Provincial Politics and Pacific Gardens

In case you hadn't noticed - there's a provincial election in B.C., and of course, being the social activists we are, several Pacific Gardeners are involved.

Some are supporting the NDP, others the Greens, and those political choices fit with our social justice and environmental values.

But it also means some of us are going to very busy, and that includes me.  In fact, that's why you haven't seen any blog posts from me for more than 10 days.

I will be focusing my attention on campaigning for my local Green Party candidate until after election day, May 14th, which means you won't be hearing from me as often.

It's not that I don't think writing about cohousing and the values it embodies are not important.  It's just that right now, the election is way more important.

I feel - as do others - that we are at a crossroads in our society.  We can choose to go one way or the other, and which way we choose will have enormous consequences.

It distresses me that so many seem to think that we continue on with an economy based on over-consumption, continual growth, and destruction of our environment.

I believe we must change the way we live our lives if there is to be any future for the next generation - that's why I live in cohousing.  I want a different way.

I won't preach or hector you about this.  But I am going to do my damnedest now to elect people who care about the environment, and have the courage to fight for it.

I hope you will, too.

Kathryn

Green-Weenie Rage

I am a Green-Weenie - as one friend of mine sardonically calls environmentalists - and I look at everything through the lens of my environmental values. You would think that would be a good thing, but I'm not so sure.  I sometimes feel as if I am in a perpetual state of Green-Weenie rage.

Of course, living at Pacific Gardens, where those values are nurtured and encouraged, has only made it worse, and being a former hackette, it is the media coverage of the environment - or lack of it - that really gets me going.

For example, the CBC has been doing news items about the melting of the sea ice in Arctic - but only to extol the economic benefits of exploiting the oil and gas deposits now more readily available, the boon to the tourist industry, and the profits to be made from shorter shipping routes through the Northwest Passage.

Nothing about the release of methane from the melting permafrost, nothing about the destruction of the fragile ecosystems in the north, or the traditional way of life for the Inuit, or the effect the loss of ice will have on levels of global warming.

Then there's the deliberate refusal of the Globe and Mail and the CBC to cover the Green Party of Canada's national convention.  I could understand that happening when the Green Party had no MPS, but now that the leader of the party, Elizabeth May, has been elected, what is their excuse?

This year's convention, held in Sidney, B.C., had Ronald Wright, Massey lecturer and award-winning author, former prime minister Stéphane Dion, and independent MP Bruce Hyer, as speakers - all articulate Canadians with newsworthy ideas.

Is it too much to ask that our national media take the threat to our environment seriously, as do newspapers in the UK,  where I once lived?  Are the threats to the environment not going to affect us here in North America as much as in Europe? You would think so, looking at the way they cover what will be the major news story of this century.

And that makes this Green-Weenie angry.

Kathryn

The rock-polisher effect, part II

Earlier in this blog I talked about the rock-polisher effect of cohousing, and how it had helped me become a better person, by making me more patient.  Well, to be honest, saying it's made me more patient is somewhat of an exaggeration.  In fact, I think a truer representation would be to say it's made me a bit more patient, or even a teensy bit more patient.

You see, patience doesn't come easily to me.  First off, I've spent most of my life working in media, so deadlines are of critical importance to me.  Second, I am what you could call a hot reactor - in fact, my father  dubbed me "the atomic-powered mosquito" when I was a child.

I really do try to sit still and listen during our community meetings as we go through the consensus process, and I have been to communication workshops where once again, I am told the importance of listening.

But I don't know what happens - I hear something and before I know it, I am responding without the frontal lobes of my brain even realizing it.  And watching me try to sit still and listen when someone says something I disagree with is interesting. Our next-door neighbour, Ian Gartshore, who has witnessed this during Green Party meetings, says it's like seeing the human equivalent of a cell-phone on vibrate.

At least now I don't catapult myself out of my chair, and I have been known to wait at least a few minutes before I express my point of view rather energetically, and it takes only a few attempts by other people in the meeting to get me to stop interrupting.

Maybe when I'm older (I'm now of pensionable age) I'll master this.  In the meantime, this rock still needs some patient polishing.

Kathryn

(Here I am a meeting - the second from the right - being patient.)

My first cohousing blog ever!

I admit I am not always au courant with the latest in online developments. I only got into Facebook and Twitter when I was (briefly) a Green Party candidate.  I have to say, though, that I am finding them a wonderful tool for connecting like-minded people, and, with Twitter, making pithy comments.

Blogging is different, however.  I've kept a journal for many years, recording my innermost thoughts and dreams, but this is much more public, a cross between a newspaper story and a personal account. Blogging about cohousing, and particularly, life at Pacific Gardens Cohousing Community, will be interesting, so watch this space!

Kathryn

Rights of Indigenous Peoples

I am ashamed that Canada is only one of three countries in the world that have refused to endorse the United Nations' Declaration on Rights of Indigenous Peoples. The other two recalcitrant countries are the United States and New Zealand.

When the UN initially adopted the Declaration in September 2007, Australia voted against it. However, even Australia now has agreed to it.

My excellent Member of Parliament, Jean Crowder, will be holding an informal meeting here in Nanaimo tomorrow. It happens, by coincidence, that she is the Federal NDP critic for Aboriginal Affairs. I am going to attend the meeting and tell her what I think. I'm sure she'll agree with me, so in that sense I'll be preaching to the choir. Still, I feel an urge to do something.

Hmmm ....... I wonder if I could convince Jean Crowder that she is too good for the NDP and that it would make sense for her to switch her allegiance to the Green Party. :-)