The Big $25 a Week Challenge

Okay, so further to my last post ...

The challenge to eat well on $25 a week begins. Updates on this site regularly.

The objective is to do it while balancing quality of life. This is not about deprivation. This is about enhancing quality of life. It's not about beans for the sake of saving money. It's about "What am I missing because I don't know this kind of food very well?"

It's also about redistributing my money so I'm not spending so much money on food. So I can spend my money on other things.

And, of course, it's about living with less because that's good for the planet. And that enhances my quality of life to know I'm putting my money where my mouth is in terms of living sustainably.

I may find out that $25 a month means poverty. I may find out that it's not enough to satisfy basic nutritional requirements. The formula may end up being wrong. But at least I'll know. And at the end of this, I'll have a whole bunch of new information which will be useful.

Whatever the outcome, I'll share the results (and the recipes). Stay tuned.

Here, on day 1 ... I'm feeling like this will be a fun.

My new year's project

Dear Media Friends and Supporters:

Way back in the 1980’s, at the tender young age of 25, I discovered that my work in media didn’t have to be as an observer, “objectively” reporting on things that I saw around me in a dispassionate, detached way.

I’d learned in school and by doing classical journalism that this was the only role of the media maker. And then I arrived in Vancouver, 1982 ... a city in a polarized province reeling from the cutbacks of the Bill Bennett government. Cruise missile testing in Cold Lake Alberta was a catalyst for some of the largest peace marches in history. Ronald Reagan had just arrived in the White House. For seven years his ideological mistress, Margaret Thatcher, had been convincing us from 10 Downing Street that only the rich and powerful mattered. And here in Canada, too many people were starting to believe her.

It was in the midst of this climate that I discovered Vancouver Co-op Radio and its message that media makers didn’t have to stand by and merely watch. We could write, take photos, do documentaries, create video and audio art in a way that participates in society, not just reports it. We could be catalysts for change, not just hold up a mirror to reflect the status quo.

Ever since that time, I’ve looked at my work in a different way. I have done my share of “objective” journalism but no longer believe that this is the only role for people working in the media. In more recent years, my experience in community-based activist media has taken me in some interesting directions. Two years at Appalshop, a major American community media arts organization dedicated to social change in the heart of the impoverished, environmentally devastated Appalachian Mountains; working with teenagers in an American inner city living in poverty; working with immigrants and mental health survivors helping them use tools of the media to tell their own stories .. All of this and my continuing involvement in community radio and the internet magazine Rabble.ca have strengthened my belief that we have important work to do.

Comparatively speaking, media for social justice is less developed in Canada than it is in places such as the United States, Europe and the UK. For a few years now I’ve wanted to start a new organization to provide a focus for work of people who share my aesthetic and my perspective on life (and more practically, so we can get grants that are only available to organizations.) I know there are a lot of you out there .. because many of you are my friends.

I am writing to tell you I am now doing it. The main goal of the yet-unnamed organization – to produce new works about some of the burning issues of our time; to create festivals, exhibitions and other dissemination opportunities for artists working in social justice oriented media; to provide workshops for our fellow travellers. And most important – to build a community of artists who work in social change so that we can work collaboratively and support each other in our work.

This is just beginning, so I don’t have it all figure out yet. If you would like to join the community of artists who have already said “Count me in”, get in touch. We’ll figure it out together.

Because this is important work we’re all doing, especially now. In many ways, it feels like the work I did and the things I learned way back in the 1980’s was just the dress rehearsal for the conditions we find ourselves in now. Our voices are needed now more than ever.

In the words of an inspiring writer, Clarissa Pinkola Estes ..

“I have heard from so many recently who are deeply and properly bewildered. They are concerned about the state of affairs in our world right now. .. Ours is a time of almost daily jaw-dropping astonishment and often righteous rage over the latest degradations of what matters most to civilized, visionary people.

… For years, we have been learning, practicing, been in training for and just waiting to meet on this exact plain of engagement.

.. Do Not Lose Heart. We Were Meant for These Times”

In Peace,
Victoria

Big Changes, Big Travel

It's a condition of our time .. too many blogs, too much Facebook, too much Twitter ..

Well no, I'm not going to say it's Too Much, because I just love this new internet environment. But it does mean it's hard to get everything done. And as usual, my businessy, arty blogs get more attention than this one, my personal reflections.

