KATIMAVIK!!!!!

The most bestest thing I ever did is in jeopardy!

Please follow the link to petition the canadian government to not cut Katimavik financing. http://www.etatdufinancement.katimavik.org/support/index/

Or, you can post a paper letter to your mp and the Minister of Canadian Heritage and Status of Women free.

this beta thing

My blog has a new look, I'm sorry. I tried to make it be wider and don't know how well I succeeded. Hopefully the colours aren't distracting or difficult to read, please let me know and I'll try to work on it more. I've spent two hours now, reading through old posts and such, when I should be reading through job postings. It was a nice trip to the past- I have been back from Haiti a while now, i guess. Also I read my mom's blog from her trip last christmas, and noticed how similar we are, and also how different. It made me realize how much I love her, which seems to be a theme this week. I love you mom! (tell Wm I love him too)

(Sidenote: Ottawa is SO the place I've lived in Canada where I do the most exciting things. Tuesday I went to a play at the National Arts Centre. There was much jumping up and down when i realized I had been to the theatre and was now looking up at my nation's parliament buildings)

Anyway, back to work, ugh.

Yesterday and even farther ago

I went to church, and the text was "Love the Lord your God with all your heart..."

I know how to love God with my mind, but I forget for the moment how to love with my strength. That seems like an odd thing to say. I suppose I could use my strength for the thing that I love, but I don't know how to use it for God. He doesn't actually need me to physically climb mountains does he?

Well, come to think of it, in Haiti I climbed a lot of mountains, and thought it was necessary for my job, and thought that was serving God. Hmmm...

Monday Motday

Of late, I have been doing much reading and encountering words I don't know, or at least, of which I don't know the specific definition. In order to not simply look up definitions and then forget, I have decided to start Monday Motday- a day for words to be practiced. Since I'm not in grade school anymore, all the words will have to be used in one sentence. Not because I want to learn to use them in that way, but because effusive eruditism is much more ostentatious. (and as such, competitive and fun!) (Yes, I think word competitions are fun. Even against myself- but if you wanna experience the fun for yourself, the comments section is open)

antebellum: adj.
before or existing before the war, esp. Amer. Civil War
concomitant: adj.
existing or occurring with something else, often in a lesser way;
accompanying; concurrent: an event and its concomitant circumstances.
propensity: noun
1. a natural inclination or tendency: a propensity to drink too much.
2. Obsolete. favorable disposition or partiality.
anacoluthia: noun
lack of grammatical sequence or coherence, esp. in a sentence.

As in:
A propensity for anacoluthia to be concomitant with propaganda can be noted in the articles of antebellum journals.

Toast with your tea

www.myspace.com/toastlikestojam

Everybody go there, and then watch their video. It is like the second time that i can think of where I've been connected to a band personally, so I like their music, but everyone will like their video. (It is in Tripplettes of Belleville style.) GO NOW!

eh?

So, I'm looking for jobs, I started yesterday. Everyone whose been hassling me to do so may now relax. Those of you hassling me to go back to school, attend a different school or pay my taxes, you will be pleased to note that the looking for job option is ...I don't want to say unpleasant, but certainly ... well, here's the last post I read:

Years of experience related to the job offer : none
Description of qualifications : Be an incumbent(holder) of an equivalent secondary school diploma in the 11th year or in a 5th year of the secondary or the certificate the equivalence of which is recognized by the proper authorities; or belong to a class of jobs of the public service the conditions of membership of which as for the schooling are comparable; the person who is also admitted(supposed) has a lower number of years of schooling, on condition that it compensates for every year of missing schooling by two years of work experience; we hear(understand) by work experience, such as, the dependent or the time dedicated to the care and to the education of a child or the other persons with load(responsibility). The knowledge of the English language is essential in the exercise of the job and will be the object of an evaluation which will be eliminating heat. This competition addresses only the persons whose main home located in the RCM of Pontiac, administrative region of Outaouais. However, this condition does not apply to the members of cultural communities and to the persons with a disability. You also have to have the status of Canadian citizen or that of the permanent resident. Furthermore, to occupy a job in the Quebecois public service, you have to have a knowledge of French suited to the duties(functions). SALARY: the annual salary, calculated on a base of 35 hours per week, is 26 591 $ (14,56 $ the hour) in the start and of 32 581 $ (17,84 $ the hour) at most of the scale(ladder) *

Surely the coolest thing since that van commercial!

