June 8th, 2008 writerspice
Rising gas prices have finally raised the question. Should we stay or should we go?
It’s not an easy one to answer, but since airplanes deliver one of the worst doses of carbon, it’s long overdo that we stop treating travel like it is sacrosanct in the discussion about climate change and start thinking about what staying home can give us.
Read more about this – “the first real end of the exciting and engaging world that those of us in the more prosperous part of the planet (who are prosperous enough to afford it) have learned to enjoy over the past hundred years” – in my most recent post on Celsias.com
Photo by Malias
Posted in Contemplations, Going Green, Issues | No Comments »
June 6th, 2008 writerspice
On my way home from the library last night, yet another bit about the collapsing airline industry was on the radio.
Dubbed the “airline armageddon” by blogger Lou at The Cost of Energy, it seems like passenger costs for plane trips are rising faster than anyone can book their tickets. Despite the disappointment for travelers (or would be travelers – I think of my 7 and 11-year-old nephews who might miss out on seeing very much of the world as they grow up), anyone with half a brain knows this is inevitable.
Back in May, David Suzuki said it himself:
Air travel leaves the heaviest carbon footprint among all modes of transportation and skyrocketing fuel prices are already having explosive effects…. Economists think tourism can continue to grow into infinity. But we have to realize that nothing can grow forever. This unchecked growth only accelerates us on a suicidal path.
But yesterday, when I was cruising through back blog posts at Celsias.com, a wee bit of hope for future adventures sprang up in my soul. I caught sight of a piece by George Monbiot (the writer of Heat: How to Stop the Planet From Burning
and, the newest, Bring on the Apocalypse: Collected Writing
) discussing the feasibility of relaunching airships.
I know what you’re all thinking. I know because I thought it, too. Starts with H and ends with G, right? Here’s what George says:
The word airship elicits a fixed reaction in almost everyone who hears it: “what about the Hindenburg?”. It’s as if, every time someone proposed travelling on a cruise ship, you were to ask, “but what about the Titanic?”. Yes, there was a spectacular disaster – 71 years ago. It has lodged in our minds because, like the Titanic, the Hindenburg was bigger and plusher than any craft built before it, and it was carrying rich and prominent people. The conflagration was witnessed by journalists and broadcast all over the world. It also become the technology’s funeral pyre: the Hindenburg was doomed long before it burnt, as airships were already being displaced by aeroplanes.
Granted, the solution isn’t perfect. In one of these contraptions – and four companies are working towards getting them off the ground (who knew?) – it would take about two days to get from New York to London. And the resources they would need, writes Monbiot, are somewhat scarce. But nothing in this global quandary – apart from using less and staying home (more on that in days to come) – is infallible.
Despite all our questions and confusion as we face these challenges, the article makes for an interesting read and a bit of black-and-white mental imagining of a future that might have been dreamed up by our great-grandparents, in the days before the airplane industry became the only way to go.
Photo by TeecNosPos
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June 4th, 2008 writerspice
I love the United States. The country is full of grand vistas and great people.
And even though lots of Canadians complain about the tough process of getting across the border these days, I’ve never had a problem.
More often than not, I find the folks working the conveyor belts and waving me through the metal detector professional and often personable. Yes, getting through customs is a longer process and the lines are often peppered with panicked people anxious that they’re going to miss their flights, but what can you do? Get there early. Take a deep breath. Leave your liquids behind.
But with today’s news from ABC that “citizens from countries in the VWP [Visa Waiver Program], which allows travelers from certain countries to enter the United States without a visa, will be required to submit their travel plans and personal information before their day of travel,” I’m not so sure I’ll be visiting nearly as much after the requirement comes into effect next January.
Don’t get me wrong. I have nothing to hide. But the thought of logging my passport number into a computerized system 72 hours before I’m set to go, to wait as my name is checked against a terror watch list, raises visions of all those zombie-like automatons wandering around that fictitious world of George Orwell’s. According to the article, the Europeans are balking, too, with concerns about what will happen to the collected information and how long it will be held.
And there are other questions, as well. Who is on that list? What is the definition of a ‘terrorist’? Does someone attending a hunger strike outside the U.S. consulate to protest American military policies end up on that list? Stranger things have happened.
