Hello again everyone,

As we draw ever nearer the end of 2009, I wanted to let you know about the upcoming office closure.  Our office will close at noon (local time) on Thursday, December 24th and will re-open for regular business on Monday, January 4th 2010.

During the holiday break, there will be nobody at the office to answer emails or phone calls, so if you do leave a message or email for us here between those two dates, please note that it may take a couple days for us to get back to you.

In the meantime, I want to wish everyone out there a very safe and happy holiday season!!  All the best for the rest of ‘09 and let’s all have a fantastic 2010!!!

Cheers,

Kevin du Manoir
Admission Coordinator

Often when we talk about how food invokes memories we speak very generally, without specific items and stories in mind. But do you ever find that some dishes and drinks impart a physical nostalgia so strong it takes you right back to that place – much like certain songs cause us to replay past events almost tangibly?

Today I tucked a box of Canada’s own Mighty Leaf Vanilla Bean into my shopping bag. Have you had these teas? They’re really splendid. The vanilla in particular has such a gentle and sweet nose –  just like a freshly scraped bean! It’s not cloying and fake like most vanilla teas I’ve steeped.

(As an aside: I’m resolving this new year to walk into a Whole Foods without buying tea. It’s become 2009’s psychological impossibility. Worse addictions exist, but really! I lack restraint around leafy aromatic things.)

Through fourth year university, I almost-lived in a little tea shop on campus called The Tea Room. It was run by our engineers and was a cozy little space that was diligent about keeping a small environmental impact – from completely biodegradable products, to sortable waste receptacles, to a vermi-composter and energy monitor in the shop. They exclusively served Mighty Leaf tea and I drank so much Vanilla Bean that winter.

This afternoon, I returned to the office after lunch and brewed a cup from my new treasure box, and lo – one entire winter right under my skin. It was palpable: the bone-chilling walk from my Princess Street home, the slushy underpath to the limestone building, how nice it felt to strip off layers of parka and mittens and sink into a mug of goodness alongside a hefty dose of theory. Tea Room had the nicest mugs – giant like latte bowls with a sturdy handle, but made of glass so you could perfectly steep the tea. The early-morning shift behind the counter would always gift me a hot water top-up as I extended my mug for just one more hour of reading.

I ached a little, today, remembering those long mornings, afternoons, nights. We romanticize things and forget the long hours of slogging away, writing just one more paper, trying – failing – to figure out what on earth a certain philosopher was trying to say. The weeks of choosing pretty much any activity over sleep, sometimes not by choice. Student life isn’t glamorous and I did my share of sobbing into my mom’s ear over four years.

But so much about that time was right. The flexible schedule and sun-drenched naps. The easy library shifts where I’d help book-seekers find material for papers soon due.  The hummus-cucumber-tomato-sprout-on-pumpernickel sandwiches (not toasted, please) that fueled me through eight exam seasons. The overwhelming feeling of promise of a 6:30pm walk to campus, counting my fortune that I would for three hours sit around a table to discuss the finer points of things that happen only in the clouds.

There’s something magical in these forgotten places and what they become in our minds. And I ruminate on this very moment  - how I might find it one day, over a cup of tea.

[photo via]

Merry Christmas from George!

I spent the past year back in college, after 25 years away, in order to get a piece of paper that I seemed to need in order to get a decent job in Kingston, even though I had almost 25 years of administrative office experience. Thankfully, with my new Medical Office Administration Diploma (Honours) in hand, I landed a very good part-time job in September at Queen’s University in the Department of Pediatrics, Division of Medical Genetics, and work for two of the nicest, coolest, young clinical geneticists you could ever hope to meet. I am so fortunate to work with all the great people who run Medical Genetics at 20 Barrie Street and pray for a lengthy association with everyone there.

I know that for many of you, 2009 was a veritable shit storm. I personally know quite a few people who struggled with depression, personal loss and illness this past year and to you, I want to say 2010 WILL be better! It will be our year to celebrate the gods and goddesses within us. Sometimes life throws way too much crap at us and I hope that over the holidays we can take the time to reflect and to give thanks for the things in our life that are indeed positive. I know that it’s time for me to re-read The Secret and to reinforce the rules that apply to the Law of Attraction in my own life, and maybe you will too. We deserve to be happy and I truly believe that the Universe wants us to be happy. We just have to focus on the positive, live in the present moment, and be grateful for the little things of beauty that surround us and that we can see if we just take the time to look.

