Aboriginal Irish Blood Memory

I have been searching for a word lately. The lack of this word has seriously impeded my ability to communicate on this blog.  The word, or rather the lack of the word, has been the metaphorical brick blocking my creativity.  My writer's block had become a word and the lack of it was preventing me from writing.

I was in northern Ontario, Kenora, recently.  My dear friend has lived there for nearly twenty years now and it is only the second time I've gone up to her.  Now that my own child is nearly grown up I can avail of the independence both of us now have.  I am enjoying being able to make the time for trips and people I deeply care about.  This friend in Kenora is a special connection that I hope continues for many many more years and with many more shared trips such as the one I had last month.

In the early 90s, this friend of mine got her teaching degree and obtained her first position at the school I first attended in Toronto.  I only attended this school for not quite two years (junior and senior kindergarten).  My parents moved to Brampton before I finished kindergarten.  My friend and I thought this was an interesting coincidence since she moved to the very area I spent my early youth exploring with wild abandon.  She was not long for the city though.  Whilst knocking herself out in her first years of teaching she embarked in Ojibwa lessons at night so that she could move north and teach on a reserve.  She has native blood and it was screaming at her during our early friendship so she honoured this and arranged her life to be more in touch with this calling.

It is fitting that during my trip up to see her that she introduced me to the native concept of blood memory.  I had been mentioning a research article I had recently read that announced the fact that yes, the cells of our maternal ancestors never leave us and as mothers, we carry the cells of the all the children we have ever borne.  That moment, when she connected the native blood memory legend to the scientific reality of it was like turning on a light bulb to me.  I have always been drawn to native lore.  I think most people can't help it. Everything they talk about resonates with clarity in my being.  I heard Clayton Thomas-Muller, the noted indigenous activist, talk last week and not only did that one lightbulb of blood memory awareness get brighter but an additional stadium of lighting got lit up in my mind.  [If you want to see Clayton in action yourself, check out this fantastic 25 minute video of him talking about the indigenous perspective on the Occupy movement.]

My people are pure Irish.  I am Canadian born but my Irish ancestors go back at least two hundred years and most likely for thousands.  The burning of nearly all Irish records hinders the ability of the Irish to prove this reality.  The practical ramifications of the pillaging of Irish culture by the British means that we can not go back more than seven generations or so.  During the live talk that I attended, Clayton mentioned the many native legends about the seven fires prophecy.  I started to tingle when he mentioned this.  You see, while I was in Winnipeg I had written the following quote, penned by Lois Riel, and transcribed by myself into my brand new travel journal gifted to me by my Kenora friend, on Manitoba's Lois Riel day 2012:  "My people will sleep for 100 years, and when they awake, it will be artists who give them back their spirit."

And yet another interesting thing has happened as of late.  My maternal grandmother has visited me recently in my dreams.  This has occurred in the past and I've always found comfort in these shadowy meetups.  She died when I was quite young so have very fleeting memories of the last trip I had to Ireland when she was alive.  I was four and I'm the only descendant of my generation to carry any memory of her since I am the oldest of my cousins.  My mother is working on a memoir of her life and I eagerly await it.  There have been other Irish-themed occurrences that have demanded  my attention as of late.  An Irish friend gave me a necklace crafted in the manner and form that my ancestors would have done and in the area where my maternal line descends from.  In this relatively new blog I've already written twice (here and here) about ancient Irish celebrations.  Orangemen Order references by high school mates.  I reconnected with an Irish acquaintance who had been not far from my thoughts.  Etc, etc.

And now we return to that metaphorical brick, the word I was seeking out.  I felt it was Irish even though I do not speak Irish.  And after talking to my mother today and trying to suss out the word I realized that perhaps it wasn't a 'word' at all.  Perhaps it was my aboriginal Irish blood memory screaming for a voice.  And so here it is.  For me, the prophecy of the seven fires now includes the Aboriginal Irish.  We too are awakening and joining indigenous people across Turtle island.  Our ancestors, the ones oppressed, starved, murdered and culturally nearly annihilated are screaming in my blood.  I am listening and writing, once more.

This quilt was made by Kim Ratuski and is one of seven exquisite quilts made by her and are
 hanging in the music room at a Kenora high school.

Felis Catus: Venato ergo sum

Domestic Cat:  I hunt therefore I am.

1. Hunger/Boredom (mostly likely boredom)
2. Opportunity Spotted (something to hunt)
3. Goal Set (decide to nail a target)
4. Appraisal of Situation (best launch point)
5. Maximize the Utility of Personal Surroundings (take up a different position if necessary/able)
6. Wait, Patiently, Until Goal is Within Reach (watch, listen, and learn)
7. Posturing (align yourself with target)
8. Pounce (leap of faith)
9. If Goal Achieved (target is met) go to step 10, otherwise Repeat steps 1- 9, Possibly with the same target.
10. If Hungry, Eat.  Otherwise - Let Go and Repeat steps 1 - 9, Possibly with the same target.

In 2012 I think I'll try to take a page or two from my cat.

My head is bursting.

Me at Machu Picchu, Peru December 3, 2011

I have had two weeks that will change my life.

I know this with a certitude that has escaped me in the past other than yes, I wanted to breed and yes, I would attend university (for much longer than the average bear...as it turned out).

I have no idea how my experiences from the last two weeks will change me.  But, then again,  I didn't know how going to university and becoming a mother would change me also. The uncertainty of the outcome is part of the deliciousness of the certitude.

My linear mind wants to force the experiences into tiny  boxes and, to be honest, on facebook I just status-ed about my 4 distinct vacations/destinations along with a distance count (nearly 20,000 kilometers by plane, train, and automobile).

I think I will allow a few days of processing and leave this post as an indication of things to come.

Loco pero feliz en el Perú

Machu Picchu, Peru

Tomorrow morning I will be taking the train to Machu Picchu.  I am in Peru and have been for the last four days.  The first two days were spent in Lima.  The last two days have been spent in Cusco, acclimatizing to the thin air of the Andes.  I think I am ready to take on MP.

I am a little stunned by the experience so far.  The trip was suggested, confirmed and planned within about 3 weeks of take off and two of my friends are with me.  Two friends that did not know each other before this trip.  Two friends that are now probably life long friends after the last 4 intense days and the remaining 5.