Posted in Issues, News, United States | No Comments »
June 3rd, 2008 writerspice
Last year I spent some time chatting with a few local farmers to produce an article about the importance and ease of eating from the fields in the county I call home. Called Think Fresh, Eat Locally, the article is in the May/June issue of Simcoe Life magazine.
With my ever-burgeoning interest in growing food and using wild edibles and herbs (my newly-planted veggie garden is sprouting and a batch of mullien from a neighbour’s driveway is drying in the dehydrator as I type), I poured my heart and soul into this piece.
Unfortunately, in the print issue, it ran with the wrong byline.
Although this has never happened to me before, it is a fairly common occurrence for lots of writers (a few colleagues were quick to share their own tales of woe when I released my sorrows in a forum).
But do me a favour. Should you live somewhere within Simcoe County and come across the magazine, take out your pen, cross out the wrong name and write mine in. That would make me feel a whole lot better.
Chef Doug Porter puts together some locally-grown greens at Collingwood’s Simcoe County Restaurant (photo by Lauren Carter)
Posted in Food, Going Green, Issues, Ontario, Recommended, Seasons, Simcoe County, World, Writing Life | No Comments »
April 30th, 2008 writerspice
I don’t know if it’s because I recently finished re-watching the final season of Buffy the Vampire Slayer or all the bad news lately but if ever there was a time when I was tempted to grow a long, white beard and hoist a sign on the street corner, this is it.
The end, I told Jason this morning, is nigh.
I know, I know, it’s my own damn fault. As mentioned last week, I’ve started writing a post here and there for Celsias.com, a gig that’s keeping me increasingly invested in the chaos steadily creeping across the world.
My first piece was on Bill C-517, currently in the House of Commons, to enforce labelling of Genetically Modified Foods (for those of you Googling, as I was unsuccessfully, to find the date of the final debate and subsequent vote, it is May 6th, with voting on the 7th – had to call my MP for that information, as the issue hasn’t made even a squeak in recent mainstream media).
This led to a teary-eyed viewing (the last scene is a killer) of The World According to Monsanto (pour a stiff drink grab the bottle and stay away from all sharp objects for the duration of this film) and the compilation of an epic amount of information to try to convince my MP to vote in favour of the bill, despite his opposition. After all that, exhaustion set in.
Don’t get me wrong. I am not apathetic. I care. I’ve even been a tireless activist. In fact, for a long time I was out there standing against stupid environmental ideas like Adams Mine, getting people to sign a petition for free Toronto transit on smog days, running a neighbourhood newspaper, organizing peace rallies and lots of other stuff. But after awhile, I realized that I could feel my soul pooling on the floor beneath me. And I decided I needed it, all to myself. I had no quiet corners. And, practically speaking, it is, in my experience, impossible to be a writer without them.
So now I just write. Every now and then I leave the house. But for the most part, I am in my chair, trolling the net for the latest in travel, environmental and other news. Practicing my craft. This solitude is probably part of my problem vis-a-vis the whole end-is-nigh thing.
When I get out of the house, it’s nice to learn I’m not alone. This past weekend, J. and I went down to Toronto. We spent Friday evening and Saturday morning with friends. It was a great time; so nice to reconnect with people we hadn’t seen in a long while and just to hang out in the city.
Over local organic beer, I found myself talking about GMO foods. Quickly, my friend Lina’s boyfriend put his hand up. “I’m too worried we’re going to run out of water,” he said. “I can’t really go there.” The next day, my friend Phil interrupted the start of my sermon over diner eggs and homefries on the Danforth. “I’m on peak oil,” he said. “Sorry.”
Maybe I could have an end-is-nigh party, I thought.
This weekend, Jason and I are going to rent some, um, funny movies.
I’m going to try to remember how to laugh.
With that on the agenda alongside the first sail of the season and the opening of my mom and stepdad’s joint art show at the quaint Coldwater Gallery (if you’re in the neighbourhood…), it should be a fine last weekend should the hellmouth decide to stretch itself open anytime soon.
Photo by Jason Cartwright
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April 21st, 2008 writerspice
A few weeks ago, bloggers Peter Davidson – a fellow Canadian currently writing out of Shanghai, China – and Julie Schwietert – a prolific writer who splits her time between New York, Mexico City and San Juan – asked me and a few other travel writers how we decide whether to pitch or to blog.
