a trinity of hamsters

Mall Reptile

2010-09-17T10:16:00.000-07:00

Last week I spent a morning at the Frederick Mall in Kitchener, Ontario
Okay so it looks a bit bleak but that big building behind the grocery store is Steve's TV which seems to have one of the widest DVD selections in Waterloo Region. K-W Sewing Machines is the only place specifically in Kitchener where one can find WORN magazine. The pet store has a section devoted to reptiles and, speaking of movies, there is a cinema where one can see movies for less than $10, as I recall.

The Berkshires!!

2010-09-07T09:37:00.000-07:00

After a lovely day by the lake with patriotic changing facilities, I went for a walk in the woods. Did not have the chutzpah to see what was in the window of the cabin in the woods, but at least I found a place to purchase common sense, ethics, and even a soul if I need one.

2010-07-27T14:56:00.000-07:00

Recently I took my daughter to Centre Island and we rode on the Haunted Barrel Works, a ride I loved as a kid. She thought it was more silly than scary but I loved it, my interest in it had not faded over the years.

This site has more information on it.

And I was more than pleased to see that our friend the pirate had made BoingBoing.

I was interested to hear that the ride had been inspired by the work of Bill Tracy.

wanna make your own scary ride? here's a place to buy your own props. they were a little too steep for my budget so I think I will just keep visiting Centre Island.

Or find a scary ride near you!

the image was found on flickr

2010-07-27T10:01:00.000-07:00

I thought I'd put my daughter's infatuation with a certain sea-sponge to an educational use.

Stephen Hillenburg, creator of SpongeBob Squarepants, is also a former marine science educator who "saw how enamoured kids are with marine life." (howstuffworks.com)

I sent her to the library to read up on her favourite sea creatures and invertebrates. Then she made cards shaped like SpongeBob characters with their faces drawn on the front and information about the species on the back.

Hopefully soon we will go to an aquarium to meet the real SpongeBob, Patrick, Plankton, and others.

Images are from twerdict.com and treehugger.com

2010-07-27T09:30:00.000-07:00

As a parent, I am all for eating in front of the TV. Eating in front of a movie? Even better.

Why not invite some friends over, show a movie, and serve movie-themed drinks and snacks. Above are hotdog cookies intended to be served while viewing Up and blue drinks for Avatar.

You could even have a movie-themed dinner party.

Allrecipes.com has a site with suggestions of movie-themed menus, from the obvious Ratatouille to the more surprising Juno and Inglorious Basterds. The main page lists some movies but if you click on one you will likely find tips for others.

Want to take it beyond food?

Design*Sponge's living in section has fashion and home decorating ideas to recreate everything from Jaws to The Parent Trap to The Graduate.

Life doesn't get any better than this, does it?

images are from getouttoday.com and tasteofhome.com

The Dawning of the Age of Snail...oh forget it

2010-06-21T17:59:00.000-07:00

(Images are form Website4stuff, istockphoto, and toonpool. Do not graffiti your snail)

A little while ago, Lily found a tiny garden snail on the sidewalk and wanted to make it her pet. At first my response was that she couldn't bring it into our house, it could live in the garden outside. However, I did an internet search and discovered that garden snails are relatively easy to keep as pets.

We carefully washed out the plastic tank that was once home to a beta fish. They sell these tanks for betas as well as small reptiles and amphibians. They are made of clear plastic with lids that have breathing holes so they can work for either air or water-breathing creatures (just don't fill it with water for an air-breathing creature such as a garden snail!)

If you don't have such a tank I also found many other suggestions of what to use for your snailarium on the web.

I filled 2 pie plates with potting soil and baked the soil (without the snail in it, of course) for 20 min at 350. I allowed the soil to cool completely and then moistened it with tap water.

Every few weeks I take off a layer of soil and replace it with some new soil, baking it first and moistening it as above.

I would caution when you are using anything garden related to be aware that some things are designed to kill or deter snails as they are seen as garden pests.I read the soil package carefully for this reason and it appeared to be fine.

Snails like to hide in and under things. The links at the end of this post have many suggestions. I tried a small plastic cup intended for a doll but the snail never showed interest in this. I have just bought a plastic boot-shaped thingy meant for aquariums.

Everything I have put in the snailarium I have rinsed carefully with hot water. I don't like to use soap for animals (other than humans, that is) because I feel it can never be completely rinsed out. Others feel differently.

You will notice from the sites below that there are many different and sometimes conflicting ideas and, as always, it's up to your common sense.

Snails need calcium to build their shells and I read many ideas. One site said to use eggshells and another recommended against it because of bacteria and jagged edges. We finally bought a cuttle bone from the pet store that was intended for turtles. I peeled off the rough outer edge and placed a small piece in the snailarium. I also rubbed calcium dust from cuttle bone and spread it around the snailarium. My daughter thought that the dust was parmesan cheese and put more cheese into the snailarium which I removed, not sure if that's good for them or not.

Snails don't require a water dish, actually it's not recommended unless the dish is shallow enough as not to drown in it if you were the size of a small garden snail. We have a plastic doll plate that we keep wet with some tap water (incidentally one of the sites below cautions against tap water for snails. We have been using it to no ill effect.)

Regarding the above, I am talking about garden snails that breathe air. Aquarium snails, that you get at an aquarium store and NOT in your backyard, breathe with gills which is why they don't drown in an aquarium.

Snails absorb fluid from being in a moist environment and you can keep the snailarium moist with a spray-bottle of water, spraying daily so the snailarium is moist but not wet. I would not use a bottle that had ever been used for hairspray or another chemical. I rinse our bottle out daily and replace the water.

Also, a site I read said to be careful even using hairspray or another chemical in the same room as the snails since they can absorb it.

Additionally, I'd be careful about letting the snails get to near to salt because that can drain moisture out of their bodies (initially I put a sea-spnge in the snailarium because I thought this could add moisture but I removed it when I smelled how salty it was)

Snails eat fruit and vegetables. I cut small pieces and rinse carefully with cold tap water to remove any possible pesticides. I usually cut a bigger piece than what the snail can actually eat because I am afraid it will get lost otherwise. Snails seem to like to hide under lettuce leaves as well. And they really seem to like strawberries. Every day I take the old food out, put it in the compost, and put new food in. Sometimes I dust the food with calcium from the cuttle bone.

Snails don't like environments that are too hot or sunny or dry. Notice how they come out when it rains. Keep the environment moist and don't put the snailarium right near a window.

If the environment is unfavorable, the snail can often survive for a time by crawling into its shell. It can even do this to preserve energy when food and water are scarce.

Yesterday it rained again and I found another snail down by the grocery store in our town. I introduced it to the snailarium and the two snails seem to be getting along alright. Perhaps one of them will eventually lay eggs. Not sure if the small one is mature enough to yet. Oh yeah, they can both lay eggs because snails are intersexual, but you still need two snails for them to lay eggs.

well here are some links

this got us started

this one is from someone who had pet snails and slugs as a child and now sells cyber-slugs

and try this one

more pictures

close-ups!!

educational resources

more education

fun educational resource

very informative, intended for giant african landsnails but some of the information is still relevant

this site tells you how to GET RID OF snails. I linked so you would all know what NOT to do! I know the pic at the beginning is cool but would also caution, again, against graffiti on a snailshell (graffiti anywhere else is cool by me)

2009-11-21T16:39:00.000-08:00

The Women of Winter are a Toronto Women's shinny organization with some exciting plans underway.

There will be a shinny tournament in February, and registration for this is on November 25, 2009. Forms can be downloaded from The Women of Winter's website

Also, TWOW is organizing a road trip to a Canadian Women's Hockey League game at the Icelands Arena in Mississauga on Sunday, December 13, 2009, at 11 am. Go to the CWHL website for more details. If you want to possibly obtain free tix, email me at schodos@anduhyaun.org

Full-priced tickets are $7

Finally, look up skating at Dufferin Park for information on shinny and skills clinics. Or go to your neighbourhood rink, wherever that is. It does not look like Dufferin's page is updated yet but it surely will be soon.

happy shinnying!!

Meet Me in St. Louis

2009-11-20T18:09:00.000-08:00

Turns out St. Louis, Missouri, is a family-friendly sort of place. You can travel up the Gateway Arch, go on a Riverboat cruise, or just walk down by the Mississipi River. On the other side, it's Illinois (wow)!!

The City Museum is brilliant, I was prepared to tell my daughter not to climb on the elaborate structures, as is usually the case with museums, but I noticed that other kids were climbing on the structures, which extended up several stories, wound around the outside of the building, and included more than one slide and a ball-pit.

The zoo is great, a bit smaller than the one in Toronto, but that makes it walkable, and, also, admission is free. However, there are extra things, like a dinosaur simulator ride, that cost a little extra money if you choose to do them.

Hammerstone's on Soulard is a great Blues joint, a little smoky, perhaps, as there is no Smoke-Free Ontario Act, but it would seem as though this may be happening in Missouri at some point down the road. In any case, the people are friendly and kids are welcome, as we learned.

If we had stayed longer, we might have checked out Flamingo Bowl, or taken in a hockey, baseball, or football game, depending on the season.

St. Louis is not too close and not too far in terms of a vacation from Southern Ontario, and it's very friendly. I look forward to returning sometime in the future.

Something Strange in the Neighbourhood

2009-10-22T05:52:00.001-07:00

Image source here.

Bunch has been noticing something strange happening in the neighbourhood:

Ghosts showing up on doorsteps!!

