Community

You are currently browsing the archive for the Community category.

I don’t care what you think; I care what you do.

December 6, 2009 in Community, Ideas | No comments

If you see me out and about, I won’t be wearing a ribbon, red, pink, white, or yellow. Online, I won’t be adding anything to nor changing the colours of my avatars. I don’t make a point of buying specific charity-branded coffee. My kitchen, wardrobe and satchel contain no charity-branded products. And I’ve had a hard time wrapping words around why I don’t do these things, why they’ve generally given rise to a sense of wrongness in my mind that I just can’t shake, no matter how worthy I believe the cause might be.

I have issues with the concept of charity; I wonder (especially with large, international charities) where the money goes, how much gets socked away into ‘administrative costs’, how much good is actually done, and whether or not charitable aid actually ends up creating dependents instead of assisting people and nations to stand on their own feet. And having worked for various charities and non-profits, both in paid and volunteer positions, I have questions about how ethically some of them are run - how they treat their employees, how they set goals and measure results, how responsible and smart and efficient they are. I see a lot of burnout, and a lot of brilliant people martyring themselves to no discernible positive effect in the community, a lot of waste. Or wearing themselves thin until they’re no longer able to work in that field, with a huge net loss of intelligence, connections and human power.

But more troubling for me is this trend towards passive charity; the buying of something to demonstrate your beliefs, in substitution for actually acting on them.

Recently, Merlin Mann linked to a book called ‘Conspicuous Compassion,’ about the phenomenon of publicly displaying our charity (you can get a .pdf of the first chapter here; I recommend that you read it). Though it goes to some places I disagree with, overall it was with relief that I saw this discomfort expressed by someone else. Read the rest of this entry »

Diggdel.icio.usFacebookRedditStumbleUpon

New Moon - How to Deal With It

November 25, 2009 in Blog, Community, Movie Reviews, art and ideas | 3 comments

So last Friday afternoon my sisters and I went to see the newest film in the Twilight saga, New Moon. Why would a 32-year-old woman and her adult sisters would go see this movie? There are three reasons:

1. Twilight is a huge cultural phenomenon, and to avoid seeing this movie is to ignore the obsession of an entire generation. Also, years of jokes and parodies which you won’t get because you skipped it.

2. These movies are a laugh riot. I mean, unintentional, but they’re hilarious. Much more funny than most comedies.

3. Robert Pattinson is pretty hot.

So New Moon.

I was going to write a review and be hilarious at the expense of this movie, but you’ll probably see it, and the humour implicit in Italian vampires who don’t wear any socks and teenage werewolves who never wear shirts will be clear to you. Instead I’m going to talk directly to the parents of the teens and pre-teens who are going to see this film.

Firstly, don’t fool yourself: this series is not about abstinence. It’s about sex. Lots of it. In the near future. The whole series is designed to get the readers wound up, essentially, into a dreamy, inexperienced sexual frenzy. That’s how they sell merchandise. It’s not rocket science.

There’s probably no way you can avoid having your kid see any of the movies from this series unless you’re raising a socially maladjusted freak. By hook or by crook, even if you forbid your kid from seeing this film, they’ll find a way. When they’re older they will probably also get into your liquor cabinet. So don’t go through all the drama of making these films or books forbidden fruit; you’ve got bigger fish to fry. Take them to see it. It’s really not worth fighting about.

But when the film is done, by god, sit them down and have a conversation. Read the rest of this entry »

Diggdel.icio.usFacebookRedditStumbleUpon

In Praise of Generalists.

October 23, 2009 in Blog, Community, TV, art and ideas | 2 comments

Okay, yes: I’ve been watching a lot of TV lately. I used to watch a lot of movies, but I feel like there’s not a lot of interesting stuff happening there and I wonder if culturally we need a little break from the 90-120 minute format for storytelling. So I’ve been watching TV shows, where the plot arc is long and filled with potential for character development. Character development is just about the only thing I’m interested in watching these days. Well, okay, character development and shirtless men. I have facets.

I was a kid in the 80s, when TV (and fashion) was awful. Characters had one dimension; plots were hackneyed and predictable. Characters didn’t develop, and the end of an episode was like a magic reset button; nothing changed, everything went back to how it had been at the beginning of the episode. How it had always been.

