The floundering Flames shocked the hockey world by firing their coach late Thursday night (after a victory even!) and announcing that former coach, Darryl Sutter, who led them to the game seven of the Stanley Cup Finals in 2004 before coming up short, would be retaking the reins of the team.
That run was when we lived in Calgary, about six blocks from the infamous “Red Mile”, and one of the best experiences of my life!
We’re into the same month as when Covid became real and the world shut-down mid-month so I’ll likely be posting a few different retrospective posts, whether it’s “Throwback Thursday” or not over the next few weeks.
For example, here’s all my tweets from March 2020.
I loved this tweet (but not that I managed a typo in both “quarantine” and “quarantino” – “quarantine” being one of many new words that would become part of my regular vocabulary as the year went on.)
#EditButtonNow
Me at home on day one of Quentin Quanantino…
#QuarentineLife pic.twitter.com/yDDe9w0spK— Jason Hammond (@headtale) March 19, 2020
Ted Lasso is an unexpected hit AppleTV+ show which began as a series of promos to promote NBC Sports showing Premier League soccer.
Those vignettes led to the character being developed and expanded into a 10-episode series of half-hour comedies which initially seems like a typical “fish out of water” story of an American football coach being hired to coach a British football team but become a larger story about optimism, trust and seeing the good in everyone.
In our increasingly polarized world, perhaps not a surprise it became a hit after all?
With vaccines rolling out, certain states (probably prematurely) removing *all* Covid restrictions, and other leaders speculating about the light at the end of the tunnel (or maybe not?), it’s time for a list…
Happy birthday Grandma!
In a different year, we might have been celebrating together in some tropical destination but unfortunately, that’s not the case this year.
Have a cerveza on us and we’ll see you soon!
I always enjoy trying to come up with something creative for a FTRW display at my library and this year was no different.
Going back to what I said earlier in the week (in a post that had a display we did just as Covid was starting to turn towards pandemic status in early March 2020), I tried to do a theme about “good/reliable/science-based” information and policy versus that which is more controversial or less likely to prove useful.
I initially thought about grouping two piles of books – one of “good” info and one of “less good” info but realised that gets to the crux of the issue. There is never going to be 100% consensus on any piece of information and the library skates that narrow line between providing good, reliable info plus info that doesn’t meet that criteria but would be of interest to some.
For that reason, it morphed into a bit more of a display about a range of books connected to Covid – not just science vs. homeopathy for instance but also politics, travel and so on.
This is a photo of the display at the start of the week. For interest’s sake, here’s some of the books that moved off the display over the course of the week:
“What’s the Issue? Fake News”
“Anxiety Busters”
“Fear: Trump in the White House”
“Is Gwyneth Paltrow Wrong About Everything?”
“How Not To Worry”
Shea and I have been showing the kids a lot of our favourite movies from when we were growing up – “Dirty Dancing” to “Adventures in Babysitting” to “Airplane!” – movies that both of us remember being allowed to watch by our parents at relatively young ages with no censorship or restrictions (*maybe* I’d be told to cover my eyes if a sex scene came on.)
One of the most fascinating things is realising how different these movies may seem in our current age, both because societal mores have changed but also now that we’re the parents and our own nervousness about the kids hearing/learning something unexpected from these movies (more along the lines of concerns about the racism and sexism than the sex or violence usually.) And to be fair, Sasha heard about a pretty intense PG-13 movie about residential schools at school that we watched as a family last night. Once we got into it, we had moments of thinking it might not be appropriate for someone her age but after checking in, we kept watching as honestly, I think it’s more about the conversations than the content in situations like that.
Even one of the most beloved, highest-grossing films of all-time, E.T., is not immune from being updated for modern times as the Anniversary Edition took out references to terrorism, scenes of guards holding guns, and the insult “penis breath”.
Steven Spielberg later said he regretted some of the changes he made due to criticism from advocacy groups when the film was originally released:
The director has since said he regrets the changes. “Not because of fan outrage,” he told Sean O’Neal of The AV Club website, “but … I was overly sensitive to some of the criticism ‘E.T.’ got from parent groups when it was first released in ’82, having to do with Eliott saying ‘penis breath’ or the guns.”
Through my work with the Writers Guild of Alberta, I became involved with the Calgary Freedom to Read Week Committee. I can’t find it online now but my memory is that this committee of writers, librarians, publishers and social activists was formed after some MLA held up some book in the Alberta Legislature to denounce it as offensive.
The Committee did a variety of things throughout the year but the highlight was during Freedom to Read Week where they would present a copy of a controversial book, chosen by the committee each year, to Calgary City Council (nice change from politicians advocating for book banning for sure!)
I got to make the actual presentation a couple years in a row – these are pictures of me with Calgary’s Mayor at the time, Dave “Bronco” Bronconnier and I think the pictures are from 2004 or possibly 2003.
(Fun personal trivia – I got to be in Council chambers for my presentation the same day Calgary Public Library made their budget presentation and some of the details of what they talked about have stayed with me to this day – probably a bit of a clue why I went on to become a librarian!)
Anyhow, being on the Calgary #FTRW committee was a great experience in many ways – from learning to organize events (I should also post a pic of Shea and I with Right Honourable Joe Clark at a FTRW Fundraiser I organized) to some aspects of political advocacy (although I can’t help but note how pointedly I chose *not* to wear a suit or tie for this presentation!) to just getting such a solid understanding of the importance of freedom of expression and surrounding issues.
Another aspect of Freedom of Expression in the age of Covid is whether workers feel empowered to speak out about safety concerns they see in their workplaces without fear of reprisal.
Most legislation has provisions to protect workers for speaking out on safety issues of any kind but many workplaces also take the position that by doing the expected things – plexiglass, providing masks & sanitizer, etc. – the workplace is no more dangerous than in pre-Covid times which is, at best, debatable given the outbreaks that have happened in various restaurants, retailers and other places where the public visits.
This example is a bit more egregious than a single fast-food worker possibly being exposed to a Covid positive customer. It happened when a seasonal worker from Mexico, living in a crowded bunkhouse in Ontario where others had Covid and at least one person died, was fired for speaking out.
The case went to the Ontario Labour Board who ruled in favour of the worker who was found to be justified in raising their concerns. Again, this is a pretty clear cut example where the employee was in the right and the employer was in the wrong but it’d be interesting to see how similar cases would play out when its perhaps not quite as clear cut?
