Author: ginny200

Selling Books

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The Kent Bookstore in Lindsay, Ontario is now carrying my book, Murderous Roots. Many thanks to them.

Marketing is a strange game. To date, there have been on-line reviews of the book; I’ve blogged about it; I have followed all the advice I could find and established a web-site, a Facebook site, and paid for press releases. I’ve told everyone I could, including the checkout clerk at the supermarket about it, and so on. There are online marketing courses to take but I have to draw the line at that expense. And soon I’ll have to start all over with the sequel! It’s all a long way from writing.

G20 police response: who’s responsible?

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CBC News – Canada – Sentencing act to cost billions: report.

The security for the G8/G20 costs 1.2 billion. The new jail terms cost billions. The law and order agenda. In Toronto this weekend we saw what that really means.

The results of all that money in Toronto: property damage, indelible memories of black-hooded thugs roaming unchecked; ordinary citizens treated like what….cattle, hardened criminals, terrorists?  I watched it for several hours Sunday night, as people were encircled, man-handled, herded, hoping that someone would say something that would justify the disregard for civil rights. No one did. Eventually the police chief, Bill Blair, according to the Globe this morning,  called them off.  Today he said it was a large and dangerous protest. Not according to the press who were in the center of the crowd. People claimed that the police surrounding them were OPP. Who was in charge?

There were severe thunderstorms, torrential rain. No one talked to the people in the crowd. If an individual spoke to a policeman, he was arrested. People were approaching the line to get arrested so they could get out of there. A tactical decision they said. Whose?

They were apparently searching for the individuals who were in the black bloc, believing that they were going to strike again. Some said they had found weapons along Queen Street.

As I understood the powers granted under some obscure act, the police were allowed to ask for id and search within 5 metres of the fence. They were a long way from the fence, and the meetings were over.

The fence came down today. The mayor wants Ottawa, that is us, to pay for the property damage. Who is going to hold the police accountable for their actions? Or at least demand they explain them?

Black Bloc …again

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So the message of the marchers is lost yet again, not because the people weren’t allowed to march, thousands of them, but because a group of so-called anarchists, thugs in masks who seem to move from city to city only to destroy, are the only ones whose voices are being heard.

Many, not all, of the leaders who are in Toronto, were democratically elected. The voices of their people are heard through them. Who are these men in masks? They represent no one.

Shame.

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The shame of honour crimes – The Globe and Mail.

This morning in today’s Globe and Mail, Sheena Khan talks about her community’s responsibility to educate and influence immigrants to leave behind the violent ways of the old country. It is a thoughtful piece and suggests an approach such as Cease Fire in Chicago that has been successful in dealing with violent young men.

Rereading a short story of Conan Doyle this morning, I was reminded that little more than one hundred years ago in England an man could brutalize his wife and children with no interference from the law. When the women’s movement achieved success in the campaign to have women declared persons under the law, such behaviour was recognized as criminal and treated that way.

In the  last paragraph, Ms Khan writes that “women are dead because they breached their families’ honour.” No they are not. They are dead because they attempted to live as free human beings and some man or men decided they shouldn’t. These men and their complicit families have no honour.

Murdering women and girls in the name of male “honour”

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Young women are dying around the world because their family (read male) honour has been damaged by their behaviour. This is primitive barbaric nonsense.

The first link below details the murder in Brampton of a teenage girl. Not of any particular religion, she died at home, killed by her father and stepmother. No motive given.

The second link, a young woman killed by her brother and father, because she behaved like a normal Canadian teenager, rebelling against a lifestyle that condemned her to complete control by any and all males in her family.

The national geographic article and the one from the UN tells us how many girls are killed for reasons like this one, or because she didn’t bring enough dowry! The marriages of course went forward, the dowry taken, the girl killed and then, I suppose another took her place, so that the groom’s family collected twice.

The UN article makes it clear that this is institutionalized violence against women, with no or little penalty because of the “honour” involved, or the religion.

It is and always has been about control, power, and money. The religious argument is a convenient screen behind which violent abusers may hide. The screen should be removed; the perpetrators revealed for the abusing cowards that they are. There is no difference between the deaths of the young girl in Brampton and the young girl in Toronto. Both killed by the males in their family, whose duty should have been to protect them. They are murderers and child abusers, nothing more. And they never had any honour to lose.

http://www.cbc.ca/canada/toronto/story/2010/06/15/brampton-teen-homicide.html

http://www.cbc.ca/canada/toronto/story/2010/06/15/parvez-guilty-plea.html

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2002/02/0212_020212_honorkilling.html

http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=33971&Cr=violence+against+women&Cr1

Harper’s Fake Lake

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The overspending becomes tedious, doesn’t it? First, the delegates are fenced into a small area of Toronto, and not the most attractive area, except for the lake itself. No, not the one in the Convention Centre, the real one visible from the hotel windows for those lucky enough to to have rooms on the South side. Second, they are surrounded by 1 billion! dollars worth of security (and there still is no accounting for where all that money is going). Finally, they and the reporters for whom this stage set was constructed, are walked past a cardboard cut-out of cottage country. As someone pointed out in the Globe this morning, they didn’t import the blackflies.

