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]]>The Baby Formula is a comedy about a lesbian couple who try to conceive a child using sperm created from their own stem cells.
]]>The Baby Formula is a comedy about a lesbian couple who try to conceive a child using sperm created from their own stem cells.
]]>Look up. Way up. What do you see? What do you think you see?
In the swamps of eastern Arkansas it might be a whole lot of nothing. Or so Ghost Bird a new film by director Scott Crocker suggests.
The Ivory-billed woodpecker has long been considered the Holy Grail by diehard birders who refused to believe it went extinct over sixty years ago. So when scientists announced that the bird had been found in the small town of Brinkley, Arkansas, it was celebrated around the world as the rediscovery of a lifetime. But the skeptics aren't convinced, and the evidence isn't conclusive.
What follows is a deep meditation on the politics of scientific discovery, the revival of a small town, and the hope for a species long considered a ghost from the past. Ghost Bird is not a film about birds, or environmental conservation. Rather it is a story of loss and belief, our difficult relationship with nature and our own tragic culpability. Ghost Bird is fundamentally a story about people.
Ghost Bird has it's world premiere at Hot Docs on May 6th at 9:45 PM at the Cumberland theater and May 8th at 1:30PM at the ROM.
]]>Before I was a blogger for This, I worked briefly as a media trainer in Zambia. The experience was challenging at the best of times and devastating at the worst, but overall I think I emerged a better person, and certainly gained a stronger understanding of the complex nature of international aid work. Suffice to say, sending your dollars to Africa isn't enough. Reporter, now screening at Hot Docs, attempts to answer some of these questions through the experiences of Nicholas Kristof, a two-time Pulitzer Prize winning columnist for the New York Times.
]]> Reporter unfolds in the DRC, where decades of conflict have left four million civilians dead and countless more displaced. Like most conflict journalists, Kristof spends the film searching for that one individual story that can summarize an entire war and resonate with the readers. His goal: to make you care, which as he puts it, is almost impossible in an age where empathy is dead.Reporter is Eric Daniel Metzgar third film, and without a doubt, his most commercial. Executive Produced by Ben Affleck and premiering at Sundance, the film still retains the tender appeal of Metzgar's earlier films. Unlike many of today's big budget documentarians, Metzgar directs, edits and photographs his own films. And while techies everywhere decry the shaky camera a one-man-filming-band can often produce, the result is a tender, intimate portrayal of the realities of international conflict reporting that goes beyond a superficial treatment and gets to the heart of the matter. It's like Sherman's March meets Apocalypse Now, and it totally works.
What sets Reporter apart from the pack of aid-agency documentaries released in the last few years (Shake hand with the Devil comes to mind,) is the imperfect characters. Metzgar's chilling commentary portrays Kristof not as a super-human being, or even a saint, but as a complex individual who sometimes detaches himself from the horror of his victims stories to get the job done. The dynamics between the characters is tense, anxious, and utterly real, making Reporter one of the docs to watch this festival season.
Reporter screens Wednesday May 6th at 4:30 PM at the Royal Ontario Museum
]]>Professor Norman Cornett, a new documentary by filmmaker Alanis Obomsawin, explores the wrongful dismissal of the professor Norman Cornett from McGill University in 2007. Cornett won the affection of many students with his unconventional teaching methods, which favored stream of conscious reflections over academic essays and standardized tests. He encouraged his students to explore diverse issues from a personal standpoint, and rejected the notion that academic pursuit much by an impersonal proposition. Unfortunately, McGill University did not share his views on unconventional teaching techniques and opted not extend his contract when it came up for renewal (Professor Cornett was not tenured faculty.)
Director Alanis Obomsawin, who is the subject of this years Hot Docs retrospective, explores the nature of what is means to learn through the story of Professor Cornett. Through the eyes of his excited and eager former students, Obosawin creates a touching and tender tribute to both the Professor and the virtues of an open minded and generous spirit. While this is a small film with a local perspective, it honors the spirit of the documentary medium, calling attention to a grave injustice, and building awareness on what it means to be truly educated.
