Canadian Humour

A friend of mine in the States sent this to me. It was fun to be able to tell her I've flown with Westjet, and yes, the quotes are probably accurate.

FWD: You've got to love the Canadian sense of humor.

West Jet is an Airline with head office situated in Calgary, Alberta.
West Jet airline attendants make an effort to make the in-flight "safety
lecture" and announcements a bit more entertaining.

Here are some real examples that have been heard or reported:
On a West Jet flight there is no assigned seating, you just sit where
you want. Passengers were apparently having a hard time choosing, when a
flight attendant announced, "People, people we're not picking out
furniture here, find a seat and get in it!"
___________________________________

On another West Jet Flight with a very "senior" flight attendant crew,
the pilot said, "Ladies and gentlemen, we've reached cruising altitude and
will be turning down the cabin lights. This is for your comfort and to
enhance the appearance of your flight attendants."
____________________________________
On landing, the stewardess said, "Please be sure to take all of your
belongings. If you're going to leave anything, please make sure it's
something we'd like to have."
____________________________________
"There may be 50 ways to leave your lover, but there are only 4 ways out
of this airplane."

-----------------------
"Thank you for flying West Jet Express. We hope you enjoyed giving us
the business as much as we enjoyed taking you for a ride."
---------------------------

As the plane landed and was coming to a stop at the Vancouver
airport, a lone voice came over the loudspeaker: "Whoa, big fella. WHOA!"
-------------------------

After a particularly rough landing during thunderstorms in Ontario, a
flight attendant on a West Jet flight announced, "Please take care when
opening the overhead compartments because, after a landing like that,
sure as hell everything has shifted."
-----------------------

From a West Jet Airlines employee: "Welcome aboard West Jet Flight 245
to Calgary. To operate your seat belt, insert the metal tab into the
buckle, and pull tight. It works just like every other seat belt; and, if you
don't know how to operate one, you probably shouldn't be out in public unsupervised."
-- -------------------

"In the event of a sudden loss of cabin pressure, masks will descend
from the ceiling, stop screaming, grab the mask, and pull it over your face.
If you have a small child traveling with you, secure your mask before
assisting with theirs. If you are traveling with more than one small child, pick your favorite."
-----------------------

"Weather at our destination is 50 degrees with some broken clouds, but
we'll try to have them fixed before we arrive. Thank you, and remember,
nobody loves you, or your money, more than West Jet Airlines."
------------------------

"Your seat cushions can be used for flotation; and in the event of an
emergency water landing, please paddle to shore and take them with our compliments."
-----------------------

"As you exit the plane, make sure to gather all of your belongings.
Anything lef t behind will be distributed evenly among the flight
attendants. Please do not leave children or spouses."
---------------------------

And from the pilot during his welcome message: "West Jet Airlines is
pleased to announce that we have some of the best flight attendants in
the industry. Unfortunately, none of them are on this flight!"
-----------------------------

Heard on West Jet Airlines just after a very hard landing in Edmonton;
The flight attendant came on the intercom and said, "That was quite a
bump, and I know what y'all are thinking. I'm here to tell you it wasn't
the airline's fault, it wasn't the pilot's fault, it wasn't the flight
attendant's fault, it was the asphalt."

------------------------------
Overheard on a West Jet Airlines flight into Regina on a particularly
windy and bumpy day: During the final approach, the Captain was
really having to fight it. After an extremely hard landing, the Flight
Attendant said, "Ladies and Gentlemen, welcome to Regina. Please remain
in your seats with your seat belts fastened while the Captain taxis what's
left of our airplane to the gate!"

------------------------------
Another flight attendant's comment on a less than perfect landing: "We
ask you to please remain seated as Captain Kangaroo bounces us to the
terminal."

