I have a thing for street posters. I’m often photographing these in the thin moments between changing walk signals. Band posters played a role in getting me interested in design when I was a teenager, though I don’t think I’ve ever had the opportunity to make one. Rarely do I even make it to the event. These are my favourites of the past couple of years.
Commentary follows each image.
This one for Iron and Wine reminds me of the crayon-layered images I made as a kid. And it might be made that way.
My family enjoyed one last traditional breakfast at the house in North Saanich and said goodbye. After at least 15 years in the family, the house first owned by my late grandmother has been sold. I felt at odds with reality — we’ll come back here in the summer and eat breakfast in the dining room and lunch in the yard, right? I had trouble believing that this meal we gathered for in this room, with the round, dark wood table with the blue fabric-backed chairs and tiffany lamp overhead, smelling a certain way and most definitely feeling a certain way, would be our last. I was more in tune with that feeling than ever.
I wondered for a long time why climate change deniers existed. Maybe, I thought, because the truth is scary and requires us to change our ways — not a comfortable request for a society so deeply anchored in business as usual. While it’s true that climate change is indeed frightening and changing ourselves can be met with resistance, the actual reason is that there is a handful of very wealthy people who stand to lose a lot of money from the societal shift required to prevent catastrophic climate change. The rest of us, well, what we stand to lose by doing nothing can’t be measured in dollars.
On the weekend I attended a vegetable gardening workshop at my local urban farm, hosted by the lively farmer, Gavin. It was an informative session on seed starting during which I figured out why my tomato seeds hadn’t germinated. He took the small group of us on a brief tour afterward and had funny (if not sometimes tragic) stories to tell about the arugula (sown somewhat erratically by a teenager and now bursting with leaves under the tent) and disappearing carrots (slugs are voracious). It’s only half an acre — tiny compared to UBC Farm‘s 60 acres. But my hope is that this small model of local, urban agriculture will get people excited to grow more food in their backyards, or on their balconies, and support future urban agriculture projects in the community.
Reading in the square against a backdrop of multilingual chatter, medical school students practising multi-syllabic terminology, and the rhythm of water flowing down the stepped landscaping.
A distant airplane, the screech of tires and engine rumble, bicycle clicking.
The warm air is punctuated by a breeze,
pushing,
retreating suddenly,
twirling then releasing my long hair.
Flowers and leaves not here last week flourish next to trees just budding out.
British Columbians are waging a battle against two pipelines and a prospective future that puts at risk much of what we hold dear. There is a huge opportunity in this crisis, however, to supercharge our people power and fight not just for our rights, the environment, and democracy in BC, but to impact the course of future energy use in Canada and abroad.
Especially with the upcoming provincial election, the time is now to get British Columbians talking seriously about a clean energy direction for the future that helps us avoid oil sands expansion and a six-degree increase in global average temperature.
To help facilitate that, an amazing panel of speakers will be heading the West Coast Oil Pipeline Summit and gala dinner on April 19th. Amongst them, Mayor Gregor Robertson whose team at the City of Vancouver has been very outspoken against Kinder Morgan’s pipeline and tanker expansion plans; Tzeporah Berman, environmental activist; City of Burnaby Mayor Derek Corrigan; and Chief Justin George of the Tsleil-Waututh Nation in North Vancouver, who are directly across from the pipeline terminus at the Chevron refinery in Burnaby.
Say yes to beautiful BC. Say no to Kinder Morgan and oil sands expansion.
In the fall, I planted four garlic cloves and crossed my fingers. The soil had been used already for tomato plants and I didn’t have much compost left, so I added coffee grounds and watered them occasionally when I remembered. Talk about neglect. To my utter delight, I recently noticed two of them growing and wondered if the other two — which are closer to the wall where they’d receive less of any rainfall that made it that far — would appear. Sure enough, there they are!
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