Random Complexity Writing Challenge*

OK, I’m in. As writing challenges go, Aerin Bender-Stone’s Random Complexity Writing Challenge isn’t too onerous, as I just have to compete 1,000 words of creative writing each month.

I’ve decided that I’m going to finish my novel for middle readers by May 1, 2009, so I won’t have any trouble meeting Aerin’s requirements for the next four months. After that, we’ll see. January’s 1,000 words are already in the bag. I’m now writing Chapter Seven during which my hero takes on the very first mystery that gave me the working title: The Mystery of the Old Hotel.

Luckily, I’m better at creative writing than I am at creating titles.

It’s a story about fortunes won and lost, about the first tentative steps into adulthood, about having fun, about coping with bullies, about picking your battles, and learning to move beyond your fears. It’s about the importance of family, and of personal responsibility.

It’s also a really, really good mystery.

But I may as well come clean; I didn’t create my characters. I brazenly stole them from another work of literature. My partner, Kristina Robinson, wrote a picture book two years ago, and I liked the family so much that I chose to revisit their lives 11 years later, after the shit has hit the fan. Luckily, Kristina will cut all clichés from this middle reader before I submit it to an agent.

I don’t find it hard to write fiction. I spend all my time writing uninspired newsletters — where facts are nevertheless important — and trying to give people reason to return to One Blue Marble despite a dour tone. So to be able to free myself to write about something that exists only in my imagination comes as a relief. It’s not difficult, it’s liberating.

Two things stand in my way. One is migraines. I had such an unrelentingly grim autumn, suffering through 80 or 90 migraines in four months, and that knocks all the stuffing from me. Composing fine sentences under those circumstances is like running a sharp blade across my forehead. I invariably fail, and feel all the worse for the failure.

The second is financial. It’s hard to write something when the payment is delayed for a year or more. I could be spending those early morning hours creating a web site for a paying client, or writing yet another commentary for a Canadian newspaper. But since neither of those skills is putting food on the table, I may as well do something I enjoy.

_____________

*Aerin is a wonderful, thoughtful person, so very easy to like. Be sure to visit In Search of Giants.

One Blue Marble Redesign

Our web site at One Blue Marble has been in a beta stage for the last six weeks. Our first design was one of expediency, but now we’re getting ready for prime time.

Please have a look and make sure that everything works. All comments and critiques are gratefully accepted.

In particular, I would call your attention to our new side banners, six in all. They were designed by my niece, the lovely and talented Tara Keleher.

Tara is hard at work, so we should have One Blue Marble posters and T-shirts available for order soon (based on the side banner designs).

Stay tuned!

And so it came to pass…

That Smart like Streetcar and Tempest in a Teapot have had to flee with their domains to a far and distant land in order to avoid the evil King Herod and his minions of shittiness.*

You can find Kristina here.

And Richard here.

Please look for us in our new homes in Nazare…. er, in some unnamned community where King Herod will never find us! Hah, so take that, you evil ruler, you.

There are several downsides to our new addresses, but the biggest one that I can see so far is that I can’t figure out how to import users… So that may affect comments going forward or they may work tickity-boo.

Our addresses (richard@smartlikestreetcar.com and kristina@tempest-in-a-teapot.com) will not work in the New Year. But we’ll have new email addresses at the new place.

Despite this setback, we’re hoping that 2009 will be golden!

________________
* According to National Geographic, King Herod may have actually been a great king with a really, really bad PR agent.

Baby steps

I’ve just added a blog to One Blue Marble. I hope to post dozens of short environmental pieces there every week, so if you are interested — and pardon me for lecturing, but you should be interested — head on over. And add it to your blogroll.

Thanks!

PS: BTW, this isn’t the final design of One Blue Marble. We have plans to make it much more visually appealing!

Two Things about Two Hearts

Have a look at Christina Martin’s new video. I think she has a lovely voice, and I really like this song.

After you listen, I hope that you’ll head over to Much More Music and vote for this video on their top 10 program. It’s currently #5 with a bullet. (I don’t know what that means, but I’ve always wanted to use that expression). You can vote every day, so I encourage you to do exactly that if you have the time.

And now the why. The video was directed by my nephew, Jason Levangie, and filmed at his family’s cottage.

I’m that proud of him.

One Blue Marble

Hello Everyone!

