Now What?

Left to right, back row: me, my older sister Cathy and my younger sister Kim.
My oldest sister Carol may be the person in the pink shirt, outside the photo frame, next to Kim.
Left to right front row Sandy, Alan, Kerry and Debra Pfahl. 

When you send out holiday greetings to every name you recognize in your contacts list, sometimes you get unexpected things back.

Like this photo, sent to me by Alan Pfahl. Obviously, it's Christmastime. We're visiting our long-time family friends in Ottawa.  

The photo's from around 1975, just in case the fashion choices didn't establish that for you. I vaguely recall the photo being taken. We were told we needed to smile more. And I definitely remember the shirt I'm wearing, decorated with a rhinestone-eyed bunny embroidered in gold thread.  

Why my memory would snag on a shirt I wore 45 years ago is beyond me. 

What should be more captivating is what I'll be doing for the next certain-to-be-less-than 45 years. I reassure everyone who asks that I have a plan for the next three months:

• January - do nothing
• February - go to Amsterdam (only ten days, but that counts as a month)
• March - fire up the network and see what's going on

And that really is the best I can do right now.

Thanks for reading!

Happy New Year!

Karen

  

Happy Holidays

Every year for the holidays, the Allan Gardens greenhouse fills with poinsettias and other festive adornments, including mannikins covered in bromeliads, succulents, air ferns and pine boughs.

During December, more people pack the greenhouse in a day than visit for the whole rest of the year.

The happy Christmas memories for lots of kids in Toronto include the contented turtles hanging out in the pool by the orchids.  

I hope your holidays are peaceful, full of joy and as pleasant and memorable as a morning stroll through the greenhouse.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

Karen

'Tis the Season to be Jolly

Today is December 21, the shortest day of 2019 and the first day of my new status as a former public servant.

I waited for this for almost a year, and, on some days, I could hardly wait. 

The guy slated to take my job could also hardly wait. He updated his LinkedIn profile a couple of weeks ago to say he was doing my job. 

It was around then that he stuck his head in my door and asked "When are you going to clean out your office?"

Yesterday, my last day, I opened my closet to hang up my coat and saw there was no room. The new guy had moved all his stuff in the day before.

It perhaps goes without saying now that there are a few mixed feelings.  

When I surrendered my phone, my laptop, my VPN token, my corporate credit card (that I never used) and my security badge, the finality sank in a bit. 

When I exchanged the last few blasts of small talk and congratulations with my team and gave most but not all of them a parting hug, I felt a little sad.

And when I heard, just before I left, my boss, my successor and the head of ministry communications brainstorming outside my office about how to stickhandle the most recent (and most assuredly not the last) major policy gaffe orchestrated by Ontario's stubborn, inept and gormless government, I felt a little less sad. 

Thanks for reading!

Happy Holidays!

Karen

As festive as it gets around here:
The Christmas coat tree in extreme close up

Greta Thunberg Rules

Salvador Dali: deconstructed Madonna at the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art

My Minister, Greg Rickford, got called out in the news recently for citing research from the climate-change-denying blog Climate Change Dispatch. Rockford liked the blog's position on the futility of green energy. It helped with his rhetorical sparring with ungrateful Ontarians who complain about the green energy contracts the Ford government has cancelled.

Another prominent conservative, Joe Oliver, now Chair of the Board of the province's Independent Electricity Systems Operator, does not disbelieve in climate change, he just thinks people need to give it a chance. 

On my sixth last day as a public servant, I attended a presentation given by one of our co-op students. He shared his research on how Toronto Hydro is adapting to climate change. He seemed to think he was saying something new when he noted that actions taken now will be much less expensive than actions taken in the future.

"Just like we said in 1984," I said, unable to contain myself.

What surprised and then dismayed me was the genuine surprise on the faces of the youngsters in the room with me, my fellow public servants, the ones holding the reins for now and the next thirty years. 

Apparently they think they invented climate change, too.

5 days left.

Thanks for reading!

Karen

Women in the News - Part Two

From the Scottish National Museum of Modern Art: Magritte's only "shaped" painting. The note on the wall included Magritte's statement that he thought this picture of a woman reduced to her most forbidden feature would "create a sensation."

In this week of the 30th anniversary of the vicious assault on innocent women at l'Ecole Polytechnique, a few other stories about women are also worthy of note.

From the Globe and Mail: "In Canada, 72 per cent of senior-age women reported they were highly satisfied living alone." 

Other than 72 per cent of senior-age men, is anyone surprised by this?  

In other news, victims of the century's most prolific and successful child molester are speaking up for themselves.

One thing: the media should stop referring to Jeffrey Epstein as a "financier" or a "disgraced financier." He was a con man, a pimp, a pedophile and a convicted sex offender. He preyed on children for pleasure, profit and access to swanky friends like Prince Andrew. He wasn't a financier any more than P.T. Barnum was a social scientist.

When I'm not stewing in decades worth of suppressed anger from relentless, unceasing and still astonishingly tolerated violence against women, I'm counting the days to when I no longer will say "I work for the Ontario government."

There are ten left.

Karen