It's a new tradition, called "Ghosting" or "Boo'ing."

Wanna be a part of this?

It's Easy!!

Here's how:

You need:

two paper bags filled with treats,
two pictures of ghosts

and,

directions to make two similar treat bags and two similar pictures of ghosts, along with directions to hang the ghost picture up in the window to indicate you have already been "ghosted"

The idea is to drop the bags on the doorsteps of two unsuspecting neighbours after dark. (Kids should bring and adult with them.) Ring the doorbell and run away before they come to answer. Then, each neighbour does the same to two other neighbours.

I Got Ghosted allows you to track your ghosting.

Diana's Legacy says "What a fabulous way to be neighbourly...It's such a great thing to drive around the neghbourhood and see the kindness spread."
Image source here"

Alpha Mom says "I love this tradition so much I wanted to share it with you."

Southern Living has a discussion forum on "Boo'ing."

You can include a poem in your package. Either write your own or find one on one of the websites above.

This one goes to the tune of "Black Magic Woman" by Santana.

You've got a ghost on your doorstep
You've got a ghost on your doorstep
You've got a ghost on your doorstep
Dropped off by me
And you're gonna find out how much fun this
Ghost on the doorstep's gonna be

Don't turn your back on me neighbour
Don't turn your back on me neighbour
Don't turn your back on me neighbour
Please go along with my tricks
Because this ghost is gonna visit two more neighbours
your picks!!

Take Over The World

2009-10-17T11:25:00.000-07:00

Stacey is a friend from my hometown. I always see pictures of her amazing cakes. I recently asked her what her secrets were.

"...for almost all of my vegan cakes and cupcakes, I use the recipes in 'Vegan Cupcakes Take Over The World,'

The pond cake and construction cake are both easy-to-do, and you don't need any special skills or equipment.

For the construction cake I took a chocolate layer cake, and I 'excavated' a hole in the top layer. I iced it with chocolate icing, and then I covered the whole thing with "dirt"

(mostly chocolate cookie crumbs, but it looks more like real dirt if you add some other stuff like graham crumbs, coarse sugar, skor toffee bits, brown sugar, etc.)

Then I added chocolate candy 'rocks' (from Bulk Barn), construction toys, and some little paper signs I made.

The pond cake is also a simple layer cake that has a hole excavated in it, and iced to 'seal' the cake.

Then I used green shoestring licorice, cut on steep diagonals for the reeds.

Some of them I dipped in melted chocolate for cat-tails; others I dipped in yellow or purple candy melts (Bulk Barn) and then in yellow or purple crystal sugar (also BB) to make the flowers.

I arranged these around one side of the hollow.

The water was extra-concentrated blue jello (I think I used 3pkgs of blue jello with only 1c of hot water and 1/2c of cold), allowed it to cool to room temp, poured it in the hollow and put it in the fridge to set.

Just before serving it, I put on the 'lilypad' (which was a green gumdrop I flattened) -- don't put it on in advance because the sugar on it will 'melt' the jello! Then added the frog.

The baby bird cupcakes are pretty easy to do, but require you to use piping bags and specialty decorating tips. You can take a 4-evening decorating course at most Bulk Barns or Michaels stores, and you would learn everything you needed to know to make these cakes! Having a couple of inexpensive tools and a little guidance about technique is all you really need to be able to make these basic kinds of things!"

Thanks, Stacey!!

postscript: obviously not all of the recipes are completely vegan but they could certainly be modified thus. See the recipe for vegetarian jello.

Yes, You Can Do That....

2009-10-16T13:35:00.000-07:00

One of the most influential actors of my childhood has left us.

Les Lye 1924-2009

Best known for playing all of the male adult roles in You Can't Do That on Television.

Danny Gallagher of TV Squad says "It was really the first show in my mind that created an "us vs. them" mentality between kids and adults and didn't worry about influencing children negatively by entertaining kids through things that kids actually found entertaining. Maybe that's why my parents refused to let me watch it. They saw it and thought it might lead to a children's revolution of Spartacan proportions. "

I think there was something revolutionary about You Can't Do That on Television. The kids were shown having all manner of injustice brought upon them by the adults.

However, the sheer ridicule of it all meant the kids had the last laugh and showed that those who misuse power deserve to be laughed at.

Old-Town Crawl

2009-10-16T13:18:00.000-07:00

The Esplanade in Toronto is a wide street with a boulevard in the middle. It is so wide that the boulevard has playgrounds, fountains, soccer fields, and basketball courts.

The boulevard is one long park and the surrounding mix of condo and co-op leads to a vibrant blend of humankind.

Soccer teams practise, teenagers shoot baskets, dogs are walked, children play, and people of all ages enjoy a city that belongs to and is composed of each and every one.

This area is particularly beautiful just before sunset, and on a weekend afternoon. It is probably divine first thing in the morning but I may never know for sure.

Postscript: Before heading out on an Esplanade excursion, you might want to download Toronto artist Marlena Zuber's great map of the area, inspired by a local running group.

2009-10-05T09:55:00.001-07:00

How can I describe the intersection of College and Bathurst?

Sneaky Dees? Bistro 422?

What about The Pink Flamingo, just east of Sneaky Dees? I always wondered what it was like, a friend of mine said;

"It's a unique disco bar- with a strong Latin American feel, I almost feel that I am partying the night away in a disco in Mexico or Ecuador. Very easy crowd, don't need to be a professional ballroom dancer."

If you are looking for a CD then Soundscapes is the place to go. It doesn't look very big but it's pretty stacked.

2009-09-10T17:38:00.000-07:00

Back to Spadina, Rosemary Donegan wrote a book documenting the history of Spadina Avenue which have quotes from people who grew up in the neighbourhoods around Queen and College streets, early in the previous century. What is interesting is that this general area became known for housing some of the most well-known live music clubs;

“People who are not in the area think it’s fascinating, but people who are don’t think much of it. When you come up through it and you experience it, it’s nice to read about it, but it’s not nice to experience it. You have good moments but you have more bad. Sometimes you want to work and you can’t work. The economics are bad and in those days it was certain jobs for certain people. The Jews had the garment industry, local blacks worked in service jobs- an the trains and as domestics. I guess if you were an Orangeman or something you worked at City Hall...Around Queen and Bathurst, when I was a kid, everyone was Ukrainian, Jewish, Hungarian, Polish...The kids you hung out with, usually their mother could never speak English. You never really spoke correct English to them, you spoke a kind of funny English. That’s all they seemed to be able to understand. If you spoke correctly they didn’t really understand.” Interview with Ernie Richardson, May 27, 1984. (Donegan, 1985: 84)

“How I managed to grow up at College and Spadina, in that place at that time, I’ll never know. ...with my parents bootleggers, my aunt and my grandmothers’ bootleggers, one of my uncles also outside of the law working as a professionall gambler, a cousin having done time for what the law came within a whisker of calling murder, another in-law so mixed up with the criminal element (The Purple Gang, no less) that he spent a solid year in hiding, in fear of his life, and the street itself swarming with citizens of the most dubious legitimacy, each of them polishing up his own little corner of the action.” (Donegan, 1985:163)

Donegan, Rosemary. Spadina Avenue. with an introduction by Rick Salutin. Vancouver and Toronto: Douglas and McIntyre Ltd., 1985.

2009-09-10T17:04:00.000-07:00

I spent two weeks this summer interning in Moss Park.

I love that neighbourhood. Of all the places listed at the link above, the Berkeley Cafe was my favourite.

I briefly went to Inglenook at King and Sackville and my father had an office at Queen and Sherbourne. Sometimes we met at The Mystic Muffin or Schnitzel Queen. Both of these places predate gentrification.

I went to school at King and Sackville when The Distillery District was a bunch of vacated buildings.

Okay so King and Sackville and the Distillery District are technically not in Moss Park. But they are close.

As for bars, my favourite pre-gentrification drinking spot in Moss Park would be Betty's.

There are a lot of cool pre-gentrification things in this area.

Images from torontoneighbourhoodguide.com and torontoist.com

2009-09-07T13:31:00.000-07:00

Check out the Chicago Bar Project, created by Sean Parnell,

it has lots of information on bars in Chicago, including former speakeasies and "gone but not forgotten"

Some Toronto Spots

2009-09-07T06:48:00.000-07:00

Here is the beginning of my Toronto bar project.

Please feel more than free to comment with any suggestions/corrections

“A working hotel and bar for 80 years, The Cameron began this most recent incarnation in 1981 when it morphed from a flophouse into a full-fledged arts community.” (www.thecameron.com). Just ever so slightly too far west to be considered a part of the trendy Queen St. strip that includes the Rivoli, the Horseshoe Tavern, and the CHUM City buildings, and just south of the Alexandra Park housing co-operative, it represents many elements of an urban arts community that could otherwise be seen to be incompatible.

Building on the success of The Cameron House, many more of this genre of bar would seem to be cropping up of late along Queen St. West. Of Parkdale’s relatively new Mitzi’s Sister restaurant, Toronto Life says, ‘The crowd here is much less Rosedale trust-fund baby than Parkdale loftier who sees glamour on the grittier side of Queen West.’ (see www.toronto.com) In its own website, the Drake Hotel at Queen and Beaconsfield, just west of Dovercourt, the same area that houses the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health, is described as ‘Housing beautiful contradictions, where highs meet lows and the healthful coexist with the decadent, the Drake embodies urban wildness...By the 80’s, The Drake had fallen upon hard times - at times a punk bar, all night rave den and come-by-chance flophouse. The current owner purchased the property in late 2001 and undertook the extensive renovations that give the hotel its current form - a celebration of its fabulous history.’ (www.thedrakehotel.ca).

