Reading random news the other day I was stunned by a recurring trend in the stories: power to the people!

Right to Facebook

Jigme Wangchuk, 11, was a student at St. Peter’s School in Boston when he was enthroned in November by a Buddhist sect in India’s Darjeeling district as its high priest, covering territory extending to neighboring Nepal and Bhutan. He will live in seclusion in his monastery, except for contact with Facebook friends he made while in Boston.

Right to the Bathroom Throne

An unprecedented toilet-building spree has taken hold in India over the last two years, spurred by a government campaign embraced by young women: “No Toilet, No Bride” (i.e., no marriage unless the male’s dowry includes indoor plumbing). About 665 million people in India lack access to toilets, according to an October Washington Post dispatch. [Washington Post, 10-12-09]

Right to Drink and Drive?
(Is anyone surprised this one is from Ireland?)

As the Irish Parliament debated whether to lower the blood-alcohol reading that would earn drivers a DUI charge, legislator Mattie McGrath begged colleagues to keep the current, more generous standards: “(Modest drinking) can make people who are jumpy on the road, or nervous, be more relaxed.” [The Guardian (London), 10-27-09]

Right to Love

“Bonnet books” are a “booming new subcategory of the romance genre,” reported The Wall Street Journal in September, describing “G-rated” Amish love stories that sell well among outside readers but have found an even more avid audience among Amish women themselves. The typical best-seller is by a non-Amish writer, perhaps involving a woman inside the community who falls in love with an outsider. In one book described by the Journal, the lovers “actually kiss a couple of times in 326 pages.” [Wall Street Journal, 9-9-09]

I know reading this you couldn’t help but feel as inspired as I did creating it. I just want to go out there and picket for a worthy cause! As a 2nd year teacher, hopefully I will be more mature than these two…

I know I have said this a million times, but I hate the news. Especially in Las Vegas. I would rather stare at an hour of static with the volume on high than hear about the child abductions, abuse, and drug dealing going on in my backyard. So, in honor of boycotting Las Vegas news, I present to you my happy news for the week….(Trust me every one of these is worth a click!)

Flying Home to Find Pets

Soldier Returns Home

Alicia Keys Uses Voice for the Voiceless

And the most random collection of photos to keep the smiles coming…

This last one’s for Bri, I finally found this photo…. One of the first Tour de France competitions…. Notice all the “leaders” are smoking….

Cheers and Happy Friday…almost

Well, today is the sixteenth day I have been completely smoke free. I have not had a single cig. in just over two weeks and it’s not going to bad. They say the first three days are the hardest, I disagree. While possibly you will be the most agitated and irritable during those first three days, I’d say the fourth fifth and six are harder, followed by the second week, and then the one month. These aren’t so much because your body is still having withdrawal symptoms, but because of something psychological. A feeling of missing something. It’s just the realization of that routine actually being stopped for good. It’s the fact that you are on the fast track to never inhaling another smoke ever again. This is the scary part I think. Loosing something you’ve used to identify yourself with for the last however many years you were a smoker.

But either way, it will be all for the best. You know what I find to be harder than quitting smoking. Working out constantly. That…. that is the hardest thing for me. But it’s on the to do list. Along with many, many other things.

So for anyone who is trying to quit and reads this, just know it is for the best, you will be better off for it, and don’t give up.
This is probably the sixth time I’ve tried quitting. I’m hoping it sticks this time.

Cheers.

Tomorrow it’s back to school for me. Back to screaming kiddos, gross germs, sticky hands, and my personal favorite — recess. So what is taking up my last hours of freedom?

• Nostradamus Special on Discovery

• Leftover halloween candy

• Curricular Planning

I knew you would appreciate the update On another note, half marathon training is in full effect and I am loving every second of it. The forecast for my next week’s running?

Monday: 81
Tuesday: 81
Wednesday: 83
Thursday: 82
Friday: 81
Saturday: 79
Sunday:69

Yep folks, my summer continues…

Well there is talk to create an all boys school in Toronto with mainly male teachers, I believe it said starting at grades kindergarten to three and then continuing subsequent years. This all in the hopes of lowering the drop out rates of males and to raise the achievement of boys in school.