A movie of dominoes and billiards. You'll like it, really! (And plus, hey look at me being interested in something relaxing!)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=niSw5DWomIA

TEMPERATURE EFFECTS ON COMFORT AND HEALTH

24C - top range of comfort

21C - recommended living room temperature

Less than 20C - death risk begins

18C - recommended bedroom temperature

16C - resistance to respiratory diseases weakened

12C - more than two hours at this temperature raises blood pressure and increases heart attack and stroke risk

5C - Significant risk of hypothermia

Source: West Midlands Public Health Observatory

Found this while looking up info for post about Marshall Islands. Interesting stuff the BBC has.

Thing I'm distracted from

Reading the news today, I got angry and defensive when Haiti was referred to as the poorest country in the americas. Then I looked it up, and sometime in the last year Haiti has indeed been reclassed in the human development index lower than any other american country.

But, underneath the status of "low development", there are a whole bunch of "unclassed" countries, which I imagined would be places like Vatican City and San Marino. They're there, but so are Afghanistan, Somalia and Serbia, and some others.

One of the others is the Marshall Islands, who I couldn't even generally point to on the globe. (North Pacific)

They are classed 195th in GDP per capita. (Haiti is 149, and Burkina Faso is 164th) I can't tell you who 195 is near because it doesn't even show up on the Wikipedia list, which stops at 181. To give you an idea of what those countries are doing, here are the ten preceding the cut:

171	Madagascar	908
172	Sierra Leone	903
173	Niger	872
174	Eritrea	858
175	Ethiopia	823
176	Democratic Republic of the Congo	774
177	Yemen	751
178	Burundi	739
179	Guinea-Bissau	736
180	Tanzania	723
181	Malawi	596

I also learned that:

Not being among the 179 member countries of the International Labour Organisation, Marshall Islands is among the handful of countries not obliged to abide by the core labour standards (elimination of forced labour, child labour and discrimination, and respect for freedom of association and right to collective bargaining) as required of ILO members.

The Marshall Islands also host an american testing ground for missiles, and its government is suing the US for increased compensation for its radiation-poisoning victims, according to the BBC Country Profile

Haiti defeats Bermuda in under 20 soccer!

http://www.theroyalgazette.com/apps/pbcs.dll/
article?AID=/20061025/SPORT/110250178

That is a link to the Bermuda news article regarding their defeat 11-1 by Haiti's under 20 soccer team.

11 to 1 !!!

Haiti did surprisingly well in Carribean Women's Volleyball tournament this summer too, why do we never hear about this in the mainstream news?

I am indeed, starting to feel like we are being distracted from other things by despair about Haiti.

Haiti is poor, don't get me wrong, but there are moments of hope, things to rejoice.

Ordinarily I would say that sports don't do much for the masses, and am annoyed at how much my govt is spending on the 2010 Olympics. HOWEVER, Haiti really does care about football. When there is a game on, even a small game, it is as big a deal as the Stanley Cup playoffs in Edmonton. I can't imagine what it would have been like during the world cup games this summer.

Donc, If arguments are made about sports bringing pride, and that being good for the solidarity of a nation, if it were going to be true anywhere, it would be true in Haiti, where the people really do need a current reason to be proud of being Haitian.

And so, an eleven to one victory against Bermuda, a country of much wealth, seems to me to be worth rejoicing. Although, I admit that there is much dodginess in how it was achieved, and would rather have had a smaller victory more obviously fairly.

(The match was moved from Port au Prince to St Marc, and earlier in the day, instead of in the evening, the day before it was played. I wonder if this was actually an attempt to put the other team of balance, or if the Port stadium was having troubles and St Marc was closest. The noon start time really does seem dodgy though- Unless it was because, given that they had to get from St Marc back to their hotel, the game needed to finish earlier. I wouldn't want to be a rich foreign team travelling at night and have the whole country know it! )

the US political scene: Red, White and Green?

http://www.grist.org/news/maindish/2006
/10/05/gate/index.html?source=weekly

That is a link to articles about evangelical environmentalists.

Not, mind you, environmentalists who are christians, (there are many of those, it isn't news) but christians who are coming to be environmentalists.

I will try not to let my pride get to big about being on the right side of right:)

Besides, given my history, if too many people start to agree with this global warming thing, I might join Dr Dobson and call it hooey.

The most wonderful picture of the day

This picture is curtesy of livejournal Haitian community (featured in links to right).

You will notice there are also quite a lot of other Haitian links, and not much else.