2009-05-22T12:17:00.000-07:00

I took some photos in the rapidly-gentrifying area around the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health in Toronto

I made a slideshow out of the same photos

click on the word to watch it, if you like

2008-10-23T08:00:00.000-07:00

"investigating the role of embodiment in practises of knowledge and memory, this chapter considers in particular the felt, somatic aspects of movement knowledge. I argue that thinking itself, including the way we access, organize, retrieve, and present information, is as much a matter of somatic understandings as of semiotic ones...Drawing on field research with dancers in the annual fiesta of Our Lady of Guadelupe in Tortugas, New Mexico, I review findings resulting from a somatic approach."

Sklar, 97

Philosopher Edward Casey distinguishes 'body memory' from 'memory of the body', the first working primarily through feelings in the body, the second through representations of the body as an object of awareness. For Casey, the first would properly be called remembering, the second, recollecting"

Sklar 98

"Kinestic sensations, much less their meanings, are rarely the focus of everyday awarenesss. As Marcel Mauss and, after him, Pierre Bourdieau, have pointed out, the bodily patterns we master are then enacted outside of conscious awareness."

Sklar 99

"Undertaken to refute Nazi notions about the correlation of race and gesture, Efron studies and compared the conversational gestures of two relatively homogenous and stable European communities..."

Sklar 104

"It was the affects and effects of the fiesta I wanted to understand, what it was to 'feel the Virgin's presence', as the people said, and what that presence meant to the fiesta."

Sklar 106

"Unlike the Protestants who killed or 'removed' the indigenous people they encountered in New England, the Spanish Catholics required Native labour and coveted, in the name of God, Indigenous souls...In El Paso del Norte they (the Pueblans that joined the Spanish after the Pueblo revolt of 1680)lived in mission communities among the larger Spanish and Meztizo, or mixed Spanish and indigenous mexican population"Sklar 107

Connections between embodied memory and dance

"Indeed, he (child psychologist Daniel Stern) acknowledges, they ('vitality effects', the complex qualities of kinetic energy inherent in all bodily activity) are equivalent to what Suzanne Langer calls the 'forms of feeling' embodied in dance....Until we attend to kinetic dynamics, the way vitality affects are organized in specific movement systems and actions, we lack a crucial dimension in understanding the meaningfulness of movent performance in and as social memory" Sklar 98-99

Dierdre Sklar, Qualities of Memory: Two Dances of the Tortugas Fiesta, New Mexico, 2006.

more SOCAN

2008-08-28T11:12:00.001-07:00

I guess what is bothering me is this...well, it would seem as though SOCAN is useful, I won't deny that... and for some musicians it is the difference between receiving or not receiving sizeable amounts of money...but for the majority of musicians it means getting a small cheque every once in a while.

I was a member of SOCAN back in the brief time I was trying to make a career of being a punk musician. Not that I got very far in my career, but for me SOCAN membership meant not getting any money at all, rather just a glossy magazine.

I now work in community and social services and unions are very active in this field. I don't think we would tolerate what most musicians have to put up with...we expect to get paid either hourly or on salary for the work we do. We don't just get paid if our clients like our work. And besides payment, there is the recognition that we are potentially putting ourselves in a very vulerable position, not unlike musicians.

Ah, well I am trying to make sense of what I am able to download and read about SOCAN. I cannot say I know very much as I was not a professional musician for very long. But I am wondering if there are some aspects of being a musician that SOCAN overlooks.

SOCAN we?

2008-08-25T18:02:00.000-07:00

From SOCAN Website, top bar, "About SOCAN"

"Overview...SOCAN is an organization that administers the communication and performing rights of virtually the world's entire repertoire of copyright-protected music, when it is used in Canada. We collect licence fees, then distribute the fees as royalties to our members and affiliated performing rights organizations (PROs) worldwide. We ensure that music creators and publishers get paid for the communication and public performance of their music in Canada. To do this, we collect fees from individuals, businesses and organizations that play music in public, broadcast it, or communicate it by telecommunication. We do what's right for music."

"What We Do... As a collective for the performing rights of our members - the creators and publishers of music - we make sure they get paid for the public performance and communication to the public of their music. We do that by collecting licence fees, as set by the Copyright Board of Canada, from anyone playing or broadcasting live or recorded music."

"Who We Serve...We serve our members, the Canadian creators and publishers of music, and the members of international affiliated performing rights organizations. We act on their behalf to collect licence fees from users and then distribute these fees to our members and affiliates in the form of royalties.

We also serve our customers – the venue operators, broadcasters, promoters, and others who authorize or perform the music in their establishments or at their events. Through their association with SOCAN, our customers enjoy the benefit of accessing the world's repertoire of copyright-protected music through a single central entity."

I am going to be reading and writing more about this I think...

parkdale CHC

2008-03-18T07:19:00.001-07:00

I will be examining the Parkdale Community Health Centre, particularly with regard to its art programs. I will be looking at the potential strengths and weaknesses as well as examining the histories and meanings of both the Parkdale Neighbourhood and the Community Healthcare system. I will be positing the notion that art plays a vital role in healthcare and is particularly appropriate in the Parkdale community.

The Parkdale Community Healthcare Centre is one satellite of the Community Health Centre system. CHCs are located throughout Ontario to provide health-related services in ways that meet the needs of the communities in which they are located. The Parkdale CHC provides Parkdale with "responsive, accessible, and innovative services to address primary healthcare needs." (see Parkdale CHC website) "Primary healthcare needs" in this instance refers not just to physical health, or more specifically, treatment of physical diseases, but also"biological, socio-cultural, psychological, and environmental aspects..." within people's "respective socio-economic realities." As such Parkdale CHC's programming includes not only anonymous HIV testing, needle exchanges, and infant hearing screening clinics (although it does include those as well) but also an English Conversation Circle (for those new to the language) a Queer Parents' group, and, of course, lots of art programs.

Is art a component of primary healthcare? Jan Cohen-Cruz says, "Art can put people in touch with their desire...Art has the capacity for reflection and exploration of what one individual or group wants." (Cohen-Cruz, 2002)" Most people recognize that there is a psychological component to health. Some see a division between physicial health and psychological health while others are of the belief that mind and body are not entirely separate. In that context, art would certainly be an important component of primary healthcare needs because of its vital role in the health of the individuals who produce it and those around who are affected by it. Art can express emotions that are difficult to express explicitly. Trinh T. Minh-Ha says, "To write is to communicate, express, witness, impose, instruct, redeem, or save- at any rate to send out an unambiguous message...Obscurity is an imposition on the reader. True, but beware when you cross railroad tracks for one train may hide another train...To write "clearly," one must incessantly prune, eliminate, forbid, purge, purify..."(Trinh T. Minh-Ha, Woman Native Other, pp16-17)

Why did I decide to focus on the Parkdale CHC? I am interested in the concept of CHCs. They are a province-wide phenomenon with different regional sites offering programs to meet the needs of their respective communities. CHCs can serve as comfortable and non-judgemental places where people from all walks of life can go to get various needs met. In some communities they also serve a community hub where people can meet and lots of different community programming takes place. As an aspiring Community Arts Practitioner I am supportive of any organization that recoginzes the complex and multifaceted aspects of health promotion. Mind and body cannot be completely separate and nor can individuals from their communities.

Why did I choose the Parkdale CHC instead of any other CHC in the province of Ontario? Parkdale is a neighbourhood in Toronto that I am familiar with and also one with a history that interests me. Initially a desirable Western suburb of Toronto, Parkdale has seen many changes over the years. After World War Two, an expressway was constructed that separated the residential part of the neighbourhood from the lake and its beachside component. Also, the Queen St. Mental Health Centre (now a site of the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health) is located just east of Parkdale. In the nineteen-seventies the Mental Health system began to move from an isolated and institutionally-based model of care to a more community-based approach. This drastically affected the neighbourhoods surrounding the Mental Health Centre, of which Parkdale was one. The stigma surrounding the Mental Health industry meant that Parkdale was no longer a desirable neighbourhood. The property values dropped and the area was accessible to people whose incomes were low for many reasons. New Canadians, substance users, and Mental Health system consumers resided together, sharing nothing except their marginalization. In recent years Parkdale has become gentrified. The large Victorian houses that once made it desirable are now desirable again. However this will not erase layers and layers of history that tells a story of marginalization. This makes art all the more appropriate in Parkdale because as Minh-Ha and Cohen Cruz posit, art has an important place in the telling of alternate histories and marginalized realities.

One potential pitfall of a Community Art Program at the Parkdale CHC? Since the word "health" is present in the organization's title, there is always the issue of different interpretations of "health." Some practitioners in various elements of the healthcare system possess a limited notion of what "health" is and believe that any work done in the healthcare system must have the aim of eventually getting people to reform to this notion. At one time, homosexuality was viewed as a Mental Illness, for example. Perhaps there are many other aspects of human experience that are now cast with the same shadow but will not be forever. It is my belief that community art programs should aim to allow all members of a community to express themselves as they are. I recall a lecture from last semester where a community artist by the name of Sau-Wai Tai distinguished herself from an "art therapist" in fact by saying that the latter works from a framework of making people "well" whereas community artists work more towards personal expression and actualization. I think it is important, whenever undertaking a project aimed to "help" people, that one is constantly making sure they are not just furthering the stigma that contributes to the marginalization and isolation. I have been heartened to see the diversity of programs offered through the Parkdale CHC which indicates a diversity of acceptance rather than a being "well" model.