I originally set up this blog as a way for all my friends to stay connected when I'm on the road. Time for me to heat it up again, because I am once again GOING ON THE ROAD!

Not until the new year. I need some time to sort things and get rid of all the things I never should have packed up and kept in storage last time. And I need time to develop the plan. Which so far includes house-sitting in Toronto, a trip to Guatemala, a few months on either the west or the east coast doing my audio art camp again.

And I would dearly love to spend some time in Montreal studying with Montreal's famed electroacoustic composers. Especially Eldad Tsabary, who I had a brief and wonderful time with a couple of weeks ago studying Ear Training for the Electroacoustic Composer (including games like Name that Frequency. Is it 5000 khz, or 7,000?)

In the meantime, I am continuing to build business doing podcasts for clients. And building a new organization focussing on Media Arts and Social Engagement. Theoretically I'll be able to work anywhere there's a high speed internet connection.

It's all good .. I'm enjoying the present and really looking forward to the future.

Love
Victoria

A Jewel from the Archives

I have finally been getting around to unpacking most of my boxes and settling in. I ran across this, which is wonderful and well worth sharing.

For every girl who is tired of acting weak when she is strong, there is a boy tired of feeling strong when he feels vulnerable.

For every boy who is burdened with the constant expectation of knowing everything, there is a girl tired of people not trusting her intelligence.

For every girl who is tired of being called over-sensitive, there is a boy who fears to be gentle, to weep.

For every boy for whom competition is the only way to prove his masculinity, there is a girl who is called unfeminine when she competes.

For every girl who throws out her Easybake oven, there is a boy who wishes to find one.

For every boy struggling not to let advertising dictate his desires, there is a girl facing the ad industry's attacks on her self-esteem.

For every girl who takes a step toward her liberation, there is a boy who finds the way to freedom a little easier.

- adapted from a poem by Nancy R. Smith. Distributed by Crimethinc, a dynamic organization not as scary as it sounds. Great work in a wholesome anarchistic kind of way. Check them out.

More questions ...

From my journal .. a continuation of the last entry of October 9th, about journalism, honesty and compassion ...

Here is one of the questions I've been asking myself:

How do we blend compassion and love with clarity and truthfulness in the stories we write? How do we tell the truth without sacrificing the dignity of the person about whom I am telling the truth?

How do I tell the truth about Leah's life in the slum in a way that empowers her and doesn't hold her up to people's feelings of pity? Or cause her to feel embarrassed about her poverty? Or treat her story as a commodity?

As I reflect on this, my quandry isn't so great in this case. Because Leah is a journalist who knows that we have to bring things to people's attention if they are ever going to change. She invited me to Korogocho willingly.

A week or so before I went into Korogocho, a couple of women from the conference and I went to the Kibera slum, the largest in Nairobi. In this case, we were not invited. And of course, I wanted to write about what I saw. But I didn't. I did take pictures, though. So what made this experience different than the visit to Korogocho with Leah?

The difference was that I was invited to go to Korogocho by someone who lives there. There is a new kind of tourism evolving ... it's called "pro-poor tourism". It's also known as "dark tourism", where people are wanting to see the darker sides of life. For what purpose .. I guess it depends on who you ask. For me, the objective is to learn. And to empathize.

I didn't feel good about being in Kibera. It felt like I was capturing their images without a way to understand the context.

An important moment happened in Korogocho, which summarized the difference for me. We were taking pictures, Frieda and I. With Leah's permission, always deferring to her for direction about when it was alright and when it wasn't. Whenever Leah said "yes, it's fine to take a picture" we would. So I thought we were being sensitive.

Nonetheless, a man stopped us and asked "how does your picture taking help the people who live here?"

This is a critical question -- for journalists, and for everyone who captures another person's image. How does this picture help this person> Or how does this story I am telling help this person?

It was an uncomfortable moment, but I am glad he asked.

A postscript on the "pro-poor" tourism angle --I asked Leah, what is the difference between her taking us into the slum, and somebody else? She said it all depends on the motivation. They are very sensitive about other people making money when the community doesn't benefit. They take a dim view of companies who are doing this, even when they are employing local people who live there to show tourists around. The benefits don't come to the community. I suspect it also sets up issues of jealousy and envy, which is bound to happen in places where everyone is scrambling to get by.