Now honestly does anyone really think boys need special attention to do well in school? That’s retarded. They claimed boys read at a lower level then girls, have higher drop out rates, higher suspension and expulsion rates. Well why is that? Is it because an eight year old is being distracted by their female counterparts or because they are just not getting the attention they need from their teachers because there are just to many kids and not enough teachers?
Or perhaps because kids don’t get enough time with their parents at home. You know HOME, that place where you should be doing homework with the kids, helping build shitty projects, teaching them to read, write, regulating how much T.V. they watch, how many hours they spend on video games. Wait.. what was that, did I say home was where parents taught kids how to read and write… .right I did. Because that’s what’s supposed to happen, I remember my mom making me read kid books, then short novels, then longer ones. I had to read Black Beauty and not for school. I hated it. But I’m an avid reader now and pretty decent at it. I only wish my mother made me write more so I could be decent at that.
If people want to see better grades and less drop out rates people need to realize that 30 kids is to much for one teacher. And the teacher can’t teach your child every thing they need to know to succeed in life. Its a team effort. The teacher has 30 kids for almost 8 hours a day, you parents have one or two kids for four or five hours a day. Look further into the time horizon, and force them to do well early with school work. Make them practice at home. Give them attention.
If we want our educational system fixed we need a lower student to teacher ratio and more extra curricular activities. Segregating the sexes will only cause social distress later in life when they have to work beside or for females in the work place.

What the fuck man,
This just really pisses me off.

Well, I’m on reading week. The first fall reading week that York has had in over 3 decades or so. It’s really amazing and definitely needed. I’m enjoying the time off and working on school work with all the spare time. Got to catch up and get ahead. School has been hectic already and it has only been a month and a half. I forgot how much time was needed for a full course load. But I’m loving it. I can’t wait to be done and have that undergraduate degree. In my fourth year and I’m ready to be done, but alas I’ll be back for a fifth and maybe a sixth. But that’s alright. Everyone makes their own way through the maze that is known as University.
I’m loving my sculpture and painting class’. I feel so much more confident in my abilities to learn and produce good art.
I’ve learned a lot already and I’ll be heading into the studio tomorrow to work on my metal sculpture, oh yea welding!

Now I know the title states CBC in it and the reason for that is that I’ve re-fallen in love with the local CBC Toronto radio programming. I discovered it last summer and then forgot about it for a few months until recently. I have the app on my iPod and listen to it all the time now. It’s amazing to know how much goes on in our city and the world. I highly recommend it to everyone.

Well. I’m off to work for the next six hours and then homework when I get home. Painting, or writing an essay. I can’t decide yet which I’ll be in the mood for yet.

             I have finally faced the fact that no matter how many shelving units, file cabinets, boxes, calendars, agendas and other assorted organizational items I buy, I will always be an “organized chaos” type of person.  Every year my New Year’s Resolution is the same—“This year I will get organized!”, and every year, by January 10^th, all indications and thoughts of organization are long since buried under piles upon piles of other work.

     I remember when, in the early 1990’s, I got my first PC. I just knew I would never have to sit at my desk behind stacks upon stacks of paperwork again. This new wonder machine, my computer, was going to take care of all that for me. I could throw out all my file folders and file cabinets because everything was going to be in this greatest of all inventions, the computer!  Well, we all know how that turned out!

      I know everyone of you reading this thought the exact same thing when you got your computer. We all fell for the ads that told us we would get out of the “paper jungle”. The ads told us we would do everything on the computer. That someday we would even phone each other and watch movies on the computer.

     So much of what they said has come to pass. We can talk to each other over the computer, we sit at our computer and watch movies, TV shows and sports. We get our news almost at the same instant it happens. The computer has simplified so much of our lives, but there is one area that even the computer can’t get a handle on.  Actually, it’s the computer that caused the problem. What am I talking about?  Papers, papers and more papers!! 

     As I sit here with my state of the art computer, I look around my office and see three huge bookcases and six file drawers all stuffed to the max with files and paperwork. This is by far more paperwork than I ever used to create prior to having my computer! How did this happen? I think I have figured it out.