There are internet cafes everywhere in this very tourist centred town and I am sitting in one right now.  A TV is blaring downstairs in Spanish.  A spanish radio station is playing in the cafe.  There are traditional dancers in the small plaza up the road.  I just negotiated two solas off of the purchase of a universal adapter for charging my new battery for my camera.  I know about 20 words in Spanish - which is an increase of about 15 words from 5 days ago....language is not my forte!!  Earlier this evening, we all enjoyed a 1.25 hour long full body massage (without the ´happy´ ending that a young man offered one of my young travelling companions earlier! :).

I am literally overwhelmed by the new tastes, sounds, smells, experiences and interpersonal and individual growth I am experiencing.

I met a 64 year old woman from Calgary at our hostel in Lima.  We felt sympatico in our mutual sense of adventure.  She was about to leave after spending six weeks in Peru, including three weeks homestaying and learning Spanish in the area I am now in.  I feel, like she did, that to pick up and go on a whirlwind cross planet trip (she did hers with six weeks notice for her six week trip) is either a real sign of insanity or of joie de vivre.

Or both :)

Joyous Anticipation.

In a wee while we shall return to courting more frequently.

I will love your early morning kisses. Especially at the bedroom window.

And our late night cuddles with me in light clothing and you and your naked brilliance finally put to rest for a short nap.

Every year you abandon me for another hemisphere.


And I am a microscopic moon, unable to resist your allure when you return.

Since every year you do return, dear Sun.

You are a right rascal for being so reliable.

Nourishment 101

"Her eyes were quivering." I am a voracious reader so I no doubt have read this description more than once in my life. Until this past Friday night I hadn't witnessed it first hand without emotions overwhelming me simultaneously so the trite description didn't immediately spring to mind in real time.


I have a certain type of face.  The type of face that strangers regularly approach for directions.  And the type of face that says:  You can confide in me; I am all ears and empathy.  I can thank genetics for this - it runs in the family.  At times it can be uncomfortable but it is always a moment of real communion with a fellow human.


I had such a moment on Friday night.  I attended the approximately bi-monthly, and for now, roving St. Jamestown Community Café.  I learned about this endeavour at the monthly (intentionally roving) Foodie Drinks.  The organizers I met (Nancy Slamet and Lucas Lu) certainly captivated my interest and I attended not only to support their efforts but also as a detective.  I was sussing out the vibe in order to bring back info to my upcoming community association meeting.  The St. Jamestown Community Café is hoping to eventually create an incubator model for other cafés and since Nancy herself interned at the long time successful Queen Street Commons café in Kitchener, I have tremendous faith in the likelihood of the success of the St. Jamestown Community Café.

St. Jamestown community café Friday November 18th, 2011.

I spent most of the evening parked in the same chair munching down on delicious and healthy food that attendees purchase using a pay-what-you-can system so that anyone, with any means, can come participate in the café.  The pay-what-you-can model has been utilized in a few well known establishments and I foresee a huge increase in it's use due to changing worldwide economic circumstances and the increasing popularity and acceptability of social enterprises.

While I stayed stationary at the same table, the cast of characters surrounding me completely turned over three times.  I first enjoyed an amusing rapport with three long term residents (30+years!) from the community.  These three women have raised children and buried husbands together.  The only one with a walker departed by getting up and dancing her way to the front of the room (where the musicians were providing an excellent foot tapping show) before returning to collect her walker and go home.  I was still giggling when a much older woman with a walker came through the door.

The elder woman's paid caretaker saw my now empty table and got the woman seated and her walker stashed away before going to collect her a plate of food.  The woman settled quite close to me and I asked her her name.  She told me and was quite delighted to find out that I knew it was italian since one of my own neighbours that is about the same age (91) has the very same unusual italian name that has fallen out of favour since the earlier part of the 20th century.

This woman was as sharp as a tack and her immediate familiarity with me was a little daunting but quite enjoyable.  We meandered our way through the niceties and I found out that she too is a long time resident of St. Jamestown and in fact moved to the area after her mother died in Kapuskasing, ON.  She was 20 years old so that means that she has lived there for over 70 years!  A veritable walking history book!

In the course of the conversation I thought to ask her if she had any children.  That is when her eyes started quivering and I simultaneously thought of the trite phrase whilst panicking at what I was to find out.  "Yes, my daughter.  But she left me.  Five years ago.  I buried her.  She had taken a job since she was broke.  She hit her head.  Her work didn't phone a doctor, and so she just went to bed that night.  AND DIED."  I capitalize since by the end of this halting speech the tiny frail woman was wailing.  And I was bawling.  And during the course of her delivery I had instinctively reached out and grabbed the tiny arm and felt the life force of this woman humming along, albeit in vast amounts of pain.   I could not choke back my sobs.  So we sat there and cried a bit with me holding on to her arm with both hands now - an awkward but universal type of embrace that is instinctive to humans sharing pain.  After a few minutes I said that I applauded her courage to get up every day and go out and that no mother should ever have to bury a child.  After a few more weepy minutes we gravitated away from the subject and she entertained me with stories of her life as a cleaning woman in Toronto and her cat and the bedbugs that her nursing home is fighting.  She left after eating a healthy sized meal for a 91 year old and I hope to see her again.

The last cast of characters at my table were also fascinating and engaging people.  Two of them were the musicians finally enjoying their repast after entertaining us so wonderfully.  In fact we were all so engrossed in conversing with one another we were literally kicked out (laughingly)!  I had not realized that the tables were being packed up around us and ours was the very last table to be dismantled and put away.

Kudos to the St. Jamestown Community Café.  If my experience can be considered representative of other attendees, I have no doubt that your community development efforts will be successful.  I left the event nourished completely in both body and spirit and I can't imagine any other measure of success that such an effort would desire.

Brand Spankin'

Marleeville November 15, 2011

I've seen both of them, but rarely together. Actually I've seen the three of them but only once altogether. I've seen them many times in the last few weeks. They are always walking down the middle or on the side of my uptown suburbanish wide street. They never walk down the sidewalk.  I've seen them in the sun, wind and rain. And at all times of the day.

