Saturday, February 20, 2010

KICKSTART FESTIVAL 2010 MARCH ८ - २७ - disability arts and culture




Art Exhibitions, Theatre, Dance, Music, Workshops.

Tuesday, February 16, 2010

FEBRUARY 14 2010 - 19th ANNUAL WOMEN'S MEMORIAL MARCH




FEBRUARY 14 2010 'Valentines Day' in the Downtown Eastside (DTES) Canada's 'poorest postal code.'
19th ANNUAL WOMEN'S MEMORIAL MARCH, REMEMBERING WOMEN 14 FEBRUARY 2010
Women who are missing, were murdered, died from drugs or poverty, the majority First Nations = died from the violence, and effects of colonialism, cultural genocide and racism. The Womens' Memorial March takes place every February 14, stopping at places where women died, or were last seen. The DTES is a couple blocks from several Winter Olympic 2010 Venues, VANOC tried to have the 19th Annual Womens' Memorial March canceled; delayed until after the Olympics; rerouted. They were unsuccessful.

December 2008. Aboriginal Women's Action Network
'The United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) has called on Canada to set up an inquiry into the reasons for the failure of law enforcement agencies to investigate promptly the cases of missing and murdered Aboriginal women. Carrie Humchitt, President of the Aboriginal Women’s Action Network, said “The CEDAW Committee has clearly recognized the urgency and gravity of the documented disappearances and murders of over 511 Aboriginal women and girls from communities in Canada. It is important to everyone to examine why Canadian officials failed to protect these women, or investigate promptly. This is a human rights issue of central importance in Canada,” said Humchitt, “and one that needs the immediate attention on the facts and solutions that the UN Committee is calling for.”

In British Columbia over the last twenty years, dozens of Aboriginal women and girls have gone missing from the Downtown Eastside of Vancouver, and along the Highway of Tears which runs between Prince George and Prince Rupert. Many of these missing women and girls have been found murdered. “Aboriginal women and girls have been treated by violent men, and by authorities, as though their safety and their lives do not matter. Bringing the facts into the light is essential if Canada is to fulfill its commitment to treating Aboriginal women and girls as human beings of equal dignity and worth,” said Jackie Lynne, a Board member of AWAN.'

Amnesty International completed a report on the situation in 2004 Stolen Sisters: A Human Rights Response to discrimination and violence against Indigenous Women in Canada (October, 2004)

Audio and Video from the 2010 MARCH, with family members, Shawn A-in-chut Atleo National Chief of the Assembly of First Nations, Mayor Gregor Robertson, and Federal MP Libby Davies, echoing the calls of many groups for a provincial and/or federal inquiry. Something groups like AWAN and Native Women's Association of Canada have been calling for, for years.

In related news a Tent City was set up February 15 2010 to draw attention to homelessness at 58 East Hastings St, a site of previous housing, torn down, slated for redevelopment, which later stalled, and the site is currently parking for VANOC. 'No more empty talk, no more empty lots'. Check out a Cath Turner report on Al Jazeera with Stella August and Joan Morelli of Power of Women at the Downtown Eastside Women Centre

Xtrawest reports 'City Councilor Ellen Woodsworth began a seven-day hunger strike this week in support of housing the city's homeless. She is one of many local volunteers who have held the iconic wooden spoon in the 2010 Hunger Strike Relay। The relay began in December 2008 and will continue until June, when supporters from across the country will call on the federal government to reestablish a National Housing Program in Canada. Despite her hunger strike, Woodsworth is spending time this week at various city intersections handing out Valentine's Day cards that people can sign and send to their MP or to Prime Minister Stephen Harper in support of the bill.'

women do not die
peacefully
when murdered
deprived of life
livelihood
they do not lie
with vacant eyes
and angel expressions
like you see
on the tv shows
women fight
are beaten down
women yell
are silenced
women scream
are suffocated
women do not die
calmly
but in pain
in fear
and in anger
WOMEN
FIGHT
TO
LIVE

(2003)


TO WOMEN'S MEMORIES: PEACE. KIA PAI MARIE. NAMASTE.

Saturday, February 13, 2010

k.d. lang eh







Yes I watched the opening of the 2010 Winter Olympic Games on TV. For the record I wish governments would spend as much money and energy on addressing First Nations sovereignty; homelessness, poverty, services to women, children, elders, disabled, refugees; the arts etc as they do on sports events like this.....k.d. lang singing Leonard Cohen's Hallelujah near the end kinda got to me. Wow, such power in her voice, she put her heart and soul in to that! (Even tho up until that moment I wasn't really a fan of this song, I mean the dude can write, but his songs can tend towards dirges and sometimes 1970's style misogyny). Okay I cried during the First Nations part, with so many dancers from so many nations gathered together in one place. Bagpipes make me cry sometimes too, and I tried not to cry, during a fantastic performance by Turanga Ararau and local First Nations last week, I went to on the eve of Waitangi Day, as I hummed quietly the familiar tunes. It's part spirit, part collective memory, part some grief of energy around previously oppressed cultures, part some personal history of my own. Like when people play 10 guitars. Theme song of 1970's parties, rural and urban.....I actually thought this was a local song up until quite recently, there were so many localized versions sung; me being oblivious to Engelbert Humperdink.

