Tweeted

So this is a little weird.

I have been dropping hints in this blog about the climate change consultations that were impending and are now fully upon me. We did two sessions in Toronto this past Tuesday and Wednesday. This week coming up, I'm in Thunder Bay and Sudbury. The week after that, Ottawa and Kingston. The week after that Guelph and Kitchener-Waterloo. 

Despite the fact that we are in the age of social media and instantaneous transmission of important information like who wore what at the Oscars and what's on LOL cats, the Ministry's approach to the consultation is to physically ship as many as a dozen sixty-five kilogram humans to each location and engage in old-fashioned face to face conversations. 

But that doesn't mean the Ministry is not up to date. Not long before someone took the above photo of me and put it into the Twittersphere, I asked the audience to do two things: turn their phone ringers off and please tweet. 

The communications people at the Ministry are very happy when people tweet about what the Ministry is doing.

I've got mixed feelings about being the thing tweeted. Readers know that I only infrequently put pictures of people on this blog, and even less frequently than that, pictures of me. So, even though I throw my thoughts every week into the gaping abyss that is the Internet, I still try to maintain a modicum of control (warmly reassured by the fact that, of the world's seven billion plus souls, only about twenty of 'em check out this blog every week). 

When the Communications Branch social media maven came to me and said, "you're on Twitter," all I said was, "that's nice."

Then he said, "we've had seven million hits on that site since we started."    

Then I wish I'd combed my hair.

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Pop Quiz Answer: the out-of-place-seeming MARSEC threat level board can be found in several places on the property of the Redpath Sugar facility on the Toronto Waterfront. Why that may be is beyond me.

Thanks to the two people who hazarded a guess. It was nice to get replies to the blog.

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Proof I'm Getting Old: I felt deeply sad when I learned that Leonard Nimoy had died.  

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Strangest Thing I Saw This Week: Rob Ford posing with the stupid stuff he's selling on E-bay, including his "yes, I have smoked crack" NFL tie. 


Thanks for reading!

Have a great week!

Karen

Today's Lesson / Pop Quiz

Several times this week I found myself asking people why everything was being done at the very last minute. The response, always, to this question was a warm, pitying look, and words to the effect of "it's how we do things around here."   

For today's post, I will apply this general law of the universe to teach you something and then test your knowledge at the same time.

It's how I do things around here.

So, MARSEC, what is it and what is it for. 

The following passage is cut and pasted directly from Wikipedia:

MARSEC (MARitime SECurity) is the three-tiered United States Coast Guard Maritime Security system designed to easily communicate to the Coast Guard and the maritime industry pre-planned scalable responses for credible threats. Its objective is to provide an assessment of possible terrorist activity within the maritime sectors of transportation, including threats to nautical facilities and vessels falling within the jurisdiction of the United States that could be targets of attack.The Coast Guard originally created MARSEC to be compatible with, and respond in unison to the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) Homeland Security Advisory System (HSAS). With the introduction of the National Terrorism Advisory System(NTAS) to replace HSAS, the Commandant of the Coast Guard will adjust the MARSEC Level, if appropriate, based on any NTAS Alert issued by DHS.

Now that you've learned what MARSEC is, here's your test.

I recently took this photo of a MARSEC threat level board somewhere on the Toronto waterfront, which, to the best of my knowledge, falls neither under the jurisdiction of the US Coast Guard nor the United States.

Did I take the photo ...

1. On Hanlan's Point, by the air quality monitoring station put there to support the Pan Am Games?
2. By the Billy Bishop Airport on Toronto Island?
3. By the Redpath Sugar plant, next to Sugar Beach?
4. By the Island Ferry Dock?

I'll provide the answer next week, but if you'd like to guess, please do so in the comments box below.

Thanks for reading!

Have a great week!

Karen

Genteel Ruin

Abandoned home, St. Augustine Florida, March 2014

About a year ago, Bruce and I visited friends who have a condo in St. Augustine, Florida. We walked a lot in that pretty, historic, city, and twice found ourselves in Lincolnville.