Professor Norman Cornett will have its world premiere on May 8th at 9:30 PM at the Bader Theater in Toronto, Canada.
]]>I just finished an internship, and I'm returning to the freelancer's constant search for work, so I've been looking back over my portfolio and wondering: when editors read through my clippings, do they see reviews, news pieces, and columns, or do they see reviews of gay books, gay news, and a column about queer politics? I didn't set out to be a professional lesbian. I haven't decided yet what sort of journalist I want to be when I grow up so I want to keep my options open, but I worry that the more queer-themed writing I do, the more the label starts to stick.
]]> My links to the queer community gave me my first breaks in journalism. Among my first publication credits were reviews of queer club nights for the LGBT section of a newly-launched magazine in my hometown of Edinburgh. These led to three longer pieces for the section, and I went on to work at a mainstream entertainment magazine. When I moved to Toronto, Xtra was the first freelance market to return my email, and quickly became my most regular and reliable source of work.When you're trying to establish yourself in this industry, you can't afford to be choosy about what assignments you take. You're just grateful to be writing. And it's good to have a niche as a freelancer — it helps editors remember you. But at some point, a niche threatens to become a pigeonhole, and "gay writer" is a tough label to escape.
My dilemma is that to a certain extent, it is important to me to write about queer issues. Whatever progress we make and however integrated queer culture is with mainstream culture, we do still have our own concerns and our own history, and I think it's important to use the voice I have as a reporter to tell some of those stories. And since I am increasingly well-placed to do so, it would feel like an incredible betrayal of my own background to ignore these stories just because I'm afraid of being branded an activist.
All of these concerns were very much on my mind when I decided to start writing this column back in December. I was about to take a hiatus from most of my freelance work, including Xtra, and start a three-month internship, and I was ready to focus on broadening my experience. I had to think seriously about whether I wanted to weight my resume with another queer writing credit, especially since my being asked to write it in the first place suggested I was already becoming typecast. In the end, I decided that working with a magazine I had a huge amount of respect for was well worth the risk, but it was a tough decision to make.
The dilemma still rears its head every time I think about moving career forward. My best bet for getting into a big mainstream magazine is probably a story about something or someone queer, and I'm faced once again with deciding whether it makes strategic sense to do that, or whether I'd be shooting myself in the foot by refusing to capitalize on the most useful thing I have going for me.
]]>[Editor's note: Every month, Eco-Chamber profiles an eco-activist from Canada and abroad, called "Eco-Warriors." Eco-Warriors takes a look at both the activist and the environmental issue they fight for, using such approaches as direct action, legal crusading, documentary filmmaking, or green commerce.]
As a lover of whales, Alex Morton left eastern plains of Connecticut for the mountainous rainforest of British Columbia. Setting out to study Orca whales, her research soon became more like of a "study of absence," with the whales becoming increasingly rare. She knew the food source of the Orcas was what really needed needed protection: B.C.'s wild salmon. Since there were few people advocating for wild salmon, she became an activist and a scientist.
Short film by Twyla Roscovich
]]> Since 1984, she has written more than 10,000 pages of letters to politicians, written several books, has been profiled in the New York Times, founded a conservation group (adopt-a-fry.org), spoke to the Queen of England in person and led a recent Supreme Court case — yet the fight to protect B.C.'s wild salmon continues.According to Science magazine, wild pink salmon are likely to become extinct due to offshore fish farming. But the problem does not end with the fry; the fish farms affect the larger B.C. ecosystem, too. Wild salmon are food for such animals as grizzly bears, eagles and Orca whales. Many local communities in B.C. depend upon the wild salmon fishery too. Starting in 2001, Alex Morton watched her community fall apart with the depletion of wild salmon in Echo Bay.
"In Echo Bay, there was once a large community, a school for children and mail delivered three times a week," she says. "Today, there are less then ten people in the community, the school is shut down and there is no mail delivered."