It made me think about the power of k.d. lang standing there in her white suit butchness for all the parts of the world which could watch knowing some part of who and what she is. This Metis, lesbian, butch woman, singing a song to another woman. It inspired me to carry on with my own tiny spoken word performance when the opportunity arises. There is a power in your own truth which others not only appreciate, but need.



Like a disabled artist I met out at a Uni talk about Cancer and being Queer. I was chatting with after, asked me 'was that you I went to see perform at such and such a venue'? Yep it probably was. We have no idea sometimes the positive effect of what we do has on others. We often don't find out until years later, if even at all. Being a big boned gal from southern alberta, apparently k.d. lang performed Turn me round at the 1988 Calgary Winter Olympics too. I did love that song, big boned gal from southern alberta that year, it made me feel like I fit in my body as I danced around the kitchen.

I did really love her Constant Craving song from her Ingenue album, and could play it over, and over and over again in the early 1990's! Although I always thought of it as being about chocolate! I'm joking! And I thought the line 'Maybe a great magnet/pulls all souls towards truth' was 'Maybe a great Minatour' huh? I always imagined some big Taniwha.



So as per Dame Edna's dubious advice below, I am embracing my inner Canadian, no not the Olympic pride kind. The be true to yourself, k.d. lang kind. I do love when she sings how she commits, to the song, to the note, to whatever she's wearing. That's it, just commit.





I saw the delightful k.d. lang in concert in Aotearoa a few years back for my birthday, fantastic! With a couple of my dear, apparently straight grrl workmates who were swooning in the aisles! There was leaning over the balcony, taking breathtaking photos, and breathless whispering! But y'know k.d. is awesome it's hard not to swoon! Ah good times good times ( : I often seem to see people perform outa their country, whichever one I'm not in. Like I saw The Topp Twins live in Canada in 1998, and Alix Dobkin, and Joan Baez in Aotearoa around 2000. Stumbled upon my all time favs Aussie grrl band FRUIT in Canada around 2006.



At the Turanga Ararau performance at We Yah Hani Nah Coastal First Nations Dance Festival we got seated near the front, on the side with the bear totem, which made me happy, the side, the place for twins. ( : Reminded me how ten days before I met Miss A, I dressed up in a bear costume I made out of my grandma's black coat and tried to win a free trip to visit Canada. The energy of that, of committing to that. Once when I was first in Canada, things were going real badly housing and relationships wise for a bit, and I knew no one, and I was staying in this place with no phone and no internet. I felt so lonesome, just before I fell asleep, I thought of a black bear, I'd met two by then already. I fell asleep with it's warm pungent fur and breath on my neck. The next day, a bear walked up the stairs past my door. It truly did, I called, and bear came and gave me strength to go on. I been wondering if twins will come to the next generation, and then a relative did talk to me about that this week, the possible genetic inheritance of that happening.

Hey and synchronistic I was walking through a mall thursday and I heard playing 'How Bizzare' Sistah Seena says 'funky'!!

Okay enough with the youtube mix tape session, I need to get Mixpod like the stylee Miss Brian। Nice music e hoa! Still craving some k.d? Miss Brian rightly points out in her comment below k.d. lang does indeed have a new compilation just out Recollection.


Sunday, February 7, 2010

SUNDAY DRIVE



Don't ask me how, I got to thinking about the Sunday Drive, maybe coz it is Sunday, or maybe it's the crocuses poking through the dirt, or the pee-paw sound of a bird heralding spring, the overcast day. Although hitherto unto now I had completely forgotten about the existence or possibility of the Sunday Drive for a large number of years.

From memory a Sunday Drive require 6 things:
1. A Vehicle any kind will do, truck, car, motorbike.
2. A Driver.
3. Passengers.
4. A Road.
5. Money for gas; and maybe an ice cream.
६. An indeterminate amount of time.