The tourist guidebooks say that any tourist who goes into a slum in Africa is putting themselves in danger and setting themselves up to be robbed. I didn't feel unsafe at all. Then again, I was with someone who lived there, and who is known and respected. That's what makes the difference.

I don't think I'll post a picture with this entry ...

Korogocho

It always takes me a long time to process what I've seen and experienced when I've been away.

Of all the places I went during my Africa trip, Korogocho is the one which is occupying most of my thoughts.

I met a wonderful young woman named Leah Murugi at the conference I was at .. The International Association of Women in Radio and Television. Leah was invited to speak because she works at Koch FM, a tiny radio station deep in the heart of the Korogocho Slum. Korogocho is the third largest slum in Nairobi, with half a million people living in a space the size of six city blocks.

We connected because I did a workshop on listening and collecting sounds, and she wanted to use some of my ideas to work with children. I was really happy about this ...

Then she invited me, and my friend Frieda (also from Canada) to visit the radio station and her home. I felt very honoured and privileged ... it must have taken some kind of trust for Leah to have the confidence to say "this is where I live ..." and not be worried about being judged or getting a bad reaction from us.

Also, Leah is a journalist. She understands that things never change unless people are shown the things that need changing. As her bright red Radio Koch T-shirt says:





Since returning home, I have read some articles on the internet by other people who have visited Korogocho. Many of these articles focus on the despair, the filth, the poverty, the City of Nairobi garbage dump that is so close to the slum that it's part of the slum.

I didn't feel this sense of despair, and as I thought about it on the plane (and when I gave myself the space to shed a tear or two), I asked myself why. And I think the reason is that Leah doesn't feel despair. She is a woman who is working to make a difference.

She sings a song, the words of which are "It was not my wish to be born in Korogocho, but God help me to do good while I am here".

She's lived there for all twenty of her young years, but the vision of her life doesn't include living there for the rest of her life. She has a plan .. to go to journalism school and get a job to move her, her mother and her sister out of the slum. I believe she will do it.

That's why I didn't feel hopeless. Though I do feel sadness for the children without adequate health care who are fighting worse germs than any of us ever will. For the friendly boys we met who Leah told us were high on glue ... for the people who don't have the hope they will ever get out of there.

But it's too much to think about all at once. Better to light a candle than to curse the darkness, they say. And Leah is one bright little candle ...

And here's the front side of Leah's T-shirt, and Leah's smiling, beautiful face:

Journal Reflections -- Child's Hope Home Saturday Oct. 6th

The kindergarten class at the Child's Hope Home

Over the next couple of weeks I am going to be posting some of my reflections that I captured in my journal -- this is one of them

I am in a monk's cell of a hotel room in Nakuru, after a long day at a political rally for the president of Kenya. Much more about elections and the electoral process in one of my next journal entries. For now, I'm thinking about the children at the Njaaga's Hope Child Home, an orphanage for 74 children, funded by my Kenyan friends James (Njaaga) and Lucy. I've been spending the last few days there, and it has been truly memorable.

First thing this morning the children knocked on my door. Constantly from 7 am on with letters to bring back to their sponsors back home, and my two nieces Emily and Elizabeth who sent money over to buy the kids some things that they need. I have been reading through the large stack ... they are sweet, sweet, sweet. What is amazing about these kids is that they are happy, well adjusted and don't carry the kinds of scars and wounds that you often see in children who live in poverty and deprivation.

I am sure they have their sadness too, but their joy is there in much greater measure.

Yesterday I went for a walk to gather water with them. What a job! I still can't understand how they can carry 50(!) pounds of water on their heads! Even the little ones have to go fetch water every day. The home has plumbing but no running water yet, so they have to go to the river and haul it up a steep hill. Even the four year olds do their bit. (I am going to suggest to the people here in Canada who are helping the orphanage financially that our next project should be to raise money to dig the well deeper -- there is a 60 foot well but it's not deep enough to get enough water for all these kids. The plumbing is in, but the well needs to go down another 60 feet. It's attainable ... it will only be $1000 to do it).

I've been spending my time at the home recording the children to do a story for the donors back here. I have captured some great stuff -- first of all, the kids are great singers and they sing all the time. One of the songs they sing the most contains the refrain "Happy, happy, we should be happy". This is the theme I want to use as the central theme.

