Author Archives: Natasha Moore

CLJ Reviews The Hunger Games

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What we read

I first read the Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins on the recommendation from a friend. She had told me that it was a book for ‘young’ readers but followed up that she absolutely loved it. I was intrigued!

I not only loved it but devoured it just as I remember doing with so many books when I was a ‘young’ reader.

The Hunger Games is the story of Katniss, a young woman living in a post-apocalyptic world. Each year the Capital holds The Hunger Games and chooses one girl and one boy from each district to fight to the death. Through a series of events Katniss enters the Games for her district – district 12.

What we did

The Hunger Games is, as most things are sooner or later, being made into a film. So the challenge was to create their own young readers story and then deliver it as a film pitch. The pitches were rated by other readers for creativity, delivery and overall appeal

What we thought

A really positive response from our book club readers who found The Hunger Games to be an engaging and fast paced book – even if it was written for those half our age and more! A couple went on to read the remaining two books of the series – always a good indication that the book was well liked.

CLJ Reviews The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work

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What We Read

The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work by Alain de Botton examines the nature of and our relationship with work – something that most of us will spend a good portion of life doing. De Botton takes a long walk with a man who loves powerlines, he sits with a career counselor through interviews and workshops and follows the death and consumption of a tuna steak. His examination of work challenges us to reflect on why we do what we do – that for many of us we are engaged in something that our sixteen year old selves decided for us – for better or worse!

What we did and how we did it

I was quite unsure of what to do for this book club but one idea came clearly from reading the book. In the chapter on biscuit manufacture, de Botton talks about the way in which meaning is placed in the intangible. That a circular biscuit conveys a particular message to us. I wondered what my work would look like as a biscuit … how would I convey what I did and what it meant to me using cookie dough and chocolate chips? And so our intrepid readers did exactly that. They created a cookie that represented their work.

As I was reading some online reviews about the book and thinking of questions to as the group I though – I wonder what Alain would ask the book club? So on a whim I went to his website, found his email and sent him a note. LO! In no time at all I had a reply and a question to ask book club. What a delight!

And his question was:

I’d ask: what other pleasures are there that work can deliver that are not considered here?
For example, the pleasure of serving. In other words, the question would be about people submitting ideas for imaginary further chapters to the book.

What we Thought

So what did we think? Perhaps it’s best demonstrated in my follow up email to Alain.

Hello Alain!

Well I must say that the Circle of Literary Judgment was very excited to receive a question from you as part of our book club discussion. It prompted some lively banter and here are some ideas that we think are perfect for your next book.

Other pleasures in work include:

  • Mastery “even like a cigar roller in Cuba”
  • Camaraderie, laughter, community and mentorship
  • Ritual “the treat of having coffee at 10:15″
  • Learning, education
  • The variety in simplicity

I’ve also attached a little snapshot of our cookie-making challenge. In competition for the trophy readers were asked to create a cookie to represent and invoke their feeling around their work. Just as ‘Moments’ are for ‘me time’.

You’ll be interested to learn that the winner of the trophy did not make a cookie but rather provided an appropriate accompaniment to our sweet treats – milk of course. You see John is a Career Counselor and as so winningly explained by him, his role is to provide the support and nourishment for our cookie-making endeavors. That is his cookie.

A final note: we received a card from Yann Martel! We had asked him to recommend books for us to read and I would like to extend the same request to you. What books should the Circle of Literary Judgment read next??

Thank you for providing us with such a wonderful book club book!

CLJ

And Alain recommends:

Dear Natasha,

I now have book club envy. Your club looks such fun, I wish I could gatecrash. Perhaps one day…

I’m so glad things went well. In the future, you should read some Norman Mailer non-fiction (Of a Fire on the Moon ideally) or else the whole of Marcel Proust, or else, for a briefer thing, Philip Roth’s The Dying Animal.

I’m so glad Yann was a sport – and thanks so much to you for your kindness.

