kar0ling

Some headlines just make a person groan and reading the article makes it worse instead of better. That's how I felt after reading this article. So I wrote a letter to my politicians to let them know.  https://www.winnipegfreepress.com/breakingnews/2024/09/04/province-eyes-gps-tracking-of-garbage-trucks There's several indications in the article that a fair bit of tracking is already happening. It wasn't lack of knowledge but lack of will that put such a long delay on searching the landfill. And how tragic that we should be concerned this situation might be repeated and our only steps are to make it easier to "catch the guy"! What kind of steps might be taken instead to help women avoid ending up in such vulnerable and dangerous positions in the first place? How about building a society where anyone who treats vulnerable women like garbage is made clearly aware that is not acceptable? And then there's the price tag: $200,000 just to engage a consultant t...

It's my favourite two weeks of summer and this folk dancing nerd is in her element. This year, I got to introduce some Toronto-relocated friends to the joy of the good-old hokey Winnipeg amateur-hour cultural spectacle that is Folklorama. There was a little bit of extra excitement this year. First of all, the usual at the Japanese pavilion. The feisty four-year old was inspired by the low-key armthrusts and choreographed fake fighting of the karate demonstration. (Sorry, folks, but Park's Tae kwon do academy puts on a much more impressive demonstration over at the Korean pavilion.) The eight-year-old was entranced by Hinedo Taiko's drumming, mirroring their movements on her lap. The game-store-manager young dad enthused over the connections to anim é and Pokemon. It was a successful first pavilion. It was enough culture for the littles, so we left them to go play in the park and headed off alone to the Punjabi pavilion with just enough time to catch the show. The opening so...

With apologies to CBC, I'm going to pull a John Longhurst here and link to my blog which links to the news article. If you didn't catch the leader's debate, please watch it here. Facebook's media ban is putting a serious crimp on our election, meaning that the vast majority of political messages you get are paid for campaign ads rather than journalistic reports on announcements, interviews with both leaders and laypeople, etc. Don't go into this election uninformed. And then take in the post-election debate analysis.

Apologies to CBC Ideas and Astra Taylor for my half-baked musings on and possibly poor recounting of her stimulating and inspiring presentation, in service of my need to exercise my writing and reflection muscles. Unlike the Greek myth of Prometheus which suggests human exceptionalism, the Roman story of Curia’s gift in equipping humans is that makes insecurity an inescapable part of the human condition. “We are fated to worry,” says Astra Taylor, at this year’s Massey lectures (2023). Security, by etymology, is the absence of care: sine curitas. Without worries. But we carry our creator Curia always with us, and so we live in a state of existential insecurity. It cuts both ways, says Astra Taylor. We are by nature dependent on others, for good and ill. We are by nature vulnerable to psychological wounding – again, for good or ill. Insecurity can inspire in us compassion, stemming from our own vulnerabilities, or contempt of them that leads to all sorts of compulsions to obviate o...

Climate anxiety has entered the lexicon. For the last few years, it’s been talked about more and more in news articles, science discussions and even in spiritual care contexts. I shrugged it off as overly sensitive people, but the shoe has dropped for me now too. Extreme weather or one sort another everywhere all at once for the past few years has brought home what I always acknowledged intellectually but didn’t really synthesized emotionally: climate change is actually coming and it will be bad. I feel so angry and impotent in the face of these massive systems working against my small efforts to reduce waste and burn less carbon. So I went to the climate forum for this provincial election. It felt really important just to be in the room to declare “this subject matters!” The room had a remarkable number of grey hairs in it. This brought up terribly mixed feelings for me. On the one hand, good of them to continue to care about these issues, even as they can anticipate it won’t ...

With Facebook, blithely blocking all news for Canadians rather than sharing a tiny slice of its profits which it surely making at least some off the back of the interest said news generates, maybe I should do my public opining on the news here on a blog where the news isn't blocked.  Re "The parental rights Trojan Horse" By: Shannon D.M. Moore, Kevin Lopuck, Colleen Dawson, Katie Hurst, Ellen Bees, Emily Livingston, Scott Durling and Melanie Janzen It would be funny if it weren't so pathetic and dangerous.  The PCs are promising to expand parental rights -- in ways that exist already. "Much of what was proposed is redundant and unfounded. The curriculum documents are all readily available online. In addition, media release forms are widely used in schools across the province and schools typically inform parents about guest speakers. Similarly, the idea that schools need to better inform parents is peculiar, as parents can email or phone teachers, read school news...

*off the cuff, despairing rant* Gillingham campaigned on creating neighourhood action teams that will look for issues in communities, including icy sidewalks, he said. "I've been working to, and will continue to work to improve snow clearing in this city, our winter city. I think the neighborhood action teams are really going to help," he said. https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/manitoba/sidewalk-snow-clearing-motion-1.6807358 Mayor Gillingham, can you seriously claim to be "working on it" when you have zero ideas and you outright reject the councillor who comes at you with a suggestion? "People have the right to participate equally in society," Allard told the committee. It's painfully apparent city councillors -- and our former-pastor mayor -- don't really believe that.  Only people who get around in cars matter in this city.  One councillor patronizingly explained that he wears grippy footwear in winter as though that would solve everyone...