I've been doing a lot of thinking about that statement. They are living in poverty. Their parents have died. A lot of them will be living a life of poverty that their families have lived. So why SHOULD they be happy?

Not a question they ask themselves. Because they ARE happy, though to Western sensibilities there doesn't seem to be much reason. Washing clothes in the pond (and a dirty pond at that). Having to carry 50 pounds of water .. some of them carry two buckets at a time. No toys. Having to wear the same clothes day after day.

For most of us, this would be a recipe for unhappiness.

But they are happy. So maybe these things don't have much to do with human happiness?

I've been thinking a lot about the difference between "want" and "need". When it comes right down to it, we need only four things -- food, shelter, water and love.

Even health care isn't necessary if all the other three are provided. The need for health care mostly stems from a life out of balance. I realize that this is a broad statement, stemming from my current thinking that a) suffering is inevitable and b) life and death should be allowed to take its own course.

There are many yes-buts to this position, which I even argue with myself over .. for example, it may be "natural" for a certain percentage of woment to die in childbirth. but shouldn't we do everything we can to prevent it? Yes. And I'm sure glad I got a typhoid vaccination before I left Canada.

Even a life in perfect balance won't help you if you're bitten by a malaria-carrying mosquito. A life in balance will help you fend it off better, though.

So okay, my list of needs is now up to five -- food, water, shelter, love and health care.

And what about education? Necessary or not? Back before the world intermingled to the extent it does now, people were well served through traditional education, passed on down through the family and the tribe.

I look at the kids at the Hope Home -- some of them will go on to higher education. Others will stay in the village. So what good is a western-style education to people who never leave the village?

Here, my answer to myself is clear. They wouldn't need "education" in the western sense of the word if they were living in closed situations. But they're not. Even if they have no desire to live anywhere else, the rest of the world will come to them. And they'll be exploited just as they have been in the past. Not just by European interests anymore as in colonial times, but by the economic powers of their own central governments and corporations.

If the people in the villages are not educated, they will not be able to deal with incoming change from a position of empowerment. If these children are educated, they will be able to lead their communities from a position of strength. So I hope some of these children stay in their traditional villages. Because their leadership is needed right here.

No more answers this morning, sad to say. Back later with many more questions.


The traditional village of Kirengiro, near the children's home. Most of the children come from this village and would be raised by their grandmothers if they weren't in the home.

Mouseland - A Socialist Parable

(This is a story which was written by the great Tommy Douglas, father of medicare in Canada. Written many years ago but still relevant today. Lots of people know this story .. I post it here for the people who don't know it yet)


This is the story of a place called Mouseland. Mouseland was a place where all the little mice lived and played. Were born and died. And they lived much as you and I do. They even had a parliament. And every four years they had an election. They used to walk to the polls and cast their ballot. Some of them even got a ride to the polls. They got a ride for the next four years afterward too. Just like you and me. And every time on election day, all the little mice used to go to the ballot box and they used to elect a government. A government made up of big black fat cats.

Now if you think it’s strange that mice should elect a government made up of cats. You just look at the history of Canada for the last ninety years and maybe you’ll see they weren’t any stupider than we are.

Now I am not saying anything against the cats. They were nice fellows; they conducted the government with dignity. They passed good laws. That is, laws that were good for cats.

But the laws that were good for cats weren’t very good for mice. One of the laws said that mouse holes had to be big enough so a cat could get his paw in. Another law said that mice could only travel at certain speeds so that a cat could get his breakfast without too much physical effort.

All the laws were good laws for cats. But oh, they were hard on the mice. And life was getting harder and harder. And when the mice couldn’t put up with it anymore they decided something had to be done about it. So they went en masse the polls.

They voted the black cats out. They put in the white cats. The white cats had put up a terrific campaign. They said all that Mouseland needs is more vision. They said the trouble with Mouseland is those round mouse holes we’ve got. If you put us in we’ll establish square mouse holes. And they did. And the square mouse holes were twice as big as the round mouse holes. And now the cat could get both his paws in. And life was tougher than ever.

And when they couldn’t take that anymore they voted the white cats out and put the black ones in again. And then they went back to the white cats, and then to the black, they even tried half black cats and half white cats. And they called that coalition. They even got one government made up with up cats with spots on them. They were cats that tried to make a noise like a mouse but they ate like a cat.

