The beauty of blogging is that it allows for shameless self-promotion. And that is exactly what this entry is all about…me.

I wrote advertising for a living, for what seemed to be an eternity. When I retired, I decided to write for myself. Pure indulgence, I know. But, I never believed it would amount to anything. Well, to my surprise it has. Not in dollars and cents, but in the satisfaction and surprise of seeing some of my short stories published.

My first effort took second prize in the local paper and earned me $50.00. Then I entered the Alice Munro Literary Festival Short Story Contest…long title, impressive name. That story earned third prize and another $50.00.

Now, I realize I am not a new nova in the writing universe. It is sufficient, though, for me to dabble on my Mac Book and see what comes out. I write for myself to prove that I can still think…to preserve the ever-diminishing reserves of grey matter they say declines with age. Nobody else.

More often than not, the stories are built on personal experiences. I call it ‘Fictionalized Reality.’ That may sound like B.S., but it works for me. I will never write my life story. I will probably never write a novel (although I’ve got 144 pages of something or other at the moment). And I keep sending my stuff off, wondering how long it will take for the next rejection or acceptance. All of this keeps me off the streets and out of N’s hair.

Recently, I savored the ultimate writer’s moment…The Reading! The first story I wrote in retirement was accepted in the Dorothy Shoemaker Literary Awards Contest, through the Kitchener Public Library. The Prose Section was judged by an award winning author, Eric Walters, and my story, ‘The Willow’, was published in their magazine, The Changing Image.

Mr. Walters introduced me and told the audience that, “Mr. N has a way with words.” As he continued to expound positively about the piece, I started to feel nervous. 

“Who? Me?” I thought.

I blushed. Sweat broke out on my brow and my mouth went dry. Here was a proven writer saying nice things about something I had written. Then I found myself on stage, staring down at my pages of words and looking up at the audience, afraid to open my mouth.

“You’re going to read your story in public,” I told myself. “How about that!”

So, I did. And you know I’d really like to do it again.

My first public reading as a writer.

If you would like to read what got me to my first public performance as an author, send me a note through the COMMENT section and I’ll email you the file.

And, thanks for the interest.

My schedule for the next two weeks:

Wednesday, November 12, 2008:

Social Innovation Dialogues: Fall 2008

Systems Change: Thinking Like a Movement with Frances Westley & Paul Born

Thursday, November 13, 2008:

Full-day workshop on Systems Change: Thinking Like a Movement

Based on the book Getting to Maybe: How the World is Changed facilitated by Frances Westley and Paul Born

Friday, November 14, 2008 – Sunday, November 16, 2008

2nd Annual Conference on Social Entrepreneurship

presented by the Laurel Centre for Social Entrepreneurship

Monday, November 17, 2008

Social Entrepreneurship Summit

hosted by MaRS, SiG@MaRS, Entrepreneurship Week Canada

Tuesday, November 18, 2008

Social Finance Forum

hosted by Causeway, MaRS, SiG@MaRS, Entrepreneurship Week Canada

Wednesday, November 19, 2008

Leadership Summit

hosted by Impact

I plan on writing blog posts for each conference session/workshop I attend, as well as profiling any interesting people/organizations I come across.

Watch this space for more details!

The SiG@Waterloo E-Newsletter came out yesterday, and features the presentation by Michael Quinn Patton on Measuring Social Impact, which will take place later today at 430pm at the Kitchener Public Library.

Link here:

The Record coverage of the Senator Kirby talk on Mental Illness, Sep 23 2008:

“Even people in the health care professions are inclined to have the same negative opinions of someone with a mental illness as the general public,” said Kirby, the retired Liberal senator who, in March 2007, was appointed by the federal Conservatives to be chair of the new Mental Health Commission of Canada.

Speaking to a crowd at the Kitchener Public Library last night, Kirby said not much has improved in the last 50 years when it comes to treating the mentally ill.

Yet there are economic reasons to make changes. Mental illness costs Ontario as much as $17 billion a year in lost productivity, he said. A full half of all employee sick leaves are related to mental illness.

And consider that one in five Canadians will suffer some sort of mental illness. Or that researchers have established that mental illness can cause physical illness, and vice-versa.

Despite this enormous toll, the vast majority of care for the mentally ill is not handled by hospitals or doctors — it’s done by families, peer groups and clinical psychologists, who don’t receive any taxpayer money for the work.

Read more here

Who hasn’t heard of the 100-mile diet, the eating regime that encourages consuming a diet of foods grown within a 100-mile (or 160 km) radius of where one lives?

This “diet” has recently been made popular by Alisa Smith and J.B. MacKinnon who lived the 100-mile diet for a year in Vancouver, then documented their experience in a book appropriately titled The 100-Mile Diet (Random House, 2007). There is also a blog, www.100milediet.org, which provides inspiration and recipes for eating locally.

Smith and MacKinnon will be visiting Kitchener on September 17 to talk about their book and their experience buying and eating locally. (More details follow.)

Eating close to the land – choosing to eat local foods as they come into season – is hardly a new way of thinking about shopping, cooking and eating food. In fact, this is the philosophy by which much of the world has eaten for a long time. In the global village we live in, where cultures readily mix and assimilate, travel is relatively easy (although it used to be a little cheaper!), and transport systems have made it possible to bring in foods from far-away places, it has become possible, in fact the norm, for at least some of the world’s population to eat a stunning variety of foods from around the globe. Although this broadens the options at meal time, it also means many of us have become quite removed from those who produce our food and the source of food in its original state. Sadly, if questioned as to where a particular food comes from (e.g. milk, beef), some of us would respond with a quizzical stare and uncertainty. “Uh…the store?” (It’s true. I’ve seen it happen.)

