What's your griefstyle? What do you do to mourn those people, animals, relationships, experiences and situations that you know or believe you can no longer enjoy?

Maybe you cry and mope in a corner. Maybe you scream in anger and frustration. Maybe you turn to booze, chocolate or other substances, legal or otherwise. Maybe you seek solace in your friends or your faith community, or in nature, music, journalling or the arts. I suppose any of these things can be helpful, to varying degrees, at various times in one's life, depending on who you are and what you're all about.

How about a wind phone?There's already one that I know of in the Outaouais:

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa/chelsea-wind-phone-1.6621595

Soon there will be another one more centrally located right in Ottawa, in a park for cancer patients, cancer survivors and their loved ones:

https://www.cbc.ca/listen/live-radio/1-100-ottawa-morning/clip/15991698-how-wind-phone-help-people-connect-loved-ones

The basic idea is simple: a public, landline-type telephone that's not connected. But you can still lift up the receiver, dial or press numbers on a keypad, and talk to whomever you wish to imagine being at the other end.

The most famous wind phone in the world and the one that's generally credited as being the original, was installed in March 2011 at the foot of Kujira-yama (Mountain of the Whale) just outside of Otsuchi Japan, in the wake of the disastrous tsunamis in that area:

https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/wind-telephone

Fast forward nine years. I think we all know what happened in March 2020, don't we?
Almost everyone was grieving. If they weren't actually grieving for people who had died or who were seriously ill, they were at the very least grieving for the finer things and even routine aspects of life that they could no longer enjoy. And it was difficult to properly process that grief. Drive-through funerals? Memorial services via Zoom? They're not for everyone.

Libraries were closed too. But I ordered quite a few books online. Including Laura Imai Messina's book The Phone Box at the Edge of the World, published by Manilla Press, in association with Goldsboro Books, in July 2020. It's fiction, but inspired by the Japanese wind phone installed in 2011. I found it extremely moving, even though inspirational-type literature is not normally my thing. It's not Pollyannish at all, but sort of quietly poignant. It has stayed with me.

Then last summer in Ireland, I bought and read Sorry for Your Trouble: The Irish Way of Death, by Ann Marie Hourihane (c2021). That one's non-fiction but highly readable; anecdotes about death, dying and funeral rites, where the author's sly Irish humour shows through on every page.

Finally, just recently, I read another work of fiction that I bought through Goldsboro Books, End of Story by Louise Swanson (who also writes as Louise Beech). It's mostly set in the year 2035, in a world where fiction is completely banned and those who had made a living in the arts are retrained for other things. Our heroine, Fern Dostoy, had been a best-selling author of a highly influential, prize-winning book. Reading bedtime stories to your kids is banned. The only bookstore in town now sells only non-fiction and one day a month is an amnesty day when people can turn in any works of fiction they may still have in their possession.

It's a powerful story about guilt and grief, especially women's guilt and grief. In fact, it is divided into five sections, each for one of the (supposed) five stages of grief: Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression and Acceptance. There's a bit of a twist towards the end, which I almost dismissed as a cop-out; but I read on and was glad I did because the various strands of the storyline were brought to what I felt was a satisfying conclusion.

So anyway, would I use a wind phone? Probably not, but I think the more positive outlets we have for processing life's setbacks, the better. What's MY griefstyle? I'm still trying to figure that out!
The pandemic of the last 3+ years has knocked the stuffing out of most of us, I think. It's also knocked a lot of stuff into our lives that was not there before. Masks! Face shields! Bulky Corsi-Rosenthal contraptions made of kludged-together box fans and furnace filters! Emergency packs to cope with tornadoes, derechos, ice storms, wildfires and power failures arising from myriad crises! Meanwhile, it's been harder to divest ourselves of the stuff we DON'T want around any more. The City of Ottawa urged us to postpone putting out large bulky items on garbage collection day. Thrift shops pressed "pause" on collecting donations. The Friends of the Experimental Farm have not held one of their big book sales since 2019.

Fortunately, much of the above seems to be coming to an end.

We got a phone call in late April or early May from the Diabetes people. They would be in our neighbourhood on May 10. Did we have anything we'd be interested in donating? Well, yes!

They were very specific about what they could and couldn't accept, how it should be packaged and so forth. And one thing we've acquired in abundance over the past 3 years of ordering stuff online is packaging material. Cartons. Bubble wrap. Brown paper packaging, though not tied up with string.

So I put together bags and boxes of clothing, household items and little-kid toys that the grandchildren have outgrown, labelled them with the downloadable Diabetes Canada labels and put them out for collection. That worked so well that I arranged a second pick-up date for early June and packaged up more stuff. Which was also duly picked up.

The City of Ottawa used to schedule twice-annual "Giveaway Weekends" when you can put out stuff you don't want, but somebody else might. Now, however, they boast that giveaway weekends have morphed into Giveaway Every Day. Unfortunately, I don't think that works nearly as well. People aren't going to cruise your neighbourhood each and every day to see what's on offer! And you can't have stuff all over your lawn when the lawn service comes in to do its weekly mowing! This past Saturday, however, was our neighbourhood garage sale day. I don't have the patience to sit in our garage or driveway, babysit a cash box and try to flog my stuff. But knowing that there'd be lots of people around, I decided to put out some unwanted stuff that I figured other people might be interested in, and marked it as being free for the taking. And it magically disappeared over the course of the morning, while we were exploring the neighbours' offerings.