The thing about not keeping a regular schedule is that it is a little like stepping up onto the desk à la Dead Poet's Society: You get to see the world and it's happenings through a sort of prism rather than just a plain clear glass. A neighbourhood is a dynamic place and not just full of people getting up and regularly stuffing themselves into a cubicle. And my neighbourhood is no exception but due to the inflation of housing prices in this city there are fewer and fewer young families about. The last baby born on my street was whisked away to a bigger house this past summer. It seems that the post war bungalows on this street no longer suit the families of today. It is troubling that these same bungalows were entirely suitable for the large contingent of italian and portugese immigrant families in the 1950s thru 1970s.  Many of the dwindling stock of bungalows (developers are slowly gentrifying my 'hood), have aging matriarchs and patriarchs still canning tomatoes and making wine every fall.  Most of the remaining non-gentrified bungalows have single or coupled folk living with no children.  Infants are few and far to be seen in this area.

So when I first saw the woman walking down the middle of my road pushing a covered stroller I recognized immediately the confluence of spring in her step and weariness on her brow. Such a dichotomy can only make an appearance during a unique phase in one's life. The Brand Spanking New Parent phase. This phase is so brief and so infectious that I swear just a small vicarious dose of it during one's reproductive years instills the desire, nay carnal urge, to reproduce and live through this phase first hand. And having lived it myself I have to confess that seeing it again, albeit quite vicariously as a voyeur neighbour, gives me a sense of communion with this world that I don't know if I could also feel if I had not.

Before the biological clock turned off for me, a mere few years ago, I might have viewed this quite differently. My womb would feel barren and I would intellectualize the impracticality of more children. Now my heart sings with delight. The difference is marvelous and like all new experiences I am nearly raw with emotion after seeing Brand Spanking New Dad walking down my street today.

It seems that this Brand New Child is rather difficult. I suspected this right from my first sighting of Brand New Mom going down my street on an early fall evening.  I noticed immediately that she was gingerly directing the stroller away from any noise making opportunities (crunchy leaves). I was walking my dog and she gave me a winning smile (Brand New Mom hormones emanating!). I wouldn't have dreamed to talk to her after seeing the way she was avoiding the leaves. I had a Brand New Child like that. A child that didn't sleep and then once asleep was easily woken. So the Brand New Mom and I have merely exchanged smiles when I see her out on the street.  I see Brand New Dad less frequently and he also emanates a winning smile.  I think I've them together only once. I try to force as much empathy into my smile as possible because I remember the desperation that comes with all the other wonderful new experiences as a Brand New Parent. The desperation for sleep. A solid night. Oh jaysus what I wouldn't have done for a solid 6 hour night in that first year.

And this morning, from my front window, I see Brand New Dad go down the mostly leafless side (on the road, not the sidewalk) of my recently paved and beautifully smooth street. There is a very slight downward grade on my street. Both Brand New Parents walk the length of this downward grade and turn around rather than pushing the baby carriage up the steeper incline that follows. So I watch and wait for him to turn around (I'm near the end of this sloping grade). I have not seen Brand New Dad as often as Brand New Mom so I was watching openly from my front window. He was distracted by trying to sneak a peak at Brand New Child while still pushing at the same fairly brisk pace that some Brand New Children demand. My own Brand New Child liked to be rocked at a definite upbeat tempo and this rocking had to be done with an upright adult, in their arms, in a particular position. This became more and more difficult for me as the desperation for a decent nights sleep kicked into high gear about 2 months into Brand New Parenting.

The penny dropped as I was musing about my own experiences while watching Brand New Dad this morning from my front window. Brand New Mom has probably hit that desperation for sleep point so on a Tuesday morning Brand New Dad possibly took a morning off work in order to get Brand New Baby to sleep after a very difficult night.  Lately I have been having difficulty sleeping and the gratitude that I no longer face Brand New Child sleep deprived insanity overwhelmed me.

And oh yes, the above picture is Brand New Dad at the end of my street.  The Brand New Parents don't live on my street but since my street is the widest and smoothest one in the area I suspect it's worth travelling to.  I wonder what other adventures Brand New Child will introduce to Brand New Parents during his/her lifetime.  I hope they are joyous and more restful than this first one!

An only

In my lifetime I have seen the disappearance of the large family in the socio-economic landscape of North America.  We all know of them.  The families with 4 - 10+ children.  An old neighbour of mine, 10 years my senior, is the eldest of 14 children.  Both my parents came from small Irish 1940s-50s families...four children in dad's, six in mum's.  The largest families I know today have four children and they are anomalies.  Most families only have one or two children...sometimes three (gender 'triplets', as often as not).

In most modern North American families the parents decide when or if there will be other children.  The miracle of birth control has allowed this decision making to be easily enforced and the availability of safe access to abortion makes any errors in judgment or failures of birth control remedied effectively (if desired).

However in some families there are choices made, either by nature or nurture, that disrupt this parental decision making pattern.  I was raised in such a family and it is only quite recently that I have accepted this.  I had one sibling, a sister, for nearly forty years and then, she disowned us.

Seeing the starkness of that last paragraph brings a lump to my throat.  You know that saying, "You can choose your friends but not your family."  Well, my sister wised up to this about five years ago and got the hell out of her own personal Dodge which included the entirety of her blood relations - and all connections to Canada.  So although she did not choose her family, she claimed personal freedom by firing the lot of us and moving overseas.

I played some part in this and tried to own the whole thing, for many years. I only recently realized that as usual, I was overcompensating.  Trying to take blame on where blame was not due.  In fact, there is no blame to be had anywhere in all of this.  It is comforting to finally realize this.  In my small 1970s immigrant irish catholic family we were victims.  Each and every one of us. Victims mostly to a society that has changed with an alarming and ferocious speed since the dawn of the industrial era.

I admit to being overwhelmed by sadness at times about this loss.  I also admit to being angry that I am left to deal with aging parents on my own.  I find I have a grudging admiration for the tenacity it takes to follow through on this.  A tenacity that I feel, for myself, is best directed at other things.  Like staying off the smokes and exercising daily. 