Because there has been no political will to protect wild salmon, and in turn the ecosystem and economy, Morton, in her 50's, decided to take her own direct action. In 2008, Morton founded the Adopt-A-Fry organization, originally with the aim to single-handedly evacuate the wild fry away from the farm-infected areas with her small boat. Since then, last February, her group has gone to the B.C. Supreme Court in a case against one of the largest Norwegian fish farm companies, Marine Harvest, in an attempt to get them off water and on land. Currently, Adopt-A-Fry is collecting signatures on a petition to end offshore fish farming in Canada.
"Farming salmon in Canadian waters is unconstitutional because no one is allowed to privatize ocean spaces, nor schools of fish," says Morton. "Canadian law needs to apply to these Norwegian fisheries."
So far, Morton's petition has gone largely ignored in political circles: B.C. premier, Gordon Campbell and federal Fisheries Minister Gail Shea have both remained silent on the issue. Despite this, the petition has rapidly grown, from 100 signatories in winter 2008 to over 13,000 today. Morton believes that when the petition closes in nearer to a million signatures, the politicians will be forced to listen.
"Somewhere between 13,000 and one million, we will get Canada to follow its own laws," says Morton.
Please visit the group's website to sign the Adopt-A-Fry petition.
Emily Hunter is an environmental journalist and This Magazine's resident eco-blogger. She is currently working on a book about young environmental activism, The Next Eco-Warriors, and is the eco-correspondent to MTV News Canada.
]]>Still the thrill of the game stuck with me. And it turns out I'm not alone. I caught up with Canadian filmmaker Alan Black to talk about his new film Jackpot! Set against the backdrop of a local Toronto Bingo hall, Jackpot! explores what it means to really win in life.
Your film is about a Bingo hall in Toronto. Where did the idea come from? Do you play a lot of Bingo?
It came from playing Bingo with my grandmother as a kid. Every Christmas we would go down to Florida to visit her and pass the days playing Bingo. It was a great experience, exciting and a great feeling to win. To this day is stands out as a really Important childhood memory. Later on in life I went to play Bingo as an adult and it was so different, people were so serious, it wasn't fun at all. There was this strange sub culture that I don't remember existing when I played as a kid. Then I read an article about a shooting outside a Bingo hall at Jane and Finch over $1500 bucks. Four people beat another person to death. Can you imagine killing someone for $300? It made me realize, playing Bingo is not about the money. I started to wonder "what are these people really after?"
]]> And what are they really after?I think they are after purpose in life. Some glimmer of hope that their life otherwise doesn’t provide. I have a lovely fiancé, a job, a family and friends. Every morning I wake up and I think about all the good things in my life. I think about this interview, the festival, what’s next. But what do you do if you don’t have anything good on the horizon? If every day is the same and you have nothing to look forward too? All you want is a moment of success, some possibility. I believe Bingo players play for that moment of winning. They play for the feeling of possibility, that moment of success!
So is this film a comedy, a tragedy or a character film?
It’s a bit of all of those things. It’s not a comedy, it’s not for laughs. There is definitely humanity and comedy in the characters. But it’s not a tradegy either. It's a bit of everything, I hope.
The characters in your film love Bingo, but at moments it seems that this love is more of an addiction. In your mind, are these people gambling addicts, or is it more complex?
It’s more complex. The questions is not whether or not they are addicts, but why. What has caused them to meet something like this in their lives? You know, at one point one of the characters points out that playing Bingo isn't much more expensive than a night spent at the movie theater. In the end these people are spending their enterainment dollars on something that brings them joy, and what’s wrong with that?
It’s obvious through the intimacy of your interviews with the characters that you built a strong relationship with these people. What kind of process did you go through to gain their trust?
What you see is about 30 days of shooting. Myself and my producer spent every weekend playing Bingo and hanging out with the characters at the Bingo hall for an entire year before actual filming commenced.
