PACIFIC CURLS

PACIFIC CURLS are fantastic! Wonderful musicians! They are Kim Halliday (Rotuman/NZ Scottish), Sarah Beattie (Scottish) and Ora Barlow (Te Whanau-a-Apanui/English). This trio has been together for 6 years, and play a seamless blend of Maori, Pasifik, Celtic music and instruments.

I saw/heard them in the summer and started a blog and then life ran away with me but here I am back in the blogosphere.

thumb piano

 So heres the thing, I grew up around pacific cultures and sounz, but have no claim to it culturally myself, am of Scottish ancestry, but was not raised in that culture, just in this bland english way.  Fiddle player Sarah hails from Aberdeenshire, as do some of my rellies, my great-grandma for instance.

This blend of music and cultures, YES! I never felt more complete, at home, so far from 'home'. Pacific beatz and harmonies with celtic fiddle. Who knew!?

Ora definitely leads, keeps it all together, the show moving along with her great song introductions, humour, audience participation, vocals, beat box and range of traditional instruments she plays from Nguru (nose flute) to the whirring spin of a Purerehua.

I loved all their songs, but can't get the final offering of their concert Kalimba Trance out of my head. Based around Kim Halliday's exquisite Kalimba (thumb piano) playing, which I heard like a ring of tiny bells being played in a mesmerizing circular rhythm (think didgeridoo circular breathing).  It made me want to get out my humble thumb piano (see photo) and play it after it sitting idle for years! Kim's exquisite thumb piano and ukele of a pink/blonde wood look like they may have been handcrafted just for her by the same detailed instrument maker. I once played mine for hours under a full moon on new years eve sitting at the top of a HUGE macrocarpa tree to an audience of equally large cockroaches. Yes I believe that is fizzy drink can decorations on my Trade Aid thumb piano, inventive use of recycling eh?

I was so enthused I ended up buying both their CD's, their 2008 Pacifi Celta, and their most recent Te Kore. 

You can hear some of their music online at their Pacific Curls sonicbids page where you can also keep a track of their touring dates. Go see them if they come to a place near you - you'll be glad you did!

Strong Medicine - West meets East meets North meets South

Medicine and spirit has been up a lot lately. I'm gonna go with that. During a film festival, I saw the films Buffy Sainte-Marie: A Multimedia Life, and The Rainbow Warriors of Waiheke Island.

Buffy Sainte-Marie (1941- ) is an awe inspiring artist and activist who travels the world performing, and working on her Cradle Board Teaching Project which links indigenous teens across communities, provides School Curriculum on First Nations and much more. I really like her innovative  digital art work, 'painting with light'.  Her multiple streams of creativity, and standing up for what she believes in. Learning more about her long trail blazing career as a singer and songwriter since the 1960's was just wonderful. She has worked so hard for close to five decades, and endured her music being 'blacklisted' and suppressed due to her stand on First Nations rights and many other issues.

I was struck by many things in these two movies, but what stays with me is near the end Buffy Sainte-Marie says in the film something to the effect, 'if you carry the medicine, if you are a medicine carrier, but the illness is not epidemic yet, you have to carry the medicine for a really long time'. It made me reflect on the long history of many diverse communities for justice, healing, and wellness.

Buffy Sainte-Marie who was born in Saskatchewan, Canada of the Cree Nation, lives some of the year, when she is not traveling for work, in Hawaii. She talked about the need for a place of retreat, and quiet, in order to be able to do all she does as a performer and teacher. Similarly Hanne Sorensen (1960 - ) originally from Denmark who is one of 6 people featured in the film The Rainbow Warriors of Waiheke Island, talks about needing to retreat after years working as a welder and technician aboard Greenpeace ships on environmental issues. The Greenpeace ship the Rainbow Warrior - named after a Cree prophecy of the ecological disaster that would befall the human race if nature was not respected, was to lead a protest against underwater nuclear bomb tests at Mururoa, in 1985. For decades the peoples of the pacific have been made so sick by radiation poisoning, which still effects people today, including genetically. The Rainbow Warrior had just come from Rongelap, (Marshall Islands), where the indigenous people had asked for help to relocate to another island, their homeland had become so uninhabitable. The ship was bombed by members of the French military in a covert operation in Auckland harbour, it sank taking the life of Fernando Pereira. Many of the crew now live on nearby Waiheke Island. Aotearoa has been a nuclear-free zone by practice since 1984, and by law since 1987.

I understand that need to retreat, to reflect, to rejuvenate.  Both these places - Hawaii, and Waiheke Island, where these two women live, I have been to, and returned to for exactly these reasons - healing, review, renewal. Places which in and of themselves are healing, they have such powerful energy.

I watched a video of African-American writer Alice Walker (1944 - ) and Buddhist nun Pema Chodron (1936 - ) Pema Chodron and Alice Walker in Conversation (1999).

Alice Walker's third novel The Color Purple is one of my favourites. It talked about things I knew: violence; relationships with women; and things I had not been subjected to: racism. It meant so much to me, when the movie based on the book came out, a friend took the poster from the movie theatre and gave it to me, it hung on my wall for years. Alice Walker was awarded the 1983 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction (the first African American woman writer to receive it) and the American Book Award for The Color Purple

Pema Chodron is a European-American Buddhist nun, director of Gampo Abbey in Nova Scotia, Canada.  Pema Chodron and Alice Walker  talked amongst other things about making toxic things in to medicine - more like emotional, or mental or spiritual suffering. Not to seek suffering, or be martyrish about it, but to accept that there will be good times, and there will be hard times. To use the hard times, to make use of them, to learn about ourselves, and others, a way to understand this as a social activist -  our shared experiences of sufffering. To make the hard, the toxic be a teacher to us.


