Monkey see, monkey do?

Monkey totem, originally uploaded by The River Thief. Copyright Ruth Seeley 2008. www.wk-photoart.com/Georganna/Maypole.htm

There's a long blog post in the works that will focus on how to become the change we all want to see. Let me just say briefly that I spent a couple of hours in the emergency ward with a friend on Thursday. I then had to rush home, leaving her on her own and in pain, equipped only with the paperbacks I'd shoved into a bag and a few pieces of nicotine gum. We got there at 10AM, and when I called at 7PM to find out whether she had been admitted, subjected to emergency surgery, or released, I was told they still hadn't decided what they were going to do with her. By 10PM when I called again, I was angry enough about the situation that if they had told me they still hadn't decided what they were doing with her, I was going to the make the decision for them and go and get her. I am still quite shaken by her description of what she went through during a nine-hour wait for an x-ray.

I wanted to blog a bit about the presentation at Northern Voice 08 that has stayed with me. More than a month later, I think about Dave Olson's presentation, 'F*ck Stats, Make Art.' See his synopsis here, or better yet, download the podcast. It's a shame it wasn't filmed, really, because I do think you had to be there to see how truly engaging he was:

http://wiki.northernvoice.ca/F*ck+Stats,+Make+Art+Dossier

I'm currently taking a speechwriting course, which so far involves watching and commenting on presentations from a diverse group of speakers. I am struggling a bit with some of the material, because to be perfectly honest, it is presented for the most part completely out of context. I am trying to be a good girl and a good student, but I have been so disconcerted by the second speech (from former Saturday Night Live cast member Julia Sweeney) that I've just sort of come to a standstill. I don't really want to post what I'm truly thinking, which is 'who is this Julia Sweeney and why should I care whether she believes in Santa Claus or not?' Setting a cat amongst the pigeons was fun when I was in my 20s but I have to be feeling truly energetic to deal with the fallout from this pastime now.

In describing my quandry to the friend I took to the hospital though, I talked about the difference between Sweeney's presentation and Dave Olson's. Wacky though he (or his persona) may be, he had a point and he moved unerringly towards it from the moment he started speaking. Yes there were asides and yes, a very old copy (not sure if it was a first edition or not) of Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass was brandished during the course of the presentation. Here's my synopsis of his presentation: think of all the Web 2.0 creative content (blogs, vlogs, podcasts, digital photos and collage, et al.) generated by just ordinary folks as a huge pyramid. The bottom layer of the pyramid will be a fairly thin but broad slice of just sheer dreck. The bulk of the pyramid will be content that is relatively ordinary but gets a fair bit of attention, or as Olson describes it, 'goofy, nonsensical, or cheesy slices of contemporary pop culture [that have] either contrived or wrangled their way to the top of the viral avenues.' But that very top slice of the pyramid is going to yield some real gold in artistic terms. And creating that gold is far more important than getting to the top of the pyramid.

Flickr has recently added a new feature, the ability to check one's stats. Every once in a while I take a look to see how many of my photos have been viewed in a day and which ones they were. I am constantly surprised and usually gratified to see that some of the more offbeat things I photograph are viewed, often years after they've been taken. Yes, the photos of my breasts are my two most often viewed. That was a tagging science experiment though. Just wait till I start tagging all my photos 'breasts' or 'nipples.'

As the news turns

Hydrangeas against rail, originally uploaded by The River Thief. Copyright Ruth Seeley 2008

I do wonder why a study would be released on a Sunday and whether the implication is that we can all read it today and get a jumpstart on next week's work - that does seem a little cruel.

But it looks like there's some interesting stuff in the Project for Excellence in Journalism's annual State of the News Media report as synopsized by Wired's online news site:
http://news.wired.com/dynamic/stories/S/STATE_OF_JOURNALISM?SITE=WIRE&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2008-03-16-16-32-59

The full report is available here:

http://www.stateofthenewsmedia.org/2008/

I confess I haven't read it in its entirety yet. That will require a cup of coffee, as I wrap my head around the fact that without the war in Iraq and the election, there would be 25 per cent less news in the U.S. (ok I realize that's not what the report says, that's my somewhat cynical tweak on it). I do hope the report gives us a ranking of Britney stories because I'm pretty sure that even though I've assiduously tried to avoid them, I probably read more news items about Britney Spears in 2007 than I did about the US election and the war in Iraq combined.

Also surprising is the assertion that blogs and citizen journalism sites aren't as welcoming of commentary as traditional news media sites. You mean the experts got something right? ;)

What's encouraging though - or what I take to be encouraging from the synopsis - is the notion that print is following broadcast media's lead - by accepting that stories are fluid and require frequent updates, regardless of printing deadlines. What's also encouraging is that a newspaper article is now being seen as an investigative starting point rather than the last word. This can only mean good things for notions like objective and balanced reporting or a clear statement of bias.

Letters to the editor

Never light just a single candle, originally uploaded by The River Thief. Copyright Ruth Seeley 2005

I continue to ruminate about the hold Facebook and Twitter have on our collective attention spans, and about social media in general, its importance and its relevance. With some time to explore newer aspects of Web 2.0, I'm thinking a lot about the value of social media.

After writing yesterday's post I went back to my email inbox and glanced at the daily CBC news aggregate I have sent to me and got lost for the better part of the day in the bizarre tale of a break-up between two people announced in a weird kind of way as an entry in the currently brand dominant online encyclopedia. (If you wonder why I'm being so cagey here, it's because I'm not going to dignify the woman involved - of whom I had never heard till yesterday - or her actions - which include the posting of instant messages and emails and the announcement that she is selling her ex-lover's leave-behinds on E-Bay - by mentioning her name or including tags that reference her, her former lover, or the online encyclopedia in question. If you want to know who and what I'm referring to, here's a Globe and Mail article on the subject: www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20080304.wlbreakup04/BNStory/lifeMain/home).

Thinking about this fiasco and also thinking about advising potential clients who are usually too busy running their businesses to focus on these things, in my stubbornly analytical way I wanted to find a definition of social media I could use with clients to stress the value of adding a social media marketing and communications component to their public relations and communications plans.

No more than six years ago I disagreed with a colleague who told me she had a friend with a local catering business and wanted a web site. The colleague said her friend's business was growing, she had a Yellow Pages listing, and that she saw no point in her friend going to the trouble and expense of creating a web site. I disagreed for two reasons. First, in the days before the internet, I had had to arrange catering in remote locations throughout Northern Ontario, without the benefit of even phone books for the communities involved. The long distance operators became my best allies in this endeavour. I'd dial 1-area code-555-1212 and ask them to look up caterers in the Yellow Pages, get three names and numbers, and then get on the phone to the caterers, explain what I wanted, find out if they were available on the date required, discuss the menu, and take it from there. It worked beautifully. I organized at least a dozen parties by remote control and had only one frantic call back from a caterer when the number of guests suddenly quadrupled and she needed my authorization to bring in more food (and to exceed the original quote for the catering). In the relatively early days of the internet (still in the 20th Century), I also hired a Vancouver photographer (from Toronto) to photograph an event - based on a web search and a couple of emails. In retrospect I should perhaps have emailed someone in our Vancouver office and asked for a recommendation, but it turned out just fine - the guy I found was, and still is, one of Vancouver's top photographers and he did a far more than adequate job.

Having a web site now - unless you are lucky enough to have lived and worked in the same community for a long time and your business comes to you - i.e. you really have no need whatsoever to market your services and are being offered contracts by people who already know both you and the quality of your work - is a credibility issue. Without one, you're like someone without a business card. As part of your marketing collateral, a web site is the second most important tool in your arsenal, right after that business card. (I should take my own advice, huh? Don't bother me, I'm busy blogging here.)

Conversely, I was dismayed last summer to have a client tell me she had just signed yet another contract for a quarter-page Yellow Pages ad that was going to cost her $18,000 over the course of the year and represented the bulk of her marketing communications budget when she had no real marketing collateral and an iffy web site that needed a lot of work. The only time I use the actual Yellow Pages these days is during power outages. And the target demographic for her business is probably a lot like me.

So in trying to find an acceptable and useful definition of social media, I came across this post and its ensuing discussion: http://scobleizer.com/2007/02/16/what-is-social-media/. And I don't disagree with any of it, although I'd like to refine the definition a little at some point.