Essentially, I chose to focus on the Parkdale CHC because, as a Community Health Centre located in Parkdale, it helps to tell this story of marginalization, of the possible coherence of a seemingly incoherent community, of alternative histories, and of a more holistic model of health.

References

Cohen-Cruz, Jan. An Introduction to Community Art and Activism. Community Arts Network Reading Room, 2002.

http://www.aohc.org

http://dev.metastrategies.com/PCHC/news/show.cfm?news_id=12

http://www.torontoneighbourhoods.net

Tai, Sau-Wai. Lecture. 2007.

Trinh T. Minh-Ha. Woman, Native, Other: Writing Postcoloniality and Feminism. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1989.

2007-11-03T10:35:00.000-07:00

for more general community resources in Toronto there is a book called the 'Blue Pages' or you can dial 211, I found this out recently

best

sarah

2007-10-26T19:41:00.000-07:00

hey try this

http://www.bayswan.org/traffick/

2007-10-26T19:04:00.000-07:00

This is a questionnaire I have been working on. The idea of posting it here is just to give people who are reading it something to think about. If you have any suggestions for me please to not hesitate to comment. If there is something in this questionnaire that makes you think you would like further information or assistance, my recommendation might be to contact one of the organizations I've linked to, unless you can think of another organization or place to get help/information (and it would be great if you felt comfortable letting me know so I can put the link to that org. on this blog)

thanks! be well!

sarah

okay, here goes...obviously you are not going to be writing so ignore that part

Please answer as fully as you feel comfortable, using extra writing space if needed. Please feel free to leave out details or leave questions blank that you are uncomfortable answering. If you feel comfortable doing so, it will be of help if you specify whether these are circumstances you have personally experienced, personally witnessed, or perhaps not personally experienced or witnessed but been made aware of through other means, and what those means were/are.

Every situation is different, yet relevant. If the questions are not appropriate to the circumstances you wish to write about, please also feel free to ignore the questions and write whatever you want in the extra space.

these questions may seem slightly redundant (apologies)…if you feel your answer to any given question will be exactly the same as your answer to another question, please feel free to just write the number of the other question.

1.have you had a job/do you know anyone who has had a job where it could not be taken for granted that

a)you/they were allowed any time off? allowed to rest if sick?

b)you/they were allowed to quit working for the same person/place and get a job somewhere else?

c)you/they were allowed to communicate with family members,friends,significant others? other workers? people outside of the organization? essentially whomever you/they wanted to communicate with?

d)you/they had access to the money you/they earned and could buy your/their own belongings?

2.Have you had a job/do you know anyone who has had a job where;

a)you/they were coerced into signing any forms (leases, contracts, etc.)? how?

b)your/their movement was restricted? how? (eg do you/they have a key to your/their house?) were you/they were living and working at the same place?

c)you/they were decieved about your/their living conditions

d)you/they were chaperoned/guarded/incarcerated?

e)anything ever happened to any of your/their ID, what and by whom?were you/they ever threatened on the grounds that you/they no longer had your/their ID?

f)you/they were subject to any form of “debt bondage” (ie providing services to anyone or pledging someone else’s services as a security for debt)

g)you/they were forcibly transported from one town/city/province to another?

h)you/they were threatened with violence, harm, or retaliation against you/them or friends/family?

i)there were threats to report you/them to authorities?

j)you/they were forced into a relationship?

k)you/they were threatened with confinement or isolation?

3.And in this situation, was it ever the case that;

a)you/they were subject to physical assaults or torture? (pinching, hitting, slapping, punching, kicking, shaking, burning, etc.)

b)you/they were subject to sexual assault?

c)you/they were forcibly confined or isolated?

d)you/they were denied essential medical care?

e)you/they were denied food/clothes and other basic necessities including ability to maintain basic hygeine?

f)you/they viewed or heard others being physically or sexually assaulted?

g)you/they were subject to verbal abuse, name calling, degrading remarks?

h)you/they were photographed or filmed while being physically or sexually assaulted, humiliated, or degraded? if so, have there ever been threats to use the images against you/them?

4.how did you/they initially become involved in the situation in question (eg advertising, acquiantance, family)

If you answered any of the above questions regarding someone other than you, it may be more appropriate to skip these next questions as you may not know the answers or feel comfortable providing the information that will be asked for on behalf of a third party, or to answer some and not others (obviously substituting ‘they’ for ‘you’), as you see fit.

arrival and/or initial circumstances

5.If relevant, when did you arrive in Toronto? (date, time, place of entry)

6.what was the first address you were taken to? who took you there? how did you get there?

7.did you know where you were at the time?

8.were you subsequently moved?

9.was money promised, how much, and by whom?

10.where have you resided and for how long/at what ages did you reside in these locations?

11.does your family know your whereabouts (in this case family could refer to anyone you feel should know…)?

12.have you ever been transported across an international border? was there ever talk of this?

13.have you ever been transported at all (whether or not it involved crossing a border) ?

14.what means of transportation was used?

15.did the people you were travelling with change at any time during transit?

16.did you spend any time in transit locations, safe houses...where? how long? with whom and under what conditions?

17.were you physically or sexually threatened or assaulted or confined in the transit locations?

18.were there any circumstances of forced labour in transit locations?

19.were you ever decieved about your living conditions in Toronto?

terms of involvement

20.have you signed any forms/contracts/leases?

21.if so what are the terms?

22.were these contracts you felt coerced into signing?

23.do you posess a copy/copies of the form(s)?

24.was anyone paid a fee for your recruitment?

25.have you been paid for any work you have done and at what rate?

26.do/did you owe money to anyone?

27.have you ever been coached about what to say to officials?

28.have you ever been given clothing/jewellry and instructed to wear it?

life circumstances

29.do others involved in this situation (please specify how they were involved/connected to you) know your home/work address or telephone number?

30.do these others have any details about your family/loved ones?

31.do they claim to know these things?

2007-10-26T18:52:00.000-07:00

here are some Canadian govt. sites that may be of interest;

http://www.justice.gc.ca/en/fs/ht/index.html

http://www.rcmp-grc.gc.ca/imm_pass/q_a_human_e.htm

for the second site, just scroll down until you get to the link

http://www.icclr.law.ubc.ca/Site%20Map/Programs/Human_Trafficking.htm

and then
Human Trafficking - Reference Guide for Canadian Law Enforcement

it was from there that I got the template for my questionnaire

i tried to put these links in an earlier blog but they would not work...it would seem that some of them are working here...if not...google...

2007-10-26T18:42:00.000-07:00

also i have been looking into CHCs and CLCs, this is Community Legal Clinics and Community Health Centres, which may be of interest

http://www.legalaid.on.ca/en/locate/pages/046.asp

kensington-bellwoods community legal services which is on college st. just west of bathurst seems pretty interesting, and they have an interesting links section

http://www.kbcls.org/

the central toronto community health centres are also interesting- Queen West is on bathurst just south of Queen and Shout is in the Carlton/Jarvis area

http://www.ctchc.com/

locate a chc near you...

http://www.aohc.org

chcs and clcs are all over Ontario, and there are other similar programs in other regions, if you happen to contact a place that does not serve the area you live, they will certainly direct you to one that does.

2007-10-26T18:34:00.000-07:00

i decided on my case study for one of my art classes it will be this

http://www.sexworkerfest.com

it looked pretty cool, check it out

the organizer of this festival is also in charge of bayswan at http://www.bayswan.org

they are san fancisco based, there seems to be lots of interesting things in that neck of the woods

this is an interesting site from LA

http://www.iswface.org

and look up http://www.nswp.org, and both san fran and LA have COYOTE chapters

on the nswp (Network of Sex Work Projects) site, have a look at the Mobility section on the sidebar (no actually i just got it by scrolling to the bottom of the front page...) it may not only be relevant to people who have moved from one country to another, it looks like there are lots of resources, especially under the section of human rights groups on the web.

2007-04-27T07:52:00.001-07:00

aaahh editing...

2007-04-09T09:22:00.000-07:00

Blah, here is the essay that was making me insane...and I am still insane but I finally wrote the essay- this is the first few paragraphs only, I think I am compelled to post it just so that I look like less of a whack-job (although reading this over I am not so sure...)

I had to narrow my focus so I mainly zoomed in on orientalism and post-coloniality as it pertains to art in Canada

for some reason quotations are showing up as question marks which i think might actually be fitting

well, here it goes...

In this essay I am going to suggest that, in Canadian society orientalism and art are
diametrically opposed. I will discuss what orientalism means in a Canadian context.
Edward Said greatly elucidated our knowledge of how different societies are judged by
using the example of how Europe and its derivatives viewed the Palestinians. I believe
these ideas are valid in understanding how Canadian society views the First Nations
people. In Canada there has not been a mass physical genocide of First Nations people
like that seen in the United States and yet there has been a mass cultural genocide that
was still quite devastating and I believe that the use of orientalism made this genocide
possible. I will then discuss the difference between explicit forms of communication
like news media and history textbooks versus less explicit forms of communication which
would certainly include art. Aspects of experience like personal memory and identity, the
very aspects which cultural genocide seeks to destroy, are often difficult to
communicate explicitly and tend to be communicated more powerfully through art than the
written word. Additionally, art is always somewhat open to the interpretation of the
beholder and it is therefore not easy to make people question their own identities and
experiences using art. For these reasons, the personal memories and identities that run
counter to the those put forth by history books are often more easily communicated by
art. Finally, I will discuss how, since orientalism plays such a powerful role in the
control of Canadian society, not just in terms of devaluing other ideas and people but
also devaluing its own ideas and people while continuing to hold a conception of its own
society that does not include these people, art and orientalism in Canada are
diametrically opposed.