      It was the greed of the printer and ink companies. They started selling printers to go with your computer. Or I should say, they gave them away. If you bought a computer, you got this great little gift “bundle” that always included a printer.  Now you had a way to print out every single thing you did on your computer, “just in case”.  Just in case the computer crashed. Just in case you needed an extra copy. Just in case you wanted to read it without having to turn on your computer. There were all sorts of excuses you started making up just to hear the clickity-click of the printer cranking out those reams of paper.

     All was good in the world. You had the best of both worlds. You had your computer that could do just about everything, and you had your printer that could make copies of it all! You started coping more and more and didn’t even realize it, but lurking somewhere out there was someone who did realize it—–the printer and ink companies. They saw your insatiable desire for more and more copies of anything and everything. They saw you going through those ink cartridges faster and faster. They said, hey, it’s not the printers we make a fortune on, it’s the ink!

     The ink prices started creeping up more and more until along came some smart business people who had enough of it. They invented the ink refill kits. WOW! I was so excited! No more worrying about “should I print this or not?” No more need to try to save ink.  If you ran out all you had to do was pull out your refill kit, refill the cartridge and keep on copying even more papers! Take that, you evil printer and ink companies, I have beaten you at your own game!

     For a while all seemed perfect in this world of computers, ink and papers. You read, copied and re-inked. What more could you ask out of life? You smirked as you realized you had come out on top of this little skirmish with the big boys. Little did you know that while you thought they had run off with their tails between their legs, they were hard at work devising a new plan.

     They invented a “smart chip” ink cartridge for the new printers. This little chip knows when it runs out of ink and will not let you refill it because the chip can’t be re-set.  Not to worry—all is not lost! Once again, our quick thinking ink using nation came up with chip decoders and chip re-setters. So take that, again you big business bullies! We’re on it!

     So goes the war between the big printer and ink companies and the rest of us. As hard as I try, I will never be organized because I can’t crawl out from under this pile of papers. But, I know I’m not alone in this. There are many others like me. You know who you are. We have this love-hate relationship with our papers and our stuff. Sometimes it’s a bane, sometimes it’s a security blanket, but always it’s ours…and maybe that’s why it’s so special to us.

This rant has been coming on for years and I have held my tongue, but I can’t keep silent any longer!

I am so sick of seeing the English language “bastarized” and misused. It seems everywhere you look on the internet, you find the use of improper grammar. When I opened my Sunday paper, yes an actual pulp and ink version, last Sunday and saw not one, not two, but three separate incidences of terrible grammer, it finally put me over the top. Let me also mention that my newspaper is not some hick town local rag, it’s the award-winning St. Petersburg Times.

I put much of the blame on spell check software because it seems as long as you spell the word correctly, the damn software will let you use the word anywhere…even where it doesn’t belong.

Example:  “As time worn on, they became noticed. They had wrote poetry, books….”

If you see nothing wrong with the example, even though I highlighted the problems, then you are who I am addressing with this rant! As I read the above piece further, it became clear that this was no spell check problem, but a problem with the writer, the editor and anyone else who read this piece prior to print.

Now don’t jump all over me saying I must be some snooty English professor, I’m certainly not that.  What I am is a writer of the English word, and the grammar in many of the pieces you find on the internet and in print today is absolutely atroceous!

As a professional writer, I know that the best way to connect with your reader is to ”speak” in your normal voice in your writings. However, that statement assumes that you also speak properly. When you have a problem with words and then you form those improperly spoken words into the written word, it shows how badly lacking your skills as a writer are…and it shows just how terribly you speak as well! 

If you want to be taken seriously as a writer, learn the proper use of the English language!

s time worn on, they became noticed. They had wrote poetry, books,

                                                       Writers Roulette……. 

Put your fingers on the keyboard and push!

It’s almost like having a gun to your head. Deadline looming, must write, can’t write, must think, can’t think. Editor’s face turning red as he watches the clock and looks at my blank computer screen. Sweat pouring down my face, hands clammy. Heart beats getting faster and louder. 

Oh, the joys of being a writer!