Or as the Dalai Lama puts it:  'Acceptance of suffering does not mean we should not do everything in our power to solve a problem whenever it can be solved. However, acceptance of the suffering that we are already undergoing helps us not to make it worse with the additional burden of mental and emotional suffering. For example, there is not much we can do about old age. Far better to accept our condition than to fret about it.'

A Two-Spirit friend who was participating as one of forty Aboriginal ceremonial spiritual elders and leaders in the third annual Downtown Eastside Smudge Ceremony invited me and a friend to come. Which was a humbling and amazing experience -  it is open to all, four hundred people came, many First Nations people traveling from near and far. It is held in a hard place, a dangerous place for women, especially Aboriginal women, where colonization meets the street. Where poverty, displacement, violence, addiction and prostitution live. A place where people live, and look out for one another. A place where Aboriginal villages once were. A place of hurt. The ceremony of healing from violence towards women,  was initiated by Darla Laughlin in 2007, after she had a vision in which she saw a huge abalone (paua) shell from which the smoke of sage was filling the street. Bringing together people of all races from the four sacred directions of the medicine wheel. Red races from the West, Black races from the South, Yellow races from the east, White races from the North. This year the smudge ceremony was on the 'Summer Solstice: Honouring Women as Sacred Life Giver. Prayers for Mother Earth and all Female Energy. Keeping our Seven Generations.'
 

Powerful medicine, after three hours one of the most painful places on earth felt as clear, neutral, energized, pure as a temple. I have recently been taught the Buddhist practice of Tonglen. Making your heart  a place of light, through which you breath in others suffering, breathing out joy, peace, happiness. I do not find it easy, I am still learning how not to take in, on that suffering, not to be overwhelmed by the suffering of all living beings.  Being a bit of an energy empath, I frequently shudder, on the bus, on the street, in traffic, when people and places of hurt, negative energy reaches and envelopes me as I pass by. I try to have compassion. To remember that sometimes, angry, aggressive, violent people, are just like barking dogs - scared. Yes I try to protect myself, with light. There are reasons I live in the mountains, and meditate on buses.  In the ceremonial space of so much concentrated energy, with so many people standing in spirit with their sacred medicine bundles, and constantly renewed by the smoke of the smudge, it was much more possible. The breathing in of suffering, transforming it, the breathing out of joy. It was a profound way to spend the summer solstice. 

After in the park, we ate wonderful vegetarian South-Asian Indian food. Amidst the First Nations drumming and dancing, I thought of friends in Aotearoa, in the winter, celebrating Matariki, the new year.


Later that week, an Aussie musician friend from down the line, I wished I could see more often, was in town and turned up unexpectedly next to me in my mediation class to surprise me! No not in a vision, like in reality! Let us sit together and envision a better world for all.

With gratitude Namaste.

a giraffe in your head

if the front
of your head
is your forehead
florid
florin
what is
a crown?
the back
of your head?
like a boat 
fore and aft
afthead?
daft in the head
draft in your head
a giraffe in your head?

BIOMYTHOGRAPHY - d'bi young anitafrika

Run, wheel, scoot, bus, drive or take handidart to see d'bi young anitafrika perform Blood Claat at the Firehall, last chance for the Vancouver run, Saturday April 17, 2pm and 8pm. Fan-freakin-tastic! She embodies all 12 characters so completely - young, old, female, male. Characters like a teenage girl, granny, auntie, uncle, bus conductor, boyfriend, priestess, warrior all reveal their different relationships to blood. Her sweat and tears are hard earned, it will touch you in a deep place, and make you think about, everything. She is an extraordinary storyteller, sit in the second row for the most fun and laughs! Support women in theatre! Talkback with d'bi after each performance, you'll be glad you stayed.

'Blood.claat, is a story told through multiple generations in which rituals travel in symbolic cycles of scorn and celebration exposing rites in which all metaphors unite in the fluid of life.'

I had the pleasure of being wowed by her entrancing dub poetry at the folk festival last year, once you have seen her perform, you won't want to miss her ever again! Check out the youtube clip where she talks about dub theatre.  Her website for her  performance centre in Toronto anitafrika dub theatre, or an interview with her talking about her work  here.  

She works in the genre of biomyth(ography) as presented by the wonderful writer Audre Lorde, (1934 - 1992) as do I. Hmm maybe I will dust of that three generational play and finish it sometime! Feeling inspired! It was Audre Lorde who wrote: "We must be the change we wish to see in the world." I found Audre Lordes work in the late 80's/early 90's, from memory 'Zami: a new spelling of my name', and 'The Cancer Journals.'

Blood Claat is the first part of a trilogy of works d'bi is currently touring: 

'blood.claat (the first play in d'bi.young's biomyth-monodrama trilogy entitled sankofa) was nominated for five dora mavor moore awards in 2006, and won in the categories of outstanding new play and outstanding female performance. it toured canada extensively and was published as a bilingual 1st edition (english/spanish) by playwrights canada press. d'bi.young is presently completing benu (part 2), originally commissioned by montreal's la chapelle theatre and supported by factory theatre and word! sound! powah! (part 3), originally commissioned by soulpepper theatre and supported by canstage theatre. young's first play, a two-hander co-written by naila belvett, entitled yagayah was published in testifyin': contemporary african canadian drama in 2003. her second two-hander androgyne was produced by buddies in bad times theatre in 2007. young is the 2009-2010 playwright-in-residence at canstage theatre and is a member of the tarragon playwrights unit 2010.' 

