a new kind of Snapple – and far too much air time was devoted to them holding their Snapple bottles, sipping their Snapple ice tea. Tonight’s episode showcased Ford – and the winners each got their own car.

Sure, I know that advertisers need to find new ways to reach audiences. And V and I are exactly the sort of audience they are targeting, since we record the show in order to be able to fast forward through the commercials. I so rarely watch commercials these days that when I do, I’m fascinated with them as if I were discovering some old relic of the past.

I’ve also started paying attention in shows to how many products are actually displayed. I notice if the beer label is turned to the camera, or turned away. I notice what products are being displayed on counter tops. But while it’s one thing to have a brand of crackers on top of the fridge (Mad Men) it’s quite another to be as blatant as the Amazing Race is. They’re not subtle at all. With soft-lit shots and loving descriptions, basically they are boldly placing advertisements into the middle of their programming.

(I don’t watch Survivor, but I’m curious to know if they have found ways to sneak product placement on the ‘deserted islands’. They likely have.)

And what about when products on movies and tv look like a well known brand – i.e. a coffee shop with a green and white logo – but aren’t actually branded per se. Does Starbucks want to have coffeeshops in movies that look just like their stores but yet aren’t directly branded?

This gets me wondering - who pays who? Obviously Snapple and Ford invested in the Amazing Race – and negotiated a whole lot of in-show promotion. But does Starbucks pay to have a coffeeshop-scene in a movie – or do the directors pay Starbucks? What kind of deals and pay-outs are influencing what I see when I watch a movie or show?

Pilgrims book excerpt 6 - nearing the end

It is incredible, this drive and urgency now pulsing through the Camino. I see feet raw with blisters, covered with white flaps of skin, pink flesh and weeping holes. I don’t know how they can manage 10 steps, yet they travel more than 20 km each day.

I wonder if people would push themselves so much if they were walking alone. But it can’t be that they simply don’t want to lose the people they are walking with, that they must keep up with the pilgrim horde. It’s almost as if a great hand is pushing us forward, urging us along.

In France it was quite common for people to rest for a day or more. But back then, Santiago was still more than 1,000 kilometres away. Now, we could be there in ten days or less. It seems impossible to stop.

It’s the third of July. Two months ago, I was arriving in Le Puy, nervous and unsure of what was ahead of me. Has it really only been two months? I am sure the calendar does not apply here. It has been two years. Or two decades. I feel my body growing old. The limbs are less sure. I tire more quickly. Once I thought about walking back from Santiago, now I look forward to arriving with a distant, faded zeal.

There are times when I want to get off this conveyer belt that keeps pushing us forward, ever faster. One morning I met an old woman pushing a wheelbarrow heaped with vegetables. I stopped and talked to her in my broken Spanish, asking where she was going and if I could carry her wheelbarrow for her. But even after she finally understood what I was offering, she would not let me help. She laughed with shy embarrassment, self-consciously adjusted her thick, plastic glasses, and encouraged me to go along. “Buen camino,” she wished.

I had been looking for some way to connect, to not just pass blindly through this beautiful countryside. The momentum of the Camino is growing, sweeping me into a mighty river in which it is difficult to steer my own craft, to cling for a moment to the shore.

Pilgrims book excerpt 5 - musings on love

“When you love someone, the first thing you have to do is admit that you are very foolish.”

It is later in the afternoon at one of the tables downstairs, and Frank is musing on romance, both on the Camino and off. He hasn’t yet had the chance to introduce me to Maude, but we can hear her laughing and talking outside. “Love is not rational. It is not rational to be loyal to one person if I could be with other beautiful women, if there are other people I could love as well. Romantics will say they don’t care, that they choose to love just one, but this just isn’t logical.”

He stops and gazes out at Maude. “So the first thing you must do is admit that you are foolish.”

“Are you saying that loving one person for a whole lifetime is impossible?”

“Not at all. It is just irrational. If you want to love someone your whole life, you cannot expect to do that with your head. You have to go beyond what is rational.”

The Budapest is much less of a romantic. A French man with darkly tanned skin and a body devoid of excess fat, he began walking in Budapest because, as he claims proudly, it was the farthest point east. He doesn’t go by his name, Jean-François, but prefers to be known as ‘the Budapest’.

‘The problem is so many people believe that finding a companion will erase their solitude,’ he says. ‘It never will. And it is not the fault of the companion, nor of the relationship. Solitude will always be there. We must celebrate and value it.’ He reads me a passage from a book called ‘L’Éloignement du monde’ – Distancing from the world: ‘Those who know how to love us accompany us to the doorstep of our solitude and remain there without going one more step. Those who pretend to go farther in our company remain, in fact, much farther behind.’

‘Solitude is a fundamental human state,’ he continues. ‘Some people become disappointed in love when they realize it does not negate this. But we need to value our aloneness as much as we do our togetherness.’

Pilgrims book excerpt 4

My shadow withers and huddles at my feet. Bright gravel burns my eyes. This is no longer the high, rolling plateau of the meseta. We've descended onto the vast plains of the Castille, where gusts of hot air bend the fields of grain and whip my brittle hair into my eyes.

I cannot keep going, and yet the Camino pulls me on, dragging me into this desert of dust and sun. I am carrying more than a thousand kilometres in my feet, in my body. Each morning I wake at 5:30. My feet ache when I rise to stand, they cry when I pull on my sandals. Every kilometre brings me closer to Santiago, closer to my final rest; but each étape seems like eternity. Ten kilometres feel like 30 - tripled by the heat, the unchanging scenery, and a body sapped of its last strength.

The path does not bend all morning. It does not climb or descend. My mind assumes the monotonous rhythm of my footsteps. The highway is beside us, separated from the Camino by a few feet of scraggly weeds. After walking for an hour, nothing has changed. I could have been standing still.

“Alex…” I say and stop walking. We’ll never get there. The town we seek is backing away from us. I want to flag down a car. I want to sit by the road and not get up. I want to sleep in the ditch and wait for a stork to carry me off to the steeple of the church.

‘Come, Ta,’ he says. It’s not so far. We are almost there. You can rest soon.

But he sees the tears in my eyes and then he is beside me, wrapping his tanned arms around me, under my backpack against my sweaty back. I lean my head on his shoulder and tears shudder through me.

I don’t care anymore that he sees me cry. It feels better to be held than to cry alone.

Alex waits until I lift my head, then gently brushes my eyes. “Ça va aller,” he says. It will be alright. And for the next 10 kilometres he holds my hand, every single step.

tweet tweet

Exclusive interview with D, the lead designer for RIM’s twitter app (T4BB):

T4BB is twitter app for the BlackBerry. As D explains, there are a lot of conventions with a BlackBerry that don’t apply to anything else – and BlackBerry has developed an app that is more deeply integrated than what iPhone has. “It’s very usable.”

He explains it simply for me: “An app means you don’t have to log in - you’re right back to where you were. It’s a lot quicker.”

D isn’t just a fan of what Blackberries can do – he’s a big fan of twitter. “Twitter’s awesome,” he says. “You can see what’s happening locally. Like a year ago when there was an earthquake here, you could find out instantly how far it spread from tweets in Montreal.”

