Knitnut.net. Watch my life unravel...
|
Posted by Zoom! on August 4, 2010, at 8:08 am |
Apparently Maria McRae is going to be running again for City Councilor in River Ward. (She’s the incumbent.)
During the last municipal election I emailed both candidates with questions, and based my vote on their responses. I wasn’t particularly impressed with either of them, but I voted for Blake Batson, the guy who lost.
I won’t be voting for Ms. McRae this time round either. I contacted her a few times during the last few years, about different issues, and found her to be disinterested in me except while campaigning. She did not return calls. She did not answer emails.
In fact, last November she sent around a letter asking for volunteers for a working group about The Oaks (the new Shepherds of Good Hope housing on Merivale), so I volunteered. A month or so later, I followed up with a phone call and was told by a staffer that they’d be in touch early in the new year. Some time after that I emailed Ms. McRae about the proposed Nuisance Noise bylaw, and while I was at it, I reminded her that I’d never been contacted regarding the working group.
No response.
Two weeks later I followed up again.
One of her staff called and apologized profusely on my answering machine, blaming a former employee for the fact that I’d never been contacted about the working group. She said the working group had only met once so far, and I would be contacted for the second meeting, probably in May. She apologized too for the fact that my email about the nuisance bylaw had somehow slipped through the cracks, but said there would be another debate in Council, and Ms. McRae would be made aware of my opinion.
I never heard from anybody ever again. Not about the working group, not about the nuisance bylaw.
So that’s it. I’ve written her off.
That leaves Michael Kostiuk and Nadia Willard.
I’m familiar with Kostiuk, and won’t be voting for him.
Hopefully Nadia Willard is good, because it looks like she’s getting my vote. From what I can tell so far, she does sound promising. She’s a nurse who grew up in a low-income family, and she has been active in poverty, labour and disability issues.
As for the mayoralty race, I haven’t decided who to vote for yet. But I can say that the process of elimination began four years ago.
Posted by Zoom! on August 2, 2010, at 7:58 am |
 We took the baby lovebirds out of Billie’s cage yesterday morning, and brought them to my house. They’re living inside a parakeet bathtub which is lined with shredded paper and which sits atop a stack of baby towels inside a blue plastic bin on top of a heating pad on the table in my art room. There’s a canvas on top, to keep the heat in and the light out.
I’m feeding them with an oral syringe – the kind you give medicine to babies with. They eat KayTee Exact Formula for hand-fed birds at 7am, noon, 5pm and 10pm. It takes about an hour each time to feed them, but California Dreamer says I’ll get faster with experience.
It’s a bit overwhelming. There are so many ways to accidentally kill a baby bird.
First, they’re super susceptible to bacterial infections. So you can kill them by not disinfecting your equipment after each feeding.
On the other hand, you can kill them by disinfecting the equipment with a toxic disinfectant. (I’ve been phoning and emailing all kinds of bird strangers in the area, trying to find out what is a bird-friendly disinfectant and where I can get it. No-one’s gotten back to me yet. Do any of you know?)
You can kill them by feeding them formula that’s a) too hot or b) too cold. It’s supposed to be between 102 and 107 degrees farenheit. (So far my greatest challenge is trying to keep it in that range while feeding the babies. I have to keep warming it up and cooling it off.)
You can kill them by feeding them too fast, which causes the formula to go into their lungs.
You can starve them by not feeding them enough.
You can kill them by feeding them too often. If their crops (pre-digestive holding tanks) don’t get a chance to completely empty every day, the food in there can go bad and cause an infection.
You can kill them by turning your back to reheat the formula and they fall off the table.
They’ll die if they get too hot or too cold. They need to be kept in a very warm room. But not too warm.
You can kill them by forgetting to close the door to the art room, thereby allowing an exceptionally curious and persistent cat to get in.
 The good news is that they’re still alive, and they’ve each gained two grams. (They weigh between 26 and 38 grams each – that’s just under an ounce to almost an ounce and a half. I can already tell I’m going to get totally obsessive about their weight. Expect spreadsheets.)
My heart melts whenever their little toes curl around my fingers while I’m feeding them, or when they gaze at me through their newly-open eyes. They’ve gone from looking like the fetuses on the anti-abortion posters (as Grace said) to looking like sweet little baby birds.
As for Billie and Lester, they’re back together in the original cage now. (You may recall that Lester was banished last week for trampling Sweet Baby Bongo to death.) Even though Billie was absolutely and utterly devoted to her babies ever since she laid those eggs, she was rather spectacularly unconcerned about their sudden disappearance. We absconded with the whole nesting box while she was out flying around the house, and when she returned to the cage she seemed momentarily puzzled. Then she had breakfast and a drink and started playing with the new toy we put in the cage.