I do, however, want to quibble with the importance of social media in terms of its usefulness and the resources devoted to it. In the same way that no media interview should consist merely of a recitation of key messages (with the notable exception of crisis communications, when those key messages should pretty much comprise the entire interview because dealing with the crisis is what really matters), no communications or public relations or marketing plan should consist solely of social media communications endeavours.

During the question period following Rob Cottingham's presentation at Northern Voice 08, Blogger 911: Crisis communications and the social web, an audience member suggested that, in a crisis, stakeholders should all be directed to a single web site that is being regularly updated. This is just so wrong. What makes a crisis so very challenging is the need to communicate with all stakeholders in the way they want to be communicated with. In the same way some people like to pay cash and actually count out the bills when making a transaction, others prefer to use their debit cards or pay online, while others still get an almost visceral thrill from writing a cheque, putting the stamp on the envelope, and then walking to the mailbox with it. You have to communicate with people in the way that is meaningful and appropriate to them.

If I picked up the phone and called a company during a crisis that involved me or someone I cared deeply about, I might appreciate being told that there was detailed information available on the company's web site or blog. But in the same way that corporate and social etiquette has generally contended that in most cases, the appropriate response to an email is an email and to a phone call is a phone call, if I am calling for information, I expect to be given information over the phone. I don't mind being referred to a web site that will provide me with a more detailed response, but I do expect my efforts at communication to be reciprocated politely and I don't want to feel that I'm being brushed off or that the person providing customer service is impatient with me. If I take the time to write a letter and send it by snail mail, ditto. Even though my email signature includes my phone number, I don't really expect - or want - someone to call me in response to my email. Unless my email says, 'call me.'

During a focus group on internal communications several years ago I had a forceful demonstration of exactly this point. We had two men who were demographically identical in the group: same age, same sex, same level in the organization, same earnings, same ethnic backgrounds. One of them loathed and despised email and announced that he'd returned his modem and cancelled his home internet service - he was having enough trouble keeping up with the barrage of emails he received at work. The other said that, frustrated with trying to reach his daughter on a shared phone in her university residence, he had been communicating her with mostly via MSN Messenger and email.

For once there is an actual connection between the photo that illustrates this post and its subject matter. The photo, as originally posted on flickr, is titled, 'Never light just a single candle.' One of the examples of good crisis communications utlizing social media cited by Rob Cottingham (who is the president of Social Signal (www.socialsignal.com) was the video JetBlue Airways' founder and CEO David Neeleman posted on youtube after nearly half JetBlue's New York flights were delayed or cancelled on Valentine's Day 2007. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-r_PIg7EAUw

I'm not going to debate the merits of the messaging or its delivery right now. I would point out though, that the series of press releases posted on the JetBlue web site, beginning with the one linked below and posted on an almost-daily basis until the day after the video was posted (February 19, 2007), contain information not conveyed in the video, such as the refunds customers were being offered (unless I missed it in three viewings, but I'm pretty sure I didn't), and refer to 'our promise to you' rather than to the 'customer's bill of rights' that was the company's official response to the crisis. http://investor.jetblue.com/phoenix.zhtml?c=131045&p=irol-newsArticle&ID=963450&highlight=

My point is that the video is great, the press releases are great, letters and phone calls to customers are great, setting up a toll-free line so people can get an explanation of what happened and why and what you're doing to ensure it doesn't happen again is great, letters, emails and phone calls to customers are great, newspaper ads are great, radio, TV and print interviews are great. And you can't neglect a single one of those things, because if you do, you will be perceived as having not having made the attempt to communicate, which is the first step in making it right.

I have no idea who JetBlue's primary demographic is, but I'm willing to bet the first-born child I don't have that not all its customers would be mollified by any one of the available communications vehicles mentioned above.

Before the internet existed, it was generally accepted that for every one letter to the editor received by a newspaper, there were a thousand people who felt the same way but weren't sufficiently exercised about the subject to actually pick up a pen or roll a piece of paper into the typewriter or pick up their dictaphone and have their secretaries type a letter for them. Because of the perceived volume of opinion behind a single letter to the editor, they were taken seriously - very seriously.

I am not so sure the same can be said of an often anonymous posting on a blog or bulletin board. From the blogs I've read and the debates that sometimes ensue in the comment streams, there are a lot of opinions out there, and few people share precisely the same one. And I seriously doubt that a single blog comment represents the kind of groundswell of opinion implied by one letter to the editor.

And so, while it's safe to assume that it is possible to communicate with all your stakeholders when it's really necessary to do so, it is never safe to assume that one form of communication will reach - or please - everyone. Consistency of messaging is of paramount importance. Diversity in the manner in which you communicate an entirely consistent message is equally important - and ever changing.

If your friends are bothering you

Pomegranates, originally uploaded by The River Thief. Copyright Ruth Seeley 2007

I just got a hilarious email from someone via Facebook. Well, I'm not sure why I got it - at first I thought someone had replied to all on an email that sent us a link to photos posted on Facebook. I haven't checked out Facebook's email features closely enough to know whether the 'reply to all' feature was activated within Facebook or the responder's own email client.

What I do know is that at the bottom of the email there's a Facebook-generated line that says, "Are your friends bothering you? You can opt out of emails from friends on Facebook."

I'm not going to bore you with the ins and outs of why this doesn't make a lot of sense to me because the email address to which the original link to the Facebook photo albums was sent isn't the one I use for Facebook. Who cares, really?

I am tired of hearing about the Facebook phenomenon and of being told that I have to have a Facebook account (the implication being that I won't understand social media if I'm not compulsively writing on people's walls and Twittering like a mad fool).

I have been using social media devices for more than a decade now. To some extent, I've got a lot of it out of my system. The giddy days of chat are over, although I still think that the real business potential of virtual meeting spaces was never really harnessed by corporations so people could cost-effectively brainstorm from locations across the world.

But I also think there's something just plain wrong about the notion that Facebook and Twitter represent some sort of great technological leap in human interaction. Am I missing something here? They act as centralized bulletin boards, do they not? There is absolutely nothing new about this idea. The only thing that's new is the branding and widespread adoption of two bulletin board services that incorporate some rather natural technological advancements, such as the ability to upload photo files to static sites. Frankly, that's not as impressive as the file sharing features of MSN and Yahoo! messenger systems, where you can share any kind of file you like within an instant message. These messaging systems have always incorporated an archiving option. So I think I'm pretty safe in saying that neither Facebook nor Twitter are the neatest things since sliced bread.

During at least two presentations I attended at Northern Voice 08, presenters who were online while speaking were interrupted by 'notifications' that appeared on the screen, updating them regarding new Facebook wall posts or Twits telling them what an acquaintance was doing. The first time it happened it was funny in the way someone farting might have been. The second time there was a stir in the audience and a feeling of unease, and I overheard a couple of conversations afterwards about - well, frankly, the inappropriateness of the whole thing.

Having once (and once only) been reproached by a friend for taking a cell phone call from another friend when we were having lunch, I've been doing a lot of thinking about the pros and cons of multi-tasking for the last couple of years. I've always known that while I had two ears, I'm really not capable of talking and listening at the same time, or of having two completely separate conversations at once in person. I used to be able to manage four different chat windows at a time, but I type more quickly than most and the quality of my conversations wasn't adversely affected by the fact that I wasn't uni-tasking. On the contrary, had I been talking to only one slow typist, I would have been less engaged in the conversations due to delays in waiting for responses.

I've been a member of flickr for several years now and have actively participated in a few groups. I've met dozens of flickrites and have been really thrilled when something I've said or a photo I've taken has resonated with someone an ocean away. The best example of this is the email I received from a guy in the UK who noticed a photo I'd posted of a tombstone at Vancouver's Mountain View Cemetery (and must have tagged with the deceased's name). He said they have been trying to track this long-lost ancestor for years and hadn't been able to figure out where he had ended up. My posting the photo of his grave let his relatives know he'd ended up in Vancouver. I was pleased to receive this email and happy to have helped someone with their genealogy even though that wasn't my intent.

The appeal of Facebook and Twitter is just totally passing me by here, folks. I'm not seeing any pros, only the cons (including more of life spent tethered to an electronic device, even if that tether is a wireless one). Is there something I'm missing here?

Political spoilers

More pods in the Park, originally uploaded by The River Thief. Copyright Ruth Seeley 2008

I am going to revisit my post about our Canadian federal leadership at some point, but I'm also going to break yet another of my silly rules and talk briefly about the American leadership race and the upcoming November election.