“And what’s really cool about twitter is that, because you’re limited to 140 characters, people have to get to the point about what they are saying. So if you search something, the results are really easy to skim through. You can quickly consume the search results and get a lot of information quickly.”

As an example, he suggests that I run a twitter search on ‘T4BB’ I read him back some of the tweets and he gets giddy. “Seeing that stuff is cocaine for me.”

“Twitter is something that’s evolved into being more than what it’s started – it’s a new form of communication. It’s more than just the social thing; it’s the way that people communicate.”

Unlike other social media like Facebook, twitter is driven by what you’re interested in. “So if you’re interested in finding out people’s opinions, you can find them pretty quickly. That’s where I’ve discovered the real power. It’s not so much about what you tweet about, but what you can find out about. With twitter you have the ability to mass poll people – even no results tell you something. It’s pretty cool.”

Before leaving, our friend makes a plug at V – the ever-reluctant user of social media – to get on board. “Get on twitter. You’re a twitter user. That’s where you belong. Do it!!!”

And amazingly – V is converted. Check him out at @zaxeroplasteon. He wants followers. Do it!!

Leaders' debate

Watched our political leaders ‘debate’ tonight – a rather discouraging spectacle. While it didn’t descend into the infantile shenanigans of Parliamentary debate, it certainly was not inspiring.

What I found fascinating though was Stephen Harper’s constant denial of anything he did not agree with. This shouldn’t be surprising since it seems to be the way he and his party operate – to ignore what they disagree with and proceed as if they never heard any arguments contrary to their position. In this debate, whenever an accusation was made against him, his reply was inevitably, “that’s simply not true.”
The opposition would remind Harper that he had been found in contempt of Parliament. “That’s not true,” he’d say.

They’d note that he has slashed program funding in various areas. “That’s simply not true he’d say.”

He also kept claiming that he (and ‘Canadians’) did not want this election – he even acted as if he didn’t know why it had been called.

When Ignatieff would remind him that the election was called because the Conservatives had been found in contempt of Parliament, Harper would deny it, portraying the contempt finding as simply being ‘outvoted’ by the opposition.

Harper also kept talking about the negative, “bickering” nature of Parliament which was impeding his government from getting any real work done.

Ignatieff had a good comeback for that one – “it’s not bickering, it’s democracy” he said.

But that was the extent of it – a lot of accusations back at forth. Harper was calm and cool and actually did a good job at seeming to take the high road and using any chance he had to talk about his platform and positive points in the Conservative track record. Ignatieff seemed to struggle at times and was a bit of a broken record in his accusations against Harper, but he did get some good points across and at times actually seemed to take charge of the debate.

Ignatieff wanted listeners to think the election is only between Conservatives and Liberals (much to Layton’s annoyance). Harper preached a message of the need for a majority if we are to avoid such “bickering” and repeat elections. Both men were being disingenuous. A whole lotta spin.

Writing, ranting, rhyming

So yesterday I went on a bit of poetic rant in response to an animated poem – a very good and funny one too. I’m prone to ranting these days – and then later wondering if all my words came out quite right. Probably not.

That’s an interesting thing about this whole daily blog business, I put up an idea each day and the next day may reconsider, but if I’m going to keep my 365-365, I’ll leave up the previous post, with all its unfinished thoughts and unbalanced views.

I also find that, when I write a poem, the words take on a life of their own. Sometimes driven by the rhyme, sometimes by the meter, sometimes by the sheer pleasure of it – I never end up where I started and don’t always know where I’m going. I find it all quite amusing, but later I’ll wonder how it may be read by others.

Mind you, the vast majority of poetry which I have written has never been read by anyone either than myself. These poems to me now are like abstract reflections of an unclear past. Sometimes I can recall the situation which prompted them, other times I know that I was simply playing with words, playing with ideas and voices. Some of them amuse me still.

I’m not trying to make excuses for what I wrote yesterday. It was fun. I don’t disagree with what I wrote. I don’t fully agree with what I wrote either. That’s the nature of poetry – at least it is for me.

I was listening today to CBC’s Writers and Company with Eleanor Wachtel. She replayed a part of a previous interview with Gary Hyland, a Saskatchewan poet who recently passed away. His poetry and words were beautiful and touching.

As I often do when I hear the works of poets and writers, I wonder about their process. I wonder about their relationship to the words they’ve written. I wonder if there are writers who always write the truth – or if even such a thing is possible.

I wonder what it would mean for me to write the truth. I don’t think I have that in singular. Does anyone?

Storming

So I watched this clip, and now I must to dip my oar in the mud so to speak
I’m a fan of the art of it, but really at the heart of it, was a tired old argument that’s just weak.
Science over mystery. Take God out of history. Yes, we’ve heard it before.
But it’s not one or the other, why can’t you uncover your ears when faith knocks on the door?
Sure there are quacks, cons, scammers and hams
There are lies and disguises – messieurs and mesdames.
Believing does not mean we turn off our brains.
If there is room in this great world for love and for pain
for anger, forgiveness, lust and greed,
There’s gotta be room for both science and creeds of the faith and of zeal
unmeasurable, incalculable, but not any less real.

Sure, take your pokes at those sorry blokes who get scammed by the silver-tongued fox.
Or rant and complain, and argue in vain, against those seeing outside of your box.
We’re all on the same journey, it’s self/world discovery. We learn at our own pace and style
At the altar of physics, or the chamber of psychics, we all our own views must compile.
What is nonsense to you, is important to some.
We may not agree but the point’s not to come
to one big consensus, tie up all the facts
solve all the mysteries, paint the world white and black.
There are so many things that we can never know
If that scares you, well good, it should, but don’t blow
off your head and your mouth when you hear some express
opinions your don’t share, or views you think less
of than mud or dog poo.
It’s their understanding
It doesn’t hurt you.

(Course when someone’s world view serves to cause others pain
Or is based on exclusion, oppression, and blame,
We can and we should speak up and be heard
Stand up against violence and hatred absurd.)

Minchin’s poem may be cool, an artsy display. He’s taking the craft in an inspiring way.
And sure he can rhyme, but it’s not worth a dime if it’s just tired old bs replayed.

Ottawa Alleyways at Cube Gallery

Not too long ago an art gallery moved in to a building a few doors down from my favourite coffee shop. I pass by it several times a week, and occasionally stop in just to look around. It’s not a huge space (it used to be an Indian restaurant) but they do a great job of showcasing new and local art.

Cube gallery is currently exhibiting a series called ‘Ottawa Alleyways’. The gallery describes the subject as: “quaint or grotty, neat as pin or sketchy and scary. These are Ottawa's back alleys - those surprising service lanes and discretely annexed arteries that harkens back to an era when kids, delivery boys and repair men were politely but firmly instructed to use the rear entrance, please. A place for a quiet puff, a purview of the back yards and back doors of the nation's capital.”

The gallery is showing the works of eight different Ottawa artists, all of whom have their own interpretations and portrayals of Ottawa’s back alleys.

The front windows of the gallery always have pictures or sculptures displayed and this latest Alleyways exhibit has often made me stop and look awhile. Not only is it neat to see places I recognize transformed into art, but there is something about the subject matter that attracts me. Perhaps it’s because many pictures depict paths –drawing me in and inviting my imagination to walk in through the frame, down the alley and on beyond where the canvas stops.

