Event @ Octopus Books

Adria Vasil author of Ecoholic
Thursday May 3, 7:00 p.m
Arbour Environmental Shoppe
800 Bank St (between Third and Fourth Ave)
This event is free and accessible (please note the washrooms are downstairs)

Octopus Books and Arbour Environmental Shoppe are excited to invite you to an evening with Adria Vasil and her much anticipated book - Ecoholic. Filled with helpful tips on everything from which seafood is safe to eat and where to find organic clothes that don’t look like a burlap sack to which green cleaning products actually do the job, Ecoholic is a witty and informative companion on the road to sustainability. Don't miss this great event and learn how to make your world a greener place.

Adria Vasil has been writing the Ecoholic column for NOW Magazine since the spring of 2004 and has covered environmental issues for NOW’s news section for four years. Vasil has a degree in development politics and cultural anthropology from the University of Toronto and a degree in magazine journalism from Ryerson. An advocate for the earth, women’s issues and human rights since her teens, Vasil has appeared on MTV Canada and CBC’s Newsworld to promote environmentalism.

Questions - please call Octopus Books at 613-233-2589

I Heart Stuart McLean

Many of you have read my previous entries on Stuart and the Vinyl Cafe and know I'm a huge fan.... so you can imagine my delight when I read this:

Stuart McLean captures third Leacock medal CBC radio host Stuart McLean has
captured his third Stephen Leacock Memorial Medal for Humour for his book
Secrets from the Vinyl Cafe. McLean was named the winner at a luncheon Wednesday at the Stephen Leacock Museum in Orillia, Ont. He joins former CBC radio host Arthur Black as a three-time winner. McLean’s other wins were for Home from the Vinyl Cafe and Vinyl Cafe Unplugged. The Leacock award, worth $10,000, was first handed out in 1947. Past winners include Mordecai Richler, W.O. Mitchell, Farley Mowat, Roch Carrier and Will Ferguson.

AlterNet goodies

Chomsky and Zinn on Patriotism in America
An interview with two of America's leading dissidents on how the highest act of patriotism would be opposing the war in Iraq and calling for a withdrawal of our troops.

Revenge of the World Bank Secretaries
Want to know what really goes on at the World Bank? Read a copy of Bank Swirled, an underground satirical newspaper published by World Bank employees.

Bill Moyers on why the press bought the war

Great article and teaser video here for the PBS special on this Wednesday, April 25th.

Wandering Around an Albuquerque Airport Terminal by Naomi Shihab Nye

After learning my flight was detained 4 hours, I heard the announcement:

If anyone in the vicinity of gate 4-A understands any Arabic, please come to the gate immediately.

Well -- one pauses these days. Gate 4-A was my own gate. I went there.

An older woman in full traditional Palestinian dress, just like my grandma wore, was crumpled to the floor, wailing loudly. Help, said the flight service person. Talk to her. What is her problem? We told her the flight was going to be four hours late and she did this.

I put my arm around her and spoke to her haltingly. Shu dow-a,shu-biduckhabibti, stani stani schway, min fadlick, sho bit se-wee?

The minute she heard my words she knew -- however poorly used -- she stopped crying. She thought our flight had been cancelled entirely. She needed to be in El aso for some major medical treatment the following day. I said no, no, we're fine, you'll get there, just late, who is picking you up?

Let's call him and tell him. We called her son and I spoke with him in English. I told him I would stay with his mother till we got on the plane and would ride next to her.

She talked to him. Then we called her other sons just for the fun of it.

Then we called my dad and he and she spoke for a while in Arabic and found out of course they had ten shared friends. Then I thought just for the heck of it why not call some Palestinian poets I know and let them chat with her.This all took up about 2 hours. She was laughing a lot by then. Telling about her life. Answering questions.

She had pulled a sack of homemade mamool cookies -- little powdered sugar rumbly mounds stuffed with dates and nuts -- out of her bag and was offering them to all the women at the gate. To my amazement, not a single woman declined one. It was like a sacrament. The traveler from Argentina, the traveler from California, the lovely woman from Laredo -- we were all covered with the same powdered sugar. And smiling. There are no better cookies.

And then the airline broke out the free beverages from huge coolers --non-alcoholic -- and the two little girls for our flight, one African-American, one Mexican-American -- ran around serving us all apple juice and lemonade and they were covered with powdered sugar, too.

And I noticed my new best friend -- by now we were holding hands -- had a potted plant poking out of her bag, some medicinal thing, with green furry leaves. Such an old country traveling tradition. Always carry a plant. Always stay rooted to somewhere.

And I looked around that gate of late and weary ones and thought, this is the world I want to live in. The shared world. Not a single person in this gate -- once the crying of confusion stopped -- has seemed apprehensive about any other person. They took the cookies. I wanted to hug all those other women, too. This can still happen, anywhere.

Not everything is lost.

Naomi Shihab Nye is an American poet of Palestinian background.