I don't have all that fond memories of the family Sunday Drives, owing to the fact I was the youngest and the smallest, and my siblings were prone to poking me, as siblings are, which made me squeal, I still do can't help it! Which meant when we had the little domed car I had to sit in the front on a board wedged between the parents in their bucket seats, with my three siblings in the backseat. When we had the station wagon I sat in the boot/trunk part, not all that comfortable, nor allowed by law today, but at least no one poked me and could be quite sunny with windows on three sides ( : Either way the Sunday Drive involved staring dreamily out the window at all that passed by in the countryside. The Sunday Drive like theatre does require audience participation, in this case passengers, although the 'performance' itself is mainly the Driving.

Mostly there was no purpose to the Sunday Drive, that was the whole point, you didn't know where you were going. You meandered, the original the journey is the destination experience, route choices were made on impulse. Although secretly you all hoped the Sunday Drive would stop at your favourite ice cream store, and in reality the Driver often did have a plan in mind, they just didn't reveal it. That was part of the deal as they pulled up to the much often visited repast stop of old. You all exclaimed in mock surprise, and excitedly raced in to eyeball every single flavour of ice cream in the open cardboard boxes under the glass refrigerated cabinet, and had the same one you always had. Cherry chocolate, bubblegum or hokey pokey.

I think the Sunday Drive happened more in the winter and spring. In the winter as an antidote to cabin fever and distraction from the rain, which did make the windows kind of misty what with all those people breathing in there. You might stop at some remote part of the road and be let out like puppies to run around on the beach for a few minutes wildly you hair steaming in the wind until you face and fingers were freezing. In the spring you drove by lambs, new grass, daffodils, foals. In the summer if you were near one, you went straight to the nearest waterhole, or beach. Less of a Sunday Drive, and more of an Outing. The only meandering involved picking up more friends to cram in the car.

The Sunday Drive may have been be combined with contemporary hunting and gathering activities, such as going to a pick berries, wild blackberries, cultivated strawberries by the bucketful, more in your stomach than in the pot. That apple orchard by the black stump on the back way to such-and-such, where they sold apples by the wooden box load, in Miss A's childhood; or in plastic bags as tall as an 8 year old in my time. On the way home you might stop at the flower or tomato stand the one you had scoped out as the best on the way up. Take your produce, put the coins in the honesty box, to this day you can still do this in places like the Sunshine Coast.

My Nana took me on plenty of Sunday Drives of the hunting and gathering variety when she came to visit and we were living in the city by then. I returned the favour when I went back to visit her in her 80's. Driving the hour and a half down to see her, and believe me she was ready and waiting (a little too anxiously) at the gate of the old folks home in her finest peacock hued clothes to go out for the Sunday Drive. We went to the Brian Boru pub for fish'n'chips and pavlova, once operated by relatives of Miss A. We drove up the coast to a picnic bench by the ocean on a curve in the road. That may have been the last time I was a regular practitioner of the Sunday Drive, which does really require you to have a car. We did it a bit up the Coast, maybe drive past the house with the arched wall, see if the eagles are out on the rock, look at the colored lights on every ones house in the winter time....

Since my parents, and my grandparents indulged in the Sunday Drive, it's apparent they were well off enough have cars, and some free time. The Sunday Drive is most often done with people you live with, all inmates of a house pile in, including pets. But some one could call you up and say I'm going for a Drive, wanna come? You will say yes, although you have no idea where they plan to go, and maybe neither do they. Sunday driving as an adult with the family can be dangerous, members are prone to reminisce about stories which have become the stuff of family legend. Tales which you now realize have gaping holes in them you could drive a tractor through. Which, when you question the mythologer on, you discover truths you would really rather not know.

Perversely, when you are actually on your way somewhere, an Outing, or emergency, to say a Fair that closes in less than a hour, the hospital, a funeral, a sports meet, and you meet people crawling along the road on a Sunday Drive, you will be infuriated. You will honk your horn, and pound on the steering wheel, gesticulate wildly out the window, yell "come on!" at the top of your lungs until the 4 or more people in the car in front of you finally pull over to the side or you will foolishly gashilit and pass them in the no passing zone at top speed, yelling with some contempt out the window "Sunday Driver!" get off the road!

Fortunately our neighbor Miss D, 80-something, has just dropped by to say hi after I took over some vegetable soup yesterday, and to pass on a spare blood pressure reader for Miss A. Miss D, was able to fill me in on the custom on Sunday Driving on the prairies. Yes indeed, her dad, a farmer, was a proponent of the Sunday Drive, to see how the other farms, his neighbors crops were doing. The Sunday Drive may not have involved ice cream it was 14 miles to the nearest store. When she lived in Vancouver's Westend, she and her husband went on Sunday Drives, out to the forest at UBC, the farmland in Surrey etc.

She thinks the demise of the Sunday Drive, is Television, why she herself has just been watching the women's curling; and paradoxically there being too many cars on the road. I'm not sure where it went. Do people still do it?