Throughout the course of my life I have often been overwhelmed by feelings of being trapped.  As a single parent this was manifested quite magnificently.  Wisdom is now allowing me to see that the only thing that ever traps me completely is my own attitude and by blanketing myself with the feeling of being trapped I am unable to see anything to move forward towards.  Being trapped is a very safe way of being.  A comfort zone, if you will.

In order for me to loosen and start to remove the blanket that traps me I know I don't need to fire my family.  But I do need to acknowledge that I really am now an only child. And there is no-one and nothing to blame for it.  It just is.

Click pic to find source:  an excellent blog post about the
advantages of being and raising an only child.

Whose reachin' out to capture a moment? Everyone knows it's Windy.

Sometimes a great big wind has to tear through the skies in order to clear away all the debris leftover from summer's death.  That happened last night.  There are only a handful of leaves remaining on both mature trees on my property.  The younger trees in my back yard are still holding on tight.

As a metaphor I have to say I find this most appropriate.

In my youth every grudge was nursed and stroked regularly and with diligence.  An early boyfriend liked to remind me (lovingly) of the chip on my shoulder and for many years after that relationship ended I pondered that.  In fact, during that time, I did not know the chip was so large I had to start to develop a chip on the other shoulder throughout my twenties in order to accommodate the growing pile of grievances that seemed to accumulate monthly.

At the dawn of my middle age I feel fortunate that the love of my friends and family (and therapy!) have acted like layers of spackling.  So while I do still have the chip it is considerably smaller and back to only one shoulder.

I realize today that I'm like the mature trees on my property.  The great wind of youth has passed through my life and I'm hanging on to a few of the leaves of despair.  I realize that these 'leaves' are there.  However, I also realize that they represent the last fragments of a younger self that was determined to logically resolve every emotional ache and wrongdoing ever inflicted upon me.

As someone with an extremely analytical mind this has been one of the greatest lessons learned in my life to date.  It is okay to be a thinker and to try and think your way through problems.  But knowing which problems to devote that energy to? That's true wisdom.

And on that note I leave you with a practical problem that my analytical mind (with the help of google) could not seem to solve.  Perhaps you could help a blogger out by answering the question posed in my picture?

This tree is in my backyard.
I have no idea what it is but the fall leaves are stunning.

Two things to watch for in tonight's skies (worldwide)

Given that I have an endless fascination with space (pun intended) I long ago discovered and subscribe to a list that generates news on a regular basis about the interesting events in our skies. Fittingly, the site is called SpaceWeather and I encourage you to subscribe since you get notices about planetary watches, solar flares, sun spots, eclipses and the like.  You don't have to have a telescope to enjoy many of it's offerings.

Yesterday's email from them had the following information that I thought worthy enough to blog about.  Apparently, today (November 8, 2011) at 23:28 UT (or 6:28 p.m. EST) an asteroid the size of an aircraft carrier is moseying on by our planet.  By 'moseying' I mean it will be closer to our planet than our moon.  So maybe I should say 'cozy'-ing.  Seriously.  That's close.  An object estimated to be 400m wide is coming within 85% of the distance of our moon to the earth (or .85 LD = lunar distance i.e. the distance from the earth to the moon).  This type of asteroid is called a PHA (Potentially Hazardous Asteorid) and is exceptional due to the proximity it has to the earth.  The email notifying me of this event assured me that "There is no danger to our planet.".   Um, wev.  Even if they are wrong, this NASA site assures me:

"Many objects with sizes ranging up to about a kilometer will hit the Earth in the next one thousand to ten million years. These impacts could produce damaging blast waves, earthquakes, fires, and tidal waves, but the area affected will be less than the size of the U.S. Except for a direct hit on a major population center, the greatest damage may be done by tidal waves sweeping entire ocean coastlines ... These objects could kill millions of people, but the damage is not greater than that from other natural events such as earthquakes."

A few years back I subscribed to a now BBC owned British magazine called "Focus". It was/is full of really geeky science and technology news all laid out in full glossy print with lots of pictures...many of them technical.  At one point during my subscription, the magazine had an article about asteroids (and today's asteroid is actually on the main splash page of their website today).  The take away point, for me, from that first asteroid article was the fact that our worldwide governments haven't funded well placed asteroid observation stations so, as a planet, we could be sideswiped by an asteroid at any time.  Now, please correct me if I'm wrong, but in the years subsequent to my reading of this article I haven't seen a lot of announcements regarding funding of asteroid 'watch' stations.  So, I think the fact remains that unexpected collisions with undiscovered large asteroids still remain a risk (albeit a small one).  Especially when you note the *daily* update of this list of PHAs (they are discovered all the time!).

I suspect that if an asteroid, expected or not, wipes out a portion of our planet in my lifetime, we won't be wondering whether or not it was tracked.  Because even if it is was, there is nearly nothing that can be done about it given the nebulous state of our asteroid defense technology.

So tonight, instead of worrying about the PHA, I will instead go outside (I hope the clouds clear over Toronto tonight) and look for the second notable event happening:

When the sun goes down tonight, step outside and look east. Jupiter and the waxing full Moon are lined up less than 10^o apart. It's a beautiful conjunction that will last all night long--don't miss it!

For me, taking a good long hard look at nature is the best grounding force I know.  Try it yourself and see if you, like me, can find the cosmic connection that is all around us and there for the taking at any second.

This radar image of asteroid 2005 YU55 was obtained on Nov. 7, 2011, at 11:45 a.m. PST (2:45 p.m. EST/1945 UTC), when the space rock was at 3.6 lunar distances.

Time is an invention

The concept of daylight savings time has always hurt my head.  The fact that only some locales observe it, even within countries, makes it especially ache.  As a child I noted the difference since sometimes Mom and Dad came home from work in the daylight.  I also noted that at times, I would have to go to bed in the daylight (no fair!).  We are told that the spring forward time change leads to an increase in accidents due to people being tired.  We are also told that the extra hour in the fall soon wears off and people go back to their sleep deprived ways, pronto.  These factoids, and the knowledge that most of the world no longer observes daylight savings time, do little to alleviate my head hurting.

