I told this one on Facebook but I don't think I put it on the blog. A few nights ago Pace was throwing toys so I gave him a time-out in his room. Then we hear his little voice: “Mom – backpack!” Shea goes in to see what he means and gives him the backpack hanging on his door. “Mom – door!” He wants to go out the front door?!? Hmm, let's see where this is going. Shea follows him out and says: “Mom – bus stop!”
Yep, our two and a half has decided to run away for the first time (although in retrospect, we wondered if he wasn't really “running away” but made the leap from seeing the backpack in his room to the bus stop as a good way to get out of his time-out because he knows daddy takes a backpack to the bus stop each day.)
Pace calls my iPhone the “iMoan” – I thought only Apple fanboys called it that!
When Shea picked him up at daycare the other day and he was playing on a toy kitchen set, she asked him what he was making and he replied “Make supper!” (Ambitious kid!)
Of all the words that Pace could mis-pronounce to sound like swear words, I never thought it would be “pumpkin” that would have me racing around the corner ready to wash his mouth out with soap! (Use your imagination! )
Tonight, I was putting him to sleep and said “Good-night, Pace-man!” to which he replied, “Good-night, dad-man!”
2009 is apparently the 250th birthday of Robbie Burns, a fact I only discovered while searching for clips from one of my favourite Saskatchewan singer-songwriters, Eileen Laverty.
I'm way past Robbie Burns Day but I'll still post it here…such a beautiful song…three days in a row with content to bring a tear to your eye!
It's not something I spend a great deal of time thinking about but I do feel fortunate that I belong to a profession that's consistently ranked as one of the most valued in society (librarians and firefighters usually battle for the “most important public service” title when citizens in various cities are surveyed each year.) As a nurse, Shea also belongs to one of, if not the most trusted profession in society as well.
On the opposite end of the spectrum, we all know the reputation that lawyers have. And politicians are one of the few groups who rank even lower in public opinion polls than lawyers, somewhere between morticians and used car salesmen (and what does that say about used car salesmen??? ).
This is the popular conception of those two professions but in my experience, lawyers (the good ones anyhow!) are frequently the ones you want to be working with when it counts. They are intelligent, rational and committed to principles of fairness and decency.
My first boss was trained as a lawyer and when I get to my “Five Things I Learned at the Sask Publishers Group” post, you'll see how valuable I found that perspective while learning a lot about the “real world” in my first job after completing my undergrad degree. In a variety of other spots in my life, it's always seemed to be the lawyers who have been the focal points of making things happen – whether it was the Chair of the Calgary Freedom to Read Week Committee, the head of the Alberta Civil Liberties Union or the driving force behind the G8 Amnesty International Observer Team in Kananaskis in 2002.
So it was with great pride that Shea and I were able to join a busload of enthusiastic Regina supporters today on a road trip to Moose Jaw for the NDP's nomination meeting that saw Regina barrister, Noah Evanchukchosen as the candidate for the Palliser riding in the next Federal election (whenever that may be – Jurist has lots of great posts covering developments on that front.)
Noah gave a captivating speech – at times personal, at times partisan, and at times profound. I won't go into a full analysis but I want to share one story that Noah told.
He spoke of working as a public defender for a young woman who was being charged with armed robbery. She had been forced into prostitution at a young age and had an altercation with a John who refused to pay her. During the course of this altercation, she was thrown from a moving vehicle and sustained a brain injury. Oh, and she wasn't just a young woman when this happened, she was literally just a girl. Twelve years old.
So now stop.
You read that paragraph and if you're like me, you're surfing around. You skim articles. You keep moving. So now stop. And go back and read that again. Slowly.
This young woman – an underage prostitute, abused by her John and permanently injured – is the PERSON BEING CHARGED WITH ARMED ROBBERY.
Worse, there are people in this country (including the majority of the members of the party that currently runs our country) who believe that this is right course of action. Unbelievable. But that is why we need people like Noah in Ottawa. Canada needs more people who run with country with compassion, cooperation and courage.
Cynics may call it emotional button pushing but when Noah went on to say that he had a follow-up visit with this client and she told him that he was the only person in her entire life who told her that she was a good person…well, I couldn't count the teary eyes in the room because I happened to have something in my eye as well!
Once upon a time in a University library, I happened upon a back issue of Journal of Popular Culture or some such where some academic had done a *very* in-depth study of who wrote which Beatles songs, giving percentage contributions to each. I think I have a copy of that article around here somewhere – I should go read it again – very interesting material. And if you haven't read “Revolution in the Head“, go read it now! And if you prefer to come at the songs from more of a musical perspective than a lyrical/thematic/cultural approach, I highly recommend Allan J. Pollock's “Notes On” series.
You could pitch this as a movie but you might get told it's too unrealistic – a pint-sized hockey player who's short on stature but big on heart overcomes incredible odds to not only make the Calgary Flames but become a prolific scorer and team leader helping the Flames win the team's only Stanley Cup in 1989. He is traded in 1998, leaving the Flames as their all-time leading scorer before eventually playing for Colorado, New York and Chicago. In addition to his Stanley Cup, he also wins an Olympic Gold Medal in 2002 but the following year, leaves the NHL after violating the league's substance abuse policy multiple times.