In case you can't read it, the plaque says that Lincolnville began as a settlement of emancipated slaves in 1866, on the site of First Nations' villages. The fifty-block neighbourhood contains the largest concentration of late victorian homes in St. Augustine (also known as the Ancient City).

There were many well-tended and pretty properties in Lincolnville, but my eye lingered on the ones teetering on the brink of or well into genteel ruin.

And the ones imaginatively repurposed, like the Lincolnville Public Library below.

In case you can't read it in the picture, the phrase under Fresh Produce" is "locally grown." The locavores have found St. Augustine.

******

Some weeks, I really don't know what I'm going to write about in this blog. I sift through the eleven thousand shots I have in iPhoto and wait 'til something grabs me. 

These photos of old buildings slowly losing the fight against entropy appealed to me this week because I know we won't be able to see our friends in St. Augustine this year and I miss them.

The photos also make me think of the state I'll be in after the Ontario government's whirlwind, first phase, public consultation on climate change.

Thanks for reading!

Have a great week!

Karen

Quicksand Survival

Garbage-picking raven, with admirer (see lower right corner of the shot), Beacon Hill Park, Victoria, July 2014

Things at the Ministry of the Environment and Climate Crazy have been picking up torque. There's lots going on and, for every person tasked with actually getting things done, there are at least a half a dozen more with an opinion (almost always helpful) about how that should happen.

There are documents, consultation plans, announcements, media plans, issue management plans, reactions to things the Premier said, things the Minister said, things the opposition said ... all running with the orderly progression of stampeding ducks.

People are, understandably, showing some signs of stress. Since I've been back from Niagara on the Lake, I have witnessed myself or heard of second hand, weeping, yelling, displays of anger and panic. 

For example:

My phone rang late Monday afternoon. My otherwise pretty calm boss was angry with me because of something he had been yelled at about. 

My freshly-minted other boss (it's a long story) was in my office the next day, also late in the afternoon, also angry with me because of something he had been yelled at about.

They were upset because they thought my branch was responsible for avoidable delays. My team was vindicated, of course, when further delays for which we were still clearly not the cause kept the items at issue from their deadline.

When I am in situations like this, I recall the TV westerns I spent hundreds of hours watching when I was a kid. The schoolrooms of Wagon Train, Gunsmoke, Rifleman, Bonanza and, to a lesser extent, F-Troop, taught me that you can survive a rattlesnake bite, go for five days without food, three days without water, and, if you find yourself in quicksand, don't struggle.  

My advice to my staff is "fighting it just makes it worse." 

I'm not sure the message has sunk in.

Thanks for reading!

Have a great week!

Karen

Cylinders of Excellence

Print of a cartoon by M.K. Brown. I know her best from the National Lampoon in the 80's and 90's. We saw a show of her work at the Cartoon Art Museum in San Francisco, where I bought this print.

Nothing's better than waking up in your own bed after a long time away from home.

I woke up in my own bed this morning after spending a week at the White Oaks Resort in Niagara on the Lake, attending the Niagara Institute Leadership Development Program.

Readers may recall that just a bit less than a year ago, I sent dispatches from Kingston, where I was attending another executive development program. The only memorable outcome of that two-week stint was a case of the shingles.

I think I'll get a better result from this past week. I'm still processing a lot of what I saw and heard. But, the title of this post is something I wanted to share right away. It was how one other participants described the silos in which she works. It got a huge laugh.

Here we all are. The two course facilitators, Marc and Nick, are at the ends. Nick's the tall one. Of the twelve participants pictured here, six were from the provincial government. Three guys were from the same Maritimes-based blueberry-and-other-food processing company (and I'll never think of blueberries the same way again). The bearded gentleman fourth from the left was with the Bank of Canada (and we all wanted to work with him because he said they swim in vaults full of money). The woman in the yellow sweater worked for a Polish company operating a mine in Chile for Japanese clients (wrap your head around the linguistic/cultural challenges there for a minute).  There was also a guy from Hamilton who worked at a chemical company.

As is always the case with these courses, I had a lot of fun hanging with a bunch of exceptional people. As is less commonly the case with these courses (see Queens, above) I learned a lot about myself and will go back to work with the objective of making things better for me, my boss, my peers and my exceptional team.