And on June 24, the Friends of the Experimental Farm will again be accepting book donations for their sale in October, which returns after a 4-year hiatus. Then on November 4, they're accepting more donations for NEXT year's sale.

We still have stuff that may prove challenging to divest ourselves of. But for now, that's a good start on the decluttering process!
Isn't it odd how language, vocabulary and terminology evolve, often over a relatively short time span? Like a generation or two. Or maybe just three years.

In March of 2020, most federal public servants were sent home to carry out their work. They didn't choose to go home, although many eventually decided that they preferred the new arrangement. Their offices were shut down and deemed unsafe. Suddenly we started using a whole bunch of new words, old words used in different ways, new phrases, and so on. Bubble. Pivot. Social distancing. Self-isolation. Personal Protective Equipment, or PPE. Remote work.

What IS remote work, anyway? The term is used these days to denote work done off the Employer's premises, but still on the Employer's dime. Except that when the Employer is not providing and maintaining those premises, that work is, willy-nilly, to some extent on the EMPLOYEE'S dime.

I find that there are some interesting subtexts to the term. There's this hint that "remote work" is somehow not REAL work, not proper adult work, or not really a component of the labour force. You know, like back in the day when "Does your wife work?" was still considered a politically correct question and "No, she's just a housewife" was considered an adequate and even a self-explanatory answer. Besides, a married woman in the paid workforce, especially if she were also a mother, would be taking work away from men!

Doesn't it make more sense to refer to those who go out to the office or the construction site or the embassy abroad as the "remote workers"?

Historically speaking, the separation of home and workplace is a relatively recent phenomenon. Some date it back to the Industrial Revolution and the rise of factory work. On the other hand family farmers these days might prefer to farm full-time yet are often compelled to commute to an office job in the city just to survive!

Growing up in the suburbs of Ottawa in the 1950s and 60s, I enjoyed a fairly typical middle class lifestyle for that time. Mum was at home. Dad went out to work. Like the fathers of many of my friends, his work was top secret and directly related to the Cold War. I really didn't have a clue what he did. He was the more "remote" parent from my perspective, although he wasn't really cold or distant with his own family.

Times have changed, of course. Like a lot of women of my generation, I was in the workforce for pretty much my entire adult life until I retired. I went to the office first thing in the morning and came home in the late afternoon. I had a number of workplaces over the years and relationships with co-workers ran the gamut from friendly and cordial to stressful and strained. Likewise, there were some jobs I loved, some I hated and many others that fell somewhere in between.

While I did sometimes socialize with colleagues outside of working hours, home base was always the "real world" for me, a constant in my life. Work and leisure activities were things that came and went.

As to my retirement lexicon, that's still a work in progress!
Well, yes and no. A lot has changed over the past 30-odd years. I participated in the strike of 1991. I'm now a federal retiree and member of the Retired Members Guild of PIPSC, the union I've belonged to for most of this century.

So what has changed since the general strike of 1991?

For one thing, the political climate is very different. Back in 1991, Brian Mulroney was the Prime Minister of Canada. Conservative governments were the order of the day in other major English-speaking countries too. The U.S. and the U.K. were still reeling from the effects of Reaganomics and Thatcherism and their new leaders were not much better. Today, Justin Trudeau is PM and while his sunny ways have given way to cloudier conditions, his continued leadership is to some extent at the mercy of our NDP leader as they (and all of us, I would argue) have a common interest in staving off Pierre Poilievre.

For another thing (well, two things actually) - technology and the pandemic have made remote work (or at least hybrid work) the rule rather than the exception for federal public servants.

Let's take the political climate first. Right-leaning governments generally disapprove of any sort of labour action. The usual attitude is something like:

After all we've done for them, how can they do this to us? How can they be so ungrateful?

They have no compunction about legislating their employees back to work with the stroke of a pen. Or in this day and age, with the click of a link. Of course, it all has to go through the messy business of Parliamentary democracy (which is perhaps not so democratic under our electoral rules) but a majority or near-majority government usually gets its own way eventually.

Then there's the fiscal restraint motive that typifies right-wing governments, making them averse to the idea of salary increases that even keep pace with the cost of living. But ironically, when it comes to their own employees, the government actually saves money during the strike itself. No salary dollars get paid to the striking employees, there's less wear and tear and overhead costs for the buildings and facilities. So they can let the strike go on for a bit, maybe throw workers a few crumbs from all the money they've saved, and order them back to work maintaining they've been patient long enough and more than generous in the end.

I certainly saw this with "Lyin' Brian" Mulroney and Gilles Loiselle (not-so-affectionately known as Weasel), who was the president of the Treasury Board at the time of the 1991 strike.

The Liberals know they can't get away with this kind of rhetoric. And certainly Jagmeet Singh would lose all credibility with the NDP and with his supporters if he were to try any Conservative style tactics.

So now let's talk about the progress of government technology over the decades, further accelerated by the imperatives of the pandemic.