Life goes on.
Posted by Zoom! on July 30, 2010, at 9:38 am |
Last night GC and I went to the opening night performance of They All Do It, a play produced by Odyssey Theatre.
I’m not someone who has their ear to the ground when it comes to theatre, so I’d never even heard of Odyssey until they emailed me an invitation a couple of weeks ago. (This is one of the perks of being a blogger – every now and then, somebody gives you something. Just for being a blogger. So far I’ve gotten free books, tickets to plays and movies, and a coupon for free kitty litter.)
So. Odyssey Theatre is in its 24th season and its Theatre Under the Stars stage is in Strathcona Park. It’s a lovely, comfy, informal setting. The weather last night was ideal for sitting outside and watching a play. (GC and I, incidentally, went to a free concert of the National Arts Centre orchestra at Lebreton Park last Sunday, and we’ve decided we love doing these kinds of things outside in the fresh air instead of indoors. It’s a whole different feel, and it’s better.)
They All Do It was written by Janet Irwin, an Ottawa playwright, as part of Odyssey’s New Play Creation Program. It was two hours long, with a 20-minute intermission, and I never looked at my watch once. It kept me fully engaged. It was about youth, love, desire, idealism and cynicism. The audience laughed often and heartily (fortunately it was a comedy), and the acting was excellent. I particularly enjoyed the performances of the actress who played Lark (Emma Hunter), and the actress who played Despina (Kelly Rigole). (Despina was an ‘older woman’ of 30.)
Even though GC and I both enjoyed the play and laughed a lot, we weren’t crazy about the underlying storyline. The story itself just didn’t resonate with us. Surprisingly, that didn’t seem to matter. In fact, I didn’t even notice it until after the fact, when we were discussing the play. The storyline was secondary to the the characters, the acting, the dialogue and the humour, all of which fully entertained and amused us.
If you get a chance, go see it. It really is a lot of fun. It’s playing from now until August 29th. Ticket information is here and there’s a Pay-What-You-Can Sunday matinee each week.
Posted by Zoom! on July 29, 2010, at 10:38 am |
Yesterday I read a story in the Ottawa Citizen about a 27-year-old Gatineau man who was convicted on child pornography charges. Police had found on his computer about 2,000 animé images of children having sex with adults or other children, plus three photographic images. Animé is Japanese cartoon-style drawings. (I’m not sure whether his drawings were animated or not – if so, I guess they could collectively make up a single cartoon.)
A psychiatric assessment indicated that he did not meet the criteria to be deemed a pedophile. He pleaded guilty, and was sentenced to 90 days in jail, to be served on weekends, plus three years probation and 20 years on the sex offender registry.
Let’s pretend, for the sake of argument, that the three photographs didn’t exist, and that the man did meet the psychiatric definition of a pedophile. Do you think he is guilty of possessing child pornography? What if he had drawn the animé images himself, or painted a picture – from his imagination – depicting a child in a sexually graphic situation?
I don’t think we get much choice in who or what we’re attracted to. We only have a choice in what we actually do. It’s not a crime to be a pedophile – someone who is sexually attracted to children – as long as you don’t act on it.
I’m willing to bet there are plenty of pedophiles out there who have never touched a child sexually and never will. Whether it’s because it’s illegal, or because they fear the humiliation of getting caught, or because they don’t want to hurt children, I don’t know. But they don’t sexually abuse kids. By the same token, they might avoid child pornography as well, either because it’s illegal or because real children get hurt in the making of real child porn.
But drawings? Isn’t that going a little too far?
What if we had the technology to monitor people’s fantasies? Should those be subject to our child pornography and obscenity laws too?
Posted by Zoom! on July 27, 2010, at 11:31 am |
 The Janie H. Knits sale was wild. It filled a great big room the size of a gymnasium at the Perth Legion. I found myself stroking yarn and oohing and aahing with hundreds of other women and three men.
We ran into Carmen and she nudged GC along, encouraging him to dive into the whole yarn-buying experience. He ended up with six skeins of yummy cashmere. Carmen also helped me get unstuck. I was wishing I’d come armed with a pattern, so I’d know what to buy and how much. But she taught me how to really buy yarn. You don’t need a pattern, you just go with your instincts!
