confluence, by andrew kurjata

Dear William and Kate: A last-minute plea to the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge to not name the royal baby George

July 22 2013 | ∞

Monday, July 22
Their Royal Highnesses the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge
c/o Buckingham Palace
London SW1A 1AA

Your Majesties,

First, I apologize for not writing sooner. Things can get quite busy here in the outer reaches of the Commonwealth, and I’ve been remiss in not remarking upon your pregnancy. Congratulations.

Congratulations, as well, on the birth today of your baby boy. By all accounts I hear he is happy and healthy and ready to take the throne in due time. Jolly good, as they say.

I must admit, however, that I do not contact you for entirely altruistic purposes. Indeed, this letter comes with a request, and a quite urgent one at that. I appreciate you taking the time.

You see, wanting to give you your privacy, I have not been taking part in much of the speculation surrounding your pregnancy these past months. I did not care much whether it was a boy or a girl, twins or triplets. I hoped only that you would be happy, and your child would be well.

But it has come to my attention that atop the list of possible names for your new baby, over “Alexander,” “James,” and “Robert,” is “George.” A fine name, to be sure, and one held by many royals over the centuries. Believe me, I know this, because here in northern British Columbia, Canada, I live in one of these George’s namesakes.

Yes, my home is Prince George, British Columbia, Canada, a decision settled upon via a vote circa 1915, replacing the earlier “Fort George.” It’s not entirely clear which Prince George it was named after, mind you, but still, here we all are.

In earlier times, sharing your name with a living royal was likely quite the honour. Indeed, taking a look across the country it seems to be something of a norm, judging by the “Prince Ruperts” and “Prince Edward Islands” and the like. But it’s the 21st century now, and we have some very new 21st century problems.

I am, by trade, a radio broadcaster with a focus on local events. I keep track of what’s happening in a number of ways, including newspapers, city council minutes, and talking to people on the street. But an especially valuable area of research is the internet.

For example, let’s say I want to to learn about Indian restaurants in the city. I might go over to Google and search for “Indian restaurants near Prince George.” I do this for all sorts of things. I also have a saved Twitter search that tracks what people are saying about the city. It looks like this:

Until earlier today, when I clicked on that it was largely people talking about the city. Things they liked, things they didn’t like, pictures of the sunrise, where they were eating lunch. Much of it not earth-shaking, but a useful way to take the pulse of what’s happening locally.

You may also notice that I use the modifier “-county”. That’s because in the United States, there is a Prince George’s county that sometimes creeps into my results. By putting a minus symbol before the county, it removes any results for “Prince George” that include the term “county”. Even so, I still get plenty of results for the region, so much so that I feel quite familiar with the news happening there, along with my own city.

All of this is a roundabout way of saying that if you decide to name your child, a future prince, “George”, I have great fears about what this might to do my internet searches. A county is one thing to compete with. A member of the Royal Family is quite another. Already, going on nothing but speculation, this is what my Twitter search looks like:

As you can, the world is incredibly interested in your child. Probably far more so than this small community. It’s a lovely city and one I’m proud to call home. But I really don’t know that our 80,000 people can compete with your 8 pound child.

We have quite happily welcomed a number of royals into our city. We are named after a royal, the Queen is on our money, and our province is called “British Columbia.” You can be assured that the royal presence will be felt here without having your son’s name come up in every Google and Twitter search we conduct about our community for the next ten decades or so.

And so, I respectfully ask you:

Please don’t name your child George.

Yours sincerely,

Andrew Kurjata
Prince George, British Columbia, Canada

update: that didn’t work.

Filed under: Best Of, Prince George, social media | Discussion

Reaction to the City of Prince George deactivating its Facebook and Twitter accounts

July 19 2013 | ∞

This is just a quick post, because it’s a beautiful weekend and I’m taking an internet hiatus until Monday.
Earlier this week, it was discovered that the city of Prince George had taken down its Facebook and Twitter accounts. Whether they are deleted or simply hidden is unknown. So, too, is anything beyond this statement from city communications staff:

“The City of Prince George is evaluating its use of social media. During the assessment phase, our Facebook and Twitter accounts will be dormant. Members of the public can continue to comment electronically by clicking on the Feedback link located at the bottom of the City of Prince George’s homepage at www.princegeorge.ca”

Since this statement was shared, I’ve been watching the reaction come in. Most of it has been on Facebook and Twitter and, perhaps not surprisingly, most of the people who are on Facebook and Twitter and have something to say about this think that cities should be on Facebook and Twitter. Here’s a few of the tweets I received on the subject:

@akurjata @daybreaknorth my instinct is that if many other major cities are using it, and benefitting, then we should learn and use.
— Bryce Lokken (@BryceLokken) July 18, 2013

@akurjata @daybreaknorth I definitely think they should. It creates an easier way for the city to stay connected to ppl in the community. — Michelle Mohr (@InvisPG) July 18, 2013

@akurjata @daybreaknorth Take a look at how Calgary’s mayor and staff used social media during the flood emergency. Nenshi is connected — Not the Mayor of PG (@notPG_Mayor) July 18, 2013

@daybreaknorth Social media, when used properly, can be effective for cities, which have frequent announcements. Also good for transparency.
— Tyler Noble (@tnoble) July 18, 2013

Over on the CBC Daybreak North Facebook page, reaction was similar. Susan Smith-Josephy wrote:

“Ill-advised move. Facebook and Twitter are vital communication tools. As I mentioned in a reply below, during a disaster social media is one of the quickest ways of getting the word out. Perfect examples of how social media, can not only provide immediate updates to people, but they are used for citizens to make direct contact. And it’s not just the younger demographic that use these tools, BTW.”

Sharon Sadler:

“Cities try hard to improve the economy and are always looking for ways to promote their city and tourism. This seems like a counter productive decision.”

Shawn Petriw:

“Should a city use telephones? I think so. What is NOT needed is paying someone six figures to use Facebook and twitter badly; they are for dialogue, not broadcast.”

It even prompted a couple of blog posts. On his Cariboo Politics blog, Steve Forseth wrote:

“it is my opinion that this move is a step backwards for the City of Prince George. Yes – you should evaluate all of your communication tools (social media, traditional media, etc) constantly to ensure you are communicating with your residents in the best manner possible, but deactivate your social media tools to undergo a ‘evaluation’ period is not the way to go.”

And Judy Kucharak opined:

“Why? Why abandon such an important conduit for communication? A system that can assist you in:

·   Early warning in case of local emergency

·   Local event/tourism promotion

·   Getting feedback via survey links

·   Authentic, real time engagement on local issues

·   Acting as a portal for the community

“My question after learning of the City of Prince George decision: Why would any community deliberately sever that important conduit of communication?”

Not everyone agrees, though. In a comment on Judy’s post, an Anonymous commenter had this to say:

“Or maybe the city of Prince George stopped sniffing the social media snake oil.
Lets say they had 3000 residents ‘engaged’ on their social media channels [we’re pretending a) there are no robot followers and b) everyone interested in PG is from PG]. This would be less than 4% of the total population of the town.
You expect them to pay an individual or a TEAM to cater to 4% of the population?”

That 3000 is a fair number, too, since it was roughly 2000 on the Facebook page and 1000 on the Twitter (and there was probably a decent amount of overlap/robots).
It’s also worth noting that this is all internet reaction- and from people who care to join the discussion at all. When I asked people on the street, I got a lot more who didn’t see the point of cities being on social media at all (it was about 50/50 in a teeny-tiny non-representative sample, but still interesting).
Finally, Prince George city councillor Garth Frizzell (who says he was not aware of the deactivation of the accounts) alerted me to the existence of B.C. Local Government Management Association document on cities and social media, highlighting this portion:

“Concerns have been raised as to whether municipalities should adopt social media tools at all, as no long term trends are available for carrying out analyses of the effectiveness and return on investment of adopting social media tools. Our findings indicated that given the current trends in social media adoption by Canadians, the scalability of social media tools, and the relatively low risk of being involved, municipalities should implement social media tools to the extent their resources permit. Implementing social media on a minimal engagement level requires negligible investment, and ensures that the organization’s brand is reserved for future use should social media become commonly adopted.”

Anyways, this is just some of the reaction I’ve seen. It’s an interesting subject, and one I’ll be mulling over during my time away from the screen over the next two days.

Filed under: Prince George, social media

Why I'm the @CityofPG on Twitter

July 18 2013 | ∞

When the city of Prince George joined Twitter in 2010, it chose @CityofPG as its Twitter handle. The account was promoted in news releases, YouTube videos, and official publications. It amassed a following of over 1,000 in a city of roughly 80,000, and received @mentions from a senior government minister, UBC’s medical program, and various citizens and visitors.
Then it was deleted.
Here is the reason given by communications staff:

“The City of Prince George is evaluating its use of social media. During the assessment phase, our Facebook and Twitter accounts will be dormant. Members of the public can continue to comment electronically by clicking on the Feedback link located at the bottom of the City of Prince George’s homepage at www.princegeorge.ca“

After reading this, I contacted staff with follow-up questions about why the evaluation was being done, why the sites were taken down for this period, who was doing the evaluating, how long, how, and if it was known when or if the city would return to social media. Staff politely declined to answer but said I would know when decisions were made/announced.
And then it occurred to me: what happens to the @CityofPG username? I’ve never deleted a Twitter account before, so I wasn’t sure if the handle immediately became available, or if it was still “held” by whoever shut it down.