When people learn that I’m a writer they look at me with one of two looks–envy or pity. The envious ones think it’s a life of glamour; always meeting celebrities, traveling to exotic places, dining at the finest restaurants. The ones with the pity look on their faces think I am the poor soul who never made anything of her life; the starving writer who always thinks the great American novel is ready to jump out of her head at any moment but never materializes.

Actually, the life of a writer is no different than any other. We have goals we don’t meet, we have dreams yet to be fulfilled, we have families and obligations and we laugh, cry and scream just like anyone else. BUT, that ‘s where the similarity ends!

Unlike the other guys, we have an escape route. We can go off into our writers’ fantasy world and play with our thoughts; turning them into words, sentences, paragraphs and finally—-a story for others to enjoy or hate. It doesn’t matter which; only that we moved the reader to some emotion—good or bad.

I love my life of writing, cooking, travel and dining. As a food and travel writer, I have met wonderful people, eaten fabulous foods, traveled to exotic places and now I am able to use all this experience and knowledge to open my own little eatery…The Deli Diva!

Check it out at http://thedelidiva.wordpress.com.  Read about the trials and tribulations of opening a restaurant and follow me along on my journey as we get this place open and, hopefully, on it’s way to success!

We complain that our children are growing up too fast, but who is to blame for that? A few years ago, I watched a show in a state of shock. I know I must have had my mouth wide open through the entire broadcast. It was hard to comprehend what I saw. A group of four and five year old boys and girls were in a playroom. In the room were hidden cameras and microphones so the viewers could see and hear everything that was going on.

Almost immediately, the boys grouped separately from the girls. Not a big deal, it’s something that has happened at every party I have ever been to since I was a pre-teen. It’s commonplace. But what happened next was a complete shock to me.

These four and five year old girls started talking about diets, how fat they were and asked the others did they look sexy! I couldn’t believe my ears, but there it was. I was looking at the future generation of anorexics and bulimics. The boys, oblivious to it all, played as any normal boys their age should. They could care less if they were chubby or cute, and sex was far, far away from their minds.

I am no child psychologist, but in my humble layman’s opinion, I would have to blame the female gender for the tainting of our young girls. But we are not in this alone. We can share much of the blame with the media. Magazine, newspaper and television ads put beauty up on a pedestal. It leads us to believe that if you weren’t fortunate enough to be born beautiful, and you can’t afford to slice and dice your way to beauty through plastic surgery, then your existence on this planet is really not necessary.

Young girls and women buy into this and pass it on to the next generation. Now little girls barely out of diapers are talking about dieting and sex. It is unnerving to see a six or seven year old girl dressing and acting like a teenager, and in many cases, with the encouragement of their parents!

It’s sad that we stress how girls look instead of what they think. It’s sad that the girls who view themselves as pretty grow up with all the self-confidence, and the less “pretty” girls are so overwhelmed by their lack of good looks that they never look deeper into themselves to see what a truly wonderful person they are.

Have you ever seen a beauty contest for little girls? Remember those photos of JonBenet looking like she was 21 years old? The first time I saw one of these strange contests, I almost got sick. These five year old girls where dressed and made up like hookers. They had more make-up on than I have ever worn. They wore “sexy” outfits that looked ridiculous on them. They strutted their stuff down the runway like consummate pros. It was un-natural and turned my stomach. But, when the cameras panned over to the Moms, they were beaming with pride. They bragged about spending thousands of dollars on the girls’ clothing. They had dressed up their live “dolls” to look “pretty” and now they might win the big prize.

 Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. It’s sad so many parents need glasses!

“The most advanced piece of technology you ever peed on.” Remeber that TV ad from last year?

I have to say that I was a bit dumbfounded when I heard this spot for the first time. In case some of you never saw this ad, its for an early pregnancy test.

The announcer’s voice is deep and commands respect. The background music is dramatic and suspenseful and then they go for the comic relief, with the line above. At least I hope they meant it to be humorous, because after the shock wears off the first time you see it, subsequent viewings do become rather comical.

This ad made me think about the long way we have come with what we deem appropriate for general, daytime viewing. In the 1970’s Rosalind Russell, the actress known in her day for her rather large chesty attributes, was the spokesperson for the “Cross Your Heart” bra. She stood beside a mannequin that was wearing the bra and spoke about it. It may be hard to believe, but this commercial started an uproar with the public. A bra on a dummy outraged them! This was an era of denial. Advertising of any personal products was not permitted on TV. So this first attempt at showing a woman’s underwear did create quite a stir.

