I’ve managed to stuff my weekend to the brim with various events, from Juno festivities to enviro-political discussions, and a possible, long-overdue trip to the market.
Here’s what’s going on!
In 10 hours, Avaaz’s new petition asking the federal government to support the CBC has garnered over 25,000 signatures. Please sign the petition and pass it on to your friends!
The Winter Farmer’s Market is on again at the WISE Hall (1882 Adanac St. in East Van) from 10 am – 2pm. Well, technically it’s spring now, so there are some fresh surprises:
Good-bye winter blues (and flus!) — spring has sprung at the Vancouver Farmers Market and what better way to celebrate than with the arrival of spring crops. Brian Patterson of Shalefield Gardens will have several varieties of sprouts including Broccoli, Mustard and Red Radish, as well he will have Micro Greens, Jerusalem Artichokes, Strawberry plants, and Nettle, oh my!
Still fighting off that winter cold? Don’t forget to pick up some garlic, which Brian says his customers are most excited about. His favourite recipe? Garlic broth soup, with celery, carrot, and nettle. Don’t forget to also visit Langley Organic Growers, for their selection of spring greens, including Baby Kale, Arugula, and Mustard Greens. Join us at the Market for this delicious start to spring, but get there early if you want the greens! — Facebook event page
SFU Surrey Campus (at Surrey Central Skytrain), Rm 5140, 13450 – 102 Avenue, Surrey.
1 – 4pm. Free, pre-registration is not required.
The Tar Sands megaproject in Alberta has been described as the most environmentally destructive project ever built. But many people don’t know about the pivotal role proposed BC projects could have in facilitating tar sands expansion and fueling demand for tar sands oil.
Join us for a short video, presentation and discussion on the ways tar sands plans depend on proposed projects in BC. The presentations will focus on the Tar Sands, the Proposed Enbridge Gateway Pipeline, and the Gateway freeway and port expansion schemes.
Presenters:
Harjap Grewal — Council of Canadians: The Gateway and other proposed tar sands pipelines.
Eric Doherty — Livable Region Coalition: The Gateway freeway and port expansion proposals.
Jessie Schwarz — Greenpeace: The environmental and social impacts of the tar sands.
A reminder that it’s Earth Hour from 8:30 – 9:30 pm (local time). Granville Magazine lists 21 ways to spend Earth Hour sans power. I will be observing it at a large party with candles for each person, which should be lovely! I think I missed it last year so this may be my first one. I enjoyed the Globe and Mail’s article about getting creative for Earth Hour.
Continue reading More events: Save the CBC, Earth Hour, local food, tar sands talk, and more »
Last night I finally attended my first Philosopher’s Cafe, on the topic “Sustainability—is it compatible with free markets?” It was a good discussion and, despite us all being pro-sustainability, we still differed on enough views to promote some argument. I’m an idealist but used my realist friends’ perspectives to offer some critique. (Sorry that you weren’t there!) I won’t make it to the next one at that location, because there is one that interests me even more in New Westminster: “The ethics of the hundred mile diet” is on April 15 at Heritage Grill, 7pm. A discussion on “GMOs: The complex difficulties of Frankenfood” happens there June 17… but that’s a ways off!
Here are a couple upcoming FREE events for folks interested in sustainability and social media.
Audacious Visions for Vancouver
Friday, March 20 (tomorrow!)
Pacifica Photography Studio, 821 Powell St, Vancouver
“A World Cafe style dialogue to discuss the future of Vancouver. How do we make Vancouver the greenest city in the world by 2020? Come and contribute your thoughts in an afternoon of creativity and audacious thinking. A collaboration of the SFU Undergraduate Semester in Dialogue and the City of Vancouver’s Greenest City Action Team.” Details: audaciousvancouver.com
Register online for the first portion beginning at 1pm, or come down at 6pm for some casual conversation.
Vancouver Net Tuesdays – Remixing the Web for Social Change!
Net Tuesday is a regular gathering of bloggers, social media folks, designers, non-profits and other folks interested in the role of the web for social and environmental change. It’s been going on in Vancouver for about a year.
Tuesday, March 24, 2009
5:30pm – 7:30pm
WorkSpace, #400-21 Water St, Vancouver
Presenters (confirmed thus far):
Raul Pacheco – Social Media in Sustainability and Public Policy
Grace Carter – ChipsNotDeadYet.com (BC Children’s Hospital Social Media Case Study)
Doug van Spronsen – MakeGood.com
Steve Williams – Data for Good
Joe Solomon – The future of the Green Web — Joe is the Net Tuesday organizer
Host/MC is Darren Barefoot. Yay!
More details on Facebook or MeetUp.com
I’ve been working for awhile on giving my blog design a facelift. As tends to happen with design projects that are drawn out at length (as is the case when it’s not my full-time work), I know more at the end than I did at the beginning. I mean, yeah, that’s supposed to happen, naturally, with any project, but these ones that would otherwise be condensed into a short time frame take place over the course of months that are packed with learning that occurs outside their context. That learning tends to fall into either design (look at how much better I’ve become!) or programming (look at what I’ve learned how to do!). Sometimes it’s outside influences like new technology that didn’t exist before, or of which I did not know. Well, this time around, it’s not so much my visual skills or my technological skills, but my thinking that has changed and grown since I embarked on this miniature quest. And it’s quite, quite recent.
Blogs and websites are constantly evolving. As a result one can probably expect users to be evolving too — in fact, with the presence of RSS readers, we hardly need spend time on people’s blogs in our web browsers save to comment. User behaviour changes with technology. This is clear. So when I have a model for my blog that is almost 3 years old, I have to wonder… what is still relevant? What features do users actually use and how do they find information?