I’ve also long been a fan of roads less traveled, overgrown alleys, and secret pathways. It can be fun to walk along a busy street, observing the other pedestrians – and in this neighbourhood the countless dogs and strollers – but it’s a more personal and intimate experience to walk along quiet sideways, to take a short-cut perhaps only a few locals know about, or to discover a narrow footpath through a thicket of trees.

Some of the art in this current exhibit reflect this intimacy for me – revealing hidden parts of the city I have not yet discovered or demonstrating that, of those I have, someone else is in on the secret and values them as much as I.

Spring on the farm

I saw a sheep in labour today – and no, this isn’t the beginning of some strange joke. Miya and I were at the Experimental Farm this morning. It’s already one of our favourite haunts in Ottawa, but it’s an even more exciting place to visit in the spring. There was one little lamb only 4 days old, some piglets just recently born, young calves – and a labouring sheep.

We were told that most of the sheep and goats in the Small Animal Barn are expected to deliver babies in the next few weeks. And there will be bunnies for Easter. We’ll definitely be back often.

I was really hoping we could actually watch little lambs being born – and was curious to know what M would think of the whole thing. We kept checking in on the mama sheep throughout the morning to see how she was coming along. She was quite calm, mostly just laying down and looking around. I was told that sheep usually deliver unassisted and quite quickly. Now that sounds familiar...

It was a beautiful day to be at the farm – one of the first really warm days of the year where the sun was warm on our faces, birds were flitting about and the sky was a bright, cheerful blue. M is a big fan of the horses and was happy to see that they were in an outdoor enclosure. We parked ourselves on the bench and she watched them do their thing – which was mostly a lot of standing around, but she still seemed to find it quite interesting. When they were led back into the barn, she wanted to follow them in and check on them in their stalls, greeting each of them by name.

We also stopped by to say hello to the cows – a young, beautiful Brown Swiss licked M’s hand with her strange purple tongue. We checked in on the rabbits and the pigs, dropped in at the snack area during craft time where M got to make a little bunny.

This is truly one of the perks of being a parent – spending hours discovering and exploring things that as adults we tend to forget about.

Something positive for prisoners

I’ve been looking a lot at what is wrong with the Canadian justice system, frustrated by our government’s stubborn commitment to pursue agendas that may sound good to voters but are destructive for the people directly affected. So it was refreshing and encouraging today to learn about a great program that is actively doing positive things for prisoners.

Stride is a program within Kitchener-Waterloo’s Community Justice Initiative which supports federally sentenced women coming out of the Grand Valley prison into the KW community. They use community engagement and circles of support to provide care and support for women who face so many obstacles when leaving prison and trying to build a new life for themselves.

Most women in prison, and those who are coming out of prison, are isolated and stigmatized. The vast majority have been physically and/or sexually abused. Most were unemployed at the time of their offence; two-thirds have not completed high school. It is naive and unrealistic to expect that these women can leave the harsh prison environment and seamlessly integrate into communities.

Stride matches trained community volunteers with women wanting support with re-entering the community. By having community support and caring volunteers encircling them, women have a much better chance of not only staying crime-free, but also improving their lives.

My description in no way does justice to this exciting project. One aspect of the program which is really interesting and which I’m itching to participate in is called the ‘Stride Night Program’ in which community volunteers and local agencies go inside the prison walls to participate in evenings of crafts, sports, games and socializing. These evenings provide opportunities for inmates and community members to build relationships that can be so important and helpful for women’s community integration.

And next time I’m in Kitchener I’m going to make a point to check out RareFunk, a consignment store in the downtown that supports the female inmates by selling ‘Fresh Start Creations’ - the crafts and art which female inmates create. Through the proceeds from these sales, these women are able to give back to the KW region by donating to local women’s or children’s charities.

Yet another reason to move to KW...

Elections - More prisons or real justice?

I’ve been writing quite a bit about justice issues lately. And the more I learn about the backward policies our government has been advocating, such as building more prisons while reducing services and programs that actually rehabilitate and assist offenders, the more frustrated I become.

The Conservative government was recently found in contempt of Parliament (something unprecedented in Canadian history) in part for failing to disclose the full cost of their ‘tough-on-crime’ agenda. They have already acknowledged that they will spend an estimated $6 billion in construction costs alone for new prisons, but what we don’t know is the real total which will be spent on incarcerating and warehousing all the new convicts. Budgets for prison infrastructure have already more than doubled in five years (from $88.6-million in 2005–6 to $211.6-million in 2010–11).

Of course, the Tories want to make sure these prisons are filled. They are doing this by changing the Criminal Code to increase mandatory minimal sentences and by removing the discretionary powers of judges who might recognize that an offender is not actually a threat to the community and that the interests of all parties – victims, community and offender – are best served by using alternatives to prison such as reparation, restitution and treatment.

Yet while this election was brought about by issues of contempt and spending on prisons, these issues have all but disappeared from the media.

So I would like to humbly suggest that should you encounter any candidate in the next few weeks, or have a chance to ask questions which may be put before political parties, you may want to remind candidates about what triggered this election and ask if our tax dollars will continue to be dumped into ineffective, pricey ‘tough-on-crime’ agendas.

You could mention that more than a third of prisoners in provincial jails have not even been convicted of a crime – they are awaiting trial. The majority of our inmates are serving a sentence for a non-violent offence (78% and 31% in provincial and federal penitentiaries respectively). Many repeat offenders are mentally ill – they require treatment, health services, education, housing and employment.

Ask for real improvements to our justice system, not simply more prisons.

Cracking code

I have spent far too much time today trying to figure out WordPress, the so-called “full content management system and so much more” and “elegant, well-architectured personal publishing system”. It’s open software (in other words free) that allows people to create sites and post content on the web.

The problem is, WordPress is designed for bloggers, not for organizations – and I’ve been asked to manage an organization’s website that has been created with this software and is completely jumbled and full of broken links and horrible design/layout. It may not be the software’s fault – but figuring out the software in order to fix these problems is not simple. I don’t know how long I have spent today trying unsuccessfully to simply change the width of the main navigation menu.

Now I do not claim to be have mastered web development, but I have created a few websites and have managed several different ones (i.e. for organizations and restaurants). Most of my work has been with Dreamweaver and I feel quite comfortable with the basics. I may not be able to do dancing hippos, but I can make a clean, user-friendly site.

But I have been stumped by WordPress. It’s like this software is designed for either those who know nothing about scripts and source code – or for people who are such experts that they can design their own templates and fiddle with open-source php, css, wtfs, etc.

I spent much of the day and much of my evening fighting with software that may look slick and all bubbly-clickable – but is a fortress of incomprehensibility if you try to dig below the surface. And now that it is after 10 p.m. I am throwing in the towel for the day. Tomorrow I am going to read up on integrating WordPress with Dreamweaver so that perhaps I can design the site with a software that lets me adjust such things as column and menu width, and then manage it in WordPress (the concern being that other people in the office do not know how to use Dreamweaver).

If there are any experts on this subject out there, I would love to hear from you. Help. Please help.