He bounces around – playing in a British semi-pro league, for a northern Alberta senior team and later, with a Manitoba senior team as well. Eventually, he starts a concrete business with his wife and brother and after six years out of the league, it is assumed his hockey playing days are over.
So when it is announced a week ago that he has invited to attend the training camp of his original team at the age of 41, rumours about the reason for this offer ran wild – the Flames only offered him a try-out to deflect attention from others on the roster, they wanted to ensure sell-outs for their pre-season games to maximize revenue (or demote him to their new farm team in Abbotsford and have the same thing happen there), they want to sell a new retro jersey or most promisingly, they wanted to give a local hero a chance to have some closure after leaving the league in disgrace.
Well, I know it was only a pre-season game but no matter what happens from here on in – whether he makes the team or not – the ending of the first NHL game for Saskatchewan-born Theo Fleury in six years, will go down in the history as one of the most dramatic endings to a hockey game ever with Fleury scoring the game-winning (and only) goal for either team in a shoot-out!
Facebook has stolenadded a new feature, inspired by Twitter, where you can tag another user by using the “@” sign and then typing the person's name in your status updates.
When I was trying it out to tag Shea in a post, I ended with a rhetorical “Is this a Twitter killer?” A few people were quick to respond that this wasn't the case with one very succinctly saying “Um…no.”
So I should clarify what I meant with my half-baked comment. I obviously don't think that one appropriated feature, no matter how core to the experience, means that Twitter's going to disappear (although they appear capable of doing this to themselves regularly anyhow!)
But I do wonder if the rapid Twitter-ification of Facebook does mean that the casual user (here I'm talking about people who aren't early adopters, who don't work in libraries and get excited about every new technology that comes along, and yes, I'll say it, the type of person who answer a LOT of Facebook quizzes) might be less inclined to make the jump to getting on Twitter if they're already on Facebook?
A few months back, I was speaking to someone who'd done a bunch of demographic research on Regina. The topic of wealthy areas of the city came up and I said that I suspected one of our suburban branches, with a high percentage of doctors, lawyers, University professors and other white collar professionals living nearby, likely had the richest patrons.
The person responded that this was probably the case if you were looking purely at household gross income but the question really depended on how you defined “rich”. They went on to say that their research had actually shown that the richest area of the city, at least in terms of net worth (which most would consider a better indicator of wealth than income) was a working class neighbourhood I never would've guessed in a million years.
But it makes sense once you think about it – many of the people in this area are tradespeople who make very good incomes, often as self-employed workers with low overhead. Many work from their homes which they can write-off as a business expense. They have skills that allow them to do their own home repairs rather than hiring expensive…you guessed it…tradespeople. Their homes tend to be modest (at least in comparison to the McMansions in the area where many white collar folks live) and therefore, are paid off earlier rather than carrying a larger mortgage for a longer term (how many people in the suburbs are “house rich but cash poor” after their gi-normous mortgage payment each month?)
Same with vehicles and other status items – instead of purchasing this year's new model to replace last year's new model, many working class folks tend to own older vehicles that they keep for a longer time which means they're owned outright as well and when needed, repaired in their own backyard rather than an expensive garage. And for the skills they don't have, their network of contacts often means that they know people who can do any needed work at a discount and/or under the table. They save money in other ways too. Instead of expensive vacations to Europe and the Caribbean, they might take a family trip to the Rockies or the West Edmonton Mall.
I'm not speaking of my own neighbourhood in this post but the similarities are striking – the area where Shea and I live is also one that would be termed a working class neighbourhood with a high percentage of tradespeople living here.
In fact, the house that Shea and I live in was built by a cooperative of tradespeople in the late 1970's – one carpenter, one plumber, one electrician, one bricklayer and one or two others banded together to buy six lots and built each others' homes. (When we had our house checked over as part of our offer to buy, the contractor couldn't help but comment on the sturdy construction.)
What's my point? I guess that it's foolish to make assumptions about a neighbourhood or an area of the city based on who lives there or what they do for a living (he says having just done an entire post with some pretty broad generalizations about a couple different types of neighbourhoods! )
But obviously I was wrong when I assumed that simply having wealthy, white collar-type workers in an area meant everybody was “rich” just as many others look at “poorer” working class neighbourhoods and don't recognize the real wealth contained within them.
(I hasten to add that I'm not one of these people with a secret net
worth of millions because of my “salt o' the earth” lifestyle and
skills! My leaking bathroom faucet is covered with duct tape as I type this and Shea and I regularly spend way more money than we should on cars, vacations, dining out and all kinds of other un-necessities of life! We fight hard not to get caught up in the “Keeping Up With the Joneses” mentality – sometimes successfully, sometimes not.
But overall, by choosing to live in a “poorer” neighbourhood of the city, we gain some pretty sweet advantages compared to many people who are otherwise similar to us. Shea is able to work only three days a week instead of full-time and we're still able to dedicate a large percentage of our income to savings or other things we want than many of our friends who have similar incomes but chose to live in more expensive areas of the city.
I always think of the horror story of one of Shea's former co-workers being told by her husband that she *had* to work full-time rather than dropping down to lower hours to spend more time with their two young children like she wanted. In the driveway of the bungalow in a “nice” area of the city? A brand new BMW and a two-year old VW Passat. )
