1. This youtube video/lecture about channeling by Brian Tracy
"How To Activate Your Super Conscious Mind"
2. The animation of Steve Cutts
I just found out about this today, I like his videos because he pokes fun at obvious things that we'd perhaps prefer not to call attention to as a society, and somehow the use of cartoons softens the messages.
There are a few more on his website or youtube channel but here are a couple favourites:
3. Bob Proctor Reveals 'The Ultimate Secret' beyond the Law of Attraction
Sunday, March 16, 2014
Thursday, March 13, 2014
The Caterpillar - a poem
The Caterpillar
by Susan Paczek
Once upon a time there was a caterpillar
He ate leaves all day. He was a real leaf killer!
The leaves were alright. But sometimes he would cry
He ate leaves all day. He was a real leaf killer!
The leaves were alright. But sometimes he would cry
Because he wished he could play like a bird in the sky
He tried to heave his body up into the air
He tried to heave his body up into the air
But it landed with a splat. He didn’t belong up there.
So he stayed in his bush eating leaves without end
So he stayed in his bush eating leaves without end
Wondering about flying to his caterpillar
friend
His friend said “Don’t be foolish! You’re where you’re supposed to be
His friend said “Don’t be foolish! You’re where you’re supposed to be
Right here in this bush, eating leaves with me!....”
“And another thing...” but before he could say another word
“And another thing...” but before he could say another word
His caterpillar friend was taken by a hungry bird
Leaving our caterpillar to eat leaves on his own
Leaving our caterpillar to eat leaves on his own
And dream his flying dreams in his bush all alone
He thought of his flying wish late into one night
He thought of his flying wish late into one night
When the sky was cloudless clear and the stars shiny bright
He picked out one star that seemed to shine the best
He picked out one star that seemed to shine the best
He told it his wish and then he lay down to rest
And when the night ended with a new day to face
And when the night ended with a new day to face
The caterpillar discovered he was frozen into place
Really? He thought, this must be some sort of curse!
Really? He thought, this must be some sort of curse!
I wished that I could fly but this is even worse!
The caterpillar who dreamed of soaring above the mob
The caterpillar who dreamed of soaring above the mob
Now found himself stuck fast in some wretched green glob
He tried to bust out of his trap but without any luck
He tried to bust out of his trap but without any luck
Eventually he had to accept the fact that he was stuck!
At last he stopped struggling and spent the night
At last he stopped struggling and spent the night
Resigned in surrender, trapped in his plight
And he wondered, how on earth did I end up here?
And he wondered, how on earth did I end up here?
Was my wish forbidden or was it just unclear?
He let go and sat still as the moon waxed and waned
He let go and sat still as the moon waxed and waned
Til one day, in his cocoon, he found something had changed
Many legs were now few, and what were these things?
Many legs were now few, and what were these things?
That sprouted from his back... could they possibly be wings?
He pushed his new limbs against the walls that held him in so long
He pushed his new limbs against the walls that held him in so long
Until the exercise made his legs and wings grow strong
They grew stronger and stronger until he kicked forcefully
They grew stronger and stronger until he kicked forcefully
And his cocoon fell away.
The caterpillar broke free!
But he was not a caterpillar anymore
But he was not a caterpillar anymore
And he understood what the cocoon had been for
Thanking the stars he took off into the sky
Thanking the stars he took off into the sky
To play in the air as a new butterfly
 |
| "Dancing" acrylic on canvas, 36" x 48" by Evgenia Makogon |
Sunday, March 9, 2014
This Week's Favourite Things! March 3rd - March 9th, 2014
This is short and sweet today but here we go:
1. A twitter feed! @averagegorillas which is a gorilla tweeting what it is up to every few days. This makes me smile.
2. "Inside Llewyn Davis" the latest Coen Bros film. I love not only this movie which I saw Thursday night but I love the fact that a bunch of elder artsies in Lunenburg have commandeered one of the theatres in Bridgewater for the first Wednesday/Thursday of the month, for the spring at least to show film fest films. Great idea, and only $8 cash! Fun!
3. The philosophy of Frank Giustra and Andrew Carnegie, I won't re-link here but check out why in this post I wrote this week.