Pink Shirt Day - Proudly Canadian

Did you wear pink April 14 to show your support for stopping bullying? At school, at work, at home, in public. I did! 

Makes ya proud to be a Canadian! 

Here's how the CBC called it September 2007: 

'Two Nova Scotia students are being praised across North America for the way they turned the tide against the bullies who picked on a fellow student for wearing pink.

The victim — a Grade 9 boy at Central Kings Rural High School in the small community of Cambridge — wore a pink polo shirt on his first day of school.

Bullies harassed the boy, called him a homosexual for wearing pink and threatened to beat him up, students said.

Two Grade 12 students — David Shepherd and Travis Price — heard the news and decided to take action.

"I just figured enough was enough," said Shepherd.

They went to a nearby discount store and bought 50 pink shirts, including tank tops, to wear to school the next day.

.....And there's been nary a peep from the bullies since, which Shepherd says just goes to show what a little activism will do.'

I was wondering why I felt a bit sad, immobilized, withdrawn yesterday. Something deep, painful I couldn't seem to find words for. Then I started thinking about, Bullies, I have known.  Bullying begins at home, bullies, they live somewhere. There was of course the highly abusive father, I'll return to that later. There was an older brother who enlisted my siblings in excluding me from, well, everything, until he left home when I was 14. They complied, even though he broke their bones anyway. He later joined law enforcement, draw your own conclusions. When I was 12, I said something a girl in my class didn't like, she was known for jumping to conclusions and taking things the wrong way. She said she was going to get her boyfriend, a notorious bully, small but mean, to beat me up. At that point my after school playmates were 3 neighborhood boys, so I wasn't as that phased as I might have been. I decided I would rather face up to it, than be ambushed, so I met N, at the set time and place after school by the bike sheds. He explained to me a little whakama (shamed) that if he beat one more person up he was going to be permanently expelled from school. So that was the end of the matter.

There was the sexual harassment my classmates and I endured from some of the few male teachers at an all girls public school. There was mr F who taught French, in a berating manner, and was known for leaning his 6 foot frame over our desks from behind and looking down our uniforms at our breasts. The was the art teacher mr C who was known for taking 'crotch shots' of athletes, allegedly for the school magazine. When you take photos of adolescent girls  in sports attire you need to be very careful how you frame them. At 16 we made up a rhyming song about the students and teachers, while on a school trip. The line about him - which I believe was supplied by a young student teacher - went 'mr C is a dirty old man, you watch out for his wandering hand'. We sang the song at an end of year public event. I was the one who had written the words down, and called out the lines. The Principal  told me we could sing the song if  we took out those lines, resentfully, we did.  But that was not the end of the matter, by 17 I was in his art history class, he frequently made inappropriate sexual comments about nude artworks we were studying. After talking amongst ourselves about it, I spoke to the Dean of our year. She said the school was aware of the problem and there was nothing they could do about it. (This was the 1980's). So we students agreed we would write down what he said. C, who sat at the back agreed to do it, mr C saw her notes and bullied her from the class, I failed art history.

There were other staff who were lovely. Like mr B our beloved science teacher, one day when I was 13 some of my classmates decided to tease me about how I talked, several of them imitated me, I just couldn't take it that day, I thought I was amongst friends. I hid my head, in my folded arms on my desk, and started to cry, I couldn't stop. At the end of class mr B had all the other students leave and then he tried to talk to me. He asked all the right questions, was I sick, was it a relationship, was there trouble at home, was I having difficulty in school. I couldn't speak, or even raise my head. Eventually he let me go and I went to the bathroom to get myself together.

When I was 20, and had extracted myself, or so I hoped from the reach of the abusive father, in a different city. I heard from my professors that he was at the University looking for me. I went, in my bare feet to see the stern Registrar who had a reputation for being a stickler for protocol, to explain my predicament. This was in the days before an awareness or policy about privacy, and the University was in the habit of giving out student's phone numbers and addresses to friends and relatives who asked for them. The Registrar looked at me for only a moment, and then swiftly erased my address and phone number  from the computer database. The relief, and gratitude was immense.

Bullies are not only male, female, too. But women can be less overt sometimes, harder to identity. Like the relative who tells you constantly how useless you are; or the sister who when you are a child pretends to people you are a boy, so you will be excluded from playing with other girls. Or the boss who takes your work and ideas, puts her name on it, giving you no credit.

I've been bullied in my own community, by a friend of a friend who spread outrageous false rumours about me. I called her on it, I asked to meet, with a qualified third party if she wanted, she could choose. She refused. It so angered and hurt my friend, she stopped participating in that community. As fate would have it, years later ms Rumour was in a class I taught, I was teaching people how to - listen. Sometimes I think the universe has  a sense of humour!

I'm a fairly assertive person, but still not immune to bullying. In the past 10 years, bullying bosses - 3 out of 6. Thankfully not currently! It's hard for me to even accept the last time I was bullied at work was only 2 years ago. The first time, he apologized on his own. The second time I called him on it. The third time I had to speak to some one higher up. He had been formally censured at least twice already for bullying other staff members.

Bullying is a behavior - like the in-law I met by chance on a transit platform, who shouted at me for twenty minutes while bemused passengers looked on with shock on their faces, wondering what to do. Nobody did anything. It doesn't have to be a lifestyle. We are all capable of it, it can happen to any of us, we can all be complicit. DON'T. I try to remember, see the good in all people. Mostly I can, it is much harder to imagine in people who terrorized you for years. Do something. I have driven strangers home who were running for their lives, stood up for colleagues at work. Told a young lesbian she does not deserve to be beaten by her parent, stood between abusive young men and their girlfriends to halt an attack. Recently I gave a knee tap with my walking stick to a man who was body slamming his girlfriend on the bus. Quite often this results in the bully, and sometimes the victim turning this in to a homophobic attack on me, but it won't stop me.