Turns out it was available.
Links to this Twitter account are in city YouTube videos, council meeting minutes, physical publications, and websites for organizations like the Downtown Business Improvement Association and CivicInfoBC. They were all pointing to an address that was sitting there, available to anyone. If it went unused, that would be one thing. But if it was picked up by some other city of PG or a parody account, it could be confusing.
So, I decided to go through with the sign-up process and hold on to the name. I’m trying to make it as obvious as possible that it was the official account, but no longer is. I also have no plans to do anything with it. If the city decides they’d like to come back to Twitter, their old handle is available. They know how to get in touch.
PS. Not much I can do about the Facebook account. One thing I do know is that you can decide to either delete a page or simply make it invisible, with the option of coming back in the future. I have no idea which decision staff made.

Filed under: Prince George, social media | Discussion

Northern British Columbia's post-colonial era

July 16 2013 | ∞

Barkerville blogger/museum theater specialist Danette Boucher asks “Is it ethical to celebrate the colonial era?”:

“Is it ethical to celebrate the colonial period of a land, when colonisation certainly wasn’t a good thing for many of the ethnic groups involved? Is it ethical to celebrate industries like gold mining without also spending some amount of time addressing the element of damage industry of any kind brings to an environment?”

Prince George Citizen editor Neil Godbout wants to correct history:

“We have a mural in Prince George Community Foundation Park, just a few short steps from that great statue of Terry Fox, that tells a blatant, racist lie about this area’s history. It glorifies white settlers and marginalizes First Nations. One part of the mural, depicting a white missionary teaching a rapt audience of aboriginal people, is particularly offensive in light of what happened in residential schools.”

It looks like a cerebral discussion, but it really is something for every resident of a city/province/country to grapple with: who are we? How do we present ourselves? Which stories do we tell? We’re only just now becoming aware of/acknowledging some of the less savory parts of our past, and are figuring out how to incorporate them into who we are. In many ways, we’re starting from scratch. It’s a new era, if we want it to be.

* * *

As a sidenote, I was lucky enough to speak with Danette Boucher about these issues. You can listen to that conversation here.

Filed under: British Columbia, Canada, cities, Indigenous, Prince George

The hidden messages of bylaw enforcement

July 13 2013 | ∞

Earlier this month, bylaw enforcement in Prince George made a homeowner to take down a “Slow Down, Kids Playing” sign.
The comments on that article have plenty of upset people. It also prompted a blog post from Dezene Huber:

“The part that really irked me was a comment from the city manager of transportation operations in response to a media inquiry:
‘Parents should encourage their children to play in playgrounds as playing near the street is not the safest place to play.’
“The thing that bugs me about this comment is its deeper implication that spontaneous play in a child’s own yard is not safe and that the only places that kids should be are in a playground (highly supervised, of course) or, presumably, in their house. This comment leaves the impression that, in the mind of our city officials, a yard is inherently unsafe.”

There are many ways you can shape the character of a city. Taking down these sorts of signs in cul-de-sacs is one of them.
For the record, one of the first things we told our neighbours when we moved in is that their kids are free to incorporate our front yard into their play area when they’re out on the street.

Filed under: cities, Prince George

Less tennis courts, less firehalls, less libraries (they cost money): Some of the things up for discussion in Prince George's core services review