Ralph Nader has 'declared' again and really, this is all this race needs, a second spoiler candidate to split the left-of-centre vote. If John McCain ends up president of the United States, the first two people I'm going to blame will be Ralph Nader and Barack Obama.

I realize politics is a blood sport, and that the complications of the US political system (which we studied in school but as Canadians used to a multi-party system I think most of us dismissed as - well - far too complicated for its own good or for our understanding) mean there may be some sort of subtleties I'm missing. Let me also state that I'm not Hillary Clinton's biggest fan. It's more a case of wanting to like her than of my actually finding anything she says or does inspiring.

Here's the thing though: Ms Clinton has been nothing but transparent about her intention to run for president ever since she first entered the political arena in her own right. Correct me if I'm wrong, but she was the first candidate to declare that she was going to seek the Democratic nomination in 2008. I'm not going to call Barack Obama names or say he's a Johnny Come Lately. I will call Ralph Nader The Spoiler, and his comment about the fact that the Democratic Party can't get it together and his cynical addendum that if it hasn't managed to get itself together in the eight years of Bush rule it should just implode because it's irrelevant was highly self serving. Nader doesn't play well with the other children and I'm sorry, but I think his refusal to either change the political process in the US so a multi-party system is adopted or play by the rules and actually seek the nomination of one of the two parties that are mandated to represent its citizens is just churlish. In fact, I think it's childish.

But I also think it is extremely unfortunate that Barack Obama has chosen to run in this particular election. I don't think American Democrats should be facing a choice between electing the first female president in their nation's history or their first black president. The primaries to date indicate that voters are almost equally split between these two candidates. In the Canadian system this wouldn't be so much of a problem, because at a national convention with multiple ballots, the leader would have been selected a long time ago. Obama, Clinton and Edwards would all have made good showings on the first ballot, and by the third or fourth ballot they would have been the only three candidates left, with Edwards functioning as King- or Queen-maker, throwing his support to either Obama or Clinton or setting his delegates free to choose one or the other. And then everyone in the party would have started to focus on what really matters: getting a Democrat elected this time around. Because that is what matters. And if another Republican president is elected this time around, I may change my mind and agree with Ralph Nader. Because this is just getting stupid: a country heading into recession because it's spending billions waging war halfway around the world while its own citizens have 'democracy' but not health care. A country that doesn't take its leaders to task when those leaders lie to the citizens they represent doesn't deserve to be a superpower. It sure doesn't have any claim to be a model of democracy for any other country (how about those weapons of mass destruction, has anyone found one yet? the search has been on for a while now).

So once again I find myself agreeing with Gloria Steinem. Hillary may not have quite as cute a smile as Barack Obama. Warmth may be something she struggles to convey via electronic media (something John Edwards can emanate without even lifting a finger, it seems). But she deserves the support of her fellow Democrats, and I hope she gets it before it's too late. She's done her time in the trenches, she's got not only the desire but also the experience to lead, and somehow I don't think she'll run again if she doesn't get the nomination this time. I'm not sure whether Obama will seek the nomination a second time if he doesn't get it this year. But I think the fact that Hillary's campaign for the Democratic nomination has been going on for so long means this is it: go 2008 or go home.

Here's a not-so-recent Op Ed Gloria Steinem wrote on the subject for The New York Times:

www.nytimes.com/2008/01/08/opinion/08steinem.html?_r=1&ex=1357534800&en=737e0fe8e3afc0f0&ei=5088&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss&oref=slogin

Recently read

Story House, originally uploaded by The River Thief. Copyright Ruth Seeley 2008.

Since they're all due back at the library this week, it's time to do that blog post I've been intending for a couple of weeks now. Since the new year began I've been rather effortlessly reading more non-fiction than usual. I'm not quite sure what this is all about - perhaps I'm choosing better non-fiction, or perhaps it's better written these days?

The books on this shelf are actually the 'to read' pile but that's ok.

The Golden Spruce by John Vaillant
The book's subtitled 'A True Story of Myth, Madness and Greed' and ultimately I think I would have liked it to focus on just one of those things. It would probably be over-ambitious to expect it to really illuminate all three. I ended up wanting to know more about the Golden Spruce itself and its role in Haida myth, more about Grant Hadwin's madness (some commentary from his wife would have been nice, although I can understand refusing to discuss one's estranged, presumed dead husband with a writer), and more about the greed that's characterized the forestry industry globally.

Last Lovers by William Wharton
William Wharton's the guy who said something I thought was totally profound about love: 'What is love? It is passion, admiration and respect. If you have two, you have enough. If you have all three, you don't have to die to go to heaven.' I was hoping reading this novel would help me track down exactly where he said it, but no such luck.

This is an odd novel merely by virtue of the way it's told, with alternating first-person narratives by the only two characters. One is a middle-aged American painter who is living illegally in a garret, having turned his back on corporate success, his wife and his children, at least temporarily. The other is a 70-something Parisienne who has suffered from hysterical blindness since she discovered her mother dead in the bath, having slit her wrists, when she was 14. The bizarre love affair that evolves between the two is just the teensiest bit too creepy to be heartwarming. Apparently Birdy is the one to read, so I'm not saying no to the notion of reading another of his novels.

Big Women by Fay Weldon
Fay is nothing if not reliable. Her cynical narratives of (mostly) English second-wave feminists are always witty treats, and this one is no exception. Stephanie, Nancy, Layla, Zoe, Daffy, Alice, and later, Zoe's daughter Saffron, live, love, strive, and survive in London, feuding, stealing each other's husbands and lovers, creating a publishing empire. Naturally the empire implodes, but most of the women survive and, well, carry on, older and wiser but no less witty.

Bud Inc. by Ian Mulgrew
Highly entertaining although quite astonishing in its bias. Funny that, with its focus on the medical marijuana market, two studies should come to my attention within a week of reading this book about the dangers of marijuana: one a New Zealand study focusing on higher incidences of lung cancer and another on damage to teeth and gums from heavy marijuana smoking (defined as one joint a day). Still, I am grateful to finally have read an explanation of the difference between indica and sativa.

Recently read will hopefully become a regular feature of this blog.

Finding one's (northern) (southern) (eastern) (western) voice - another reason I blog

Copyright Ruth Seeley 2007.

I made reference, a couple of blog posts ago, to the fact that I'll be attending Northern Voice, the Vancouver blogging conference, later this month. It runs from Thursday, February 21 to Saturday, February 23. http://2008.northernvoice.ca/

The kick-off dinner is being held this year in the Polynesian Room at Vancouver's Waldorf Hotel http://www.critiki.com/cgi-bin/location.cgi?loc_id=196, and I am really looking forward to it. (Last year's was held in the gorgeous Volunteer Vancouver building on Main Street, I believe - should have gone, I heard rumours of fountains of chocolate or chocolate swans or something equally extravagant.)

I also made a comment, in my previous blog post, that I was going to attend for the second year, despite having had a really miserable time at last year's conference. Some of it was my fault, some of it was a case of 'I should just have stayed in bed today' and some of it rests squarely on the conference organizers, or at least those tasked with event planning.

Northern Voice (the conference itself), is held at UBC's Forestry Building. For those of you who've never visited the UBC campus - it's huge. It's freaking huge. The UBC population is almost 10 times bigger than Kincardine, the small southwestern Ontario town in which I lived for a year before moving to BC in 2002. And I managed to get lost there for months. The estimates I've seen are that UBC has a student, staff and faculty population of 50,000. It is a vast expanse of land. What can I say - they didn't call it the Wild West for nothing. The only place I can really find with ease at UBC is its marvellous bookstore, and that's only when the roads aren't completely torn up and I don't have to take six detours.

It was pissing rain on the Saturday of Northern Voice 2007. Yes it's Vancouver, and I am actually one of the few people I know who don't mind the rain here and don't complain about it much, even though I've always thought snow was the smarter form of precipitation. Snow doesn't get you wet and it's - well - it's usually much more scenic than rain. Still, it was Toni Onley's dreamy coastal landscapes I had in mind when I moved here. This was unusual rain for Vancouver though - hard rain - big drops that really got you wet. I think of this as Eastern rain rather than Western rain. Mean rain. Purposeful rain. Its purpose being to mess you up in a quest to replenish the water table as quickly as possible.