The priorities of this government are strange and speak to an astounding lack of imagination at the top. And it comes from the top. This is a government run by micro-managers, with the supreme micro-manager at the top. Remember all the directives about staying on message. This was the guy who preferred a US style press conference, with all the reporters standing up respectfully when he came in the room, and controlled questions from hand-picked journalists to the hurly-burly of the scrum. When you are looking for the guy who spent all the money that the former government set aside for a rainy day, look no further. Remember all the fiscal pain when Paul Martin was in charge of the government purse. The pain produced surpluses. They are all gone, spent to buy votes, and now we are left with deficit for years ahead. There was nothing  for the rainy day that came 18 months ago. Remember Harper denying how severe it was going to be.

No fiscal conservatism here, no transparency, and no  sense, common or expert. No wonder they took the Progressive out of the party’s name.

Harper’s control central

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Harper’s message control is unprecedented, critics say – The Globe and Mail.

The funding for a retirement home, a mere 12,000 or so, is cause for a script, “to make sure everyone stays on message.” The message, according to this article in the Globe and Mail is heavily controlled, in an “unprecedented manner” citing former staffers of the Privy Council Office.

It doesn’t sound unprecedented to me. It sounds like the kind of control exerted in countries who don’t have democratic regimes. Harper got elected by saying his would be transparent government. It doesn’t seem to be transparent; it seems to be murky as hell. Why do they have to control so heavily. What is happening that we can’t know about? If we knew it, would we be calling for an election to throw them out?

No wonder they are spending one billion or so on security at the G20, when a few months ago it was three or four hundred million. They were spending too much time worrying about the 12,000 in Edmonton in the retirement home to pay attention.

And what does one billion in security buy anyway? Does anyone really know? Don’t expect an answer. It wouldn’t be on message.

Kobo Reader – the experience

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I’ve been away the last few days, visiting a friend in Toronto. I took along my new Kobo reader.

Good things about it:

1. It’s light

2.I didn’t have to buy anything for the trial as it comes with 100 books. I read Emma, a novel I had neglected.

3. I could change the font to reflect whether or not I wanted to wear my glasses.

4.No light source, so no computer like beam into my eyes at bedtime.

5.I could carry it in a small purse.

6. I read it at a solo lunch. No keeping the pages open with the greasy fingers on one hand while trying to eat with the other.

7. No one could see what exactly I was reading.

8. It’s cheap, compared to the Kindle or the iPad.

Things I didn’t like:

1. No wireless, so no instant download if I had a mad urge to read something other than one of the downloaded books while away from my computer

2. No clock. (Okay, I don’t wear a watch.)

3. No light source, so reading was difficult in a dark cafe.

4.Font changing limited to smallest, smaller, small, medium, large, etc. not a number. No change in font style.

5.No one could see what I was reading so no conversation starting questions.

6.The battery seems to have a much shorter life than advertised. 8000 page turns relates, I think, to the number of times the page is turned on the machine, not in the actual book. I have no idea how many times i turned the page while reading Emma, but I did have to recharge.

7. It doesn’t ship with the adapter needed to allow a recharge from an electrical outlet rather than the computer. I used the one for my iphone.

8. It’s not as pretty as the iPad.

9. No underlining of favourite passages.

All in all, I like it. It’s a single purpose machine, that performs that function well. The features it lacks would all increase the cost and the weight. Within the time it took to read a few pages, I found myself just reading, and not focussing on the fact that I wasn’t reading a “real” book. Emma was still Emma. I did miss the ability to go back to previously read pages to find something I wanted to read again. It is possible  to do that but it’s tedious.

I wanted a light weight storage/reading device that I could take to Europe. Kobo will do just fine. If I wanted to go into the Amazon, far from electrical outlets, it wouldn’t.

Another silver lining for the Icelandic Volcano problem

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BBC News – Transport firms hoping to turn ash into cash.

Yet another group which has seen its fortunes improve as a result of the volcano. Ferries in several European ports are reporting increased usage from travellers, who, forced into this alternative transport by the ash, are now discovering the superior service and comfort compared to budget airlines.

My book, Murderous Roots, is now available as  print on demand from the publisher, Write Words Inc.  http://www.writewordsinc.com Very exciting to hold the hard copy in my hand. Murderous Roots is also available as a kindle edition at Amazon.com and at the publisher.

However, I’m also trying out the Kobo ebook reader, which just arrived. So far – light, easy to use, not as options as I would like, but  I’m enjoying the experience.

Iceland volcano dormant?

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Flight chaos volcano stops spewing ash – CNN.com.

CNN reports that the volcano has stopped producing ash, and is now releasing only steam. Its temperature has dropped to 100 degrees C.

However, the BBC quotes an expert on the volcano as saying that in the last eruption, in 1821-1823, the starting and stopping went on for 13 months. As well there are still earthquakes under the volcano and activity has not reduced to pre-eruption levels.

Hopefully this fitful behaviour quiets and air travel returns to its previous, fairly reliable state.