This is a note that I sent to people who joined my Project ABC group on Facebook during the last election, and I include it here in case any SLS readers are interested in joining the fight against climate change. You can help in many ways, including linking to One Blue Marble on your blogs, posting our logo somewhere on your sidebar; or joining our new group on Facebook. (Add me as a friend, while you’re at it!)

The OBM web site is still a work in progress, but we felt we needed to bring it online after Canada’s embarrasing behavior at the international climate change summit in Poznan, Poland. So the new site will grow and become deeper over time.

It’s important to note that One Blue Marble won’t just be about Canada. We plan to focus on social justice, and climate change and the international response to it. So please join even if you’re from Germany or the United States or Peru. We’re just need to focus on Canada right now because we’re so far behind (as you’ll see if you read further).

So please have a read, and then join the fight to save the planet!

We’ve taken our new web site — called One Blue Marble — live, although it’s still a work in progress. If you care about climate change, the economy, and Canada’s international reputation, then we hope that you’ll join our new Facebook group. (Especially since we’ll close this one down in the New Year).

http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=46457158240

This letter comes at a crucial time; the international climate talks that have taken place over the last 12 days in Poznan, Poland have ended in failure. The Canadian, US, and Japanese delegations are to blame. If you search Google news for climate change and Canada, you’ll see that we’re being vilified around the world in hundreds of stories and editorials. (The US will be left off this dubious list in just 37 days, as Obama will unveil an ambitious climate change roadmap just after taking office).

In fact, we’re 191! A group of NGOs at Poznan issued a report card grading the efforts that developed and developing nations are taking to slow climate change. Canada was ranked second from the bottom, just ahead of Saudi Arabia, our new ally.

We agree wholeheartedly with Elizabeth May’s take on the events in Poland. (But if you don’t believe her, then consider this story, or this one, or this one or this one).

Of course, We wish the story would be more broadly reported in Canada, but Environment Canada’s climate experts are not allowed to speak to the media without permission from the Prime Minister’s office. Which means they are not allowed to speak, period.

And that’s why we need groups like One Blue Marble. We’re going to launch a number of campaigns in effort to change our story:

1) We want parliament to bring down the Conservatives in a vote of non-confidence, and form a coalition government. The Liberals and NDP have strong plans to fight climate change, while our Prime Minister believes that it’s a socialist plot to fleece rich countries. And it doesn’t have to be the economy OR the environment. It’s the perfect time to save both.

2) We want to support Obama’s climate initiatives in the US.

3) We want to slow development at the Alberta oil sands, the world’s worst environmental disaster. The oil from Alberta have 3-5 times as much CO2 as the light sweet crude from Saudi Arabia, so Canada’s emissions will rise dramatically over the next dozen years if we don’t change our ways.

4) We want to create a coalition of environmental and social groups to speak with one voice. In our day job — editing environmental newsletters — we noted this week that Scotland has introduced the planet’s most comprehensive climate change bill, promising to cut emissions by 50% by 2030. And we also noted that, in Scotland, all groups concerned with the social justice and the environment — including a bevy of churches and charitable groups working in the developing world — speak with a single message: we must do everything we can to create a low-carbon economy. So we also want to bring conservatives and progressive together in common purpose.

And that’s just the beginning. We have a handful of other campaigns percolating right now, including some real, practical programs that will help Canadians and Americans. We don’t need to recreate the wheel. We just need to focus and work together.

So please join us at One Blue Marble. We’ve just flipped the switch on our online store — featuring designs by the lovely and talented Tara Keleher (my niece) — and the store will be growing with each and every campaign that we launch to help us get the message out.

Please invite your friends and colleagues to join us. Let us know what you think is important. If you have a blog, and feel like being an iconoclast, then perhaps you could link to One Blue Marble, or ask me for a jpg of our logo that you can display in a sidebar (if you don’t know how to download the one above).

We want to make a difference, and we’re excited by the prospects of becoming the change we need to see in the world.

Salut!

Richard Levangie
Founder, One Blue Marble

The New Guy

The Liberal Party of Canada has a new leader in Dr. Michael Ignatieff, who has been a academic at Cambridge, Harvard, Oxford, and the University of Toronto, as well as an author and documentary filmmaker.

If you believe that global warming is the most pressing issue facing humanity — or if you’re just tired of the gang-who-couldn’t-shoot-straight antics of the Harper Conservatives, might I suggest that you send a polite note to Professor Ignatieff to tell him that it’s time to send the current administration to the showers. An email will work just as well.