4. This Asian boy band, EXO. I stumbled across these guys youtube. Their videos are a total multimedia feast.
Here is Mama by EXO
And Wolf by EXO .... ahoooooooooo!!
1. A twitter feed! @averagegorillas which is a gorilla tweeting what it is up to every few days. This makes me smile.
2. "Inside Llewyn Davis" the latest Coen Bros film. I love not only this movie which I saw Thursday night but I love the fact that a bunch of elder artsies in Lunenburg have commandeered one of the theatres in Bridgewater for the first Wednesday/Thursday of the month, for the spring at least to show film fest films. Great idea, and only $8 cash! Fun!
3. The philosophy of Frank Giustra and Andrew Carnegie, I won't re-link here but check out why in this post I wrote this week.
4. This Asian boy band, EXO. I stumbled across these guys youtube. Their videos are a total multimedia feast.
Here is Mama by EXO
And Wolf by EXO .... ahoooooooooo!!
Thursday, March 6, 2014
Cat and Mouse - a poem
Cat and Mouse
by Susan Paczek
Beepbeep the cat looks from left to right
Scanning her prey that's frozen with fright
Here on the kitchen floor of my house
Is a real-life game of cat and mouse
The mouse has earned my sympathy
"It's doomed" I think, nowhere to flee
His dark eyes glisten, he sits in stillness
I assume this ends in a bloody mess
The cat is waiting for the mouse to go
To sink in a claw with her first blow
But before she can claim her prize to keep
With unseen force, the mouse makes a leap
He launches himself towards the wall
And through a crack to the basement hall
Where he can find his nest and tell his wife
How lucky he is to have kept his life:
"If I had stayed put I would have died!
But I took a leap! Thank God I tried!"
 |
| Beepbeep - photo by Brendan Labelle |
Tuesday, March 4, 2014
Cry Me A River - a poem
Cry Me A River
by Susan Paczek
The river passes wordlessly
Past my house, towards the sea
Under ducks and along drinking deer
Over turtles and lost fishing gear
It has no words, but still can share
All it has heard between here and there
"Darling, let's cut down all the trees
Along the river so we can see...
The beautiful view out of our window
We'll drink our coffee, watch the river go..."
The river hears all sorts of chatter
Of "just this bit" and "once won't matter"
It rolls past someone who thinks "it's just one fish"
"Salmon will taste so good in my breakfast dish"
It hears "This fertilizer makes the lawn so green!"
and "Wear gloves, but this gets the house really clean"
It carries downstream all the trash, goop and grime
Injected into its body "Just one time"
All the secrets of the river's harm
Collect like scars on a cutter's arm
To be deposited into the sea at last
With secrets from other rivers, slow and fast
Only to rise again in the form of clouds
That blanket the horizon in thick, grey shrouds
Until the wind blows, setting them free
Back to the land, away from the sea
And over my house rain falls from the sky
That's how the river is allowed to cry
 |
| Bear River Outflow (Yarmouth County), Oil on board by Helen Opie |
Monday, March 3, 2014
More Giustra and Nova Scotian Seeds, Less Empire and Emera Please... a response to Ian Thompson's latest letter in the Herald
I haven't blogged about the news lately, thinking from now on I am just going to translate my opinions into poems and Monkey Stories. But I can't stop thinking about something in Ian Thomspon's most recent letter in the Chronicle Herald Magazine: "More Exports, Not More Government".
The last time Ian wrote a letter I got so excited that I wrote two blog posts, "The Nova Scotia Pottery Emergency" and another one contemplating more ideas for value-added exports.
I'm not pretending for a minute that craft is the answer to all of Nova Scotia's issues but if we're calling for more exports, figuring out some things that could be manufactured here to export could be a good start.
Being a member of the private sector, I am a big fan of the private sector and concur with the theme of this recent letter. What surprised me, though, was that Empire and Emera are on Ian's awesome-list of companies
To quote his letter:
We should also pray for more Michelins. And encourage growth of a few more dozen companies like Clearwater, Oxford Frozen Foods, Emera, Empire, Stanfield’s, Newfoundland Capital, LED Roadway Lighting, Nautel, Scotia Investments and its offspring, Acadian Seaplants, Protocase, A.F. Theriault & Son, Tri-Star, Seaboard, High Liner, IMP, Chorus Aviation, the Shaw Group, Velsoft and Cherubini.