For some inexplicable reason, the bus driver I had was not familiar with UBC campus and couldn't help me find the Forestry Building. This is the point at which I step up to the plate and acknowledge that I could have done my 'how to get there' research instead of just glancing at the map and assuming the bus driver would know his or her route. And that I could have left the house earlier.

As it happened though, I ended up wandering in the aforementioned pissing rain, waiting for another bus that would actually take me to the Forestry Building, getting myself into a completely foul temper, and arriving an hour late for the conference.

So - off to a bit of a rough start. I ran into a few people I knew and attended two sessions, both of which were interesting. Then it was lunch time. I quailed at the prospect of heading back out into that mess, so armed myself with the map listing all the area lunch venues. Most of them were at least a quarter-mile's hike from the Forestry Building. Many of them were much, much further away. I had already noticed that the Tim Horton's in the building itself wasn't open weekends, and thought it odd that they hadn't made an exception for a weekend when a conference was going on. Surely it would have been worth their while to open up on a Saturday just this once? While I'm not a fan of Tim's, some hot soup and a sandwich would have been really nice. I might even have been able to forget my wet socks in the convivial atmosphere of Tim's.

But no. Muttering to myself about it being one of those days I was going to get soaked four times (to and from the conference, to and from lunch), I headed for the next-nearest provision-providing venue, Starbucks. A latte and a pumpkin scone would have been just fine. On the way to the Starbucks I noticed an independent corner store and thought, oh, I don't care what their sandwiches are like, this is a better idea than Starbucks. Apparently not. The store had been robbed earlier in the day and the police were still conducting their investigation. Even though I had cash, the store owners had been forbidden to conduct business until the police wrapped up their investigation. Starbucks it was, then.

Obviously I wasn't the only person who had taken public transit to the conference, and great minds do think alike (fools seldom differ). I've never seen a Starbucks slammed the way that one was. And no one looked happy, which is most unusual. Didn't take long to figure out why. There was no food. I mean, there may have been one of those cinnamon straws. But other than that, the glass display case was pretty much empty. The Northern Voice organizers had failed to notify Starbucks that there was a conference going on. The staff were bewildered and embarrassed. Run off their feet too, since they'd been unexpectedly slammed.

So I had a latte, which I think I consumed perched on a cement planter in a courtyard that provided some shelter from the rain, and thought about going back to the conference. And I decided not to. The wet socks were starting to get to me, and I was beginning to feel murderous thoughts.

This year's going to be different. A lot different. For one thing, I'll be driving or being driven. For another, I know where the Forestry Building is. I'm also going to give the Starbucks a call myself and make sure they know there's a conference going on. I might even call the Tim Horton's and suggest they open up on Saturday. I've already done the feedback thing* for Northern Voice 2007 and mentioned these issues, so perhaps my phone calls will be reminders only, if the organizers took my advice. If they didn't, I'm not taking any chances.

Which brings me to the third reason why I blog. In my post 'Columnists I Like' I talked about the joy of writing freedom. That freedom doesn't matter much until and unless you have truly found your voice as a writer. When I first worked in public relations I was amazed at how difficult it was to master the right tone and style of PR writing. I'd written poetry, short stories, book reviews, magazine articles, ad copy, research and non-research essays, part of a screenplay...this writing thing wasn't really a problem for me. I've kept a copy of my first case study, which went through about 45 drafts before it was finalized, as one of my writing samples. I had significant editing help from at least two of my colleagues. A red pen was used, until my always expressive face assumed a rather stricken look. A black pen was substituted for the red. That didn't really help my ego much. And then, finally, something clicked for me and I was able to rewrite the case study myself and get it approved. Everything became a lot easier after that.

Looking back, this is how I'd describe it. Have you ever worn cowboy boots? I've only owned one pair, and I'm not sure what happened to them, but I'm quite sure I cried when I got rid of them. I loved them. I loved them when I first saw them in the store and I loved wearing them. There was a two-week period when I first started wearing them though, when I actually contemplated cutting off my feet. I've never had blisters on the tops of my feet before. I've never had blisters on my heels that bled. I've never stacked bandaids one on top of each other to try to prevent further damage and a little cushioning just so I could get through the breaking in process.

Mastering another form of writing - and a difficult one - was like breaking in those cowboy boots. Ultimately it was worth the struggle. Much to my surprise, writing is a skill that continues to develop the more of it you do. I'd add, 'as long as you continue to read good writing,' as my one caveat. A couple of years after my first case study, the receptionist at work got a call from someone asking to be put through to the company's best writer. My boss wasn't in, so she directed the call to me. Turns out it was a headhunter, and while the lovely Diana was outraged at being tricked this way, it was pretty hard for me not to giggle with sheer joy at the compliment she'd paid me.

I remember a client objecting strenuously to a press release and demanding to know why we'd chosen to use each and every phrase and structured it the way press releases are properly structured. I'm not sure what possessed me, but I do know we'd sweated over this release (our 'best teams' approach wasn't quite working in this instance, I'm afraid). I couldn't help myself. Even though I was the most junior person there, I had to be the one to justify our approach. And I did, mounting an extremely convincing case for why the release needed to be left alone if the client's goals were to be met. That release and the subsequent media relations we did with it led to the longest feature coverage I've ever helped generate.

And that was the point at which I realized I had found my voice as a writer. While I may not understand it on a conscious level when I begin to write, whatever method I have, whether it's research or an outline or that weird form of subconscious analysis that happens when you absorb a new form of writing by osmosis from reading, reading, reading...I now know there's no form of writing I can't master. One of the best things I learned at my former agency was to stop being neurotic about my writing. The collective writing approach used in a PR agency means you can't be too proprietary about your work. If you were to have a hissy fit every time something you wrote got changed, you wouldn't make it through the probationary period. There's no room for that sort of journalistic ego in PR writing, and there's also no time for it. The sort of jockeying for position (front page, please, and if not that, I'll settle for a section front page) that goes on at newspapers won't cut it. The learning process may be painful. Hair may be pulled. Tears may be shed. Paper may well be crumpled and flung. (Gee, I manage to make a pretty much silent activity seem quite melodramatic, don't I?)

Then, of course, once you have found your voice, you must use it. Or lose it. And so, I blog....

* As you can see from the first link I've posted, the organizers have listened and are including lunch! Oh, it's so nice to be listened to. Heeded. To have one's views taken into account. I'm still calling Starbucks to give 'em a heads up though.

Be who you are

Got my ‘monthly ezine for communications professionals’ from the British Association of Communicators in Business this morning and the first article I clicked was ‘Need to establish some blogging guidelines?’ It wasn’t so much an article as a paragraph referring readers to the guidelines IBM has now made public for its employees who blog. www.ibm.com/blogs/zz/en/guidelines.html

Nice definition of a blog in this article: 'A blog is a tool individuals can use to share their insights, express their opinions, and communicate within the context of a globally distributed conversation.' It's that globally distributed part I like about this definition. As I track my readers, I can't help but get excited when I see my blog has 'penetrated' another country. Who's reading me in Mexico and the Netherlands? I don't know, but hello and welcome!

I also really liked the discussion of personal responsibility (number three in the article) and this advice: 'Speak in the first person. Use your own voice; bring your own personality to the forefront; say what is on your mind.' The only thing I'd add to this excellent list is the caveat, 'Beware of blogging before you've had coffee - both your thinking and typing skills may well be impaired.' All right, that's me being facetious. There probably are a couple of things I'd add to a list of guidelines for employees who blog, based on my experience with a public relations agency and as a manager in the corporate communications department of a former client:

Be wary of your own motivation when blogging about your employer;

and

Don't get too specific, either in what you say about the company for which you work or in the depth of your exploration of a subject.

Both these guidelines need a little explanation.

Be wary of your own motivation when blogging about your employer

Some people aren't very happy with their employers and are frustrated because they don't see the change they desire happening, no matter how long they wait or how often they express their opinions. Not to be unkind or disrespectful, but I am not going to tell you how to load fuel into a nuclear reactor. Please don't try to tell me how (or when!) to write a press release. Unless you're on the senior management team of an organization (and sometimes not even then), you don't really know all the factors in play regarding decisions the company is making and challenges it's facing. And if the CEO and/or the corporate communications department were to tell you absolutely everything, not only would they not get anything done, they'd probably be arrested for some sort of securities violation. Being micro managed isn't a lot of fun and the CEO doesn't do it to you. Return the favour, will ya?