Canada is seen as a European and predominantly Anglo-Saxon society and yet many Canadians
have always had cultural influences that were not Anglo-Saxon , perhaps not even French,
and maybe not even European. Canada never experienced the sort of mass physical genocide
of First Nations people like that seen in the United States. However, there was a mass
cultural genocide that was perhaps as violent only in different ways. For individuals to
rise to positions of power, or to be heard at all, they had to assimilate into the
dominant society (i.e. European society) as best they could and not remember, or at least
not claim to remember, anything they may have known about any other societal
affiliations, as this association would threaten their credibility. However, this would
mean that they were, paradoxically, forced to forget aspects of their own experiences in
order to be regarded as knowledgeable. Joanne Arnott says, ? The language of media
reports on current events constantly others ?the Natives? from the audience addressed,
and this use of language, layered upon the massive ignorance of historical repression,
aggravates the dissociation.? (Arnott, 1995:60). The treatment of ?The Natives? within
Canada is, in other words, very similar to Edward Said?s conception of the treatment of
the Palestinians by Western society. How could something as impersonal as a media report
have an impact on an individual?s self-perception? Michel Foucault says ?Nothing in man-
not even his body- is sufficiently stable to serve as the basis for self-recognition or
for understanding other men...Knowledge, even under the banner of history, does not
depend on ?rediscovery,? and it emphatically excludes the rediscovery of ourselves.
History becomes ?effective? to the degree that it introduces discontinuity into our very
being- as it divides our emotions, dramatizes our instincts, multiplies our body and sets
it against itself.? (Foucault, 1977: 153-154). In this manner crucial elements of
Canadian history and present-day society have been erased, even when they would seem to
be observable and obvious. What is more, people lose contact with not only the story of
the nation in which they reside but with the story of their lives, families, and personal
histories.L.M. Findlay says, ?Memory?s estate remains under dispute in Canada today...The
rebirth of memory as history ? and its appropriate narration- occurs only when politics
give rise to the Hegelian state, so that serious memory and serious politics are coeval:
historical memory properly understood is, from its inception and throughout its course,
an effect of the state expressed in the prose of self-administration and
self-representation.? (Findlay, 2003: 217-219). While it may often seem that memory tells
an objective truth, this is not actually the case.

Important, perhaps, is the difference between the way that personal memory and identity
are communicated versus the way that a nation communicates what it wants its members to
believe. News periodicals and history books communicate ?facts? in an explicit and
linear manner that can be difficult to counter with things like personal memory and
identity which are difficult to communicate in this manner. Joanne Arnott spoke of the
media and representation of First Nations people and of Canadian society as a whole. L.M.
Findlay talks about the manipulation of memory by a conception of history imposed by the
state. Trinh T. Minh-Ha talks about the meaning of words and how a means of
communication can function to hide the truth "To write is to communicate, express,
witness, impose, instruct, redeem, or save- at any rate to send out an unambiguous
message...Obscurity is an imposition on the reader. True, but beware when you cross
railroad tracks for one train may hide another train...To write "clearly," one must
incessantly prune, eliminate, forbid, purge, purify..."(Trinh, 1989:pp16-17) For a
population to be controlled, the means of available communication must be "pruned,
eliminated, forbidden, purged, purified," hence the view of words as the most reliable
form of communication, which is less of a phenomenon in many societies than in Western
society, may actually be a component of this control. Since forms of knowledge like
personal memory and identity are often not easy to communicate explicitly, they are often
obscured by other forms of communication. As a result, personal memory and history which
are not often communicated explicitly are obscured by views imposed by the state.

Does orientalism always involve language? Can art be part of this orientalizing force?
James Clifford talks about the difference between the ?masterpiece? as represented by
?connoisseurship, the art museum, and the art market? from the ?artifact? as represented
by ?history and folklore, the ethnographic museum, material culture, and art.? This
system has often served to orientalize non-European art by classifying it as ?artifact?
rather than ?masterpiece.? So, it would seem apparent that art can serve as a part of
this orientalizing force. However, this classification system does not dictate all of
what any given work of art can communicate. The ?artifact? can resist colonization by
both presenting how colonization looks from the ?other? side as well as communicating the
humanness of the ?other?. Trin-Minh-Ha might say that art certainly can have meaning, but
not like a train obscuring all other trains. Even if what is being shown is left up to
interpretation, no observer can ever be absolutely certain of why it is being shown
without a more explicit context to place the work in. In this way it is often difficult
to discern whether art is orientalizing or whether it is showing the absurdity of
orientalist views. Sometimes what a work was supposed to mean as proscribed by the
dominant institutions and what it actually ends up meaning are two different matters. In
this way art can be both an orientalizing force and a force that resists orientalism, and
sometimes the difference is in the hands of the viewer. In this manner, also, art can be
a form of resistance that often passes by the powers that exist to eliminate this
resistance; colonial powers will likely only see art by colonized populations as
?artifact? and use this classification system to use art as an orientalist tool rather
than recognizing it as a tool in resistance of colonization. And the colonial
?masterpieces? can be very insidious about how they communicate their own form of
resistance. Yes, art can communicate what language communicates, but in a rather
different way and this difference is important in the instance of orientalism.

2007-02-18T09:44:00.000-08:00

Here is something I wrote a little while ago

...you see, I sort of think that in Christian theology the trickster is Christ. He takes on earthly form, just like the raven, and the coyote, in various western-hemispheric religions, then he plays the funniest trick of all where he "dies" and really has everyone there but they go to visit his corpse (forgive me, I don't know the story all that well) and it is gone...this is where he discloses that his "life" has been a trick, albeit a meaningful one intended to teach those on earth.

and humans get stronger by being able to laugh at their own mortality

Well here is what playwrite Tomson Highway says about the Trickster in the notes leading up to his play "The Rez"
"A Note on Nanabush

The dream world of North American Indian mythology is inhabited by the most fantastic creatures, beings, and events. Foremost among these beings is the 'Trickster' as pivotal and important a figure in the Native world as Christ is in the realm of Christian mythology. 'Weesageechack' in Cree, 'Nanabush' in Ojibway, 'Raven' in others, 'Coyote' in still others, this Trickster goes by many names and many guises. In fact, he can assume any guise he chooses. Essentially a comic, clownish sort of character, he teaches us about the nature and meaning of existence on the planet earth; he straddles the consciousness of man and that of God, the Great Spirit." (HighwayXII:1988)

Christ's resurrection happens at easter, ayostar, ostara...the spring equinox...symbolizing rebirth, or passover which symbolizes freedom in the Jewish religion
freedom from slavery, freedom from earthly existence, freedom from winter

I have a better chart I think than the one I did before

in the beggining
water/river
dragon

then this separates into

unknown/known
nature/ancestors
earth,moon/ sun,stars, sky,air
emotion/ reason
body/ mind

and then reconnects at

trickster
sexuality
art
fire

2007-02-16T20:48:00.000-08:00

yaaaaahhhh...my second-most recent post, one I wrote earlier this evening, has ended up underneath the one I wrote yesterday and is marked as 'February 11'

don't ask me how I managed to post them like this

I guess this is what happens when you are going insane

2007-02-16T20:45:00.000-08:00

interesting, somehow my feb 15 post ended up as more recent than my feb 16 post that I just wrote a little while ago

this, like everything else, makes absolutely no sense

2007-02-15T19:26:00.000-08:00

this was one interesting psychology course I took...I only took the intro to Maps of Meaning, though, his second-year course

http://www.psych.utoronto.ca/~peterson/mom.htm

but I read the book
and my disclaimer will say that there is a good chance that I have completely misunderstood Dr. Peterson, if you want to know what he really thinks, go to his website...

it seemed to me that his approach to religion had some important cornerstones

one; the feminine aspects of god are as important as the masculine

two; the "evil" aspects of existence are just as godly as the "good"...

I came up with my own chart...it's a bad use of the four elements, I know...

in the beginning
air and water
chaos

earth /sun
mother/ father
nature/ ancestors
body / mind
emotion /reason
unknown /known

fire
child
sexuality
trickster
life
christ/devil..."twins"

of course not all sexuality is procreative- (that would get kind of ridiculous, don't you think?)
to take this literally would be fairly sexist and heterosexist indeed

BUT it may have some mythological significance

nature and ancestry give birth to procreation

the physical and the psychological give birth to the sexual

a mind connected to a body is life

Peterson talks about the importance of the "father" as a guiding figure but also the importance of his not becoming over-rigid and forbidding the influence of the "mother" as a regenerative figure

(if the "father/mother" element is bothersome feel more than free to substitute non-gendered terms, I just can't think of any right now)

in a sense, it is important that old kings die and make way for new kings
and that the mother continue to bear new kings

Peterson also talks about how Christ and the Devil are necessarily intimately connected- they are not really antagonists, they are more like brothers...however the first is willing to admit his weaknesses and learn from them while the other is not, and hence becomes not just flawed but intentionally evil

it seems to me that Christ/Devil is one manifestation of the Trickster, like Anansi or Coyote...

and Peterson's main claim seems to be that this is how monotheism was intended to be practised

wow

what happened?

