Another sensible programme gone

April 16, 2012 / ginny200 / Leave a comment

Prison rehab program axed due to budget cuts – Canada – CBC News.

The CBC reports this morning that the government has cancelled the rehabilitation programme that has operated successfully in prisons, helping prisoners fight addiction and return as better and safer citizens to the outside world.

This government has curious pseudo-logic — put more people in prisons so you have to build more prisons, and make sure the prisoners continue to be addicted so they will reoffend when they hit the streets, and justify the increase in prisons.

Humane civilizations treat those who fall within their care, the elderly, the poor, the disabled, the sick, and yes the prisoners, many of whom fall into the last two groups as well, with compassion. It does the country no good whatsoever to return the untreated addicted to the streets.

The more bizarre the actions of this government, and that’s without considering Peter McKay, the better Thomas Mulcair looks.

Writers’ Retreat: Spring Thaw

April 2, 2012April 2, 2012 / ginny200 / Leave a comment

I just spent a lovely, productive weekend at Spring Thaw, a retreat organized and facilitated by Ruth E. Walker and Gwyn Scheltema of Writescape.

The Venue: Elmhirst Resort on Rice Lake near Keene, Ontario. http://elmhirst.ca, a comfortable old resort complete with separate cottages, a salt-water pool, a work-out room and a masseuse with “magic fingers”( so I am reliably informed}

We had two dinners and a fabulous brunch, the latter worth the drive. Elmhirst has a deserved reputation for its expansive dessert table.

Ruth and Gwynn generously catered the rest of our meals in their cottage where the conversation ranged from the progress of the writing, to the business of publishing to the merits of George Clooney as an actor.

They gave us unfettered time to write and think and walk, talk if we chose, to other writers, or silence to listen to the lake and the birds.

Each of them blue-pencilled ten pages of work for each of us and one-on-one, invaluable sessions that combined encouragement and critique.

The other writers: a range from the never-published to the soon-to-be published to those making a living by their pen. The most extraordinary voices emerged from unexpected people.

This was my second retreat with Ruth and Gwynn. It won’t be my last.

My Guest Blog

March 16, 2012 / ginny200 / Leave a comment

Richard Bylina invited me to guest blog at http://rickbylina.blogspot.com/. Please visit his always engaging blog on writing and check out his insightful book reviews.

Canadian Scientists Muzzled?— Shame

March 4, 2012 / ginny200 / Leave a comment

Prime Minister Stephen Harper should set scientists free, says Nature – thestar.com

http://sciencewriters.ca/2012/02/16/prime-minister-please-unmuzzle-the-scientists/

Both the articles above are a must-read for anyone interested in science, working in science or studying in science and for anyone who thinks that censorship is antithetical to democracy.

If the scientists who work for federally-funded organizations are being forced to toe a party(Conservative) line before they talk to the media, they are being muzzled. The free-flow of scientific thought is the most important factor in progress in science. Cross-pollination of ideas happens not just from publications in scientific journals but also from information in the popular press. One scientist’s information may be the very stimulus needed for another’s idea, perhaps in a totally unrelated field.

The mania for control of the “message” in Stephen Harper’s government, a government elected on the promise of transparency, appears to be spiralling out of control. What next? Controlling what can be taught in the universities?

The scientists who work for federally-funded agencies are not working for the PMO, nor for the Conservative Party. They are working for us, and we have the right to hear what they have to say, whether the government like it or not.

This country is losing its thoughtful, sane, measured behaviour. Muzzling scientists is an offence against free speech and Canadian values. Shame.

Sunday

February 12, 2012 / ginny200 / Leave a comment

The myth of Tory economic performance – The Globe and Mail.

Check out Lawrence Martin’s assessment of the Harper record. The out-of-control cuts and spending left us with a deficit where there had been a surplus. Martin puts it all together in this fine article. Politics is ever the same. The politicians “spin”, trying to convince us that up is down, black is white and guys who denied the economic downturn in ’08 are somehow our saviours in ’12.

Writing: I’m working on book three in my Dangerous Journey’s series. Anne is in Bermuda this time, fending off a police detective who thinks that Anne is a killer, and a killer who thinks she’s a nuisance that needs to be eliminated. I hope to be finished by the end of March, so watch for it next fall. Title, as always, pending.

Reading; I finished The Hare with the Amber Eyes, by Edmund de Waal. De Waal writes the biography of his family’s collection of netsuke and through it a memoir of his family of Russian Jewish bankers and their sad fate at the hands of Austrian Nazis. A fascinating and moving story, and a very good read.