Don't get too specific, either in what you say about the company for which you work or in the depth of your exploration of a subject.

In other words, don’t go on and on and on, and don’t overrate the fascination of your readers with your subject matter. Chances are that if you have to spend four paragraphs explaining why the poor performance of this widget is costing the company time and money and your invention would work much better (even though you’ve already shown the plans to your boss and he really wasn’t interested, nor was your boss’s boss), you’re being too ‘granular.’ Now, repeat after me: the tree is part of the forest. The tree is part of the forest. The tree is part of the forest.

Here’s the link for the CiB web site if you want to subscribe to the ezine yourself: www.cib.uk.com/

On a more personal note: Happy Valentine’s Day to all. This is the 17^th anniversary of my father’s death, and it is the first year I will be able to visit his gravesite. Not sure if I’m going to go today or not as the weather is looking extremely iffy. It has always struck me as so appropriate that the man who taught me most of what I know about how to be a kind, loving, and compassionate person should have died on Valentine’s Day. One of the things I loved most about my father was the fact that he was truly incapable of driving by someone who needed help without offering to help them (I mean this in both the literal and the figurative senses). To focus on the literal though: in the days before cars became a lot more reliable (and before cell phones were invented), they used to break down by the side of the road a lot more often than they do now. We had one car that perversely broke down in the middle of the one 23-mile stretch of road between Ottawa and the lake where there was nothing - nada - zip - almost every weekend. My father never saw a motorist in distress without stopping and offering to help change a tire, give someone a lift to the gas station, or offer to call for a tow from the next town. If ‘do unto others as you would have them do unto you’ isn’t the bedrock and cornerstone of a sweet and loving nature I don’t know what is. Proof that the golden rule works? I still remember the woman at the farm somewhere within a 45-mile radius of Ottawa who made us scones with homemade jam and tea and gave us the recipe for scones while we waited for our car to be fixed.

Columnists I like – another step towards the answer to why I blog

Gargoyle on the Burrard Bridge, originally uploaded by The River Thief. Copyright Ruth Seeley 2006

Back in the early 80s, when I worked in the magazine and newspaper business, I used to eagerly await the next issue of Esquire magazine so I could read Harry Stein’s Ethics column. The first issue of Esquire I ever saw was, I think, in 1980, and the cover featured either a hand-tinted photo of the cowboy Ronald Reagan from one of his old movies, or a hyper-realistic portrait. Someone else took over the Ethics column after a few years, and it wasn’t quite the same. But for those three or four years when Harry was writing that column, it was the first thing I read in the magazine every month, regardless of who was on the cover.

In the late 70s or early 80s there was a Globe and Mail ‘he said, she said’ column. I can’t even remember who wrote it: Marni Jackson and M.T. Kelly? It was fun, partly because it predated the whole Venus/Mars thing. What Kelly lacked in wit was compensated by his sheer tenacity. And he was certainly outclassed on the wit front, but that was part of what made the column fun to read.

In the last couple of decades I have moved away from magazines, and I’m not quite sure why. I try to like The Walrus and I’ve subscribed, but it’s not working for me. I think it’s actually a design issue – there’s something wrong with the use of white space and while I am not a fan of the ‘nine parts photo, one part writing’ style of magazine (think People, US, any other sound-bite style of wide-circulation, determinedly anti-intellectual publication), a magazine is not a novel. I expect to see top notch photography and illustration incorporated with award-winning design as well as read award-calibre articles.

I’m still puzzling over the point of Vancouver’s latest entry into the magazine sweepstakes, Granville. A magazine about sustainability that doesn’t feel obliged to either define the term or to understand it is a bit of a puzzle to me, but it’s free and they’re spending some decent money on photography and illustrations, so I’ll look at their photos of what I can only describe as ‘salvage design’ (clothes made from or incorporating bits and pieces of pre-existing, sometimes vintage clothing) and try to find an article that’s actually worth reading.

For the most part, favourite columnists have been replaced for me by bloggers, who have pretty much the same editorial control of their subject matter as magazine and newspaper columnists – almost total. I can’t say, other than Patia Stephens’ wonderful blog, A Drivel Runs Through It (www.patiastephens.com), that I’ve developed a blogger loyalty that equates to my columnist loyalty to Harry Stein. I may yet, as I further refine the blog roll and get deeper into the blogging process. But obviously for me that is the incredible appeal of blogging: editorial control of my product. You don’t have to like it, and you don’t have to read it, but it is pure joy to be able to write about what I want to write about when I want to write it without any kind of filter (editor, publisher, outraged advertiser, employer) trying to impose his or her vision of how the story should go. It’s my story. I’ll tell it the way I choose to, thank you.

Recently though I have found myself drawn more and more to Heather Mallick’s writing, which I encounter on the CBC web site. I’ll be reading about how grateful Squamish is that something has finally been done to make the Sea to Sky Highway safer and then read the article on the latest Superbug taking hold in Vancouver and there’ll be a little box with a provocative headline that leads me to Heather Mallick’s latest column, and I just have to click on it. Today’s was no exception: “A house is a home, not an investment.” A woman after my own heart, obviously. For those of you who’d rather read her article than mine, here you go: www.cbc.ca/news/viewpoint/vp_mallick/20080211.html

Perhaps it’s because she describes herself as having an ‘old fashioned MA in English literature’ or the fact that she calls herself a ‘full-time reader’ in the bio on her web site (www.heathermallick.ca). Her writing style has a lot to do with it though. She writes in a way that is accessible without being patronizing. She’s not dumbing it down for anyone, but she’s obviously a fan of the ‘don’t use a dollar word when a quarter word will do’ rule. Lovers of language and readers of literature (or at least this one) regard that as the inevitable sand trap of writing (this is probably the only golf metaphor you’re ever going to encounter on this blog), the temptation to use a big beautiful word because it sounds great and means exactly what you’re trying to express. Think ‘sycophant’ versus ‘yes man.’ Yes, sycophant has the advantage of being gender-neutral, although in my world it doesn’t need to be, since I’m not sure I’ve ever encountered a ‘yes woman’ – that must be an experiential thing though, having grown up during the second wave of feminism.

The point is that pretty much everyone knows what a yes-man is, while sycophant is going to send a fair percentage of readers to the dictionary or just alienate them because they don’t know what it means. Naturally the context should supply incontrovertible clues to the word’s meaning, but it doesn’t always. I recall becoming incensed by a colleague’s persistent use of the word ‘matrix’ because I never really knew what the hell he was talking about. When I looked it up and discovered he meant chart, grid, point at which two things intersect, I wanted to slap him for being a professional communicator who valued his own ability to confound over plain speech. I will also confess that I would have to do the same research I’ve done about 40 times already to explain to you what is meant by the phrase ‘paradigm shift.’ It’s glib, it’s catchy, it does mean something important, but it’s a phrase I find immediately alienating and I have obviously developed a mental block about it.

More on this subject (the wilfully obscure school of language arts) at some unspecified future date.

I liked what Heather Mallick had to say in her article about housing. The phrase ‘starter home’ first came to my attention back in the mid ‘80s when I was living in Toronto and working for The Financial Post. One of the copy editors was looking to buy a house the year Toronto housing prices rose a spectacular 47%. Sadly I was looking for a place to live at the time, and had not yet adopted my best apartment-hunting strategy: find a building in which you want to live, put in an application and get approved, wait for a vacancy and move when there is one. I met a lot of people apartment hunting. The majority weren’t landlords, although I am still stunned when I remember the tiny and very imperfect space on offer in High Park for an exorbitant sum and the landlord’s wail that renting out three apartments in the house at these far-above-market-value prices would barely cover his mortgage. I am not sure whether I actually said to him, “Sucks to be a real estate speculator, don’t it?” or whether I just thought it. Even if I didn’t say it, my non-poker face no doubt conveyed precisely that message. One place we looked at had 75 applicants for a single, overpriced, not particularly charming apartment. A freelance editor and a jazz musician didn’t stand much of a chance of getting to the top of that heap.