---------------------
An airline pilot wrote that on this particular flight he had hammered
his ship into the runway really hard. The airline had a policy which
required the first officer to stand at the door while the Passengers exited,
smile, and give them a "Thanks for flying our airline."
He said that, in light of his bad landing, he had a hard time looking
the passengers in the eye, thinking that someone would have a smart comment.
Finally everyone had gotten off except for a little old lady walking
with a cane. She said, "Sir, do you mind if I ask you a question?"
"Why, no, Ma'am," said the pilot. "What is it?"
The little old lady said, "Did we land, or were we shot down?"
-------------------

After a real crusher of a landing in Halifax, the attendant
came on with, "Ladies and Gentlemen, please remain in your seats until
Captain Crash and the Crew have brought the aircraft to a screeching
halt against the gate. And, once the tire smoke has cleared and the warning
bells are silenced, we will open the door and you can pick your way
through the wreckage to the terminal."

-----------------------
Part of a flight attendant's arrival announcement: "We'd like to thank
you folks for flying with us today. And, the next time you get the
insane urge to go blasting through the skies in a pressurized metal tube, we
hope you'll think of West Jet Airways."

-----------------------
Heard on a West Jet Airline flight. "Ladies and gentlemen, if you wish
to smoke, the smoking section on this airplane is on the wing. If you can
light 'em, you can smoke 'em."

-----------------------
A plane was taking off from the Winnipeg airport. After it reached a
comfortable cruising altitude, the captain made an announcement over the
intercom, "Ladies and gentlemen, this is your captain speaking. Welcome
to Flight Number 293, nonstop from Winnipeg to Montreal. The weather ahead
is good and, therefore, we should ha have a smooth and uneventful flight.
Now sit back and relax.. OH, MY GOD!"

Silence followed, and after a few minutes, the captain came back on
the intercom and said, "Ladies and Gentlemen, I am so sorry if I
scared you earlier. While I was talking to you, the flight attendant
accidentally spilled a cup of hot coffee in my lap. You should see the
front of my pants!" A passenger in Coach yelled, "That's nothing. You
should see the back of mine!"

Another favourite picture

In the final stages of winter (supposed to be spring, but it's still snowing), it's so nice to go back to my India/Nepal/Sri Lanka pictures and feel the warmth.

Different pictures jump out at me at different times. I have just rediscovered this one. I was at the Elephant Orphanage in Sri Lanka and a group of school kids asked if they could take my picture with them. So then I asked one of them to take a picture with my camera. And I just love the way it turned out.

Good Work, Mom and Dad!

Today is my parents 52nd anniversary. April 9, 1955 was the day. The place was Ruscom United Church, in a small village (hamlet, really) about 40 kilometers from Windsor. A farming community populated by people who were mostly all related to each other (by marriage, not all by blood). My mom and dad lived only a couple of kilometers from each other but somehow didn't get to know each other until they were teenagers. They met detassling corn, and their first date was at the stock car races.

For fifty two years they've kept it together. Pretty amazing from my vantage point ... I am in the final stages of ending mine after 21 years. I can remember times which were tense, especially when we were teenagers. But they're still together.

And I'm glad. I wouldn't have wanted them to stay together "for the kids" if they weren't happy. But I don't think they stayed together just for us. They did it for them. Which is the way it should be.

Hope you have lots and lots more anniversaries, Mom and Dad.

Love from your five girls,
Marianne, Dianne, Victoria, Lori and Cindy
and your two little girls .. Elizabeth and Emily

(PS - The other people in the picture are my sisters Marianne and Dianne, and my brother in law George. I guess you can tell who my mom and dad are ... this picture was taken on Christmas Day 2006)

Remember This

This from my wonderful friend Angelyn Debord in the mountains of Virginia:

Speak the following lines out loud:

I love everything about me
I love my uncanny beauty and my bewildering pain
I love my hungry soul and my wounded longing
I love my flaws, my fears, and my scary frontiers

I will never forsake, betray, or deceive myself
I will always adore, forgive, and believe in myself
I will never refuse, abandon, or scorn myself
I will always amuse, delight, and redeem myself

Opting back in

Well, I am becoming a member of North American (read:consumer) society again. I now have my own apartment (haven’t moved in yet but that will happen next Monday), I am now typing this as I wait for Cogeco Cable to go through their exceedingly long voicemail message that explains that I am liable for everything and they are liable for nothing. I cannot get exit this message because if I hang up they will not hook up my cable and internet, which makes the fifteen minutes I’ve already been on the phone signing up rather pointless. It is very, very, very boring. So I am updating my blog at the same time.