Did you ever worry you might become addicted to Bingo?
I don’t have an addictive personality. I really like Bingo and there is something exciting about winning or coming close. When you're one number away from winning you get this amazing rush. I get that, but I don’t think I need it. There isn’t that void in my life
What do you think your film says money and our current recession?
I think it's funny that the film is being read that way. Jackpot! is in the Lets Make Money program at Hot Docs and I’m on a panel about greed and poverty. But this is not a movie about money. It’s a film about an absence of something. That absence could be financial, but it could also be emotional, social, etc. I suppose in the end this film speaks to overcoming adversity. It speaks to perservearance and finding purpose when things aren’t going well.
Is this a hopeful film?
I think so. I think it’s about not giving up. About finding something to keep you going, even when that thing is very hard to find.
What the one thing your hope the audience takes away from this film?
I hope they get a glimps of a section of Toronto they never get to see. I hope they get exposed to a world they don’t really know about. I hope it helps them better understand peoples motivations in life, however silly they might seem. In the end, you can’t really judge people on what there doing, you can only hope to get a better understanding of why they are doing it.
Jackpot! screens at the Hot Docs International Documentary Film Festival Friday May 1st at 10 PM at the Royal Cinema, and Sunday May 10th at 6:30PM at the Bloor Cinema.
]]>This years festival is the largest in the history of Hot Docs. It's also arguably the most important. The global economic down turn, combined with the restructuring of Canadian government funding for film and television has created unprecedented challenges for documentary filmmakers. Recently, the Conservative government elected to abolish both the Canadian Television Fund (CTF) and the Canadian New Media Fund (CNMF). While these funds have been replaced by the Canadian Media Fund (CMF), the CMF is controlled by the cable industry, with no commitment to educational or documentary programming. Moreover, private broadcasters will have access to the CMF to produce their in-house productions. The result? Less financing for independent Canadian producers, more of tax payers money in the hands of private broadcasters and cable companies, and less quality Canadian content on our airwaves.
Independent Canadian documentary production is a $170 million dollar industry in Canada. It represents some of the best in educational Canadian content. While Hot Docs is a time of celebration for an industry with international recognition, it's also a time to pause and reflect on what kind of content we as Canadians want to see on our airwaves. Like it or not, television matters. And in my mind, television without Canadian content in no television worth having at all.
]]>
Today, just call me Chuck Woolery.
It seems like everyone has a pipeline for finding love online. The jews have JDate,christian values are covered by places like Christian Mingle and even cheaters have place to go at the controversial and highly publicized Ashley Madison Agency.
Online is also an important venue where many disabled daters believe they can leave their various limitations behind and just be themselves. Some choose to secretly assume the guise of able-bodied avatars on the popular online MMORPG Second Life and play out their fantasies that way, while others peruse the chatlines and profiles on various dating sites just for them.
Today, I'm assuming the role of the famed talkshow host, by running down what's out there online for disabled daters of all stripes, hoping one of you will find your own Love Connection.
]]> Dating 4 DisabledPROS: They have an internal instant message, blog and email system. There are plently of people with all types of disabilities from mostly the U.S. and the U.K. with Canada and parts of Asia bringing up the rear, so you can meet, date and network with people from all over the world. You can specify not just your disability, but also your level of mobility. This is an important distinction that makes sure all disabled people on the site are not painted with the same brush and adds a level of discernment for users looking for a mobility level similar to, or above their own. Also, there are many profiles featuring able-bodied people who are attracted to people with disabilities. (Hardly in an X-filesian way, but they are out there and they're not just fetishists or devotees).
CONS: Mixed in with people who have documented disabilities, are people who list their disability as, "Obesity" or "diabetes". Though I acknowledge that diabetes can lead to disabilities like blindness and amputation, last time I checked diabetes is a disease, not a disability. I also don't consider a weight problem a disability, but I know it can lead to diseases. I'm not a huge fan of huge people taking advantage of supports designed for genuinely disabled people. For example, handicap parking and scooters to get around. (Someone had to say it.) Also, there are way too many people looking for friendship or chat on this dating site, which may be indicative of the struggle of some people with disabilities for true socialization beyond their computer screens. I couldn't tell if any of the airbrushed hotties on the front page are actually disabled. As an added bonus, the orange page layout is truly eye constricting.