All best

Alain

On shaky ground – being earthquake prepared in Vancouver

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1946 earthquake - Vancouver Island

It’s strange to give someone, on the other side of the world, news about a calamitous event near them. I was skyping with myMum in Australia and mentioned that there had been an earthquake that morning in Christchurch. Not having she turned on the TV to get the news. How strange it was to watch Australian news updates through Skype! It was during this conversation that I mentioned, oh silly me, that Vancouver is due for ‘a big one’.

Over the last 130 years some 10 moderate earthquakes have occurred in Southwest British Columbia and Washington. Larger quakes – in the magnitude of 8 or 9 come around once every 500 years with the last one off the coast of west of Vancouver Island in the 1700’s.

But – did you know that there is an average of one earthquake each day in Southwest BC? While these daily quakes cannot be felt it’s certain that a larger one would wreak considerable havoc on what is now a highly populated area.

The devastation we’re witnessing from Japan is a stark reminder of our own vulnerability. While a nuclear meltdown might not be of concern but Burrard Inlet is home to a number of industrial sites including a chlorine plant and a Chevron refinery. Our high risk transportation zones, the Skytrain, bridges and tunnels, will also be critical in times of emergency.

I live in a building built long before seismic resistance was incorporated into building code. How will my building stand up in a quake? Alas it will crumble unless it was renovated in the last 10 years or was recently converted from an office to residential. But that’s unlikely given it’s in the middle of Kits! Schools and public buildings will fair better with billions of dollars being invested into earthquake proofing. Our kids will be safe and perhaps we’ll see an influx into the public service!

In the meantime, it’s Emergency Preparedness Week in May. Get some tips on putting together an earthquake kit (sardines and all) and brush up on your Earthquake Preparedness.

Community Dreaming

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I have a friend whose capacity to dream inspires me and has opened my eyes to the value dreaming in my own life. Right now, I don’t have a one-year plan let alone a vision for myself in 5 years or 10 years time and as I carry on somewhat aimlessly through life I have been wondering about our dreams for community.

Our public institutions are encouraging in these matters. The City of North Vancouver has published a 100-year sustainability vision – a collective dream to create a ‘livable, sustainable and resilient’ city and of course there is the City of Vancouver’s vision to becoming the ‘Greenest City’.

While there is civic discourse around community planning – notably with a sustainability focus – I’m intrigued about what our personal dreams for community might be. Perhaps these dreams are about collective values, relationships and human rights. Or perhaps they reflect our wishes for emotional and spiritual development. Are they tangible and practical dreams for green space and communal neighbourhoods. Do they cross cultural and ethnic boundaries to harness our capacity to create?

Given that I’m new at this dreaming business, I want to open the floor to you to hear your community dreams, starting a collective thread of dreaming right here on the best community blog in the world.

Gumboot Community Dreaming!

Dream a little dream of community: What are your dreams for your community?

–

Confessions of an Orthorexic

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2 tbs lemon juice

2 tbs maple syrup

1/10 tsp cayenne powder

1 cup water

Mix all ingredients together.

Drink

That my friends is breakfast, lunch and dinner for 10 days. The Master Cleanse is liquid torture for a gal like me – a gal that likes her breakfast, lunch and dinner to contain food. However, every once in a while I go out on a limb and spend 10 days or so on a cleanse. Sometimes they involve food (but less of it), other times, like now, they distinctly lack it. And while I can usually stick out the ones that involve food, my self-control is challenged when faced with a week or more without something to chew on.

To while away the time (who wants to have drinks with a gal sucking back lemons and syrup?), I’m reading ‘In Defense of Food’ by Michael Pollan. Appropriate for the occasion I feel!

A lack of anything solid opens one’s eyes to the abundance of food around us. Unfortunately, much of it is processed, albeit with claims of ‘added fiber, low-fat or omega 3’s. At best these are a poor, and not very healthy, imitation of the real thing.