You see my friends the trouble wasn’t with the colour of the cats. The trouble was that they were cats. And because they were cats they naturally look after cats instead of mice.

Presently there came along one little mouse who had an idea. My friends watch out for the little fellow with an idea. He said to the other mice. “Look fellows why do we keep electing a government made up of cats, why don’t we elect a government made up of mice?�? Oh, they said, he’s a Bolshevik. So they put him in jail. But I want to remind you that you can lock up a mouse or a man but you can’t lock up an idea.

- Tommy Douglas, then leader of the NDP

The Future is a Place

(Note: this article was written by my friend Roxanne Amico who is an artist and radio producer living in Buffalo. I was dazzled by this article and asked her if I could post it on my blog. She said yes, and I am happy. The above picture is also by Roxanne and is called "Circle Casting". Links to Roxanne's site are at the end of this post. Enjoy. Be inspired. Be hopeful)

The Future is a Place
By Roxanne Amico

We walked to the playground, from my mother's house, where I go for dinner most Friday nights, to play with my sister's 2 daughters (10 and 5 yrs old) and my mom's dog. The ten year old has mastered everything at the playground with an admirable cockiness, and still challenges herself to step outside her limits. The five year old worships her older sister and wants to do all the older one does. I've been marvelling this spring over how much stronger they are, how much more confident in all the things they do...

The five year old saw what her bigger sister did on the monkey bars--a move that made ME envious--and she wanted to do it. What she can't do alone, I help her with if I can. I couldn't help her this time. I had to say no. I hate that. So does she. She stomped away, her hair flying behind her like a kite with the words ":F-You" written on it... I know how she felt--I knew that if I were bigger or stronger, I could have helped her. I walked slowly behind her to her pouting spot and told her that it was only because I didn't want her getting hurt by doing something I couldn't help her do. "It's not fair! Why can't I do ANYthing?" I told her how much she does this year that she couldn't do last year, when she was four. I knew that would have some meaning, because she makes it clear on a regular basis how proud she is to have arrived at five years old. I called her older sister over to help remind her of the strides she's made in one year. She wanted to do that monkey bar thing though and pressed her case. I said, "You will." She said, "When?"

I said what I knew to be the most irrelevant answer I could give a five year old child, knowing both before, during, and after saying it that it was inane: "In the future."

It was inane because ultimately time means at once everything and nothing to a five year old. "Five years old" is just "more than four", and therefore "better", in many respects because she feels progressively more privileged "now" than "before". It means this thing that means so much more to everyone else --older and bigger--around her, and therefore becomes something she wants desperately to understand, as if it were the secret to the universe. Her mother and I laughed about this recently, because she's been asking, "What time is it?" a lot lately, (..."Why--You got a date?"...), just as she's been talking about death and age. The future is nothing, does not exist, and I know this, yet to say, "In the future" was all I could think to say, while all the while I thought about the problems with this answer, the things I did not say to her, about how I hate this answer I am about to give her... I hate it because I hate this culture that teaches children to become adults who sell their lives to the clock and wallet; because I loathe the fact that she is growing up in a culture that is obsessed with pretending death won't happen, and therefore lives insanely as if the future is the only thing, a culture then unwittingly enslaved to the future as death, disguised as eternal youth, which is actually eternal ignorance, and amounts to acute lack of responsibility for the lives of others in other cultures who die at the hands of this foolishness--others who cannot--don't have the luxury to-- forget about their impending death, too often imposed by this culture...

...I feel rage rise in my chest, right next to the grief that I've got a niece who is 5, one who is 10, one who is 13, and another who is 16, knowing as I do that the future is grim because:

* if the bee population collapses which it is, humanity has 4-5 yrs to survive;
* if the climate change reports are accurate … we have maybe 20 yrs before it's too late to do anything to stop the worst of the consequences of climate change ...
* because I know that another 570+ species go extinct every day, huge areas of the planets forests are felled and cleared every day, more topsoil is removed, deserts keep expanding, oceans keep dying, Greenland and all places ice are melting at a much faster rate;
* because we act like the economy is ok because it hasn't hit "us" yet, but we're just plain wrong and to say otherwise is like talking a language no one can translate. And there are good reasons it SHOULDN'T continue as it is, and in the middle of ALL of the above, people still think we will find a technological silver bullet fix for the energy crisis we are now immersed in ----
* AND-this culture keeps pretending that to look closely at these facts is to invite depression, rather than it being an act of reason to look at the facts and recognize WE -CANNOT-GO-ON-LIKE-THIS YET-WE-CONTINUE-TO-ACT-LIKE-WE-CAN....