And these are some of the issues Mallick addresses in her column. Yes, a house may well be the single biggest purchase most of us ever make in our lives. Yes, real estate has almost always been a good investment, and unless one buys at the very high end of a market cycle and then experiences rapidly rising interest rates without commensurate salary inflation, it is difficult to lose money buying a home. Of course there are other factors – neighbourhoods change and become more or less desirable depending on who and what moves in, failing to do any sort of upkeep at all will affect resale value, your quiet lane might suddenly become a major traffic avoidance route, etc.

But the real point is this: shelter is a basic and fundamental human need. When that need becomes perverted into a way to make money rather than satisfaction of that fundamental need, something huge is lost. We are already living, in the Western world, in unrooted times. Many of us live thousands of miles from our families and that support network. It’s highly unlikely my mother would have been able to continue working if my grandmother hadn’t lived in the same city and hadn’t been more than willing to look after me whenever I got a childhood disease. I missed almost six weeks of school the year before I had my tonsils out, with one strep throat and bout of tonsillitis after another culminating in scarlet fever (which was really exciting because I had to be quarantined and everyone in the house had to take penicillin along with me – this made me feel extraordinarily self important in an “I am the avenger and I carry death – or at least bad sickness – within me” kind of way). And there’s no way either of my parents could have afforded to take that much time off work to look after me while I was sick.

As the urbanization of populations continues, it is less and less likely that we will be able to live anywhere near where we grew up. There was a great article I read many years ago about how the creation of Silicon Valley meant that almost no one who had grown up in towns like Palo Alto or Mountain View, CA, would ever be able to buy a house there, even though their parents had done so with ease long before networking became a verb. Nor, unless they were only children, would they ever inherit a house or enough land on which to build their own. Like the second and third sons of the English gentry in Jane Austen’s time, alternatives would have to be created – we can’t all be squires and inherit the baronetcy – some of us will have to look to the army and the church for our careers and revenue streams. For those who grew up in what became Silicon Valley, the answer was a fairly massive exodus not only from the area but from the state itself to places like North and South Carolina where homes were still affordable.

Sadly, too, the global village and the cottage industries outlined by Marshall McLuhan aren’t happening as quickly as most of us would like, and it is still the rare individual who can work from home and make a decent living. I am beginning to think I should take up farming so no one thinks it’s strange that I want to work from home, a home in a rather remote location preferably (oh cabin in the woods, I continue to hear your siren song).

But a focus on what is affordable where and what, precisely, the fallout will be from the sub-prime mortgage mess misses the most important point in all of this. Current legislation designed to discourage real estate speculation is pretty toothless. In Ontario you have to own a house for a year before you can sell it or you are considered a speculator (I’m not sure what sort of penalty there is for this in law). In British Columbia, in the run-up to the Olympics, it’s only six months. Sure, there are some provisions to discourage landlords and property developers from buying houses on spec and flipping them in BC. Having to give tenants a month’s free rent when they’re evicted so a house can be renovated or demolished to build a monster home on the lot is one of those provisions. It’s not enough, however.

What is required is – ha – sorry I can’t resist – a paradigm shift in the way we look at shelter and at real estate. That paradigm shift will involve a return to the concept of houses as homes rather than as investments. It will also involve a commitment on our part to the concept of universal shelter for all that is similar to our commitment to the notion of universal health care. There was no mass exodus from Canada when our version of socialized medicine was introduced. And those stories about the ‘brain drain’ were also wild exaggerations in terms of number. We have experienced nothing like the exodus Great Britain saw during the Thatcher era. We have not lost a generation of our educated middle class to other countries. Most Canadians took a look at the pros versus the cons of higher American salaries and lower taxation and were able to do the math in our own heads: yes we pay much higher rates of taxation but we’re getting not only universal health care but almost-universal access to post-secondary education for those tax dollars. On the whole we’re pretty happy with the bargain we’ve made, I think. It is worth it.

Now if only we could wrap our heads around the need to ensure no one in this country is homeless. A huge part of that, I think, is refusing to participate in the commoditization of housing. Don’t do the bidding war thing. Don’t buy a house you don’t like as a ‘starter’ home just for the sake of ‘getting into the market.’ Don’t be one of those people who spend 70 per cent of your take-home income on housing (that would be most Vancouverites these days). Life is too short and mortgages are too long to live a half life in a house that isn’t a home in a neighbourhood you don’t like.

For another take on the housing crisis - and it is a crisis, one way or other, because as house prices rise, so do rents, here's Mary-Ellen Lang's recent article as well: www.cbc.ca/news/viewpoint/vp_lang/20080208.html

P.S. Okay I just laughed aloud at the line in this column for The Guardian in which Heather Mallick announces there will never be a sex scandal involving a Canadian politician because, let’s face it, they’re all too unattractive. She obviously hasn’t met the charming and highly personable Vancouver-Fairview MLA Gregor Robertson http://thetyee.ca/News/2004/11/08/NDPNewFaceBusiness/. Not that he would ever do anything scandalous.

www.heathermallick.ca/guardian.co.uk-columns/top-quality-sleaze.html

Towards an answer to why I blog

Pilings at Foreshore Park, originally uploaded by The River Thief. Copyright Ruth Seeley 2008.

I'm just about to register for Northern Voice for the second year in a row, despite having had just about the most miserable experience one can imagine at the 2007 event (more about that later).

I can't resist posting the banner ad - if nothing else it'll be yet another experiment in what some refer to (rather vulgarly, I've always thought), as 'link love.'


But before all that serious stuff, a little about this photo.

I've made a point of finding Foreshore Park again after one hot summer night when my friend and guide to New Westminster took me for a drive after we'd been out to dinner. I love it when she takes me places: for one thing, they're almost always places I've never been, and for another, she isn't kidding when she says she loves to drive. Having just taken up the sport again, it's actually really nice to be driven every once in a while. When you trust the driver, it can be an incredibly secure and relaxing experience.

It's an odd park, in many ways. There aren't many wide open spaces. Instead it hugs the curves of the Fraser as it prepares to leave Burnaby and enter Vancouver. There are a lot of pilings close to the eastern shore, of various shapes, sizes, and patterns. They look particularly good during the 'golden hour' and I made a special point of going back there to take at least a few photos of the river at this time of day. The setting sun is just to the right of the photo, and I deliberately excluded it so I could create what I now think of as the silver hour.

I wanted to focus on the blacks and blues of the rocks in the foreground, the pilings, the water, and then the naked trees against the skyline. I guess that's part of what makes Foreshore seem familiar to me. It reminds me a bit of the canal in Ottawa, in some strange way (maybe just because you can see across the Fraser so easily here).

Today I've also discovered this totally kewl book site. Or at least I hope it will be totally kewl. I never know when I discover these things if everyone else has known about them for years and is going 'well, d'uh' when I tell them about them or whether they're true gems only I a have mined (at least among my tiny perfect circle anyway).
http://www.goodreads.com/

Oh and my point - and I do have one. One reason I blog is because I love the idea of people I don't know reading my blog. By tracking readership through Google Analytics I'm able to make educated guesses (some of which are, I think, remarkably accurate) about who's been reading my blog, whether any of the family has checked in on me or not, which of my flickr contacts is curious enough about me, based on my photos (probably not so much) and my constant and occasionally ribald commentary there, to read the blog.

My final note of the day. I've seen a painting I want. Perhaps I should say, I've seen another painting I want. And seen is a word whose meaning should be interpreted figuratively, not literally, as the painting isn't finished and I haven't yet made arrangements to buy it. I'll do so now, if I can. Here's a sneak peek of a work in progress by my amazing friend, Suffolk artist Paul Jackson:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/92943860@N00/2241629505/

Scathing

Sunrise on the Fraser, originally uploaded by The River Thief. Copyright Ruth Seeley

Scathing is one of my favourite words, and it’s a pity it can’t be used in situations where a negative emotion isn’t involved. What can scathing modify as an adjective? Indictment, review, assessment. Not much else, really. Scathing is all about passing judgment, which is a shame, because I try not to be judgmental while retaining the right to be highly opinionated. I like the way it’s spelled, I like the lack of ambiguity in its meaning, and I love the way it’s pronounced. The soft ess followed by the hard cee, then that long and uncompromising vowel – it’s really quite onomatopoetic, if you think about it long and hard enough.