Pollan uses the term ‘nutritionism’ to describe a way of thinking about food in which ‘foods are essentially the sum of their nutrient parts’. I was struck by this concept and a little embarrassed as I’ve often extolled the virtues of this food or that based on a singular nutrient factor.

It pleased me however to learn that food is, in so many ways smarter than us. Extract the molecules we desire (like vitamin E, beta-carotene or lycopene) from the whole food and they often don’t work at all. Proud though we may be about human scientific discovery we still find it hard to work out which part of the Thyme plant we should extract to make an antioxidant supplement. Pollan’s advice, just eat the Thyme!

I will confess that I am likely a part-time orthorexic – a person with an unhealthy obsession with healthy eating. And although it’s not an official eating disorder yet I find it quite adequately describes my compulsion to read, learn and extol the virtues of a healthy diet. Now I say part-time because I also have a penchant for poutine, chocolate and dumplings. So I’m caught between a compulsion to ‘be’ healthy and eat with abandon.

What is concerning is that this sort of anxiety is not an uncommon response to the Western diet. Paul Rozin, a psychologist at the University of Pennsylvania asked a group of Americans for word associations with a number of images. The top response for a picture of chocolate cake was “guilt”. For the French however, the most frequent word associated with a slice of chocolate cake was “celebration”. How unfortunate that we have reduced food to a scientific obsession about caloric and nutrient intake over health and pleasure.

Michael Pollan gave us some simple words to live by:

Eat food, not too much, mostly plants. Someone pass the Thyme! (That last part was me).

The Community Within

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Community is living and breathing all around us. We walk though them, work in them, compete as them. Together we are community. If our external community is a living, breathing organism are we not our own living community, and I’m not just talking about eyelash mites.

The human body is a complex thing. As I sit here I can hardly comprehend the information coursing though my body in order to type these words. I’m no scientist, that’s for sure but it doesn’t take a genius to realize that there is something wonderful about this mass of blood, muscle, skin and bones that we call home. And while we might think that it’s all about the neurons firing around our noggin we’re beginning to understand that the heart plays a significant ‘thinking’ role.

The Institute of HeartMath concluded in a recent research study* that “with each beat, (the heart) not only pumps blood, but also transmits patterns of neurological, hormonal, pressure, and electromagnetic information through (extensive communication) networks.”

My non-scientific, awkward interpretation of this in relation to community is that an understanding of the communication network within us – between our heart and brain is critical to the health of our external community.

I have recently started meditating and I am slowing understanding that my internal dialogue – the stories I tell myself, the scenarios I create, are clearly linked to how I experience and engage with my community. As I start to feel compassion for myself, I feel a greater ability to feel compassion and empathy for others.

Einstein said (and I think it is worthwhile sharing all of it) “a human being is part of the whole, called by us ‘universe,’ a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings, as something separate from the rest — a kind of optical delusion of consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.”

Our environment and our community are revealed as intelligent and through patience we meet the world as it is. Our strength comes from an ability to do this with compassion – for ourselves, and our community.

*R. McCraty, M. Atkinson, D Tomasino, & R.T. Bradley, “The Coherent Heart Heart–Brain Interactions, Psychophysiological Coherence, and the Emergence of System-Wide Order, Institute of HeartMath, pg.50  http://www.heartmath.org/

Cars and Community Planning … in a roundabout sort of way

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A recent run-in with the pavement got me thinking about bike commuting in Vancouver, indeed anywhere in which the car is king on the roads.

I went end-over handlebars and broke my elbow, an accident that would have been considerably worse if I hit the car I was trying to avoid.

Two things struck me (ok three if you count the ground!)

  1. People in this town don’t understand roundabouts
  2. Significant change is needed to make our roads safer and more accessible for non-car transit. And this is some thing we should aspire to (… that’s 4. I feel like I’m in a Monty Python sketch)

When it comes to roundabouts, unless there are traffic control signs, these are uncontrolled intersections … so you’ve gotta remember three things – yield to traffic on the right if the other vehicle has arrived first or at the same time, yield to traffic already in the roundabout to your left and NEVER come to a full stop in a roundabout (unless traffic conditions require it). Come on peeps … it’s that easy! Making our roads safer for riders however will take a little more work.