And when a 5 yr old asks me one 'simple' question, I think of the rest of her life in these conditions, because I love her, and because I know how much she loves to be alive. (And because I know she won't go all ga-ga about how fast and high that dow jones is climbing--whoop-de-effing do--Aren't we all doing so wonderfully???? I know she won't say something even more inane like, "hey--but we can always try wind/solar-power, while all the while ignoring all these other factors, and forgetting that even these "low tech" solutions rely on PETROLEUM )

Now before I get any emails telling me everything is ok, or checking in on my state of mental health, I'll just say right now I am not "Depressed". This time is one of the happiest, most satisfying and exciting times of my life. What I despise is this culture, not people, not reality, not everything. I can't stand that to merely look at and raise the topic of the danger we are in brings people to blind fear, rather than awakened agency, but I keep looking for a way...

And I think that until we truly see and feel and grasp the deeply disturbing reality, we cannot truly do anything effective about it.

I passionately believe it's entirely possible to love life, love the people I know and many I don't know, love the planet and all living things, past, present, and future. And at the same time to have deep contempt for that which threatens all I love--that which is within my agency to oppose, that which is, as my niece calls it, "Not fair." When I say I hate this culture, I mean the petri dish we're all in, festering away in the disease that's killing the planet, (and there's simply no positive way to put that one anymore), and I don't mean culture in the classic (and elitist) sense of the term. This, of course, is what makes me the artist I am: Because I love, and because I hate, and because the future is not enough, so that what my life is about is shaping a sustainable culture, and because I know in my heart that the only answer really is the present, [even if, at the same time, I know the future I am working for is far too much in the future than I can describe to a five year old] as does the five year old know so dearly about the present...

...As this avalanche of thought crashed through my mind, fully expecting a rumble from my niece in response to my simplistic "in the future" claim, she didn't skip a beat: She sort of growled, and sneered, and with her fingers extended in her own gesticulated passion, sort of like a cat's untrimmed toe-nails, she said loudly,

"the future is just this boring place where they let you do everything and you can't have any fun!!!"

This took my breath away. Knowing I wouldn't remember this exact thing later, I grabbed my pen and paper I always keep in my pocket I don't always have and said, "Hannah--Wait!! Before you say another thing--THAT is one of the coolest things anyone has ever said to me--Can I write it down?"

She said, "Now this is fun. I like this writing things down when I say them--let's do more of that..."



(to hear Roxanne's radio show, go here
To see more of Roxanne's work, go to her online studio here
Her myspace site is http://www.myspace.com/radioroxanne)

In the Middle of Nowhere

Sometimes I google a phrase and see what comes up. Today I googled the phrase "staying with pain" .. tough day today. And I landed upon a page called Electronic Iraq and I found these words by the late Tom Fox, one of the men from the Christian Peacekeeping Team who was imprisoned along with Jim Loney and Harmeet Singh .. they were freed but Tom Fox didn't make it out.

There are a lot of brave words here, and also words which express the difficulties of peacemaking work. Amazing words from an amazing man ...

"The ability to feel the pain of another human being is central to any kind of peacemaking work. But this compassion is fraught with peril. A person can experience a feeling of being overwhelmed. Or a feeling of rage and desire for revenge. Or a desire to move away from the pain. Or a sense of numbness that can deaden the ability to feel anything at all.

"How do I stay with the pain and suffering and not be overwhelmed? How do I resist the welling up of rage towards the perpetrators of violence? How do I keep from disconnecting from or becoming numb to the pain?

"After eight months with CPT, I am no clearer than I when I began. In fact I have to struggle harder and harder each day against my desire to move away or become numb. Simply staying with the pain of others doesn't seem to create any healing or transformation. Yet there seems to be no other first step into the realm of compassion than to not step away."

Here, Fox quotes Buddhist teacher Pema Chodron, from her book The Places that Scare You: "Becoming intimate with the queasy feeling of being in the middle of nowhere makes our hearts more tender. When we are brave enough to stay in the nowhere place then compassion arises spontaneously."

