The Westboro Baptist Church are a truly odious group of folks (widely referred to as a hate group) who travel around “protesting” various events that they somehow think are connected to homosexuality. But when they chose to protest a recent Foo Fighters concert, the band had a response planned. (Of course this raises questions about whether it’s better to address groups like this or ignore them.)
Shea and I were out to Indian Head yesterday to take in a fundraiser for the local NDP candidate in this year’s Provincial Election with guest speaker, Dr. Ryan Meili (plus a pretty amazing special guest speaker too.)
Here’s some random thoughts…
– we heard about the fundraiser at a wedding in IH about a month ago when the mother-of-the-bride, who knew we’d worked on Ryan’s campaign, mentioned it to us. (Last night, she apologized for being so brash as to promote the event at her daughter’s wedding but we just laughed – “It was the perfect time to tell us!”)
– Ryan Meili did his talk on “The Politics of Health” and though I’ve heard it before, it’s such a good presentation, I think I could listen to it repeatedly. Ryan’s a great speaker too – very engaging! And happy to hear him mention he’s looking to publish a book on the topic sometime in the new year.
– Also happy to hear him give a solid non-answer when a person in the crowd asked if he’d be getting back in politics – especially since I thought he was firmly in the “no more politics” camp. I think Ryan truly believes what he says in his speech which he tells as a parable – if you notice a drowning kid go by in a river, you’ll go in to save the kid. And if you notice another, you’ll save that one too. And the next one. That’s healthcare. But eventually, you have to go up river to see what’s causing so many kids to end up drowning in the river in the first place. That’s politics. So he knows that politics are the only way to broadly change society in a way that medicine doesn’t allow.
– As someone who’s a big believer in work-life balance (and not just paying lip service to the idea like so many do), I realised that Ryan losing his leadership bid was probably the best thing to happen to him – he got married soon after the leadership convention and now has a baby who was exactly five weeks old yesterday. Had he won the leadership, those timelines might have been drastically different or his life may have been drastically different or both.
– The event ended up with a very high profile special guest – Churchill NDP MP Niki Ashton had been to Saskatoon for an event earlier in the day, made her way to Regina for another event (which we were invited to but had to miss unfortunately) then, since she was en route to Winnipeg, accepted an invite to pop in on the Indian Head event. Great to meet her and though I haven’t made any formal decisions about who I might support in the Federal NDP leadership race (especially since I think only one person has officially declared as running so far!), I will note that, even though Facebook pages for pretty much every potential candidate have sprung up, the “Draft Niki Ashton for NDP Leader” page on is the only one I’ve “liked”…so far.
– Why is that the case? Niki seems to hit many of the criteria I listed in my original post on potential next leaders : bilingual (actually multi-lingual), western, young, progressive, highly educated. If she decides to run, she’s got an uphill battle against the more established candidates but who knows? It was fun seeing her and Ryan on stage together as it reminded me of that same sort of underdog potential that got Ryan within 5% of the Provincial NDP leadership.
– I’ve got a few thoughts about how growing up in rural Saskatchewan influenced by view on (and now approach to) politics which I’ll probably try to cover in a longer entry sometime between now and our provincial election in a month and a half.
– I won two McFarlane hockey figurines collectibles in the silent auction – a Wayne Gretzky one as well as one of the greatest player of all-time. 😉
– Shea won a crock pot in the door prize draw too. We already have one but this one’s red so will fit our kitchen decor better. Cool!
– You’re probably not supposed to notice this type of stuff but in a small town where everybody knows everybody, it was interesting to see who showed up. “Oh, of course that cool teacher from high school is an NDP’er! Sure, the parents of my one classmate who went on to be so successful are NDP’ers. Hey, I never expected that grizzled old farmer who likes hunting and restoring old cars to be at an NDP event.” And so on.
Speaking of uphill battles, like many NDP candidates in rural Saskatchewan, I suspect Richard Klyne will have a tough go of it on November 7, especially against a high profile Cabinet minister. But as Ryan said so eloquently in his opening remarks, anyone who chooses to put their name forward as a potential public servant deserves better than the reputation that politicians tend to have in our society.
Best of luck, Richard!
A recent documentary features a variety of scenes from all around the world captured on a single day. Here’s the trailer:
One Day on Earth – Motion Picture Trailer from One Day On Earth on Vimeo.
I admit that I’m such a library nerd that sometimes when I’m bored and can’t think of something to look at on the Internet, I’ll just go to a random library’s web site to see what’s up, what they’re doing, how they present themselves. It’s especially fun to pick libraries that you expect to be unique – Beverly Hills, Washington DC, Nashville – usually only to find that they’re all essentially the same.
I hadn’t stumbled across this one before but researching our upcoming holiday led me to the web site for the Hawaii Public Library System. There was one particular element of their web site – which all library web sites have – that I was especially interested in checking out. But unfortunately, right now, they’ve only got a Janitor II position listed! 😉
The idea of a connection between happiness and productivity is a discussion I’ve had with a few people at work over the past couple years – some who are in agreement with the idea, some who feel there’s no link between happiness and productivity and some who are uncertain (or haven’t given it much thought when I catch myself talking to unsuspecting victims in the lunch room!)