To my single women friends, my wish for us is that we finally meet the perfect person to share our lives with in 2010. There is no doubt about the fact that when we are in love, the whole world looks beautiful, and the hope and faith in our hearts shines as bright as the Star of Bethlehem. In the meantime, I pass along this Christmas wish from the divine George Clooney and hope that wherever you are, you are smiling.

Love & light,
Christine xox

Remember how horrible the food was in residence?  Well it was provided by a company called Sodexho.  Guess what their latest travesty is?

Peruvian gastronomy will be included in Sodexo’s menus in the next two years, which will allow its  dissemination to 50 million people in the countries where this company is operating, according to Sodexo Peru’s General Manager, Alfredo Garcia.

This makes me sad.  Why does it make me sad?  Because Peruvian food is so good, and Sodexho could ruin toast.  Now 50 million people in the world are going to inexplicably hate Peruvian food for the rest of their lives, when they could be enjoying delicious lomo saltado.

The Women’s Empowerment Committee at Queen’s just tweeted this half an hour ago:

Overheard at @Queensu: (in line for #SciFormal) “Rape the girls in front of you to get them out of the way!” #overheard #rapeisafunnyjoke

Just because you had to wait in line for an hour and a half does not give you the right to joke about sexually assaulting someone. This is not rocket science, folks.

I worked at Sci Formal and although I didn’t overhear that doozie, it sure wasn’t the only predatory thing that happened. Man running straight into the women’s bathroom screaming abuse at his upset girlfriend? Check! To be fair, Sci Formal also seemed like a lot of fun and, as always, beautifully decorated – I don’t want to give Sci Formal a bad reputation – but shit, what was with the women-bashing?

The voice of AQE and the GBA

Sir Kenneth Bloomfield and Professor Tony Gallagher were interviewed on BBC Good Morning Ulster after the first of the five unregulated tests to determine entry into grammar school in Northern Ireland.

The problem rather than the solution?

What they failed to admit during the interview were a number of important points for parents.

The AQE developed their CEA tests and offered them as a common exam for all grammar schools. This was rejected by the Catholic Voluntary grammar schools who set up an arrangement with GL Assessment thereby creating the necessity for pupils to take up to five tests.

• Sir Kenneth Bloomfield’s school, Inst, is a member of the Governing Bodies Association, an organisation claiming to be the representative body for all voluntary grammar schools.  Sir Kenneth Bloomfield has been a spokesperson for the GBA on many occasions. Yet GBA schools operate two separate exam systems. Parents will naturally wonder which of the two testing systems is better since they cannot be the same.
•  Sir Kenneth told BBC listeners that negotiations were ongoing to agree one common test for next year. He neglected to inform listeners that members of the GBA were split deliberately in order that two tests were imposed upon the very pupils that AQE and GBA claim to be concerned about.

• Tony Gallagher cited his concern over those not entered for the entrance exams. For someone charged with responsibility for the School of Education at Queen’s University perhaps he should have considered the possibility that their parents were actually content with the choice for a secondary school. PACE have previously highlighted Professor Gallagher’s contradictory position on academic selection and in particular (s)election at 14, the latest phase in the plan to impose comprehensive schools in Northern Ireland.
• Tony Gallagher once again attempted to blame politicians for their failure to implement his advice to government. Perhaps the politicians should use their powers to examine Professor Gallagher to the same level of scrutiny as the unregulated tests given his anti-selection background and contradictory advice.

Just finished a meeting with a possible supervisor. Thought I had my thesis narrowed down and figured out, then realized that I’m back in the rough, maybe deeper than before. Either way, I was given an interesting path to go down for my master’s thesis.

What the meeting did was help me come away with my central research question, the question that will guide the purpose of my study. Very simply,

Does the media studies/media literacy training a pre-service teacher receives prepare them to teach media literacy/media studies in the classroom?

Whoa.