The Old or Middle English verb from which the adjective is formed, scathe, comes from the Old Norse and means to ‘harm or injure, especially by fire.’ And so visions of Vikings pulling up in one of their high-prowed long ships and laying waste to an entire innocent coastal village come to mind. When they’re done rampaging and have pulled down not only all the ramparts but all the buildings as well, when they’ve finished using those uniquely frightening maces to split skulls and when they’ve sated their lust by raping all the women before killing them, it’s torch time. One does not really recover from a ‘scathing’ attack – one gathers a headless doll, a coin or two and maybe a pot from the rubble and slinks away to create a new life in a safer location. If, that is, one has been lucky enough to be out of town the day the verbal Vikings arrived.

In today’s world, we are beginning to realize that negative reinforcement creates a society of messed up people who react rather than act, whose perceptions and actions are always suspect because they’re damaged emotionally, and we are beginning to acknowledge that you do indeed get more flies with honey than with vinegar and that this is not a bad thing at all if more flies are what you want. American Idol may be the cultural exception to this trend. And perhaps that’s why Simon Callow’s opinions get so much attention and even respect. Here’s a man who seems bitter and twisted and whose negativity seems to colour his judgment. Devastating though it may be for the various warblers who appear before him, isn’t there something really satisfying about the way – and the fact that - he delivers his scathing assessments? Every once in a while it’s nice to hear a spade referred to as a spade, rather than as a ‘gardening utensil.’ Every once in a while the talentless ever-hopefuls need to be told to confine their singing to the shower where it belongs rather than continue to inflict it on the world.

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/scathing

And now for something completely different. How can I say no to a free course about blogging? Dog knows there doesn't seem to be a decent book on the subject yet published (might have to do something about that one of these days). Check this out, and I'll check it out as well and report back.

I'm evaluating a multi-media course on blogging from the folks at Simpleology. For a while, they're letting you snag it for free if you post about it on your blog.

It covers:

• The best blogging techniques.
• How to get traffic to your blog.
• How to turn your blog into money.

I'll let you know what I think once I've had a chance to check it out. Meanwhile, go grab yours while it's still free.

Tuesday's Child

British North America Bank, Kingsmere, originally uploaded by The River Thief. Copyright Ruth Seeley 2007.

Monday’s Child

Monday's child is fair of face,
Tuesday's child is full of grace,
Wednesday's child is full of woe,
Thursday's child has far to go.
Friday's child is loving and giving,
Saturday's child works hard for a living,
But the child born on the Sabbath Day,
Is fair and wise and good and gay.

-- Mother Goose

I’ve always loved this rhyme, partly because I was born on a Tuesday. Being fair of face would be nice, and if I had to rank the days on which I could have been born, I’d say that after Tuesday, being loving and giving (Friday’s child), or a fair-of-face Monday’s child would be the next best things. I don’t aspire to be a Sunday’s child, although obviously they have it all. Sometimes I’ve wondered if they made a mistake and I was actually born on a Thursday or a Saturday, along with all those others for whom life seems to be semi-constant struggle.

The swimming metaphor for life has always worked for me. Technically I’m a fire sign, but there’s a LOT of water in my chart. (This is not an astrology-free zone.) For some parts of your life you’re floating, drifting in the water currents and letting them take you where they will. You’re strong and confident, and in this phase of existence you feel extremely safe and relaxed. Who doesn’t love this phase?

When things are going badly in my life, I feel like I’m treading water. Anyone who’s been broke for an extended period of time and has had to effect economies knows this. I’ve always relied on my sense of humour to get me through the rough patches, and so far it’s working. Over the course of the past year I’ve found myself thinking a lot about the expression, Don’t borrow trouble. I’ve made a conscious effort to stop worrying about whether things are going to work out or not. A former friend is right: it will all work out.

And then there are the times when you’re trying to get somewhere and the only way to do that is to swim purposefully and vigorously towards your destination. I seem to have had fewer periods of this phase in my life than the other two. I’m not sure why that is, and I wonder if other people feel the same way, or if there is just a fairly wide variance amongst people in terms of precisely how purposeful they are. I’ve often been described as ‘driven’ – but I make quite a few left turns along the way. I like to navigate by the sun and reflect by the moon.

I agree that the death of one’s parents means one has reached the final phase of separation and individuation (although some choose not to separate and individuate – I’m not quite sure why). My mother’s death has given me something I am not sure she ever truly wanted me to have, although it’s something she often said she wanted for me: a sense of infinite possibilities. Ordinarily I am a decisive person. As I get older, however, I have learned to temper my spontaneity with a little reflection. Now for a lake, some sunshine, and a flat-bottomed rowboat in which to sit and reflect.

Wind Swimmer by Doug Taylor

Wind Swimmer by Doug Taylor, originally uploaded by The River Thief.

Those of you who know me are aware of the fact that my mother died last week - Monday night for me, very early on Tuesday morning her time.

I am not ready to write about her yet, but I will have to - that, for better or for worse, is what writers do.

She wrote her own obituary, for which I am grateful. I am also grateful to my cousins who have reached out to me.

More on this subject later. But in the meantime, her obituary:

SEELEY, Lois (nee Potter)
Died Tuesday, June 26, 2007 in her 82nd year after a 10-year struggle with interstitial lung disease (pulmonary fibrosis) at Valley View Villa, Stellarton, Nova Scotia. Lois was born in Ottawa West, Nepean Township, to the late Margaret Gertrude (Murphy) Potter and Andrew Boucher on February 28, 1926, and graduated from the High School of Commerce in Ottawa. She served proudly as a member of the Canadian Women's Army Corps in World War II, attaining the rank of Sergeant, with postings to Ottawa, Saint John and Vancouver. She left when the CWAC was disbanded in 1946. In 1953, Lois married the love of her life, Allan Frederick Seeley, in Ottawa, where their only child, Ruth Elizabeth Seeley, was born in 1955. Lois and Allan worked for many years for the Federal Government in Ottawa, and in 1974, Allan returned to the Maritimes to a posting with Environment Canada. Unfortunately, he died young (64) in 1991. She is survived by her daughter, Ruth, Burnaby, B.C. At Lois's request, her body has been cremated. Interment at a later date in Ottawa, Ontario. Arrangements entrusted to Colchester Community Funeral Home, Truro, Nova Scotia. Very many thanks to Dr. Debra Morrison for her care and devotion over the past 10 years.

Successful networking...not

Building for sale, originally uploaded by The River Thief. Copyright Ruth Seeley 2007

I went to the Successful Consulting and Contracting networking breakfast this morning, having been invited by friend Antoinette Leong of Indaba Design, who took the two-week program last summer and, like all the other program grads I've met, had nothing but good things to say about it. For more information on SCC, check out this link: http://www.goconsult.ca/.

I'm so glad Antoinette was there; also very glad we ran into Edel Walsh, another SCC and self employment program grad from my group.

Sadly, it seems you can dress me up but you can't really take me anywhere. At least, not that early in the morning (I got up at 5:30 to get downtown for 8:30 as I had some work to finish off before I left the house). The muffins were great but it took a while for me to get some coffee - and I had barely had two sips of it when I knocked my mug over and soaked the front of my jacket with it. Luckily it was a double-breasted jacket so the coffee didn't go through to my shirt, nor was it hot enough to do any damage. Also fortuitously, it was great coffee and it smelled really good. Why haven't they invented any coffee-flavoured colognes? Why should vanilla have the field all to itself? I'm not so sure others share my enthuasiasm for coffee cologne though. Between the din and the crowds and suddenly being sopping wet, I just wanted to escape.

Which is a shame, because ordinarily the best parties are the ones where you know no one - or next to no one. Better luck next time. Invite me to your party - I just might show up.

Portraiture

Having finally arranged to get CBC's news digest emailed to me every morning (it's been a while since I've been able to do that, not sure if it's been technical issues with the old laptop or whether it was a problem with www.cbc.ca), I was surprised to read of the controversy surrounding Annie Leibovitz's new photographic portrait of the Queen.

The controversy is peculiar. As I understand it, there are two major issues being dealt with here. The first (and easiest to explain), is that due to our very mixed responses to the idea of the monarchy in the 21st Century, there is bound to be mixed response. Americans are simultaneously defiant of and awed by the whole concept of a monarchy, given their revolutionary past and their rejection of parliamentary democracy. Canadians, as former colonials who didn't have to stage a revolution in order to become a country, can be fawningly sentimental about royals. The Brits' attitude can be summed up by saying, "It's fine for ME to slag my mother - the minute you begin to criticise her, you're in big trouble." [Nod to British spelling there.]

