Some things can go together

See this photo? From the outset, it might just look like two computer geeks comparing laptop specs.

However, you'll notice that the thing behind us is a canvas tarp and I'm dressed like a camp counselor. Why? Because we're sitting in a little booth in the middle of a field, that's why! What you're looking at here is the Living Archive tent at the Shelter Valley Folk Festival.

I have a lot of hobbies. Or at least, too many that I'm staunchly dedicated to. Problem is, these hobbies rarely coincide. Dividing my time between them is painful, and full of sacrifices I don't want to make.

Except maybe in cases like this.

Here is my reprieve from having to choose between separate worlds (geekdom and folk music) that I hold dear.

It's a reminder of how much the basic tenets of community, art and responsible living don't necessarily have to be mutually exclusive from games, technology, comics etc. And when I get a chance to bring ideas from one realm into another, you better believe I'm all over it.

Generally speaking, I'm too much of a multi-tasker. And I give myself a hard time about it. I like too many different types of entertainment, media and artistic expression and so tend to exhaust myself trying to stay on top of everything.

But I'm learning that being a Jill-of-all-Trades has its advantages. My role is becoming essentially one of facilitating the crossing of boundaries within art and technology. And I love it.

See that hat I'm wearing? It says "More cowbell". Just call me Christopher Walken.

Footprints

My column photo from Northumberland News
Originally uploaded by phinux

This photo, as might seem obvious, was taken to be printed alongside a series of columns I did back in highschool, for one of the local newspapers.

If I wanted to, I could go to the local library and look myself up on the periodicals, and look at past printed evidence of my existence. I'm dimly aware that some people liked my columns enough to clip them out and stick them in a scrapbook.

I remember I was once, in my teens, out at the local scout camp for some sort of camp, and we were going through the dusty contents of a coffee table in the chalet. We found a number of well out-dated Leader magazines, and an old photo album. We flipped through it, seeing many miscellaneous photos of past scout troops (well past) and things that didn't make much sense out of context. However, we found a series of photos taken the very first year the scout camp was opened, which according to this book was around 1987. The amazing part? I was in some of them. I was only four or five by the looks of things, and obviously not aware in the photos of the true meaning of the event. It was a strange feeling. The scout camp was consciously like a home-away-from-home for me, but I hadn't realized I'd been present for it's actual inception. It was like seeing photos of one's own birth.

The thought that I am unknowingly a part of a tradition or in someone's scrapbook somewhere, somehow means more to me than a byline in a newspaper. When we live our whole lives in one place, we leave a footprint- and the size of the footprint is measured by how many lives we touch. Even in small ways.

Contemplation

The Other World

Poor creatures of a passing day. What is a man?
What is he not? We are a scumbling shadow's
dream. And yet, there are brief moments
when the sun transfusing a cloudlet in the after-rain
reminds us of a radiance that, pitched
beyond the reach of our dark world, still touches us
from time to time, with an unimagined glow.

~Pindar

A Story in Six Words

"From torched skyscrapers, men grew wings"

by Gregory Maguire

Local Schools take a Zero-Tolerance Approach

Wookie For Councillor

Because if he loses, he might tear your arm off...

Say it loud, Say it clear

A Family Dinner once Upon a Time
Originally uploaded by phinux.

Sometimes my childhood lies behind me like a blur of personal frustration, confusion, and struggle, but there are occasions when I'm reminded of how there was a time I wasn't aware I was any different.

I was recently home, helping my mother prepare a slideshow of her father. She had her crate of photographs out, which was a mixed up in a random assortment of basically everything.

For whatever reason, I opened the crate and found this picture. I had no recollection at first of when it was taken, but I'm sure I was about four at the time. What I mistakened for a christmas dinner was actually a dinner celebrating my father's birthday, shortly after his knee-surgery. I'm not sure what it was that touched me about this photo- perhaps it is just the four of us together, celebrating a private family moment. A bottle of Kahlua on the table, as well as a bottle of champagne, and everybody toasting good health.

Sometimes I forget how happy I was as a small child. Sometimes I forget how many group photos there are of my family (and how I have very few of them). And sometimes I forget how so simple an image can so accurately sum up my family.

The song my mum wanted to use for her slideshow was "The Living Years" by Mike and the Mechanics, but for some reason I feel in my heart that it describes my family.

The happy father

The happy father
Originally uploaded by phinux.

This is my brother. My brother is hearing impaired. When he himself was born, he was born over a month premature, and suffered lung problems when he was young. He requires hearing-aids to hear, and he struggled throughout school, due to a learning disability that was not properly diagnosed early.

But despite his shrimpy exterior, and his difficult to understand speech, he is dear and sweet.

He is never blunt or sarcastic, and always good-humoured. He is a child at heart, but does not act childish. He is wise enough not to have made many of the same mistakes people his age would have made by now.

I know all this because I grew up with him- and although we had the usual sibling rivalries, for a very long time in our childhood we only really had each other to play with on the weekends. He stayed at the School for the Deaf during the week, and I didn't have any friends to visit me in my spare time. But through the many hours of playing G.I. Joes and Lego I learned that my brother is a person of endless imagination. He had stories to tell that he could not express through written or verbal communication, but could be acted out through the adventures of dozens of tiny characters on a tiny stage. He was as much a writer as I am, without a page to write on.

I only hope that Justin benefits as much from his humbling, abstract communication as I did.