Pilgrims book excerpt 3

I am approaching the village of Mañeru which, like many villages in this region or north-central Spain, is cluster of ochre houses with an ornate church spire rising from the centre. On the wide, dusty trail, an old man is walking toward me. He has a dark beret above his wrinkled, moon face, a wooden walking stick in hand. He stops as I draw near. “Beunos dias,” he says and I reply in kind. He asks where I’m coming from, then turns to walk beside me. He tells me his name is Ricardo and that he is originally from Pamplona. He says he’ll accompany me through the village. His pace is surprisingly strong and quick.

Ricardo walks me through the village, past a group of youth who have not finished their party from the night before and are still drinking and carousing in the streets. They drunkenly cheer me on, like the last marathoner to cross the line.

It is touching to find someone who seems not to have tired of the pilgrims. I wonder if he often joins pilgrims in the morning while out for a stroll. Ricardo walks with me to a place where fields of grain become vineyards and the path starts to climb. He gestures that here he will turn back. I warmly thank him and am about to ask if I may take his photo when he steps forward to give me a kiss on my cheek. I extend him my cheek, but to my astonishment he presses his dry lips directly on mine. Purposefully, cheekily. I am struck speechless while he squeezes my shoulder, grins and disappears.

More amused than offended; I laugh as I walk away. I laugh even more when I meet Pascale in the next town and find out that he did the same thing to her. After he left me, he must have sped back to Mañeru where he met up with Pascale and Marie. He offered to walk with them for awhile; when they got to the point where the path starts to climb, he said good-bye and stole a kiss. We wondered how many other pilgrims through Mañeru received such a mischievous escort.

Orienting political views

So if you are undecided about how to vote – or are curious about how your views align with parties in this federal campaign – you might be interested in CBC’s ‘Vote Compass’.

Some examples of the 30 questions/statements are:
“All Canadian troops should be pulled out of Afghanistan immediately.”
“Canada should seek closer economic relations with the USA.”
“The government should fund daycare instead of giving money directly to parents.”
“Violent young offenders should be sentenced as adults.”

I took the quiz and it rated my position as NDP, fully in the grid of ‘Economic Left’ and ‘Social Liberalism’. Shocker. V is a Liberal - so slightly to the right of me... Interesting.

My problem with the questions is that for several of them I felt that I would need more information to answer it – for example, the question about pulling troops out of Afghanistan. I may not agree with the direction that Canada has taken with its military engagement in Afghanistan, but that doesn’t mean the solution is immediate withdrawal. I know enough to know that situations such as the on-going conflict in Afghanistan cannot easily be simplified into ‘yes/no’ categories. I also know that I don’t know enough to have a fully informed opinion on the subject.

For some of the questions – like the sentencing of violent young offenders, my answer was easily ‘strongly disagree’ – and yet I recognize that it is impossible and even dangerous to make blanket statements. While I very strongly disagree with the direction the Conservatives are heading with regards to criminal justice – especially how they are trying to undo reforms that were moving towards more rehabilitation of young offenders – I do recognize that there will always be unusual circumstances.

I also know that how people vote may not have everything, or even much, to do with how their views align with each party. We have to consider the candidates in each riding, how informed people are of party platforms, what views are espoused by family and friends...

Such a complex world we live in. Whenever someone tries to take my grey and turn it into black and white, I feel annoyed and betrayed by the harsh picture that results.

Strange house, strange noises

Why do houses make such strange noises? And other people’s houses make the strangest ones.
I’m babysitting tonight – hanging out on a couch in house I don’t know well. The baby has made a few sounds, but she can’t be responsible for all I’m hearing.

Why did I hear shuffling on the floors? Or what sounded like tinkling bells a while ago? I’m glad when the heat comes on because the rush of air through the vents masks other sounds – or at least provides a reason for them.

Sounds in the night are, for me, a good reason to have pets. One, any noise that I hear I can blame it on the cats – that is if they are not sleeping right beside me. Two, I trust my pets to notice a noise that really is worth paying attention to. I put great faith in their superior hearing. Not that my cats could defend me if there actually was an intruder, but perhaps they would alert me to the fact. At least that’s what I tell myself when I’m home alone and the floors squeak.

This house, like ours, has creaky floors. I used to find creaky floors endearing, sort of like traditional apple pie. But now that we have a house in which the floors are moving from creaking into groaning and cussing, it seems a bit less charming.

And here is some, perhaps needless advice, if you a sitting alone in a strange house, hearing odd noises, don’t google ‘strange noises in the night’. There are plenty of stories there to fire up anyone’s imagination.

V would be rather disappointed, I’m sure, to hear me say that I do believe in the paranormal. What exactly I believe I’m not going to say since it is not entirely clear in my own head and I fear I would invite ridicule. And I’m not saying that I think ghosts are walking around in this house – I am quite sure that the noises I hear are various normal things such as water in pipes, bugs, air through vents, wind and other noises outside. But still, sitting alone in a strange house can be a little... disconcerting.

Discussing death with my daughter

I've wondered before what it would be like to have a conversation about death with my daughter. It seems horrible to even think about, but I wondered who we would be discussing – and I kind of hoped it would be a pet before it was a person. At one point V and I even talked about getting goldfish since they usually don’t live too long, and M likely wouldn’t grow too attached to them so as to be too traumatized if they died.

But today, when we visited the seniors, I was told that three residents had passed away in the last week. One was a woman we did not interact much with, one a man whom M would share her toys with, but did not know by name – but one was a man who was one of her favourites – those residents she most willingly and often shares her toys with, knows by name, talks about at home, etc.

I knew John only as a man of few words but with a gentle manner that M instinctively responded to. He was one of the first residents she built a puzzle with and she like to go over and greet him if he was brought into the common room during our visits.

When the facilitator informed me that this gentleman had passed away during the week, my first instinct was to not mention it to M. She may be observant, but no two weeks have been the same in terms of which residents are in the common room during our visit and which ones are up for interacting with her. She seems to have easily accepted that the group will be a little different each week.

So I thought of just letting it slip. Then I realized that this was an opportunity to have our fist discussion about death. It went something like this.

M was talking about our visit today to the seniors and mentioned a few of the residents.

“Yes, they were there,” I said. “But John wasn’t.”
“No.”
“John died, so he won’t be there anymore.”
“No.”

And that was the extent of it - my first conversation about death with my daughter.

Maple syrup season

In true Canadian spirit, this spring Miya made sure to attend a local sugaring festival to check on this year's maple syrup production.

With help from her parents, she checked several buckets to ensure that the sap was flowing.

Then came the all important taste test.

Miya accepted a serving of maple syrup poured over clean snow and wrapped around popsicle sticks.

After some reflection, she deemed it absolutely delicious. Even the stick was worth chewing on after all the syrup-snow had been eaten.

knit graffiti, part ii

Spring has been here for over a week now – and so I finally took down the knitted Christmas lights that have been hanging outside my favourite café for the past few months. They have weathered the winter amazing well, but since the snow is melting, their time really is up.

But I couldn’t leave the tree empty. It looked so bare once stripped of the festive lights. And so I hung butterflies and a little bee – signs of spring.