Living by society’s rules is really complicated. It has been much easier with no home and wandering around from place to place with no bills but my Visa card to pay so that I can do more travelling. I like being a gypsy. I am going to miss it.

Fuck … this message isn’t over yet … pardon my profanity. I don’t like businesses which waste my time like this. I don’t need them to read a whole contract to me OVER THE PHONE!

So I’ve put down the phone and let the recorded message blather on.

Even though I’ve opted back in, I’m still undecided about how much to do it Okay, an apartment for now is the way to go. For now. Until I can establish an intentional community with likeminded people. It will happen but it's a few years off. And I don't know where it's going to be yet. And I have to have communications services. I will have to do that even in my intentional community Shangr-la. Some things are inevitable. But I don’t have to shop at Walmart or at the mall. I don’t have to buy into consumerism to the degree that I used to think I had to.

I’m thinking that I want to buy little, and bank my money for travelling. Forget RRSP’s – at my age it’s not going to do me much good. I was listening to one financial advisor on the radio who pointed out that in order for most Canadians to live the Freedom 55 lifestyle, they’d need at least half a million dollars in RRSPs when they retire. And the average Canadian RRSP savings is $40,000. I think I’m just going to have to take my chances and trust grace and luck to get me through my old age. And thank god people in Ontario don’t have to retire at 65 because I’ll be working until I drop dead.

Update -- Fifteen minutes later. The annoying dial-a-contract message is STILL going. So I hung up. Wonder if they'll tell me I can't have cable now. My god, read me House of Commons proceedings instead. It would be a lot more interesting compared to this. Hope this telecontract thing doesn’t become a trend. If the pollution and wars don’t get us, these big corporations are going to bore us to death.

Tonight’s contacts with the big wide world of North American commerce has reaffirmed something that I already knew … that I don’t want to deal with big corporations any more and will do business with ordinary people except in cases where I can’t avoid it.

(I am unusually crabby today … probably because I woke up annoyed because my body was telling me it was 8:00 and the clock said it was already 9. I'm also bitchy because somebody decided to make daylight savings time happen 3 weeks early. Daylight savings time is not supposed to start when the snow is still on the ground. It ain't natural)

I really must be careful …. this last 18 months has been a welcome holiday from frustration and cynicism. The challenge is to maintain that spirit … and to discover how I can opt out spiritually while opting in to those things that I need – like services of big companies that do phones, internet and rent apartments. And to enjoy the good things about Western society without letting the not-so-good things drag me down.

It's truly a spiritual challenge, it is.

Media with a Forgiving Mind ..

I have referred several times in this blog about the Dart Center for Journalism and Trauma. That's because it's an amazing collection of stuff about dealing with the emotional content of our work, both in terms of the people we write about and also ourselves.

There is an article I found that is especially resonant with me. It's all about Trauma and Forgiveness, written by BBC Reporter Jennifer Glasse after a workshop on trauma and forgiveness, done by Robin Shohet and Ben Fuchs of the Findhorn Foundation (which is a website you should also check out).

Ms. Glasse starts out being skeptical, but then starts to challenge her own definition of forgiveness. And she made some really good discoveries about herself and her profession.

Well worth a look.

A Splash of Colour

Oh, this page of my blog is looking way too grey .. such is February in Canada. So here's another view ... the Malabar coast on the west side of India with waves rolling in from Africa. It would be nice to be there today, sitting in the sun and looking up at the tall, tall coconut trees.