Somewhere it seems that the feminine aspects of god were at the very least disregarded...Mary plays a role in the New Testament but it is limited, and the Old Testament is not necessarily better in this regard

and sometimes they were even outright persecuted, look at the way witchcraft was treated after patriarchial monotheism took hold in Europe

Also, the Devil was banished from heaven, of course...and not only did HE ignore his weaknesses but large masses of people were instructed to ignore HIM...

Interestingly...one of the pagan gods was/is often represented as having horns...

According to Peterson, people who ignore the evil aspects of human experience are chosing to be themselves evil

or perhaps there were but few evil people controlling the society by taking from them the means with which to control themselves...this gets a little Foucault's Power/Knowledge, I know...I have very few original thoughts

this is interesting to me after taking classes in post-colonial theory and also sexual diversity theory

why do heterosexual european men have such a history of doing horrible things to others?
(it may be good to note that the vast majority of people I have met in the above categories are actually wonderful people...)

...European "myth" did not stop having evil and unknown elements, just that these were transposed onto other people...women, the colonized- how convenient then that it was the feminine aspects of god being ignored...and these HUMANS were treated in the same way that European myth had come to dictate that these ELEMENTS OF HUMAN EXISTENCE should be treated

and sexuality, with its necessary influence of nature, became evil

whatever, I am still trying to figure out what art has to do with all of this

it may be that art stands in the midpoint between emotion and reason- sort of like sexuality
and is a way to regenerate the known with the unknown, essentially, making it a little bit evil, like sexuality...

I am trying to write an essay about art, and why it is often either trivialized or viewed with suspicion

At the end of madness and civilization Foucault comes to a few interesting conclusions, on eof them seems to me to be that the difference between a mad person and an artist is simply whether or not he or she produces art

so, the artist channels madness into something we all can use...this is both a very important and very dangerous position to be in, especially when a society does not view this regenerative process in a particularly positive light...

aaaahhh it's not pacific time over here and for me in these past couple months this hour has become known as late at night....

2007-02-11T20:10:00.000-08:00

Well, I am still trying to hammer this one out, I think there may still be some hope here

"Ruse and new triumph of madness: the world that thought to measure and justify madness through psychology must justify itself before madness, since in its struggles and agonies it measures itself by the excess of works like those of Nietzche, of Van Gogh, of Artaud." Foucault Madness and Civilization p289

"Nietzche's last cry, proclaiming himself both Christ and Dionysos, is not on the border of reason and unreason, in the perspective of the work of art...it is the very annihlation of the work of art, the point where it becomes impossible and where it must fall silent; the hammer has just fallen from the philosopher's hands." Foucault, Madness and Civilization, p.287

"To write is to communicate, express, witness, impose, instruct, redeem, or save- at any rate to send out an unambiguous message...Obscurity is an imposition on the reader. True, but beware when you cross railroad tracks for one train may hide another train...To write "clearly," one must incessantly prune, eliminate, forbid, purge, purify..."(Trinh T. Minh-Ha, Woman Native Other, pp16-17)

Who, then, communicates what we don't have words for? The artists, of course...

I am interested in Foucault's connection between art and madness and then madness and civiliztion

often a binary is drawn to include wilderness along with the feminine and civilization with the masculine but I believe this to be a misuse of that binary...

for a civilization to work it must be constanly drawing new knowledge from the unknown and getting rid of ideas that are no longer useful

and perhaps there is no such thing as wilderness really, because even the forest and the jungle have a very clear order

but for a population to be controlled, the means of available communication must be "pruned, eliminated, forbidden, purged, purified,"

what is Foucault's connection between madness and disease, anyway...at the beginning he talks about how in the middle ages insanity came to replace leprosy in the minds of Europeans

a powerful way to control people is by fear of disease...if insanity is seen as a disease...

but I am still sort of spinning in binaries...fear of the unknown leading to fear of disease

this is where I found the existence of groups like Pivot (try googling PivotLegal) in terms of all the groups covered under its umbrella

is there an "other" really or are all these people just unified by a common enemy?

2007-02-02T17:13:00.000-08:00

that shows what state my brain was in after staring at the computer for so long

it's redefining prostitution as sex work

does not define sex work as slavery, that's the whole point

blah

well if anyone's reading this and I just perplexed you, sorry

but jo bindman seems pretty interesting

Caught in Traffick

2007-02-02T08:11:00.001-08:00

oh why oh why won't my links work?

jo bindman wrote an article called "redefining sex work as slavery on the international agenda" which should be available either by googling her name or the title of the article, (sorry, I just could not get any links to work so google it'll have to be)

this also somehow links to walnet and was written in collaboration with Anti-Slavery International and the Network of Sex Work Projects, both of these organizations have websites that I think are worth a look)

oh, I first heard of Jo Bindman when I was reading Global Sex Workers: Rights Resistance and Redefinition which is a compilation edited by Kamala Kempadoo and Jo Doezema. An interesting point is that Kamala Kempadoo, though she was teaching in Colorado when she wrote this, is now a Women's Studies professor at York University, right here in Toronto.

on the issue of trafficking, I had usually thought of it as something that happens across borders but I have just learned that it can happen within borders, too

try googling

department of justice canada human trafficking

and

rcmp frequently asked questions on human trafficking

try this

http://www.icclr.law.ubc.ca/Publications/Reports/human_trafficking_2005.pdf

or google the International Centre for Criminal Law Reform and Criminal Justice Policy, once there, the sidebar has a what's new section, click on it, then scroll to where it says 7/28/2005- Human Trafficking, A Reference Guide for Canadian Law Enforcement, click on it then scroll to the bottom where again it says Human Trafficking, A Reference Guide for Canadian Law Enforcement, click on this and you will be in a 72-pg report. Pgs 8-10 has some intro and definitions and pgs 64-68 has a questionnaire which seems to outline the issues well as most people probably don't have time to read the whole thing.

2007-02-02T08:11:00.000-08:00

posting links on my myspace blog has not been working for me so I am going to try it here

http://sec.sa.utoronto.ca

I have not worked there for a few years, but this led to where I am now working, Guelph-Wellington Women In Crisis

http://www.gwwomenincrisis.org/

I also found some organizations that seem to share a similar ideology

I will apologize if the links don't work, try googling the title of the organization, which unless otherwise specified is the main part of the url

Here's Toronto Public Health's sexual health section

http://www.toronto.ca/health/sexualhealth/index.htm
and for more resources here, try "more info"

the community centre at 519 church st.

http://www.the519.org/

Planned Parenthood Toronto

http://www.ppt.on.ca/
Sadly I am too old for The House, but I always found it useful when I wasn't too old, try 'programs and services'

also try

http://www.hasslefreeclinic.org/

http://www.ontarioearlyyears.org

this organization is called Education Wife Assault;

http://www.womanabuseprevention.com/html/
they have some interesting links in the 'links' section that don't seem limited to wife assault

here is a legal activism site in Vancouver
http://www.pivotlegal.org/

and finally

http://www.walnet.org/

http://spoc.ca

2007-01-28T09:19:00.000-08:00

If my work is to be successful it will draw from a diversity of sources to reach the conclusion that the sex industry has played a critical part in the development of society in Toronto. I have gathered information from a wide variety of theorists as well as those whose approach is more practical. Most importantly perhaps is that I draw from the work of Phillipa Levine, Kamala Kempadoo, Jo Doezema, Dan Allman, Gloria Lockett, Julian Marlowe, Gail Pheterson, and others and will be operating on the assumption that discrimination against sex workers as a group is grounded in racism, classism, sexism, and homophobia. While there are certainly concerns, such as physical exploitation and transmission of infection, that are connected to the sex industry, it is my standpoint that these concerns are not peculiar to the sex industry and furthermore, that procedures to abolish the sex industry will make those involved less likely to seek outside help, and will hence worsen the problems associated with it. One factor shared by all instruments intended to abolish the sex industry is that they have all been ineffective. Approaches ranging from patriarchal-monotheistic anti-sex doctrines, outright criminalization of those involved in the sex industry, and certain factions of the feminist movement that view the sex industry’s existence as inherently oppressive to women, have at this time not succeeded in eliminating the sex industry. If these approaches have been successful at all it has been in pushing those involved in the sex industry outside of critical factions of society such as the legal system, spiritual communities, and the feminist movement, hence, causing them to be more oppressed.

There is a feminist stream, headed by theorists such as Kathleen Barry (see Kempadoo 1998, pp. 11-12), that views the commercial sex as a paradigm of women’s oppression via sexual subordination and economic marginalization. Proponents of this form of thinking believe that women will not fully be emancipated until the sex industry is abolished. I intend to challenge this viewpoint, as I believe, conversely, that it is the oppression of women that makes people concerned about the existence of the sex industry. Women in European society are, traditionally, not supposed to earn their own money or be agents of their own sexuality. Participation in the sex industry necessarily entails these two aspects, which is why I believe that it is the patriarchy that seeks to abolish it. While there is certainly much work to be done by feminists in terms of improving the working conditions of women, I feel that when this work takes the direction of abolishing the sex industry, it is misguided.

