test blog #10

The party's today! I'm excited. The weather looks beautiful, Allan's got the whole weekend off, and I feel like I'm on vacation. There's been a flurry of last-minute cancellations, of course; that seems to be inevitable. I've learned not to worry about who can't make it, and just enjoy the company of who shows. Last year, we actually knew very few of our guests before they arrived. It was more like an internet meet-up than a regular party. This year, it feels like our friends are coming over. That is a great feeling.

Thank you, Antonia Zerbisias, for using the word that the media won't learn: femicide . So, World Wrestling Entertainment superstar Chris Benoit – a.k.a. "The Canadian Crippler" – sent "several curious text messages" to friends last weekend before apparently strangling his 43-year-old wife Nancy, smothering his son Daniel, 7, and then hanging himself. Atlanta authorities suggest he may have suddenly snapped in a fit of 'roid rage. Or was Nancy about to toss him out of the (marriage) ring? Meanwhile, east-end Toronto sewing machine technician Alton Beckford killed his common-law wife, her mother and himself Monday night, just after returning from his 13-year-old stepdaughter's Grade 8 graduation. The girl escaped with self-defence wounds. Beckford had reportedly lost his job five weeks ago because, according to what he told neighbours, he had complained about unsafe working conditions. Guess he must have "suddenly snapped" after five weeks of h...

I finished Miriam Toews's A Complicated Kindness . It's very good. The book is funny, sad and hopeful. It has some profound things to say about religion, love, forgiveness and hope, and it says all of them through the story and characters, not through preaching. A really nice book. I'm about to start The Darling , by one of my favourite authors, Russell Banks . When I blogged earlier about A Complicated Kindness , I mentioned I am attracted to novels with teenage narrators. Banks wrote one of the quintessential teenage-narrated novel, Rule of the Bone . ROTB is the child of Catcher in the Rye and the grandchild of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn , the latter in a very conscious way. Banks's novel Cloudsplitter , about the radical abolitionist John Brown, is his masterpiece. I've read several other books by him, too. I don't know anything about The Darling , but I'm expecting good things. Don't you love the library?

Here's a great example of what can happen when you keep an open mind and an eye out for possibilities. Last week I answered an ad on Craigslist, someone looking for drivers in Mississauga. Pick up a few kids in the morning, drop them off at a summer program, pick them up in the afternoon, drop them off at their home. $50 per kid per week, cash. I thought, hey, it's worth a look. It turns out to be an ESL program. This is how I came to think about tutoring as a possibility. I went to the office today. It's a one-woman operation, a former ESL teacher who started her own teaching and tutoring business. She seems to run a quality service, and she's thrilled to find me. Next week I'll start ferrying some nearby kids to their summer program, earn $200 cash a week and have all day free in between trips. She groups kids together by location, so they'll be somewhat nearby. Beginning in the fall, her clients contract for tutoring in packages of 8 hours, paid in advance. T...

I'm sure this comes as no surprise. In the freedom vs security dilemma , I've chosen freedom. I had a good first interview with HR, and they scheduled a second interview with the department supervisor, and extensive testing. It seems like LFF would be a good employer, and that they might offer me a decent full-time job... if one wanted such a thing. I just can't do it, not while I still have other options. I'm cancelling the second interview. Meanwhile, I thought of another option for September: tutoring. There are several Mississauga companies that offer ESL classes, tutoring and other educational help. I'm not qualified to teach ESL, but I have a lot of tutoring experience, and I enjoy it. Onward.

I forgot to wish everyone a happy Pride Weekend . My thoughts go out especially to the folks spending their first Pride in Canada - and even more especially to Gito and Juan , who fought so hard to be together, and now they are, in their new home. Next year, I'll say that for Tom and Emilio ! I hope everyone has a fantastic weekend. Lots of love to all.