The History of Podsafe Music

I am finishing my doc about Indian community radio and have a few segments that are naked of background sound. So I did a search for Indian Podsafe Music. Didn't find much except for one enterprising rock band named Parlay who are everywhere in Google search land.

I did find a reallllllly funny site that you have to see called The History of Podsafe Music

This is the comment which instigated the item coming up in Google:



"The first evidence of podsafe music was discovered in this cave drawing in central India. It depicts the mirth and disdain of the fertility goddess after attending a show by an unsigned band. Squirting milk from her breasts was not only a prehistoric version of throwing a tomato, but also indicated the band members' inability to get women."

Click on the site to get the full effect. And the other four significant eras of podcast history.

Going Home to Hamilton

I'm slowly making my way back to Hamilton. It's taken me a long time to figure out where I wanted to be. Last year at this time, I figured I was gone for good. I'm in Toronto right now but watching the apartment ads every day to find a place to call home.

Most of my friends are supportive of my decision to go back, and a couple of them are not. The ones who aren't are former Hamiltonians themselves who have left and I guess didn't have that great an experience when they were there.

That's not me, though. I love Hamilton. When I first moved there is 1992 to work at CFMU (McMaster University's radio station), no less than 6 people in the first week called me and said "hi, remember me?" They were all people who I had known in other cities. And I have always found it so easy to make friends in Hamilton. Something about the city .... I just like being there.

It's also about the character of the town. There are ghosts, there is mafia and biker gangs. There are people with PhD's and salt of the earth folks who are good people who just want to make a little bit of difference in the world.

Hamilton's different from Toronto, Vancouver and Ottawa. Because there's no real upper crust in Hamilton (well, okay, now that Ancaster is part of Hamilton, there are a few people who think they're upper crust. But that doesn't go very far downtown.

In terms of the work I do, it's a great city. Cities that don't see the need to change don't have much use for social change work. In Hamilton, everybody knows that a lot has to change. And while some would look at the problems of poverty as an insurmountable problem, I see it as an indication that there is so much useful work that can be done here.

Not that there isn't work to be done in every city ... but it is harder to do social change work in cities that don't want to face the idea that changes are needed. The prettier and richer the city, I find, the harder it is for the people who live there to look beyond the facade. In Hamilton, a lot of people are open to new ideas. Not everybody of course, but we voted him out last time around.

So I am going back to the city with more waterfalls than anywhere else in North America. And more pitbulls than any other city in North America. And a beautiful harbour. And steel mills that are both scary and beautiful at the same time.

I think that's a good way to describe Hamilton ... scary and beautiful at the same time. And real down to earth and a great place to live.

Documentary Poetry

I have been looking for a while for a term that describes the kind of poetry I do .. whereby I combine subjective writing with sounds gathered from the real world. The term I came up with was "documentary poetry" ... and to see if anybody else thought of this genre, I turned to my good friend Google.

I was really excited to find out that it is a term used (and perhaps invented) by Canadian poet Dorothy Livesay. I'm glad to see my work fits into some kind of historical context, and I am also really happy that a poet who I admire and respect and I have something in common. I think we have a lot in common, actually, since she writes from her roots as an activist.

This from the Athabasca University website:

"She offered a theory that Canadian literature favoured a mode she called “documentary poetry,” long narrative poems that comment on particular social topics and that “are a conscious attempt to create a dialectic between the objective facts and the subjective feelings of the poet” (“The Documentary Poem: A Canadian Genre,” 267). Call My People Home (1950)--about the mistreatment of Japanese Canadians during the Second World War--and The Documentaries (1968) are examples of her own work in this genre. In the same vein, Right Hand Left Hand (1977), her remarkable autobiography about her life of activism in the 1930s, combines retrospective commentary with period photographs, newspaper articles, poetry, drama, and unedited letters that emphasizes the integration of the individual history with social history. She also believed in the close affinity between poetry and music. ( Vivian Zenari )

"A Model Wife and Mother"

I love this statue.

