Life's Little Ironies

The only time I got the photo function to work,
from the long-since-deleted Clumsy Ninja app on my iPad.

I was in Thunder Bay from around ten in the morning until four in the afternoon one day this past week. 

During that time, I spent about twenty minutes on a stage making a presentation to one hundred and fifty representatives from municipalities in northwestern Ontario, and about an hour workshopping some public policy concepts with seven (count 'em, seven) people from aforesaid municipalities.

It's 577 nautical miles in each direction from Toronto to Thunder Bay - total trip 1154 nautical miles. At about 50 pounds of CO2 per mile, that's 57,700 pounds of carbon dioxide, divided by the thirty or so passengers plus crew on the plane with me, making my share of the greenhouse gas emissions about 1,923 pounds of CO2 for the trip.

Of course I was in Thunder Bay to talk about climate change. 

At one point I asked the members of the really not very engaged audience how they thought they would reduce their own greenhouse gas emissions by 40% (relative to 1990) by 2030, or even by 15% by 2020.  

I said, "I ask myself that question just about every day. What would I do to reduce my emissions by that much."  

My answer - that I kept to myself - was to reduce my trips to Thunder Bay.

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Another Experiment in Behavioural Science - Part VIII

With this week's question, we are 80% of the way to the end of this ultra-low-carbon endeavour. 

The sage, inspiring, dazzling horde of respondents continues to grow. Last week one hero took just 8 seconds to respond!  

You'll find this week's question here.

Thanks for reading!

Have a great week!

Karen

Speechless

Self-appointed supervisor oversees inexplicable mayhem on Sherbourne Street

There's a lot going on in this week's picture that you can't see all that well. Behind the man on the sidewalk, there's a local tv station doing a man-in-the-street interview. Across the street obscured by traffic are two of seven police cruisers huddled around the scene of a crime. 

At about 7:30 in the morning three Saturdays ago, a disagreement arose for unknown reasons in a rooming house across the street from where I live. There was a struggle, one of the parties pulled a weapon of some sort, attacked two people, and fled south on Sherbourne to where he had parked his vehicle. You can read the details here.

At the time, I was at my computer, writing my blog. I heard the commotion. I looked out my window and saw a man in a grey tracksuit - the suspect, I later learned - as he trotted slowly down Sherbourne Street.

When the police cruisers arrived, I stepped away from my computer, put on some proper clothes and went to tell them what I saw.

They were not interested in what I had to say. One of the officers on the scene directed me to sit on a step until they had time to talk with me.

Instead, I listened to the officer as she radioed in her report. There were several eye-witnesses to the whole incident, and all I had to offer was a scrap of information confirming what they already knew.

I went back home.

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Yesterday, I attended a day-long meeting of a panel of experts advising the government on one of its major priorities. I was second on the agenda and was to have presented on the overall framing of the strategy for government action - providing answers to the question of "why" as opposed to "what" the government would do, or "how." These were topics for other presentations that day.

In fact, the leading agenda item was one of the major "whats." The discussion on that item went long, taking all the time set for my presentation. After that, the panel's estimable chair stuck to the agenda, giving priority to all the other items over mine. 

At almost the very end of a long day, and after about half of the panel members had already left, the chair gave me twenty minutes to cover an hour's worth of material. When I was about two thirds of the way through the presentation, the chair called the proceedings to a halt. We'd gone over time and facility staff needed to clear the room for another function.

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The "why" of the brutal incident on Sherbourne Street may never be fully known, but I'll hazard this guess: the preconditions for violence in my neighbourhood are established by de facto policies of the municipal police that warehouse drug dealers and the people they prey on in the same place. Police figure that if the mayhem is intramural, no one will care. They are likely right about that.

The estimable chair of the expert panel seemed to be applying a similar logic: given the choice between discussing what a government is doing as opposed to why a government is doing something, people will prefer the former over the latter. If you never really get around to exploring the why, no one will care.

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Another Experiment in Behavioural Science - Part VII

With this week's question, we are 70% of the way to the end of this historic, epochal, epic, iconic, effort. 

The wise, awesome, brilliant hordes of respondents just keeps getting bigger and bigger. The fastest time for a response to last week's question was 22 seconds!  

You'll find this week's question here.

Thanks for reading!

Have a great week!

Karen

Chaos Theory

The YMCA on Grosvenor Street in Toronto: big, welcoming, bustling.

It's been quite a week at work. 

Of course and as always these are confidential matters, so it's time to visit our friend the Queen and her Advisors.

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The Queen of a small and pleasant realm was in her chambers, applying herself to her endless stream of paperwork but being distracted by a persistent, irritating fly.