Again, money was saved by the government as buildings sat empty or vastly under-occupied for three years. On the other hand private businesses, many of whom typically donate generously to Conservative coffers, lost out big-time when public servants weren't going out and hanging around them spending their money. Instead, that money was being spent online, often bypassing local and national businesses altogether.

The government's compromise(?) solution which seems to have satisfied no one was to decide that most public servants must be back in the office 2 or 3 days per week. But does the government genuinely even want that?

We've heard plenty of stories of workers who have dutifully returned to the office - or at least their former office BUILDING - only to be obliged to sit on the floor or in a broom closet or keep most of their belongings in a locker because their old office no longer exists!

So what's going to happen?

I doubt that there'll be any back-to-work legislation. I doubt that the strike will drag on for weeks on end. I think that after a few days of this, there will be a tentative deal reached at the bargaining table. A modest salary increase. Some deliberately vague wording around the whole question of telework, agreeing to keep the door open and respect the changing technological environment, operational requirements, worker preferences, blah blah blah. Then it will get voted on and ratified. The unhappy campers on both sides will reluctantly go back into the tent.

Life and work will go on. Both sides will have had their say but not much will have changed since the strike began.

Or, of course, I could be totally off-base in my prediction of the outcome.
Happy Freedom to Read Week, everyone! And just a reminder: most libraries and bookstores in Ontario are closed today. Indigo's site is not available for online shopping. You may be able to buy the odd paperback novel, the kind that the drugstore sells.

I recently bought the following two books that the American Library Association (ALA) produced in 2022:

1. Read These Banned Books: A Journal and 52-Week Reading Challenge

2. 52 Diverse Titles Every Book Lover Should Read: A One-Year Journal and Recommended Reading List

For each title, there's a brief summary of what the book's about, followed by a question to stimulate personal reflection and then some blank pages for the reader to review the item and record a star-rating and the date they finished the book.

Of the titles listed in book #1, I've already read quite a number; I've only read one or two of the 52 Diverse Titles. While I don't plan to embark on the Reading Challenge in quite the way the ALA may have intended, I do intend to use both books as a kind of reader advisory tool for myself and my friends. A title that particularly caught my eye was Quichotte, by Salman Rushdie. Here's the first sentence of the blurb:

In this homage to the revered satire Don Quixote, a mediocre Indian American crime writer using the pen name Sam DuChamp believes that his spy novels have put him in actual danger.

Most of the titles listed in these two books are contentious for all the usual twentieth-century reasons: sex, violence, coarse or otherwise offensive language, religion, politics, racial tension, being antithetical to "family values"... I'm sure you get the picture. But this century has ushered in a whole host of new and different reasons for restricting access to books. Consider, for example, the following:

https://www.cbc.ca/news/entertainment/roald-dahl-censorship-allegations-1.6753828?cmp=rss

So: Is editing or censorship, if done for reasons of cultural sensitivity, avoidance of hate speech and alt-right polemic and promotion of politically correct values, somehow more justifiable than editing or censorship based on real or perceived racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia and all the other -isms and -phobiae that are generally offensive to most segments of modern-day society?

Or maybe context is everything?

This is rather timely for me, as I recently attended a performance of "Is God Is" at the National Arts Centre (NAC). Most of the actors in this play are black. A majority of the audience members (myself included) were not. February is of course Black History Month, which I have always assumed is meant both for black folks to learn about and celebrate their heritage and for lighter-skinned people to gain a better understanding of what Black people have endured and accomplished over the course of the centuries, while being largely erased from our history books.

Originally, the NAC planned to hold a couple of performances open only to black people although they later walked that back, stating all people were welcome:

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa/national-arts-centre-ottawa-play-black-audience-theatre-1.6735929?cmp=rss

I'm personally a little conflicted on the matter of whether or not this kind of Apartheid for All the Right Reasons is reasonable. Certainly I understand and applaud the rationale behind women's centres and women's shelters, given the appalling stories we hear of intimate partner violence, usually perpetrated by men.

In conclusion, however, I want to re-emphasize that Freedom to Read is not just freedom from censorship. Above all, it's a question of accessibility.

In the early days of the pandemic, libraries were closed. Schools were closed. So what about people without extensive personal book collections, people who could ill afford to buy their own books, people in rural or remote areas where internet access was spotty and unreliable, people without computers who relied on public libraries for what little online time they could get?

That's the kind of information-poverty and literature-poverty that even now continues to fly under the radar.
blogcutter: (Nanook)
Ever since the first lockdown in March 2020, we've been trying to limit our grocery expeditions to once every two weeks, an early-morning trip on alternate Mondays.

Two years ago, our cat was content with almost any flavour of minced Hills Science Diet canned food, with a particular fondness for the seafood varieties. As the Science Diet food was unavailable from the grocery store, that meant doing curbside pickup at our local PetSmart, buying two or three cases at a time. We got into the new routine and everything was tickety-boo... for a while.

But then a few months into the pandemic, just after one of our stocking-up excursions, she suddenly decided that the food she'd been perfectly OK with thus far would just.not.do at all.

I was worried, particularly remembering our previous resident feline who had been rather overweight until she suddenly stopped eating and subsequently, despite our and our vet's care and attention, succumbed to end-state liver disease.