In its third official year (fourth counting the original action)  PINK SHIRT DAY is now observed Internationally.

In 2011 PINK SHIRT DAY will return to its usual last Wednesday in February, and be observed February 23 2011. Mark you calendars now! You can keep up to date with plans and events for PINK SHIRT DAY on Facebook.

Luminousity of the week

I have been going to a meditation once a week lately, at  a local library. This week we arrived to find a huge mural covering two walls of the cosy meeting room, which was formerly minimalist austere. By the artist who did this painting - Dana Irving. Some one described it as Emily Carr meets Dr Seuss! The mural is of a wooded scene with a river, trees, this same luminous gold light, the red of tree trunks. It has local creatures raccoons, ladybugs, eagle, crow, squirrels. It's stunning, and has such a fantastic upbeat energy about it. I definitely felt like I had stepped in to a  fantastical red/green/gold world...

                                   wonder 
                                   mural
                                   green trees

                                   red trunks

                                   gold light

                                   listen

                                   teacher 

                                   red and gold 

                                   robed 

                                   orange tea

                                   yellow cup

                                   shirt striped  

                                   yellow, green, blue 

                                   red wheelchair 

                                   eye returning 

                                   to  fellow

                                   meditators pen 

                                   red 

                                   and yellow
                                   next day
                                   hummingbird 
                                   at my window
                                   red
                                   and gold 

                                 

killing us softly - something in the water?

The Tyee — Disabled again on BC Liberals' Hit List

"There are a number of initiatives that are undertaken in the budget to make sure that we continue to put low-income people on the top of the list." 

-- Premier Gordon Campbell, March 5 2010 (Yeah right Gordo!)


'The poor and the disabled are definitely at the top of the B.C. Liberal government's list -- the hit list for more suffering, that is. The poor and people with HIV and chronic illnesses whacked with more cuts to income and health support'. By Bill Tieleman, 9 Mar 2010, TheTyee.ca

Yes the 'Liberal' provincial government is at it again, announcing last month a further slate of cuts to products and services for people with disabilities, which include no longer funding products like orthotics, glucose monitors, bottled water. Changing eligibility to: dental and medical services; provision, replacement and repair of motorized scooters; nutritional supplements, etc. See more info here.

 The Liberal government seems to have a very short memory, they might have forgotten but we haven't, the 12 people who took their own lives; when their government decided to review everyone receiving disability benefits and make them 're-prove' their disability in 2002 by filling in a 23 page form in conjunction with a GP.  In a province where historically many thousands of people don't even have access to a GP.   Heroes exhibition artist Cleo Pawson hasn't forgotton either, she talks about it (at minute 7.40) along with her art in this interview on Redeye. The government spent millions on the review and saved practically nothing. The form was sent to 18, 750 people, only 47 people were found to not qualify anymore. Ironically it turned out Cleo was more disabled not less disabled,  and subsequently got more assistance that she needed. Photo of  a beaded work she started at the time, which took 6 years to complete. It is stunning, and so detailed.

BC Coalition of People with Disabilities will keep you up to date with BC governments shenanigans. The creepy part is the BC Government does remember. I heard on the grapevine recently, they gave some funding to a small disability arts festival a few years back, and the idea was the provgov would invite people on benefits to come. In the end the provgov decided not to, as they realized, people on disability benefits getting an unexpected envelope in the mail, would FREAK OUT, and think it was something bad again like the benefit review debacle.  

Neither have we forgotten about the 7 people who died, and the hundreds who were made sick, when ecoli contaminated the municipal water supply  in Walkerton Ontario in 2000. That's the reason why people who are immune compromised, don't drink tap water, if the water becomes contaminated, and it will from time to time, they will not just get sick, they are at a risk of dying. Now there were only 4, 800 people living in Walkerton at the time, so those 7 people who died represent more than 1 in 1000.  There are over 2 million people living in metro Vancouver - half of the province's population, which means if our water supply becomes contaminated as it did in 2006 and we are advised not to drink tap water, over 2000 people could die. Which is just over 2/3 of the number who died in the 911 attacks.  I hope when that happens, and it's not a matter of if, but when, that the their loved ones take a class action suit against the  provincial government .

For the record here is a quote from a current document from a Medical Office for a Metro Vancouver municipality: 

'Advisory Re: Drinking Water & Persons Who Are Immunocompromised. The Provincial Health Officer advises all British Columbians with compromised immune systems (such as HIV, organ or bone transplants, chemotherapy or medications that suppress the immune system) to avoid drinking water from any surface water source unless it has been boiled, filtered or distilled.  North Shore, Greater Vancouver and, in fact, nearly all British Columbia water sources are surface water sources (lakes, rivers, streams).' 

Lets not forget the provincial and federal government's failure to provide clean water to many First Nations reserves in Canada, you can keep up to date with progress on that front at Rez Water. Or that half the worlds population is made sick by diseases found in dirty water, that at least 5 million people worldwide die every year from lack of access to clean water.

So lets recap, the provincial government says if you are immune compromised DO NOT drink tap water. They used to pay for you to get purified water, but now they have decided, you can pay for it yourself, out of your insufficient funds, or die. 