Harper and Seniors

January 31, 2012 / ginny200 / 2 Comments

Opposition accuses Harper of putting prisons before seniors – The Globe and Mail.

First I must admit, I am a senior. Have been for seven months. Before that I worked as a physician for forty years. I paid taxes on every penny. Taxes that paid for schools, roads, hospitals, hydro dams, and lately politicians’ gold-plated pensions. Also wars, expansions of prisons. and incentives to large corporations.

Yes, I and the others of my age paid for it all. When Harper was elected, another pair of seniors, Chretien and Martin, handed over a surplus. We, the elders paid for that too, enduring those years of restraints. Harper squandered it.

And now we have a government that has decided that those of us who paid for all that will be too big a drain on the economy, too big to carry on with the 540.12 each month, that is the total OAS that seniors receive. What is the total amount that the MP’s present and past receive?

Perhaps we could forgo the expansion of our prison system, and the required prison sentences that are forcing it. The crime rate is falling after all.

Mr. Harper knows that we’re coming, the seniors. I think he should remember that we all vote.

Fairness

December 31, 2011December 31, 2011 / ginny200 / Leave a comment

John Ralston Saul, in his book, A Fair Country, talks about Canada as an aboriginal country, with one of its principle values, fairness. When I read it I remembered my father-in-law, who arrived here as a refugee from Slovakia in 1950, telling me about hearing children say to one another that something wasn’t fair. That was what was different about Canada, he said, even children knew things had to be fair.

In today’s Globe and Mail, Michael Ignatieff discusses the current economic disaster, and notes that things now are not fair. There are too many people who are excluded from Ralston Saul’s “big tent”. What follows is one of the final paragraphs:

A politics of fairness is also a politics of growth. Fair societies are more dynamic and more innovative. In fair societies, people don’t think the game is rigged before it begins. Success goes by what you know, not who you know. And people don’t waste emotions and energy on resentment and anger. They are too busy thinking up the next big thing.

He thinks that only by ensuring that everyone gets a fair chance can we overcome the current situation.

There’s no way out but a new politics of fairness – The Globe and Mail.

Happy New Year

Merry Christmas

December 24, 2011 / ginny200 / Leave a comment

My friends, love is better than anger. Hope is better than fear. Optimism is better than despair. So let us be loving, hopeful and optimistic. And we’ll change the world.

Jack Layton

Merry Christmas and best wishes for the New Year. Let’s change the world this year.

Outrage

December 18, 2011December 18, 2011 / ginny200 / Leave a comment

Saudi Arabia beheads woman for witchcraft – chicagotribune.com.

I am outraged by this. Capital punishment is appalling enough for capital crimes, but this, a state killing of a woman accused of sorcery. What did they think she could do, lay a spell on the ruling family?

The Chicago Tribune story goes on to explain the huge increase in executions in Saudi Arabia this year, several for “sorcery”, some even men.

The newspaper doesn’t comment, although it may have in the past, on the continued execution of people in the United States. Many of these are mentally challenged. Those convicted of killing white individuals are far more likely to be executed than those killing people of any other colour. Those killers who are women are highly unlikely to be executed. Even-handed justice? I think not.

Every country, including this one, has a number of the falsely accused, or wrongly convicted. Guy Paul Morin, Donald Marshall, Stephen Truscott. Those are the names we need to remember when politicians talk about bringing back the death penalty(for our falling murder rate) here. I don’t want innocent blood, shed by the government in my name and yours, on my hands. You can’t say sorry to a corpse.

http://freesakineh.org Please sign the petition.

8 Gifts for Photographers(amateur variety)

December 9, 2011December 10, 2011 / ginny200 / 1 Comment

I’ve been roaming around, looking at sites with gifts for photographers. Some cost megadollars and some under ten. Here’s a list of a few, not too expensive items that I found.

1) The phone is a great carry-around-every-day camera,always in the pocket. Make room for these little items. The cost is great and the company ships internationally. Fisheye, Macro, Wide Angle and Telephoto Phone Lenses Telephoto: $20 (US) Wide/Macro: $20 (US) Fisheye: $25 (US) These lenses work with any camera phone and attach using a magnetic ring that sticks to your cell, allowing you to easily change lenses. http://photojojo.com/store/awesomeness/cell-phone-lenses