The pandemic complicated things, of course. We didn't want to order a whole caseload of some other food, only to discover that she would find the new food equally unappealing. And if she became ill enough to need veterinary attention, that too was much more complicated with pandemic protocols in place. We would be unable to enter the veterinary clinic with her; instead, we would have to wait in the parking lot with an increasingly antsy cat in her carrier until a clinic staff member was available to take her inside.

Our solution, if you can call it that, was to buy a selection of the types of food that the grocery store does stock, and see which ones she would eat. She's now on a diet of Fancy Feast Petites, salmon or ocean whitefish in broth. It may not be the highest-quality catfood going, but at least she'll eat it!

There've been other behavioural changes in her over the course of the pandemic too. She's more clingy, more affectionate, in need of human reassurance. As we start going out more, there's going to be an adjustment period - for all of us.
I know I'm not the only person to report remembering more, and more vivid dreams, since the pandemic began. And this past week has been a particularly vivid dream-week for me. Here's a sampling. together with a few explanatory comments & asides.

Dream #1 - I invited my parents over to our place for dinner. Except in the dream, "our place" wasn't the house we've been living in for 40+ years but rather the house in Gatineau where our daughter, son-in-law and grandkids live. They were living there too in the dream, presumably along with the cat & the chickens.
Comment: This is highly unlikely to happen any time soon, not just because of pandemic restrictions on gathering size but also because both parents have been dead for a number of years. I'm not sure if ghosts count as part of the maximum gathering size...

Dream #2 - I went back to my office (not sure WHICH office, or even if it was anywhere I'd actually worked in my awake-world), which clearly had not been occupied in quite some time. The furniture was dusty and there was an odd mish-mash of people's abandoned possessions and dirty coffee cups. There were two or three other people around, though no one I recognized. One of them had an enclosed office and was clearly a fairly senior public service manager although I don't think she was my boss. Anyway, I figured since it was quiet, it would be a good opportunity to catch up on things, as I had a lot of catching up to do. The time was moving pretty quickly and eventually the woman in the enclosed office came out with her coat on and told me she was just leaving and since I was the last one in the building, could I please make sure the lights were off and things were locked up as they should be before I left. But before she could actually leave, my partner arrived to pick me up (as we had arranged) and the two of them got into a discussion. I think Important Manager-Lady was really just meaning to make polite conversation but somehow my partner got into a big political argument of some kind with her. Manager-Lady eventually extricated herself from it and left and I started putting things away and gathering my things together to leave, but I was inwardly fuming. I was trying to think how to broach it to my partner that in my job, I was expected to be politically neutral and I was likely to get suspended or even fired as a result of my partner's rash mouthing-off. At some point as we were going out of the building to the car, I segued into an awake-state. But because the dream had been so real to me, I was still feeling very annoyed and it took several minutes before I realized it had all been a dream.

Dream #3 - I was walking somewhere on or just off Bank Street in the Glebe when I noticed our car parked nearby. But I knew my partner, the only driver in the family, was at home so I figured someone must have stolen the car. I do keep an emergency set of keys in my purse so I used those to get into the car and decide what to do. I figured the car thief would eventually return to the vehicle and probably drive it goodness-knows-where and it would be unrecoverable. So I decided to drive it as far as Billings Bridge (gambling I wouldn't be stopped by the cops) and park it somewhere in their parking lot. Then I planned to take the #88 bus home and my partner could pick up the car at Billings Bridge whenever. I made it to Billings Bridge without incident and I was heading up to the transitway to get my bus but everything had been moved around. I had to catch an elevator to get up to the stop, but the elevators were surrounded by all kinds of obstacles like newspaper boxes, coatracks, cartons etc. that I had to clamber over and around just to reach one of the elevators. It was while navigating that obstacle course that I woke up. Again, the dream had felt very real and it took me a while to get my bearings.

Dream #4 - For some reason, I was in charge of picking up mail for both OSFS (Ottawa Science Fiction Society) and ApaPlexy (an every-6-weeks zine I used to belong to & write for). But the house where I had to go to pick up this mail was worthy of a horror film or a murder mystery (secret passages, trap doors, unexpected things that go bump in the night...) Location-wise, it was in our general neighbourhood, possibly where the president of OSFS used to live and hold some meetings, but the house itself was totally different. I had to go up and down a bunch of passageways and at one point even had to swim through some sort of underground swimming pool to collect the mail. It was like some sort of scavenger hunt, relay race and obstacle course all rolled into one. I woke up before I figured out the rules of the game and I don't think I ever did manage to find any mail!

Not sure what any of those dreams mean.
The charity I have chosen to highlight this month is Shelter Movers Ottawa, which offers emergency relocation services for adults, dependent children and pets needing to escape from family violence:

https://www.sheltermovers.com/ottawa/

Staffed by concerned volunteers, it devotes only 5% of donations to administration, the rest being allocated to the practical assistance and resources required in the specific situation.

While few families are conflict-free, problems are exacerbated during a pandemic. In the absence of outside diversions and the regular routines of school and work, family members are compelled by circumstances (but not necessarily by choice) to spend more time together.

