Oiled Animals or "Why I'm Crying at a Soap Commercial"

Today's post, the first after a long pause, is an invitation.  Spring has sprung, and I think all of us are almost deliriously relieved to be seeing flora and fauna waking up and reminding us of how much we love being outside. The hope of spring is what I would like to harness in you.

It has been many many months since the BP oil spill disaster was being widely covered in the press.  As those horrible images fade into memory, I would like to invite you to share some of the optimism and joy of spring with an organization that does such good work that it's hard to over-state their contribution.

The International Bird Rescue Research Center is dedicated to washing, rehabilitating and releasing back into the wild animals who have been oiled by either man-made disasters or natural incidents.  You can read more about their work on their website.  In short, they are financially transparent, direct and effective.

The organization is also supported by Dawn soap (if, by the way, you buy Dawn for this reason, don't forget to go on-line and activate your donation for every bottle you purchase); you may have already seen this commercial:

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If you're like me, and this ad makes you cry every single time you see it, or if you have more self-control but still empathise, I would invite you to make a donation to the IBRRC.  I just did - a monthly contribution in memory of a friend - and I've never been so happy to see a charge on my Visa.  A few dollars a month from a few of us will go a long way.  I'm often hesitant to give to big charities like the WWF, because it's so hard to know where your money is really going.  The IBRRC, however, is the next best thing to going and doing it yourself, and they don't have any militant hidden agendas (like PETA - I'm a vegetarian and animal lover to the core, but God almighty do I hate PETA).  Although organizations like the WWF are extremely important and help create the kind of lasting change that will solve environmental problems, if I have to pick one charity to give to (which at this point in my life I do), I'm going to selfishly pick the one that warms my heart and makes me feel like there's some hope for immediate relief of suffering.

These are good humans, fighting hard to combat the damage done by bad humans.  Although those responsible for man-made disasters are supposed to pay for the clean-up and all related activities, there is always more to do.  Let's help; it's embarrassingly easy.  I don't have a big flashy salary; in fact, I don't even have a permanent job.  However, I know I can afford to give a few dollars a month, and I know that more importantly, I want to.  Let's all try being Good Humans by proxy for a while, and see how good it feels - just like getting that first breath of spring air.

In Memory of Tom Hopkins

This entry is an impossible attempt to express my sorrow at the loss of a very Good Human. Tom Hopkins, father of my friend Anna, died suddenly on Sunday night. He was a spectacular artist, and as many have said a mentor and teacher to countless students. He didn't just paint; he was an active part of the artistic community in Montreal and beyond. His life achievements were many, and I suspect that even after his passing his legacy will go on to inspire both those who already knew him and those who hadn't yet had that privilege.  This is, however, small comfort to those dealing with such a stunning loss.

Bill Brownstein of the Montreal Gazette wrote a piece outlining some of Tom's background and accomplishments.  All I would like to add is that I will remember him playing the guitar and singing us to sleep at sleepovers in their beautiful old house in Point Saint-Charles when we were small.  He was such a kind and warm man, and I think even at 100 would have been too young to go - at 66 it is simply a tragedy.  Some of his works can be found at Tom Hopkins Art and they are more than worth a look.  

This is a very sad time for anyone who knew Tom and anyone who knows his family.  He was a Good Human and a great father, and the sharp pain felt by anyone who was close to him is only proof of the sort of man he was.

Heartfelt condolences to Anna, Jacob and all of Tom's loved ones - nothing could be harder to endure, or more undeserved.

The Unbearable Irony of Being (A Quebecer)

I'm going to keep this post relatively short, because what I'm about to express is not a complex thought - just a relevant one.  First I have to give a bit of a preamble.  A little 'big picture' before the specific story at hand.

Do the PQ (Parti Québécois) honestly not realise the irony of ... well, everything they say?  They do not support any kind of reasonable accommodation, seeing all accommodation as inherently unreasonable - women aren't allowed to cover their faces, Sikhs can't carry ceremonial daggers, everyone has to speak French, everyone has to stand in neat little rows and salute Pauline Marois.  And yet... they want to separate from Canada because they think they deserve special ACCOMMODATION from the rest of Canada?

