Life in Chebucto West

How to find even more stories

2012-02-11T23:22:00.003-04:00

"How to find stories" was so successful that I am putting together...Part Deux! Thank you to everyone who contributed even more ideas. As always, if you want to comment or email me more, I will keep adding.

Here's the original list (it will open in a separate window, so you can see both at once). And here's the new list:

Go look at the Nova Scotia Supreme Court listings. I used to muck around in there every day when working for allnovascotia.com. If you go down to the Supreme Court, there's an office on the main level. In the office there's a binder that anyone can look at where the staff put a list of court cases that were freshly filed yesterday. There's a binder for civil cases and a binder for probate cases. You will only see the names of both parties in the case; if you want to look at the actual documents, you have to pay a fee to get the file. It's a bit like searching for a needle in a haystack, but if you are good at recognizing names and companies you might be able to find something significant.

CNW Newswire and Marketwire contain press releases. Mostly company product announcements but sometimes other things too.

The Civil Aviation Daily Occurrence Reporting System or CADORS national report is the is a federally-run database of incidents involving Canadian aircraft or airspace across the country. You occasionally see things like a runway closed because a plane hit a bald eagle.

Read message boards like Halifax Locals or reddit.com (try searching keywords like Halifax, Dartmouth, Nova Scotia).

This tip via Alison Delorey (@alisondelorey on Twitter): "I'd also suggest that if you write for a lot of trade or b2b publications that you stay on top of industry news and events like regional or national meetings or AGMs. Also think about "honoured" days both obvious (Earth Day) and lesser known (World School Milk Day) and think about connecting story pitches to those events."

From Jon Tattrie (@jontattrie): "I often check sites like Dal News for stories. They do them as the official voice of the organization, of course, but often there is something that can be re-spun into a story or a feature."

For more university news, try Unews.ca and the University of King's College Journalism publications.

A good resource is the environmental assessments filed with the province. You can see all projects, projects under review, and completed reviews. You can also sign up for email updates on new projects and ministerial decisions. See also the Canadian Environmental Assessment Registry, a searchable database of environmental assessments that pertain to federal departments or federal legislation. The explanations on the CEAR are very detailed and helpful.

The Canadian Legal Information Institute is great for finding legal decisions. It has a wider scope than the Courts of Nova Scotia website because in addition to the courts decisions, it includes legislation (statutes and regulations), and decisions from boards (labour, privacy, human rights, discipline, and securities) for all provinces and territories. This is useful for labour arbitration decisions, human rights rulings, etc.

SEDAR is the System for Electronic Document Analysis and Retrieval. This is the place where you can find a lot of Canadian securities information, such as the financial statements of publicly traded companies. EDGAR is the equivalent American resource. I first learned how to use SEDAR while working at RBC Dominion Securities one summer, and I'm ridiculously pleased it still comes in handy.

The Notice to Mariners is put out every month by the Department of Fisheries and Oceans, together with the Coast Guard. It has updated nautical chart corrections and safety announcements. In a coastal province like Nova Scotia this can be important.

Other resources for marine stories include Canada's Vessel Registration System, and MarineTraffic.com, which shows some (but not all) ships in the area.

The RCMP and Halifax Regional Police put news releases on their websites.
There is also the daily police report from the HRP.

Online Property Assessment Information is a database run by the body that assesses property values in Nova Scotia. That value is used by municipalities in calculating taxes. It has maps of the property lines and assessed values dating back ten years.

Property Online is a very useful subscriber-based website from Service Nova Scotia, showing who owns what land in the province. See maps, surveyors descriptions, names and addresses of property owners and the dates the land changed ownership, and even scanned copies of the deed. There is a fee to use the service, and it is not cheap. You must sign a user agreement that takes 10 days to process in order to use at home, but I've been told if you're in a hurry you can go to one of the office locations and pay a per-search fee (not sure if that's still correct, though). In a similar vein, you can pay to use the NS Lien Check on property.

If you're into health and science topics and looking for public meetings, check the Canadian Institute of Health Research's list of "cafes," which are really public panel discussions on various topics.

The Nova Scotia Registry of Joint Stocks is a great place to find out more about any registered business in the province.

Nova Scotia's Vital Signs is a site that wants to show "how communities in Nova Scotia compare to the national average." Statistics are compiled from StatsCan, the OECD, and the Canadian Medical Association. The site is funded by the Community Foundation of Nova Scotia, which is funded by donors and corporate sponsors listed on its main page.

