It’s true: we’re shameless about spreading the word of the amazing accomplishments of our team members.

Since our publisher and blogger Stacey May Fowles is probably all humble about it, I will do the honours of promoting her shamelessly!

She will be launching her new book, Fear of Fighting, illustrated by Marlena Zuber, at:

THIS IS NOT A READING SERIES
Tuesday, October 14, 2008
The Gladstone Hotel
1214 Queen St. West (Queen just East of Dufferin)
Toronto
7:30PM-12AM

The two will compare notes with Mariko Tamaki on the creative process.

Since I’m all blocked and stuff, and considering the Artist’s Way (how 80s of me), I’m going to try and make it.

There will also be a live set by Tomboyfriend!

Did you know that over 90,000 students in Toronto go to school hungry?

Or that one in three children live in poverty?

How about the fact that 41% of Toronto school children start school each day without breakfast?

The Toronto Foundation for Student Success feeds many of these students in schools and community programs through various breakfast, lunch and snack programs. Over 1200 volunteers assist to administer and facilitate these programs, but there is so much more that needs to be done.

This week, October 6th to 8th, has been declared the “Feeding Hungry Toronto Students Week” and the aim is to promote awareness of the missing link between nutrition and learning, and to increase support for child nutrition programs in our communities and neighbourhoods in Toronto.

A series of events are taking place across schools and across the city this week, and your participation and involvement is definitely needed!

Wow.

That’s all I have to say about a youth friend of mine from a community I work with in northwestern British Columbia. Sonya Tamara May Patrick, 16, from Burns Lake, along with 5 other young people, won a contest the Carrier First Nation of Lake Babine hosted for their youth to write about what their language, neduten, means to them and the entire nation.

The prize? Attending the World Indigenous People’s Conference on Education in Australia! And to top off that life-changing opportunity, touring with the Maori for their educational tour the following week in New Zealand.

The conference will be held on the traditional lands of the Kulin Nation, in Melbourne, from December 7th to 11th. It will be a celebration of our diverse cultures, traditions and knowledge.

So why did she decide to write?

“I wrote the essay because our language itself is symbolic to our nation, and that knowing our language and speaking it in another country would show that we still have our pride. We are really so proud of it, residential schools tried to ban our language, but they failed, and knowing that we survived through it keeps it and us alive, and it is still very strong. I would like to learn our language while we have our Elders, because we as youth need to realize we are losing our elders fast and need to take advantage of learning our language when we can. It’s so important.”

The World Indigenous Peoples Conference: Education (WIPC:E) is a triennial conference of international significance that attracts peoples from around the globe to celebrate and share diverse cultures, traditions and knowledge with a focus on world Indigenous education. The purpose of WIPC:E is to provide a forum to come together, share and learn and promote best practice in Indigenous education policies, programs and practice.

Oh, and she found out that she won while she was assisting to run another important conference in her community this past summer, Healing Our Spirits, that promoted health and wellness intersecting the importance of culture.

Wow.

Go Sonya go!

Proud and strong Carrier youth leader, Sonya Tamara May Patrick, standing ground on her traditional territory of Lake Babine.

For those you who missed it last night, here’s the vice presidential debate in ten easy minutes. Darn right!

Via Feministing.

A personal message straight from Stéphanie Piché, Planned Parenthood of Ottawa’s former Executive Director:

Dear Pro-choice community members,

It is with an immense pleasure that I am announcing the end of the law suit commenced by First Place Pregnancy Centre (FPPC) against Planned Parenthood Ottawa (PPO).

Last May, PPO, Heather Greenwood and I, Stéphanie Piché, received the official documentation informing us of the law suit, for defamation, from FPPC regarding comments publicly made by PPO regarding the Better Halves SENSational Tree Raffle in November 2007.

Following a public plea made to the pro-choice community, PPO received tremendous support from many individuals and organizations everywhere across the country. Thanks to your help and to your support, PPO was able to find an incredible lawyer, within two days, who understood the issue and knew how to defend our cause: Peter A. Downard from the firm Fasken Martineau DuMoulin LLP.

I am taking the time to write this short note to thank you all for your moral and social support. THANKS! I’m also taking this opportunity to inform you that the law suit FPPC vs. PPO has come to an agreement out of court which cannot be publicly commented.

Again, PPO, Heather Greenwood (former PPO employee) and I, would like to send you all of our recognition.

Sincerely,

Stéphanie Piché
PPO’s former Executive Director

Planned Parenthood of Ottawa’s community and members

It’s no secret that I’ll take any opportunity for a dance break. I also love people rockin’ out in home videos. So my friends, I just hit the motherload. Here’s what artist Margaux Williamson had to say about this video that she made mainly of clips of “teenagers dancing in their basements”, all taken from Youtube:

A friend first directed me to Youtube in 2004. The first thing I looked up was “whales”. I really had a craving to look at some whales. And like everyone else, I went on from there. It all looked so much to me like a palette – just like the “real” high quality palette of pigments you get from the ground that I was at first so suspicious of. After years of thinking about small human gestures, I was able to see a bigger portion of that rainbow – completely undirected by me, and completely of our world.

My long-time friend and first collaborator, Ryan Kamstra, read a book by Jeffrey Sachs called The End of Poverty. Then he wrote a song called End of Poverty. Ryan’s song has a line in it that goes: You struggled so hard for a petty theft of affection / only to find – you’re totally ordinary. That line, and everything else about the song, made it clear that it was time to try out this new palette of ordinary human gestures. I focussed on basement hues and teeangers.

The video is playing on a loop at the Harbourfront Centre Gallery in Toronto until November 9. Check out more of Williamson’s work here, and more of Ryan Kamstra’s band Tomboyfriend, here.

Just in case there was any doubt, here is what many women are feeling about Sarah Palin, the person to not vote for just because she is a woman.

This is a testimony from one woman:

The Alaska Women Reject Palin rally was to be held outside on the lawn in front of the Loussac Library in midtown Anchorage . Home made signs were encouraged, and the idea was to make a statement that Sarah Palin does not speak for all Alaska women, or men. I had no idea what to expect.

The rally was organized by a small group of women, talking over coffee. It made me wonder what other things have started with small groups of women talking over coffee. It’s probably an impressive list. These women hatched the plan, printed up flyers, posted them around town, and sent notices to local media outlets. One of those media outlets was KBYR radio, home of Eddie Burke, a long-time uber-conservative Anchorage talk show host. Turns out that Eddie Burke not only announced the rally, but called the people who planned to attend the rally “a bunch of socialist baby-killing maggots,” and read the home phone numbers of the organizers aloud over the air, urging listeners to call and tell them what they thought. The women, of course, received some nasty, harassing and threatening messages.

(more inside…)

Check out this shrine to sexy Stephen Harper by his biggest fan Ruby:

Desire and scrapbooking at The Stephen Harper Fan Club!!!

don’t you just want to squeeze him? (www.torontoist.com)

If Picasso had his Blue Period, then Judy Blume had her Period Period. Man, did I learn a lot about menstruation from these books. [Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret] was the one that got passed around feverishly in school. Not only did it teach us a (futile) breast enhancement exercise, it introduced us to ”Two Minutes in the Closet,” a game we played at many parties thereafter.

-Diablo Cody, Juno screenwriter, in her Entertainment Weekly column.

Via QuillBlog.