For the environmental record, while we are all trying to stop drinking tiny bottles of bottled water which when discarded then pollute the environment. Everyone I know who gets bottled water for health reasons, has a couple 20 litre bottles which they get refilled  ( :

The really sad part is these recent cuts are on top of everything which has been cut by the Liberal provincial government of  B.C, in the past 8 years: Legal Aid, funding to Women's Centres, funding to Seniors Services in the community, daycare subsidies, the BC Human Rights Commission, 50% Arts funding, the list goes on. Stop Arts Cuts on Facebook. You can see just how badly BC is doing in securing the rights of First Nations/women.  So badly the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women wants Canada to report back on how it has improved the situation for women on welfare,  and First Nations women  facing violence in 1 year.

Here's a nice little ditty a timely reminder of the cost of the Olympics - like cutting the budget of the office which investigates the deaths of children. Yep just one of the many places that 8 billion dollars came from.  http://geoffberner.com/Olympicstheme/

Fortunately some people and organizations do give a damn, about making BC a better place to live, and will be demonstrating so on April 10th 2010.

Instrucciones para recortar el cabello en casa – how to cut an androgynous persons hair

Lets talk about Spanish, and hair cutting, and androgyny. It was a couple weeks before I would be attending a number of arts events and I needed a half decent haircut. Okay I hadn’t had my hair cut all winter since a traumatic incident last time.

It’s not easy getting your hair cut if you are androgynous. Although you would think the invention of the unisex hair salon and unisex haircut in the 1980’s would have solved all that. But no, no matter what I say, ‘flat top’, ‘buzz cut’ - thinking singer Grace Jones, they say ‘like a man’ and I sigh and give up and say ‘yes’. It still gets cut short in some head-hugging hair facing forward definitely feminine with little curls by your ear and a wispy fringe like model ‘Twiggy’ kind of way. Sigh. Instead of some clean cut, partly sticking up on top, stylish kind of way. The thing is I don’t want my hair cut in a particularly masculine or feminine way, I want it cut like me, what I look like. But there are not words for that, the androgynous haircut.

 The best haircuts I ever had were at a Men's Hairdressers on Lambton Quay, Wellington; in 3 Lamps Plaza, Ponsonby Auckland; Kaua’I, Hawaii, and up the Sunshine Coast. Haircutting is a service industry, where immigrants, refugees and visible minorities  are over-  represented. It’s partly about what kind of work is (and isn’t) made available, or starting your own business I think. Or perhaps cultural rituals around hair, or maybe coz no one else knows how to cut their hair either? Some hairdressers say they like being around people, well you know like for 20 minutes at a time. At a Men’s Hairdresser at 3 Lamps Plaza, Ponsonby the woman and younger man were from Iraq, and they knew their local clientele (him perhaps personally), how to cut gay peoples hair, men and women. In the beauty shop which also did enamel fingernails, in a tiny strip mall next to an industrial part of the highway in Kaua’i, the woman hairdresser was Asian Hawaiian. I gradually told her bit by bit, you know trying it out, to see what her reaction was, that when I got back I was going to be best man at a wedding and would be wearing a suit. She gave me the best haircut ever!  Up the Sunshine Coast, a neighbor cut hair, she was originally from Greece and liked to talk about her trips back there. She had such a lovely way about her. Maybe coz she was such a good conversationalist you hardly even noticed her cutting your hair, all you could see was the azure seas of Greece, and then voila it was time to shake out the plastic cape. At a Men's Hairdresser on Lambton Quay, the woman was originally from England I think, or her family were, it was a government town, she asked you how your work was going, told you about her sons sports events. Her salon was right handy to me, I got my hair cut often,  and was happy. Oh yeah and there was that cute wee pixie of a lesbian who was raised by dykes and worked at some swanky downtown gay frufru hairdressers in the ‘couv, who could make you look and feel fabulous! But that was many years ago, and then she moved salons, and we lost track of her, and we couldn’t afford it anyway. Before that I'd come from getting my hair cut for $5- $10 at the Peoples Centre. Where the cuts were okay, more perfunctory, completed with good natured humour by an irrepressible sleep deprived young Russian woman, who was in night school studying physics.


My friend T had such a traumatic haircutting experience she didn’t get her hair cut for 2 years, which is saying something for a butch who looks good with a buzz cut! I don’t know exactly what happened, I think the hairdresser saw the lesbian symbol tattooed on the back of neck, and things went downhill from there. She arrived at my place with hair down to her shoulders, asking for an intervention! She was real sick of her cult-like government workplace too – if you called in sick, then didn’t answer your phone later, managers came to your house! So I typed her arts based resume while I was at it, as part of my comprehensive complimentary make over service! Took her in to the lovely woman at the Men's Hairdressers, who I had already primed with the story my friend was recovering from a bad hair cutting experience. The Hairdresser chatted away to us about how my friends holiday was going, she looked at my friend’s girlfriends short haircut a few times, and modeled it partly on that. Turned out just fine!

I am ashamed to confess I privately thought my friend was being a bit of a baby about the whole haircutting incident, until, I had my own bad experience recently. I’ve been to this place a few times, Iranian women work there, I have had some good hair cuts there, but lately I keep getting this woman who says ‘oh I remember you’, points to a picture of a man with a curly flat top haircut, I say ‘yes’ and away she goes. It would be fine if she would just stop cutting half way through, it looks good. But for some reason no matter what I say she keeps going and it gets shorter and shorter. Until she might as was well have taken the clippers and run them over my head with a number 3 blade until I look like the fuzzy egg I do, at the end anyway! Don't get me wrong I have spent many a year with just such a haircut, and I did it myself, but theres good #3's and theres bad #3's! Maybe that's the difference between a haircut and a  hairstyle, I was here for the latter. For goodness sake it’s the middle of winter! I go home, cry, put on a hat, won’t come out of my room for a day and leave the hat on when in public for 2 weeks! Until it grows a little. I’m not all that fond of having anyone touch my head anyway. Often after the creative concept negotiations, and they get going I shut my eyes and go off in to a meditative trance just to cope. Kind of like being at the dentist. Hairdressing is a act and conversation  across culture, language, gender and sexuality, some things get lost in translation. I suspect though for me the concept that androgyny is something to be accentuated, (if you've got it flaunt it!) desired, desirable, may be biggest loss in translation.