I am not unignorant of Haitian affairs, but I certainly am more ignorant of everything else, and I am concerned about this.

1-Am I distracted from more urgent problems, such as Darfur, Burma, even Afghanistan?
2-Am I actually in love with Haiti, or simply an addict?
3-Can I do anything to make it better there, or am I so ignorant & prideful that the first rule, the "Do No Harm" rule, would be better translated as "VT GO HOME"?

All of this is, I am sure, a part of reverse-culture shock, but I feel like I need more knowledge of that too. Shouldn't I be getting better yet? I have been back as long as I was away.

My roommate, who went through all of this already, gets frustrated with me often, because I hold my ideas too closely, they are the only babies I have here to hold, and so I am angered when she tries to take them and hold them to the light of reason. I try to tell her to give me time to be angry, that I am also listening and will tomorrow agree with her, but this doesn't make it any easier to deal with me when I'm bichy NOW, I'm sure.

Especially when sometimes, eg literacy and what language it should be in, I don't come round to her way of seeing things the next day. I am not ready to condemn Creole to an oral language only. I should do research and see that her opinion is the wise one, but I don't. I don't know why not, although partly I don't really know where to start, and I am tired and distracted by all the other things I feel I should know.

So instead I sleep, and Wormwood's successor drinks happily.

Do those of you in education, or wherever, have suggestions on what I should study to better understand education and literacy?

This is my God-son-of-my-heart. He goes to school and he can talk on phones and he likes the same picture books I did. (Although no mention of munsch, I may have to send him some)

Certainly, I will send him and his mom both letters. Just as soon as I write my grandpa and aunties and mentors and children in Haiti. I think I will need to start drinking more coffee!

It snowed today

And I talked to my best friends and my Dad, and had tea with a friend, and listened to Stuart McLean. I am very rich* and life is good.

Tomorrow, I may even buy a pillow and some shoes. Definitely a teapot. Not that I am an adult and ready to be responsible for my own teapot, but my roommate/friend can be.

*edit: I reread that and feel like maybe it comes across as ostentatious. To be clear, I meant rich in the sense of having friends and family, not two mercedes and a spa membership. I am also material-ly wealthy, in the sense that I HAVE A MATTRESS AGAIN, NO MORE COUCHES FOR AT LEAST THREE MONTHS, WOOHOO!

However, I'd like to think that I'm not the sort of person who would derive self-worth from wealth. Although I will admit to being much happier sleeping on a bed than in the dirt, that is backpain and chills, not self worth talking.

Forgiveness

I was talking yesterday and realized that I forgive my mom not giving me the contact numbers, not because she was trying to do what was best (though I'm sure she was) but because if I'd been able to deal with my friend, if I hadn't myself been messed up and terrified of phones, that "fiddlehead" wouldn't have had to phone mom with a new number, she would have had mine.

This is important, because I KNOW I'm supposed to forgive. But a week ago, I really didn't want to, and now I have, and that is good.

That's the end of today's learning, please rise for the doxology. (which actually, my mom doesn't like, but hopefully she'll forgive me this once.)

BE IT NOTED

That I love Mom even when I am angry at her, and I love Dad when I am angry at him, and that they have done a wonderful job of convincing me that I am loved by them too. I have never feared that they don't love me, only that they might not like me particularly much. Which they can't be blamed for, as I have done some remarkably unlikeable things, and I don't even always like myself.

But I do like cheese.

My best friend's back

My other Best Friend. I have three friends from highschool who were officially my best friends, and two of them I miss all the time. Not often enough that I can be proud of, but often enough that I know I haven't forgotten them, that our lives would be better were we in contact.

The other one, I live with. I'm driving her crazy, actually, and I would worry that we might not stay best friends long. Except that she is the most fantastic person in the world, and when she is sick of me, she says "I'm sick of you" and I go outside and take a walk until she misses me. (OR, that's the plan anyway. Sometimes I'm too engrossed in my book to go outside, so I'd better learn to put my book down, which is something a grown-up should know how to do anyway)

I haven't always lived with her, in fact, it's been less than three weeks. There was a short time after highschool when I didn't talk to her very much, but somehow we got over that and have been getting to know each other again ever since.

The other two, I also stopped talking to during that time, but instead of getting over that, there contacts info changed and I wasn't au courant so I just lost them, and I have never gotten over it.