Under this idea, instead of interviewing some leaders in the field and then have questionnaires to pre-service teachers at a few faculties of education, I would hold focus groups with pre-service English teachers at three faculties of education in Ontario (Queen’s could be one because, well, it’s here and close by) and then use the information from the focus groups to come to some conclusion about the state of pre-service media literacy training. With this model, I could also interview faculty members about teaching pre-service teachers in the ways of media literacy, but I wonder what further information that could provide. Faculty could give an overview of how items are taught and how well students pick it up. Faculty could also provide a balance on how well the curriculum prepares pre-service media studies/English teachers.

Amazing that you can think you’re so close to figuring it all out and instead feel farther away than before.

If Ikea made an awning, this would be it:

This was a really fun picture to take.  But what drew me to it in the first place, was where I found it…

…attached to a beautiful limestone building in Queen’s.  I find it surprising that some historical society or such didn’t raise a fuss, whenever it was that this was installed.

Isn’t it weird looking from this angle?

]]> http://2wordjunkies.wordpress.com/2009/11/06/heart-mind-connection/ Fri, 06 Nov 2009 14:34:48 +0000 2wordjunkies http://2wordjunkies.wordpress.com/2009/11/06/heart-mind-connection/

November 5, 2009

I received a phone call from Naropa University yesterday. They’ve accepted me into their MFA program: I have until tomorrow to decide which school I will attend – Naropa or Queens. And while this is an excellent dilemma to have, it is a dilemma nonetheless.

I am not a decisive person. I’m a ponderer and a worrier. I once spent half an hour in the grocery store trying to decide which cookies to buy for my Girl Scout troop. Some liked chocolate, some liked vanilla and, at 10 years old, none liked compromise. Walking up and down the aisle, I contemplated possible fallout. What if I get chocolate and everyone accused me of favoritism (my daughter liked chocolate after all)? What if I got vanilla and the chocolate eaters hated them? Okay, I decided, I’ll buy both. But wait. Should I get soft or crunchy? Creamy middle or empty middle? Nabisco or Keebler? What about oatmeal cookies? Should I skip chocolate and vanilla and buy oatmeal? Wrapped as I was in a cocoon of self-doubt, I lost track of time. When an employee, concerned perhaps about the woman stalking about muttering in the cookie aisle, asked me if I was okay, I was perplexed. “I am,” I answered, wondering what had prompted the question. She laughed, saying, “Oh, good. You’ve been standing there so long I’d started to worry.” That’s when I checked my watch.

Before you think maybe I’m just crazy that way, let me explain. Cookies weren’t alone in my head that day. They were up there crawling around with all sorts of other sticky issues, like – how in the hell had I, the not very patient, craft-challenged mother of an only child, wound up leading a Girl Scout troop? In Scottsdale, Arizona, two thousand miles away from my home and my job and my friends. Living with a man to whom I’d been separated for five years. You see, I’m crazy that way! In my head, no issue is as simple as it at first seems, because I can’t keep the rest of me from getting involved. No sooner does my head speak up, “Buy the damn cookies and let’s go!” than my heart steps in, “But what if someone doesn’t like them?” Or more to the point, “What if all of the girls ostracize my child because I’m a lame, rotten-cookie-picking troop leader?” “Fine,” says Head! “Try to please everyone. Where does that get you? Late, that’s where. Late and suspicious.”

My heart is strong, but my head is louder.

I know in my heart what I want to do. I want to go to Naropa and meditate and write and practice yoga and watch performance art. I want to hike in the Rockies on my mornings off. Kayak on the weekends. Study Buddhism. I want to hang out with the hippies and recite Beat poetry. When I got the call from Queens two weeks ago, I was happy. Excited. When Naropa called – I wept. And yet, my head will not be still. I know next to nothing about Naropa. Nothing, at least that I haven’t read in books and on the web-site. I have friends who have gone to Queens. I’ve been there myself on several occasions. Walked the bricked pathways, admired the older buildings, enjoyed concerts in the Theater. Queens is cheaper. Queens is closer. Queens has instructors I’ve read and met, and an excellent alumni support system. All good points, supported by common sense and practicality.

But what attracted me to Naropa in the first place was a passage in Ram Dass’ book, “Be Here Now,” a fascinating treatise on a more enlightened, intuitive existence. Follow your heart, Dass instructs. Stretch your body and your mind. The only question is – can I listen?