No more! So I decided to return to my late teens early 20’s practice and cut my own hair! I have some clippers, so I got them out, plugged them in, oiled them, and away I went. Well not quite, this time I proceeded with caution, I was laughing picturing some of the less than great youthful haircuts I gave myself! So for the first time I got out the instructions. It said ‘Instrucciones para recortar el cabello en casa’ you know which got Para Graphia’s attention what with the word PARA being in there!

On the English version of the instructions it said: ‘Home Hair trimming instructions’. There were pictures too, with hair trimming tips, what process to follow, the order, and how to do a crew cut, puurrffect! I followed the instructions, I remembered how to cut hair. I laughed some more remembering the good and bad haircuts I gave some of my male fellow students at Uni who asked me to cut their hair and paid me in chocolate. I know how to cut MY hair, I’m real good at cutting straight up to the ears with the scissors, I used the clippers on the sides and the back, but not cutting too high up, and not too close, the largest blade, number 7. Which was good, its too hard to cut the back of your hair using scissors, directions become very confusing in the mirror. I cut the top with scissors, using the trim along your index finger method paying special attention to that tricky crown area. Otherwise one week after my haircut I start to look like a parrot! I really like my haircut! It still sticks up, there’s a bit if a wave to it.

So about those Spanish instructions: ‘Instrucciones para recortar el cabello en casa’, according to Bablefish online translation http://babelfish.yahoo.com/translate_txt it means ‘Instructions to trim the hair in house’ which if you re-translate back to Spanish is ‘Instrucciones de ajustar el pelo en casa’ again to English ‘Instructions to fit the hair in house’ back again to Spanish ‘Instrucciones de caber el pelo en casa’. That’s about where it ends.

Unless you think it wise to rely on free online translations such as Babelfish – and I personally don’t - as opposed to say online Dictionaries which seem much more reliable in their translation, of words, if not always sentences. Part of the fun of Babelfish is translating and retranslating a phrase between languages as it gets further and further away from the original sentence to something ludicrous, fantastical or nonsensical which may make you howl with laughter. But it’s only really funny for about a day and then you get bored. Unlike human translators, computers do not cope well with idioms, colloquialisms and contractions. Which is how the drift away from the original occurs, and because languages may construct sentences so differently, while computers translate literally. No not literary! But that might be useful……

According to this online dictionary http://www.spanishdict.com/translate/para

para [pah’-rah] is a preposition
Which can mean alternately: For, to, in order to (finalidad), toward, wherefore, to the end that.

It’s also where I discovered the fixings for this little bilingual lost in translation found poem on the nourishment of words:

es para ti                                         it's for you
¿Para qué                                      why
Leer para sí                                    to read to oneself
Para siempre                                 for ever
comida para llevar                        food to go
Hay que comer para vivir             It's necessary to eat in order live
   
I realize now that the people who might know how to cut my hair - the boyish looking girl, may be women who work in men’s hairdressers. Las mujeres que trabajan en peluquerías de hombresso! If you know any let me know? Otherwise too much seems to be lost in translation.

  According to Babelfish ‘Home hair trimming instructions’ in Spanish is ‘Instrucciones caseras del ajuste del pelo’ which I can not comment on the accuracy of, but perhaps some one will? I say we need instructions:  Cómo cortar un pelo andrógino de las personas - how to cut an androgynous persons hair. Or like painter Frida Khalo, I will have to resort to cutting my own hair.

Para Graphia Mark III

It’s all about context eh? It was only today seeing Para written in a sentence with other Maori words, I remembered Para is also a Maori word, or often prefix. I know that it’s not only about context, it’s also about who is writing, or seeing, or speaking, or understanding a word. That Para, separated from Graphia, as in Paragraphia, is a word not only in English/Latin, but also Maori, and possibly other languages such as Spanish. I set out to find what Para could mean. Relying on the always reliable, extensive Ngata Dictionary, Maori to English, and English to Maori. (http://www.learningmedia.co.nz/ngata/)

Which revealed 260 results for Para. So out of respect for the fact letters, sounds syllables live within many languages; in this space devoted to words, meanings and writers, included below are some of the beautiful possibilities in Maori. Which resonate with this writing, and whose trail led me back to another language I had been thinking about after returning to spend time at the Out from Under exhibition, Braille:

For those who may not know, Aotearoa is officially a trilingual country. The official languages, are indigenous Maori (since 1987 - of which in reality there are many distinct languages and dialects), NZ Sign Language (since 2006). English which is a de facto Official Language by use since colonization in 1800’s, but not actually by law.  Unfortunately the reality of access to, use, and teaching in all three languages is a whole other struggle. English being far more favoured by officialdom, and both Maori and NZ Sign Language having been repressed historically. That is, in practice, and legislated against, and people punished for using them. I believe the only other country in which Sign Language is an official language so far is Uganda.