 Here’s what me and my instincts bought:
10 balls of Rowan Lima, 10 balls of Rowan Felted Tweed Aran, 6 bals of Rowan Siena, 2 skeins of Berroco Mica, one skein of Tilli Tomas silk & kelp, and a gorgeous mohair sweater made in Newfounldland by Woof Designs.
 What is it about yarn that makes us crave it so much? I have enough yarn to last me many years – possibly even the rest of my life. So why do I want more? And why, when I do buy yarn, can I not buy just a little?
It’s not just me, either. Most of the knitters I know hoard yarn. If you google “yarn stash” or “yarn addict” you’ll see what I mean.
 On the way back to Ottawa, we stopped in Carleton Place for lunch and a visit to that wacky used-book store. It’s a whole house stuffed full of books to the rafters. It’s kind of expensive for a used book store, but I guess that’s how they manage to have so much stock. I think they might have a bit of a hoarding problem too.
In other news, it’s been a tough week for friends’ pets. R.I.P. Bongo and Ramona. Get well soon Muffy. Let’s all give our pets a little extra loving today. (“And a little extra tuna fish” adds Duncan, “since it’s Tuna Fish Tuesday.”)
Posted by Zoom! on July 25, 2010, at 3:41 pm |
Before I tell you about the Yarn Sale, I have to tell you what happened AFTER the yarn sale.
We were going to have a nap after all that exhausting yarn shopping, and then we were going to eat dinner and go to Shakespeare in the Park. But first I checked my email and found an urgent message from my sister, Mudmama. She’d been watching the webcam and had witnessed a terrible drama unfolding in the Love Nest. Lester and Billie had been fighting. The babies had been trampled by Lester, and the littlest one – Sweet Baby Bongo – was believed to be dead. He was only two days old.
The experts on the chat were saying we needed to remove Bongo’s body from the nest immediately. Also, we needed to separate Lester from his family because he was too rough, Billie was getting stressed out by his presence, and he was “sucking her dry” of all the food intended for the babies.
All along, I’d thought Lester had been a devoted father, helping with the babies and adoring Billie. But others didn’t see him that way. I know he’s very attached to Billie, and maybe he had a pang of jealousy because she didn’t have much time for him anymore. I’m just anthropomorphizing here…the truth is, I have no idea what lovebirds think. Especially boy lovebirds.
What ensued next took the rest of the day, quite literally.
We went back to GC’s place, and opened the doors to the cage, so that Lester would leave. He did. We noticed he had a bloody nose. Then we took the nesting box from the cage. We opened it up and started removing baby birds. I held each baby in my hand for a few seconds. They were so little and warm. Their skin felt tougher than it looked, but they also felt so tiny and vulnerable. I removed Billie, who was just sitting there looking stunned. She panicked and started screeching while we dug through the nest looking for Bongo’s body. Eventually we concluded he wasn’t there, so we put the babies back in the box, and put the box back in the cage. Billie stopped screeching.
Next, we went out and bought a new cage for Lester. While we were setting it up, GC started melting down a bit because it was hot and he was tired and his house was messy because the birds were taking over the place. In order to put the new cage next to Billie’s cage, like the experts thought he should, he’d have to move his couch into the dining room and move his dining room table out, and so on and so forth. He wisely took a few minutes and went down to the basement, where it’s cool, to cool down.
Lester, meanwhile, was freaking out at being locked out of the old cage and separated from his family. He tried for a very long time to find a way back in.
Eventually he got so distraught by the whole experience that he flew down to the floor and sat right beside The Dog’s head. The Dog did a double take and blinked once or twice. Then we all kind of exploded into action. The Dog moved towards Lester, I yelled The Dog’s name, GC leapt across the room, and Lester flew back up to safety. Tragedy averted, we all sat back down again, just in time to see Lester fly down and land on The Dog’s back!
GC accused him of having a death wish. We put The Dog outside and set about in earnest to catch Lester and force him into his new home. This took hours, but eventually we succeeded. We all felt much better, including Lester, once this was accomplished.
Then we looked everywhere else for Bongo’s body. The experts said the parents would not eat him, but they might have pushed him through the bars of the cage, to get rid of the body. We couldn’t find it. We started looking at The Dog suspiciously.
Finally we lured Billie out of the nesting box and remove the box from the cage again. Billie panicked when she realized her babies were missing. We were hiding in the bathroom, rooting through the box in search of Bongo. GC found his tiny little body buried under layers of newspaper. I think I missed him the first time because I thought he’d be bigger than he was. He was so tiny compared to his older brothers and sisters.
GC said some nice words about him and we flushed him down the toilet. Then we returned the nesting box and babies to the cage and to Billie, who by then was apoplectic.