"It's not accommodation," you say, "because they don't want special rules - they want to be independent!"  Well, actually, they want to keep Canadian currency, keep Canadian military protection, keep Canadian border security, and ... well, you see where I'm going with this.  It's not independence, it's special accommodation.  It's not even reasonable accommodation - it's not Quebec asking to be allowed, for instance, to have totally different rules about everything from the rest of Canada - they already have that.  Did you know that many companies won't operate in Quebec because we have to have French labels on everything?  "Separating" (and I use that word with extreme looseness of definition) would be special, unique, troublesome, irritating accommodation.  It will affect all other Canadians.  It will affect the world economy.  And yet Quebec politicians persist in fear-mongering to Quebecers, telling them that somehow a lady wearing a face veil is going to undo every fibre of our cultural being until all that is left is a sad wind, blowing through our desolate dead forest of ghosts.

I'm not going to get into whether or not veiling is good or bad, or reasonable legally speaking.  I'm not even going to get into whether or not Sikh daggers should count as dangerous weapons.  I'm just going to say that this story made me make this face:

Why am I feeling such excruciating existential angst that I compare myself to a painting entitled simply, The Scream?  Because in the article in question, PQ representative Louise Beaudoin (who during her time as an elected member of the interestingly named National Assembly - a provincial seat of government, for anyone who's confused - was rather hilariously put in charge of the 'globalization' portfolio) unabashedly declares that "multiculturalism is not a Quebec value. It may be a Canadian one but it is not a Quebec one."  Wow.  Wow!  First of all, in what delusional world does Louise Beaudoin get to decide what values apply to the province of Quebec?  Second...WHAT IS WRONG WITH THESE PEOPLE?  

I don't feel capable of expressing myself eloquently or calmly on this issue.  Declaring publicly and directly that not only does your party not believe in multiculturalism (which amounts to saying that you do not believe in having different cultures, which amounts to say that you're a big giant fascist bigot who lives in a fantasy land where we can somehow keep cultures 'pure' and 'undiluted').. not only is she attempting to speak in a loud, totalitarian voice for her own party's anti-diversity stance - she wants to paint all of Quebec with the same brush.  

I am a Quebecer.  My voice counts even though I'm not a unilingual Francophone with a French family name. My family has been here since the 17th century, and I have documents in a bank vault that show our 'seigneurie' (a long strip of land that ran down to the river, under a feudal-type system that allowed equal access to water for all farmers) which belonged to my German ancestors who came here as Schmidts and who eventually became Smiths.  I'm very sorry if the PQ doesn't think multiculturalism is a Quebec value, but I do, and I think that the generations of immigrants who have made Quebec what it is would tend to agree with me.  That would, by the way, include the grand majority of people in the province, even if we start counting after we stole the land on which we are having this stupid debate from the Native Americans who helped the settlers not starve and freeze to death.  Do we really have to keep pointing this out to people?  Who do the PQ think they are?  The ultimate hypocrisy of the separatists in this province is that while claiming that only descendants of French colonists are real Quebecers, they simultaneously disdain real French culture, seeing it as elitist and old fashioned.  Is it even possible to win this infuriating game of 'who's more vielle souche' (an expression literally meaning 'old stump' which signifies old provincial blood)?  

Well, this wasn't as short as I had promised.  However, the PQ is getting more and more unabashedly, dare I say, racist, in their rhetoric.  They seem to have completely abandoned pretending to respect immigrants and visible minorities, and just gone straight to the stage where they admit their hatred of all things vaguely unfamiliar.  And yet they also pretend that it has nothing to do with race or religion - those things are fine as long as they don't ever have to be expressed in any way whatsoever.  You can be Muslim, but not in public.  You can be English, but not in any way that counts - you still have to send your children to a French school, put up your business signs in French, and God help you if you try to answer the phone at work in English.  The Office of the French Language will descend on you and fine you.  I am so unbelievably sick of it - it's like listening to a bunch of whiny teenagers complain about their parents and their school and their minimum wage job.  The PQ wants to move out of the house, but they also want Mom & Dad to pay the bills and do their homework for them.  In the midst of that absurdity, it's really very hard to take anything else they say seriously - including this drivel about reasonable accommodation.  The term itself is starting to annoy the Hell out of me.