PROS: EnableLove offers the ability to search for your potential love connection to great specificity, including disability, mobility level, age, location, marital status and type of relationship. You can also pinpoint the various attributes of a partner, like religon, marital status and whether they have children. The site seems much more focused on encouraging its members to take their relationships offline and into the real world. It doesn't just accept disabilities, but markets itself towards people with other "Life Challenges" and diseases, thereby publicly broadening its reach past just disabilities and avoiding false advertising.
CONS: The profile layout is sparse and impersonal and comes across much more as a list of criteria than an actual story that reveals something about the person. In the profile details, members can list their full postal code, which in the age of Mapquest could be a stalker's paradise.
PROS: Soulful Encounters takes the focus away from the disability starting with the name and stopping with the fact that it truly is a site managed by people with disabilities, for people with disabilities. They present themselves as a support group for the newly minted members of the disability community and parents of kids with disabilities. The site has numerous forums and chatrooms on any topic imaginable. The profiles are set up much like a Myspace page, with imported videos, graphics and a comments page. The customization level is unparalleled.
CONS: It's the type of site where members run the risk of spending their days getting lost behind a computer screen and never meeting their matches in real life. It tackles so many issues and tries to serve so many types of members that finding a realistic love match could easily be lost among those who just want to chat as friends, or those who aren't currently single. Its "Differently Abled" terminology is a little too much of a politically correct cliche for my taste.
PROS: This is the disabled community's answer to eHarmony. Their search program promises to take your character and values criteria and finds your match among the 5 million members they claim in their database. They report pinpoint accuracy and unlike eHarmony, they don't screen out the gay population and 5% of the people that use their site aren't unmatchable, so I'd at least have better luck here than I did on the real eHarmony.
CONS: The other sites listed above are free, while this one you have to pay for if you want anything more than a trial membership (receiving messages). Truly, whatever horse you bet on for a longterm relationship, has real money riding on it here. Plus, the site skews to an older, more clean cut crowd, but if that's your style, by all means...
PROS: Turn! Turn! Turn! To everything there is a season...WAIT! STOP! that's The Byrds not Love Byrd. Love Byrd is like dating with a cyber coach at your side. While it features internal email, blogs and instant messaging, there's also a dating column written by a journalist named Tiff Carlson who happens to be a quadriplegic. I a dating etiquette guide for men and women and a Dear Abby-like advice column called, "The View". The beauty is, it's all accessible while you're chatting up your latest catch, so if you need to look something up, just scroll down the sidebar.
CONS: The interface is complicated and busy. I also had a strange sense that I had stepped into Oprah's "Remembering Your Spirit" segment. Everything seemed particularly geared to a middle-aged female audience. Sometimes there is so much instruction and advice, that actually taking that first step in meeting your match can seem very overwhelming because every little nuance in the dating game is intellectualized. This site is suffering from a serious case of T.M.I.
Hopefully, that was enough of a primer on the online disabled dating scene to help you make a Love Connection--Happy Hunting! As for me, as Chuck Woolery use to say before a commercial break, "I'll be back in two and two!"
Aaron is a freelance journalist living in Toronto. His work has appeared in Financial Post Business, Investment Executive Newspaper, and TV Week Magazine, along with Askmen.com. He is a regular contributor to Abilities Magazine and is currently plotting a weekly web comic called GIMP, with artist Jon Duguay, about a handicap school bus driver who wakes up after a crash to find he's the last able-bodied person on earth — and he's being hunted.
]]>Thanks to Coach House Books for helping us out with this contest!