I took off my wristwatch in 1996.  I was 29 years old and there were no pocket sized consumer cell phones back then that would allow you to tell the time immediately.  The circumstances under which I made this decision was a total frustration at the lack of time keeping by my Irish family whom I was staying with whilst on a summer vacation.  Time seemed to have no meaning in Ireland back then.  I have not been back to Ireland in awhile so I do not know if the digital age has changed this cultural norm.

Later that same year, when I was back for a second trip to help bury my grandfather, I recall this same uncle pointing to a train pulling into the Cork city train station and saying "That'd be the 10 a.m. train pulling in from Dublin."  My other uncle, long before deviated from his Irish roots by emmigrating to another country, looked at his wrist watch and pointed at it to my mum and I.  It was past 11 a.m..  I knew right then and there that I had made a good decision.  The man was seriously stressed by the lack of respect given to his wrist watch by the Cork train company.  To me, it was a moment that vindicated my decision.

Humans need structure.  But we must balance that with spontaneity in order for our creative bursts to see daylight.  I wonder if by taking off that wrist watch, long ago, I was publicly declaring my allegiance to the creative spontaneity I am continuously drawn to.  

Today, having 25 hours with which to ponder these thoughts, I wonder how I may nurture that creative spark a little more without disturbing the minimal structure I have imposed on my life.  The shortening daylight hours make me want to throw structure to the wind and hibernate till spring equinox.  But perhaps this year I might find the balance that has eluded me for years.

Mice and Men.

E. and I were walking beside the St. Jacob's Railway tracks after attending our duties as long term Teaching Assistants for an Organizational Behaviour course.  We were both PhD students in the Faculty of Engineering, Department of Management Sciences at the University of Waterloo.  I was walking towards my car to go home and he was walking towards  the married students residences that were a very short distance from the campus.  The very same residences that I had lived in as a newlywed, earlier in my career as a graduate student.

My husband and I had moved out of these married student quarters just before finishing my master's degree.  I had applied for funding to do a doctorate and we were uncertain as to whether we would be able to stay in the residence and besides which we were ready for a non-student dwelling after many years of living the student life.

As it turns out, I did get funding for that doctoral research.  I also started teaching sessionally at Wilfred Laurier University.  So, a mere year after moving into our first 'real' apartment, my husband and I were able to purchase our first home in Waterloo knowing that we would be having a baby and I would be finishing up graduate work and this would take a few years.

But as the saying goes, the best laid plans....

By the time E. and I were walking alongside those tracks I had had my baby and my husband had left.  I was basically an emotional and intellectual trainwreck yet I clung desperately to the original plan.  This particular afternoon walk took place within a year of my husband leaving and I was suffering also from great shame.

E. and I had worked together for a number of school terms by this point.  He was a mature married student from Thailand and our department had many social gatherings embracing the myriad of international students so we were on good casual terms with each other.  In fact, we may have both served on our student council team.  We were both outgoing and involved.

I think this walk was the first time I was alone with him subsequent to my baby and then marriage fiasco.  I have noted the casual and friendly nature of our relationship yet he felt it necessary to ask me this:  "Do you think that the fact that you chose to have a baby during your doctoral research might have been the reason your husband left you?"

You know what?  16 years later and I'm still gobsmacked by the question and the emotional rollercoaster it sets off in me.  Researchers look for tidy answers to explain the lack of female representation in STEM.  This story is one of my contributions (yes, there are more) to the not so tidy answers I suspect litter the STEM landscape for women.

Cheer your way out of an illness.

Telling me to cheer up or imply that I am not welcome unless portraying a cheery disposition implies that I have control over my physical and/or mental circumstances.  Waking up and being unable to fully function physically on a regular basis is no fun.  And, fyi,  there seems to be no cause/cure other than the lesions on my spinal cord.  I repeat, there is no known cure or cause.  So no, I did not bring this on myself. And lately I have completely reverted to the only pragmatic solution my budget allows - following a very restricted diet.

I agree that being in a good headspace is important when you have a serious illness.  But sometimes attitude does not overcome physical realities.   This past month has been disturbingly difficult for me.  The prolonged lack of employment is like a game of dominoes on my central nervous system.

I don't know if one can ever accept shitty things about one's life and circumstance.  I think the great literary works of art (and the visual/musical ones) serve as testament to the profound unease (and/or *dis* ease) that many of us struggle with.  One just learns to ignore and batten down the hatches, more often than not. I think I've been pretty good at the ignore part and I'm a mere novice apprentice for battening down the hatches.

So advising me to cheer up does not validate my reality.  I have an illness that can not be meditated away.  As far as I know.

My year of living civically

I wonder if Canadian data would be similar?

When your source of employment evaporates, almost overnight,  what would you do?

In August 2010 that choice was put before me.

So I strapped on my boots, printed up a few business cards, and headed out.

Part of my motivation was the ole' networking thing.  Maybe something or someone would turn up that could offer me employment or at least some contract work.  But, to be truthful, a much larger part of myself was excited at the prospect of just getting out there.  Being involved.  Being aware.  Being engaged with the citizens of my community in a way that I was deprived of for most of the past 12 years living in the city.

I moved to Toronto from a community where I was actively involved during most of my adult (post undergraduate) life there.  I was on the board of the community band.  I volunteered at my child's preschool.  I was on the board of the food cooperative.  I started exploring alternative community based groups such as a local bartering system.  I got involved in a fledgling political party.

When I moved to Toronto my life went into a kind of warp drive of frenzied employment search and then the life of teaching seemed to suck the soul right out of me.  Couple that with a diminishing physical ability due to a degenerative illness (undiagnosed for years) and a lack of child care options led to a huge gaping void in my life that I was unaware of until last year when the option to renew this core part of my life was put before me.

My first civic minded involvement came early.  I recall launching a class endeavour in grade 3/4 (I did both grades in one year).  We staged the Wizard of Oz for a performance to the the younger grades with minimal help from our teacher.  Years later, in middle school, our catholic school religion department became infested with hippies and my life as a protestor started in earnest.  I recall signing my first petition and proudly wearing my first protest button in the late 70s (the boycott Nestle movement).  I attended an anti-nuclear protest shortly afterwards. Besides being roped into a pro-life march or two, the civic engagement training provided by my religion (hippie) teachers throughout middle school and high school was most informative and taught me the importance of being civically aware AND involved.