I'm sure you all know who this is. If not, let me give you a clue ... one of the reasons why I love this statue is because of her name. When I was in India, a number of people said to me "oh, Victoria, you have a very important name". And yes, I guess it is. After all, she was the first and only Empress of India.

The most amazing thing about this statue to me is the inscription:

VICTORIA
QUEEN AND EMPRESS
A MODEL WIFE AND MOTHER

It was dedicated to the Queen by the women of Hamilton in the early part of the century.

Queen and Empress --- yes.

But ... a model wife and mother ????

I guess it depends which model you're looking at. Model wife she was. She loved Prince Albert. In every sense of the word. Prince Albert, despite being regarded as her social inferior, was her closest advisor. When he died, she went into mourning and wore black for the rest of her life. By all reports, she was a woman deeply in love and a woman who deeply loved.

As far as the Model Mother part ... by all reports, that's stretching it quite a bit. She was the mother of nine children, but allegedly thought the act of childbirth and all things associated with it to be deeply disgusting. And she once referred to babies as being ungainly as little frogs. Deeply maternal she was not. Allegedly, anyway.

All that aside, what I find ironic about this statue is the juxtaposition of those words, Empress, Queen, Wife, Mother. It makes me wonder what statement was being made about ideal womanhood. Was it not enough to be Queen and Empress?

Or maybe it was an attempt to humanize her and minimize the distance between her and her loyal subjects in Hamilton?

Well, without reading too deeply into it, the statue just plain makes me smile. Partly because of the absurdity of it, partly because it's so damn dramatic ... I wouldn't describe her face as severe, but she is not a woman to be trifled with. "Mom" is not the word which comes to mind when gazing upward at this woman with sceptre in hand and a lion guarding her feet.

I like it because it's a great piece of art, a great piece of history. With a really great name.

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.

Berlin, are you there .. Prague .. come in ...

I spent the afternoon today in a radio studio celebrating Art's Birthday. Art who? ART. With a capital A. As in AHHT ... dahling.

My job was to search the internet and pull audio clips from all the Art's Birthday celebrations from around the world. Which would mean mostly Canada and Europe. Japan had a live netcast too, but their day was all finished by the time we got to the station. That international date line thing, you know.

I did a lot of listening today and a lot of surfing too. The best thing about it was that this was the first time I've used internet broadcasts as a programming tool. And I learned a lot.

First of all, you have to get up early in the morning to grab your material because by the time the afternoon rolls around, the net gets very congested and slow. And some streams don't even appear at all ... we techologically based artists are pretty good at this stuff but we're not infallible. I never could get Prague to come in.

And speaking of Prague, I sure wish those Czechs would put the little loudspeaker symbol on their web page so I don't have to figure out what the word "Listen" is in Czech. Some of these web masters make it awfully hard to figure things out. Respect the conventions of UWL, (Universal Web Language), folks.

I also realized that you don't ever plan a whole afternoon on live netcasts. Or, if you do, you always have a good backup plan in case Prague doesn't show up for your party either.

The other things I learned were about Art himself (who decided that Art was a guy, anyway?) After listening to a whole bunch of artists paying homage to their master, I have come up with the conclusion that Art is a pretty cool guy. Damn cold, as a matter of fact (actually, it's a matter of perception, not fact).

Art is a real machine these days. All those computer generated sounds. Beeps, squawks, machine sounds. So I have to ask, where is the humanity in all the beep squawking that is going in galleries these days? Where are the human voices? Where are the real world sounds? Where is the stuff that stirs the soul?

I enjoyed the workout that the left side of my brain got today, though. I'll visit my right brain again tomorrow and be glad that for me, Art's a whole lot softer than all that.

If you want to listen to some Art's Birthday celebrations yourself, click here.

P.S. the guy with the cake above is Pierre Filliou, the guy who decided over a hundred years ago that Art's Birthday should be celebrated. He was French. You probably figured that out ....