A Chief Anger I hold against my mother is that she didn't give me one friend's number three years ago. It may have been longer. If you are reading this, my fiddling friend, I miss you, I want you back, and it's not my fault I didn't call. I think about you every time I go to Nanaimo, every time I see a show where boys go into a closet with girls, and sometimes when I rake a lawn. And those are obscure things we only did once, but they are things I only did with you. (Except go to Nanaimo, you did that alone, and therein is the problem)

My third friend, my trucking friend, called me tonight. She has been missing me too, and I am thrilled. Because with her, it is my fault that we lost touch. In college, I had her number, and called her once, but never called her back. It was too hard, the conversation didn't flow. The past three weeks I've been thinking about her more than usual, and yesterday I wrote an email and made a call to destinations I knew were disconnected, praying that they weren't, praying I could get in contact with her again. And tonight, completely independently, she called me, or rather my Dad. He called me and I screamed so loud it made my roommate-best friend crazier. But it was worth it. I called my trucker and she has a beautiful voice, even more Canadian than I remember it being, and we talked for 45 minutes and her son- my god-son in my head even if he doesn't know it-is five and started school and it is good.

I worry that maybe I'm putting too much pressure on this, that she will read this and be totally freaked out, or that we will lose contact again and I will be devestated, and that I should try to keep my cool. But I've no interest in that, at all. This is an answer to prayer, and even if I do lose contact again, at least I will have found out a little about what she is up to, and how to think of her.

Now all I need is to find that third friend.

Oh, and to decide how to deal with a God who answers prayers like "I miss my friend" but not "Protect the people in Darfur from slaughter".

Who is Wendell Berry?

The person who said:

"Rats and roaches live by competition under the law of supply and demand; it is the privlege of human beings to live under the laws of justice and mercy."

But besides that, has anyone any idea about this person, Wendell Berry?

Wyclef konn jouwe!

I got hooked on Wyclef Jean when I was in Haiti, although mostly on his creole stuff, I'm still not big on English rap. (My friend Eric has a quote, "Bad rap gives good rap a bad rap" that is about as much as I normally think on the subject) I have seen his charity "Yele Haiti" around Port-au-Prince, as well as his face on posters for a terrible soda pop, but still don't know much.

An interesting interview with him: http://www.sunnewsonline.com/webpages/features
/showtime/2006/aug/25/showtime-25-08-2006-001.htm

but note what the Haiti anti american newsnet has to say about his Uncle:
http://www.haitiaction.net/News/Storm/ERNESTO/8_25_6.html

Mud Pies

I was on another page and read about mud pies. i wanted to talk about it here, but the picture function isn't working. I'll try again tonight.

excerpts from a letter

I'm fine I guess, I'm always struggling with what to do, with trying
to understand how God fits into my life and how my life fits into his
plan. I read a lot, a book right now about immigrants from the
Carribean to Canada in the 70s.It is by Austin Clarke, a
Barbados-born Canadian. It is very interesting, but very disturbing, to see how he portrays black immigrant's ideas about white
immigrants and other canadians.

Today I went to a very interesting church, we had sandwhiches as part
of the service, to get a chance to meet the other people, to try and
develop more of a sense of community. I really enjoyed that. It is a
church that tries to serve poor people so there were lots of hungry
people there, the woman I sat with had come in to escape the rain. I
wondered about some of the conversations I heard, sitting beside this
woman who'd spent the day in the rain and the night huddled in a
doorway, i could hear people talking about gardens and birthday gifts
and the tour de france. I felt like all that stuff excluded her from
the conversation, but on the other hand, if the other people weren't
free to talk about what was on their minds, then they would never be
open, would never be a real part of the community either. So I don't
know. What should you talk about when trying to be friends with
someone who hasn't had the same circumstances as you? And isn't it
prejudiced of me to think that just because she is going through hard
times she has no interest in those things? (It is true that she
didn't join any of those conversations, but she didn't really join in
any others unless she was asked a direct question)

I think this was a problem for me in Haiti too. Certainly I could ask questions about their
lives and about Haiti, but there were few people with whom I could
relax and feel like I had common ground.

I really enjoyed my host mom for that, actually. Even though there was a big
language barrier, when we actually sat and talked I felt like we had
really good talks, about men and politics and religion and psychology
and stuff. Sometimes I felt like we weren't talking about the same
things, or that maybe she was just letting me rant and didn't really
care, but I felt like I could talk to her. And one other girl too, but
that was less surprising because her family is more familiar with whites and North Americans, and we could speak french which was easier.