Together we'll build even better cylinders of excellence.

Thanks for reading!

Have a great week!

Karen

Disposable

Tree-discarded blossom - Fort Baker, Sausalito, California

Over the holidays I mentioned more than once that I'd seen two signs almost side by side, one advertising a seven dollar cup of coffee, another a nine dollar party dress. 

Among the range of reactions that observation brought - laughs, umbrage among them - was the cool calculation that people pay more for what they value. In the case of the cup of coffee, the value was in the person who served the drink. The dress was made far away, the comment continued, by people the purchaser couldn't see, so ....

I used to buy winter boots and coats that, although they were expensive, never really lasted more than one or two years. This year, I bought cheap, man-made-material-only boots that are all of warm, light, waterproof, durable and have a good tread. I paid for them about a third of what I usually do. They'll last as long as the ones I used to buy.

So, I'm paying less for what I value most in a pair of boots.

Same goes for my winter coat. 

I'll wear my coat and boots for two years and then, just like the expensive ones, either donate them to charity or throw them away.

If I donate them, they'll eventually make their way into a container ship and possibly be sent to the valuable people who made them in the first place.

Nothing is wasted.

Thanks for reading!

Have a great week!

Karen

Your Tax Dollars At Work

Sidewalk sign on the Golden Gate Bridge. Men and girls in hats may walk here.

Returning to work after two weeks away is like waking up from a long coma. Everything may seem familiar, but there are important differences and they are hard to put your finger on.

This past week - my first week back after waking from my Christmas/NewYears/San Francisco coma - I struggled not only to catch up on the subtle differences in everything, but also to complete a very important task.

As always, these are confidential matters, so I will resort to a fanciful tale featuring our friend the ruler and her advisors.

***

The ruler of a small, pleasant realm was in the midst of doing some routine paperwork one day when a crowd of her advisors came to speak with her. She asked what they wanted.

"Oh great ruler," they said, "barbarians are at the gate!"

"Goodness," said the ruler, "what should I do?"

But before she had completed her question, the ruler's advisors had already nodded to one another, as if to say 'our work here is done,' and were gone.

Perplexed, but busy with other matters, the ruler hurried to finish her paperwork and get on with her day.

The next day, the ruler's advisors returned.

"Oh great ruler," they said, their tone betraying their need for patience, "we told you barbarians were at the gate; have you taken the appropriate steps?"

The ruler replied, just as patiently, "I asked you what I should do, but you were already gone."

Stunned by the ingratitude and arrogance of their leader, the advisors said, "you need to fill out these forms," and handed her a thick sheaf of papers.

The ruler looked at the forms. "But this is the paperwork I was doing yesterday, only about ten times more. Why didn't you tell me this yesterday?"

"You don't need to get nasty," said the advisor closest to retirement, "we're just trying to help."

"Can you help me now?" asked the ruler as she flipped through the complex forms. When she looked up, her advisors were gone.

Annoyed, but determined to protect her realm, the ruler set aside all her other responsibilities and applied herself to filling in the forms. No other work was done that week.

When she'd completed the task the ruler asked, "So, is my realm protected? Have the barbarians fled?"

"Oh no," said her advisors, astonished at how clueless their ruler could be some times, "they're still there. They're reading the forms. And if they find something they don't like, they will attack us."

"What are the chances they will find something they don't like?" asked the ruler.

"Oh, high," said her advisors, nodding their heads vigorously, "very high."

"So I spent all week, putting everything else aside, to fill out forms that will at best delay but not prevent a barbarian invasion?" asked the ruler.

"Well," said her advisors, looking sideways at one another, "They're accountants."

"Barbarian accountants?" asked the ruler.

"Yes," said her advisors, "The worst kind."

"Well, in that case," said the ruler, regretting how much effort had been put into fending off marauding bean counters, "could we just, in future, set out some simple rules for this paperwork that will both appease the accountants and take less time?"

Delighted by the wisdom and foresight of their great leader, the advisors set to work make the existing forms longer and more elaborate. 

Thanks for reading!

Have a great week!

Karen