So, after almost 12 years being trapped in my own home due to unavoidable circumstances, my sudden and unplanned state of unemployment was like a gift.  My life literally opened up.  My child, now old enough to feed herself occasionally and also quite active with her own teenage social life, no longer needed me around and my time was like a blank slate.

So I got out there.  I had already been dabbling a bit with the Toronto Food Movement and had spent a year on the board of one of the food co-ops.  I had petitioned my councillor about urban chickens.  I had attended a few local food policy events.  So that was my starting point.  The fall of 2010 also had a municipal election so I became aware of my local issues and joined the only local resident's association (which isn't very local).  I jumped into the spring 2011 federal election by volunteering to be a campaign manager.  I was a founding organizer of a local arts festival.  I volunteered for three different food organizations.

I figure that in one brief year I managed to cram in about 5 years of community involvement.  Not one job offer but a wealth of experience was gained.

I've learned that politicians can be slimey.  Even the ones that purport to be your friends (my local councillor has recently blocked me on facebook and so did his provincially elected father, I have supported both of these men so the blocking is rather puzzling and irritating since I no longer have access to community information).

I've learned that young people make up the backbone of the food movement which startles me (a bit) since they are not the ones actually feeding the next generation, yet.   My own food awareness was basically launched the day I gave birth so perhaps that clouds my judgment.  I do believe there should be more representation from people actually feeding families and perhaps events should be orchestrated to facilitate this.

I've learned that most people are on a payroll of some sort when they are civically engaged which means that there is always an ulterior motive and/or agenda.

I've learned that volunteers might be recognized but they will never be given more than a terse thank-you.  I've also learned that most volunteer jobs should be paid employment - and that especially is applicable to the alarming rate of growth of the Canadian internship industry.  And many perpetual volunteers are unpaid women in my general age range.  Male volunteers/organizers [unpaid] are few and far between.  They tend to get paid for their civically engaged gigs - maybe not directly but in the form of future speaking gigs or book sales which are promoted at the volunteer gig.  I've also learned that stating this fact does not make one very popular.

After my month pseudo-unplugged I decided to reign in my civic involvement.  I've beefed up my resume a bit with these experiences and I have no regrets.  I've met some very interesting people and look forward to watching some of their personal endeavours blossom.  And I suspect that this past year will act as a bit of a reboot for the rest of my life since I don't think I will ever let my civically minded inner champion disappear like that again....at least not without one helluva fight.

Food Porn

Lunch time in a suburban Catholic school in the 1970s went something like this.  The bell rang for lunch time dismissal.  If you were in Grade 2 or younger you waited for an older sibling or a designated substitute or a parent (mother) to pick you up to take you home.  Or you waited for an older sibling or designated sub to take you to the gymnasium to eat your bagged lunch with your fellow 'bus kids' - of which there were only a couple of dozen in a school of a few hundred.  If you were in Grade 3 or older you were allowed to take yourself home or go to the gym yourself.

I attended a school such as this and I was a bus kid.  I was one of the very few children that had a mother that had paid employment (and possibly the only one whose mother made more $ than the father).  I was also the only child I knew that had a family that had public marital troubles in it's history (although god forbid I ever talked about that).

In grade 5 and 6 it started to become 'cool' for kids to stay for lunch rather than go home so I recall that we started staying in our classrooms for lunch.  This allowed me, an irish immigrant child, to gain further insight into the food choices of the mostly italian, portuguese and filipino families.  I would come home to my parents begging for things like nutella (on fresh italian bakery bread, OH MY).  And wagon wheels.  And pop tarts.  Their deli-meat based lunches smelled a lot different than my peanut butter and carrot (yes) sandwiches on brown whole wheat (cheap) bread.  My lunch treat was an apple and very occasionally a couple of (cheap) cookies.  I started baking at a very early age just so I could improve the contents of my bagged lunch.

Even today, the smell of the deli counter brings my mind directly back to those childhood lunchrooms.  And one of the proudest accomplishments of my parenting career is the fact that my daughter came home regularly during much of her elementary school years so she was able to experience a period of time that included a hot midday meal.  But she, like during my time, started wanting to stay with her friends in grade 6 and by grade 7 she was taking the subway downtown to an alternative middle school which ended her childhood hot lunch era.

One of my own guilty pleasures has been the provision of nutella for my daughter.  This was one item that never came into the household I grew up in and was regularly provided for my elementary school peers.  I wish I could also say that she also brought fresh homemade cookies throughout her childhood.  Let's just say that she too started baking in a quest to improve the contents of her bagged lunch.  After all, the apple doesn't stray too far from the tree :)

Snap, you've been pwned.

There was recently some controversial press surrounding the choice of a Toronto couple to not reveal the gender of their baby (their third child) to anyone outside of their immediate family.  The flurry of public judgment surrounding their family's personal decision reveals much about the state of our society.

Each breeder makes many choices in the course of their parenting journey.  Some choose to release their children into other families.  Some choose to continue breeding well beyond societal and global norms - China's one child policy has been in place for almost 32 years and, according to their authorities, the policy has prevented almost 1 billion births.  Some breeding choices are more public than others.  The Toronto couple's controversy stemmed from the fact that many people felt that gender is something the public is entitled to know.  Gender is something our culture feels it owns and we are lambasted daily with media images defining gender norms.  So it is no wonder the controversy brewed worldwide about 'hiding' the gender of this infant. Our culture has given permission for that to be owned by others and kudos to these parents for highlighting this fact.

I remember touring a day care facility while pregnant and the tour guide proudly declaring their ability to look after babies as young as three weeks (this was in the days of six month parental leaves).  I recall being suitably impressed.  Nearly immediately after giving birth I started to question this.  My line of questioning revolved around the inane choice to breed and then hand off the responsibility of raising your infant/child to someone else...or most likely a series of other people that are paid very low wages.  The average baby in full time care spends 40 - 50 hours of their prime awake times with someone else.  This seemed logical before I gave birth but was extremely illogical, to me,  postpartum.  It was like a light switch went off the day I gave birth and it has never turned off.  The era in which I was raised made me believe that the natural course of events in one's life included the farming out of one's children to other people's care.  "Two earner families are a requirement in this day and age" is a line I've heard time and time again.