Bad Humans for making me feel like there's no hope for Quebec society - I resent being drummed out of my home province by sheer irritation.  All the people who migrated down the 401 have left a cultural hole in Quebec that is being filled with ignorance and idiocy, and I for one feel like it's becoming a lost cause to even discuss it any more.  TABARNAK.  Why can't our beautiful province with some of the richest history in North America be focused on the wonderful things we have to offer the world and ourselves, instead of harping endlessly on one tired old issue that is simply farcical in the modern world?  Here's a fact for the PQ - short of becoming North Korea: it is not possible to stop culture from changing - it is, in fact, the mark of a healthy culture.  We need to stop obsessing over insignificant non-issues in this province, and start growing and blossoming again along with the rest of the world.  We have so much to offer, and we are committing cultural suicide by suffocating ourselves under blankets of isolationism and nostalgia for something that never existed.

Human Shields vs. Human Bombs

For the first post of the new year, I would like to share a story from Egypt.  Following the bombing of a Coptic church by extremists, Egyptian Muslims have rallied across the country and have begun a campaign of Egyptian inter-faith solidarity.  In this article from Ahram Online, the recently launched "English-language news web site published by Al-Ahram Establishment, Egypt’s largest news organization, and the publisher of the Middle East’s oldest newspaper, the daily Al-Ahram, in publication since 1875," we can read about the Muslims who are attending Coptic Christmas services to act as human shields for the Christians attending mass. 

The risk they take is substantial, as is the risk the Christians take when they venture out to worship after the New Years day event so widely covered in the press.  However, this movement of solidarity gives hope that when the Muslim community rises up and in a unified voice rejects Islamists and their immoral behaviour, national communities can heal, grow and remain strong despite acts of violence.  As one of Muslim attendee of the service said, most Egyptians have Christians in their families somewhere, either now or historically.  Many acknowledge the simple connection between the faiths and see Egyptian community as infinitely more important than religious differences.  This is true secularism in a society; not the absence of religion, but the absence of religion as a divisive force or a strangling force controlling society.

Good humans for defying a minority of ignorant and lost people with quiet strength and hope.  Hopefully this kind of stable-minded and moderate response to terrorist acts will be the solution to terrorism world-wide; instead of retaliation: refusal to accept injustice, and instead of revenge: constructive action.

A New Canadian with an Old Idea, or "Where There's Space, There's Rice"

Most technology is exciting, impressive, or intriguing, but rarely is it truly surprising.  Solar technology, for instance, is well-established; advances in the field therefore are fascinating but not a shock to us.  Interestingly, it is often the knowledge we've forgotten, rather than truly new knowledge, which surprises us most.  For instance - the lost art of agriculture.  In our modern culture, a microscopic percentage of people are involved in food production - many casually grow houseplants, but few of those actually seed their own flora at home.  The simple joy of taking a seed, planting it, and actually producing a living thing is lost to most of us.  

So, based on this, when we stumble across someone who is quietly growing rice in a vacant lot in Windsor, all by himself, it is quite simply... surprising.  Qinsi Yu, a 72 year-old immigrant from China, is trying to prove that rice can be grown in Canada, and that it is of higher quality than store-bought, older rice.  He even wants to send some to the Prime Minister to prove his point.  Despite all of the idiotic comments that follow the story online, including people demanding to know why someone who 'doesn't speak English' or is old is allowed to emigrate here, I think the majority of people viewing this would be impressed by both his successful and unique project, and his frankly surprising mastery of English (considering that he arrived in Canada in 2003 from rural China at the age of 65).  