The installation of the knitted lights had been done under cover of darkness – late at night after the cafe had closed. But over time, word leaked out that I was the one behind the installation, so secrecy didn’t seem so necessary this time. Plus, this installation required a lot more tying of fine knots – something which would have been quite difficult in the dark.

So any attempt at subtlety was abandoned. I walked up to the barristas and asked to borrow a step ladder. Oddly, one of them thought I said ‘steam pitcher’ and offered to bring me a broken one from the back. He disappeared, leaving the other two barristas and me wondering why he was offering a broken ladder. He returned with a small metal container used to heat milk. It was maybe 6 inches tall, so really not too helpful for reaching the higher branches.

Misunderstanding righted, a friend helped steady the ladder while I took down the lights and strung up the butterflies. The barrista, walking by later, commented that we could have totally done that with a steam pitcher.

Again, oddly, while we were hanging things up, a woman stopped to admire the project and then gave us each a business card. I didn’t think knit bombing was a networking activity, but apparently it is. Her site has the tagline – Handmade by Mother – so you damn well better wear it.

We also got chatted up by the local Conservative candidate and his staffer. I wondered why two men were been so enthusiastic about knitting, until I recognized the candidate who’d come begging for signatures at this cafe a few days before.

So certainly much less of a stealth operation this time.

Pilgrims book excerpt 2

A second excerpt from my pilgrimage book.

Bells ring out at six a.m. as I hurry down the cobbled streets of Le Puy to enter the dimly lit interior of the Notre-Dame cathedral. People sit quietly before a white robed priest and I slip in to a pew beside them. Backpacks and walking sticks wait impatiently along the stone walls.

After mass, the group of a more than a dozen pilgrims is invited to gather around a white stone statue of St. Jacques. The figure stands against a side wall of the church, a satchel slung over his shoulder, a scallop shell on his broad hat; his eyes are fixed westward. The priest greets each of us, asks where we come from - France, Switzerland, Germany, Canada - and wishes us a safe journey. A nun at his side gives us each a small pendant of Notre Dame-du-Puy which I pin on the strap of my pack.

Then, standing beside St. Jacques, the priest reads the pilgrim blessing. “Look favorably on your pilgrims who leave for the road to Compostelle and direct their steps in your goodness. Be for them a shade in the heat of day, a light in the obscurity of night, a relief during the fatigue.”

Having been blessed, pilgrims gather their things to leave. We are invited to the sacristy where our credentials are stamped and we sign our names in a book thick with lists of others who have set out from the dark cathedral doors. Then, one by one, we step out to the grey light of morning.

The doors are capped by arched outer walls of the cathedral; a huge, uneven stairway leads down into town. This is the beginning of the Via Podiensis, the beginning of my two-month pilgrimage to the tomb of an apostle I do not know or believe in. I stand at the top for a moment, looking down the stone stairs and ahead to the western horizon. With a deep breath, I begin to descend, following the signs as the trail weaves through town. Soon I am climbing out of the valley, the Virgin glowing behind me in the first light of day.

Reply All

Isn’t there something a little crazy about email? Sure, it can be useful, but admit it, it can also be annoying and distracting and a huge time drain.

How many times have you heard someone complain about coming back from holidays to find hundreds, or even thousands, of messages in their inbox? A friend working in the government told me about a woman who’d left one department to work in another, but returned to the first after a few years away. The first time she logged in to her computer, the whole departmental system crashed. Apparently her email account had not been deactivated during her absence.

For years I’ve been doing various contracts, most of which would leave me relatively independent from the organization I’d work for. I was, to a large extent, exempt from the office emails that fly around, cc’ing all and replying to all. With my last contract, I would receive many of these emails but could know with almost 100% certainty that they had nothing to do with me, so would simply delete them en masse.

But now I find myself in a job where I am being actively emailed – directly and indirectly – at a rate which I’m sure is insignificant compared to many, but which has still got me seriously thinking about how I am going to manage this.

Luckily I have a sympathetic manager who recognizes that reading and responding to email can easily encroach from professional into personnel lives. We agreed that since I'm only a part-time contractor, it is fitting that I set up boundaries around my email activity – meaning I will only read and reply to emails 3 days a week. This last weekend was the first time I implemented this new policy – and while it wasn’t easy to ignore my inbox filling up, it did mean I spent more time with my family and less time thinking about and doing work in the off hours.

This has also got me thinking about how we use email, both in our professional and personal lives, about this age of information overload and this culture of over-sharing the many details of our lives. Ironic that I’m blogging this.

More nanny woes

I swear I’m jinxed when it comes to nannies. In less than a year and a half, Miya has had 5 different care-givers. I’ve tried such things as getting nannies to sign a contract with a required period of notice – that seems to make no difference what-so-ever. Of the 5 nannies, 3 have left with less than 24-hours notice.

Well, I shouldn’t say 3. The latest didn’t exactly quit – unfortunately she spent part of her weekend in hospital with a serious knee injury and is now on crutches and with a full leg brace –certainly not in the position to care for 2 toddlers. Of course I don’t blame her for her injury or for being unable to come in to work; perhaps I should apologize to her for falling victim to my nanny curse.

In the past when my nannies ditched me, I would scramble to take time off work and stay home. This week, that simply wasn’t possible. Luckily the other family with whom we share care have some contacts and I was sent a phone number of a possible care-giver around 7 p.m. last night. I phoned her and amazingly she was available to come the next morning at 9 a.m.

My daughter is always more resilient than I give her credit for. When she met her new, sudden care-giver this morning it was almost as if she was making an effort to allay my fears (odd role-reversal there). She reached to be picked up by the new nanny within minutes of meeting her and proudly showed her around the house, showing where she sleeps and her favourite toys. She actually seemed rather unfazed about the whole change, simply accepting that today someone new would be spending time with her.

All’s well that ends well. M seemed to have had a good day – going about her usual routine and taking the change in stride. This woman can come again tomorrow and her friend will come for the following two days. Next week is still up in the air, but for now I am taking this one day at a time, grateful for small mercies, a resilient daughter, and the kindness of strangers.

The Tavern Kids Campaign

I’m always carrying on about various causes and campaigns, so here’s one I came across this week that I feel is very important and one which I actively promoted among my friends.

The Tavern Kids Campaign – an initiative of local family-friendly band, Hey Buster, is a “campaign to introduce the children of Ottawa to taverns.” The band cites findings at “the Hey Buster Beer Research Institute,” to advocate for taverns as an “integral part of Canada's cultural heritage that children have been heretofore excluded from experiencing.”

“To help repair this egregious gap in our children’s' education,” Hey Buster performed an all-ages concert at the storied Elmdale House Tavern on Wellington St in Ottawa today.

Hey Buster noted that “children must be accompanied by adults and are not allowed to drink beer; they may only experience beer consumption vicariously through their parents or parents' friends. Adults are allowed to drink without a child in attendance, but it is best to borrow a child for a day as they make a hip and happening drinking accessory.”

Eager to support the cause, M and I headed down to the tavern today after her nap. It actually worked in our favour that we were about half an hour late, since apparently there had been a line-up down the street and people, including some I had recruited to the cause, had been turned away. But I guess a few had left by the time we got there, so we were able to squeeze in.