Reading about the trials and tribulations of my job search must be getting pretty boring. But I've learned to stop apologizing for the content of my posts. I finally got it that if you don't want to read it, you'll just skip this one. Tomorrow I have an interview with a Large Financial Firm for a full-time document production position. It's normal Monday-Friday daytime hours. I've already done a phone interview, and I'm reasonably certain I'll get an offer. The question is, do I want the job? Advantages: Good, steady money and other benefits like paid sick and vacation days. Easier living, which we had before I quit my job at Really Crappy Firm. The end of our financial worries for a while. It's not a law firm, so if a Fri/Sat/Sun law firm job becomes available, I could bolt with no negative consequences. I don't think leaving Really Crappy Firm after only 3 weeks on the job will reflect badly on me, but doing that twice in a row would not be good. E...

This morning's headlines tell us that Prime Minister Stephen Harper has "softened" his stance on extending Canada's military presence in Afghanistan, and will seek "consensus" before keeping the troops there longer. If you read a bit further, however, Harper manages to "soften" while still blaming the Liberals for a potential pull out. I don't want to send people on a mission if the opposition is going to, at home, undercut the dangerous work they're doing in the field. So Canada won't leave Afghanistan because that's what most Canadians want, and it won't leave Afghanistan because it has no business being there. And it certainly won't leave because the Tories needs votes in Quebec, where polls show a whopping 70% opposition to the war. Certainly not. Canada will leave because the Liberals are undercutting the mission. Uh huh. But politics aside, the main thing is that the debate is out there, that the discussion is movi...

I've started A Complicated Kindness , by the Canadian novelist Miriam Toews , the first of a few novels I took out of the library to give my brain a break from overly dense history. I really like the book so far, especially the voice of the teenaged narrator. I'm always interested in books with a teenage narrator, especially ones that are not necessarily written for young people. Toews's narrator feels very authentic and not forced, which can be a common pitfall. I had A Complicated Kindness from the library last year, but for some reason I never got to it. While it was sitting around the house, Allan picked it up, and he found the depiction of growing up in a repressive religious environment rang true as well. I'm enjoying the dark humour and the pointed observations.

The "Engrish" editing job may not have been a scam after all. And here I deleted the question mark from the title of that post! They're looking into other methods of payment. If they'll use PayPal, I'll do it. I realized I can do the notetaking work without making a long-term commitment. If no weekend doc-pro spot comes up through the summer (which I suspect will be the case), I can apply for notetaking work in August, and if I'm accepted, start work in September. Notetaking during the college term will buy me some time to wait for a good doc-pro job, as opposed to taking a schedule I dread. So while there's not enough work for my main employment, it might be an interesting and well-paid stop-gap. I've been copyediting websites for various people who are not native speakers of English. I enjoy the work, and I wouldn't mind doing a lot more of it. I put an ad on Craigslist (me and a zillion other people), and I'm brainstorming other avenues to...

The head of NATO is doing a PR stint in Quebec , trying to bolster support for the Afghan "mission" in that province. (Don't you love that euphemism? Why don't they start calling the soldiers "missionaries"?) NATO is now pushing Canada to stay in Afghanistan past the current commitment, which expires in 2009. Let's hope an autumn election quashes any notion of that. From today's Star : NATO has had a tough time convincing members of the 26-member military alliance to deploy troops alongside the Canadians in the dangerous regions of southern Afghanistan, where insurgent activity is highest. Now it's facing the possibility that two of the nations already there – the Netherlands and Canada – could pull up stakes with no nations waiting in the wings to take their place. The Netherlands, Scheffer's home country, is due to decide on its troop presence in southern Afghanistan this summer, a debate that could influence Canada's own decision, w...

For a few months, Toronto fire and ambulance vehicles have been displaying "support our troops" ribbon-shaped decals. The stickers were supposed to be removed in September, but some city councillors wanted them left on indefinitely. Mayor David Miller correctly pointed out that may people view the decals as support for Canada's military presence in Afghanistan, which he termed "very controversial". Yesterday Miller was quoted : "There are calls from people saying, 'Why are you expressing support for war in Afghanistan?'" he said, adding he wasn't made aware ahead of time that the decals would appear on city vehicles." This morning we learn that the mayor, caving to pressure, will keep the decals on city vehicles for some indeterminate period. I'm not blaming Miller alone, although he could have shown a little spine. The City Council vote was 37-0 in favour of leaving the stickers on. Pressure must have been pretty intense, because...