Fox adds: "Being in the middle of nowhere really does create a very queasy feeling and yet so many spiritual teachers say it is the only authentic place to be. Not staking out any ground for myself creates the possibility of standing with anyone. The middle of nowhere is the one place where compassion can be discovered. The constant challenge is recognizing that my true country of origin is the middle of nowhere."

Hope that helps when you're wonder if you're standing in the middle of nowhere. Helps me. my struggle is small compared to his was, yet his words resonate ... which means his words still live and have power.

Of Coffee and Compromises

Breakfast at Au Grand Bois 

Further to my post yesterday about the beauties of Au Grand Bois, here is another favourite story of mine. (By the way, the picture above is Doug, Darren and Lorne waiting for their morning coffee)

Arleen and Lenny, who are the stewards ("owners", for those of you who prefer the more familiar Western capitalistic jargon) of Au Grand Bois, came to me with a really funny dilemma after we'd all been camping there for a day. The problem was coffee. Serious problem.

Arleen and Lenny are not coffee drinkers. Arleen had made the choice to go with Fair Trade coffee. I drink fair trade coffee almost all the time myself, so this was a decision I supported wholeheartedly (wish Tim Hortons would pay more attention to this issue).

So, about a day into our week, Arleen was running out of coffee. She was absolutely astounded at the amount of coffee we were going through. Not only that, the amount of talk about coffee was something else she had never experienced.

So, what to do .. she had only budgeted for two cups a day per person. No, no, no, this would not do ... these are media people .. and one thing you don't do is limit the supply of coffee to a media person. I mean, how are we going to meet deadline? And even out here in the bush, we had deadlines to meet.

Arleen's first choice was to have me encourage all of us to drink less coffee. Not just for economic reasons, but because she sincerely believes that caffeine is an addiction that we can all kick with a little loving encouragement. Not gonna happen, Arleen. They'll shoot me at dawn. After they've had their coffee, that is.

Or she could buy more Fair Trade coffee and send the bill to us. But I was the organizer and budget-keeper, so I made the typical decision which is made in the hard-hearted North American economy. No extra financial cost.

My compromise -- we will stay in integrity for the morning, I told Arleen, and drink Fair Trade Coffee. I would go out and buy the ethically-compromised coffee for the afternoon. At least we can start the day with a sincere effort to support the impoverished coffee growers of the world.

I reassured her that I would take full moral responsibility for the decision. So to mitigate my on-going guilt about my decision having possibly harmed the Workers of the World, here's a word to all of you -- think of the farmers who grow your coffee. Buy Fair Trade.

And it has the added benefit of being shade-grown, which means they aren't clear cutting the forest to build mono-cropped plantations of coffee plants (trees? Can't remember if coffee is a tree or a shrub). And it's organically grown, so no nasty chemicals. And just about all the Fair Trade coffee I've had has been wonderfully good.

Yes, better than Tim Horton's. Even if it doesn't come with a Roll Up the Rim cup. That new car would just cause more pollution anyway. (note to my puzzled American friends -- you gotta be Canadian to understand that reference).

Nationalize the Buggers!

I haven't done a political rant in a long time. So please indulge me.

I've been looking at my various options, figuring out where I want to live for the next little while. Still want to go to Nova Scotia and live a life of rural bliss. I may end up in the city, which I'm not totally adverse to as long as it's a liveable city. Rural Nova Scotia would be my first choice.

Here's the obstacle -- I schmucked my car in December. My fault, I admit it. But nobody was hurt (except the insurance company's bottom line, that is) The other woman's car only had a paint smear on her pretty white SUV. My passenger doors got punched in (the picture in on a previous blog entry here). They wrote me a cheque and said "your first accident won't have that big an effect".

Well, I'm not so sure. My own insurance company isn't even getting back to me. And on-line quotes are ranging anywhere from $2200 a year to $5700.

Well, I will be damned if I am going to allow myself to be held hostage to these thieves. One accident. And not even a big one. Come on.

On the other hand, this hands me an opportunity to put into practice one of my beliefs -- that if more people found alternative ways of living, like going car-free, we would have a cleaner, more sustainable environment. And a car is also a very expensive habit, both in terms of money and our health (so much healthier to be biking and walking)

And if more of us said "No, that's fuck YOU" to our insurance companies and said, hey, we can live without you, maybe they couldn't continue these extortionate rates.