It was crowded and noisy, but in a very happy, friendly way. Kids were everywhere – dancing in front of the stage, sitting at tables, perched on the shoulders of their parents or held in arms. Everyone grooving to the songs about boogers, poo, play dates and bellybuttons. We inched our way in and eventually got some seats at the back. M with her sippy-cup, and I, a glass of beer.

In her own quiet, observant way, M seemed to enjoy it – certainly she talked about it for the rest of the day. And I think it’s pretty cute to have a picture of her and her little friend sitting together at a concert in a bar.

Trees and candlelight

V and I have been spending a candlelit evening together in honour of Earth hour, so I’m late coming to this blog. But it was nice to spend time away from electronics, surrounded by soft, flickering light. I even convinced V that we shouldn’t just do this one night a year, so we’ve decided to mark solstices and equinoxes with candlelit evenings as well – and I’ll try to remember to turn off some lights and light some candles on other random nights too.

On the day of an event focused on “positive action for the planet”, it seems fitting that we spent our morning in a forest of maple trees. One of M’s little friends celebrated his second birthday today at a local ‘cabane à sucre’ – sugar shack. We met up with the birthday boy, his parents and several other young families in an Ottawa urban park where over 1,000 maple trees are tapped each spring for syrup.

We’ve never been to a maple-sugar festival before, so it was a discovery for the whole family. M was very interested in checking the contents in various buckets to see how much sap had already been collected.

She also greatly enjoyed trying maple syrup that had been poured onto clean snow then rolled around a popsicle stick. Quite a treat for a little girl who is usually denied refined sugars and sweets.

Another big hit at the festival was the horse-drawn wagon rides. M is a big fan of the Clydesdale horses at the Agriculture Museum, so it was a real treat to get to ride on a wagon pulled by a beautiful pair of Clydesdales. We got in line early so that she could get a front seat in the wagon and she was absolutely engrossed in watching them the whole ride.

And I enjoyed finding, in the middle of my city, a grove of maple trees being tapped for syrup. It’s so refreshing to step off the treadmill of our busy, modern lives – whether it is by turning off the lights or by discovering the bounty of a forest. It’s a reminder to slow down and to appreciate and preserve the many gifts around us.

I heart Fridays

TGIF. Many people look forward to Fridays as the end of a work week and the beginning of a weekend. But for me, it’s also my wonderful day with my daughter.

I’ve mentioned this before, so I hope you forgive me for bringing it up again. You see, it was a rather busy week filled with many demands of work – so a day spent away from computers with my favourite little girl was extra appreciated.

We dropped V off at the office this morning then headed to a cafe. Going for “coffee and muffin” is one of M’s and my favourite things to do. She loves looking around at other cafe patrons and staring out the big windows at people and cars going by outside. And as her vocabulary grows, we are starting to have little conversations about what she sees - or we just make silly faces at each other while I sip my coffee and she snacks on a muffin.

After the cafe, we headed over the seniors’ residence where M is received with much joy. She knows many of the seniors by name now and increasingly talks about them at home and engages with them during our visits – sharing her toys, doing puzzles or tossing around a big balloon. When we leave, she says good-bye to them by name.

Afterward, instead of coming home for lunch, I took M to my favourite vegetarian buffet-style restaurant where we both had a delicious lunch and she again got to absorb her surroundings. Many people have remarked to me how observant she is, and certainly she generally prefers to hang back and take things in. It’s fun to watch her sizing things up and then have her describe them to me. Sometimes the smallest thing will become a repeated subject of ‘conversation’ for the rest of the day.

In the afternoon, we were out again, this time to one her favourite places: the Agriculture Museum. We went around the farm, saying hello to horses, cows, rabbits, sheep and goats. There were pygmy goats, young lambs and a new calf too.

I feel so lucky to have these days like today – peaceful, gentle, laughter-filled and life-affirming.

Pilgrims book excerpt

An excerpt from my book – complete, but unpublished. The beginning of my pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostella in north-western Spain.

Morning on this third of May is cool and damp. Paris is preoccupied and I slip through its streets unnoticed. In the Gâre de Lyon I board the train for Le Puy-en-Vélay in the southeast of France, a starting point of the Santiago pilgrimage.

Spring is waiting outside the city limits. The lush green of the French countryside spreads out like an open embrace. Traveling at a remarkable speed, within a few hours we enter the Haute Loire region and the landscape becomes more rugged. Streams jostle alongside the railway lines and hills rise sharply behind them. Excitement and anxiety knit into a warm knot in my stomach that rocks with the rhythm of the train. By afternoon, I have arrived.

Set against the volcanic background of the Massif Central mountains, the town of Le Puy-en-Vélay is a pocket of red tile roofs in a rich cloak of forest green. Three immense pillars of rock jut up between the roofs like granite arms reaching skyward. An immense red iron statue of the Virgin Mary perches on the tallest of these peaks. Her child is in her arms; her sightless eyes are fixed on the town below. Her body faces westward, toward the horizon’s uneven line over which flows a human river of pilgrims to Santiago de Compostelle.

Crouched at Mary’s feet is Notre-Dame du Puy, a somber Roman cathedral. Narrow cobblestone streets wind in a maze beneath the cathedral, twisting and turning before leading me to the modestly marked gate of the pilgrim hostel. My guidebook lists this as a ‘gîte d’étape’ - a dormitory-type accommodation for hikers and pilgrims. Run by nuns, the Maison St. François is tucked inside a small enclosure not far from the cathedral. The building is not large, but has an interior courtyard with a small fountain. The floors are of smooth flagstone.

A nun with glasses and a blue cotton dress greets me. Once she understands that I intend to walk the pilgrimage to Compostelle, she smiles kindly and offers me a room that is sparse but neat.

I will not write about politics, I will not write about politics, I will not...

I thought I’d blog about the federal budget today, but as I wrote yesterday, I’m feeling so disappointed and frustrated with politics and our so-called democracy right now that I really don’t want to spend any more time wading through inflammatory political rhetoric.

So if not politics, what to say?

I guess I could discuss concerns that my cat may be ill – suggested by red ears and wheezing when he sleeps (which he does a great deal of the time). But then I’d have to admit how I am such a bad pet owner since I tend to avoid vets unless it is absolutely necessary. The cats got their vaccinations and neutering when they were kittens, but since then we haven’t exactly been developing a close relationship with the local animal clinic.

Ah, but to blog about pets... I don’t think it has quite come to that.
I could write about how my little girl was inexplicably distraught a few times today – and how distressing I find it to see her cry so hard and not know how to help. Sometimes a cuddle and a song make the tears go away, but sometimes she just cries harder.

But really, there isn’t much more to say about that.

Should I describe the hesitant spring we are having this year? After a rather indifferent winter – not much snow, no horrible cold spells – and were steadily warming into spring. Then winter suddenly woke up and realized he’d been dozing on the job. In the past couple weeks we had dumpings of heavy snow, sleet and rain. On the first day of spring I drove home in practically white-out conditions.

Talking about the weather? I bore even myself.

So I find my mind wandering back to politics. The government is likely to be dissolved this week, but this was not soon enough to stop Royal Assent on 10 bills today – three of which will directly increase prison populations (Bill S-6, Bill C-21 and Bill C-48). This, in turn, only furthers the likelihood that billions of tax dollars will be spent to build and fill prisons.