I've been researching the computerized notetaking gig - gathering information, laying the groundwork - and have been increasingly excited about the possibilities. I was looking forward to the work, and especially the change of lifestyle it would bring. The pay turned out to be better than I thought, and the hours per week would be perfect. Yesterday I found the catch, and I can't find a way around it. There aren't enough work weeks. Notetakers work during class time only, not during reading periods (I didn't know what those were, but apparently Canadian college students have study breaks before exams), or during exams, and of course not between terms. I was told the rule of thumb is seven weeks on, seven weeks off. The pay is nice, but not enough thta I could work only half the year. If I earned more money from my writing, this would be the perfect compliment. But although that happens occasionally, I can't count on it or plan for it. That's why I need the day-...

Archaeologists have uncovered the human skeleton of what appears to be the earliest known gunshot victim in the New World. The skeleton was found in an Inca cemetery outside Lima, Peru. Digging in an Inca cemetery in the suburbs of Lima , they came on well-preserved remains of an individual with holes less than an inch in diameter in the back and front of the skull. Forensic scientists in Connecticut said the position of the round holes and some minuscule iron particles showed that the person most likely was shot and killed by a Spanish musket ball. Ceramics and other artifacts in the 72 examined graves established the approximate time of the burials, archaeologists said, and this indicated that these were casualties of combat between Inca warriors and Spanish invaders, who seized the Andean empire in 1532. Spanish chronicles describe a pitched battle, a last stand of the Incas that was fought in the vicinity in 1536. Conquistadors were equipped with some of the first effective firearm...

I feel so much better now that Canada's no-fly list has been implemented . How has the country managed to avert disaster all this time without it? What's that you say? Terrorists don't fly with their own names and passports? Civil what? That's so pre-6/19/07 thinking! Well, it can't be pre-9/11 thinking. We've been managing without it since then.

Answers and explanations are now in comments .

Amazing stuff from our man in the mainstream media, Keith Olbermann. On the restoration of habeas corpus , and what its costing the US to ignore it. Turley: "The greatest irony of the Bush Administration is that his legacy will be to show the dangers of walking away from those rights that define us. We're very much alone today. He can't go to Canada without people protesting, Miss America can't even go to Mexico without being booed. We're viewed as a rogue nation and it is a dangerous world to live in when you’re alone." On the nexus of politics and terror : . . . from the mind-bending idea that four guys dressed as Pizza Delivery men were going to out-gun all the soldiers at Fort Dix . . . to the not-too-thought-out plan to blow-up J-F-K Airport . . . here we go again. Time for an update of our segment "The Nexus of Politics and Terror". And, to refresh our memories, the first part of that timeline . Thanks, as always, to Crooks and Liars for hosti...

I have a letter in today's Toronto Star . A recent article about Toronto's environmental plans looked at three other cities: San Francisco, Chicago and New York. Perhaps the writer just wanted to use three US cities, or perhaps it's de rigueur to compare Toronto to New York. But New York's environmental policies are so weak, that the article cites Mayor Bloomberg's proposals , none of which exist yet - and many of which, knowing New York, may never exist. I wrote this. If Toronto wants to emulate New York City's successes, it shouldn't look at proposals for programs that don't exist, and may never, like Mayor Michael Bloomberg's proposed vehicle congestion tax. Where New York should and can be imitated is its massive public transportation infrastructure. Driving into Manhattan's business district is an unnecessary luxury. Owning a car at all in New York is a luxury, not a necessity. Can Toronto say that? I think a vehicle congestion charge is...

I'm completely stalled on At Canaan's Edge . This is the final book in Taylor Branch's trilogy subtitled "America In The King Years". It's a huge doorstop of a book, and very dense. So were the first two books, and I loved those. This one... I'm having some problems with. Branch has an unfortunate tendency to overwhelm the reader with details. While the well-chosen detail brings clarity and focus, mountains of extraneous detail can obscure all meaning. The book is full of long, winding sentences, clauses looped onto clauses, often using odd constructions that force me to read a sentence two or three times before I understand it. One after the next after the next. I feel more like I'm plowing through this book to absorb information than actually enjoying the experience of reading. This is a big disappointment, as I loved the first two books, and was eagerly awaiting this one. I long ago stopped forcing myself to finish every book I start, as long as I...