I feel strongly that the speed at which our culture changed in the 20th century did not allow time for our values and priorities to be thoughtfully re-adjusted.  For example, in the middle of last century my parents were both raised in homes where a mid-day hot meal was prepared and served by a homemaker.  Children came home from school for it.  I believe this contributes to their mostly good health (ps Dad's okay).  I look around at my peer group and I see many illnesses that were unheard of when my parents were in their forties.  Heart disease and diabetes being the headliners.  Cancer too.

The urgency of our world to reclaim feminine power in the 20th century usurped the basic human needs of healthy food (and nurture).  Communities have been decimated and reduced to enclosures that families shuffle into at night.  Neighbours are not regarded as allies but merely as temporary acquaintances until the next property flip or job change.  Fear permeates most opportunities for interpersonal engagement to the point that it is discouraged as soon as a child is allowed to walk alone on the streets (which is now at a much older age, if ever).  Families don't even eat together anymore!

But getting back to the gender free baby.   Our society is quick to pass judgment on this issue.  I myself was criticized many times for raising my child in a television free home ("but what about her friends at school? doesn't she feel left out?").  I was criticized for her father's and I choice to give her my last name ("you won't be a real family").  Etc., etc.

But that is not really the crux of it.  At the end of the day we all have to be able to look in our children's eyes and hear their opinion on the matter.  And last night daughter read me homework for her grade 12 english course.  It was a narrative essay that, in part, applauded me for my choice to raise her in a television free home. As a parent I can think of no better way to capture how I feel while hearing her read it aloud:  Snap, you've NOT been pwned. She'd shudder to hear me misuse modern vernacular this way but so be it :)

Apples and Snakes

I am not religious.  Not anymore.  I had a good long three decade run at it with most of it being a willing and consenting participant (i.e. as an infant/small child I had no choice).  My certificate of annulment from my brief mid-twenties marriage attests to the purity of faith I once had as well as to the success of the brainwashing efforts.  As does the certificate of baptism that my daughter has.  As a teenager I used to go to Saturday evening masses with my best friend when neither of my parents had darkened the church doorstep for months.  My relationship with the church fizzled out before my daughter's recollected memory starts so she has bypassed the brainwashing track and for that I am truly grateful....as is she.

However, I do miss the comfort of the ritual.  I was part of many church choirs and I miss the music.  I went to a catholic funeral a year ago and belting out the hymns was marvelous.  I didn't participate fully in this mass due to knowing that the partaking of the sacraments is a personal witnessing for christ ritual that holds no meaning to me anymore. But I was fascinated to see friends participate even though I knew they hadn't partaken of any sacrament in years and according to the 'rules' as I know them the body of christ portion of the ceremony should have been off limits to them.  All of these friends were in their second or third marriages without annulments and I'm pretty sure their new relationships weren't chaste.  So they are 'living in sin' and not regularly obtaining the sacrament of reconciliation to clear that blemish in order to partake of communion.  In fact, I'm not sure when the last time any of them had been to church (probably a first communion or confirmation service).  Their participation made it clear to me that in today's secular world most people regard church ceremony as more pomp and less - or no - circumstance.

Setting aside the pomp versus circumstances debate, I don't regret for a single minute the time I spent with mother church.  It gave me early insights into the history of humanity that I don't think I would have obtained since I was pigeon holed at an early age into the mathematics/science fields.  My knowledge of humanities subject matter remains an autodidactic journey which is enormously pleasurable albeit a bit frustrating when the next gap is forged open, yet again.

That knowledge of humanities' history becomes handy when seeing clear affronts to morality. Like this kind of shyte.  Knowing that the core of humanity can be boiled down to the Adam and Eve Garden of Eden parable delivered concisely in the first book of the bible helps to frame these affronts.  Let's recap that shall we?  Snakes are tricky. Apples are tasty. Some humans can't resist.  Consequences can be profound and innocent bystanders are affected also. But at least we can blame someone (the starting line of most christ centred religions). 

When I look at that repulsive soft drink ad campaign, or in fact at much of our modern culture,  I see lots and lots of snakes. And just because I can blame someone (or something) doesn't mean that anything will change. And even if I ignore them,  the consequences will affect me and my daughter and her generation and the generations to come.   So basically nothing can be done except to try and ignore the tasty apples cleverly profferred by the snakes and concentrate on the bounty elsewhere. Because, despite being extremely tricky, those snakes haven't figured out how to obliterate the bounty overflowing in each and every human being's mind.

P.S.  Try to imagine what our world would now look like if the starting line of the Adam and Eve religions had been placed at recognition of the abundance of our planet and our need to sustain this for all time despite the appearance of tricky snakes with their tasty apples.

Occupy Toronto: Top 10 Reason List.

fubar by 1944, acronym from fucked up beyond all recognition. Said to be military slang originally. (via)

occupy mid-14c., "to take possession of," also "to take up space or time, employ (someone)," from O.Fr. occuper, from L. occupare "take over, seize, possess, occupy," from ob "over" + intensive form of capere "to grasp, seize" (see capable). During 16c.-17c. a euphemism for "have sexual intercourse with," which caused it to fall from polite usage. (via)

I am going down to Bay Street next Saturday.  If that's where the gathering actually happens (no decisions as to location yet, I will watch for information on occupyto.org. and @OccupyToronto).

Reason 1:  I am part of the 99%.  I'm pretty positive that so are you.
Reason 2:  This is not about left versus right.  I have many issues with the 'left'.  And many with the 'right'.
Reason 3:  I am 44 and unemployed.  Most lower paying jobs require long periods of standing or the ability to lift 50 lbs.  This is no longer feasible due to me having multiple sclerosis.  Despite my condition being quite mild these are limitations that I must honour in order to maintain maximum physical comfort and sanity.
Reason 4:  Despite a master's degree in engineering I have been unable to find a job.  I have met many middle aged people in similar circumstances.
Reason 5:  I have met thousands of regular Canadians this past year in the course of my working in temporary jobs (for the federal election, Census 2011 and the Ontario Election).  We live in an amazing area on our planet...so many cultures living next door to each other in peace.  I don't want corporate greed to destroy this special place we call Toronto.  We are a magical spot in the world.
Reason 6:  I have a 17 year old.  This is for her generation.
Reason 7:  The 20th century was about being 'soma-fied' into a way of life that is no longer feasible.
Reason 8:  The 21st century is about awakening .... or extinction due to overpopulation or climate change, likely both.
Reason 9:  The real survivor builds tribes.  The people down there next Saturday will be my people.
Reason 10:  It looks like a lot of damn fun.