This to me is a wonderful example of why diverse immigration is a good thing; different generations and different ethnicities bring such vibrant and diverse knowledge to Canada.  This gentleman wants to add to our rich tapestry, and that can never be a bad thing - when immigrants are allowed to do what they know, and bring their talents with them instead of being flattened and reshaped, we all benefit.  Check him out for yourselves:

Good Human A. for being industrious, ingenious and creative, B. for being active and healthy at 72, C. for sharing his work with others, and D. for being adventurous and open.  An excellent example to us all, and a nice reminder that sometimes the simpler things in life are even more engrossing than the more complex.  

Quantum Dots & Electric Sweaters, or "Do You Mind if I Charge My Phone on Your Shirt?"

After a long and pensive hiatus, we return with a story fit for a blogging comeback, though it comes to us from 2005:  Spray-on Solar-Power.  Could science get any cooler, you ask, after bringing us to the moon, giving us Velcro, and making vegetarian chicken soup possible?  Yes it can.  Using nanotechnology (which I still have trouble believing exists outside the world of Stark Trek: Voyager in 7 of 9's Borg implants), described in the article as "[combining] specially designed nano particles called quantum dots with a polymer to make the plastic that can detect energy in the infrared"... this stuff is basically the coolest thing ever.  How come it took almost 6 years for me to hear about this?  Oh yeah, because the media prefers to put sensationalist stories of your friendly neighbourhood pervert, or teenage bombers, or other similarly monotonous items on the front page.


Anyway, some of the reasons for the general awesomeness of this spray-on material include the fact that it can absorb infrared light, allowing for power-collection on cloudy days (or even at night according to the author), that it is truly 'wireless' power, that you could SPRAY IT ONTO A SWEATER and power your cellphone (or onto a hydrogen-fueled car and power it)... I could go on.  More efficient than current solar panels, up to 6 times more, this new technology is changing the face of solar power.  It's the social equivalent of going from a windmill to a wind farm.  The author points out that the Japanese government already anticipates solar power accounting for 50% of their power needs in only 20 years from now... I for one am infatuated with the idea that, ""If we could cover 0.1 percent of the Earth's surface with [very efficient] large-area solar cells," he said, "we could in principle replace all of our energy habits with a source of power which is clean and renewable."


There will of course be skeptics, nay-sayers, and my favourite of all, the people who think solar power will somehow give us all brain cancer (everything new does, apparently) - hopefully they will all be proved wrong by the success of this project/invention, and we can all find ourselves in 20 or 30 years in a much cleaner and happier world, not dependent on fossil fuels or other unsustainable power sources.  Solar power is really the only truly clean source of energy that doesn't come at a secondary cost (wind farms kill birds, dams destroy the local ecology and displace communities AND spew mercury into the environment) - or at least we haven't identified any yet.  I am very hopeful that these kinds of scientific advancements might eliminate the need for massive social upheaval and more wars over energy needs.  If sci-fi is anything to go by, the only way to achieve an enlightened society is through the elimination of suffering through science.  I would love to know how this is coming along, 6 years later - I shall endeavor to find out, and would welcome updates from anyone who knows more.  Good Humans.

Sexy Vegetables & Urban Living

In the Gazette's article, "Urban cook-off is ripe with community spirit," I was introduced to a wonderful initiative that's been quietly making a splash in the Montreal community. The idea of sustainable food and urban gardening have always been popular in our city - a city that already connects with nature through our enormous Mont Royal and numerous parks throughout the neighbourhoods and downtown, to say nothing of the beautiful flower & tree displays lining many streets. Montrealers, in short, like a little greenery. Urban gardening is the logical extension of this philosophy that concrete is fine but plants are nicer.

Restaurants that can boast home-grown produce in their recipes are always a hit - people love knowing that not only do the fruit & vegetables have no carbon footprint from being trucked/flown from South America or Asia - they also likely have little or no pesticides or other things we'd rather not be eating. It's all about trust, and trust breeds good business.

I love the idea of this little cook-off; I wish I'd been there! The dishes produced sound amazing - even the raw food which I have to confess I have always sneered at in the past. It would be nice if more vegetarian restaurants blossomed in Montreal, and it's great to see them all coming together as a community and bringing people together.

Good Humans for trying something new, for turning a concrete wasteland into a garden, and for feeding us healthy and fun food.