In addition to donating to Shelter Movers directly, I decided to buy two books to add to my collection of pandemic literature: The Hot Mess That Was 2021; and The Sh*tstorm that was 2020.

Both are by Jon Sinden. If you buy the books directly from the author, a portion of the purchase price go to Shelter Movers. More details here:

https://thehotmessthatwas2021.com/
I've structured (or perhaps nonstructured) this in the same way as my 2021 list, i.e. title & author only. But unlike the 2021 list, I only started compiling it in mid-March 2020, after our first lockdown. At that time, I also listed what I could remember reading in January and February but I think I probably missed a few.

1. The Thursday Murder Club - Richard Osman
2. Dark August - Katia Tallo
3. Utopia Avenue - David Mitchell
4. All the Devils are Here - Louise Penny
5. The Winemaker's Wife - Kristin Harmel
6. The Book of Lost Names - Kristin Harmel
7. Policing Black Lives - Robyn Maynard
8. The Phone Box at the End of the World - Laura Imai Messina
9. The Testaments - Margaret Atwood
10. We have Always Been Here - Samra Habib
11. Middlemarch - George Eliot
12. The Giver of Stars - Jojo Moyes
13. The Book Woman of Troublesome Creek - Kim Michele Richards
14. Five Go Absolutely Nowhere - Bruno Vincent & Enid Blyton
15. Secret Seven Adventure - Enid Blyton
16. Suzanne Haden Elgin (author): Native Tongue
17. Judas Rose
18. Earthsong
19. The Language Imperative
20. The Man in the Red Coat - Julian Barnes
21. Supporting Trans People in Libraries - Stephen G. Krueger
22. The Pull of the Stars - Emma Donoghue
23. Lockdown - Peter May
24. The Ice Twins - S. J. Tremayne
25. Quiet Neighbours - Catriona McPherson
26. Oscar's Books - Thomas Wright
27. The Library of Shadows - Mikkel Birkegaard
28. There's a Murder Afoot - Vicki Delany
29. The Book of Small - Emily Carr
30. Dear Child - Romy Hausman
31. The Negro Revolution - Robert Goldston
32. He said, she said: Life lessons from my transgender journey - Gigi Gorgeous
33. Carbon Copy - Ian McKercher
34. March Mishaps - Florence Yonin Brown
35. Haven for Murder - Florence Yonin Brown
36. Reading Therapy (book of essays)
37. Laura, The Unknown Countess - Stan Skrzeszewski (unpublished)
38. No Suspicious Circumstances - Mulgray Twins
39. Don't Stand So Close to Me - Eric Walters
40. Thunder Bay - Douglas Skelton
41. Discrimination in the Courts - Ali(reza) Pey (re Iran downing of Ukraine plane)
42. Snow - John Banville (Benjamin Black)
43. Still Alice - Lisa Genova
44. Friends, Lovers, Chocolate - Alexander McCall Smith
45. Documenting Rebellions: A study of 4 lesbian & gay archives in Queer Times - Rebecca T Sheffield
46. Blood in the Water - Gillian Galbraith
47. Sunday's Child - Edward O. Phillips
48. The Wrong Kind of Woman - Sarah McCraw Crow
49. The Home for Unwanted Girls - Joanna Goodman
50. The Forgotten Daughter - Joanna Goodman
51. The End of Gender - Deborah Soh
52. The Midnight Library - Matt Haig
53. The Constant Rabbit - Jasper Fforde
54. Silas Marner - George Eliot
55. Murray McLauchlin autobiography
56. Darkest Evening - Ann Cleeves
57. The Baby Snatcher - Ann Cleeves
58. November Rain - Maureen Jennings
59. Castle Bookshop series book 2 - Essie Lang (Linda Wiken)
60. My Life in Middlemarch _ Rebecca Mead
61. Catching the Wind in Cabbage Nets - Harriet Hicks
62. The Italian Girl - Iris Murdoch
63. Christmas in Newfoundland - Mike Martin
64. Death in Avignon - Serena Kent
65. Death in Provence - Serena Kent
66. Flowers over the Inferno - Ilaria Tuti
67. The Sleeping Nymph - Ilaria Tuti
68. Silent Night - Nell Pattison
69. Lost Ottawa 3
I spent a good portion of the morning cleaning the inside of our fridge. It's a task I used to do concurrently with defrosting but now that we have a fridge that doesn't need regular defrosting, the task is generally accomplished on a hit-or-miss basis. With a little bit too much miss just lately. At any rate, today seemed like a good day for it. We've gone through most of the leftovers from Christmas dinner and today is our usual laundry day, so the cleaning cloths and towels I used will all get dumped into the washing machine at 7PM (when the cheaper electrical rates kick in).

Ever since the great lockdown of March 2020, people have been speculating that working from home for most of the workweek will become the new normal, at least for office workers. Indeed, workers will demand it, viewing it as a basic right or entitlement. But is that really what most employees want? Or what they will want, once the pandemic is behind us? And do the benefits of working from home accrue mainly to the employee? Frankly I'm dubious about these seemingly unquestioned assumptions.

I wonder what kinds of statistics are being kept so far. For example, can we tease out worker preferences by gender, age or family status?