If you are going next Saturday or wish you could go, feel free to leave a comment, anonymously even.  If you think this is a load of bull crap please comment (nicely) too.  #HarmoniousDifferences.

"She's a sweetheart."

I just finished teaching a third year university course where nearly the entire class cheated at least once.  Most offences were for simply copying (or in some extraordinarily stupid instances actually photocopying) individual assignments.  Two people had word for word exact same answers on their midterms (I was not supervising the room they were located in, an administrator for the university was).  Two other people that were in the room I was intensely supervising managed to copy similar answers by the use of ball caps. I admit to being caught out (?!) by that but I was walking up and down the classroom every 5 - 10 minutes and watching from front to back so I was shocked to see the same (wrong) answer on one of their questions. During the midterm, in my class, I actually reprimanded another table of students for trying to share answers by moving papers closer.  The final insult came after the final examination when I was informed by a student that a fellow student who was to write a deferred exam due to missing it for personal reasons had obtained a copy of the final in advance.

I have nearly 20 years of teaching experience with most of it at the post secondary level.  I have never witnessed this type of full scale complete disregard for academic integrity.  Because, you see, when I approached the administration about this, with clear cut proof, I was questioned and given no support.  I had a conversation with the director of the program that made it extremely clear that they wanted nothing to do with my charges and told me that yes, I could file reports, but, um, was I really sure?  This kind of response despite a couple of the students commending me for calling the class out....the cheating issue during all tests had become de rigueur in all their courses through the prior year (this is an intense two year program to obtain a BComm) and they were annoyed that their marks were fairly and honestly earned while a large swatch of the class regularly copied from each other for everything.  These commendations came from students that I had penalized for photocopying assignments.

This, my friends, is the nail on the coffin for me.  The coffin of my 'career' in post secondary education.  The problem is rampant throughout every level of our education system and if you haven't heard about this it is because, like me, everyone who tries to make an issue of it is not given any support.  This happened time and time again at the previous institution I was teaching at.  I was at that institution long enough to implement testing methods that nearly made it impossible for cheating to occur (4 different versions of assessments, adequate spacing allocation to prevent wandering eyes, vigilant walking throughout the testing facilities).  This most recent course was the first I had taught at a satellite campus of a distant institution and the classroom facilities were woefully inadequate.  Not to mention the incompetence of the administrator that allowed final examinations to be released and word-for-word copying on examinations.

I had a bad feeling at the web-cam based 'training' provided by this institution. The person who, in the very near future, was to ask me if I was sure that the word-for-word answers were actually cheating, said to his colleagues around the table that the person who taught the equivalent course at the main campus "She's a sweetheart, isn't she?" before telling me that I could connect with her for any questions etc.

Both this woman and I have master's degrees in engineering and were teaching a challenging third year mathematical modelling course.  But it turns out that being a sweetheart is the 'skill' that is most important to continue the paycheque flow.  And when it comes to academic integrity, and many other issues of import, I am not a sweetheart.

"Well behaved women seldom make history."  Laurel Thatcher Ulrich

To that I would add the corollary:  In the 21st century, well behaved women tend to earn regular paycheques.

Social Media and Reputation Economics

Social media.  It's an oxymoron.  The only thing that distinguishes today's media from the past, and therefore deeming it 'social', is that we can respond immediately.  Letters posted in the 19th century (and earlier) were also social media.  As were the cave drawings in Europe from 32,000 years ago.

I believe that today's social media has allowed us to bypass the knowledge economy and move directly into a more transparent reputation economy.  It is not what you know, it is who you know.  The promise of an economy growing according to [knowledge generated] patents does not get very far without the money to build, test, market and improve said patented item.  And where does the money come from?  According to the Occupy Wall Street movement, the money belongs to only 1% of the population.  So if you've got a great idea you are going to have to gain access to some of that wealth in order to generate wealth with that idea.  And that, my friends, is where reputation is key.

I spent many years pursuing a doctoral degree.  The brick wall I came up against while researching my topic (Investment Decision Making in New Technologies) was the fact that time and time again the venture capitalists and the angel investors were not modelling anything when making these decisions.  It was the handshake and the reputation that sealed the deals.  To be sure, a thorough examination of the knowledge aspects were part of the due diligence process.   But the final decision came down to the handshake and the reputation of the development team.  This reality, as well as the chaos of my personal life, forced the ending of this academic route since handshakes are not only difficult to measure but a dissertation on the 'soft' aspects of investment decision making was not likely to be easily defended in an engineering faculty.

I learned a lot about communication networks in this field of study.  I've even published on the matter.  The idea of lead users is quite compelling and feeds nicely into the foundation of a reputation economy.  With social media you no longer have to rely on face to face connections or peruse trade magazines and conferences.  If you have an idea, you can actively search online for people looking for solutions that fit your idea.  Or conversely, if you have a problem you can look for ideas that solve it.

And how does the 'wheat get separated from the chaff'?  Reputation.  And this is greatly eased by the immediacy of social media.  Letters of introduction are no longer needed (my father brought a few with him when he emigrated to Canada from Ireland in 1967).  Answers to questions like:  How many twitter followers does the person have?;  LinkedIn connections?;  Blog traffic?;  Youtube videos?; Conference presentations?;  TED talks?; will allow a potential investor to ascertain quickly whether there is enough 'klout' to warrant further investigation or a seed investment.

The sad thing about bypassing the knowledge economy is that there might be some truly great ideas out there that will go nowhere in the reputation economy.  The world transformed itself in the space of a mere decade, leaving knowledge junkies like myself hankering a bit for a bygone era and resigned to blogging for a better world.  A 3.0 world where reputation is based on quality rather than merely quantity.