So now I’m thinking of politics again. Should have stuck with the pet story.

The bludgeoning of the people

“Democracy means simply the bludgeoning of the people by the people for the people.”

– Oscar Wilde

So it looks like we may be heading into an election period. Parliamentary parties are already in full-swing lambasting each other and accusing each other of great flaws and faults. Sadly, with all the noise and grandstanding, real issues are likely to be lost and informed debate is likely to be trumped by rhetoric and slogans.

It would be nice to think that the more one became informed about the political process, the more one would be inspired to get involved. But it’s more likely to prove quite the opposite.

In the last month I have spent a good deal of time looking closely at how justice legislation is drafted, presented, argued, debated and enacted. The entire process is very disheartening.

Parliamentary debates over proposed legislation are not only partisan and couched in rhetoric, but they can be downright hostile. At one recent standing committee, a woman intervening on behalf of a church organization was bullied by a Conservative MP and backed into a corner with demands to ‘say yes or no’. Her statement, thus coerced, was then quoted out of context on that MP’s website and in correspondence sent to his constituency. While certainly such tactics will not silence criticism, they do make you think twice about sticking your neck out.

Making informed appeals to logic and common sense seem to get people nowhere – at least that is the impression I have after watching several committee proceedings and hearing expert after expert testify about the harmful impacts of the proposed legislation and then finding out that the bill was passed anyway. So who needs experts, informed debate and research? Our government certainly doesn’t seem to. The produce their own ‘experts’ and ‘witnesses’ – the Macdonald Laurier Institute is a pet think-tank that conveniently backs up Conservative positions – who seem to blindly approve whatever is being suggested.

And to think that, if an election is called, all this bullying, mud-slinging and fact-twisting will only increase. The poisonous atmosphere currently hovering over Parliament Hill will spread across the country, breeding disenchantment, apathy and frustration for some, entrenching partisan divides for others.

Programming princesses

I’ve been out shopping a couple times recently for things for my daughter. And as always, I’m struck with how hard it is to find things that are a) not pink and b) not branded with Dora or Disney princesses.

I don’t know much about Dora, but what I do know I’m not too impressed with (such as every adventure ending in prizes or rewards). I’m also in no rush to get my daughter into the ‘princess culture’. So I find shopping for her to be a challenge I had not anticipated.

She’s not yet 2, so maybe she’s too young to be really influenced by a pink princess chair or a Dora the Explorer colouring book. But then again, my daughter is a little sponge and is always catching us by surprise with the words and the things she knows that neither my husband or I remember teaching her.

I heard a bit of an interview with Peggy Orenstein, a woman who wrote a book called Cinderella Ate My Daughter: Dispatches from the Front Lines of the New Girlie-Girl Culture. I haven’t yet read the book, but certainly relate to the author’s consternation over the gender stereotyping in products geared to young children.

One could argue that it’s not really some nefarious plot to turn all little girls into brainless pretty things, but rather that companies have realized that by making a blue train version and a pink princess version, they can almost double their sales. Disney raked in $4-billion in 2009 with their Disney Princess merchandise line.

But one could also argue, as Orenstein does, that we are locking our children from a young age into certain narratives. We’re teaching them which behaviours are valuable, which are not – and the behaviours modeled to girls and those which are modeled to boys are certainly not the same. Some even say that the princess culture contributes to the sexualization of little girls, others that it breeds narcissism and a sense of entitlement.

Of course I don’t think it is the end of the world if M goes through a stage of wanting to be a princess. But I certainly am not going to encourage it.

The costs of the 'tough on crime' agenda

So the Conservatives finally revealed the costs of their ‘tough on crime’ agenda – well, grudgingly revealed, since documents were produced only after Speaker Milliken’s landmark ruling that the Tories may be flouting the rights and will of Parliament by stonewalling on cost estimates for justice bills and other legislation.

By their estimates (which are likely conservative, hah) a total of $631-million will be spent to implement the new justice bills – this is in addition to the $2.1-billion tab for prison expansion.

When you look at the total expenditures on the penitentiary system in Canada, the increase under this government is stark. For example, in 2005/06, the Liberals spent $1,597-million on the federal penitentiary system. In 2009/10, the Conservatives spent $2,267-million and are projected to spend $3,128-million by 2012/13.

In capital expenditures, the spending will increase from $138.2-million in 2005/06 to $466.9-million in 2012/13 – an increase of over 330%. Interestingly, their staffing levels don’t increase nearly at the rate of their other spending costs. From 2005/06’s 14,633 staff, they increase only to 20,706 in 2012/13. So while there will be more prisons and more prisoners, it doesn't seem that there will be corresponding increases in staffing.

All these figures likely make your eyes glaze over – I’m sure they do to most people. Because the most meaningful and important impacts of the ‘tough on crime’ legislation are not, of course, the numbers. The most worrisome impacts are on people.

The legislation that the Conservatives are forcing through Parliament will see that we lock up behind bars more youth, more women, more Aboriginals, and more people with mental disorders and substance abuse problems. The vast majority of these cases could be handled with treatment and programs within the community – at far less cost and far greater success.

The Conservatives’ prison-focused approach to crime and justice goes against massive amounts of research on effective approaches to crime, and it disregards the lessons that the Americans are learning after having implemented such laws decades ago – only to see their crime rates continue to climb while the costs of prisons have become unmanageable.

Building more prisons and sending more people to prison is a waste of money – and of human beings.

Books: Lady Chatterley's Lover

Finished reading Lady Chatterley’s Lover last night – a book that has been notorious for its descriptions of a sexual relationship between an aristocratic woman and her husband’s servant, sometimes in words that were, at the time, unprintable.

When Penguin Books first published it in the UK in 1960, they were prosecuted under the Obscene Publications Act. Based on testimony that the work was of literary merit, Penguin won their case and opened the door to greater freedom in publishing explicit material.

So it’s interesting to read such an (in)famous book. Certainly there is a fairly prolific use of four-letter words (including that ‘c’ word generally despised by women yet which receives its own sort of elegy in this text). But what is shocking to the modern reader is not likely to be the descriptions of sex, but rather the bits of misogyny, racism and just plain terrible writing. For example, the key male protagonist, the ‘lover’, rants against women who do not allow men to pleasure them. “When I’m with a woman who’s really a Lesbian, I fairly howl in my soul, wanting to kill her”. Or that sex can be good with black women but “somehow, well, we’re white men: and they’re a bit like mud.”

But mostly the author rambles and meanders his plot. In fact, this book is as much about Lawrence’s critique of industrialism and capitalism as it is about his determination to write freely about sex. His descriptions of collier towns and the drudgery of the working class are some of the better parts of the novel.

So while I found it interesting to read such a historically important work, the writing itself wasn’t great. In fact, the book ends with a rambling letter from the lover to Lady Chatterley, filled with more ranting against capitalism, while not bothering to answer questions like if and how the two actually end up together!

But for all its faults, the book does make one think about how sexuality and relationships have changed over the past century (the book was written in the 1920s). And as with Frankenstein, it’s interesting when a book that is not particularly well written can alter literary history.