Ian! What's up?
Why do we need more companies like Emera? This is the parent company for Nova Scotia Power, which supplies the province's electricity. Does anyone in Nova Scotia actually like Nova Scotia Power? Haven't they given the boot to Nova Scotian linesmen while ratcheting up power rates, and giving their executives hefty salary increases?
I suppose we could use another Emera-type company to compete with Emera and hopefully lower power rates.
Why more companies like Sobey's-controlled Empire though? This is the parent company to Crombie REIT which has hoofed small-businesses out of their commercial properties to make way for American chains. They've also sidled up to American chain Target, to replace Canadian-owned Zellers. Apparently Target Canada isn't as great as Target in the states, so they haven't been doing so well according to this CTV article.
It seems odd to me that Empire/Sobeys would be supplying groceries and supporting Target, who is now their competition. I'm not convinced that aiding an American big box store is the most efficient, long-term use of a Canadian company's resources.
And if we think things are tough in Nova Scotia here's a recent Salon article about the economy in the states: You Call This Middle Class? "I'm Trying Not To Lose My House"
Not sure Corporate America is the kid in the sandbox I'd want to be playing with.
Over the past couple of months I've gotten the impression from talking to various people that any public critique of the Sobeys in this province is frowned upon.
That's understandable I suppose. There there, Sobeys family. Yes you do make sandwiches, sushi and black forest cakes that are all delicious while employing a lot of people and giving back to the community, and you fund an art award and probably lots of other good stuff for the province.
I just wish that the businesspeople of Nova Scotia would all try to be a bit more altruistic and long-term-big-picture-thinking towards other Nova Scotians; residents and business owners alike.
Maybe Emera could offer better power rates instead of constant rate hikes that are delivered amidst news of executive salary increases.
Maybe Empire and Crombie REIT could run their business in a way that would give smaller, local commercial tenants a better chance to stay in business instead of giving them the boot.
Maybe the entire Nova Scotia private sector could all work together to create a better sandbox for everyone to play in before some Chinese billionaires land here in helicopters and start buying up the whole show like they did in my home province.
After feeling sad about the positive nod towards Emera and Empire, which I reacted to on Sunday by eating a big bag of chips and then taking an 8 hour nap, I got up went online and stumbled across an interview with Frank Giustra on youtube. This completely cheered me up.
I liked the interview so much that then I watched this one, where Frank is being interviewed by Peter Legge of BC Business Magazine.
Maybe what Nova Scotia could use is a few billionaires with ethics and ideas like Vancouver billionaire Frank Giustra.
Frank has done some cool things with his money and time, such as starting Lions Gate Entertainment, an Independent Vancouver Film company that produced The Hunger Games.
It turns out that I'm not the first person to have a hunch that the world would be a better place if more rich monkeys could figure out how to share their bananas in ways that help out other monkeys.
Frank is a fan of the teachings of Andrew Carnegie (1835-1911), the self-made wealthy Scottish-American Industrialist who is responsible for Carnegie hall and a pile of other good stuff. I never looked into Andrew Carnegie's story until last night, but Andrew Carnegie inspired Napolean Hill to write "Think and Grow Rich" (which is a great early book, popular among those who believe in the Law of Attraction).
Carnegie is noted as being a literal 'rags to riches' story and in 1889 he wrote an article called the 'The Gospel of Wealth'. To quote the wiki article about it: "Carnegie proposed that the best way of dealing with the new phenomenon of wealth inequality was for the wealthy to redistribute their surplus means in a responsible and thoughtful manner."
It is reassuring to see that some rich guy got to thinking in this way!
On another topic, as with the Fabian Calvo video at the end of my most recent Favourite Things list, Frank Giustra mentions food production as something worth investing in. He's even gone as far as to back this good-looking new magazine Modern Farmer.
Back to Ian's letter, in which he prays for oil...(the black gold kind not the olive kind).
Fossil fuels would be great, who wouldn't love cheaper heating fuel in this province, and jobs of course. But personally I could only get excited about it if the oil and/or gas were to come out of the ground easily in large quantities that don't foul up our farmland and water in the process. I'm still not clear on why booty from oil isn't shared more equally among provinces.