More great animations from Mark Fiore...

Outta' Africa

MC Rove

Feeling the Heat

We cannot go on living like this

I know I'm way behind in posts, so let me try to catch up on a few things now...

Theo and I just got back from the last GCTC play at 910 Gladstone before they open the new theatre in Westboro next season. Great play, and great company, but I don't think I'll miss the old theatre much! I'm looking forward to a modern venue with more leg room, that's for sure!

My very first GCTC play, which I went to see with my OAC Writer's Craft class: A Guide to Mourning.

Then, a few years passed before Theo and I began seeing every performance since, beginning with The Last Liberal, Rock n Roll (starring Theo's baseball team mate Todd Duckworth), and seasons tickets to this last season at 910 Gladstone.

Goodbye Gladstone, you served the GCTC community well!

We Will Rock You - Again!

Going to see WWRY again in a couple weeks while we're in Toronto for Toronto FC and Blue Jays games...

Alanis Morisette's version of 'My Humps'

Boston

Well, I survived my first business trip with no real problems. In fact, I think I'm a pro at security, having done it three times in the one trip...but more on that later.

Tuesday morning was spent at the Ottawa airport waiting (another thing I got to be very good at) until our flight left shortly after noon. Security, which I was most nervous about, seeing as the last (and only) time I flew it was pre-9/11 security. Flight attendants, construction workers, a woman with a baby carriage and a cage cart full of Coke were all allowed to go in front of me...but I got through eventually!

Once we arrived in Boston it was into a cab and off to Burlington where our U.S. headquarters are. It wasn't until we got there that we all realized how hungry we were and that the cafeteria was already closed. Thank goodness for vending machines:

Coke, popcorn, orange cheese crackers and a Snickers ice cream bar....Adrienne and I shared!

Adrienne and I were sharing a conference room, and a network cable, so we switched back and forth checking e-mails and catching up on work. Took a conference call with the team and then we headed out to Cafe Escadrille for dinner. It was excellent -- the food, music, ambiance, and of course the company. It was nice to get to hang out socially with the team and get to relax.

Wednesday was our full day meeting with the members of the PR agency we work with and it was very productive, but long. It didn't help we were using these smelly markers for the white boards and the fumes were giving everyone headaches by the end of the day!

Mid-afternoon it began to snow -- big time. Here it was, April 4 and there was a snow storm. Our cab to the airport was an hour late getting to us, and we made it to the airport with a little over an hour before the flight was scheduled to leave -- but it was delayed by about an hour so we actually had time to eat. Logan is set up a little strange, and the Air Canada terminal had little food to offer. So, we checked through security for another terminal in order to be able to go eat at the very tasty Legal Sea Food restaurant. After going through security again to get to our terminal we finally boarded the plane back to Ottawa.

It was at this point I realized I had somehow incurred some serious damage at some point during the trip (in addition to my luggage being broken a bit):

That is a huge blue/purple/red bruise I have on the back of my left bicep...no idea how I got it...

At this point it was just pouring rain...I felt as though we were on the tarmac for ages...at one point we were actually lined up behind six other planes waiting to take off in the rain...


Luckily for me, on the way home no one was sitting next to me, so I curled up on the seats and tried to catch a little shut eye - but before I knew it we were back in Ottawa...

Library Thing

Some of you may have noticed the new widget on the left side -- Library Thing. I highly encourage you to check it out or add it to your blog -- it's a neat way to see what your friends are reading or who else likes the same books as you do.

At the Sens game the other night...

...enjoying our ice cream!

Sadly, the Sens did lose....

Lessons learned at IKEA

Salma and Tracey have gotten an apartment together and so I went with them yesterday to go furniture shopping. Other than the madness of driving around the city only to find the store we were looking for to be closed or moved to another location (*ahem, the importance of updating your Web site or phone messages) we had a fun time testing out various couches.

Salma and I continued on to IKEA after grabbing dinner (and finding another store which had closed) and Salma chose a bed, bedside table and dresser. (I bought two glass jars for pasta.) After the sales woman assured us it would fit in the car as long as we folded down the seats, we set off, paid, and drove to the warehouse down the street to get the boxes. Weren't we overjoyed after 20 minutes of the two of us lifting and jamming various sized boxes into the trunk of her Acura TSX to find that one box was too wide to fit through the trunk and into the back seat area.

It ended up I called my parents to borrow their van. We drove to their place, got the van (and took out one of the boxes from Salma's car because she had already changed her mind about the bedside table) and back to the warehouse to get the last box, then back to IKEA to exchange the table and get the other one.

The funniest part is last time Daniel and Salma were at IKEA to get Daniel a desk it wouldn't fit into her car (I think it was a Honda Accord then) and so I went and got them and the stuff with the van too.

Lesson learned? Either get your IKEA stuff delivered, or bring a friend with a van. :)

I can't wait to help her put it all together!