Category Archives: Social Reform

Passion over pragmatics

Sometimes I re-watch this when I can’t quite remember the direction I was going:

Swiggtalk chats with Betsy Agar about following your passions, advice on choosing to do what you love, and the many career options available to teen girls. More at http://www.swiggtalk.com


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Almost Crimes – Broken Social Scene

Imagining the story behind the song…

Almost Crimes


I get up to pee. It’s early still, the house is quiet.

I live alone. What changes from night to day. Is it outside noise—cars, birds, neighbours?

I realize I’m still sitting on the toilet for no reason, just lost in sound and silence.

I live alone, where does the sound come from?

I flush. Onomatopoeically speaking, flush is not particularly accurate. It’s too gentle for such a violent sound—rushing water gulping air, desperate for the return of calm.

I’ve broken the seal, sound floods in. Who says “onomatopoeically speaking” anyway?

I hear the furnace rev up, readying to deliver the day’s warmth. Heat is energy and so is sound. It’s more than just fan noise. In the cold there is silence, in the warmth there is sound.

My body is humming.

As if mocking my reverie, the music visualizer on my laptop is pulsing in an electric light show. Even in the silence there is sound expressed in light and shapes and flashes of darkness. I press the mute button and the sources of the vibrant show suddenly flood my ear canals.

… The Yukon keeps me up all night

Complications seize your best…

Drums punctuate guitar riffs, rolling and stopping, pacing the vibrations as if the drumheads themselves were plucking the strings. Voices exchange words and sometimes interrupt. It is a love song. It’s on repeat and I replay the night before.

The ache returns.

____
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Shift the gender paradigm in engineering

Studying for my second-year psych exam and I’m forced to read yet another article on gender differences. This one was slightly more balanced, as the authors considered social influences alongside neuropsychological evidence and the effects of hormones, but as I sit here, a licensed female engineer retraining for a new career, I think they missed the mark.

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What a Bitch

I’m reposting a piece I wrote last year about the film The Iron Lady. It seems I’m not alone in my assessment:

Margaret Thatcher died today, but never shall her legacy.


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In the quiet

Two square shapes
On one rectangle
Their sides rectangles too.

She reaches out
With her cylinders
And lifts an angle.

Her big circle stills
Her small circles
Rest on the squares.

Repeat.

She puts the sphere
Together
As though it could be taken apart.

Put together
Taken apart
Put together.

All that is left is to
Choose the colour.

This moment is hers
I pause
And this is my reward.

~Anonymous


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But what does it mean

They’re drifting
I thought they’d stay
I lose more
With each day

Half full
And my heart beats off and on

I pine and wane
Interchangeably
This is my fate
Brought on by me

Half full
And it seems I’m losing steam

We count the like
In the face of stars
It seems so small
But my heart is theirs

Half Full
And a solo is this song

A new beginning
Brought a new end
I have to start
To start again

Half full
And myself I have to blame

All that’s new
Seems permanent
I cannot see
A return again

Half full
And life here is unknown

Late at night
Voices the same
I cannot see
A logic game

Half full
And here I must remain

They said I’d turn
It could be so
I can’t predict
What’s left to show

Half full
And so I plod along

If you see
I’m there today
Please forget
What I might say

Half full
My thoughts are wicked friends

~Anonymous


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‘He’s welcome anytime, and I’ll tell you why’

was how her story began.

I was meeting her for the first time, but she felt she knew me.

‘Some of my daughter’s classmates told her she was too small to play their game,’ she explained, ‘and I overheard him tell her “Do you know what? One of the greatest basketball players in our school is one of the smallest kids I know.” I’m not sure he knows what that meant to her, but she certainly does.’

I have worried about raising a sensitive boy who is acutely aware of what is fair and what is not. Is it fair to impose my values about fairness and kindness and inclusiveness on him?

He’s the one who has to navigate his own world, not me. Am I putting him at a disadvantage? Is he cursed to become a doormat or someone’s punching bag? Should he be tougher?

We were just two moms ducking Vancouver’s spring rain and suddenly her words celebrated a boy, my boy, who stands up for fairness and kindness and inclusiveness.

Now I know there is no one braver and I’m proud of him, but most of all, now I know he  (along with everyone around him) will be okay.


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Produce, publish, and promote: Tell your story

Atavist facilitates the process from beginning to end, in any digital format:

Likened to Etsy by the NY Times, Atavist is a platform for media craftsmen. It’s a platform that integrates all media formats and adapts to emerging devices, and not just for “serious” writers, this app may very well do for writing what the printing press did for reading and the Internet did for knowing.

I can here the click-click-clicking of your thoughts already!

Check out four other “revolutionary apps for digital storytellers” vetted by the Tyee.


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I thought these were obvious

but maybe I’ve been doing them for too long. I trust Houzz though, they be smart! So enjoy these clever tips:


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On funding public transportation

It is my privilege to write for Carbon Talks, a Simon Fraser University initiative that engages public, private, corporate, governmental, institutional, not-for-profit, any individual/group wanting to move sustainable development forward.

I have written a blog comparing Toronto and Vancouver, and the universal struggles of developing and implementing regional transit that is so efficient and convenient people won’t want to bother driving to work!

The Big Move: the cost-benefits of regionalizing transit

in preparation for Carbon Talks’ upcoming public dialogue:

A mayor’s vision of how to fund regional public transportation

Friday March 1st, 12:30-1:30 PST

Carbon Talks with Mayor Richard Walton, Chair of TransLink’s Mayor’s Council
SFU Harbour Centre Room 1700, 515 West Hastings St or by webcast

Live within limits without limiting life

Follow me and check out my new blog! Meat Eating Vegans


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