Outdoor art installation at the Agnes Etherington Art Centre at Queen’s University.  Sort of brings to mind a previous post, Fall Vines.

Thank you, Queen’s University.  I couldn’t have asked for a more perfect location for your Physical Education Centre.

Somewhere in Queen’s, a light fixture and ornate crest above a doorway.

And yes, I played with Photoshop today – added saturation to the light. 

Lying sleepless in the middle of the night last week – I realized I had deleted an important part of my previous rant. In complaining about the fears that had suddenly overtaken me upon applying for MFA programs, I cut the following sentences: “Many people have been most supportive. I’ll blog about them next time, knowing full well I have already violated all rules of etiquette by whining first and being appreciative second.” I fully intended to paste that bit of wisdom back in (see the asterisk in the middle of the second paragraph?), but somehow did not. Just goes to show, being grateful was not on my agenda.

But today is, as they say, another day. In fact, the very next evening marked another day. That was when I received a call from Mr. Fred Lebron at Queens University, informing me I had been accepted for their MFA program. What a difference a few hours can make. The man had barely opened his mouth and I flipped from distraught to euphoric – trying valiantly to maintain some sort of outward composure while doing the living room shimmy.

After I hung up from Mr. Lebron, I emailed, Facebooked and texted everyone I could think of who would be even remotely interested. Which reminded me of how grateful I was. Not just for making it into grad school, but for my daughter – who has always been my most supportive (and brutally honest) fan. For my writing buddies in the Tuesday night critique group, who immediately met my fears with encouragement. For friends and family who offered support and encouragement. And for the opportunity to act upon a dream I’ve had since childhood.

I am indeed fortunate. And grateful.

I’m having a little trouble today with people.

On October 16:

1758  Noah Webster, US lexicographer, was born.

1841 Queen’s University was founded in Kingston, Ontario Canada.

1854 Irish writer Oscar Wilde was born.

Photograph taken in 1882 by Napoleon Sarony

1869 – Girton College, Cambridge was founded, England’s first residential college for women.

“Better is wisdom than weapons of war”

1875  Brigham Young University was founded in Provo, Utah.

1886 Israel’s first Prime Minister, – David Ben-Gurion, was born,

1890 Irish patriot  Michael Collins was born.

1903 French storyteller and co-crator of Babar, Cecile de Brunhoff, was born.

1916  Margaret Sanger founded Planned Parenthood by opening the first U.S. birth control clinic.

1922 English singer and song writer Max Bygraves was born.

1923 – The Walt Disney Company was founded by Walt Disney and his brother, Roy.

1925 English actress Angela Lansbury was born.

1936 Jean Batten landed in New Zealand at the end of the first flight from Britian.

 1936 English actor Peter Bowles was born.

1945 The Food and Agriculture Organization was founded in Quebec City.

1975  Rahima Banu, a 2-year old girl from the village of Kuralia in Bangladesh, was the last known person to be infected with naturally occurring smallpox.

1995 The Skye Bridge was opened.

Skye Bridge from Kyle of Lochalsh

Sourced from NZ History Online & Wikipedia.

So I’m sitting right now in a research seminar. A couple of the faculty are talking about their research and answering some grad student questions. This is almost like a big group therapy session. Nice to hear that concerns we have as students are shared by our profs. At the same time, I’m not really seeing why I should be here. Maybe it’s the fact the overhead projector is so loud, and I showed up late and am sitting in the back of the room and having problems hearing that I’m not really into this session.

Finished up paper due Monday; now just need someone else to have a look at it. I had to stop editing it and put it down. I’ll read it tomorrow. Still need to print up all the research papers that contributed to the lit review.

Back to the seminar. Panel discussion commencing.

Well, I think I’m still bursting from my Thanksgiving dinner for International students tonight, wow it was good!

Well, I’m four weeks into classes now which are getting more and more interesting as we go.  I had major hassles during the first two weeks they call ‘Add-and-Drop’ period, because here you’ve got to choose each individual course you want and make sure it fits into your timetable – nightmare for me but easy-peasy for a lot of my friends.  Luckily it all got sorted out in the end so if this happens to you I’d say DON’T PANICK!!  The exchange coordinator here is wonderfully helpful, as were my tutors back in Glasgow.

