Word Prisms

For those interested in helping with the hurricane relief, there are a number of efforts in place and the best way to support them is with money. The Center for International Disaster information  encourages people not to send food, clothing and household items. They say Sorting clothing - Slave Lake that it causes problems with transportation and logistics that actually interfere with more urgent needs.  I know we spent hundreds of man hours sorting clothes in Slave Lake after the 2011 wildfire with very little benefit. In the end, we had truck loads of clothing left over that could not be disposed of in the community. Much was sent to landfill .  To donate money, the Hurricane Irma Relief Fund  has been endorsed by the New York Times and Newsweek  magazine with a 4/4 star rating from Charity Navigator . Donations first go to the survivor's needs for food, fuel, clean water, hygiene products and shelter. Once those needs have been met, funds will be use...

Turks & Caicos Club Med I heard an interview on CBC’s the current yesterday morning. The host, Anna Maria Tremonte interviewed a woman stuck at a “Club Med” resort in the Turks and Caicos. With Anna Maria’s prompting and encouragement, the woman complained about the Canadian government not acting effectively enough in her favour. An Air Canada plane was sitting on the tarmac waiting to take Canadians out of the country but the local government wouldn’t let them leave. Why wasn’t the Canadian government doing enough to get them out of there? Turks & Caicos after Irma That was the story? Really? Was this all that Anna Maria and the woman had to talk about? How rough it was to her having to stay at the Club Med, fed and watered, with little else to do but wait? No mention of the locals and their loss. Nothing about how lucky she and her husband are for having survived a category 5 hurricane relatively unscathed. Just how upset she was at the Canadian government for n...

We all like to figure out how other people tick. That's what makes gossip so popular. It confirms or changes our impressions of other people and we come up with responses like, "Typical" or "You wouldn't believe what he did last night." And, if we can't figure people out, we become suspicious of them. Politicians are no different. In order to feel comfortable with them, we have to be able to understand them. Americans got to know Donald Trump on fourteen seasons of "The Apprentice." Even if they didn't get to know the real guy, they got to know a pretty well established persona. By the time he hit the campaign trail, he knew his audience and they knew or at least thought they knew the Donald. It's not any different for Canadian audiences. Albertans loved Ralph Klein as the guy you could go out with for a beer. Even when he fucked up, he'd apologize and nearly everyone would forgive him. Like the time he walked into the home...