July 6 2013 | ∞

For over a year now, the City of Prince George has been involved in undertaking a core services review. At a cost of over $300,000 they had the outside consulting firm KPMG look through the way the city operates to find ways to cut down on costs. It’s been a controversial process, but one supporters (including, obviously, the bulk of the city council that is overseeing the process) maintain will be worthwhile. You can read the city’s rationale on their project page.
On Monday, mayor and council will sit down with a 120 page document titled the “Core Services Review Implementation Plan“. Basically, once KPMG made their list of ideas for what the city should do differently, city staff went through the list to examine what was possible, legal, and the benefits and drawbacks of the various ideas. Now they have a list of recommendations for council to consider. Some of these decisions will be made on Monday, others will need further review.
I’m not sure how many people are going to sit down and read all 120 pages. But I did, and here are some of the things that caught my eye. Please note, I’m not making judgement calls on whether these are good ideas or bad ideas, I’m simply highlighting them as proposals that caught my attention.
1. Charge more money for ice rinks, fields, and swimming.
This was pretty prominent throughout the whole process. We’re looking at 10% increases in 2014, 2015 and 2016 for using pools, school fields, and Masich Place (the track). On that subject, the Prince George Track and Field club could face a $700 increase in their rates in 2014, followed by a 10% increase in 2015 and 2016.
I don’t use the city ice arenas at all, but this caught my eye. According to the report, Prince George has low rates for ice time when compared to North Vancouver, Chilliwack and Kamloops, so the recommendation is to increase the fees in 2014, 2015, and 2016. Right now, the average men’s rec player pays $329 annually. By 2016, that could go up to $531. Women go from $291 to $470, and average kids fees go from $331 to $532. So I guess if you play hockey and so does your kid that could potentially cost $400 extra a year. Again, though, the argument is right now people are being undercharged.
2. Do not clear residential streets until 12 cms of snowfall
Right now, clearing happens after 10 cm of snowfall. And people sure do like to complain when their streets aren’t cleared. But quoting directly from the report: “If the threshold for clearing residential streets is increased from 10cm to 12cm, $180,000 of cost can be reallocated to other high priority snow and ice control activities. The 2cm increase will have no substantive impact on accessibility.”
3. Increase business licence fees by 30% and charge people money to rent out suites and duplexes
I don’t run a business and don’t know how much this would cost an average business owner. But the report notes that right now the business licence fees don’t pay for the services that the city has to provide to businesses (building inspections, fire safety, police services), so upping the fee by 30% would make the whole system sustainable, rather than a money-loser.
Related to this, as it currently stands you don’t need a business licence if you rent out a suite in your house or have a duplex or basically rent out anything with under three dwellings in it. City staff looked at other cities and found out that they charge business licences for these sorts of landlords and recommend Prince George do it, too.

4. Shut down tennis courts
Right now, the city maintains 63 public tennis courts. The thinking is this is more than necessary, and the number should decrease to 42. For comparison, they point out Kamloops has 26 and Kelowna has 27 (on a side-note, I wonder how we got so many tennis courts).
Here are the locations of the tennis courts that would be shut down:
Clearwood Park
Harwin Elementary School
Malaspina Park
Quinson Elementary School
South Fort /Family Resource
Van Bien Elementary School
Vanway Elementary School
Westwood Elementary School
Worth noting: the city says even if these are shut down, they could still be used as ice rinks in the winter, and they would still be monitored for safety. They just won’t paint lines, weed, and put up nets.
5. Shut down the Nechako Library, maybe
As it stands, the Prince George Public Library has two branches: the main one downtown, and a little outlet one up in the Hart area, which is about 13 km away.
The backstory provided in the report is this: in 2002, the Library Board said they don’t like the idea, but they could meet their budget requirements by shutting down this other library branch. The city didn’t make them do that and gave them the cash to keep operating, but it is estimated that it costs $200,000 a year to keep it going. City staff says it’s time to do a cost/benefit analysis- so it’s not like the Nechako branch will be shut down on Monday, but council could tell staff to look into it.
6. Also, maybe we have too many firehalls
KPMG says, and I quote, that the four firehalls in the city are “too many.”
In its report, city staff says “the suggestions in this opportunity that there are too many firehalls (4) and that the two halls in the city centre need to be amalgamated/reworked are not based on any formal analysis. However,as the City is now emerging from a ten year period of stagnant growth, a formal analysis is timely.” So, like the library, they don’t want council to make a decision- but they do think it’s time to look into the idea.
Also of note: apparently the downtown firehall is too old, and needs replacing. KPMG and city staff agree.
7. City council needs a code of conduct
I don’t get the impression this saves money (I could be wrong, I guess if councillors are constantly breaking rules and going to court that gets expensive), but anyways city staff looked at other code of conducts in other cities and wrote one for city council to adopt, if they want. It outlines ethics and things like that. You can read it at the very end of this document.
8. The Civic Centre isn’t going to be sold, at least not until after the Canada Winter Games
KPMG had a few ideas for how the city could save money on the Civic Center. One was to get a third-party operator to run it, instead of city staff, and another was to just sell it.
But! The Canada Winter Games is coming in 2015. And the Civic Centre is a big part of that. It’s going to be the Athletes’ Village and it’s going to be where a whole bunch of entertainment and ceremonies take place. So the staff recommendation is to keep doing what we’re doing until the Games are over. They add, “All avenues will be explored and identified to bring forward the best possible scenario for the operation of the [Civic Centre].”
9. Dog licences are kind of pricey compared to other cities
Dog licences for spayed/neutered pets cost $32 and unfixed are $74. You can get a discount of a few bucks if you pay early, but city staff says we should eliminate that. What caught my attention is the fees in other “comparable” cities. Compared to our $32/$74 rate, Kelowna charges $20/$60, Kamloops $25/$60, and Penticton $31/$62.
There’s a whole ton of other things in there, from drinking water prices to parking fees building inspections.
Council is going to sit down and consider these Monday morning at 8:30. You can read the full list of recommendations here, there will be a preview of the meeting Monday morning on Daybreak (and in other media, I’m sure), and you can either go down to city hall to see what council decides or stream the meeting live online from this website.
—-
Update: The Prince George Citizen, Opinion250, and Free Press all have write-ups on some of the decisions made. The livestream link above now contains the full meeting. And I interviewed the mayor.