1. Whose blog is this? 2. Is the answer to that question difficult to find? 3. Is there anything about this blog that causes you to think someone other than [answer to question number one] writes this blog? Please answer below. Thank you.

From Thomas Walkom: Governments like to say there is only one class of Canadian citizen – that no matter whether we were born here or naturalized, no matter our religion, ethnicity or political views, we receive equal treatment from the state. That is what governments like to say. Unfortunately, this is not true – particularly when citizens find themselves in trouble abroad. If a middle-class Canadian tourist is killed in Mexico, the story is front-page news. The minister of foreign affairs makes statements; the Mexicans are asked to explain. Similarly, if a Canadian is mistreated by a country we disapprove of – like Iran or even China – Ottawa is happy to talk tough. The former Liberal government roasted Iran over the jailing and murder of Zahra Kazemi. Stephen Harper, the current prime minister, is taking China to task over its imprisonment of Huseyin Celil. But if a Canadian is unlucky enough to run into trouble with a country that Ottawa does not wish to offend, it is a different ...

I answered an ad on Craigsist for some freelance editing work. It was supposed to be a service that edits Asian "Engrish" into North American business English. They sent me a fairly extensive edit test, which I took. Then the contact asked - via email - for my banking information for wire transfers. No secure server, no website, no documentation on the company. When I said I wasn't comfortable emailing bank information, he said I could do it by phone. I explained that I wouldn't give that information at all, because "for all I know, this could be an elaborate scam to obtain banking information". I said I could be paid by Paypal. I have not heard back from them since, and the ad has been removed! I posted a warning on Craigslist. The work sounded interesting. Too bad it was nonexistent! I think I will pursue Woti's suggestion of looking for university and graduate students who need their papers and theses edited.

If you've done any activism, especially if you've taken a leadership role, then you've experienced the frustration of trying to convince people to join your battle, whatever it happens to be. I'm not talking about changing people's minds. I mean getting people who already agree with you to take action. My most recent high-stakes activism, while still in New York, didn't involve a lot of recruiting. I was organizing and working with people who were already active. But I recently stepped out into the larger world, and received a face-slap reminder of how frustrating activism can be. I started a petition asking Major League Baseball to end interleague play . It's not an issue of global importance, nor was I treating it as such. But it's something discussed endlessly around the world of baseball, and something many fans complain about. My intentions were simple. I thought it would be cool to assemble a large number of signatures, possibly get a little media ...

Hey, this is weird. I just realized I'm now closer to 50 than 40. Even though that's technically been true since last June 13, I just noticed it today. I've been alive on this earth 46 years. It's good.

Last week I had the opportunity to interview a young man named Tyler, a high school senior from Waterloo, Iowa. For his Eagle Scout project, Tyler made this video. Check it out. (Running time 11 minutes.) I'm Tyler.

James passed along this photo essay from Time magazine: What The World Eats . It shows a week's worth of food from 15 different homes, all over the world. The photographs are from the book Hungry Planet , by photographer Peter Menzel and writer Faith D'Aluisio. Here's more about the book from NPR.

There's some new info in the proportional representation thread , courtesy of MSS of Fruits and Votes . Let's be tidy and keep the comments there. Thanks.

Catching up on the news this morning, I saw this headline on truthout : Cindy Sheehan Sells Protest Site to LA Radio Host . When I clicked, the name of the purchaser jumped out at me: Bree Walker ! Walker is a smart, strong feminist and disability-rights activist. I lost track of her career over the years, and was thrilled to see that's she still working and successful. Walker has a condition called ectrodactyly, which fuses her fingers and toes together, making her hands appear somewhat claw-like. When she was younger, she used to hide her hands under prosthetics, but later decided to be proudly herself. When she first "came out," I noticed that in interviews she would fix her hair or otherwise make her hands visible where she could have easily hidden them from view. Walker's success in front of the camera was hailed by people with disabilities everywhere. It doesn't hurt that she is conventionally beautiful , but then, her disability is thought of as a "def...