The Queen called upon one of her most trusted advisors.

"This fly is driving me crazy," she said when the advisor came to her, "please get rid of it."

The advisor was a kind-hearted person, so would not kill the fly, but rather shooed it out the window. What the adviser saw there gave him a start.

"Oh, Queen," the advisor said, "you better come and look at this."

The Queen came to the window.

"Sweet mother of God," she said.

Stretched out below her window was the vast expanse of the Yessir Yessir Highway. And on that highway were hordes of messengers and advisors engaged in every conceivable form of conflict: daggers drawn, horns locked, pistols cocked, blindly battling. They were yelling and crying and throwing sticks and stones at one another.

"What has happened," the Queen asked her advisor, "that would bring the kingdom to this?"

"The Troll Bridge," answered the advisor, naming the source of all power and peril along the Yessir Yessir Highway.

"Ah," said the Queen, understanding completely. "Well we'd best just shut the window and let what's going on out there simmer down before we open it again."

Obliging his Queen, the advisor shut the window, but, just before the frames touched, the pesky fly flew back into the Queen's chambers.

"Ooops," said the advisor, and the Queen looked up again from her paperwork. She saw the fly.

"Don't worry about it," said the Queen. 

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Another Experiment in Behavioural Science - Part VI

The number of brilliant, brave, best-smelling-ever survey respondents continues to grow. Those who respond still spend less than a single minute of their time. 

You'll find this week's question here.

Thanks for reading!

Have a great week!

Karen

The Parent Trap

Mom and Dad, early 1980's, Ottawa, Ontario

I left my parents' house to begin my first year of university in early September, 1977. I was nineteen-going-on-twenty years old. I packed my suitcase with all the things I owned and took the Greyhound bus to Waterloo. I think my mother may have driven me to the bus station in Trenton to help me on my way, but I really don't remember.

I have only one clear recollection from that whole day. When I got to the Kitchener/Waterloo station, the driver struggled with my jam-crammed suitcase as he lifted it out from under the bus. He said "you running away from home?"

I nodded, said "yes."

Fast forward a couple of decades.

About ten years ago, when I was working at the City of Toronto, a colleague complained one day about having to complete her daughters' university applications.

"Why on earth are you doing your kid's university applications?"

"Well, you can't really expect them to do them on their own," she said.

I wondered why not. Were her kids developmentally handicapped?

Fast forward to this week.

I was killing time in a room full of people waiting for a meeting with the Minister who'd been delayed by protesters at another meeting. Sitting next to me was a mother with a child headed to university (no word on who had filled in the forms). The mother complained that the university had not e-mailed her that her daughter's tuition was due. Instead they had e-mailed her daughter, which makes sense when you think about who the university has the contractual relationship with. But, said the mother, "everyone knows it's the parents who are paying the tuition. And my daughter didn't tell me I needed to pay until the day the tuition was due!"

People who act as if their children were developmentally handicapped sometimes say that parents these days are "much more involved in their kids lives" than our parents were. 

Also this past week, I was talking with yet another mother facing her daughter's departure to university. She reacted strongly when I told her the story that starts this post about my last day as a permanent resident of my parents' house. 

When I said "from the day I left for university, I considered myself to be on my own," she seemed to also hear "and I never saw my parents alive again." I comforted her with assurances that even though I moved away, I visited home frequently, and called my mom every Sunday for the next thirty years.

This was quite a week for parenting stories. Here's one more. 

Bruce's lovely Auntie Arlie died peacefully on August 30 at the great age of 97. At the reception after her funeral service, I chatted with her nephew, Bruce Schmitt, whose children's children were surging around us, a lively, happy bunch of youngsters. I commented on how cute his grandchildren were. 

"The greatest thing about being a grandparent," said Bruce, "is you get perspective on what matters." Then he recounted for me the details about how, many years before, he had forced his son to sit at the dinner table for three hours until he ate the stone cold broccoli on his plate. 

"It did not matter that he didn't want that broccoli," said Bruce, obviously pained by the ancient memory, "but I couldn't see that at the time and I'd worked myself into a corner that I couldn't get out of. That was so foolish."

Auntie Arlie, by the way, was never a parent herself. But she is remembered most for the limitless, unconditional love she gave to all the people who gathered to celebrate her life on September 3, 2015.

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Another Experiment in Behavioural Science - Part V

Once again, huge thanks to all the great-smelling heroes who are sharing as much as minute of their time to participate. You'll find this week's question here.

Thanks for reading!

Have a great week!

Karen