The way I see it, if we don't have gobs of oil we don't have gobs of oil. If this is the case then praying for oil would be as productive as praying for a mountain chain to spring up so we can have a helicopter skiing industry like in BC, or for residents of Saskatchewan to pray for an inland saltwater sea to form so they can go catch scallops and lobsters. Why can't the provinces just get along and share the diversity of resources our great country has to offer?
Ian, instead of encouraging Nova Scotians to envy Newfoundland's oil, how about celebrating the rich abundance of good farmland Nova Scotia has?
We all need to eat, after all.
Our current food supply as we know it has been highly dependent on industrial farming and the trucking of food for long distances. These are extremely oil-thirsty activities. Growing 'organic' food and exploring permaculture would mean we'd need less oil and at the same time be rewarded with healthier food and soil.
Where I'm from in BC much of our very best farmland has been covered over in recent years by townhouses. Nova Scotia not only has a lot good soil, and a decent growing season, it has very good, very delicious freshwater. Abundant fresh water is something I'm sure the farmers in California were coveting with their recent drought.
I think that as consumers grow more conscious of the potential threats of GMOs and more hungry for healthy organic food, the safe farmland, good freshwater, and relatively long growing season of Nova Scotia could turn out to be three of this province's greatest assets.
On that note, here is a shout-out to a few companies that got left off of Ian Thompson's list. Nova Scotian seed companies! Seeds are life and there are a few excellent companies mailing their non-GMO heirloom seeds out all over: Halifax Seed, Hope Seed, Annapolis Seeds, Incredible Seeds and any others I might have missed.
More healthy happy earth-friendly corporate citizens like these, please! Let's all appreciate this province's farmland and protect it from genetic contamination by Monsanto or from fouling by unsustainable development.
I think perhaps what needs to happen is more productive interactions between our elder business types stuck in our old paradigms of profiting via resource extraction, and our younger generations who are evolving to listen to and live symbiotically with the earth.
To be clear, I completely agree with the overall gist of Ian's message. But here is my twist: government get out of the way unless you're going to help. Private sector, take a minute to review "The Gospel of Wealth" full article here , then hop in and let's figure some awesome exports that won't wreck the planet, or our minds or our bodies, and/or some awesome systems to drive more dough into the wallets of hard-working Nova Scotians, that would make everyone richer.
Let's go easy on the earth and work with her rather than against her. If she wants to puke oil or gas at us in a way that doesn't wreck the place, then great, lucky us. But in any case I think if we can get a few of our money wielding elders to invest in more sustainable sectors (eg organic farming and value-added organically grown food products), Nova Scotia could quickly find itself to be one of Canada's richest provinces, in terms of personal, community and environmental health.
Or maybe it won't, but it could be worth a try, eh?
The last time Ian wrote a letter I got so excited that I wrote two blog posts, "The Nova Scotia Pottery Emergency" and another one contemplating more ideas for value-added exports.
I'm not pretending for a minute that craft is the answer to all of Nova Scotia's issues but if we're calling for more exports, figuring out some things that could be manufactured here to export could be a good start.
Being a member of the private sector, I am a big fan of the private sector and concur with the theme of this recent letter. What surprised me, though, was that Empire and Emera are on Ian's awesome-list of companies
To quote his letter:
We should also pray for more Michelins. And encourage growth of a few more dozen companies like Clearwater, Oxford Frozen Foods, Emera, Empire, Stanfield’s, Newfoundland Capital, LED Roadway Lighting, Nautel, Scotia Investments and its offspring, Acadian Seaplants, Protocase, A.F. Theriault & Son, Tri-Star, Seaboard, High Liner, IMP, Chorus Aviation, the Shaw Group, Velsoft and Cherubini.
Ian! What's up?
Why do we need more companies like Emera? This is the parent company for Nova Scotia Power, which supplies the province's electricity. Does anyone in Nova Scotia actually like Nova Scotia Power? Haven't they given the boot to Nova Scotian linesmen while ratcheting up power rates, and giving their executives hefty salary increases?
I suppose we could use another Emera-type company to compete with Emera and hopefully lower power rates.