Gore Vidal was in Toronto this week, speaking in the Grano Lecture Series . Today the Star , who helps sponsor the Series, ran a portion of a transcript . William Thorsell: Is there a Europe? I mean, this whole idea of Europe has got so diffused. The EU gets bigger, and so on. We talk about Europe as though there were a place or a society. We're not talking about foreign policy or anything, just is there a European civilization any more that can pick up if the United States falters? GORE VIDAL: Oh, sure there is, and every bit of it is like my fellow illuminata here. It is the Europe of the la lumière. And it is a great Europe since the Protestants' appearance at the Renaissance. One other thing that we neglected to do, and we could have done in '45 when the mandate of heaven, as Confucius would have said, came to us after World War II, we had a chance to develop a civilization. We were number one in everything, really by accident: ballet, something nobody had known about b...

Did you all hear about this? The 1943 diary of a 14-year-old Jewish girl living in the Bedzin ghetto , near Auschwitz, has been revealed. Rutka Laskier gave her diary to a friend, Stanislawa Sapinska, who held onto it for 60 years. Sapinska, who is not Jewish, recently revealed the diary. After it was authenticated, Sapinska donated the diary to Yad Vashem, the Holocaust memorial museum in Israel. Of course I read The Diary of Anne Frank as a child, but it was only when I re-read it as an adult that I appreciated its power. I was stunned by the clarity and immediacy of the writing, by the force of that prematurely wise voice speaking across the vast gulf in experience. The excerpts in the news stories about this diary have the same quality. "The rope around us is getting tighter and tighter," Rutka Laskier wrote in 1943 shortly before she was deported to Auschwitz. "I'm turning into an animal waiting to die." . . . "I simply can't believe that one day...

From an Op-Ed in the Star , by Pedro Barata, Vilma Filici, and Victor Wong, of the Portuguese Canadian National Congress, the Canadian Hispanic Congress, and the Chinese Canadian National Congress, respectively. Working-class immigrants need not apply. Although these words do not actually show up on Canadian immigration application forms, they might as well. After all, carpenters, plumbers, cleaners, hotel workers and others eager to fill positions in industries that are desperate for new recruits don't have a prayer of qualifying for permanent residency under Canada's points-based immigration system. Yesterday, Ottawa took the first important step toward rectifying this situation. Parliament passed a motion to put a moratorium on further deportations and to seek sensible solutions aimed at regularizing the status of undocumented migrants and finally overhauling the immigration and refugee determination system. The motion, which was passed by a 147 to 115 vote, with most of tho...

A few weeks ago, I blogged about the medical abuse by her parents of a girl known as "Ashley X". Kids On Wheels , the magazine I help write and edit, ran a letter in response to their article on those parents' choice. I'm posting the outstanding letter with permission of the author. I love your magazine, but I was frankly appalled when I read "Considering Ashley" (Wheel Life, Winter 2007). For all of us to have to worry that ethics committees and families might consider mutilating a little girl, and subjecting her to experimental hormone injections as a preferable alternative to institutionalizing or even euthanizing her, is so far off the charts that I am left speechless. Ashley is not the problem. The problem is that all the Ashleys and their beleaguered families don't have the supports they need. We would never be having this discussion if Ashley had been a boy, and the parents had cut off his penis and testicles. Nor would we be having this discussi...

The proportional representation discussion and the creation museum discussion are still active. Just thought I'd let you know.

It's a good-news-bad-news kind of post, so let's get the bad news out of the way first. There's a resounding silence on the job front. No weekend spots at all. However... it's looking like this is leading me to make another change in how I earn my living. I'm excited about the potential, but I'm concerned about our income during the transition. I've discovered that colleges and universities hire people to take notes for hearing-impaired students. The notetakers attend classes with the students, take notes on a laptop, then email the file to the student. This sounds like a great fit for me in many ways: I'm a great notetaker, a fast typist, and I like the idea of attending different classes at area colleges. The work is flexible and cyclical, following the school term, and I like that, too. The pay is not fantastic, but it's all right, and it has the potential to increase greatly with experience. I heard about this work shortly after we moved to Canad...