I just asked Miss A where she would like to go for her imaginary Sunday Drive. She would like to go to Ponds store at the Mairangi Bay of her childhood, for an ice cream. I would like to go, up north to Trounson Kauri Park, where I heard and saw the beautiful grey/blue rare and endangered Kokako, whose intriguing voice you can hear here, maybe have a swim in the pool in the river there. More of an Outing I guess, but the road is pretty long and winding.

So we are looking for a Sunday Driver, the ideal candidate would be affable, but not verbose. But have you noticed most affable people can talk the leg of an iron pot? While taciturn people can tend to sullenness? Steady on the road, can get hold of a car, able to concentrate on the job at hand while remarking every 6 miles or so, "the lambs are a good weight this time of year"; or "I once saw a hawk on the road here". Fond of ice cream.



Friday, February 5, 2010

PARAGRAPHIA LAND




Things are going well in PARAGRAPHIA LAND ( :
As well as writin 'bout writin here in the blogoshere, I have actually been doing some writing; as well as currently wrangling ye old arts promotion day job.

In month one I have sent off writing submissions of:
- a spoken word piece to a festival
- creative writing and non-fiction on health issues to a women's studies journal
- poetry to a lesbian journal from the poetry collection I am working on

We'll see how all that goes. Next up an opinion piece to a newspaper; and some writing on the meandering route of the performance artist to a theatre newsletter.

I never did get that "what color is your parachute" concept of working out what you are good at, and therefor what kind of work you should do. I always thought wouldn't your parachute be multicolored? How else do we explain musicians who are also lawyers?

This aint poetry, but it may sum up the gist of the poetry book I am working on, it's prosetry from a few years back; it's multicolored:

swan song
I will always love you. Because, when I discovered on the world wide web at 3 a.m that a short story I had written had been published in an international book of women writers 3 years ago, I burst into your room at 4 a.m where you were soundly sleeping and told you the good news, announcing I felt like dancing. You said with some good-natured amusement - go on then! Later under the covers in the dark when I had calmed down somewhat, you asked me what color I could see. You saw violet I think, and I said I saw silver, and turquoise and aquamarine, and green, and yellow and blue and orange and so on. You said that was not possible. I leapt out of bed and bounced back in with what I considered intractable evidence. Two Fortune cookie sayings tacked to my desk from a recent meal - one of the first in this home we share. One said "your mind is creative, original and alert", and the other "sometimes the best choice is to choose all options". You agreed I may have a point. Later that day, by 5pm you had not arrived home as planned, for me to go to a meeting in the car. I had no idea where you were, was frantically calling the cell phone, when a paramedic finally answered, my heart was in my mouth when I urged him to tell me, everything. It was with much relief I heard you in the background, of what I now knew was an ambulance, bossing him around. I was so happy to hear your conscious, lucid, living voice, post car crash.


Monday, February 1, 2010

NEOLOGISM

Neologism is a word for a new word.

Gotny?

Heres two for today from those daffy collection of letters you have to type in when you want to post comments on peoples blogs etc to prove you are a real being not an automatom.

grati - very short graffiti - grati is to graffiti as tweet is to texting

gashilit - that's when you really gotta put your foot down on the gas pedal to get your rickety old car up a steep hill.

Okay then, ifn you are white and a man, and you make up or introduce words you get to be called a genius like Shakespeare, or Comedy Central's Stephen Colbert

Word invention is considered normal in children, scientists, and technocrats, the rest of us, apparently it's a sign of mental illness, autism, or stroke.....hmm funny how we keep coming back to these three..

Now we just need a word which could mean: definitions for words made out of computer generated passwords.

inventay - invent away!

or words invented after drinking to much coffee - vente! - people spewing opinions after drinking too much coffee, or grande - peoples oversized opinions of themselves after drinking too much coffee. good thing i don't drink coffee eh? i mean imagine how much more I could go on........!

FEELING NOSTALGIC

Brian's an unusual name for a girl, doesn't like the weather lately, which as it pounds on the roof made me think of the late poet Hone Tuwhare and Rain.

Reading the NZ Herald online, R.I.P. Pacific Island music pioneer Pauly Fuemana, innovator behind that classic debut single How Bizarre. Which lead me to think of the late Maori/Jewish/Celtic music pioneer, and later Like Minds Like Mine mental health educator; Mahinaarangi Tocker, whose music formed the soundtrack of the 1980's for me. Which lead me to this soulful version of Po Karekare Ana by Deborah Wai Kapohe who I just discovered right now. She seems to be furthering the honourable tradition of wonderful women musicians who also happen to be lawyers, along with Moana Maniapoto Jackson, Judy Small, and Anne Feeney.

Like I said, feeling all nostalgic for them Black Sand Shores.......