While Smith and MacKinnon can and should take much credit for popularizing the notion of eating locally, we shouldn’t overlook the many food/land/agriculture/environment-conscious individuals who have purchased, cooked and eaten in this manner long before it became fashionable. This short list is a sampling of some of those people:

• California-based Alice Waters and Toronto’s Jamie Kennedy are chefs who have promoted local dining in their restaurants for many years.
• Food writers Anita Stewart and Elizabeth Baird are among the many cookbook authors and magazine writers who, for years, have promoted the joys of eating the rich bounty of foods produced close to home.
• In 1995, my friend and fellow home economist Pat Hughes published Savour the Seasons, a cookbook written with her colleague Eleanor Cameron. It contained menus and recipes that reflected foods available seasonally. There are a host of similar cookbooks on bookstore shelves these days.
• There are many consumers who consistently shop at their local farmers’ market or purchase locally grown foods at their neighbourhood grocery store, grow vegetables in their garden (freezing or canning the surplus), and consciously attempt to eat according to the seasons.

I’m all for eating locally grown and produced foods as much as possible. I will admit, however, that I couldn’t live only on foods grown within 100 miles of Kitchener. There would be too many favourite foods I’d miss eating – bananas, mangoes, chocolate, oranges and olives, to name a few. But there are important benefits to buying Ontario-grown or produced foods as often as possible and enjoying foods as they come into season.

Here are a few reasons to eat locally. (You’ll find 13 reasons to eat locally at www.100milediet.org.)

1. It helps support the local economy and our Ontario farmers.
2. The food you consume will not have travelled a long distance and therefore should be fresh and flavourful.
3. The fewer miles food has to travel, the lower the fuel costs and the less strain there is on the environment.

I’m fortunate that Kitchener-Waterloo is a small enough community that within minutes I can be beyond city borders and into the country where farm land is plentiful. It is easy to enjoy what rural and urban lifestyles have to offer, including the smell of manure that has wafted into our neighbourhood several times in the past few weeks. I try to consider the aroma a reminder that my agricultural cousins are busy doing their job to ensure we all have food on our tables.

I truly hope the “eat local” movement is not a passing trend. In an article written by Julia Aitken in the Toronto Star on June 18, 2008, manager Alison Fryer of The Cookbook Store in Toronto included the 100-mile diet as one of the top 10 worst trends she has witnessed in her 25 years selling cookbooks. Just one person’s opinion, of course!

If you live in Waterloo Region and would like to meet Smith and MacKinnon, they will be in our area on September 17 for One Book One Community events. You will find them at Your Kitchener Market from 10 a.m. to 10:30 a.m. where they will be signing copies of The 100-Mile Diet. There will be a 100-Mile Mini Market at the market that day as well. Copies of the The 100-Mile Diet will be for sale along with produce grown within 100 miles of the market. Exhibits will showcase the benefits of eating locally produced food.

Smith and MacKinnon will be reading from their book at 7 p.m. on September 17 at the Kitchener Public Library.

I know that I have had minimal activity on this blog the past couple of weeks, but now that all logistical details for the Social Innovation Dialogues: Fall 2008 have been taken care of, I am now in full marketing mode in trying to get the word out to interested people/organizations in the Waterloo Region that would be interested in hearing Al Etmanski (SiG fellow, Ashoka fellow) and Senator Michael Kirby (Chair of the Mental Health Commission of Canada) speak on the issue of mental health and society, albeit, from two different perspectives.

Al speaks on September 17, and Senator Kirby speaks on September 23; both events take place at the Kitchener Public Library, Main Library located on 85 Queen Street North, Kitchener, ON.

Also, the second issue of our e-newsletter came out today, with more information on our Social Innovation Dialogues, as well as the Case Writing Workshop that SiG@Waterloo hosted earlier last week for our national partners. We have also provided a link to a bibliography that was prepared for the McGill Dupont Social Innovation Initiative in 2003: Social Innovation: An Exploration of the Literature, in case you’re interested in a ‘recommended readings’ list on the topic of social innovation.

You can sign up for our e-newsletter here (under the heading E-Newsletter), in order to keep posted on whats going on with SiG@Waterloo. It definitely looks set to be a busy fall!

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SiG@Waterloo: September 2008 Events

430pm-6pm – Wednesday, September 17, 2008

Al Etmanski: Engaging Vulnerable Populations to Strengthen our Communities

Al Etmanski is the President and co-founder of the PLAN (Planned Lifetime Advocacy Network) Institute for Caring and Citizenship. PLAN has worked to create social networks across Canada, to advocate for those with disabilities and their families and to push for policy and regulatory reform work that will help families to secure their relative’s future.

730pm-9pm – Tuesday, September 23, 2008

Senator Michael Kirby: Social Innovation and Mental Health

Senator Kirby, Chair of the Mental Health Commission of Canada, will be speaking about the need for social innovation when striving to change perceptions and attitudes about mental health and mental illness amongst the general public, in policy circles as well as within the Canadian health care system itself.