Tag Archives: jim clifford

The Gumboot Community Expands!

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Deutschland ist wunderbar!

Deutschland ist wunderbar!

Yes, that’s right. Just like Starbucks, we’re expanding exponentially. That means more voices and more time for John and I to hit the pavement and promote the Gumboot’s unique offering in the wilderness of the world wide web (isn’t alliteration wonderful). In fact, in the coming weeks watch out for more and more new contributors coming online (and if you want to be a contributor – make sure to email us!).

In the meantime, I’d like to belatedly introduce our newest correspondents, Peter Joerdell, Jim Clifford, and Katie Burns. Our newest correspondents hail from Germany and Toronto expanding the Gumboot community from Vancouver to a global network of community correspondents.

Peter’s a nifty fellow. I’ve known him for years – since my young formative years at Bishop’s University. I’ll always remember sampling the apple wine (at least I think that’s what it was) – which felt like rocket fuel going down – as Peter and I along with three other Germans cruised in a dirty pickup truck through the back country dirt roads the rural Eastern Townships. Peter and I were stretched in the back, bundled up tightly and clinging to old Mauser rifles, a shot gun and some sort of tricked out sub-machine gun (yeah – in retrospect I’m not sure if it was legal either). The whole scene had a vague Stalingradish feel. It was cold, wet, and dirty; except we weren’t there to shoot Russians, but tin cans. A preferable endeavor particularly considering tin cans don’t shoot back.

Peter Joerdell - our German Correspondent.

Peter Joerdell - our German Correspondent.

Since then Peter, like all of us, has gone on to new and exciting things. He’s now a journalist and PR guy who works as a freelancer on top of it all. He lives in Germany in the north, where they don’t like Southerners and dress in black and are inordinately serious.  The Gumboot managed to snare him after offering more than the New York Times and Washington Post were able to shell out for his journalistic talents. Sorry Arthur Sulzberger – maybe next time.

Peter will be providing the Gumboot’s fabulous audience with a fresh new perspective on the Fatherland and the countless communities that connect it. We’d highly recommend you consider checking out his first piece on Oki, a local German punk who lives in a train station and keep tuned to his next article coming up this Friday. On behalf of the whole Gumboot staff and audience (with the exception of the “real Pete”) welcome to the team Peter.

Jim and Katie – well, I need not say much more than they are both awesome and (almost always) reliable.

You can find out more about Jim here and more about Katie here.

That’s right – they were such hot stuff, we had nailed them down for a Get To Know Your Community segment early on. Who says John and I can’t spot rising stars?  Turned out they were so blown away by our site they begged us to come on as full time correspondents. At least that’s the story I’m planning on telling anyone who’ll listen.

In the spirit of this post I’d like to elaborate on these two characters to explain my own personal connection to their awesomeness.

Sure they look a little shifty - but who isn't?

Look at that cute couple.

I found my love of cooking from Jim and my interest (it’s not full blown love yet unfortunately) in baking from Katie Burns. For them, I traveled across the entire continent packing a camoflage knife bag with my favorite chef’s knife so I’d have the opportunity to whip up a tasty treat or two at their wedding several years ago.

Both of the dynamic duo bring a unique and interesting organic/sustainable/friendly-folk-in-the-city angle to the Gumboot and frankly we love em for it. Jim’s able to do all of this while he’s publishing ActiveHistory.ca – a website dedicated to expanding history into new non-academic communities. As a former history student I must say I admire this mission – one which may well be as difficult as any James Bond ever came across. On behalf of the rest of the group – we’d like to welcome you to the team!

Jim Clifford

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Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, welcome to an ongoing segment here at The Daily Gumboot. It’s called “Get to Know Your Community” and, basically, it goes like this: each and every Sunday we will profile someone from a community somewhere. Each person is asked the same five questions (see below as well as in the “Ideas from Everywhere” page). At the end of the profile, the Gumbooteer (member of this blog’s Editorial Board) who found the person will list their three favourite things about the highlighted community member. Savvy?

Here are some ideas from everywhere. Here is one way that we try to build community. Have fun with it!

Jim Clifford: a man of History and Food

Jim Clifford: a man of History and Food

1. Who are you?

Jim Clifford, eternal student, historian and teacher. I’m working to finish writing a dissertation on the environmental history of a suburb, West Ham, and river, the Lea, on the eastern edge of London, England from about 1855-1935. Most people will hear a lot more about this area in a little under three years, as it’s the location of the 2012 Summer Olympics. I study and teach at York University in Toronto.

2. What do you do for fun?

Most of my life is pretty fun. I’m at that great age where I have a lot more money and comfort than when I was an undergraduate student and still don’t have the life changing young children that the majority of our friends have started creating. I like to run and
bike; eat, cook and drink; make beer, canned goods and pork products; talk about politics, food, music or just about anything else with friends; and go to concerts and take it easy with my wife Katie.

