test blog #10

We used to eat President's Choice Blue Menu granola. The vanilla-almond flavour was crunchy, delicious, and reasonably healthy. My favourite way to eat it was with plain Greek yogurt and fruit, but it was very good with milk or rice milk as well. Then... it changed. It was no longer crunchy. It was no longer tasty. With a little liquid added, it tasted like soggy cardboard, or what I imagine soggy cardboard would taste like if it were a breakfast cereal. Thanks a lot, Loblaws. Allan, who does our food shopping, went on the hunt for a cereal that would satisfy all the requirements: whole grain, crunchy, tasty, not overly sweet, and reasonably healthy. Plus I prefer clusters to flakes. It would also be good if the cereal didn't cost $10.00 a box. This is how I discovered Jordan's Morning Crisp granola, and it has made me very happy. Morning Crisp is crunchy. Morning Crisp is delicious. Morning Crisp comes in a variety of yummy flavours: Wild About Berries, Simply Strawberry, ...

These days, most hotel rooms contain some sort of green messaging, as companies are expected to show how eco-friendly they are. Usually guests have the option of not having their towels changed daily, which is supposed to yield big energy savings. Last week at the Sheraton Parkway in Toronto, I learned that Sheraton's green policy is not exactly as advertised. I don't know if this qualifies as greenwashing, but it is certainly not full disclosure. The card reads: Conserving water, energy and other resources is rewarding for you and great for the environment. Enjoy a $5 voucher at participating food and beverage outlets or 500 Starpoints® awarded at check-out for each night you decline housekeeping (except day of departure). It feels good to conserve. To participate in the Make a Green Choice program, please tell us at check-in or look for the door hanger in your guestroom. It may feel good to conserve, but your conservation doesn't feel good to hotel workers. For each gues...

I am very frustrated by progressive reaction to Doug Ford becoming the leader of the Ontario Progressive Conservative Party. People are acting as if Ford has already won an election that is three months away. I understand there is great -- and well-deserved -- anger against Kathleen Wynne's Liberal party. But are we progressives going to stand helplessly staring at polls as we are thrown from frying pan to fire? Under 20 years of Liberal governments, public spending has been frozen, resulting in a decrease of more than 40% in public resources. Corporate taxes are at all-time low. Privatization is strangling both services and jobs. And now -- supposedly -- we're all going to vote for more of the same. Either literally more of the same in the Liberals or worse than that in the Conservatives. And supposedly, we won't vote NDP because the NDP can't win. We won't vote for a party because the party can't win because not enough people will vote for it. How stupid do yo...

In my continuing (and usually failing) goal of remembering to write about things here , instead of just posting to Facebook, I feel I should write something about the student organizing and activism around gun violence in the US. This movement is the greatest thing to happen in the US in as long as I can remember. It stands with the Fight for 15 and Black Lives Matter as the most important movements of our present time. It has all the hallmarks of a true grassroots revolution. - It is self-organized. - Its spokespeople emerged organically. - It built quickly, because it has tapped into longstanding anger, and it resonates both deeply and broadly. - It is building on a local level to effect broad social change. - It is being organized from the bottom up, as opposed to, for example, the organizing around the election of Barack Obama. - It is using a variety of tools, and it appears to be fluid and agile around using different approaches as needed: walk-outs, public speaking, mainstre...

I recently attended the CUPE Ontario Library Workers Conference, which has become a highlight of my year since I first attended (and was elected to the organizing committee) in 2015. It has eclipsed and replaced the OLA Superconference as the most relevant and enjoyable must-attend conference in my schedule. When I first got my librarian degree, I was very excited about attending my first "OLA" (as it's always called). But I quickly learned that the sessions are a crap-shoot, sometimes relevant but often obvious and dull. There's also a great deal of boosterism by OLA and the member libraries. For the difference between the two conferences, for OLA, think employers and libraries , for CUPE Ontario, think  labour and library workers . In recent years, our Library Workers Conference has focused on precarious work and health and safety issues, two themes that are inextricably linked. This year's conference was called "Sex, Drugs & Bed Bugs," a light ...

