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A few posts ago , I mentioned having a PTSD episode, and being open about it, in a group setting. That post seems to have resonated with a lot of people. In that same spirit, I'm sharing this. * * * * I attended a week-long labour education event, part of the CLC's Winter School. Many different courses take place at the same time, each five days long; you're with the same people all week. My group was seven people from my own local, plus three other locals from our union, about 20 people in total. Our classroom was a very supportive environment, full of compassion and support, plus a lot of humour and fun. Three days in, we finished our morning check-in, and the facilitator said: We're going to try something new. Find a partner, and one of you will be blindfolded. That's all I heard. At the word blindfold , my head started roaring. I thought, I'll just wait til she's finished, then I'll say something to the facilitator privately. But as the facilitator c...

Allan and I have spent countless hours this week trying to backup Joy of Sox and to restore posts and comments to wmtc. I think  we are making progress, but I don't know what the final outcome will be. Which is ridiculous. This process shouldn't be this difficult and the outcome shouldn't be in doubt! Blogger's backup function, through which you export all posts and comments and save them as an XML file, appears to work for small blogs with a few hundred posts and comments. Large blogs like ours with many thousands of posts and comments -- not so much. We have been searching for an external, non-Blogger backup tool. Mostly we found nothing. After days of searching, Allan did find one option. To backup JoS, it took 26 hours and saved a file that is 23 GBs! That is crazy, given the most recent XML file produced by a Blogger backup was around 200 MBs.  Right now we believe we have every wmtc post (thank [something]) and all comments except  comments from May 2019 to the p...

A post was accidentally deleted -- an essay that took a while to write. Happily, I had recently backed up the whole blog. And thank goodness, as it had been a long while since the previous backup. In order to restore the missing post, Allan imported the backup copy... and instead of all the posts merging, they re-posted. I think that's because they were originally posted by me, but imported by Allan, making him a new author, causing Blogger to read the imported posts as new. Now we've got to get rid of about 7,000 duplicate posts. Sadly, all the lovely comments on this post have been lost. There were about 30 comments; five remain. That's frustrating. Although nowhere near as frustrating as losing the post itself. * * * * Update. Horrible update. Now all the duplicate posts are gone... but so are all the comments. Thousands of comments. All our discussions. All gone. I cannot even think about this being permanent. We are still working on it. Hoping to post another update...

A post was accidentally deleted -- an essay that took a while to write. Happily, I had recently backed up the whole blog. And thank goodness, as it had been a long while since the last backup. In order to restore the missing post, Allan imported the backup copy... and instead of all the posts merging, they re-posted. I think that's because they were originally posted by me, but imported by Allan, making him a new author, causing Blogger to read the imported posts as new. Now we've got to get rid of about 7,000 duplicate posts. Sadly, all the lovely comments on this post have been lost. There were about 30 comments; five remain. That's frustrating. Although nowhere near as frustrating as losing the post itself.

There's a movement to put the face of Tommy Douglas on the next Canadian $5 bill. Wouldn't that be wonderful? And wouldn't it be a kick in the pants to those who seek to privatize our health care system? Go here to nominate Tommy Douglas.

Dog Eat Dog , 1985 Front Cover We've reached a milestone: a Joni Mitchell album I don't like. No, that's a cop out. It's not merely that I don't like Dog Eat Dog . It's that Dog Eat Dog is not good. It's a really bad album. All musicians, all artists, create clunkers sometimes -- especially if they're experimenting and expanding. Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen, Elvis Costello, Van Morrison, David Byrne -- musical giants all, and all have released albums that aren't very good. And although it pains me to write this, Joni is not the exception. I stopped reading David Yaffe's biography of Joni while I was writing this blog series, so I don't know the history behind Dog Eat Dog . (I will go back and finish the book.) I don't know if Joni was pressured to try a more commercial sound, or if she genuinely wanted this album to sound and feel the way it does, or if perhaps the final result didn't reflect her intentions. The overall effect is t...

Thank you to the Wet'suwet'en people who are courageously defending their land for the greater good of us all. Thank you to the Kahnawake people who are courageously blocking the rail lines in solidarity. Thank you to the non-Indigenous allies who blocked the main highway on Vancouver Island, and disbanded only under threats of violence from racist thugs. Thank you to every person who attended a solidarity protest in cities across Canada. It's inspiring to see that protest has moved to full-scale civil disobedience. We can't all do it, and we are indebted to those who can. Shame beyond measure on the Trudeau government for pretending to care about reconciliation. When we doubted Trudeau's sincerity, Liberal Party apologists chided us: give him a chance, he sincerely cares. Have you woken up yet? Justin Trudeau should never be allowed to speak the word reconciliation again. When he utters the word, everyone in the room should stand up and turn their backs. Everyone ...

Let Your Reading Take You Someplace New Many of you already appreciate the joys of reading. Reading transports us to other worlds and lets us vicariously experience other lives. Reading helps us feel less alone, knowing there are other people who struggle with the same issues we do. Reading helps us explore questions of ethics, morality, spirituality, politics, and culture. It's been shown that people who read have more empathy and compassion than people who don't. That makes sense, because when we read, we are putting ourselves in others' shoes, which is literally the definition of empathy. If you love to read, why not challenge yourself to read something different? This year, I encourage you to try reading read three books that are outside your usual comfort zone. In the next few "At Your Library" columns, I will suggest a few tips on taking your reading in a different direction. Thousands of words in every picture Many adults have not yet discovered the joys of...

"I find it really difficult to ask for help." I've heard many people say this. I don't know if I ever said this myself, but as a teen and then young adult, I definitely tried never to ask for help, and seldom would allow myself to accept any. When I needed help of any kind -- physical, financial, emotional -- I would feel uncomfortable and deeply indebted, for relatively small actions. In New York City, where, like millions of New Yorkers, I didn't own a car, if someone gave me a ride home, I would thank them profusely. Years later, living in Mississauga, I offered people rides home all the time, and realized it was not that big a deal. The same goes for being asked to stay for dinner, or being offered a cup of tea or a glass of wine in someone's home. A simple act of friendship or kindness, especially from someone I didn't know very well, seemed like Such A Big Deal. This is certainly one area where our world makes it more difficult for men. Asking for he...

Cookie does not, will not, come when called. She is just not interested. At mealtimes, "wanna eat?" will bring her running. And if she's in the backyard or on the deck, the sound of the clicker and the treat jar will usually work. But at the beach, she has no intention of coming back to us. We've done the high-value treats, we've done... everything. The beach is simply too wonderful to leave. I am Cookie, and I answer to no one. Last year, on a wet, cold day, I was waiting outside the library for Allan to pick me up. He was late. I knew he had taken the dogs to the beach in the morning, and knowing he soon had to clock in to his own work, I thought he forgot about me. When Allan showed up, I learned that Cookie was still at the beach! It was getting late, he knew I was waiting, didn't have his phone with him -- so he left (with Kai)! Now he was going to head back to the beach to get Cookie. I was worried and scared! But a few minutes later, Allan and Cookie ca...