Today, you turn on the TV and watch a stream of what is supposed to be urine hitting a pregnancy test. You learn how to treat your outbreaks of sexually transmitted diseases, and you learn of the absorbency power of tampons. Stick thin models with chests that are un-naturally large for their frames, prance around in nothing but a bra and panties to advertise the product. Today nothing is off limits, so I guess, as the cigarette product said, “You’ve Come a Long Way, Baby!”  But, at what price?

Do the advertisers really need to get so damn specific about our personal hygiene? Do they really need to demonstrate to us, and the rest of the world, the proper way to use a tampon? Do our young girls need to see too-thin models clad in underwear as their role models?

Any thoughts?

I live in Florida, yet I can count on one hand the number of times I have gone fishing. This past weekend my husband said, let’s go crabbing and fishing; and instead of me giving him my usual. “Have you lost your mind?” look, I said “OK”.

We loaded up the fishing poles, the tackle box, the two crab traps, the first aid kit (I remember the time I put a hook through my finger), the chairs, the sunscreen, the cooler and all the necessary gear to spend a few frustrating hours playing mind games with the creatures of the sea.

It wasn’t long before I remembered why I don’t do this more often. After spending a few minutes looking in the bait bucket at these ugly shrimp with big eyes looking back at me, I had to gather up the courage to reach into the bucket and grab one.  Did you know that those suckers can jump? Try catching one of them as they scurry around the bait bucket and then leap a good foot into the air. If, and when, you finally do manage to catch one, then there is the nasty, work of impaling this still very much alive squirming shrimp with your hook. I don’t like harming creatures no matter how insignificant people may think they are, so this always came hard to me. I do manage, in the name of fishing, to bring myself to stick that hook into him and cast him far out into the water. 

Now I stand, with my shrimp smelling hands and my guilt ridden conscience, telling myself its worth it to catch “the big one”. Well, that little scenario never happens. Instead, its a monotonous game of stick the shrimp, toss the line and wait—over and over again.  Where’s the fun in this?

I decide to change my strategy and try my luck at the crab traps. Chicken necks are the bait of choice for crabbing. It’s the cheapest cut of the chicken and the crabs love it; which brings up another question that has bugged me for years.  How can crabs love this meat so much when it is not a natural food for them? I don’t know about you, but I can’t remember ever seeing any underwater chickens.  Yet, these crabs will fight to the death over a disgusting piece of waterlogged chicken neck.

Unfortunately, no crabs were fighting over my chicken that day. But, the highlight of the day came when I raised the crab trap and caught inside it was a good-sized funny looking brown fish with beautiful blue/green eyes and a yellow belly. I had never seen one like this and called my husband over to look at it. As we were admiring this unusual looking fish, it began to grunt. I had heard of fish called “grunts” because they do just that—they grunt! So I thought this was a grunt, but then the excitement began. Suddenly the bright yellow belly of this fish started growing. We watched in amazement as it grew twice, three, four times its original size and still kept expanding.

Suddenly this brown fish with the yellow belly was beginning to look more like a round, yellow balloon as his belly puffed up bigger and bigger until I started screaming, “Throw him back in before he explodes all over us!”  I was sure he was going to burst, right then and there, tossing his guts and any evil poisons inside that belly, and contaminate us with toxic fish-goo-guts!

We threw the trap back in and released him. As we watched him swim away, we could see him releasing the air inside his belly and returning to his normal size. His defense mechanism certainly worked with us and he got to live yet another day.

After a full day of fishing and crabbing, we came home with sunburn, a stench of fish all over us, stinky, wet crab traps and fishing poles–no fish and no crabs. I feel certain this is quite the norm for most fishing expeditions, so why then is it so popular? I just don’t get it.

The next time I want to dine on fish and crabs, I will make reservations at my favorite seafood restaurant and leave the fishing to those who think this stinky, sweaty, boring, monotonous, shrimp murdering, ugly puffer fish catching, time waster is a sport.