And while you’re at it, might I also suggest you let German Chancellor Angela Merkel that we expect her to lead in the fight against climate change. Avaaz is looking for 175,000 signatures.

My letter to The Right Honourable Michaëlle Jean*

Her Excellency

The Right Honourable Michaëlle Jean, C.C., C.M.M., C.O.M., C.D.

Governor General of Canada**

Your Excellency:

As a Canadian, I am asking you to refuse Prime Minister Harper’s expected request to prorogue parliament.

My position is simple. The Conservative Party of Canada has lost the confidence of parliament, and that’s not likely to change even if the House of Commons is suspended for two months. Nor do we need another election; we know that a viable coalition, comprised of Liberals and New Democrats, has been formed, and they possess the wherewithal to govern our country.

I am also concerned by the rhetoric coming from the Prime Minister’s Office; the harsh words that are trying to paint this coalition as an abrogation of democracy. We both know that, in fact, this is our democracy in action. Mr. Harper has not behaved honorably over the last week and, at the very least, I expect our Prime Minister to obey the constitutional laws of our land.

I am also offended by the Prime Minster’s suggestion that the Bloc Québécois are somehow lesser Members of Parliament, and that their support for the Liberal-NDP Coalition creates an unholy alliance. The people of Québéc have elected the Bloc as their representatives in Ottawa. I may not always agree with their position, but I respect the people of Quebec, and their voice deserves to be heard in Ottawa, and across the country.

As an environmentalist, I support the Liberal-NDP Coalition because I believe Canada should be a leader on the world stage, and that developing nations are about to be devastated by climate change. I don’t need to tell you that United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees has already determined that millions have been displaced by climate change. Over the next decade, we will see more Darfurs, and an increasing divide between rich and poor.

This crisis in Canada is occurring as the world convenes in Poland to hammer out an international climate change agreement. Canada, under Stephen Harper, has become one of the world’s most divisive countries, doing everything we can to stymie climate progress. At the 2007 conference in Bali, our delegates, along with the Americans, were booed and hissed. That won’t be true this time around, because America has embraced change. Will Canadians do the same?

We don’t inherit this world from our ancestors, we borrow it from our children. Let’s not fail them, or ourselves.

Warm regards,

Richard Levangie
Lunenburg, Nova Scotia

UPDATE: The Governor General has granted the Prime Minister’s request, and parliament has been suspended until the last week in January. This sets a horrible precedent, I should think.

Let the games begin. Be prepared for more hatred and fear-mongering from the Chicken Shit Conservative Party of Canada.
_____________

* I wish I had more time to work on these things; but this was hastily assembled. Michaëlle Jean is a fascinating woman; she was born in Haiti, but her family fled Papa Doc’s barbaric regime in 1968, and landed in Montreal. I believe that she truly loves Canada, and has been a remarkable representative for our country on the international stage, unlike our current Prime Minister.

** I hold a Governor-General’s Medal, and I rubbed it a few times this morning to help her make the right decision!

The Canadian Constitution supports the Liberal-NDP Coalition

From Dr. Peter Russel, Professor Emeritus at the University of Toronto…

After the Oct. 14 election, Stephen Harper remained Prime Minister, formed a new government and prepared to face the House. Although his party had improved its seat total it was still in a minority position in the House. This meant that to continue in office Harper would have to win enough support from the opposition benches to secure the confidence of the House.

For a few days it appeared that Harper would reach out in a conciliatory manner and garner the parliamentary support he needs on order to have the right to govern.

But, to put it mildly, on Nov. 27 just a few days into the session, through his finance minister’s economic update, he made an abrupt U-turn. Instead of seeking support from the opposition, his government presented an in-your-face, take-it-or-leave-it position.

The opposition parties – all three of them – decided not to take it. Instead, they announced that they would use their collective majority in the House to vote no confidence in the Harper government and support an alternative coalition government.

The no-confidence vote is to take place next Monday. If the government loses that vote, the rules of parliamentary democracy give Harper two options. He can tender his government’s resignation to the Governor General and clear the way for Madame Jean to ask Stéphane Dion to form a Liberal-NDP coalition government. Or he can ask the Governor General to dissolve the 40th Parliament so that we can elect the 41st Parliament.

The first option – resignation – would be entirely constitutional. It involves no “usurpation” of power but is an honourable way out of the present impasse.