So Long, Catfish John

I just got the very sad news that Catfish John, co-host of the Sunnyside Up Gospel Hour at WMMT is no longer with us.

The news was emailed to me via L'il Willard of the Bluegrass Express Show, also from WMMT. I met Catfish Jean and Catfish John when Barry and I were living down in Kentucky. Barry was managing the radio station, I was taking a break from working and learning about the things I missed while I was working.

WMMT had a rule ... you could sing about God, but no preachin' and no prayin'. The Catfishes walked that line really closely. Devout Christians themselves, but they appreciated the station and its rules. And in all of the time I've talked to them, not once did they say anything that expressed anything other than love and respect for other people. Truly a model that other Christians would do well to follow.

One especially memorable day, we went to the home of two WMMT folks who could no longer do a show. Mallie and Levie Gross were their names. So they did their weekly radio program of gospel tunes with a guitar, a voice and a really tinny Sears tape recorder and microphone that no broadcast professional would ever let near a radio station. They did their show anyway and it was broadcast, every week. And what it lacked in depth of sound, they made up for in depth of spirit. We went up to Levi and Mallie's house, along with Catfish Jean and Catfish John, who played in the ensemble on his slide dobro. He was a hell of a (whoops ... I meant "heck of a") good musician.

I'm glad I still have the recording that I made of that day, and I will listen to it and think of Catfish John. I am sure Catfish Jean's heart is really breakin' right now. But her faith is so strong that I don't believe she doubts for a minute that there is a heaven, and that Catfish John will be waiting for her when she gets there.

Reminds me of a song I learned when I was in Appalachia:

"I'll be waiting on the far side banks of Jordan
I'll be waiting drawing pictures in the sand
And when I see you coming I will rise up with a shout
And I'll come running through the shallow waters reaching for your hand".

Alive and Well in Cabbagetown

I know. I've been neglecting my blog. So have you .. not a comment from anybody in over a month. (bitch, bitch, bitch) Guess I have to go to Antarctica to get your attention.

I am nicely settling for five weeks at a generous friend's home in Cabbagetown. I am housesitting while she is away. For those of you not familiar with Toronto, Centre of the Universe, Cabbagetown is in the centre of Toronto, not far from Yonge Street, the longest street in the world (Toronto claims that Yonge Street goes all the way up to Timmins or something like that. Which is stretching it, but Toronto and Texas have a lot in common because both places are really invested in the suffix "est" .. as in biggest, longest, smartest (okay, so Texas doesn't usually claim that one).

I like Toronto. And I don't like Toronto. Just like all the other Canadians, I have an ambivalent relationship with Hogtown (Hogtown is the alternate name for the city. Cabbagetown is a neighbourhood within Hogtown). Named because it used to be the hog slaughtering capital of Ontario. And because the people in my neighbourhood were so poor they had to eat cabbages.

I like the neighbourhood. It's a place where gentrification started to take hold about 20 years ago and then slowed down. Can't say it stopped entirely, but it's a mixed neighbourhood which has both very affluent people and also the Regent Park Community Housing Neighbourhood (aka The Projects). It's a neighbourhood where the day old vegetables don't stay on the clear out rack for long in the No Frills Grocery store, which is three doors down from the shop with the high end expensive cheeses.

Much to my surprise, this area has also become a big area in Toronto for Tamil settlement. When I was in Sri Lanka, I heard a lot about the conflict and life in Sri Lanka from the Sinhalese point of view. But I never heard much from Tamils. Likely because I was mostly in Colombo, which is a different part of the country than the area where Tamils live. I went for a walk and discovered a Sri Lankan restaurant which I must check out. And an Indian/Sri Lankan grocery store with a friendly man named Mahindra behind the counter. I told him I'd like to come back and talk to him about what life is like for Tamils in his home country.

I haven't lived in Toronto since 1990, so this is a really great opportunity to take advantage of what the city has to offer. Which is a lot. Come mid-February, I will be back to my old haunts in Hamilton where gentrification is moving even more slowly than here.