The second issue is a little more subtle and harder to explain. In fact, it seems like a peculiarly Canadian sort of response to the portrait, and that's what makes it puzzling, since there's really no Canadian involvement here. But here in Canada we have a tendency not to revere our most famous offspring, but instead to start chipping away at them for precisely the things we loved most about them when their careers first took off. Love him or hate him, Liberal or Reform/Tory, no one can deny that Lester B. Pearson and Pierre Elliott Trudeau raised Canada's profile globally and transformed us from a nation (in the world's minds) of lumberjacks, fishermen and miners into a country with an idea or two about how to achieve peace in our time, potential thought leaders who would rather negotiate than wage war. But even the most diehard Liberals found Trudeau's imposition of the War Measures Act hard to swallow - and when he finally ended his long bachelorhood we didn't hesitate to criticize his choice of wife on a whole host of fronts.

So the criticism of the Leibovitz portrait of the Queen centres around the fact that it is not sufficiently "edgy" and that it is "unlike" her portraits of John Lennon and Whoopi Goldberg and Clint Eastwood and Demi Moore. It is "less staged by Leibovitz" basically. Aside from the unlikeliness of even Leibovitz being able to persuade the Queen to pose naked in bed with a clothed Prince Philip, in a milk bath, tied up, or naked and hugely pregnant, this criticism misses the mark entirely. This portrait was a commission, and a highly prestigious one: an official portrait of the best known and most influential reigning monarch in the Western world. It wasn't a cover for Rolling Stone or Vanity Fair of an actor of musician who by virtue of his or her artistic talent had become famous, regardless of origin. And the Queen has a vested interest in how she is represented to the world. By virtue of her birth, she has always known that she would have 15 minutes of anonymity rather than 15 minutes of fame.



Photo by Annie Leibovitz, courtesy Contact Press/NB Pictures

For a better view of the portrait, see this link - it just seemed stupid to blog about a portrait without actually reproducing it. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/6614187.stm

I think this is quite an amazing portrait. The fact that the subject is not gazing at the photographer, but at something else in the room, is an interesting choice under the circumstances, reflective of trends in portraiture, but still an interesting choice for an official portrait. Her expression is contemplative, musing, contained...and regal. It seems totally appropriate for a monarch who has reigned for more than half a century and has witnessed some of the most turbulent events and phenomenal changes the world has ever seen. There are several other interesting things about this portrait. The fact that the French doors are open, admitting a view of a sky that can only be called ominous, is significant. And then there's the fact that the subject is really quite tiny in the scale of the portrait - the urn in the foreground actually occupies more of the space in the portrait than the Queen's entire body. Why choose to photograph her seated, and from such a distance? I'd suggest this is what discussion of the portrait should centre on, rather than on questions pertaining to the photographer's personal life and losses and the influence of Susan Sontag on her life and work.

And as part of a compare and contrast exercise, take a look at the last commissioned painting of the Queen, by Lucian Freud in 2001. While I haven't researched the response to this painting thoroughly, it strikes me as odd that no one noticed it appears to be a portrait not of Queen Elizabeth II, but rather of Prince Philip wearing a wig and crown. Or is it just me?



The Royal Collection © Lucian Freud

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/1723071.stm

Update: for a different, pro-Freud point of view, see this article:

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601088&sid=aqeLAkuYdldw&refer=muse

The dark side of life (and blogging)

Hotel Empress on East Pender copyright Ruth Seeley 2006

As with any addiction, this article suggests that if you no longer have time to watch a movie (or your child take his/her first step), you're probably blogging too much. Personally, I've never been all that ambitious about blogging - if I didn't enjoy it, I wouldn't do it.



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Is nothing sacred? I mean, original?

Just a quick note to say I had no idea I'd borrowed my blog title from Primo Levi, whose book I haven't read. Technically, of course, the book was written as Se non ora, quando? (in 1982). Not sure when it was translated into English as If Not Now, When?

I don't think, from what I read about it on Wikipedia, that he meant the same thing as I did by asking the question. For me, it occurred to me when I was 40ish and was first willing to admit to being middle aged (I don't aspire to living to 100), that the fundamental question of middle age is precisely that: If not now, when? If I really want to do this and I haven't yet done it, when am I going to get around to it? From what I've read in the new specialty women's magazines for the menopausal, such as More, the question occurs to a lot of people at this stage of life. I read a hilarious article at the hairdresser's a couple of years ago about crossing things off one's 'to do' list - regardless of whether one had done them or not. One woman let herself off the hook on the bungie jumping front because she wasn't willing to risk spraining an ankle.

Anyway, my posthumous apologies to Primo Levi. The title of this blog was not intended to be any sort of homage, reference, or mockery of him, his work, or his life. Just another case of synchronicity, great minds thinking alike, fools seldom differing....

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/If_Not_Now%2C_When%3F

Read 'em and Weep - Scott Butki on books we should have loved

Great summary of the most over-hyped books in recent(ish) memory - including Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, Life of Pi, and (snort) The Celestine Prophecy.

I 'dugg' an article for the first time (is dugg the past tense of 'digg'?) and couldn't find an appropriate category so filed it under "Science - Space." That should get some chins wagging. (See article below; digg tried to insist it had already been dugg - they're having difficulty distinguishing between "Read IT and Weep" and "Read 'Em and Weep" obviously.)

The article was from Blogcritics - another first - hadn't seen that site before. Where have I been? Reading books, I guess. Speaking of reading: Geraldine Brooks' March was quite wonderful - weakened somewhat in the last third by her decision to suddenly present Mrs. March as the narrator, when the first two thirds of the novel were all told from Mr. March's point of view. Based on Louisa May Alcott's father rather than her husband (Little Women was fairly autobiographical apparently), I was astonished to discover her dad had 'invented' recess. Children everywhere need to know this. And Greg Hollinghead's Bedlam was quite wonderful too, a fictional account of tea merchant James Tilly Matthews, confined to a notorious lunatic asylum in the late 18th, early 19th centuries for his attempts to prevent war between France and England shortly after the French Revolution.

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Conspicuous consumption versus sustainability

Sun flare on Burrard Street, originally uploaded by The River Thief. Copyright Ruth Seeley

If my last post sounded rather peevish, I apologize. There's no doubt I've benefited greatly from technological innovations. Unlike a British friend of mine who told me he was the only doctor in his entire London hospital who still uses a paper datebook and who has had to be talked through using phone cards (his response to the blog was, "Bloody Hell, how did you do THAT, Ruth?"), I'm not a Luddite. Honest. In fact, it's doubtful I would ever have started taking photographs if I hadn't waited till digital cameras were relatively affordable (and more important, relatively easy to use). My first experiments with a complicated digital camera were less than salubrious (of course it was midnight and there was no manual).

It's when the technology you rely on suddenly doesn't work that I get exercised. I went to high school with Giles Slade, author of Made to Break. I haven't yet read it, and I've read some criticism of some of the statements he makes and the research behind the book. It isn't enough, in my opinion, to discredit his fundamental premise. We're churning through stuff at a fast and furious rate. We've created a world of haves and have-nots that's delineated by computer and internet usage. At this point, you're considered a have-not if you're not running Windows Vista on your computer. My poor old laptop is five years old and in desperate need of not only a new keyboard but of more memory - not because of data files I've added in five years of ownership, but because the frequent updates to Windows XP, the system it came with, have meant there's no memory left to run anything but the operating system.

We still seem to have only the most rudimentary system of recycling computer goods to ensure they don't end up in landfills. Luckily there are enough people in my age group who are slow or reluctant adopters of technology that I don't think I need to worry about what to do with any of the spare bits and bobs of technology I end up with. I'm not buying at a very fast rate and I'm using the technology I purchase long past its "best by" date. When I'm done with it, it goes to a friend. My first home computer, a Mac LCII, served me well for three years, despite the sneers from my internet service provider from my very first call to them. I believe the word "antique" was used, as the machine was already three years old when I got it.

Anyway - you get my point. Western culture has evolved into one that venerates not just youth, but the shiny and the new at the expense of all else. It's strange to think that we don't really understand the concept of sustainability except in our own human physical terms. If we applied the economic concepts we've embraced (continuous rapid growth) to our persons, we'd all weigh 700 pounds by now and be unable to move. Is it because I'm not sufficiently well versed in economics that I just don't get this?