So, to cover a bit so far, I’ll start with the amazing-ness of FROSH WEEK!!!!  Now, imagine the fun rollercoaster of Fresher’s Week…got it?  Remember how full/exhausting/epic/amazing it was?  (or another week in your life that matches these descriptions) Ok, now, Frosh Week is like the ULTIMATE FRESHERS’ WEEK!!!  It lasted 4 days and we had to pay $125 which was well worth it.  We were divided into groups and each had some leaders who taught us different fun dances/moves to songs or chants (sounds incredibly silly, but was surprisingly fun).  Some of the activities included a barbeque, scavenger hunt, NEWTS Olympics (NEWTS is the name for exchange students), a paint fight where you keep your newly ‘decorated’ coverall, a mystery road trip to two cities (ours were Upper Canada Village and Ottawa), a concert with a famous band here ‘Our Lady Peace’, and a 3-course-dinner and club after.  It was such good fun and I met so many people I still keep in touch with, it’s kind of like another family in a way.  It was epic.

The workload is fairly different to Glasgow, it’s kind of constant with min-assessments every week or so, which count for a small percentage of your end-of-year grade.  I actually prefer this to Glasgow where the few assessments are weighted much heavier.  Anyway, I’ve been working a lot during the weekdays so I can enjoy the weekends or go out in the evenings, which has actually, miraculously, been working!  My classes are very interesting and in the weekends I’ve been to Wolfe Island, Seeder Island (Kayaking!), Toronto, Niagra Falls, and Montreal.  Wolfe Island is a 25minute free ferry ride away and Seeder Island is even closer.  Toronto is a 3-hour bus journey away and has quite a lot to see, my friends and I caught it on the night of Nuit Blanche – an annual arts festival – which was exceedingly lucky!  And Niagra Falls was a further 2-hour bus ride away (but we went a funny route) and was absolutely stunning, well worth the effort.  Montreal was just this thanksgiving weekend which was a different kind of incredible.  It’s weird taking a small bus journey to a French-speaking area, I’m used to crossing a Channel for that!  Anyway, there’s so much to see here we’re definitely going back at some point when it’s winter.

Ah ha, weather.  Well this took me by surprise a little.  It was like the sun had a really bad day, and all of a sudden the temperature dropped about 15 degrees.  Literally.  I was so unequipped!!  Remember, I’d only brought summer clothes and left it a week too late to buy warmer ones.  Well, my trip to Montreal over the weekend remedied that little problem.  Shopping is to be done in Montreal, the shops are great, it’s like Glasgow city centre, only, with horse and carriages taking people through to the Old Town.

Well, I’d better get back to my work now, I have another reading response to do for my film class.  Au Revoir, a bientot!

A vine on a Queen’s building, just off Union Street.  To the immediate right was a door…and the vines on the other side of the door were still fully of colourful leaves.  Go figure.

This robot is able to both place the balls and shoot them in the right holes afterwards.

The same deveplopment team has also made some kind of augmented reality, where they use laser beams to show the possible paths of the pool balls you are about to hit. Watch the video to see a demonstration.

This pool-playing robot was developed at Vision lab in Queens University.

Read more about the Robot, Deep Green.

The Cave Hill

Not much happening this past week other than coming across a very interesting fact about the Cave Hill which has plagued me and my McArdle’s disease all my life !

As I grew up in Belfast, Northern Ireland, living for approx. 25 years between Lilliput Street and the Limestone Road, all that time until today I was unaware that I was living where Jonathan Swift once lived in Lilliput Cottage, I was amazed and surprised to find this out! I’m also annoyed that there is no Blue Plague to this fact.

Looking back on the time that I lived in that area of Belfast during the infamous troubles, and now thinking about the time that I spent playing in Lilliput Street as a child unaware about connection between Lilliput Street and the view that one has of the Cave Hill, the same view that was Jonathan Swift’s inspiration for “Gulliver’s Travels” has hit home. I’m annoyed at the school that I went to – Grove Primary – for not informing the pupils of this fact but that’s not surprising because it was a useless school with useless teachers where I didn’t get much education and that’s putting it mildly.