By then it was too late for Shakespeare. Too late for much of anything, really, except a good cry and some Key Lime Gelatto.
Posted by Zoom! on July 23, 2010, at 9:53 am |
You know what I’ve noticed? The weeks fly by a lot faster when you’re unemployed than they do when you’re employed. And there still aren’t enough hours in the day to do all the things I want to do. I wish I could live forever.
This week was largely taken up with all the babies hatching in the Love Nest. The fourth and final one hatched yesterday. Piccolo, Banjo, Oboe and Butch. Last night over dinner we decided we didn’t like that name after all, so Butch got renamed to Sweet Baby Bongo.
There’s eight days difference in age between Piccolo and Baby Bongo. You know how it is when you bring your second baby home from the hospital? One day your toddler is still your baby, but the next day, next to a newborn, he’s suddenly transformed into a gigantic little boy. It’s like that. Piccolo is freakishly enormous.
What else is new? We harvested our first red heirloom tomato from the garden last night, along with a handful of beans and peas. We haven’t tasted it yet, but we’re looking forward to it. I might plan tonight’s dinner menu all around that tomato.
We’re having more insect problems this year than last. Earwigs. Beetles. Things that eat leaves. We’re not the only ones. We’ve been asked to help pick Japanese beetles out of the organic garden at the Experimental Farm on Sunday morning.
What else? GC reads to Duncan and me most evenings before we fall asleep. Currently he’s reading Flatland to us. It’s a strange satirical novella written in 1884, about dimensions and geometry and social hierarchies. Duncan loves storytime. He lies on GC chest and rubs his chin on the book.
Speaking of Duncan, I think the arrival of four little bird siblings caused him to regress, even though the new babies live at GC’s house and not here. He wet the bed on Tuesday night. He hadn’t done that for over a year. It was on GC’s side, down by the feet. GC kept trying to figure it out. How had we offended Duncan? The litter box was clean, there was plenty of food in his dish. Why did he pee in our bed?
I wasn’t so analytical at 6:00 in the morning.
“Maybe it was an accident,” I said.
GC looked at me skeptically.
Duncan just lay there, snuggled in my arms, looking innocent.
Posted by Zoom! on July 22, 2010, at 12:07 pm |
Awhile back, I was out for brunch with a group of bloggers, and someone asked me about the Hartman’s Piano. This was the piano at the Hartman’s grocery store at Bank & Somerset. For years it was a community instrument in a small community-oriented corner of the grocery store. And then suddenly it was gone, to make room for a floral department.
A number of us tried to get Hartman’s to reconsider. Unsuccessfully.
“You can’t win ’em all,” a fellow blogger said.
“Lately I’ve been feeling like we can’t win any of them,” I replied.
And it’s true. I believe it’s our duty to actively try to make the world a better place. There are a lot of big global problems, like climate change and war and genocide and poverty and so on. I don’t expect any of them to be solved in my lifetime, or perhaps ever. But still, I think it’s important that I put my shoulder to the wheel.
There are big national problems too. For example, I’m becoming increasingly alarmed by the liberties the Harper government is taking with our liberties. (The over-policing and brutality against protesters at the G20 rally in Toronto is a symptom of a much bigger problem.) This government’s priorities are seriously warped. Worse, its slogans-and-propaganda style of governing only works on an uninformed and unthinking population, and it concerns me that so many Canadians are falling for it.
There are problems at the municipal level too, and the community level.
Taking on the Hartman’s Piano cause was my way of trying to remain hopeful about activism. I thought “Maybe we can’t achieve world peace, but at least we can get the piano back.”
But we couldn’t. I found that so discouraging. We couldn’t even get the piano back.
But you know what? Today I’m feeling optimistic. When the Chief Statistician of Canada, Munir Sheikh, resigned yesterday over the Census debacle, it was a courageous and ethical stance against Stephen Harper, and it restored my optimism.
I believe Stephen Harper, as set as he is in his autocratic ways, will have no choice but to back down. If you look at these two fascinating lists of organizations in favour of the long-form census questionnaire and those opposed, it becomes apparent that Harper is dead wrong about the Census and he’s alienating a lot of powerful people. He will ignore these lists at his own political peril.
Either way, we win. We’ll either get the Census back, or we’ll get rid of Stephen Harper. Maybe even both.
Posted by Zoom! on July 21, 2010, at 8:05 am |
 Photo: You should see the other guy Last night we went to Irene’s Pub for a benefit for Kim. I’ve known Kim for 25 years, which is even longer than she’s been a bartender at Irene’s. She got injured breaking up a rare fight at Irene’s last week. She broke her leg and sprained both wrists. She’ll be off her feet – and off work – for months.