The New York Times has just published yet another in a growing number of articles (and books and papers and web sites) saying there is indeed a correlation. This particular article features the work of an author and a professor from the Harvard School of Business who present the results of a study of 12 000 diary entries from 238 professionals across a number of different companies.
Gallup estimates the cost of America’s disengagement crisis at a staggering $300 billion in lost productivity annually. When people don’t care about their jobs or their employers, they don’t show up consistently, they produce less, or their work quality suffers.
So stepping back, what factors need to be in place to create the ideal conditions for a happy workplace? Daniel Pink, author of “Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us” has done four decades of research into human motivation and identified three factors that lead to increased employee engagement which leads to increased productivity which has direct correlation to employee happiness.
To use my standard line, “you don’t need clowns and trampolines in the hallways to create a happy workplace” (maybe if you work at Google?) but just give your employees three simple things:
1. Autonomy
2. Mastery
3. Purpose
Pink’s TED talk (the 10th Most Viewed TED talk on YouTube showing the reach of this idea) does a great job of summarizing his findings:
PS – this post features the debut of a new tag – “orgdevl” – which I hope to use as I write more about the type of things I think about in my day-to-day work at RPL but also as I contemplate what works in terms of my personal life, how other organizations operate, my increasing involvement with politics and in various other arenas.
Reddit weighs in on this question. Personally, I really like that “Enact a 6pm is dancing time – every night!” idea (though it’d likely have to be a different time since we’re watching the news at that time.) I don’t know if this is odd/quirky but a lot of times, I just like to follow Pace’s lead for ideas on what to do (“get on the floor and play turtles with me” Okay!) and also to play off him – creating stories, jokes, puns – whatever.
Spooky. Spooky good, that is!
There’s a lot of commentary today online, in other media and at memorials around the world. So instead of adding to the noise, I thought I’d do a quick round-up of some of the most interesting things I’ve seen…
(Oh, okay – I’ll quickly do my own “Where were you when?” story since I don’t think I’ve ever blogged about it. It’s nothing special – I’d just been hired at the Writers Guild of Alberta and had done 2-3 days of training with the outgoing Program Coordinator but she’s run out of things to teach me so I had a couple days off before my official start date which I think was scheduled to be September 15 or something. Shea and I were sleeping in our apartment when the phone rang. Shea’s mom was on the line and told us what had happened then warned us not to go downtown or even to go out if we could help it. Calgary has their own twin towers but I think she meant her warning more generally as, like so many people that day, nobody knew where or when further attacks might happen.)
We turned on the TV and I don’t really remember much about the next few hours as we both sat there basically glued to the TV, flipping between CNN, CTV, CBC coverage. No laptop or wifi or iPhone in those days and no real social networking either so I also went on my desktop computer in our office and tried to find out more. But of course, many sites were overwhelmed and not accessible. The MetaFilter thread I link to below was one of my main sources of ongoing news and I also remember that I ended up in a ICQ – remember that program? – chat with a former co-worker in Saskatchewan where we traded news and speculation. Later that day, suffering a bit of overload – in terms of information but also in terms of emotion – we decided to go out and run some errands. We went to Costco and I can’t think of a more surreal experience in my life then walking through the huge aisles of Costco, looking around and thinking “you’re alive and possibly 20 000 people in New York are dead” as I walked past people. “Look at all this STUFF you can buy with MONEY but who cares about that anymore?” And yes, I also was having many of those “the world has changed” thoughts too.)
Kirk Miles, one of the poets I got to know during my time in Calgary posted the following poem on his Facebook wall and so I thought I’d re-post it here:
Dust
Dust is the story of someone’s sorrow.
We see it all, sad listener.
(May I call you sad listener?)Everything has changed in the news today.
Swirling particles where fathers should be.
Everything has changed including
the shape of mountains and the color of revenge.
Everything has changed except atrocities
and all the dust they send.
Dust is the sound of hijacked screams.
We see it all, sad listener.
(May I call you sad listener?)Everything has changed on this
September morn.
Accounts payable pages float down
like unfinished business.
Human bodies caught falling
like humans bodies falling.
Everything has changed—
the air is shrieking
as we are scraping the sky
for meaning.
Dust is the sister of tragic ashes
We see it all sad listener.
(May I call you sad listener?)Everything has changed inside the TV:
Planes exploding like excited stars,
buildings awash with smoke and terror
and the weight of collapsing steel,
like the death toll, is more than we can bear.
Everything has changed
as Auden shouts from the third tower,
the tower we build from light and water:
“There will be no peace.
They hate for hate’s sake.”
Dust is the feel of sand in a throat
We see it all, sad listener.
(May I call you sad listener?)Everything has changed as
commerce wobbles then topples
and carpeted halls turn to powder.
Everything has changed except
we do not need the money
as much as we need each other.
Everything has changed including the shape
of clouds and the colour of fear.
Dust is the story of someone’s sorrow.
We see it all, sad listener.
(May I call you sad listener?)