Looking forward to it. And in the meantime, really enjoying being here too. There is so much to explore no matter where you are. There is no excuse to be bored in this amazing place called Earth .. no matter which part of it you find yourself in.

Write to me! All this solitude can be too much of a good thing.

Update

Okay, so I'm starting to get "where are you NOW?" messages. So this is a very practical post just for those who want to know and who can't keep track of me (I even have a hard time keeping track of where I am).

Right now I am in Burlington, heading to my parents' place for Christmas week. After a trip back to London to spend New Years Eve with friends and figure out what stuff I need to lug back with me (and exchange clothes .. I am again living with the same 12 items, which is what happens when I am on the road. So I can trade them for some new ones from my suitcase so I won't get bored).

I am now working in a very focussed way to find a new home. In January/February, I will either be in Toronto, house-sitting for a friend, or in Hamilton, staying in the same friend's Hamilton house (she will be away .. still determining if she needs me to house-sit in Toronto. If not, I will be at her place in the Hammer just off of trendy Locke Street. Cool).

My goal is to look for a place in Hamilton for the next little while ... it's a good town, rent is cheap and I have one heck of a great social network. Decided that I don't need to stay away just so that I won't run into any ghosts of my life as it used to be ...

In terms of my longer aspirations, I'm looking for a very creative solution. I am thinking that I want to do more international work, so I would really like to find a low-cost situation where I can just lock up the place for a couple of months when I am away without it costing me a fortune to pay for a place I'm only going to live in some of the time.

Still figuring out new ways to make this happen. Maybe a very compatible shared arrangement? One way or another, I am looking forward to unpacking my kitchen stuff, my pottery, my artworks, my CD's, getting my furniture back from my sister and living a life that's grounded in one place for a while. I need some more of that earth/rock energy. The Air energy has been good but it's time to quit blowing around in the wind quite so much.

Still figuring out the work situation .. I know I can make money writing but do I want the freelance lifestyle? I've been living it now for 8 years and it is starting to wear on me. Then again, it allows me a lot of freedom. So this will take a while to figure out.

I am meeting with my life coach this afternoon -- maybe I'll find some new perspectives on this. Balancing life and art .. always the challenge.

Journalism and Soul

I am a member of the Association of Independents in Radio, a wonderful group of people mostly in the States. The listserve is full of inspirational ideas, tech tips and notes from people who are very supportive of each other. It's wonderful -- if you're a media artist or a journalist, I recommend membership in AIR very highly.

Today, Scott Gurian, an AIR member, posted this quote from Robert Krulwich. Wikipedia describes him this way: "Robert Krulwich is a respected radio and television journalist whose specialty is explaining complex topics in depth. He has done pieces for ABC's Nightline and World News Tonight, PBS's Frontline, NOVA, and NOW with Bill Moyers. He has previously worked for CBS, NPR, and Pacifica. TV Guide called him "the most inventive network reporter in television" and New York Magazine said he's "the man who simplifies without being simple".

He spoke at the Third Coast Festival in Chicago this year.. Scott posted this excerpt and it really spoke to me, so I thought I would reprint it here:

"There is a sense in which every time you choose to do something new, you're gonna be re-born. And if you do this well, each time up... every time you do a new story -- even if it's just going down to do the parade or talk to the mayor or whatever... Each time up, small or large, it's a little challenge. And it asks you to look and listen very, very closely and find the thing that you pick out, that you notice, that bounces out of the situation and hits your heart or your head or makes you angry or makes you sad or makes you suspicious... And everything then becomes very personal.