Filed under: Prince George

How to use your Kindle 4 without the power button

July 2 2013 | ∞

Usually, when I need to fix something I turn to Google and usually the result is in the first page of search results. But every once in a while the solution to the problem isn’t easily found, so I post the results on my blog in an attempt to help future people with the same problem searching Google. I also throw in lots of keywords to help it be found. So here is what to do if you have a Fourth Generation Kindle (Kindle 4) whose power button isn’t working.

* * *

Basically, we have a Kindle 4 and one day its power button stopped working. The Kindle charges, and if you plug it in to a computer it shows up, but once it goes into screensaver (or power-saving) mode, you’re stuck. Unfortunately, I didn’t find a way to fix the power button, but I did find a way to not need the power button.
1. Plug the Kindle into a computer using the USB cable.
2. Take it out. At this point, you will be out of screensaver mode and able to actually read the Kindle.
3. Go to the homescreen.
4. Hit the menu button. Select “Search.”
5. Type ” ;debugOn” (no quotation marks) and hit the enter button (on the on-screen keyboard). At this point, all that should happen is the entirety of “;debugOn” should be highlighted.
6. Type “~disableScreensaver” and hit the enter button again.
Again, this isn’t a fix, but it does mean the Kindle won’t automatically go into screensaver mode, so you won’t be stuck in a situation where you can’t get it to turn on (unless you lose all your power and have to charge it- in which case you’ll have to plug it into a computer and unplug it again to get back into usable mode). I imagine the battery life will run out quicker, but it’s cheaper than replacing it- or, if you do replace it, now you have a handy spare for recipes in the kitchen or a “guestroom Kindle” or a cheap gift something. Better than throwing it out.
Source

Filed under: how to

Some things for Canada Day, 2013

July 1 2013 | ∞

Today is Canada Day, which means we’ve had a whole slew of lists of “the greatest”, “the best”, and “the most important” Canadian things. This is a list like that except it’s not a ranking, it’s just some things that are related to Canada that I’ve enjoyed lately.
Hark! A Vagrant
I’ve been reading Kate Beaton’s Hark! A Vagrant for a few years now, and just bought the book. I can assure you that even if you think you’ve seen them all, it’s worthwhile to get them in book form to rediscover a few- like this one.

Maestro Fresh Wes: Orchestrated Noise
It’s not the best rap album of 2013, and it’s not the best Canadian rap album of 2013. But it’s pretty fun to listen to one of the few elder statesmen of Canadian hip-hop up his Canuckness and lay claim to dominance. Most Canadian songs: “Reach for the Sky (Try)” for sampling Blue Rodeo, and “Black Trudeau (Rap Prime Minster)” for obvious reasons- but just to be safe, it starts with him addressing Mr. Speaker.

Day Into Night: A Porter Cassel Mystery

Basically, it’s crime mystery but it involves a fire investigator working in the northern woods of Alberta. It got bonus points for having the protagonist hit Dawson Creek and head up the Alaska Highway at the same time I was doing that on my vacation, but basically it’s just kind of a fun summer read.
“The Ballad of ‘Undergrads,’ Or How To Create A Cult TV Show Through Sheer Force of Will”

“Undergrads” was made by MTV, but in this post Derek Godin explains why it is so much more popular in Canada than America. As someone who did spend late nights in my teen years watching Teletoon’s late-night block, this was fascinating.
Sheared Canada Tee

I recently visited Toronto for the first time, and went to the standard landmarks like the Drake Hotel. Although I already have too many t-shirts, I walked away with this one- it’s made in Canada, part of the proceeds go to Canadian charity, and it’s pretty awesome. I’m rocking it today.
Intersections with Niru Kumar

This is a summer series from CBC Radio, one which promises to take a look at some of the more uncomfortable parts of Canadian multiculturalism. It’s a worthwhile investigation- I’ve heard one episode so far, and look forward to the rest.
This American Life: Who’s Canadian?