Hori Mahue Ngata (1919 – 1989) eldest grandson of Sir Apirana Ngata MP (1874 –1950), was a kaumatua of Ngati Porou, with tribal connections to Ngai Tamanuhiri, Rongomaiwahine, and Te Aitanga a Mahaki. Interpreter, University lecturer, scholar, he, and his whanau (family), friends, and colleagues spent decades creating the dictionary of over 14,500 entries. From the 1960’s on, until it’s publication in 1993, four years after his sudden death in 1989. Leaving us all with a great taonga (treasure) of which I am in awe. (My apologies I can’t work out how to put the macrons over the long vowels on this computer – but I am on the trail of finding and configuring software which will correct this).

"kopara: female bellbird (listen to her sing http://www.teara.govt.nz/en/small-forest-birds/4/1).

haparangi: to bellow; taipara(tia): bombard; parapara: bent. He mahi parapara te korero purakau ki a Witi Ihimaera. Witi Ihimaera has a natural bent for story-telling. (this is even more apt considering he is gay writer = bent!). para: body. He nui nga para kai roto i te wai. There are foreign bodies in the water.

ukupara - smudge; pake parapara: black cape. Ko nga muka harakeke i totohua ki ro paru mo nga ra torutoru, i whatua mo te pake parapara. Flax fibres steeped in mud for several days were used to weave the black cape.

parapara: acumen, faculty, ingenuity, instinct/ive, resource, remains. paraketu(tia): probe

para kore: pure. tio para: mud oyster.

parari: gully; parara: roar. Te parara a te hau i roto i te koaka. The roar of the wind in the ravine. paparahi: trail; para: spirit."

H.M. Ngata Dictionary 1993

Which brought me back to Mae Brown, first Deaf-Blind person to receive a degree, at Toronto University in Canada in 1972. Working away on her Braille typewriter, with her lectures spelt into the palm of her hand, as part of her work she created a Braille encyclopedia. She is featured in the Out from Under exhibit under ‘Trailblazing’. The text of the online Plain Language Audio Tour of this section concludes:  http://www.ofu.ryerson.ca/exhibits/trailblazing.html

“Long before she earned her university degree she wrote an article comparing her life to a deep dark canyon. She imagined that her only way out of the canyon was by making a difficult climb. She wanted to leave way marks behind her so that other people could find the path she had taken”

when I lie down
tired worn out
others will stand
young, fresh
on the stairs
which I have built
they will climb
and on the work
which I have done
they will mount
at my clumsy work
they will laugh
and when the stones roll
they will curse me
but they will climb
and on my stairs
and they will mount
and on my work”

Mae Brown (1935 – 1973)

I like to think of Mae Brown working at her studies in the late 1960’s; whilst on the other side of the world H.M. Ngata is beginning his dictionary, starting with the legal terms used in his level III Maori Language Class at Auckland University. Trail blazing, doing something worth doing which no one has done before.

The roar of the wind in the ravine
roar
gully
trail
spirit

Te parara a te hau i roto i te koaka
parara
parari
paparahi
para

Or, it wasn’t until I stood alone in the dark canyon of the wings about to go on a stage, with the book my friend had given me, in which I had pasted my stories. I noticed for the first time, some months before she had written ‘Shine on you crazy diamond’. (Yes Ups to Pink Floyd!) She had put those words there, perhaps knowing, I would later need them. I took courage from those words. Blaze on my friends, blaze on.

Revolving word cloud

Highlights of the week. I get to hang out with women as fabulous as this! The acerbic wit, insight, and mischievous eye twinkling smile of brilliant activist academic and Out from Under co-curator, Catherine Frazee. Along with her partner Pat, and fellow co-curators. I attended the exhibition opening on International Women's Day, and a small group of us went to eat together after, what a wonderful way to spend the day! A few days later I am stunned as always by the sheer power, and beauty of Afuwa Granger's paintings in the Heroes exhibition. The range of artistic mediums, the scope of subject matter, the ingenuity of form, the painful beauty of many pieces. On Friday I join with others in being made breathless by the mesmerizing, electrifying, non-stop mental gymnastics, laugh so hard you cry performance of Jan Derbyshire in Funny in the head!

Yesterday, a meeting, at which we all are at different times and combinations of, to muse on  the importance of art making people uncomfortable, racism in the disability and media communities, translating disability  issues within the disability communities to wider communities....

The image, I can not shake from the Out from Under exhibition, is the baby's bassinet in which there is a thick report of a Royal Commission of Inquiry into the suspicious deaths  of 36 disabled  infants at the The Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto. As many as 43 died from lethal drug overdoses it was revealed in 1981. As always I am reminded that history (including to the present day)  seeks to exterminate, medicalize, pharmaceuticalize, neutralize, neuter, confine, conform, control women as gifted as these, who bodies and/or minds do not conform to 'the norm'. I am grateful. For their existence, for their resilience, for their brilliance. Their artistry, their analysis, and for the time we have together.

In honour of the ideas these women liberate daily into the atmosphere, which are circulating in my brains word cloud; and on my way to trying to find out how to embed articles; I discovered the wonderful revolving word cloud application. Which circulates Blog Post Labels like their very own evolving, revolving,  revolutionary planet. Enjoy! If you move the mouse over the words you can make them change direction, and speed. If you just must have it, you can get your very own here.  

No sugar-coating for disability exhibit www.vancouversun.com

For disability rights activist Catherine Frazee, the personal overlaps with the political even when she doesn't intend it........

Out from Under | Disability, History and Things to Remember ofu.ryerson.ca

This virtual museum of activist disability history pays tribute to a proud legacy of resistance and survival. Click on the images below to enter the exhibits, or browse the menu at left for a range of ...

