This Blog Is Going Smash

America is an homogenous place. Sine moving to New York last January I’ve been surprised to learn how similar the east coast is to the west coast commercially. A K-Mart in Washington State looks, feels and smells the same as K-Marts in New York. Prices are adjusted, but there is a familiarity in every branch within the franchise. This power of recognition is true for large department stores, chain-food restaurants, groceries, movie theaters – almost every brand with a nationally (or regionally) growing presence. The neighborhood is going global.

This is to say that I was surprised recently when I was unable to find a NutRageous candy bar on the east coast, a global product – and highly esteemed among chocolate and peanut butter lovers – I thought was available everywhere. It went like this: one day I wanted a NutRageous although I hadn’t had one in years. I went to the street corner to buy one from the newsstand but they only carried Reese’s peanut butter cups. I went to the Duane Reade’s, to CVS, to every grocery store I could. I went to Manhattan and Brooklyn. I searched in Washington D.C. and Virginia and I could find them nowhere. Yes, they were available on Google, but how could I know these weren’t stale versions of the 1994 original?

When I came home to Washington state, I couldn’t find them at the first two supermarkets I checked. I began to grieve the death of my third favorite candy bar. And then I discovered them in our neighborhood – our locally owned – grocer. It was like finding the last remaining gas station when the world has run out of oil.

We need our independent, local businesses. We need autonomy or we will all go crazy – or worse – we will run out of chocolate. I heard from a Canadian friend only a day ago that she was unable to find Robin Hood Nanaimo Bar Mix where she had always found it before. When I was in Vancouver in March I was also unable to find it. Have you searched for this indelible goodness lately? Has Stephen Harper got hold of Robin Hood, too? Stand on your guard, Canada. Stand on your guard.

-Will

So, a year and a half ago I wrote this compelling piece on why I became a vegetarian. And I stuck to it. Well, mostly – I started eating fish again about four months in, but that’s just because sushi is just so delicious and the yam roll wasn’t cutting it. But really, I have not once regretted the vegetarian decision. It feels good to stand up and say no to something I don’t believe in, even if I am just one small person who doesn’t eat very much anyway.

But then I decided to move to Burns Lake. And realized that I actually care about what people think of me. I want to make a good impression, I want people to like me, I want to make new friends. I imagined myself going over to my new friends’ house for dinner for the first time: they set a plate of juicy steak in front of me that they’d just spent 20 minutes out in the snow barbequing, and I say, “Oh, sorry, I don’t eat meat.” And I didn’t want to be that girl. I didn’t want to be the snotty girl from the city who has all sorts of high-falutin’ ideas.

So, I decided when I moved here, I’d start eating meat again. Just a little bit. And only when served to me. And sure enough, the second day I was here, the above scenario actually happened. And instead of saying, “Sorry, I don’t eat meat,” I said, “Just a little bit please.”

Since then I’ve had a few bits of meat here and there. And I’m not sure how I feel about it. This town isn’t quite as country-bumpkin as I thought it might be. My coworkers insist that I should stick to my vegetarian ways and stand up for what I believe in. (They also won’t let me stuff or carve the turkey we’re serving at the Christmas lunch today.)

So, I’m not sure what I’m going to do about this. I’m not sure why this is even an issue for me. Most people just go ahead and eat their meat and don’t think twice. Why can’t I just do the same? Is this a matter of picking my battles? I don’t “believe in” a whole bunch of terrible atrocities that happen, but I don’t find myself doing very much about them.

What do you think? Should I eat some meat? Should I find something new to get behind? Do you eat meat?

- Linette

*Illustration by the amazing Zach Bulick.

This summer, while poking about Edinburgh, I saw it: its wet, yellow gleaming edges, and stocky black lettering. A beckoning call, partnered with a “You’re not good enough to get in!” Maybe you too have wandered across a TED conference sign. Maybe you too have dreamed, been seduced to believe that maybe, just maybe, someday you’ll be invited in.

That someday came for me this past Saturday. Upon dutifully and excitedly filling out forms, I had outwitted 275 other applicants and had become one among a hand-selected crowd to belong to TEDxSFU.

And what a really fantastic event: aside from getting to watch and learn about Taiko drumming during coffee breaks, I heard from all sorts of local guests. Here’s a two-sentence breakdown of some of my favourites of the day:

Shawn Smith encourages sustainable international giving, so that instead of just dumping money and stuff on problems overseas, we think about how we might encourage community growth at its heart. Think: giving scholarships through Education Generation to university students in India or Peru so that they can give back to their own communities by becoming doctors, teachers, policy-makers, and so on.

Trisha Baptie knows from having spent several years working on streetcorners in Vancouver’s DTES that the sex trade means violence against women. Rather than fight to create safer working conditions, however, Baptie’s Honour Consulting aims to abolish the sex industry altogether (porn included), through re-directing criminal prosecution, away from sex workers and towards Johns—including Pickton, whose trial Baptie has covered as a journalist.

Quyn Lê was blinded at two, fled Communist Vietnam at 9, drifted at sea before being held as a refugee on an Indonesian island for four years, and was labelled with cognitive development problems as a suddenly ninth-grade student upon arriving in Canada. Turns out, Lê just didn’t know the language, couldn’t read it, and was suffering from some serious culture shock—all things she has had to work through in order to start her own practice as a Registered Clinical Counsellor.

Duane Elverum, an educator at Emily Carr University of Art and Design, co-founded CityStudio Vancouver, a “10-year project [uniting] students and instructors from Vancouver’s 6 public universities and colleges with City Hall on a long-term collaboration to design and implement real-world sustainability projects that help Vancouver reach its Greenest City 2020 targets.” And, he’s looking for folks like us (teachers, employers, employees, students, Vancouverites) to get involved.

—

At the end of the 8 hour day, new TEDxSFU umbrella in hand, I was left a bit overwhelmed, but if you’re like me, these sort of events do exactly what they’re meant to do: bring us from a place of depleted enthusiasm, to a place of thinking we ought to guiltily pile at least three more activities to our list, to a recognition of how we might infuse others’ encouragement (and ideas) into the cool things we’re already doing.

What is it that you’re already doing? Need a bit of a morale boost? Here’s my virtual TEDxSFU high-five to you! You’re doing well, my friend.