For more information about My Winnipeg, go to www.chbooks.com. The Toronto launch of the book is happening at 7:30pm on May 12th at Revival, 783 College St. It's $5 at the door, or free if you buy a copy of the book.
]]>One day. That's all. That's all the time dedicated to the environment by 174 nations. That's all the time some one billion people globally will participate in environmental action. That's all, out 365 days a year, and two generations elapsed, since the modern environmental movement began. Earth Day — that is all.
Today's Earth Day is the 39th Earth Day since its inception on April 22, 1970, by U.S. Senator Gaylord Nelson. Earth Day began with the aim of raising awareness of the environment. Today, the Earth Day Network encourages year round participation in the environment. But, typically, people join together on this one day, April 22nd, to do their part by attending an Earth Day festival, planting a tree, or going to a teach-in. But at a time when the entire Arctic ice sheet could be history as early as 2013, is this really enough?
Beyond Earth Day, there is the exploding WWF campaign of Earth Hour, that saw participation of nearly one-sixth the earth's population in 2009 (compared to just a hundred million the previous year). There are many cities that extend Earth Day into Earth Week activities. Planet Green is calling for an Earth Month, where "taking the next step" includes environmental volunteerism and "greening your life." Some, like Greenpeace Canada, call for a green year by making every day Earth Day, and counsels such things as going vegetarian and cutting back on plastic bottles.
But we need more than an Earth Hour, an Earth Day, an Earth Week, an Earth Month or even an Earth Year. Simply flicking off lights for an hour, planting a tree one day of the year, attending "green" events, volunteering occasionally, or recycling and using fewer plastic bags is not enough. We need more than that. We need an Earth Movement.
]]> An Earth Movement is a social uprising — a mobilization of people with a singular goal: the sustainability of our planet and our lives within it.Now is the time more than ever for an Earth Movement, as we face things like:
However, there is reason to be optimistic about the Earth Movement. The Environmental Protection Agency in the U.S. declared on Friday that CO2 and five other greenhouses gases are indeed a threat to human health and welfare. Backed by President Obama under the Clean Air Act, this is paving the path to stricter regulations on automobiles, coal fired power plants, and other major emitters.
This sign for optimism has been brought about by a critical mass of activism, public advocacy, and engaged citizenry that has been on the rise for some time. Today there are over 12,000 environmental groups in the U.S., and roughly an equivalent number in Canada. This is the movement that is igniting climate action in Washington and paving a way forward on environmental issues.
The Earth Movement is very much alive — but everyone needs to be engaged in it. Small actions, by people who consider themselves 'green' because they volunteer for environmental causes, bike to work, and hand out the occasional leaflet, are not enough. It's mostly self-serving it doesn't lead to the massive changes that are needed. Though these micro individual changes are good, the macro scale is where the most change needs to happen.
"We're not going to solve this one light bulb at a time, but we just might if we can build one light-filled, light-hearted, lightning-fast movement.," says Bill McKibben, co-founder and director of 350.org, a group that is organizing a global demonstration on October 24, 2009 in Copenhagen.
Therefore, a movement is what we need — not baby-steps by a few. I needs to remain united and inclusive, unlike the movement of the '70s that has since fractured and dissipated. It may seem like I'm asking for a lot here. I am.
But this can happen. Change has happened in the past and it will happen again. It happened because of people, not institutions and politicians. It was people after all who fought the Women's Suffrage movement; people who fought for the Civil Rights Movement. It has, and always has been, citizens who have changed the world.
But we need action and active citizens now if the Earth Movement — and we ourselves — are to survive. It can't be just rhetoric, conversation over the water-coolers or idle thoughts. It can't be just individualistic changes. And it can't be just one day.
Being an activist does not necessary mean standing on the frontlines all tht time. Activism can mean many things, not holding up signs and yelling. Some things we need to do now are promote a green economy by training ourselves and others with the right skills. Over the next few decades, there will be an explosion of green jobs in fields like retrofitting buildings, constructing wind, solar and wave farms, manufacturing parts for those energy farms, urban agriculture and healthy farming, modern efficient urban planning, and public transit.