It’s about choice – easy alternatives

Creating real and workable alternatives is our first priority. With more bike paths, public transit, walking routes, pedestrian and bike only streets we create real alternatives and these also need to be CHEAPER. Policy and legal changes would help with bike focused road rules. What about GPS-enabled information about transit times … make it real-time and real-easy!

If it made more impact on our wallets we would think twice about taking the car everywhere. Increase the cost of the car, gas, insurance and parking. But an interesting thought strikes me. How does making cars and car ownership more expensive impact our community? By making cars and car ownership more expensive, driving becomes accessible to a privileged few whose wallets are large enough. Unless a working family or single mum are within walking distance of schools, child-care, stores and community centers they are penalized because they cant afford to 1. live in a service appropriate area or 2. afford a car.

Following in the footsteps of friends to the south the creation of 20-minute neighbourhoods is such a thoughtful and simple way to challenge how we plan our urban environment. Take the car out of the picture by making it so much easier, nicer and cheaper to ride, walk or take transit to your local neighbourhood – which has everything you need. Support those who work outside their neighbourhood with integrated transit systems.

I wonder when we’ll finally turn that corner and the car will no longer be king of the roads. What a day that will be!

A Discussion of Douchebags – History & Etymology

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By: Natasha Moore (Italics by Mike Boronowski)

Douche. It’s French. Like Napoleon.

So are some really nice handbags.

How exactly the French word for a vaginal shower came to refer to a ‘contemptible person’ is anyone’s guess.  What’s wrong with a bit of vag-cleaning anyways? Okay, so it was eventually deemed unnecessary and may cause infection but props to the Frenchies for doing their bit to keep the gals clean.

We do know that Bag is from early 13c., bagge, from O.N. baggi or a similar Scandinavian source, perhaps ultimately of Celtic origin. The use of bag as a disparaging term for “woman” predates its orientation-reversing union with douche.

To the USA in the heady 1960’s. Yes, the days of sex, drugs and rock-n-roll.  Where it was ‘gnarly’ to ‘hang ten’. A decade that saw the assassination of JFK and Martin Luther King, the Space Race, Cuban Missile Crisis and the start of the Vietnam War. And the rise of the ‘DOUCHEBAG’.

This decade also saw rise to other slang meanings. Originating from black America and the Jazz scene in the 60’s is the use of “bag” to refer to one’s area of expertise or particular interest. “Having it in the bag” and things being “not my bag” now mean far more than the literal contents and ownership of a particular purse or pack.

From all accounts ‘douchebag’ became commonplace in the 1960’s and referred to a contemptible fellow (note: most always a man) or someone for whom the speaker wished to deprecate. How pervasive ‘douchebag’ was in this era is not clear. Merriam-Webster dictionary dates it to 1963 but the word seldom appears in pop culture (i.e. TV shows, written media or literature) – at least as far as I can tell.

Bags, however, were extremely commonplace throughout the decade. From hippies, college kids, and musicians discovering “dimebags” to a rejuvenated designer-handbag “scene” due to Bonnie Cashin’s work redesigning much of Coach’s line.

Fast forward into the 2000’s and it’s a different story. ‘Douchebag’ appears in cartoons (Family Guy and South Park), political satire (Jon Stewart on the Daily Show) and in so many forms on the web it’s hard to keep track. It has re-entered our vocabulary with surprising speed and popularity.

I personally like the way it rolls of my tongue when describing a particular geographical collective. To me ‘Main Street Douchebags’ are very different to ‘Commercial Drive Douchebags’. But I call them both ‘douchebags’

Even further granularity has grown within these subclasses of Douchebags. Bagadouche can be used to refer to a douchebag when a particularly Latin or Italian flavour of unsavory qualities is present. This positions “bag” at the beginning of the derogatory term, and is revealing in that it shows perhaps that the “bag” or contents of said “bag” is what’s really important, more so than where it might be used.