Well, that felt better. I'm now going to walk the dog .. it's a beautiful day. And then I'm going to call my MPP to ask "hey, time to put public auto insurance back on the table".. (no high hopes here .. my MPP is an NDP, but the NDP did wuss out on public insurance when they were in government, so ...) But at the very least, taking political action does make me feel less powerless.

oh, ya, another thing. The accident will come off my record in ten years. But then they'll continue to be able to charge exhorbitant rates because I haven't had insurance for ten years. Under the current system I can see no immediate way to win this one. So I'm going to have to look long term and do some political action if I want to see any changes.

The Language of Aggression

Oh no. I'm a warmonger.

After my last post about militarism and peaceful protest, this is a really ironic thing that I'm writing about.

For the past few weeks I have often caught myself using militaristic language. When I'm in a situation requiring me to be large and in charge, my language changes. Examples of recent turns of phrase that I've used -- "I'll just blow it out of the water", "subtle as a hand grenade", "pinging off problems one by one like ducks in a shooting gallery".

Hardly peacemaking and gentle words. I am trying to notice when I do this because it does reflect when I'm preparing to go to battle over something. They're very little battles, mind you. But my language shows when I am in a "power over" , rather than a "power with" mindset (these are phrases used by Starhawk , who is a really wonderful witch (pardon me, that's "Wiccan") from California who does really great social change work)

Fascinating. Good example of personal change through linguistic awareness. Goes to show how our mind affects our words and our words affect our mind ..

Why I'm Holding an Anti-War Sign

What good does it do? 


I went to a vigil a couple of nights ago. That's the soft word for a protest.

I don't do this an awful lot. My last public demonstration was in the volatile days of the Mike Harris Reformatories. (The Hamilton Protest was amazing .. the best in the province).

Partly my participation was about the need to do something, anything .. because the road ahead looked very scary (it was). And I had also hoped that large numbers of people would send a message that the the government had to listen to. (They didn't -- they just dismissed us as saying we were all little bad union members who were the puppets of our big bad union bosses.)

So, okay, back to Friday night and the picture above. And what were we protesting. Or vigilling. What we were doing. I didn't know. There was a military conference happening inside the Windsor Armouries. So we were there.

Now, I'm not usually a fuzzy thinker about these things and there I was anyway. Even though I wasn't clear on the agenda -- was it an anti-war conference? Or one of those funny ones where everybody says they're against war but then start talking about how we can stop war by giving more money to our armed forces and finally buy those new helicopters or whatever the army wants today ...

I didn't know. And I didn't spend the time to find out. Because, in the end, it wasn't about the conference and its agenda. It's about our agenda. And I think the the reasons why I went say a lot about my beliefs about why we go to demonstrations, and their value.

See, what happened was this -- Ann, a friend who organized the vigil, felt really strongly that there needed to be a presence at this event. She was getting a really lukewarm reception from others and whether or not we should be there. The reason why I went was because the thought of her standing outside in the snow, one person with a picket sign was brave. And committed. (And kinda sad too). So I went to stand with her.

I needn't have worried -- twelve other people came through. Maybe because they (unlike me) understood the agenda of the conference and felt the need to be there. or maybe, like me, they were there to support Ann. Or both.

I don't think it matters. Do the people we are trying to reach really care that we are standing out there with our "no war" signs and candles? Probably not. What protesting, or vigilling, or demonstrating, or whatever you want to call it, does is give us space to be with each other. And to support each other in the struggle.

Maybe we are just small voices calling out in the wilderness. But remember -- it's an old premise of the social empowerment movement that our voices get stronger when we put them all together. And being with people working together for a common goal helps make it easier when we get up in the morning all by ourselves and work yet another day for the good of the world and its inhabitants. The people around us who support us make it possible for us to keep on going, especially when we are tempted to say what the point?

So that's why I was carrying an anti-war sign. Even if I wasn't clear about what was going on at the conference itself.

(By the way, the picture above is me, and my friends Shawn Hupka and Mary Atkinson.)

Happy Valentine's Day everybody -- for those of you without sweeties out there, your best sweetie is yourself anyway. Go buy yourself some chocolates. Or whatever you want to do to show yourself how much in love you are with the person you are.