Kim’s got a huge personality and she’s a big part of Irene’s history and culture. Naturally everybody wanted to do something to help her. So a benefit was hastily organized and all kinds of people volunteered their time and talent to make it happen.
It was a lot of fun. There was great music (including Drew Nelson, Ian Tamblyn, Sneezy Waters and many others), a meat raffle, a chicken tossing game, and lots of old familiar faces. I drank a couple of Beaus beers – not just because it’s the best beer ever, and locally brewed, but also because Beaus was donating $2.20 from every beer sold directly to Kim.
 Photo: People who can stay up later than us. Anyway. The place was packed. Everybody was there.
When GC and I left (I think it was around 11:00), there was a lineup of people outside waiting to get in. The bar was at capacity. These are the nice people who got in because GC and I left.
I don’t know how much money the benefit drummed up for Kim, but it must have been a lot. I only had seventy-six cents left when I got home.
News from the Love Nest
In other news, the third egg hatched on Monday; the fourth and final egg is expected to hatch today. The first three babies’ names are Piccolo, Banjo and Oboe. They’re growing like weeds. At first the babies just looked like wriggly little fetuses. Now they look like bigger wriggly little fetuses. I love watching Lester and Billie feeding them. You can peek inside the nest here. (If you register with Ustream.com, you can chat with us while watching the birds.) The webcam is on from about 7:30 am til about 9:00 at night.
Now I’m going to go make a batch of gingersnaps, because Carmen is coming over to help me fix my socks again!
Posted by Zoom! on July 19, 2010, at 8:04 am |
By now you’ve probably heard that Prime Minister Stephen Harper is axing the mandatory long-form Census questionnaire, supposedly in the name of safeguarding the privacy of Canadians.
It’s remarkable all the fake problems this man finds to “fix” while ignoring very real problems like climate change.
His tough-on-crime legislation is a classic example. He’s spending billions of dollars to expand the prison system, even though crime rates have been falling for decades and there’s a huge body of evidence proving this approach to crime doesn’t work.
I used to work for an organization that made extensive use of Census data. We were part of a coalition of non-profit organizations and municipalities who pooled our resources to purchase this expensive – and valuable – data from Stats Can. We used it to generate statistical profiles of cities and neighbourhoods across Canada. We were essentially mapping social and economic conditions across the country, right down to the FSA geographic level (first three characters of a postal code).
Census data is purchased, shared, mapped, analyzed and used by literally thousands of organizations across Canada. They design policies and programs, allocate resources and base critical decisions on this data. They monitor Canada’s social progress (or lack thereof) with it. It’s used by researchers, urban planners, social scientists, hospitals, school boards, social planning agencies, United Ways, universities, business, and all levels of government itself.
So many people and organizations are calling for this decision to be reversed, because Census data is a crucial tool in their work. But Harper remains steadfast in his refusal to reconsider. He didn’t consult with those who use the data before deciding to axe it, and he’s not going to change his mind now just because they’re unhappy.
So what does Stephen Harper have against the Census anyway?
Privacy concerns, he says.
This is absolutely and obviously not the truth. I’ve seen and worked with this data. It’s made up of huge tables of numbers. There are no names. There is no personally identifying information.
What’s the real reason?
I believe it’s because Prime Minister Harper finds it irritating when people use data to back up their arguments against him and his policies. He has a long history of favouring ideology over evidence. He is notoriously dismissive of experts and facts.
A person could spend their entire career thinking about and studying something, thereby accumulating a wealth of knowledge and insight far greater than Harper could ever hope to possess on the subject, and Harper would simply scoff and implement a policy or eliminate funding to a program based solely on his own opinion.
It’s my opinion that Mr. Harper is now taking his personal contempt of evidence to the next level. Rather than simply ignoring the evidence, he’s literally eliminating it so nobody can use it against him.
The Globe & Mail’s Jeffrey Simpson wrote a terrific column – PM’s Census Policy Senseless, but Great for the Party. It left me feeling weirdly sorry for Tony Clement, the Minister responsible for holding this latest bag of Harper’s steaming excrement.
The Ottawa Citizen’s Dan Gardner wrote this: Statisticians go wild –
When the number-crunchers get angry, government should know it made a mistake.
If you want to add your voice to the growing number of Canadians who want the mandatory long form questionnaire reinstated, there’s an online petition here.
Canadian Social Research Links has tons of links on this subject.
|
|
Popular Posts