Why more companies like Sobey's-controlled Empire though? This is the parent company to Crombie REIT which has hoofed small-businesses out of their commercial properties to make way for American chains. They've also sidled up to American chain Target, to replace Canadian-owned Zellers. Apparently Target Canada isn't as great as Target in the states, so they haven't been doing so well according to this CTV article.
It seems odd to me that Empire/Sobeys would be supplying groceries and supporting Target, who is now their competition. I'm not convinced that aiding an American big box store is the most efficient, long-term use of a Canadian company's resources.
And if we think things are tough in Nova Scotia here's a recent Salon article about the economy in the states: You Call This Middle Class? "I'm Trying Not To Lose My House"
Not sure Corporate America is the kid in the sandbox I'd want to be playing with.
Over the past couple of months I've gotten the impression from talking to various people that any public critique of the Sobeys in this province is frowned upon.
That's understandable I suppose. There there, Sobeys family. Yes you do make sandwiches, sushi and black forest cakes that are all delicious while employing a lot of people and giving back to the community, and you fund an art award and probably lots of other good stuff for the province.
I just wish that the businesspeople of Nova Scotia would all try to be a bit more altruistic and long-term-big-picture-thinking towards other Nova Scotians; residents and business owners alike.
Maybe Emera could offer better power rates instead of constant rate hikes that are delivered amidst news of executive salary increases.
Maybe Empire and Crombie REIT could run their business in a way that would give smaller, local commercial tenants a better chance to stay in business instead of giving them the boot.
Maybe the entire Nova Scotia private sector could all work together to create a better sandbox for everyone to play in before some Chinese billionaires land here in helicopters and start buying up the whole show like they did in my home province.
After feeling sad about the positive nod towards Emera and Empire, which I reacted to on Sunday by eating a big bag of chips and then taking an 8 hour nap, I got up went online and stumbled across an interview with Frank Giustra on youtube. This completely cheered me up.
I liked the interview so much that then I watched this one, where Frank is being interviewed by Peter Legge of BC Business Magazine.
Maybe what Nova Scotia could use is a few billionaires with ethics and ideas like Vancouver billionaire Frank Giustra.
Frank has done some cool things with his money and time, such as starting Lions Gate Entertainment, an Independent Vancouver Film company that produced The Hunger Games.
It turns out that I'm not the first person to have a hunch that the world would be a better place if more rich monkeys could figure out how to share their bananas in ways that help out other monkeys.
Frank is a fan of the teachings of Andrew Carnegie (1835-1911), the self-made wealthy Scottish-American Industrialist who is responsible for Carnegie hall and a pile of other good stuff. I never looked into Andrew Carnegie's story until last night, but Andrew Carnegie inspired Napolean Hill to write "Think and Grow Rich" (which is a great early book, popular among those who believe in the Law of Attraction).
Carnegie is noted as being a literal 'rags to riches' story and in 1889 he wrote an article called the 'The Gospel of Wealth'. To quote the wiki article about it: "Carnegie proposed that the best way of dealing with the new phenomenon of wealth inequality was for the wealthy to redistribute their surplus means in a responsible and thoughtful manner."
It is reassuring to see that some rich guy got to thinking in this way!
On another topic, as with the Fabian Calvo video at the end of my most recent Favourite Things list, Frank Giustra mentions food production as something worth investing in. He's even gone as far as to back this good-looking new magazine Modern Farmer.
Back to Ian's letter, in which he prays for oil...(the black gold kind not the olive kind).
Fossil fuels would be great, who wouldn't love cheaper heating fuel in this province, and jobs of course. But personally I could only get excited about it if the oil and/or gas were to come out of the ground easily in large quantities that don't foul up our farmland and water in the process. I'm still not clear on why booty from oil isn't shared more equally among provinces.
The way I see it, if we don't have gobs of oil we don't have gobs of oil. If this is the case then praying for oil would be as productive as praying for a mountain chain to spring up so we can have a helicopter skiing industry like in BC, or for residents of Saskatchewan to pray for an inland saltwater sea to form so they can go catch scallops and lobsters. Why can't the provinces just get along and share the diversity of resources our great country has to offer?
Ian, instead of encouraging Nova Scotians to envy Newfoundland's oil, how about celebrating the rich abundance of good farmland Nova Scotia has?
We all need to eat, after all.