From 1997 (!), American and Canadians at This American Life take a look at the lives of the Canadians who walk among Americans. When Canadians play the game of listing homegrown celebrities who made it America I find it pretty dull, but it’s far more interesting to hear Americans try to come to grips with the notion that William Shatner is Canadian or the upset at the secret Canadian messages in “Beverly Hills: 90210” (who knew?)
Three Sisters Soup

For Christmas, I received a copy of “From Pemmican to Poutine: A Journey Through Canada’s Culinary History.” It aims to dissuade you of the notion that Canada lacks any homegrown cuisine with recipes for everything from sushi developed in Vancouver to deer jerky to seal meat. I’m trying some of the more achievable recipes, like Three Sisters Soup based on recipes developed by pre-contact agriculturalists in what is now eastern Canada.

Filed under: Canada

Podcast: The Casse-Tête Sampler Pack

June 13 2013 | ∞

Normally my CFUR Radio show Almost Mainstream consists of a grab bag of music I’ve been listening to lately- no real themes or anything like that. But this week I’m between travels and pretty wiped and was considering not doing a show until I realized it’s the same weekend as Casse-Tête. Billed as “A Festival of Experimental Music”, the idea is to take non-conventional music- everything from shoegaze to free jazz to a guy who’s going to play music on a parka and mittens- and put them in a festival.
I’m not a big follower of this type of thing, but the idea intrigues me not least because of the man behind it. Jeremy Stewart is a singer-songwriter and poet, and while I don’t always get everything he does, I get the ideas behind it. It comes from a place of art, and he’s also very much invested in making Prince George a place where this sort of art can happen. And he’s not some annoying, inaccessible artist, either- he can lay down a sweet Hendrix solo on a guitar and play a straight-up folk song with the best of them, which (in my mind) gives validity to his more out-there stuff because it sounds like an outgrowth of something more conventionally understandable, even when it’s heading out into the outer edges.
Anyways, this was enough to lead me to explore the artists performing at this festival and I liked what I heard enough to put a bunch of them into a special edition of my podcast in the hopes it will encourage other people to get into them and give the festival a shot. It happens this weekend and if it’s pulled off it will be a whole new element in Prince George’s cultural capacity. The website, where you can buy tickets or become a supporter of the festival is cassetetefestival.tumblr.com. The podcast and playlist that I made is at almostmainstream.com or below. Enjoy.

Almost Mainstream Episode 54 ½ – the Casse-Tête Sampler Packon Mixcloud

download

Filed under: music, Prince George

Caterpillargeddon 2013

May 27 2013 | ∞

If you follow me on Twitter, Flickr, or Instagram you’ll know we’ve had something of a caterpillar infestation around town lately. It’s quite something. You’ll look at a tree and think there’s no caterpillars there until you notice that bit of black part is actually a whole clump of them piled on top of each other. Elsewhere, they are hanging off of trees to the point you can’t help but get some on you- it’s like trying to avoid vines draped all over the trail on some hikes.
Everything I know about them I’ve learned from “What’s with all these caterpillars” by UNBC professor Dezene Huber (the exception being a listener who wrote to tell us that they looked after a squirrel monkey once, and it eats caterpillars, too). Per the blog mentioned, you can also make them into wine.
I’ve enjoyed searching out the grossest clumps of them, but I’ve had a really hard time capturing them on film, especially the dangling ones that look like gigantic, tree-sized webs. You can see some of the better photos in Caterpillargeddon2013.

Filed under: photos

Want me to care? Then explain it to me like you want me to care

May 24 2013 | ∞

In Calgary, there’s a movement to force city hall to use plain language when communicating with the public. It comes from Alderman Druh Farrel, who notes “the type of language currently being used can be overly technical, ambiguous, confusing and isolating.”
I’ve shared Dave Meslin’s Ted Talk “The Antitode to Apathy” before. In it he calls the use of technical jargon “intentional exclusion” and makes the same argument as Druh Farrel- if we want people to care, we need to talk to them in a way that makes it easy for them to hear us.
I don’t know that it’s intentional, but it is pervasive. As people move into academic and professional worlds they adapt to the language surrounding them. It took me three years to unlearn academic writing and to start being able to communicate in the clear, concise manner needed for radio. Here on my blog I still often fight (or fail to fight) the urge to use run-on sentences and needlessly flashy language.
Here are some rules for radio writing that I try to follow:

one thought per sentence
no technical terms or acronyms
get to the point as soon as possible
every time you eliminate a word or sentence, it’s a victory

We do this in radio for a simple reason: we want people to care what we’re talking about. I wish more professions had the same approach, particularly in the world of public relations. You’re competing for attention- why make it easy to be tuned out? It’s not dumbing-down. It’s explaining things like you actually want people to care.
See also:
Say Less
Why you shouldn’t put your press release in an attachment
Email Subject Lines: Get to the Subject
I am not a writer

Filed under: journalism, writing

Democracy

May 16 2013 | ∞

“Just a friendly reminder that democracy isn’t simply picking one side to be in charge every four years. It’s a process that happens every day in a variety of forums and ways.”