Online, I’ve noticed that people of my generation seem to be doing this to themselves: casting one facet of their personality in the role of The Interesting Thing About me so they can blog about it and (eventually, I assume it’s hoped) get a book deal or a television show of their very own. Tech blogs, political blogs, movie blogs, mommy blogs - if you can name it, there’s someone out there blogging about it to the exclusion of all else. It draws an audience of like-minded people, and soon you get a marvelous infinite recursion*, where the only change is that opinions get more extreme, entrenched and isolated from the rest of the world. Read the rest of this entry »

Diggdel.icio.usFacebookRedditStumbleUpon

Music is a part of the festival, not the point of the festival.

September 2, 2009 in Community, Current Projects, Music, art and ideas | 3 comments

So the Peterborough Folk Festival pulled off beautifully; The opening Gala with Ian Tamblyn was perfect, standing-room-only. The Saturday free festival was somewhat hampered by tamblyn-gala-at-canoe-museum rain in the morning, and I think we had half our usual attendance (I also didn’t realize, I think, how many people come from out of town to PFF) due to the forecast sounding dire and miserable. But it turned out to be a beautiful day, with people saying ‘best PFF ever.’ And the workshops at Sadleir House were well-attended (better-attended than I anticipated by half) and really, really good.

I am continuing, as I had planned, as Artistic Director, and stepping down as Executive Director. Partially for continuity, and to be there in a mentoring role to whomever becomes ED, and partially because I really love being involved with the festival, and the things I’ve always dreamed of doing will be possible if I’m freed up in other areas. Also because I’ve already started booking acts for next year.

Raging Asian Women were the runaway success; they’re incredible, and wonderful, gracious people who completely get the festival and the spirit of the event and enhanced it by their presence. Unity were also amazing; I wish the weather had been better before their set, as more people ought to have heard them, but the first song in particular was freakin’ crazy-good. David Newland soldiered on throughout the entire weekend, inspiring and enlightening wherever he went. David Simard is always a treat to be around, and his music is gorgeous. Sheesham and Lotus were fabulous evening hosts, and put on a terrific set (as attested by their CD sales, which were through the roof). Elliott Brood were brilliant, and the perfect end to the evening, and the super-sweetest guys on earth to work with. Read the rest of this entry »

Diggdel.icio.usFacebookRedditStumbleUpon

Optimism, Intelligence, and Imagination.

August 9, 2009 in Blog, Community | No comments

When I was a kid in the 80s in Ontario, the environmental movement took hold of the mainstream. By that, I mean people start talking about it over the dinner table, on the nightly news, teaching about it in public school classrooms. David Suzuki become a household name. It became commodified; you could buy products that had slogans about saving the Earth silkscreened on them. There was a burst of enthusiasm; composters became commonplace, and a recycling program began in my little village.

There were two very clear messages I took with me from that time; the first and most solid was the white men in suits who said, over and over until I believed that it was true, that alternative energy sources would never be anything more than a novelty act. That you couldn’t draw serious energy from the sun, wind, anything. We could recycle all we wanted, but our dependence on fossil fuels was forever. Even to an 8-year-old, that sounded horrible, futile, depressing. To know that I was so dependent on a resource that was finite and depleting fast meant my future was compromised; the horror of dystopian sci-fi seemed like true prophesy.

The second message was that Lyn Kelsey, my third-grade teacher and by leaps and bounds one of the most interesting, intelligent, and inspiring people in my young life, believed in the green movement. Probably the only teacher who taught me a damned thing in Elementary school, Mr. K was a guy with a passion for history, for stories, for reading, and for individuality. As I grew up, I realized that his historical perspective was what inspired his interest in the environment; he taught us that we had a place in time and space, and that we weren’t the centre, but we could influence the whole. He could imagine a future where things that didn’t currently exist had been implemented, where our future was hopeful because we had the ingenuity to learn from the past and move forward in an unexpected direction, because he knew it had happened in the past. Read the rest of this entry »

Diggdel.icio.usFacebookRedditStumbleUpon