This is just a hunch but I'd be willing to bet that married men (including those in common-law relationships) would be the group most eager to work from home. As for women... well, Guilt tends to be our most constant companion. I'm happily retired but if I were sitting in a home office trying to justify my pacheque by putting in at least 7 hours' worth of telecommuting keystrokes every day, I know I would end up working MORE, not less, even considering that I could dispense with the bus trip at the beginning and end of the day. And that's just the work of paid employment.

In addition to that, I'd be worrying about the housework that needed to be done, the kids who needed attention and the bills that needed to be paid. Many believe that on average, men are much more able to compartmentalize their lives whereas women are expected to constantly multitask. Consider too that women are more likely to be in lower-level positions in the workplace, where they likely have less control over workload and work flow and less capacity to delegate. In my last position prior to retirement, I was in a sort of mid-level (a.k.a. sandwich-generation team-leader) position; we had to sign off on "performance agreements" without necessarily being accorded the authority to "make it so", to bring in the staff we needed and the program dollars to accomplish the basic objectives of our sections. And of course, one has to show oneself to be a good "team player" and get along with people one may not particularly like; if you can't express frustrations outwardly, the tendency for many is to stew inwardly, often to the point that it impacts one's health!

But back to housework. When you do all your work from an office, someone else orders and supplies the appropriate furniture, equipment and other resources. Someone else vacuums and cleans the office and takes away the garbage. Someone else pays the heating bills, fixes faulty plumbing and cleans the toilets. Policies on staff areas like lunchrooms seem variable; I remember one office I worked in where we took up a collection to buy ourselves a mini-fridge and the responsibility for cleaning it was shared, with a rota posted so we'd know whose turn it was that week. I think a microwave oven was supplied but we were responsible for cleaning it. In another office, we used a weekly rotation system for who made tea and coffee at our break times. We also were responsible for arranging and paying for social activities like Christmas and retirement parties and gifts. But still, a good portion of the socializing and enjoying ourselves was done on paid company time - we didn't have to feel guilty about chatting and getting to know our co-workers. In lockdown, I would bet there aren't too many chatty coffee breaks over Zoom.

Pre-pandemic, people in jobs they enjoyed with congenial co-workers often came to regard their workplace as a second home and their co-workers as a second family - or even a first family if they had no family or friends living nearby! Pre- social distancing, your office or cubicle might be cramped but at least you could personalize what little space you had, with a few photos of the kids or other significant mementos of your life outside of work. Now, those returning to the office are faced with a soulless "hoteling" culture with generic little boxes or cubicles "depersonalized" to remove all hints of their former occupants.

I guess the jury is still out on the future of work and the future of the workplace. I began my career when everyone was predicting the great leisure society. It's said that no one on their deathbed says they wish they'd spent more time at the office. But what if your office is now your home and your home is your office? What if, after retirement, you can no longer access the personal and community resources you need to live and thrive in that home? Then maybe you move from home to A (LTC) Home and the downward spiral may already be underway. What does that say about our society?

It doesn't have to be like that, of course. There's no one-size-fits-all solution for all people or all families. And Long Term Care homes and Retirement Homes are all over the map when it comes to quality, comfort and suitability for the individual resident. But let's remember that we're dealing with people here - the ones who live, feel dawn, see sunset glow... not just Full Time Equivalents (past, present or future) or dependency ratios!
This week's donation goes to Fondation Santé Gatineau. Hospitals in the Outaouais have been severely stressed of late, with some having to close entirely for weeks on end:

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa/rally-protesting-emergency-department-situation-outaouais-region-1.6103889?cmp=rss

I'm not sure how far my donation will go towards alleviating the immediate crises of staff shortages and burnout or government indifference or whatever you want to attribute the current situation to. Still, I see the Foundation's projects as investments in medium- and longer-term solutions. You can explore some of their ongoing initiatives here:

https://www.fondationsantegatineau.ca/en/

I haven't yet decided on a definite endpoint for my Philanthropic Phridays series. Perhaps late summer or early fall? There have certainly been some hopeful signs lately of a re-emergence of life as we used to know it. In some ways, I find this betwixt-and-between stage even more stressful and unsettling than a hard lockdown. We're still getting our bearings. As we enjoy some small but long-unaccustomed everyday pleasures, there's still that lingering trepidation about what will happen once the leaves start to fall and we all retreat indoors once again.

On the other hand, I don't want to wish my life away. I'm looking forward to enjoying some non-Zoom, non-Youtube entertainment over the next few weeks!
This week's donation goes to the CHEO Telethon:

https://www.cheotelethon.com/home

The Children's Hospital of Eastern Ontario holds a telethon once a year. Usually there are also lots of in-person events, the big one being the Teddy Bears' Picnic complete with B.A.S.H. tent for sick and injured teddy bears, food, face painting, fortune telling and plenty of parkland to enjoy. I used to have a purple HEEO (CHEO in French, at least in those days) sweatshirt with a teddy bear on it that I bought at the office as part of their fundraising activities there, but that of course is long gone now.