Activism can also be bringing an environmental angle to other aspects of your life: advocating for green politics in all parties; environmental journalism and writing; speaking out for green causes; documentary filmmaking on eco-issues; art-activism; green education; guerilla gardening; eco-feminism; promotion of green health; connecting ecological causes with social causes such as aboriginal rights; promoting green science and technological development, and so on.
You can be a part of this movement in many ways. But we have to do more than one day's work, and build a worldwide — dare I say — revolution.
Emily Hunter is an environmental journalist and This Magazine's resident eco-blogger. She is currently working on a book about young environmental activism, The Next Eco-Warriors, and a documentary on illegal whaling in Antarctica.
]]>Ever notice that when you combine the words domestic and toxicity, you get domesticity? Well, I'm chock full of 'domesticity'. I know first hand what happens when extreme heat is applied to a ceramic plate. You can literally hear it wane before it bursts into a million lethal shards and invades the tile island of your kitchenette. Now there is a blood river on my floor, thanks to that new deep gash on the bottom of my foot. Time to get a girlfriend, no? That, or at least an able-bodied roommate to bail me out.
That's by far the worst domestic disaster I've ever been at the centre of, so far. Much is written about inaccessibility in the disabled world, but I've never seen anything about how a disability affects your domestic aptitude.
]]> Some might attribute my lack of finesse in this area to the fact that I'm a guy, but there are a lot of guys,even guys with disabilities, who can pull off wonders in the kitchen. For me, whatever I cook is about my own survival and saving money, not presentation. The bottom line is never whether I cooked it from scratch, but how soon I can digest it. The more complex the recipe, the more the preparation cuts into my eating time. I'd be kind of lying though if I didn't admit that my disability didn't affect my skill in the kitchen. Hell, there's a whole profession built around teaching people with disabilities the lifeskills necessary for daily living.Occupational therapists [O.T.] taught me how to dress myself in preschool, and I remember them touring the kitchen at my parents house figuring out ways to help me bend down and transfer cookie sheets from the oven to the centre island without losing my balance. I forget what we came up with, but whatever it was, it wasn't good enough to stick. Though my balance is better now than it was at the time, and I could probably pull off baking the way my kitchen is configured, I still don't bake. The convenience of the bakery section is just too irresistible and though homemade baked goods have that nostalgic familial quality every time you bite into them, I can generally take them or leave them. Somewhere deep down, (really deep) I probably still fear the potential for my own Hansel and Gretel moment. It's like an adult version of that time you were a toddler and you were resistant to using the 'Big Boy Potty' because you were afraid you'd fall in, and just as irrational.
Most of the domestic tricks I learned didn't come from an O.T., but are just part of living, learning, and knowing older people with similar disabilities who already figured stuff out for themselves. For example, if I need to cross the room to take a glass of juice to my desk, I use a plastic cup with a lid on it to avoid spillage. I can transfer plates and bowls very easily, but sometimes the level of minute concentration that goes into keeping the plate flat and balanced is higher and more deliberate for me than for the average person. Technology helps too. I have very lttle of it, but it makes a big difference. Things like the One-Touch Jar Opener and an electric can opener saves me copious amounts of time.
A lot of my deficiency in the kitchen has to do with how I was raised. My younger brother is able-bodied and he became the de facto chore monkey in our household, so all the skill in the kitchen that mothers naturally pass to their children went to him. Not that I was totally incapable of cooking something had she bothered to teach me, but perception of ability (or lack thereof) went a long way in my household. A long time ago, mom decided to choose efficiency and speed for what she needed done around the house rather than use the work as a learning opportunity that may have served my longterm development and growth.