3. What is your favourite community and why?

This is a touch question, as I’ve moved a lot in the past ten or eleven years and I’ve got a very dispersed community of friends and family spread around Canada. So instead of focusing on a community of people, I think I’ll talk about the place I live. I really like Toronto. We’ve been here for over four years now and its the first place where I’ve really put down roots since leaving South Surrey in 1998. Despite the reputation for “coldness,” Toronto’s a pretty amazing city. Its a lot more complex than the world of bankers, media elite and Leaf fans seen by the rest of Canada. There are millions of
people here and a lot of them are pretty great. We don’t have the natural beauty that Vancouver has, and the city’s forefathers even managed to ruin much of the natural wonders we do have, but we do have great neighbourhoods that give many of the different areas of Toronto great character. Getting to know many of these neighbourhoods draws newcomers like Katie and I into the city and makes us feel at home.

4. What is your super power?

Does painstaking analysis of past events and communities count? How about writing and talking about this analysis? Sounds exhilarating eh?

5. How do you use it to build community?

I’ve joined together with a group of fellow historians in Canada to promote more active engagement with the communities we study and with the major problems of our time. We have a website, ActiveHistory.ca, and we are currently working with historians to publish a series of essays written for the public and posted on the website so they are accessible for anyone to read. We are continuing to think of other ways to connect historians with both the public and policy makers – op-eds. blogs, walking tours, public talks, comic books, policy papers, guerrilla-museum exhibitions and alternative historic plaques. While ActiveHistory.ca is mostly focused on Canada, I plan to use a variety of these approaches to bring the environmental history of West Ham into the growing conversation about the massive changes brought by the Olympics, connecting my active history with my dissertation research.

I think history matters, but I’m tried of the standard yearly news story about young Canadians failing a history pop quiz. We’ve got to find better ways to build a wider consciousness of the past that goes beyond remembering dates and facts from high school: who was the third prime minister, what date did the battle of Vimy Ridge take place. Knowing the answers to those questions while help you win trivia games, but they will contribute little to building a sustainable future where the economy, environment and our society can coexist for generations to come. I’m not sure if we’ve got the super powers to change and expand the historical consciousness of our culture, but we are going to try.

My three favourite things about Jim Clifford are…

1. He’s really, really interesting. The stuff above gives you an idea of how much the painstaking analysisof his academic life makes him an amazing conversationalist and ideas man. And the best thing about Jim being interesting and knowledgeable is that he’s very, very good at consistently striving to engage anyone from anywhere on an intellectual level. An ambitious pursuit to say the least. Activehistory.ca is what the kids out there are calling a “game changer” – it’s very cool, so check it out. And, remember, graduate students are not terrible people, Tina Fey!

2. He is a man of food. Not only does Jim understand the politics of food, he is also a damn fine cook who possesses a passion for local food, especially tomatoes. I am lucky enough to be visiting Toronto, Jim’s community, in about a month – what’s on the menu, my friend?

3. We have shared adventures. Jim is a guy you want in your corner when the chips are down, and I know this because we have been on road trips, midnight hikes and graduate seminars. You can trust on Jim to stand up for what he believes in and always doing what’s right. He’s a rugby player, too, so cultivating shenanigans is never a problem when out on the town with Jim.

1,000 Ideas from Everywhere (and counting)

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Happy Friday, good readers of The Daily Gumboot. John here. Editor-in-Chief of Vancouver’s coolest new community-based blog that my parents read sometimes. So, over the last three days I have been fortunate enough to experience some very awesome and supercool and edutaining things. And, as you know, when things come together in such a beautiful and meaningful way, well, one can’t help but feel lucky to be a part of the community – or communities – in which they find themselves. So, here’s what happened:

1. Sir Ken Robinson spoke to a few thousand students, staff and faculty at UBC’s Chan Centre. If you haven’t seen it already, check out Sir Ken’s TED Talk about why “schools kill creativity” – it will certainly make you think. For example, when I was about eight years old one of my mom’s friends asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up. I told her that I wanted to be a fire truck. She said, you mean a fireman? I repeated myself, flabbergasted that she would think I’d settle for being a fireman when I could be the bright, loud, screaming truck that carried around several firemen. No, I want to be a fire truck, I said. And my mom just smiled. And she let – nay, encouraged – me use my imagination and be creative for years to come. Sir Ken’s talk was filled with stories fairly similar to this one (one actually involved a fireman and another involved his wife and Elvis). In any case, I have a new hero (don’t worry, Steve Nash, I can have many heroes), and his name is Sir Ken Robinson.

Sir Ken is hilarious, insightful and brilliant

Sir Ken is hilarious, insightful and brilliant

Some of the highlights of the talk included, but are not limited to, the following:

  • Imagination is the bedrock of the human condition; it is what makes us unique.
  • Creativity is the practical application of imagination.
  • He gave a shout-out to historians, saying that any good historian will tell you that there are multiple paths; ergo, there are multiple futures before us – just ask Jim Clifford and the Active History team.
  • We need to think differently about human ability and talent; communities, after all, depend on a multiplicity of passions, abilities, skills, and emotional capabilities.
  • “When writing a PhD in the Arts people must be stopped!” – this statement came in a response to Sir Ken chatting with a fellow who had just written a 385,000 word dissertation (the maximum for the project was 80,000 words…).
  • He spoke of the aesthetic beauty in mathematical problems; my friend Natalie, a math goddess in her own right, will echo Sir Ken’s belief that a new idea in math is judged by two things: whether it breaks new ground and whether it is aesthetically beautiful (as math is the purest form of communicating the natural world, and given that the natural world is beautiful, a math problem must be beautiful).
  • There is beauty and creativity in sciences and objectivity and truth in arts.
  • We need to transform, not reform, education.
  • Education should be organic, not linear | life is organic, not linear.
  • We need to break apart the industrialized, standardized model of education.
  • “Seeds of possibility emerge when the growing conditions are right. So how do we create the right conditions?”
  • “Students spread their dreams beneath our feet, and we need to tread softly.”
  • We need to look for happiness internally, not externally.
  • And this one’s my favourite: “your element (ie. what you do) exists at the intersection of talent and passion.”