In my recent post about the Creation Museum , Lone Primate mentioned that this is why he doesn't support proportional representation : the opportunity for fringe parties that many of us consider dangerous and anti-democratic to share a role in government. My instincts and my reading tell me this is not the case, but I'm not well-versed enough in the issues to argue effectively. So I tapped someone who is; I invited Idealistic Pragmatist over to comment. Since I don't have time to write anything original right now, I'll rerun their discussion here, and I'll invite MSS of Fruits and Votes to join us. MSS is a professor of political science who specializes in elections. Here's the story so far. Lone Primate: ...this is the reason I get cold feet every time someone waxes eloquent about proportional representation. Sure, sounds great when you imagine it's just Latin for "the NDP gets more seats"... till you realize it also means folks like this, who ...

I have lots to write about, but no time to write it. My Kids On Wheels and New Mobility assignments have all exploded at the same time, and I have to focus on that. Do you know, if I were paid normal writing fees for my KOW work, I wouldn't need a full-time job (whether three days or five days) in the first place? Of course, if Kids On Wheels could pay standard rates, it would be a standard magazine, and not the great work that I love and care so much about. But still. I'll be back when I can. See you all soon.

It is from numberless diverse acts of courage and belief that human history is shaped. Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, and . . . those ripples build a current which can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance. These words were spoken by Robert F. Kennedy during a 1966 visit to South Africa. Kennedy, acting on an impulsive dare from an American civil rights worker, toured that country when only a tiny handful of Americans knew aware of the brutal apartheid regime. It would be another 15 years before the issue would strike public consciousness worldwide, and another decade 13 years before the dismantling of apartheid would begin. I'm not posting this because it's Kennedy; that's irrelevant here. This is about movement, and progress, and time. More on this soon.

Many of you probably already know about this reading from evolution blogs, but not being a visitor to that world, my eyes popped. There's a creation museum in Kentucky. The country of my birth grows ever stupider, and ever more divided.

Since my post about Torontonians' reaction to the new addition to the Royal Ontario Museum attracted a lively discussion, here's a bit of follow-up. According to the Star , reaction at the opening was generally positive. Of course it's an extremely skewed sample, since I doubt people who loathe the building, or who don't care about architecture, would attend the opening. Still, I was cheered to read that thousands of people showed up. A major addition to the Toronto streetscape deserves the attention. So what will the verdict be? An architectural wonder or a risky monstrosity? The crowds waiting all day to get their first glimpse inside the now-infamous Crystal, which opened this weekend as part of Luminato's Open Weekend Festivities, were downright split as to what they thought of the museum's $270-million makeover. "I think it's a very daring building. It's nice to see such bold architecture in Toronto," said Lianne Raymond, as she stood in ...

In an earlier post about our work life in Canada, I wrote: People often note that I am "lucky" because my job gives me the time and freedom to pursue my writing career. That irritates me, because it's not a function of luck. Then I wrote a capsule version of how I got to this place, in terms of my writing career and my day-jobs, which involved huge amounts of hard work, persistence and drive. Then I said: Of course, we, all of us, are fortunate to achieve what we strive for, and you know I am grateful for good fortune. You can work hard at something and still not achieve it, through no fault of your own. (I ought to know that: I have two unpublished novels.) But I seriously bristle at the implication that I accidentally fell into my life. I didn't. I built it. Some readers questioned my downplaying of the role of luck, citing luck or the lack of it in their own and others' lives. That made me think about why the "you're so lucky" comment irritates m...

Several readers have expressed surprise that I haven't blogged about the proposed massive changes to US immigration policy. If adopted, these changes would make the US's immigration policy similar to Canada's, which favours skilled workers, educated professionals and the middle class, while also offering legal status to illegal immigrants already in the US. From a mainstream news story about the bill: A bill being discussed would legalize millions of illegal immigrants, tighten border security and mandate that employers verify they are hiring legal workers. The bill includes conservative-backed initiatives such as the worker verification program to prevent illegal immigrants from getting jobs, and a new point system to prioritize skills and education over family in deciding who can immigrate in the future. Liberals decry the point scheme as unfair to families and are vehemently opposed to a guest worker program that would let laborers come to the US for temporary stints wit...