Why I describe them this way is rather lost on me.

The word just seems to work.

In-flight Community

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I was fortunate enough to spend two weeks in Nicaragua recently. These two weeks spanned the entire Winter Olympics period and while I was somewhat sad to miss out on this community making, city-defining event, while traveling dusty streets and sitting at airport bars I sort out my own Winter Olympics community – in the sunshine of another country.

Travel sometimes makes me melancholy. There is something about the silence and movement that’s almost meditative. Unless, of course, you’ve got to get a connecting flight in 20 minutes and then it’s more like a 1000-meter mad dash.

I like to walk in airports, especially when I’ve got a 6-hour layover and this trip I managed to cover Houston Airport 4 or 5 times over. I also like to find a bar and chat with people also going places. There is something deeply connecting about a 20-minute conversation with the guy having a beer on his way to San Diego, or a mother going home from seeing her grand kids in Dallas.

On this trip I had one of the loveliest and saddest moments with a fellow from California, whose name I never found out.

A Vet from the Korean War he came out of the conflict with one arm amputated and this day was on his way home from Fort Worth where he was having a prosthetic arm fitted. He was big and burly and at first I hoped he wouldn’t talk to me but as we chatted quietly he shared the loss of his wife and the stress and strain her illness had placed on him and his son. As we chatted he wept for her, quietly coping with her passing. He told me that his son was in Spain, taking a break and studying Spanish. A Mental Health professional his son has left his job to help care for his Mother in the last year of her life and the pause had given him time to reflect on life and work. The love and respect he felt for his son was evident and when he walked away 20 minutes later, I was sad that the big burly man had to get his flight.

Small but meaningful interactions like this remind me of the power of connection and community but in our aging society many of us will live alone and isolated in the last years of our lives. How we care for the aged, elderly, senior citizens (how clinical those names sound!) tells us much about the society we’ve created but also give us a pretty clear picture of the one we need to engender. The Daily Gumboot is but one example of people working to create connection and community and fingers crossed we’ll all grow old playing bridge together.

Since meeting him I’ve wondered about my friend and hope he has a supportive community around him. What will your community look like as you age?

Facebook – good for your health?

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I’ve been watching news reports with shock and sadness over the last week but have also been amazed by the extent to which social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter have not only enabled family and friends to contact each other but have also been conduits for millions of dollars donated to a devastated Haiti.

But I’ve been wondering about the Facebook phenomenon and the particular type of online interaction it breeds. Only slightly more than a popularity contest I rather thought Facebook dilutes community and have recently come across some interesting action focused online social networking sites that create space not just for amassing friends but building community – communities of social action.

Idealist.com

“Idealist is an interactive site where people and organizations can exchange resources and ideas, locate opportunities and supporters, and take steps toward building a world where all people can lead free and dignified lives.”

Idealist has always been an excellent place to, as they describe it, exchange resources and ideas but they have also recently reinvented themselves and watching this unfold was fascinating. The essence of their reinvention is to building a global network to serve and support those who want to make the world a better place. Lofty indeed but it was the way in which they went about it that particularly struck me. Essentially they posed a question – how can we better facilitate the creation of community online and offline – and invited collaboration in making this a reality.

They do a much better job than I at describing their goals. Check them out for the full scoop.

Tyze.com

Tyze networks are personal support networks that facilitate communication and organization. A Tyze network is something that a son or daughter might set up for their parent with Alzheimer’s in order to support, share and coordinate their care with friends, family and health care providers. I have recently started some work with Tyze and it’s through this connection that I’ve become more interested in action based and supportive online communities. Tyze understands that belonging to a social network has tangible benefits, including improved health and their network model facilitates this. They have some great articles on their site.

These two examples are just the tip of the iceberg. I’m excited by the possibility that online social networking will evolve and mature and maybe, just maybe even Facebook will be good for our health.