Brendan's Way  by Matthew Bin is a genre-blending journey story combining adventure, mystery, and conspiracy in a futuristic setting. It's technically science fiction, as it takes place in the future and features some technology that doesn't yet exist. But if, like me, you don't usually read science fiction, don't let that stop you. It's an engrossing story and a satisfying read. Brendan is immigrating to a new world. As generation upon generation before him have done, he is filled with hope and dreams of a better life. In this case, the travel is intergalactic, but the conditions on Brendan's home planet are familiar to us, as are the difficult conditions onboard the ship. To win his passage, Brendan is posing as the husband of a political activist who is traveling undercover on some kind of mission. Brendan doesn't know the details, and doesn't want to know. Being granted the unexpected opportunity to begin life anew on a colonial planet is reason ...

I've gathered some thoughts about several novels I read but neglected to write about. I enjoyed them all to varying degrees; all are worth reading if you enjoy the type. This is the first of three posts. * * * * The Heart Goes Last  by Margaret Atwood is a subgenre we don't see enough of: the dystopian comedy. We're in the future, one in which the entire economy of the United States has collapsed. Formerly middle-class families are living in their cars. Gangs of menacing scavengers roam the landscape. No one knows what happened -- some complicated financial dirty dealings went awry. It all looks very familiar. Now some clever entrepreneur offers a solution to hunger, want, and anxiety -- a controlled community where there are jobs for all and every need is met. Well, yes, it partly a penal colony, and no one leaves -- ever. What could possibly go wrong? As the plot thickens -- and reels, and loops, and spins -- we're treated to a wacky world involving blackmail, espiona...

In late 2015, I blogged about a remarkable documentary: " Call Me Lucky ," about the life and times of Barry Crimmins. Barry died last week at the age of 64. Describing Barry as a comedian somehow seems wrong. He was a social critic who used biting humour and righteous anger to enlighten and to skewer. He was a fierce opponent of any system that furthers war, poverty, and repression, and a stalwart advocate for equality, justice, and peace. He was also a master of wicked one-liners, as his thousands of Twitter followers knew. Barry was in many ways a cynic and a curmudgeon, but that didn't stop him from being an idealist. He constantly called attention to the mistreatment of children, the kind that happens every day in our own communities. Barry went public with his own horrific story of child sexual abuse. In the 1990s, he became an activist against child pornography, after discovering that AOL chat rooms were harboring pedophiles. As Barry often said, "Child por...

Visit We Own It for all the facts on privatization. When public services are privatized, everyone loses -- except, of course, shareholders of a private company, who increase their wealth with our  money. But did you know the pain of privatization hits women disproportionately harder? As this excellent article by Jane Stinson in Canadian Dimension says: Privatization is not gender-neutral. It threatens advances toward women’s equality in the labour market and in the home. In the labour market, privatization usually means lower wages for women workers, fewer workplace rights, reduced health and welfare benefits, no pension coverage, less predictable work hours, more precarious employment, a heavier workload and generally more exploitative working conditions. In addition, in a society where women are still the primary caregivers for both children and the elderly, when services become both scarcer and more expensive , women's burdens grow -- often while their wages are shrinking. Th...

This is a scene played out every day in public libraries all across North America. I'm at the information desk, and I see a boy, by himself, a chubby little toddler, toddle fast in one direction, then back in the other direction. He can't be much over 12 months old. When I see him cross the floor for the third time, I get up and go to chat with him. "Who are you here with, sweetie? Is your mom here? Where's your mom?" As I talk, his face starts to pucker, his eyes well up with tears. "Come with me, let's look for Mommy. I know she's here, let's go find her." He won't hold my hand, but he walks unsteadily beside me. We go around to different moms, dads, and kids. I'm hoping he'll soon recognize his family and run straight to them. By this time he is full-on crying. A woman reading with school-age kids asks them to wait and joins me.  He wouldn't take my hand, but she lifts him confidently onto her hip. Maybe she looks more like...