Additionally, there is a stream of thought that came heavily into play during the colonial era in the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth century and saw a resurgence in the 1990s that states that while women of European descent who are citizens of wealthy countries might be able to make the choice to participate in the sex industry as a way to further their emancipation as women, all other women throughout the world cannot. In this view, women who travel from countries formerly known as ‘second,’ and ‘third’ world countries to ‘first’ world countries to work as sex workers as well as many women from various sub-populations living within ‘first’ world countries who work as sex workers are seen as inherently exploited. While I am certainly not saying that I do not advocate greater economic oppourtunities for women throughout the world that would cease to cause women to work as sex workers for lack of other options, I also would like to challenge the racist assumption that some women lack agency. I believe that the separation of ‘first,’ ‘second,’ and ‘third’ world women in this regard is part of the same thinking that caused the feminist movement to initially exclude women who were not white.

One important element of my approach is that I will be utilizing some degree of a linear, historical approach (alongside other approaches, of course). I intend to trace the history of the fur-trade in Canada as well as other aspects of Canada’s colonial history as regards how these aspects caused the development of a lucrative sex industry in Canada. t industry in Canada and how its development was intensely connected to the sex industry.

Unfortunately, Much literature on the sex industry in Canada states that not much is known about the Canadian sex industry save that it has historically and continues to play a major role in the society and economy of Canada.I believe that my approach will be unique because it will look at the colonial history of Canada, specifically, and will recognize that Canada has a unique colonial history that has resulted in a unique situation with regard to the global sex industry.

References

Allman, Dan. M is For Mutual, A is For ACTS: Male Sex Work and HIV/AIDS in Canada. Vancouver: Sex Workers’ Alliance of Vancouver along with Health Canada, AIDS Vancouver, and the HIV Social, Behavioural and Epidemiological Studies Unit, Faculty of Medicine, University of Toronto, 1999.

Allman, Dan, and Myers, Ted. “Male Sex Work and HIV/AIDS in Canada,” In Men Who Sell Sex: International Perspectives on Male Prostitution and AIDS.

Aldrich, Robert. Colonialism and Homosexuality. London and New York: Routledge, 2003.

Arens, Blake, Hima B., Gina Gold, Jade Irie, Madeleine Lawson, and Gloria Lockett. “Showing Up Fully: Women of Colour Discuss Sex Work,” moderated By Jill Nagle in Whores and Other Feminists. ed. Jill Nagle. London and New York: Routledge, 1997.

Bidini, Dave. On a Cold Road: Tales of Adventure in Canadian Rock. Toronto: McClelland and Stweart, 1998.

Doezema, Jo. “Forced to Chose: Beyond the Voluntary vs. Forced Dichotomy,” In Global Sex Workers: Rights, Resistance, Redefinition. ed. Kamala Kempadoo and Jo Doezema. London and New York: Routledge: 1998. pp. 34-47.

Goddard, Peter, and Ronnie Hawkins. Ronnie Hawkins: The Last of the Good Ol’ Boys. Toronto: Stoddart Publishing Co. Ltd., 1989.

Kempadoo, Kamala “Introduction: Globalizing Sex Worker’s Rights,” In Global Sex Workers: Rights, Resistance, Redefinition. ed. Kamala Kempadoo and Jo Doezema. London and New York: Routledge, 1998. pp.1-24

Kempadoo, Kamala. “The Migrant Tightrope: Experiences from the Caribbean,” In Global Sex Workers: Rights, Resistance, Redefinition. ed. Kamala Kempadoo and Jo Doezema. London and New York: 1998. pp.124-138.

Kempadoo, Kamala. Sexing the Caribbean: Gender, Race, and Sexual Labour. London and New York: Routledge, 2004.

Levine, Phillipa. Prostitution, Race, and Politics: Policing Venereal Disease in the British Empire. London and New York: Routledge, 2003.

Marlowe, Julian. “It’s Different for Boys,” In Whores and Other Feminists. ed. Jill Nagle. London and New York: Routledge, 1997.

Pheterson, Gail (ed.). A Vindication of the Rights of Whores. Seattle, WA: Seal Press, 1989.

Sex, Politics, Rock and Roll

2007-01-28T09:17:00.001-08:00

It is difficult to separate sexuality and the performing arts. Indeed, in many times and places the distinction has not been made. In my essay I will trace the story of the development of the performing arts as a major industry in the twentieth century Western world and explore the difficulties posed in this instance by the illegality of sex as an industry. I will posit that this problem did not cause the separation of sexuality from every other aspect of the performing arts, rather it created a major economic force with both licit and illicit elements. The binaries between acceptable and unacceptable people and acceptable and unacceptable activites, and the necessary existence of both sides of the binary, would have very strong effects on the arts and culture of the Western world. Forms of art would develop that were equally influenced by the cultures of unacceptable people and the circumstances of unacceptable activities, neither ever completely separate from the acceptable. Another element of my hypothesis is that global social, political, and economic upheaval in the decades following World War Two would lead to the failure of Western society to adequately separate the acceptable from the unacceptable, as evident in the arts and culture of the time. This, in turn, would lead to a large-scale and pervasive questioning of Western societal values

Much of the popular music listened to in the world today has been somehow influenced by jazz. And jazz has been influenced by the particular set of social and political circumstances in which it appeared. Jazz came from New Orleans, a city in which many different cultural groups of European, African, and Western Hemispheric ancestry would intermingle, though not without animosity. Many different groups in the United States would be relegated to culturally or otherwise automatically inscribed positions in the sexual-economic hierarchy. “Considered ‘less than white’ by fairer-skinned Northern Europeans, the Italian experience most closely resembled the racism experienced by African-Americans.”(Russo) Feminist writers Phillipa Levine and Jo Doezema question whether men involved in the sex industry in positions other than as the actual sellers of sex were really such greedy and ruthless tyrants while the women they worked with were helpless victims. In doing so, they outline the racist and sexist stereotypes that these assumptions are based on: “The Jewishness of pimps was not routinely left as a hint or a suggestion: it was a central fact that separated the pimp from the Englishman” (Levine) “By 1910 the images of the white slave trade conjured up by London purity groups had taken full hold of the American imagination…The vision of a vast network of Jewish and French procurers kidnapping and luring white women from Europe and America to service lowly natives and “eastern rich potentates” was captivating, combining as it did racial anxieties, colonial debates, immigration politics, and public morality issues…” (Scully) But, “research indicates most of the ‘trafficking victims’ were actually prostitutes migrating, like thousands of others, in hopes of finding a better life…when subject to scruitiny, the image of the “trafficking victim” turns out to be a figment of neo-Victorian imaginations” (Doezema) This racialization of the illicit economy and the politics surrounding the changes to the American landscape in the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries would prove to be very instrumental in the development of jazz: “Whereas New Orleans invented jazz, Chicago legitimized it by introducing many soon-to-be legendary black musicians into the white attended clubs- and this seminal occurrence was largely due to the efforts of (Torrio’s business partner, and both men were known to be heavily involved in the sex trade) Al Capone…Al had always insisted that his speakeasies (i.e.prohibition-era illegal drinking houses) employ live musicians…the gangster without a racist bone in his body made a momentous decision: he would bring Chicago the best jazz musicians in the country. The overwhelming majority of these were of African descent and were playing for spare change in the dives of New Orleans, forbidden from playing the white clubs.” (Russo). . Indeed the fact that many Americans have been barred or severely hindered from full participation in the licit economy has contributed to the country’s maintenance of a burgeoning illicit economy. The fact that some people, like African-Americans, have historically been barred from the licit economy outright while others, like Italians and Jews, have been permitted a foot in each camp, has meant that there is much fluidity between the licit and the illicit economies, in fact the two are rather inseparable. The illicit economy and the licit economy cannot possibly be protected from exposure to one another. The cultural element of discrimination that keeps certain people in the illicit economy, combined with the illicit economy’s interest in the arts and entertainment industry, has had some interesting effects arts and entertainment in America. Jazz is one observable instance of this phenomenon. Jazz would develop out of a combination of a mélange of cultural influences and a relegation of some of these influences to the netherworlds of society and would go on to have a major influence on the same society’s upper strata.

Wars have a tendency to change the sexual climates of the societies they affect. Of course, large numbers of people are forced to be separated from their partners for indefinite periods of time and this can certainly lead to an increase in the prevalence of commercial sex. In the instance of a World War, individual countries will be forced to contend with all kinds of influences, licit and otherwise, from other parts of the world affected by the fighting. “…military prostitution was regarded as inevitable wherever soldiers gathered. The military presence had a powerful hand in shaping local sexualities, especially paid sex. “ (Levine). The two World Wars that occurred in the first half of the twentieth century are of particular interest because they involved conflict not just between countries but between networks of countries established during colonization. “On closer inspection, however, the war was a truly global clash of empires…The first world war was a truly global conflagration…The reality was that German defeat was exogenous, not endogenous; it was the inevitable result of trying to fight a global conflict without being a global power. Considering the vast differential between the resources of the two empires, the only real puzzle is that it took the British Empire so long to win.” In Berlin, the changes in cultural climate stemming from WWI combined with economic upheaval meant that society hardly went back to the way it had been after the First World War was over “…there was no dearth of gangs. They would gather anywhere in the city, like the clustering streetwalkers- even in the fashionable West.” (Gillman and VonE kardt) “Dope- morphine, heroine, and cocaine, was not hard to find, according to police reports of that time (Gilman and Von Eckardt) and “Prostitution was rampant” (Gilman and Von Eckardt) It must be stated that there were some very positive changes to Berlin’s culture stemming from the First World War: “the greatest influence on the music of Berlin, on the very sound of Europe, came from across the ocean. ‘Duke’ Ellington hit Berlin in the summer of 1925 with his all-black revue Chocolate Kiddies…Ellington had a lot of young Berlin composers running for score paper…Kurt Weill was the most talented of those who called the new tune. In the fall of 1928 he presented two one-act operas, based on texts by George Kaiser, in the City Opera- as well as his Threepenny Opera performed in the Theater am Schiffbauerdamm. Jazz Opera was established. Duke Ellington proved to have as much influence on the new music as Schonberg.” (Gilman and Von Eckardt) The connection of jazz with commercial sex in the United States combined with the migration of people connected with the commercial sex industry to Europe to service soldiers during WWI would have a great and lasting effect on European music.