Our current food supply as we know it has been highly dependent on industrial farming and the trucking of food for long distances. These are extremely oil-thirsty activities. Growing 'organic' food and exploring permaculture would mean we'd need less oil and at the same time be rewarded with healthier food and soil.
Where I'm from in BC much of our very best farmland has been covered over in recent years by townhouses. Nova Scotia not only has a lot good soil, and a decent growing season, it has very good, very delicious freshwater. Abundant fresh water is something I'm sure the farmers in California were coveting with their recent drought.
I think that as consumers grow more conscious of the potential threats of GMOs and more hungry for healthy organic food, the safe farmland, good freshwater, and relatively long growing season of Nova Scotia could turn out to be three of this province's greatest assets.
On that note, here is a shout-out to a few companies that got left off of Ian Thompson's list. Nova Scotian seed companies! Seeds are life and there are a few excellent companies mailing their non-GMO heirloom seeds out all over: Halifax Seed, Hope Seed, Annapolis Seeds, Incredible Seeds and any others I might have missed.
More healthy happy earth-friendly corporate citizens like these, please! Let's all appreciate this province's farmland and protect it from genetic contamination by Monsanto or from fouling by unsustainable development.
I think perhaps what needs to happen is more productive interactions between our elder business types stuck in our old paradigms of profiting via resource extraction, and our younger generations who are evolving to listen to and live symbiotically with the earth.
To be clear, I completely agree with the overall gist of Ian's message. But here is my twist: government get out of the way unless you're going to help. Private sector, take a minute to review "The Gospel of Wealth" full article here , then hop in and let's figure some awesome exports that won't wreck the planet, or our minds or our bodies, and/or some awesome systems to drive more dough into the wallets of hard-working Nova Scotians, that would make everyone richer.
Let's go easy on the earth and work with her rather than against her. If she wants to puke oil or gas at us in a way that doesn't wreck the place, then great, lucky us. But in any case I think if we can get a few of our money wielding elders to invest in more sustainable sectors (eg organic farming and value-added organically grown food products), Nova Scotia could quickly find itself to be one of Canada's richest provinces, in terms of personal, community and environmental health.
Or maybe it won't, but it could be worth a try, eh?
Sunday, March 2, 2014
This Week's Favourite Things! Feb 24th - March 2nd, 2014
Week four of posting some 'favourite things' on my blog!
1. "Baboon Fart Story" by Phronk (who carried out a hypothesis blogged by author Chuck Wendig's idea). I noticed this story on twitter and got all excited, thinking 'oh, awesome someone else has taken to writing Monkey Stories'. Haha! Sort of but not quite.
Baboon Fart Story is a commentary on how easy it is to self-publish. It is the work 'Fart' copied 100,000 times, with a picture of a baboon drinking urine on the cover. Amazon actually sold 21 copies before it was taken down. Reminds me a bit of Art School somehow. I think the book is now available on Lulu and while I wouldn't actually want to own a copy, the story made my list this week because I think it's a nice example of creative collaboration and idea-testing made possible by twitter and blogging. And of course I like the story because of my own recent obsession with writing Monkey Stories.
2. This CBC National Story about an art exhibit about Canada's oilsands. The exhibit "An Unkindness" is by a Winnipeg artist Mia Feuer and on display in Washington. I'm not a big follower of contemporary installation art, but I found this woman's work very compelling! The oily raven wings are what got to me. And I love the fact that at the same time that Prime Minister Stephen Harper seems to be muzzling scientists and slashing research budgets, this young artist slipped through the cracks and gets to draw attention to our big dirty money making environmental catastrophe, inviting Washingtonians to literally skate around on oil. Nice. But the story makes me wonder if Harper will start slashing arts funding next, and if Canada ironically funded this installation. I can't find out who paid the budget for this project, but find it interesting that is on display in Washington and not Ottawa, so maybe it was American money? And in any case, does it make a difference?
Aha, since googling about this I discovered that despite getting her BFA in Winnipeg, Mia actually lives and works in Washington DC and earned her MFA in Virginia. More information including funding can be found here.
Here is a Tyee article about the exhibit with pics
This 'favourite thing' also made me think about Art School and how we seemed to be pushed a lot to come up with conceptual art that 'meant' something. It was annoying at the time but in this case I like it. This story makes me realize that art (sculpture, music, writing, dance, etc) really can move people more than a report full of facts and numbers.
