Today was the Moss Street Paint-In (oh, I forgot: it has a corporate identity: The Toronto Dominion Paint In…). As usual, the organizers managed to arrange some deal with the weather gods and it was sunny – except for a very surreal influx of menacingly dense fog, which descended out of nowhere and just as […]
This afternoon, a brilliantly clear sunny day, my dog Jigger and I walked up to Moss Rock Park, right up the “summit,” to survey our surroundings. Well, ok: I surveyed; he sniffed about. Moss Rock is one of our local treasures: you can climb up here to savor the multimillion dollar views, gorging yourself silly […]
Victoria British Columbia hired a new City Manager one year ago (July 2009). Recently, the city released its 2009 Public Bodies Report (PDF), which itemizes the city’s expenditures. On p.8, we read that the City Manager’s 2009 salary was $186,418.09 – and that her expenses were a staggering $168,443.94. What prompts expenses that come to […]
I’ve put it off, but it’s due tomorrow (or Friday, after the Canada Day holiday on Thursday): property taxes. There are some things I’m happy to get for my taxes. But the state of those off-leash parks, with spear-grass (“the generic term used for any wild grass that has barbed seeds”) growing rampant and left […]
On June 20, the local paper (Times-Colonist) published a fascinating letter-to-the-editor by Reed Kirkpatrick, Connections everything in this job market. Kirkpatrick’s letter was a rebuttal to an earlier June 13 article by Maclean Kay, Rooting for the promised labour shortage. Kay’s somewhat rambling article eventually focused on a recent prediction about a coming labor shortage, […]
Aretha Franklin demanded it, R-E-S-P-E-C-T, because to get it confers authority on the person who is respected. Singing from the perspective of the blues, that is, of the oppressed, to get authority and therefore respect is a good thing. But what happens when established authorities themselves harp on demands for respect? Or when the supporters […]
As residents of Victoria British Columbia continue to struggle with a closed, secretive city council that (with the exception of one councilor, Geoff Young) prefers to do its business behind closed doors or from a lofty perch of Sonya Chandler- or Lynn Hunter-style “know-it-all-ism,” here’s a story from the local daily that illustrates just how […]
The newest public sculpture unveiled in Victoria BC reminds some observers of zombies, proving that hyper-realism does not equal effective art.
Salim Jiwa (journalist, founder of Vancouverite) spoke at Social Media Club Victoria about newspapers and the dangers of “press release journalism.”