I wrote that on Facebook yesterday, and a shorter version on Twitter. As of now it has 20-odd likes and 4 shares (plus a number of retweets), which for me is a pretty high number for a status update. It seems to be resonating. At the risk of destroying that resonance, here is an attempt to expand on the thoughts going through my mind when I posted it, the day after British Columbia’s provincial election. I wrote it in that context, but I think it applies to any democratic society with free and fair elections, decent human rights, and relative freedom for the majority of its citizens.

* * *

First of all, if you are among the people who were threatening to leave if your choice of party didn’t form government, you might as well go ahead and do it now. I don’t care which side you’re on. Even if things went your way this time around, eventually your party will be turfed. Why put off the inevitable? Obviously you don’t have anything here you care that deeply about, because if you did you would stay and fight for it. There are legitimate reasons for leaving, but discovering that one political party is more popular than another is not among them.
Now that that’s out of the way, this is for the rest of you. It doesn’t really matter if your party won or your party lost or even if you voted or not. Your political power, your ability to control what happens in your city, province, and country, is not limited to your vote. There’s this misconception that democracy only happens every four years or so, and is simply the process of picking a group of politicians to be in charge until the next time democracy appears for us to use over a twelve-hour period, then it goes away. This is incorrect.
At its simplest, democracy is rule by the people. It implies a certain amount of equality, a certain amount of freedom, and a fairly stable civil society. There’s lots of other things that people say are and aren’t required for democracy but this isn’t a political science paper. Here in Canada we live in a democracy. It’s not a perfect one, and not everyone has as much of a say as they should, but it is a democracy nonetheless. So this notion of it being rule by the people holds.

There’s this misconception that democracy only happens every four years or so, and is simply the process of picking a group of politicians to be in charge until the next time democracy appears for us to use over a twelve-hour period, then it goes away. This is incorrect.

This means that even though we’ve elected some people to talk about laws and policies, they still aren’t “in charge.” If we all decided we didn’t like what they were doing, there’s legal, non-violent ways to fix that. In fact, we just saw an obvious example of that in B.C. The Liberals wanted the Harmonized Sales Tax. They were the government. And yet the HST was repealed because enough people made enough noise to force a referendum on the issue, and the people against HST won. Democracy in action when there isn’t an election.
There’s lots of ways to make your voice heard. There’s protests. There’s civil disobedience. There’s writing letters to your MLA. There’s writing letters to the editor. There’s municipal elections coming up. You can vote for a mayor who will express your feelings to the province and the country. You could even be that mayor.
I’m not saying any of this is easy. But heck, you think anything important is? At a certain level, the reason they’re “in charge” and you aren’t is because they worked for it. That’s why their name was on the ballot and yours wasn’t. If yours was and you aren’t currently an MLA then you understand how difficult it is.
Let’s talk about the people whose party of choice didn’t form government. I get that it hurts. You worked hard for an outcome that didn’t materialize. Take some time to mourn.
But resist the temptation to write off everyone who voted differently than you would have liked. The instant we stop seeing the other choices in a democracy as legitimate is the instant we stop having a democracy. That’s why the leaders of parties who don’t form government make concession speeches rather than call for open rebellion. They recognize the system is legitimate and that the outcome, though not what they wanted, is acceptable. It’s healthy for the rest of us to do the same until there’s a truly compelling reason not to.

The instant we stop seeing the other choices in a democracy as legitimate is the instant we stop having a democracy.

This doesn’t mean you just have to sit around and accept everything that happens between now and next time, though. If there’s an issue that matters to you, you’re going to have to keep working. This means sitting down in meetings, going door-to-door, talking to media, organizing rallies, and mounting petitions. We have multiple levels of government, a workable legal system, and a relatively free society. It is by no means easy to make things happen the instant you want them to happen, but that’s a feature, not a flaw. It’s tough for you? It’s tough for everyone else, too, including those whose interests seem to be opposite yours. There’s checks and balances in place. Use them.
To those of you whose party of choice is forming government: don’t gloat. It’s unbecoming. Do not think for a second that this outcome means the viewpoints of everyone who voted for someone else are illegitimate. As cheesy as it to say it, let’s go with the golden rule here: how would you like to be treated if your party lost? Try doing things that way. Because as I said before, it WILL happen. When it does you’ll be better off if you set a good example.