And if you do this well, even if you're working in an organization which doesn't want you to be personal, which wants you to sound like the others, the secret thing you do is you sound sort of like the others, but you put in a little bit of your heart somewhere in there... just a little. And if it's there, it's like a marker. It's the IOU to your soul. And sometimes they let you sing loudly. And sometimes you have to sing soft. But you keep singing. You never ever stop."

listen to the full speech here:

The link for Third Coast (which has wonderful stuff on it) is www.thirdcoastfestival.org

The Story of the Belly

It is with great joy every week that I receive an email with a picture from my niece Crystal in Kelowna. She and her husband Joel are having their first baby in January, and never has a child been so welcomed into the world.

I (and the rest of her friends and family) have an entire collection of weekly shots of Crystal's belly as it gets larger. Her emails are full of exclamation marks it's clear that she is entirely thrilled about this. Her own private emails to me describe some of the little kicks, flips and turns that the baby makes. In one especially wonderful email, she writes about sitting on the couch and just enjoying feeling the baby sleep.

How does she know the baby's sleeping? Having never carried a baby myself, I have no intuitive sense of this. From what my own mother has said many times to me, it's just something about mothers. They know.

In a world where we hear often about babies who are not wanted, it is a wonderful gift to share with Crystal (and Joel too) as this baby has grown from an idea to the large-and-growing-larger bump on (and an important part of) her mother's body.

Thanks for sharing this, sweet one. And for including us all in the coming of your (and our) new baby.

P.S. - the latest pictures are 33 weeks. The baby is due the end of January.

Come Back Alive

Oh, I'm on a roll today. Something about wanting to write freeform instead of getting down to the business of dubbing, editing and writing stories for editors to pick apart.

Okay, this one post. Then, back to the self-conscious market-driven stuff.

At least my research has been somewhat market-related. I am doing a story on tourism in conflict zones, an offshoot of my incredible time in Kashmir. The story focusses around a wonderful family who owns a tourist houseboat in Srinigar. They have made their living from the tourist trade for three generations. Since 1989, their business has declined because of political instability and many guys with many guns.

In the course of my research, I found a really good website -- it's called Come Back Alive . It is scary, amusing and a wealth of information.

By the way, on the map of the world, Canada is colour-coded as "a vacation with Grandma". It is also described as "one of the least dangerous places in the world". Britain is mostly harmless except for Northern Ireland and the U.S. is listed as one of the world's hotter places in terms of danger (of course the site is written by an American, and we know America has to be the best at everything, even if the category is dangerous places".

Cautionary note of a different kind: Just because it says a place is dangerous, doesn't mean you're going to get killed. I was in three conflict zones and one post-conflict zone and I didn't have any problems at all. And the sad thing to keep in mind is that people in these areas need our help more than ever. Forty percent of the world's economy is tourist-based, and a lot of the places which depend on tourists are politically unstable. Staying away makes it even harder for the people who live there to make a living.

So don't be a chicken-shit about your travel plans either. Be courageous (but not stupid .. that's up to you to decide what that means in terms of your own life.)

Citizen Journalism

I found a phrase today which really sums up my aesthetic and philosophy towards my journalistic work. It came out of a thread on the email list of The Association for Independents in Radio, a very worthwhile producers collective I belong to.

The thread started with a story about ChiTown Daily News, a citizen journalist site in the Chicago area. As usual with groups of professionals, a lot of the discussion revolved around the theme "but they won't do it very well ..." (hence the need for professionals). They've got a point but I always find this kind of discussion to be based in part by at least a teeny bit of self-serving protectionism. This group is less infected by that, so I won't be too hard on them. And the point that "citizen journalism" is often a way for media outlets to get free content (and not have to pay us) is rather bang on.

The aspect of the discussion which caught my attention was phraseology by fellow AIR member Steve Sargeant -- "There's this whole meme being discussed out there about how journalism is no longer a packaged product, instead it's becoming a
conversation."

That is what's best about citizen journalism, and why it's the kind of journalism I am practising more and more. I'd have a lot more to say about this (and I will later) but I've now got to get back to being a traditional journalist -- with much writing and editing to do. Being a "professional" journalist (who works for pay) in addition to being a "citizen journalist" (who works for free).