While Berlin certainly developed its own unique forms of cultural expression in the years after the First World War, it far from the only region of the world to be affected by these changes. In fact, since the German situation was “exogenous, not endogenous,” (Ferguson) the roots of the turmoil were actually located elsewhere. The influence of the United States on German culture in the interwar period was likely rooted in cultural and economic upheaval in the United States. And all of this upheaval was probably rooted in what was still the global power of the time, the British Empire. “The creeping crisis in Empire had its roots in the crippling price Britain had paid for its victory over Germany in the First World War…it proved extremely difficult to restore the foundations of the pre-war era of globalization…The biggest economic change of all wrought by the war was in the international capital market. Superficially, this returned to normal in the 1920s…Britain resumed her role as the world’s banker, though now the US was investing almost as much overseas…Yet, the significant thing about the Depression in Britain was not that it was so severe but that, compared with its impact on Germany and the United States, it was so mild. What brought recovery was a redefinition of the economics of empire.” (Ferguson) A couple of years after WWI ended, the United States would enter a period of alcohol prohibition and “Chicago would become the hub of a national obsession with booze, blues, and big-money crime.” (McDougall). This was a critical time in the careers of MCA moguls Jules Stein and Lew Wasserman. “All the bands got their big boost in 1933 because of the Chicago World’s Fair” recalled former agent Chuck Suber, one of Stein’s youngest contemporaries in Depression-era Chicago. The Chicago World’s Fair, “A Century of Progress,” began as a boondoggle but wound up a bonanza, thanks to sex, booze, and big band music…Sally Rand, whose real name was Helen Gould Beck, had gone to Hollywood to become an actress in the early 1920s. But she landed only bit parts…At the Chicago World’s Fair, she hit her stride as Sally Rand, Queen of the Fan Dancers, who dared to dance au naturel, with only a pair of huge feather fans separating her from her audience…Sally worked for the Capone organization- a fact that Jules Stein and his agents learned only after MCA, too, was persuaded to work with, rather than against, the Mob…Outside of its bands, MCA’s premiere offering during the World’s Fair was the Folies-Bergere, second only to the Eiffel Tower as the most popular tourist attraction among Americans in Paris. But more important, the U.S. version featured topless showgirls for a Midwestern audience a full generation before nudity became the piece de resistance of Las Vegas showroom entertainment…They (MCA) earned a small fortune from the Follies Bergere. And Sally Rand became an MCA client…’I don’t know what arrangement Stein had with the Mob, but he did offer to deal with them,’ said Suber, who worked for MCA’s rival, General Artists Corporation in the late 1930s. ‘You had to if you were going to stay in business. We all did. ‘

“(Johnny) Torrio had made Ralph Capone’s dream of owning a piece of every element in the nightclub business come true. Naturally, entertainment was as integral to the package as an olive in every martini.” (McDougall)

MCA talent passed through many silent syndicate-controlled clubs and connections would lead Lew Wasserman to Chicago to meet Jules Stein, where the two would become business partners in the running of MCA. The upheaval of the period between the wars allowed for marginalized factions of society to gain more prestige than they were intended to given there social standing. This would create not simply different forms of cultural expression but also expression of the more shadow-laden elements of society.

The end of the Second World War would bring major changes to the structure of the World’s economy, and with it major changes to global politics and societies. The economic, political, and societal structures that had been set up as part of the British Empire was certainly no exception. “The bottom line was, of course, the economy. Exhausted by the costs of victory, denied the fresh start that followed defeat for Japan and Germany, Britain was simply no longer able to bear the costs of Empire…with the United States shifting from informal to formal empire much as late-Victorian Britain once did…As we have seen (British) empire began with as a network of coastal bases and informal spheres of influence, much like the post-1945 American ‘empire’…No one could deny the extent of American informal empire- the empire of mutinational corporations, of Hollywood movies and even of TV evangelists. Is this so very different from the early British Empire of monopoly trading companies and missionaries?…Yet…the process of ‘Anglobalization’ is different today. On close inspection, America’s strengths may not be the strengths of a natural imperial hegemon. For one thing, British imperial power relied on the massive export of capital and people. But… (America) remains the favoured destination of immigrants from around the world, not a producer of would-be colonial emigrants. ” (Ferguson) Although the United States had long since successfully fought for independence from Britain, much of the country’s inner working would still be based on initial history as a British colony. Nonetheless its economy would become the biggest in the world. Canada, still a member of the British Commonwealth, was the logical place to receive various forms of outflows of American wealth such as increased trade and outsourcing of American corporations. Simply glutting some economies relative to others would not change all of the societal networks, licit and otherwise, that had been in place for centuries. What the post-war economic upheaval, or post-war prosperity, when speaking from a Canadian or American perspective, would do would be to expose the more marginal elements of these networks.

Michel Foucault talks about how societies are often controlled by denying members access to their sexuality. “…a system of control of sexuality allied to corporal persecution, is established…” (Foucault). Sexuality and the arts cannot be separated; the sexual aspects of the arts can be hidden and only made apparent to marginalized members of society, but they will still be there. The influence on the Western world of music that evolved out of strip joints and brothels assisted its members in saying “make love, not war.” When the generation that was born after World War Two was drafted as the United States fought Vietnam, a very large portion of them refused, with Rock and Roll playing in the background. Additionally, because of the marginalization of sexuality in Western society and the relegation of marginalized members of that society to economic positions more closely associated with sexuality, the exposure of more privileged Westerners to this music with sexual roots and to the music of the less privileged cannot be separated. Art communicates what more explicit media might be afraid to. Middle-class white Americans would be exposed to the experiences of the poor and non-white in their own societies; they might understand that a war, to the marginalized, meant being relegated to the most dangerous positions, they might understand, from the British invasion, what a war would mean if it was fought on one’s home turf. Jewish voices would remind the world’s population that the stresses of war can lead to scapegoating of innocent civilians. The influence of Canada on the music of Britain would expose the empire from a slightly different perspective. When an entire society is influenced by art from marginalized factions of that society, they will likely question their society’s value-system, which is exactly what happened. When people have access to a diverse array of art forms accurately reflecting the global human experience, they will be in a position to accept the entire human condition.

Bibliography

Benn, Carl. The Iroquois in the War of 1812. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1998.

Bidini, Dave. On a Cold Road: Tales of Adventure in Canadian Rock. Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1998.

Bowman, Rob. “Life is a Carnival,” In Goldmine Magazine. July 26, 1991. Volume 17, No. 15, Issue 287.

Brock, Deborah. Making Work, Making Trouble: Prostitution as a Social Problem. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1998.

Casanova, Jaques-Donat and Raymond Douville. Daily Life in Early Canada: From Champlain to Montcalm. New York: MacMillan, 1967.

Creighton, Donald. The Empire of the St. Lawrence Toronto: MacMillan, 1956.

Doezema, Jo. “Forced to Choose: Beyond the Voluntary v. Forced Prostitution Dichotomy,” In Global Sex Workers: Rights, Resistance, Redefinition. ed. Jo Doezema and Kamala Kempadoo. New York: Routledge, 1998.

Ferguson, Niall. Empire: The Rise and Demise of the British World Order and Lessons for a Global Power. New York: Basic Books, 2004.

Foucault, Michel. “Body/Power,” in Power/Knowledge:Selected Interviews and Other Writings, 1972-1977. ed. Colin Gordon. New York: Pantheon Books, 1980.

Gilman, Sander L. and Wolf Von Eckardt. Bertold Brecht’s Berlin: A Scrapbook of the Twenties. New York: Archor Press/Doubleday, 1975.

Goddard, Peter, and Ronnie Hawkins. Ronnie Hawkins: The Last of the Good Ol’ Boys. Toronto: Stoddart, 1989.

Kempadoo, Kamala. Sexing the Carribbean: Gender, Race, and Sexual Labour. New York: Routledge, 2004.

Levine, Phillipa. Prostitution, Race, and Politics: Policing Venereal Disease in the British Empire. New York: Routledge, 2003.

Lunn, Janet, and Christopher Moore. The Story of Canada.Toronto: Lester Publishing and Key Porter Books, 1992.

Lussier, Antoine S. and D. Bruce Sealey. The Metis: Canada’s Forgotten People. Winnipeg: Pemmican Publications Inc., 1975.

McDougall, Dennis. The Last Mogul: Lew Wasserman, MCA, and the Hidden History of Hollywood. New York: Crown Publishers, 1998.

Marcus, Greil. Invisible Republic: Bob Dylan’s Basement Tapes. New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1997.

Scully, Eileen. Pre-Cold War Traffic in Sexual Labour and Its Foies: Some Contemporary Lessons. In Global Human Smuggling: Comparative Perspectives. ed David Kyle and Rey Koslowski. Baltimore and London: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001.

Russo, Gus. The Outfit: The Role of Chicago’s Underworld in the Shaping of Modern America. New York: Bloomsbury, 2001.