To be fair, I wasn't the most enthusiastic advocate for my development in this particular regard. My younger self milked my perceived lack of culinary ability for all it was worth to get out of any household chores that no one was making me do. As a result, any cooking skills I ended up with, came thanks to my grade 8 cooking class. Sure, I did contribute some at home. I loaded the dishes every night and did my own laundry, but when it came to meal time, I was always relegated to the menial prep tasks like washing lettuce. Obviously, I'm paying for it now, so to all parents of kids with disabilities, please teach your child all the culinary skills you have that were ever passed down from previous generations. The finished product may not look as good as you would like and it may take double the time it would if the able-bodied kid in your family did it, but your offspring with the disability will thank you in the long run.
As for the other domestic chores, spilling fabric softner can be avoided with either a Downy Ball or some Dryer Balls. Also, liquid soap comes in lighter containers than powdered soap, but if you only have powdered soap and your laundry room is down the hall, a cup with a lid works well for transport.
By far the biggest key to keeping my place clean is my wonderful cleaning lady. Mine comes once every two weeks. I just hired her this year (too proud to relent and ask for help in previous years) and she has been manna from heaven so far. I found that the constant bending required for vacuuming and cleaning the washroom really put stress on my lower back. I could never really put my sheets back on my bed and have them stay there for very long and there are countless odds and sods I have no hope of doing myself, like hanging pictures. After initial skepticism, I went to Craigslist to find Angela, and now I highly recommend it.
My last bit of advice is don't be afraid to hire help when you need it. Too many men seem to rely on their significant others to maintain their household. Look at it this way, if a third party takes care of it, you reduce the potential for argument and have lots of time for other extracurricular activities.
Aaron is a freelance journalist living in Toronto. His work has appeared in Financial Post Business, Investment Executive Newspaper, and TV Week Magazine, along with Askmen.com. He is a regular contributor to Abilities Magazine and is currently plotting a weekly web comic called GIMP, with artist Jon Duguay, about a handicap school bus driver who wakes up after a crash to find he's the last able-bodied person on earth — and he's being hunted. Email: aaron.broverman@gmail.com
]]>Yesterday Ray Lam stepped down as the NDP candidate for Vancouver-False Creek because one of his opponents objected to photos appearing on Lam's Facebook account. In one, a person "believed to be Lam" has his hand on an unidentified woman's breast (the picture appears at right). It seems safe to assume neither of the people depicted in the photo is sober. In another of the offending photos, the person "believed to be Lam" has his underwear showing and people are tugging on it. Boy, what the youths of today get up to.
I'm not saying the provincial Liberal party in B.C. can't pounce on a political hot-potato and exploit it if it's there for the taking, but honestly, it's time to step back and rethink this type of politicking in the age of Facebook.
It's a cheap, prudish attack, and we know the script well by now. A candidate broadly pantomimes that they are shocked, simply shocked, to find that his or her opponent isn't a saintly asexual teetotaler, and finds him- or herself duty bound to express that shock to the nearest reactionary media outlet. Usually, the attacking party, or sometimes a bored reporter, casts around for some ancient photo or blog post or mp3 of their opponent saying something embarrassing or irrelevant or offensive; the attacker then publicizes this piece of (usually) digital detritus and declares themselves offended; the defendant usually resigns in order to avoid "being a distraction" to the campaign, which is code for "everyone knows this is bullshit but a handful of loudmouth cretins won't stop talking about it."
The Lam photos are embarrassing, sure — even, gosh, inappropriate. But we've got to get over this idea that once-upon-a-time impropriety automatically and forever disqualifies you from public service or political candidacy. It's simply not realistic, and it's getting less so. In 10 years time, what political candidate will not have a backlog of evidence of their vaguely indelicate youth waiting to surface? She's flashing her hip tattoo! He's ironically throwing a gang sign! Quick, call the radio station, the public has to know! It's been used by candidates on both the right and the left — there are officious busybodies of every political stripe. Enough.
I don't write this post to defend Lam; I write it to condemn this asinine, priggish brand of political campaigning. You're running an election for the Province of B.C., not class president on Gossip Girl. Grow up.
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