The collected answers – in an article for The Traveler’s Notebook called Travel Stories: Knowing When to Pitch to an Editor and When to Blog – make for some interesting reading, especially for newly emerging travel writers trying to make a go of it while both blogging and pitching and selling work.
It seems to me it must be a tougher go nowadays. I’ve often wondered how things would be different for me, if I was starting out now and not when I did, in the days just preceding the Internet, when being published meant carefully writing a query letter, affixing a stamp and sending it out with sample writing clips enclosed.
Part of what drove me to learn to write a query and craft those first pitches was the urge to see my name in print. These days, it’s so easy to satisfy that need for gratification, and instantly, too. It makes me wonder if I would even bother learning how to craft a query and pitching editors if I was just now beginning to write.
If I was in the early days of writing freelance, I might just start a blog, or four, and find another way to make a steady living.
Don’t get me wrong, I realize that there are lots of new opportunities for writers these days and if it weren’t for the Internet, I wouldn’t be living in a small city nearly a two-hour drive (during rush hour) from Toronto. I’d have to be in the big city. I’m thankful for that, but it is also hard to know how exactly to capitalize on the new reality of lots and lots of words for, seemingly, less and less pay. Or, even, for free.
There are some great ideas out there, and certainly writers are doing it, including those interviewed for Julie and Peter’s story. Blogging can build your reputation, Abha Malpani pointed out. It can also help you gain a readership, including a literary agent, says Kelsey Timmerman, blogger at whereamiwearing.com in another discussion, at WorldHum, about how important blogging is for a travel writing career.
Lots of interesting perspectives and important questions keep coming up in this debate, an important one as advertising profits for traditional print media continue to shift into the online world.
But what I’m wondering is what does it mean for a conventional career as a writer?
Can we make it?
Yes, blogging attracts attention and does result in getting gigs but are those jobs enough to put a turkey – or tofurkey – on the table every now and then?
Posted in Contemplations, Issues, Writing Life | 1 Comment »
April 9th, 2008 writerspice
The New York Times recently published a great article about the perils of the blogging sweatshops that have formed in the new reality of writing for the Internet. In a word, death. It seems a few tireless bloggers have suffered coronaries possibly caused by the incredible stress of being ‘on’ all the time, in order to do the job and get paid for it.
In the article, one blogger “says he sleeps about five hours a night and often does not have time to eat proper meals. But he does stay fueled — by regularly consuming a protein supplement mixed into coffee.”
For me, this article couldn’t have come at a more perfect time.
Over the last few days, with one of my main markets having temporarily dried up, I’ve been surfing for work. As usual, there are lots of places looking for writers willing to write for peanuts. One job, posted on a Canadian Craigslist page, offered $7.00 an hour to start. In the skewed reality of writing for the web, this might not seem so bad, when so many of the blogging jobs offer a measly $3.00 to $5.00 per 250 word post. Still, it contains an irony.
On March 31st, the minimum wage here in Ontario, Canada went up to $8.75.
Just imagine: the lucky writer who gets that job will be making less than the pre-teen at Tim Horton’s.
With this new industry developing online, I wonder a lot why our main associations for freelance writers seem to stay mainly fixated solely on all-rights grabs at print publications instead of addressing the reality of workers churning out hundreds of articles for measly pay.
And other writers seem to think this is primarily a personal decision of weighing priorities, but to me it’s way more than that. It’s an industry issue. If that server at Tim Horton’s died of a heart attack because of the stress of having to serve coffee 24/7 in order to make enough money to live, wouldn’t someone assess the situation?
Wouldn’t something change?
Posted in Contemplations, Issues, Writing Life | 4 Comments »
January 11th, 2008 writerspice
For all the people I’ve met who think Canada means Shangri-la in some other language… this comes from Toronto housing advocate Cathy Crowe:
..Yes, Canada is at war in Afghanistan. Since 2001, Canadian Forces have been fighting a war that has now lasted longer than World War II…
Our military spending will reach $18.2 billion in 2007-08, the highest annual amount since World War II.
Much of this is being spent on military equipment intended for the war in Afghanistan, like the $3.4 billion for four military transport planes and $1.3 billion for 100 battle tanks.
That $4.7 billion for arms could have provided at least 30,000 affordable homes for homeless families.