One of Afuwa Granger's  3 luminous paintings in the

Heroes Exhibition
The text with the above image says: There is poetry hidden in my paintings/ ink and paint/ give form to marks/ carried by my ancestors/ they resist erasure/ Guyana petroglyphs/ enmesh personal/ physical history/ with/ visible present.

Jan Derbyshire gets a little funny in her head | Theatre

www.gayvancouver.net

Vancouver Lesbian Jan Derbyshire presents her one woman show Funny in the Head on March 12th as part of the Kickstart Disability Arts and Culture Festival.

WOMEN / MENTAL / HEALTH - Happy IWD, PWD's!

Photo Copyright FreeStockImages.org


HAPPY INTERNATIONAL WOMEN'S DAY MARCH 8
- PERSONS WITH DISABILITIES!

MARCH 12
She Laughed, She Cried;
Fado with Sara Marreiros & Comedy with Jan Derbyshire
Friday, March 12, 2010. 8:00pm - 10:00pm
Location: Telus Studio Theatre - Chan Centre for the Performing Arts. UBC
Opening the performance stream of the Kickstart Festival 2010. Fado singer Sara Marreiros and her band bring music steeped in the passion of Portuguese saudade (yearning). Jan Derbyshire performs Funny in the Head, the rollicking story of a bipolar comedian’s fight to stay funny.
Tickets: $22 ($16 students, seniors & fixed income)
http://www.ticketmaster.ca/section 604.280.3311
Kickstart Festival 2010 presented in partnership with the Chan Centre
for the Performing Arts. http://www.kickstart-arts.ca/kickstartfestival.html

MARCH 13
Womyn and Mental Health. Saturday, March 13th 2010.
Facilitator: Erin Graham Location: Hastings Library
(2674 East Hastings Street). Time: 10 am – 2 pm.
This workshop will offer participants opportunities to talk about their understandings and experiences of psychiatry and mental health. We will discuss some of the ways in which women respond to the sexism and oppression we encounter, and examine how some of those responses are labeled "inappropriate" or as indicative of psychiatric illness. Participants can expect to have lots of time to engage with current ideas about women and mental health, and come away with some concrete strategies for how to get beside and assist women in distress, or who may be looking for resources about mental health. Come with questions, problems, ideas and an appetite for understanding.
Erin Graham is a long-time feminist activist, mental health Worker, storyteller and raconteur. She is presently in the process of getting a PhD from the department of Educational Studies at UBC.

MARCH 6
A Feminist Perspective of the Indian Act.
Saturday, March 6th 2010. Facilitator: Fay Blaney.
Location: Hastings Library (2674 East Hastings Street)
Time: 10Am – 2Pm
With International Women's Day fast approaching, this workshop will take a feminist exploration on the impact of the Indian Act on First Nations women. The feminist principle that “the personal is political” is an effective tool in bringing about greater understandings of gendered inequality. It underscores the relationship between the shaping of ideologies and beliefs through legal and institutional instruments, and its' impact on the lived experiences of First Nations women. The conviction that “Feminist until all women are free” must apply to this discussion!

Fay Blaney is a Xwemalhkwu woman of the Coast Salish First Nation. As a founding mother of the Aboriginal Women's Action Network, Fay lead two participatory action research projects on (i) Bill C-31 and (ii) violence against women as it pertains to alternative justice models. During her years as an instructor at Langara College and UBC, Fay taught Women's Studies, from an Aboriginal feminist perspective. She also played a significant role in the creation of the Aboriginal Studies Program at Langara College. Fay also taught a course on “Racism and Ethnic Relations in Canada”. In addition to several publications, Fay appears in the film, “Finding Dawn” and developed the Study Guide that accompanies this film.

Registration: Swathi Nirmal. Women's Centre Coordinator.
Vancouver Status of Women
Phone 604-255-6554 womencentre(at)vsw.ca. Bus tickets , Snacks and Childcare Provided. Please contact gorgeousmabel(at)hotmail.com in advance if you require childcare.

AVAILABLE NOW
Rain and Thunder Issue 45 (Winter 2009): Annual Activism Issue
Featured articles:
Activism as a Disabled Womon by Philippa Willitts
"Fierce Indigenous Love": Fighting for Her Sisters -- An Interview with Aboriginal Radical Feminist Laura Holland
Twin Oaks: Not the Revolution But You Can See it From Here by Valerie LivingWater
Lone Radical ...Feminist Actions by Diana Russell
Forty Years of Activism by Jean Taylor
The Other Side of Activism: Withdrawal as a Radical Act of Defiance by Kim Rivers

ART SUBMISSIONS APRIL
Words on the wall: Remembrance Of Patients Past
Psychiatric Survivors Archives of Toronto (PSAT) is giving out bricks for artists to create with, deadline for submission April 7th 2010. There will be a silent auction of bricks painted by local artists. Proceeds from the auction will be donated to the Psychiatric Survivors Archives of Toronto (PSAT) for the purpose of buying plaques to commemorate the labour of CAMH patients during the construction of a wall on the institution’s grounds.

Marc Glassman, Executive Director of This Is Not A Reading Series, will host the evening. Gladstone Hotel Ballroom, 1214 Queen St West Wednesday April 21: 7:30pm. To celebrate the re-issue of his groundbreaking study, Remembrance Of Patients Past (University of Toronto Press), scholar and activist Geoffrey Reaume will conduct a walking tour of the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH) grounds. Reaume will then guide the group to the Gladstone Hotel, where he will have an on-stage conversation Ruth Ruth of Friendly Spike Theatre Band. http://www.tinars.ca/content/remembrance-patients-past.
For bricks contact: 416 661 9975; http://www.psychiatricsurvivorarchives.com/index.html