This year, with most of the traditional large fundraising events off the table, various local celebrities have been shaving their heads or dyeing their hair in vibrant hues to raise additional funds. I hope it works, as the amount raised in 2020 was down substantially from previous years, just at a time when children and youth are in the greatest state of crisis. Demands on CHEO's services have never been greater and the aftermath of Covid-19 in terms of mental health and clearing the backlog of non-Covid priorities stands to keep CHEO's workload higher than ever.

CHEO was not around when I was a kid but I do recall that I was somewhere in my teens when plans were in the works for it. I even volunteered for a few shifts at a booth at the Ex, to provide some general information and hand out a few pamphlets. I think there was a small-scale model of what the finished structure would look like and where the various services would be located. It's all so long ago but it did mean that I got free passes to get into the Exhibition grounds!

I'd still like to see an equivalent Quebec institution for the Outaouais, and this may happen yet. In April 2020, for example, I wrote about the Charlotte Mantha endowment fund, dedicated to building a Gatineau children's hospital:

https://blogcutter.dreamwidth.org/tag/charlotte+mantha+endowment+fund

I've been checking the Gatineau Hospital Foundation's website from time to time to see what projects are in the works and it does look as if Hull will have a new hospital in the next few years, though not solely dedicated to paediatrics. We shall see.
Looking back over the past fourteen months, it's hard to imagine how we would have coped if we didn't have reliable internet service. Time was, people without a proper computer set-up at home could at least flock to their local public library and book a time to use the computers there. But with most libraries, schools, community centres and the like shuttered because of the pandemic, the options are much more limited. These institutions can now only loan out laptops and such to one family at a time and realistically, with our lives moved almost entirely online, even one computer to a household is likely insufficient.

So this week, I decided to direct my donation to the National Capital Freenet's Community Access Fund:

https://www.ncf.ca/en/high-speed-internet/community-access-fund/

Not sure to what extent it will help people in rural and remote areas where the infrastructure is in many cases inadequate, but initiatives such as this one are at least a step towards helping some low-income folk to tune in to the online world.
... and I woke up early this morning from a rather bizarre dream.

I was at some sort of a conference in a U.S. city, together with my partner. We adjourned for a break and my partner said "I think I know now where our hotel is." I was a little confused because I didn't remember reserving a hotel room but figured it might have somehow been part of the conference registration. I suggested if it wasn't far, we should go and find it during our break.

We went through a bunch of tunnels and walkways and emerged in the lobby of a Holiday Inn. The decor was pretty typical 21st century hotel lobby style and we wandered into a gift shop. It was pretty crowded there but while we were waiting in the lineup to the cash (I don't know what we were buying), the guy ahead of us in line turned around and said to my partner, "You know, I think I recognize you. I used to be your "Little Brother". I decided to let the two of them chat while they waited in line and ventured over to the check-in desks to see if we had a reservation there. I figured if we didn't, I might be able to reserve something on the spot or at least get some suggestions about nearby hotels that might have vacancies.

There were quite a few people waiting to check in, so I wandered around a bit until the line wasn't very long. When I finally got up to the desk and asked the clerk about a reservation, she said "Oh, hadn't you heard? We've all got to get back to our stations right away!" I didn't understand and so, thoroughly confused, I turned away and went in search of someone who could tell me what was going on. Then I approached someone who might have been a concierge or a bellhop (but was clearly some kind of hotel employee) and he seemed like quite a pleasant young man. A woman just ahead of me said to the man, "We've been told to go back to our stations - what exactly does that mean?" The man led her through the lobby and out a back or side door and I tagged along behind them. He said to wait there outside until a taxi came along.

There were already quite a few people waiting there but eventually our turn came and four of us got into a taxi. One of the other passengers was a young woman talking into a cell phone and from what she was saying, I gathered that the FBI were somehow involved and we were being taken to a police station.

We were driving endlessly around the unfamiliar streets and I was still worrying about where we were going, how we could find a place to stay and whether we'd ever get back home when I finally heard a (real life) meow and emerged from my dream.
No doubt about it, the arts are suffering big time during this pandemic. If you're like me, you're probably itching to get out to a play, a movie or a concert and that just hasn't been possible during lockdown. But many performing arts organizations have come up with creative ideas for keeping their heads above water until we can safely go out on the town. Take, for example, the Gladstone theatre:

https://www.thegladstone.ca

Until Sunday at 5PM, you can view and bid on some interesting items in their virtual silent auction: original artwork, clothing and accessories, books, professional services of various kinds and some intriguing but affordable antiques like an old radio, an inkwell and even one of those little bobbing animals that move up and down in a glass of water or other beverage of your choice.

You can also rent their marquee for 24 hours to broadcast a (tasteful) message of your choice, be it birthday greetings, words of encouragement or whatever.

While regular theatre performances have been suspended, I have some hope that the small outdoor patio might soon be allowed to operate again.

The Gladstone is a registered charity and offers quite a range of valuable community services for arts lovers. Visit their website for more details!

I also want to highlight the Mayfair, which with the closure of the Bytowne, is now Ottawa's only repertory cinema. They too have had regular operations halted during the pandemic but have devised some creative survival solutions. And this weekend, you can tune in to one or both of their online concerts with a wide-ranging lineup of Ottawa talent. Details here:

https://mayfairtheatre.ca/ottawa-songwriters-uplifting-the-mayfair-fundraiser-event/
It's hard to fathom the situation right now in India. It's even more poignant when we consider that having believed the Coronavirus crisis had largely subsided in their country, India was donating its remaining vaccines, PPE and other tools of the trade to countries that at the time, were harder hit.