Bucket list: part III

Writing this bucket list has taken a surprisingly long time – although it has been fun to think about. I plan to refer to it again and hopefully cross off at least a few things this year. In writing it, I’ve been trying to remember some things that I’ve thought about doing before, but pushed to the back burner.

So here are some more things I’ve come up with:
67) Write a fan letter to someone famous and get a response
68) Spend a whole day painting/drawing
69) Take a homeless person out for lunch
70) Participate in a large-scale public art installation
71) Build something useful from wood
72) Be able to hold conversations in at least 5 languages
73) (Adopted from V’s suggestion) Sing another country's national anthem, in its original language (he says English language anthems don’t count)
74) Attend a pro-football game in the States
75) Attend a pro-football (soccer) game in South America, Europe or Africa
76) Attend at least some of a cricket match in India
77) Attend the Brier or the Tournament of Hearts
78) Watch a sepak takraw (Thai kick-volleyball) match live
79) See a Broadway production, on Broadway
80) Go to a drive-in movie
81) Eat fresh, wild strawberries

Okay, I’m stumped for new things. So for my last 19 things on the bucket list I’m going to put things that I have already done, but would definitely like to do again.
82) See the Northern lights
83) Sleep under the stars
84) Spend several days canoeing and camping away from all sounds of traffic and industry
85) See the Himalayan mountains
86) Walk through rice paddies
87) Live in Paris
88) Ride a camel in the desert
89) Climb a mountain
90) Go star-watching at an observatory
91) Midnight walk on a beach
92) Follow kangaroos in a pickup truck
93) Serve a meal at a soup kitchen
94) Install my own or a collaborative piece of public art
95) Spend a day reading and writing in a cabin by a lake
96) Go night-swimming
97) Canoe by moonlight
98) Eat a 7+ course dinner
99) Explore the Costa Brava
100) Go long-distance hiking in Europe

Bucket list: part II

To continue with my bucket list... I was thinking last night that most of the things I put on my list yesterday require a fairly substantial amount of cash – of which a large part would be airfare. So I’ve been trying to think of some things that don’t require spending too much money (although my mind wanders and certainly some things will creep in to this list which would require at least air fare).

34) Read Ulysses by James Joyce
35) Read À la recherche du temps perdu by Marcel Proust
36) Read Beyond Good and Evil by Friedrich Nietzsche
37) Attend a murder mystery party
38) Be an extra in a movie or television show
39) Ride a yak
40) Walk the Chartres pilgrimage
41) Try a 30 year-old scotch
42) Go truffle hunting
43) Take my mother on a holiday in Southern France
44) Go on a gourmet picnic in a picturesque location (wines, cheeses, salads, breads)
45) Go biking in Amsterdam and the Netherlands
46) Bike from Lhasa to Kathmandu (this is V’s bucket list item which I may be roped into)
47) Volunteer at an orphanage (although I know that this will likely break my heart)
48) Go sea kayaking
49) Build a miniature village & train set (possibly with the houses out of gingerbread) for Christmas
50) Play in a Scrabble tournament
51) Write and direct a play
52) Visit St Basil’s in Moscow
53) See Angel Falls, Venezuela
54) See a volcano up close
55) Visit all 7 continents
56) Step on the equator and the prime meridian (not at the same time)
57) Visit Iceland
58) Knit a curling cardigan
59) Learn to play Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata well
60) Be part of a Sing-along Messiah
61) Attend a Sing-along ‘Sound of Music’, in costume
62) Grow a tree from a seed
63) Put a letter in a bottle and throw it out to sea
64) Visit New Orleans
65) Sit on a jury (V has summons and we both wish I could take his place)
66) Take part in a triathlon or a biathlon (and yes, I know that these are different things, just keeping my seasonal options)

Drafting a bucket list: part I

Lately I’ve been seeing references to ‘bucket lists’ – an odd term that I guess means the things you’d like to do before you ‘kick the bucket’. And seeing as today is one of those days when I can’t think of what to blog about, I thought I’d pick up on this bucket idea and start drafting my own bucket list.

Suggestions and the sharing of your own such lists are very welcome.

So, in random order, here is a third of my list of 100 things I would like to do before ‘kicking the bucket’:

1) Write the ‘letter of the day’ to CBC’s Q.
2) Forget letter, I mean, write and publish a book – or preferably several books
3) Write a children’s book – I'd like to illustrate it too, but that might be asking too much
4) Be interviewed on the radio (this has already happened, but I’d like it to happen again – does that count?)
5) Break a Guinness World Record (I have already made one attempt)
6) Attend an Ayurvedic or yoga retreat in India
7) Attend a silent retreat
8) Learn Reiki (and convince V that it works)
9) Get an honorary degree
10) Make a quilt
11) Join a Habitat for Humanity build
12) Ride in a hot air balloon
13) Ride a gondola in Venice
14) Walk in a rainforest
15) Visit Mayan and/or Aztec ruins
16) See the Great Pyramids in Egypt
17) See the Acropolis in Greece
18) Visit the Leaning Tower of Pisa, Italy
19) Visit Stonehenge, England
20) Visit the Grand Canyon, US
21) Visit Angkor Wat, Cambodia
22) Visit Victoria Falls, Zambia and/or Zimbabwe
23) See giraffes in the wild
24) Take my daughter to see penguins in the wild
25) Ride the Trans-Siberian Railway
26) Drive the Alaskan Highway
27) Stay in an ice hotel overnight
28) Hike the West-Coast Trail in BC
29) Follow, by foot, old pilgrimage trails in Italy
30) Walk on the Great Wall of China
31) Hike in Scotland
32) Visit the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Guggenheim Museum in New York
33) See Big Ben and visit the Tate Gallery in London

Beware of Summitt Home Services

Apparently I am not to be trusted opening the door. If it hadn’t been for the well-placed suspicion of my husband, I would have signed us up for a scam deal tonight.

A woman showed up tonight on our doorstep, flashing her photo-id from Summitt Home Services. She said it was her job to inspect our rental water heater to check if we needed to be upgraded to an energy-star model.

Trustingly, I let her in to the basement and she jotted down the model number of our tank. She was well-informed, friendly and polite. She said that a new heater would be delivered at no cost to us, that it was our due as renters to have our heaters upgraded and inspected.

Then she asked for the account number off page 3 of our energy bill – which was when V really started to baulk. He said he’d rather not give that out.

“I’m not here to force you guys to get a new water heater,” she kept saying.

I admit that I was convinced she was just someone doing her job and that we were pretty much already part of this company and it was just a required upgrade. V, of course, saw through it.

He pressed her to answer his questions about cancellation and about rate increases. He also kept refusing to give his account number – countering with the suggestion that she leave the contract for us to look over and if we are interested, we could call and set up an installation appointment. She kept insisting we have the right as consumers to cancel anything we’ve signed at the door within 10 days, so we could sign up now, then look over the contract and call to cancel if we really didn’t want it.

Of course, she never handed over a copy of the contract she was trying to get us to sign.

V’s checked on-line and sure enough there are others reporting being scammed and being trapped in contracts with Summitt. So anyone reading this, be V smart (not me smart) when it comes to people showing up on your door offering some deal. Just say no and end the conversation.