Think about it, folks. Where does your talent and passion intersect? For me, it’s writing, education and community.

2. Margaret Atwood’s “Reading” of The Year of the Flood. Speaking of community, let’s chat briefly about Canada’s favourite literary figure (sorry, Elizabeth Hay

I'd put Ms. Atwood up against pretty much any stand up comedian out there; I'm just sayin...

I'd put Ms. Atwood up against pretty much any stand up comedian out there; I'm just sayin...

and Timothy Findley). On Thursday, my Special Lady and I took in Ms. Atwood’s “reading” of her new novel, The Year of the Flood. I use the term “reading” loosely, as, really, it was a beautiful and collaborative performance that became quite interactive towards the end. There was singing, acting, dancing, stand-up-comedy, education, preaching, and, yes, reading. Thousands of us crammed into the pews of St. Andrew Wesley United Church to take in a smattering of readings and hymns from The Year of the Flood. The energy was amazing. Dry, witty, dead-pan, sneaky, and amazing. Maggie Wood shared the stage with the performers and even bobbed her head along to the absolutely outstanding display of song by the trio delivering the God’s Gardeners Hymns throughout the reading. The show was unpretentious, local, globally thoughtful, and incredibly community-focused. To learn just how creative Ms. Atwood’s book tour really is, check out her blog, some articles and a wonderful post from one of The Gumboot’s Correspondents. If Sir Ken Robinson is a thinker and a talker about change, well, Margaret Atwood is a bit of a doer.

3. The Daily Gumboot just passed 1,000 unique page views. Speaking of doing amazing things, it turns out this blog has become semi-popular! Now, I don’t really know what “unique page views” means, but that’s not my job, so I’m okay with it. What our Operations Manager and Technological Evangelist, Mike Boronowski, tells us is that The Daily Gumboot received over 1,000 hits from different computers around the world last month. And, well, if you count the hits the blog receives from the editorial staff’s parents, man, we get more web traffic than the New York Times, baby!

Needless to say, it’s been a heck of a ride over the last month-and-a-bit. And I think we’ve lived up to our mantra of collecting ideas from everywhere and using them to build community. BUt, more importantly, what do you think? I mean, our correspondents truly run the gamut of sensation: from the tragi-comic-ironically-narcissistic (ie. Johnism) to the architecturally healthy (ie. affordable housing with social purpose) to the ridiculous (ie. the good thing that is the HST, social conservatives and alientating Toronto). It is an honour and a privilege to be that Captain of this pirate ship and, since Joel Plasket tells me that good things come in threes, I just wanted to end this note about the third amazing thing that happened to me in three days with a list of my three favourite things about The Daily Gumboot. Here we go:

WHat does this say? 1,000?!

WHat does this say? 1,000?!

1. Kurt Heinrich. This blog operates on a daily – not weekly – basis because of Kurt.  The guy is a worker and perhaps the most down to Earth, nicest person ever born in 1981 but actually from the 1950s. His passion for order, rules and collaboration within a neo-liberal political, social and economic system helps to create an excellent dialogue on the blog, as the Editor-in-Chief’s anarchy-meets-libertarian-sprinkled-with-pirates persona wouldn’t stand out like it does without him. The Joker wouldn’t be the Joker without Batman, right?

2. Get to Know Your Community. We’re so happy with this segment! There are so many amazing people doing so many amazing things all around the world. It has been exciting and interesting getting to know all of you in a fresh, positive and superfun way.  As we move forward, please let us know who we should be talking to and kick some names and locations of world-changers our way so we can share their stories with at least 1,000 other people.

3. The readers. In the last week or so, commentary and chatter about our posts has taken off and reached new levels. The comments have been meaningful, thought-provoking and hilarious. Truly, there are some great ideas being collected by The Gumboot. We (the editorial staff) will use such ideas to make our communities better places. And we hope you do too!

So what’s next? Well, that’s easy. 10,000. We shall increase collaboration tenfold. But no great thing in the history of Earth has even been done independently and without collaboration from several people in many communities. So, I challenge you to tell 10 friends about The Daily Gumboot and give them three reasons to read it. We also embrace ideas from everywhere (it’s kind of our thing), so if you have a few and want to share ‘em, we are always looking for special guest correspondents.

Thanks again so much for your collective and collaborative awesomeness, readers. And thanks especially for the memories.

Let’s keep reaching for those rainbows together!

- JCH