You are currently browsing the monthly archive for May, 2009.
I’m currently on Vancouver Island, taking a most scenic route to the ASLE conference. I love this place!
I just read a news story about fake grass. I don’t know what to say.
I guess I could say something about how tired I am of this ridiculous obsession our society seems to have with perfectly uniform lawns. I could also say something about how so-called “weeds” like dandelions seem to be important for the health of bee populations, etc. I could probably also ponder the reasons why someone who doesn’t like to deal with plants bothers to live in a dwelling surrounded by yard.
I think instead I’ll take solace in a good book and dream of a day when more interesting approaches to gardening dominate our yards and neighborhoods.
UPDATED: Here is another story on the same theme. Sigh…
I’m sitting at my kitchen table with piles of paper spread all around me. I’ve spent the past couple of days really digging into the edits on my manuscript (affectionately referred to as “the project that must not be named”). I got off to a slow start on this project this month, but the good news is that I’ve found my groove now and am actually enjoying it. The feedback I got from the reviewers was positive and encouraging and full of excellent suggestions — just what I needed to kick-start my energy and enthusiasm for this project again.
I suppose I shouldn’t be too surprised that I didn’t get off to the flying start I’d hoped earlier in May. As I’ve previously posted, May is a tough month — geez, it is almost a year to the day since I found my groove last year. Maybe next year I should just book holidays for the first few weeks in May and be done with it. I could go somewhere where the pollen counts are lower and skip the allergies too. But I’d miss all the early season gardening. Such a dilemma!
I think I’ll try to keep going with these edits tonight. I am, however, taking little breaks to watch the cast of characters assembling for the evening in my backyard: a young-looking skunk, a birdseed-loving rabbit, a pair of Baltimore Orioles and a delightful assortment of other birds, including a little baby sparrow who is doing that funny dance they do when they want to be fed.
When I checked my email this morning I found an invitation to an “important joint federal and provincial announcement.” How could I resist? The announcement was that the Niagara Centre for the Arts has received $54 million dollars — $18 million from the City of St. Catharines and another $18 million each from the federal and provincial government. Very exciting news!!
The Niagara Centre for the Arts and Brock University’s Marilyn I. Walker School of Fine and Performing Arts will be on the site of the old Canada Hair Cloth Building. This is such an interesting building and I’m looking forward to seeing the transformation take place over the coming years.
As I left the announcement today I took a minute to walk around the building with my camera. It is empty now, but will soon be a hub of construction activity.
And on the way back down St. Paul street I saw this amazing graffiti.
We hear the term Open Access a lot these days, and I’m excited by the number of journals that are using this publishing model. When we relaunched The Brock Review the decision to go with an online, Open Access format was almost an automatic one.
I am amazed at the perception that some people still cling to regarding the intellectual rigor of these journals. Papers published in Open Access journals still go out for peer review and there are still the same standards and expectations of the scholarship, the difference is that anyone with an internet connection (instead of anyone with an institutional password) can read the published articles. Isn’t this what sharing knowledge is all about?
I recently read a wonderfully thought-provoking blog post about Open Access over at Academic Evolution. In this post, the author talks about how Galileo embraced the idea of sharing knowledge and draws some interesting parallels between what was going on in Galileo’s time and our current situation. A very interesting read — be sure to check it out!
My mom and dad are visiting Niagara this week. We’ve had a nice mix of doing touristy stuff and also just poking around the house and garden. They’ve been helping me get some house and yard work done, things that I haven’t had a chance to do. My grass has been cut for the first time in weeks (thanks dad!) — it wasn’t something I could even contemplate doing when my allergies were raging angrily out of control.
Today I baked bread with my mom. We used my grandma’s recipe for Danish rye bread. Yum!! My grandma used to make big double batches of bread and buns, giving most of it away to friends, family and neighbors. I love this bread, so she would always save a loaf or two for me. It was such a treat!
I haven’t had this bread for years and was thinking about it a while ago. When my mom called me the night before they flew out here and asked me if there was anything I’d like them to bring, I suggested she bring this recipe so we could bake bread. I’m glad that we got a chance to do that today.
Holy public transit, batman!! It is actually happening! GO Trains will be making their way to Niagara this summer. For now it is only weekends, but wouldn’t it be wonderful if this became a long-term thing?
-It is raining today and there is a noticeable reduction in my allergy symptoms. I feel better than I have in weeks. Hurrah!! I also had a couple of Sapporos last night. Who knows? Maybe that helped too.
-I love, love, love this piece by Todd Babiak on how walking presents opportunities to know a place in a way that just isn’t possible from a car or a bus.
-We went “over the river” last night and poked around Niagara Falls, NY. We had a delicious dinner at Michael’s. I also took this random snapshot. I’d love to know the story behind this window.
When I was in grad school I discovered the magic of freewriting. It certainly helped me work through new ideas and writer’s block when I was working on my dissertation, but I’ve not consistently kept up the habit in recent years. I need to get back to it. It works. Simple as that.
I’ve been stuck on an idea for a little while now so yesterday I decided to do some freewriting to help get unstuck. I shut off the laptop, grabbed a pen and a notebook and began to write. I surprised myself by writing 8 pages. Not all of it is usable, and some of it is repetitive. However, the exercise brought out some ideas and approaches that I didn’t even know I was thinking about.
I need this to be a productive summer on the writing front. I have a number of projects started and need to move them on out. I am officially committing to doing a session of freewriting every day. You can hold me to that.