One of my favourite views of Belfast is the Cave Hill, and I’ve taken many photos of it over the years unaware that it represents the giant out of Gulliver’s Travels, amazing that I and all those that lived in the Lilliput Street area like me were ignorant of this literary fact.

I grew up in a house void of books except for the KJV Bible, and the children of that area today need inspiration in their lives because little has changed from the days when I lived at the bottom of Lilliput Street, I doubt that most children who live there today just like me have never read a book and don’t get much in inspiration and encouragement to do so, children need to read books from an early age the soon the better because reading is the gateway to all knowledge and education, and I wished I had known this while I was running around Lilliput Street all those years ago.

Today many years later I’ve learnt the truth about reading and encouraged my daughter to do so from an early age and today she is studying English at Queen’s University, Belfast, at one of the best English facilities in the U.K. if children don’t start reading in working class and socially deprived areas there’s no hope for them, I learnt to read books when it was to late for me but thankfully I’ve learnt from that mistake, if only I had have learnt it while I was at school.

As the dust over Aberdeen settles, and the horse excrement is washed away by the ever-present Kingston rain, we must come to terms with the effects of this first “Fauxcoming” weekend and take inventory of what occurred.  I, for one, must admit that my predictions were wrong. Very, very wrong….but you wouldn’t know it from the media coverage given to the event.

For many who have followed Fauxcoming in the news, it would appear nothing had changed.  Numerous students were arrested, debauchery was witnessed, and the cancellation of Queen’s University official Homecoming weekend was met with nothing more than contempt and spite-partying.  Surprisingly, this was not the case.  However, this did not stop the media from perpetuating the pre-conceived notion many outsiders have of homecoming, stopping at nothing to reinforce the stereotype of unruly, drunken university students instead of reporting what actually occurred & admitting that most students seem to be more concerned with preserving the tradition of Homecoming weekend than boozing and brawling on a 2-block residential street.

Inflammatory journalism forces students to put out fires in the coming years
(Photo courtesy of StoneMonkey, Flickr)

Most disappointing was the main coverage by the Queen’s Journal, specifically, the article syndicated in the Globe & Mail on Sunday morning.  After following the very promising coverage online on Saturday night (as I sat around my kitchen table with new and old friends, celebrating my final undergrad Homecoming in the best way), I was flabbergasted when I awoke to find opposing taglines on the Globe & Mail article (About 2,000 people turn out for boozy street party, which had attracted as many as 8,000 rowdy revellers in past years) and the Queen’s article… both written by Journal staffers.  It is unfortunate that, given the opportunity to clearly and articulately influence the national view about the so-called event, the authors chose to fuel the homecoming fire instead of using the window of opportunity to cast Queen’s in a favourable light.  While the interesting and well-reported “Overheard on Aberdeen” and Aberdeen Live-Blog/Tweet gave a full scope of what happened on those 2 blocks of pavement Saturday night, the articles were sorely lacking in the reports of police brutality, Queen’s spirit, and general student attitude towards the night.  This, accompanied by the photos which showed not happy, spirited students but a large police force, drunk eyes, and arrests, added to the impression that this night was no different than any other Homecoming Saturday night in the last 5 years or so.  (Author’s note: My favourite photo?  The beautifully ironic one of the confiscated horse toy)

What really happened?

Most students stayed off Aberdeen.  There have been numerous reports of police brutality against students, lending to the impression that the police were here to prove a point – not to preserve peace.  Charges were laid for jaywalking, swearing, standing on the sidewalk, and other minor ‘offenses’.  Those simply walking through Aberdeen (allowed, since the police were purportedly here to keep the street ‘open’) were subject to physical and verbal abuse by the police, not to mention excessive use of the mounted forces.

Luckily, these instances are not going unnoticed.  In the wake of lacking positive reporting on the event, students have taken to YouTube, blogs, Twitter, and their Facebook statuses to tell their side of the story.  Unfortunately, none of this can make up for the gaffe made by the Journal reporters featured, and the general consensus of the mainstream media. As a result, Queen’s students are on trial for yet another year, and will have to endure continued scrutiny & abuse in the lead-up to and the event itself.

This post is also featured on the course blog for FILM240