The military budget now represents 8.5% of all Federal spending. The Toronto Star reports that Prime Minister Harper intends to boost the Canadian Forces budget to $20 billion by 2010. This flies in the face of housing activists’ long-time demand that an additional 1% of the Federal budget, approximately $2 billion, be put towards a new national affordable housing program.
Homelessness and hunger are well documented and the most painful expressions of the poverty here in Canada. Surely, we should be demanding that our federal government put an end to it.
After all, as Gandhi stated, “Poverty is the worst form of violence.”
If there is such a thing as a moral war, I don’t think this is it.
To sign the Housing Not War declaration or to learn more: www.housingnotwar.ca.
Cathy Crowe’s newsletter is at http://tdrc.net/index.php?page=newsletter.
Photo by Jonathan Greenwald
Posted in Issues, Toronto | 2 Comments »
December 18th, 2007 writerspice
Travelling on my own in Argentina a few years back, I read about the ruins of San Jose de Lules, a Jesuit mission outside of the small city of Tucuman. There wasn’t much to do in Tucuman. I barely spoke Spanish and I’d already seen the sights of the town, so of course I decided to go. It seemed easy enough. Climb on the bus, get out at the chapel, wave down a bus going back when I wanted to return home. There was a museum there, my guidebook said, which in my mind meant people, especially since it was summer holidays. Mid-January; hot as blazes.
Let out on the dusty side of the road, I followed a quiet dirt path to the chapel. Nobody was there. This was okay by me, as it meant I could actually be alone for the first time in ages without having to hide away in my hotel room, buried in Dracula, the only English novel I’d been able to find.
But the lack of people meant the presence of something else.
Dogs.
They entered the chapel, their low growls resonating in the empty stone space. There were three of them. As I slowly backed up, they barked ferociously. When I was far enough away, I turned around and hustled back toward the road, their breath hot on my calves. When I got to the road, shaking, I discovered they had torn the leg of my cargo pants.
It was terrifying. Needless to say.
Once I returned home, for months afterward, I kept meaning to write to Lonely Planet, to tell them about this omission of information that could have cost me my life. But I didn’t ever get around to it, a fact that still makes me squirm.
This is what I thought about today when I read blogger and traveller Julie’s excellent post on Matador about the inadequacies of guidebooks and her reasons for not reading them. I still use guidebooks but I learned a big lesson in Argentina. Namely, they are not the authority on any given place.
It is always better to ask a local, especially when planning to head out, innocently enough, into open, empty, countryside with no idea exactly what you’ll find.
Photo by Ian Hsu
Posted in Contemplations, Issues, Recommended, World | 1 Comment »
November 28th, 2007 writerspice
These days, the city of lights is once again the city of street fires.
And as the rioting continues in Paris, I listen to a politician from the right-wing French National Assembly saying things like “tribalism” and “racism against French culture” and “it’s easier to make a living through drugs” on a CBC radio interview.
It’s not an economic issue, he says, dismissing any claims that this outpouring of rage and such a violent and hopeless attempt at change has anything to do with high unemployment among teenagers and widespread poverty and the alienation that many immigrants face.
A lot of other people, of course, are saying that this is exactly where the problems start.
Even former president Jacques Chirac, after the last wave of rioting in 2005 (also sparked by the accidental deaths of two teenagers) came out and admitted the obvious inequities.
“There is a need to respond strongly and rapidly to the undeniable problems faced by many residents of underprivileged neighborhoods around our city,” he said to the media.
At that time, Nicolas Sarkozy, now the country’s president, took a tough stand, asking for the deportation of “foreigners” (I guess he meant immigrants) involved in the riots.
As experts argue, policeman and teenagers continue the war, with many falling from injuries. And this whole thing is nothing new.
This summer, I spent some time in Benton Harbor, Michigan, a former industrial town that saw their factories leave and unemployment rise. In 2003, when a kid on a motorcycle was killed in a police chase (sound familiar?), the remorse and rage drove rioters out into the street.
Thanks to grants and the immense commitment of both locals and outside parties, Benton Harbor is being revitalized. Three galleries and open studios have opened up, as well as a glass school that offers lessons to young people at risk of being sucked into the downward spiral of poverty.
The answers are not easy, but they begin in the same place: an acknowledgment of the humanity of those driven to such extreme action and a condemnation of violence. Physical violence, yes, but also the violence of a system that abandons those who need help the most.
Photo by webbmb
Posted in Issues, World | No Comments »