3. This poem, called "Our Generation" written by a 14 year old boy in Grade 8 and tweeted by his brother. I saw the poem on Facebook via a San Fransisco Times article, so that is the link I'll use. The poem can be read both forwards and backwards. Cool. And, poetry! It was interesting to see this because suddenly I'm interested in writing poetry again, I used to write quite a bit and just wrote a rather dark poem this week. There is something about poetry, like the 140 character limit in twitter, that appeals. I think it is because it is a concise way to write and deliver messages for folks (both writers and readers) with short attention spans.
4. Finally I watched this high energy youtube video last night and really liked it! A cheerful video about impending economic collapse by Fabian Calvo, aka Fabian4Liberty. Having grown up hearing all about how WWII affected my Polish family I'm for anyone who advocates for growing their own healthy, organic food. I checked out some of this guy's Real Estate Investing advice and I don't think it is suitable to Nova Scotia's sluggish market (wholesaling 'deals') but I do want to check out some of this guy's other videos.
1. "Baboon Fart Story" by Phronk (who carried out a hypothesis blogged by author Chuck Wendig's idea). I noticed this story on twitter and got all excited, thinking 'oh, awesome someone else has taken to writing Monkey Stories'. Haha! Sort of but not quite.
Baboon Fart Story is a commentary on how easy it is to self-publish. It is the work 'Fart' copied 100,000 times, with a picture of a baboon drinking urine on the cover. Amazon actually sold 21 copies before it was taken down. Reminds me a bit of Art School somehow. I think the book is now available on Lulu and while I wouldn't actually want to own a copy, the story made my list this week because I think it's a nice example of creative collaboration and idea-testing made possible by twitter and blogging. And of course I like the story because of my own recent obsession with writing Monkey Stories.
2. This CBC National Story about an art exhibit about Canada's oilsands. The exhibit "An Unkindness" is by a Winnipeg artist Mia Feuer and on display in Washington. I'm not a big follower of contemporary installation art, but I found this woman's work very compelling! The oily raven wings are what got to me. And I love the fact that at the same time that Prime Minister Stephen Harper seems to be muzzling scientists and slashing research budgets, this young artist slipped through the cracks and gets to draw attention to our big dirty money making environmental catastrophe, inviting Washingtonians to literally skate around on oil. Nice. But the story makes me wonder if Harper will start slashing arts funding next, and if Canada ironically funded this installation. I can't find out who paid the budget for this project, but find it interesting that is on display in Washington and not Ottawa, so maybe it was American money? And in any case, does it make a difference?
Aha, since googling about this I discovered that despite getting her BFA in Winnipeg, Mia actually lives and works in Washington DC and earned her MFA in Virginia. More information including funding can be found here.
 |
| "An Unkindness" by Mia Feurer, photo by Kate Warren copied here from the Tyee... it bugs anyone that I'm using this let me know and I'll delete it |
Here is a Tyee article about the exhibit with pics
This 'favourite thing' also made me think about Art School and how we seemed to be pushed a lot to come up with conceptual art that 'meant' something. It was annoying at the time but in this case I like it. This story makes me realize that art (sculpture, music, writing, dance, etc) really can move people more than a report full of facts and numbers.
3. This poem, called "Our Generation" written by a 14 year old boy in Grade 8 and tweeted by his brother. I saw the poem on Facebook via a San Fransisco Times article, so that is the link I'll use. The poem can be read both forwards and backwards. Cool. And, poetry! It was interesting to see this because suddenly I'm interested in writing poetry again, I used to write quite a bit and just wrote a rather dark poem this week. There is something about poetry, like the 140 character limit in twitter, that appeals. I think it is because it is a concise way to write and deliver messages for folks (both writers and readers) with short attention spans.
4. Finally I watched this high energy youtube video last night and really liked it! A cheerful video about impending economic collapse by Fabian Calvo, aka Fabian4Liberty. Having grown up hearing all about how WWII affected my Polish family I'm for anyone who advocates for growing their own healthy, organic food. I checked out some of this guy's Real Estate Investing advice and I don't think it is suitable to Nova Scotia's sluggish market (wholesaling 'deals') but I do want to check out some of this guy's other videos.
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