If Harper were to take the second option, the Governor General would have to consider carefully whether to grant his request for a dissolution. Her primary concern must be to protect parliamentary democracy. A steady diet of elections – four in four years – is not healthy for parliamentary democracy.

If there is an alternative government available that has a reasonable prospect of being supported for a period of time by a majority in the House of Commons, she would have reason to decline Harper’s request. Harper would then have to resign, and the Governor General would commission Dion to form a government.

If this happens, again there would be no “usurpation” of power but a proper application of the rules and principles of parliamentary democracy. It has been very disturbing to hear over the last few days, from people who should know better, wild unparliamentary theories about our system of government. Elections are not simple popularity contests in which the leader whose party garners the most votes gets all the power.

Exactly so. If Liberal leader Stephane Dion and NDP leader Jack Layton were truly trying to circumvent our constitution, this coalition would not be supported by precedent or by law. If fact, they are supporting — and saving — our democracy.

Read the full article at The Toronto Star.

Support the Canadian Liberal-NDP Coalition

“May you live in interesting times” is an old curse often attributed to the Chinese. These are interesting times in Canada, as we’re embroiled in a so-called constitutional crisis even as our economy tanks.

Everyone knows the story. Our Prime Minister suffering from a horrible case of foot-in-mouth disease, and his loyal opposition have united to bring down the government in a Vote of Non-Confidence. That this extraordinary turn of events has happened just weeks after a national election is enough to make anyone’s head spin.

Stephen Harper brought this on the country, and he has no one to blame but himself. At a time when Canadians are watching their jobs disappear and their life savings diminish, he pressed his political advantage, and tried to cripple the opposition parties. So much for a new period of cooperation and working for common purpose in his minority government.

I’m not alone in believing that Canada needs an economic stimulus package in these uncertain times, especially since the rest of the world understands the need to jumpstart the low-carbon economy. The Labour government in Britain has pledged $200 billion to their green initiative, while President-elect Obama will be launching a $500 billion economic stimulus package that focuses on green industries.

The world is embracing renewable energy and energy efficiency, while our Finance Minister Jim Flaherty is touting the government’s GST cuts, and his plan to reduce corporate taxes by half a percentage point. That’s our made-in-Canada plan, and it’s going to leave our country at a competitive disadvantage for a generation or more.

We need the Liberal-NDP coalition. It comes with a stimulus package to invest in a low-carbon economy and offers us 18 months with parliament working in a serious and constructive mindset to solve our many problems.

But we won’t get that parliament without a fight.

The war of words is on. I’m honestly surprised by the vitriol now spouted by the right wing — suggesting that this coalition is a devious and dishonorable ploy to steal the country. On the contrary, the opposition parties are demonstrating the way parliament is supposed to work. As voters, we don’t determine who becomes prime minister. We vote for parliamentarians, and they decide who will lead our country.

The current Prime Minister is not supported by parliament. End of story. His days should be numbered. But he’s having none of that, and will most likely ask our Governor-General to suspend — or prorogue — parliament before the non-confidence vote can be recorded. That’s wrong-headed and exceedingly gutless. I always thought right-wingers were supposed to carry the courage of their convictions!

If you believe as I do, please get involved in the campaign to support the Liberal-NDP Coalition. Write a letter to Her Excellency the Right Honourable Michaëlle Jean at: info@gg.ca

Talk to your friends. Write a letter to the editor.* Sign the petition at Avaaz; and the 62 Percent Majority petition run by the NDP. join one or more Facebook groups like the Canadians for a Progressive Coalition or the Canadians for a Liberal-NDP Coalition. Attend a rally. I’ve included a few links below.

This crisis in Canada is occurring as the world convenes in Poland to hammer out an international climate change agreement. Canada, under Stephen Harper, has become one of the world’s most divisive countries, doing everything we can to stymie climate progress. At the 2007 conference in Bali, our delegates, along with the Americans, were booed and hissed. That won’t be true this time around, because America has embraced change. Will Canadians do the same?

We don’t inherit this world from our ancestors, we borrow it from our children. Let’s not fail them, or ourselves.

______________________________

*Letters to the editor:

Globe and Mail – Letters@globeandmail.com
Vancouver Sun – sunletters@png.canwest.com
Ottawa Citizen – letters@thecitizen.canwest.com
Edmonton Journal – letters@thejournal.canwest.com
Calgary Sun – callet@calgarysun.com
Chronicle-Herald – letters@herald.ca
Toronto Star – lettertoed@thestar.ca