In recent years, India had been making substantial progress in eliminating child marriage and some of the more egregious human rights violations with regard to more disadvantaged groups. I decided to direct this week's donation to boosting a particular campaign that is within spitting distance (metaphorically speaking, of course) of reaching its target, with a week left to go:

https://www.canadahelps.org/en/charities/childrens-care-international/campaign/emergency-support-for-indian-families/

Best-selling novelist Arundhati Roy has written a compelling piece for The Guardian about the situation there, which you can read here:

https://www.theguardian.com/news/2021/apr/28/crime-against-humanity-arundhati-roy-india-covid-catastrophe?utm_source=pocket-newtab

The Canadian government has put the brakes on incoming flights from India but we all know that viruses do not respect political or ethnic borders. Variants of concern, including the B1617 (first identified in India) are present all over the world and we won't really have herd immunity in Canada or in our home towns until we have it on an international basis.
Today was another grocery shopping day. So what's new in Groceryland, you might ask?

First of all, grocery stores in Ontario are now required to limit in-person shopping to 25% of the store's capacity, down from 50% previously.

Secondly, Loblaws (and presumably other supermarkets too) has now roped off (or plasticked off) the "nonessential" sections of the store while posting additional signs about taking safety precautions with the utmost seriousness. So what's considered nonessential?

Sections with tea-towels, baking pans and kitchen gadgets. Apparently food is still essential but the materials you use to prepare them are not.

A lot of stationery items were in closed-off sections too. After all, we're supposed to do "paperwork" online these days, right? Apparently Ford Nation isn't aware of the power of writing by hand or the science behind it. Here's a recent article on the topic:

https://www.artofmanliness.com/articles/benefits-writing-by-hand/?utm_source=pocket-newtab

Mind you, the irony of the fact that I found and read this article online has not escaped me!

We're still allowed to read paper publications, as the newsstand area was still open. The greeting card section, however, was off limits. So if someone you know dies of COVID-19, you won't be permitted to buy a card to send to the family. Nor can you buy the requisite stationery to make your own, though I guess you could pulp your reading matter (cringe) to make your own paper. You could write your message with lemon juice and the recipient could steam it to reveal the invisible lettering...

Luckily you can still drown your sorrows in beer and chocolate.
Hey everyone - spring is here in our region! We have tulips, crocuses and hyacinths in bloom now znd tomato seeds are busily percolating under our basement grow-lamp. The migratory birds are returning in droves - or do I mean flocks, murders, parliaments or exhortations? Enjoying nature in spacious outdoor spaces is one of the keys to surviving this pandemic. So this week's donation goes to the building campaign for a new Wild Bird Care centre in the Ottawa area:

https://wildbirdcarecentre.org/build

The existing facility on Moodie Drive is already one of my favourite spaces to soak up a little nature therapy. Chickadees and other birds eagerly swoop down on my outstretched arm and with no effort on my part, I have them literally eating out of my hand. I've seen wild turkeys roaming the area too.

That's just the wide-open-spaces, public enjoyment aspect. But they perform a highly practical service too. Anyone finding an ill or injured bird can bring it to the centre for treatment, rehabilitation and eventual release - all of which obviously requires resources!

But after 40 years on that site, they have outgrown the premises and are looking to raise money for a new improved expanded bird care centre, which will also encompass a substantial public education component. Last I checked, they had achieved approximately 2/3 of their fundraising target, with just under 6 months to get there.
In this series so far, I've been focusing on causes close to home. But since yesterday marked the one-year anniversary of the Coronavirus being declared a pandemic by the World Health Organization, I decided this was the right time to donate to a charity working on the international scene:

https://www.canadahelps.org/en/charities/international-development-and-relief-foundation/campaign/coivid-19-emergency-response/

It's pretty clear that you and I and our respective families are not (relatively) safe from the virus until EVERYONE is reasonably safe from it. That, after all, is the rationale behind COVAX and prioritizing the most vulnerable populations for access to immunizations. IDRF is very transparent as far as how it allocates the funds it raises and I found it fascinating to explore their website:

https://idrf.ca/

As we gain more knowledge about how best to survive the virus, the virus too is struggling to survive by mutating into more contagious variants of itself. The specific concerns we have about Covid-19 today have also evolved from where they were a year ago.

But hope is definitely on the horizon. I'm confident that things will not look as dire a year hence!
This week, I have thrown my support behind the Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms, a legal advocacy organization that has been very active during this pandemic:

https://www.jccf.ca/

I've long been disturbed by how there seems to be one law for the privileged and another for the disadvantaged. These inequities in access to justice come into sharp focus during a public health crisis like Covid-19.

Many people see a contradiction between my libertarian streak and my overall leanings towards left-wing causes but to me, individual personal freedoms need not be at odds with the centralization of power or discretion over issues of common concern. But that's beyond the scope of today's post and indeed could be the subject of a whole long-running series!

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