I googled this already but Google help me I didn’t find an answer. That, therefore, is where you come in. The question I pose you is: how do you use blogs? When you arrive at a post, what helps you move on to another post (assuming you enjoyed the content or found it helpful)? How do you navigate the information — through tag clouds, categories, recent comments? Are lists overwhelming or redundant?
Your feedback will help me determine what features are of most use to you when you read my blog. Thanks in advance for helping me out.
A side note: in its next incarnation, I expect comments to appear immediately on thirteen cent pinball. Hooray! The facelift is a modernization, rather than a redesign, so the overall visual “flavour” of the blog, if you will, shall remain the same.
The topic is grim, but my friend Paul Hillsdon got a large inside page photo and full-page article in the Province on the rally/gathering he and Trevor Loke have organized in Surrey this Sunday. (1 p.m. at the Central City Plaza, 13450 102nd Avenue, across from Surrey Central SkyTrain station.) We’re taking a stand together against gang violence. More info in the article.
Other friends have had letters in the Province published recently, and finally it’s my turn to get some ink—not in the Province, but in what apparently is even more important: the Surrey Leader. My letter is copied below in the format in which it was published.
In related articles, there’s a link to a Surrey Leader article about Paul, which I had not noticed before!
Continue reading Press coverage! »
The David Suzuki Foundation is making green sexy this Valentine’s Day with a series of Valetine e-cards. The one above is my personal favourite, but there are two others to choose from. They’re a little cheeky and should make your significant other, if not your mother, laugh. Save some paper this year and spread a little cheer and love to people who may not normally get a Valentine card from you. Enjoy!
Happy Valentine’s Day!
If you haven’t got a camera, paint; if you cannot paint, write.
The weekend before last, I went to the park two days in a row. On the Saturday it was achingly cold, but I didn’t notice til I’d been outside at length. Regretting not bringing a camera, I put the view to memory and wished I could paint.
The fog was still on its extended visit; however, it had broken away from the shore and hovered, almost still, above the water, who knows how close to the other shore. As the sun crawled away behind trees and the horizon, it glowed against a ship’s bow; reflected off Belcarra’s houses and the power station up the Arm; coloured the fog. The water deemed itself a deep blue with hints of grey and purple, and as it met the fog a strong but organic line formed between the two, harmoniously, one disappearing into the other. And as the colour noticeably became fog, it moved from blue into a thick and solid but desaturated purple, then upward increasingly more pastel until it touched the sky in wisps and rolls. Behind it the sky was a pale yellow, white, eventually blue somewhere above. The fog stood out from it, blended into it, touched it and made the dark, jagged slopes in the distance disappear.
Continue reading Silhouettes tell stories »
Last Monday’s anti-Gateway demonstration in Surrey; I’m in there somewhere! Photo from GatewaySucks.org
Stephen Rees’s blog has been bursting with exciting news lately, nearly every single post. When I say exciting, I don’t necessarily mean good, but the headlines do indicate multiple turning points in a potentially positive direction in what has so far been a steadfast plot on the part of our provincial and even federal government to proceed with Gateway.* At a time when gas prices have begun to increase once more, international shipping is declining, and peak oil is on the horizon, our provincial and federal governments are teaming up to build more roads and expand the port on the premise that it will create jobs. While I agree that creating jobs in British Columbia is of utmost importance, the economic benefits of redirecting funding toward building transit would more than double the number of jobs — and they would be local. That keeps BC money in BC. In fact, a study by the Canadian Urban Transit Association found that three times as many jobs are created in public transit as highways. Public transit encourages smart growth, reduces congestion and pollution (thereby making a grand step toward the Province’s 33% reduction in GHG goal), and has minimal environmental impacts.
Want to help steer the government away from highway jobs and construction to green jobs and transit, all across Canada? Here are some petitions and events happening right now:
PETITIONS
– Halt the Gateway Project
– Rail for the Valley: bring back passenger rail now
WRITE TO OUR POLITICIANS/MEDIA
– A Green Economy Makes Cents:
“On January 27, our federal government will introduce a new budget and invest billions of your tax dollars on stimulating the Canadian economy. Let’s make sure that as much of the stimulus package as possible is green.” Send a message to Finance Minister Jim Flaherty asking the government to invest in green jobs and green infrastructure. (David Suzuki Foundation)
Read my letter. (Americans can use the Wilderness Society’s page to send a letter to Congress on the same issue.)
Continue reading Changing the course of the city and country: green jobs and transit now! »
You may have noticed I really like adjectives. They’re useful, and today they’re piling up in abundance: magnificent, incredible, beautiful, bright, amazing, powerful, crunchy, quiet.
This is the most magnificent sight I’ve ever seen. In my twenty years of living here I’ve never witnessed such detail of the view across the water. Somehow the snow and sunlight bring out every branch, roofline and curve of the shore.
Continue reading Happy Holidays / I’ve never seen anything so magnificent »
Sunset snow
This past week it has been snowing in Vancouver, which brings some joy and others frustration. I’m in the first camp. My dear colleague has escaped the harsh and unusual cold by escaping to Mexico; meanwhile I have no desire but to stay here and enjoy it! (I did not inherit my grandmother’s snowbird tendencies.) The wind chill is expected to be, well, bone-chilling and when the wind and cold sweep through and suck away all the warmth it is difficult to get it back. So, anyone want to go Christmas shopping with a (*dreadful gulp*) vehicle? I need some warm clothing! Vancouverites aren’t prepared for this!
Continue reading Love in winter and the promise of snow »