How would you like to be treated if your party lost? Try doing things that way.

OK, back to everyone. There’s a temptation to refer to elections in terms of “winners” and “losers”, “battles” and “wars.” I’ve done it and, so help me, I’ll do it again. But is that really the terminology we want to apply to our fellow citizens? On my street alone, I saw signs for both major parties. I don’t want to think of my neighbours as enemies. I wave to them. I’d much rather think that they are people with legitimate points of view that happen to differ, and that maybe with work and genuine openness, those differences can be smoothed over and some form of consensus can be built.
Put it this way: permanent change comes from changing the culture, not just from winning an election. Let’s use gay marriage as an example. Not so long ago, this easily could have been a party vs party issue in Canada. And if it worked that way, we could have a situation where every time power changed hands, so too did gay marriage rights. Party A is in power: gay marriage is allowed. Party B gets elected four years later, now it isn’t. That’s not workable long-term.

Pretty much anything that we think of as fundamentally “right”- at some point, someone had to do a whole lot of convincing to the people in charge.

Instead, proponents of gay marriage have mounted a long, long campaign of changing people’s attitudes to the extent that in many places, in the public sphere at least, it’s a non-issue. This campaign has included elections, to be sure, but it’s also included court battles, parades, television shows, and simply sitting down and talking with opponents. Same goes for the right of women and minorities to vote. Or intermarriage. Or pretty much anything that we think of as fundamentally “right”- at some point, someone had to do a whole lot of convincing to the people in charge. The battle for equality isn’t over, but (in Canada, at least), the changes that have been made can’t be unmade in a single election.
If you truly believe you’re in the right and the issue you believe in is important enough, you should be willing to win people over, not just win at the ballot box. Conversely, you should also be willing to entertain the notion that you’re wrong. Listen to the challenges to your point of view and truly consider them. If your only defence is to plug your ears and shout, you’re not doing anyone any favours.
What I’m trying to say is this isn’t over. Not for the people who got their way on Tuesday, and not for the people who didn’t. At the risk of repeating myself, democracy isn’t simply picking one side to be in charge every four years. It’s a process that happens every day in a variety of forums and ways. Get out there and use it.
(By the way, if you’re one of the people who feels like the democracy we have isn’t responsive enough to your needs and so have decided not to participate, I have a separate post for you).

Filed under: Best Of, British Columbia, Canada, politics | Discussion

How to keep cats in your yard

May 11 2013 | ∞

When we got word that baited cat traps might be coming to the neighbourhood, it was time to spring into action.

We’ve been trying different techniques for keeping our cats in our yard since we bought this house. The biggest problem was the cat who came with the house (the old owners had left him behind with instructions to take him to the SPCA). This is his neighbourhood and he’d spent most of his life outdoors. He didn’t take well to being inside at all. We tried sectioning off a portion of the yard for him as a little enclosure attached to the house, but he first climbed his way out, and then when we made that impossible, started digging into the main yard and hitting the road.

Anyways, this isn’t a post about whether cats should be indoor or outdoor or whether cat traps should be allowed or not. Some cats really want to spend time outdoors, and other people want to bait cat traps and we’ve encountered both and here’s what seems to be working.
Buy a bunch of chicken wire- basically how ever many feet of fence you have, get that plus change. Also buy what I think are called galvanized steel restraints (they look roughly like this)- approximately one per section of fence, plus a few more for corners, etc. You’ll also needs staples/staple gun and a method of attaching the steel restraints to the fence.

So first we went around the yard and screwed the steel restraints in to the middle of every section of fence. Then we took the chicken wire and ran it along the fence, stapling it in. We put the chicken wire in such a way that there is no platform or paw-holds for the cats to climb onto, it’s all covered in chicken wire. Then we used excess wire to tie the steel to the chicken wire. Then we went around and bent the steel at an angle so the cats look up and see that not only can they not climb the fence, they can’t jump over it. Bonus is the chicken wire is loose enough so if the cats try to jump on it they’ll find it not exactly stable. I’m explaining this poorly in words so here are pictures.

After a few false starts where we had to fill in gaps and adjust angles, we’ve had some days in a row now where the cats have been unable to leave. The main escape one isn’t super-happy with the arrangement, but he’ll adjust, especially as we expand parts of our garden to be more exciting for him to explore. I expect we’ll have to consistently monitor and repair, but for now it’s working. It’s a compromise.

Filed under: house and home | Discussion