And here's a link to an excellent web page chock-full of tips on reporting methods from a Carleton University journalism graduate class by CP's Jim Bronskill and CBC's David McKie.

Finally... I ended the last story post with a quote. Here's another one:

"Don't worry about people stealing your ideas. If your ideas are any good, you'll have to ram them down people's throats.” - Howard Aiken, an American computer engineer and mathematician (1900-1973)

8 ways to get better interviews from children

2012-01-28T16:18:00.002-04:00

I was working on a story at a school not too long ago and this post walked into my head practically ready-made. I wish someone had told me this stuff a long time ago, because interviewing kids is really tough. It's hard to get a child to talk intelligently about a topic of my choosing in convenient ten-second clips.

Many of the pointers below assume the kids are in a group setting (school, camp, etc). And I don't suggest them because I'm great with kids (I'm not). Everything I suggest below I've learned through trial and painful error. And anyway, kids teach me that every time I think I've got it right, I find out I don't.

1) Remember to get your permissions. If you're in a school or daycare, make sure to check with the teachers whether there are children who can't be pictured or quoted. Most schools now have release forms for parents to sign. If a parent is present, simply ask for permission.

2) Don't talk down to them. Use simple language (that goes for adults too) but never underestimate how smart they are or how much they understand.

3) Avoid any questions that allow for a one word answer. Very few children will elaborate on anything, and one word answers won't help you.

Try questions that start with:

"Why did you..."
"What did you think of..."

Avoid questions that begin with:
"Do you...."
"How many...."
"When did you..."

4) If working for radio or television, mic yourself. Often children's answers will only make sense when you hear the question as well, so it's essential that the reporter's voice comes through clearly.

5) Find an outgoing child. Unlike adults, who may open up if you talk to them for a few minutes, I've found children either open up at once, or not at all. From a reporter's point of view, it is not practical to cox something out of a shy child. It is unlikely to be a good clip and you don't have the time. If they won't open up right away, you must cut your losses and try another child.

6) Don't choose the chatterbox. You want outgoing, but not the Tazmanian devil (because there's always one). The chatterbox won't stay on topic and won't actually listen to your questions. They just want to talk to anyone who will listen about what they want to say.

7) Watch out for the divas. Kids these days! They're ridiculously media-savvy. They know exactly what is going on when a camera or a microphone comes out and if you're not careful they'll mob you like deer at Marineland. They'll wave at the camera or jump in front of you, screaming "We're gonna be FAMOUS!"

8) Ask them what they see. If you're desperate for a quote, remember that kids are good visualizers. (This works really well on radio, and with some creativity could work in other mediums). Ask them to describe to you what something looks like, or what it looked like. As a follow up question try asking, "What do you think of that?"

If you have suggestions, please comment.

New Year

2012-01-11T11:56:00.007-04:00

For the last few years I have posted my new year's resolutions on the blog. This year I'm making just two:

1) Revamp my portfolio website, shainaluck.com. It sadly needs the attention.
2) Vacuum my floor. It, too, sadly needs the attention.

These goals are realistic and achievable (I think).

Also, since it is good general advice, here is a link to another set of resolutions, taken from one of my favourite blogs, Brain Pickings.

Sights and sounds in South America

2012-01-08T18:50:00.002-04:00

This is over-late, but I promised to upload a few videos from South America, and here they are. Maybe they'll help explain a bit more than words and still pictures.

This is from a football game in Rio de Janeiro. I took this before the game started, so this is just the crowd warming up and getting seated. They got WAY more excited than this afterwards (but of course, my camera died, argh). Imagine about 10,000 people chanting in unison to a small army of samba drums. Midway through the game they started letting fireworks off in the stands. After our side lost there was a minor riot in the street. It was wild.

This is a tango show in the street in Buenos Aires. Restaurants with patios hire dancers to entertain the tourists.

Those dancers are very good, but if you are ever in Buenos Aires I think it's better to see tango at a social evening or milonga. It's less showy, and more about the connection between the partners. At a very dark milonga one night, our jaws dropped when we heard this song and watched what the dancers did with it. It sounds like a completely different dance, doesn't it?

And lastly, this was the view from the window of our hostel in Buenos Aires. The Avenida 9 de Julio, a 20-lane street that you must cross in two stages. Believe it or not, I wasn't at all bothered by the traffic at night!

Morton Thompson-Pierre Berton turkey accomplished

2011-12-31T11:12:00.000-04:00

DAY ONE: Christmas Eve

I began by assembling and chopping the ingredients for the stuffing.

I only made half the recipe, as I'd bought a small turkey (everything's relative. By 16+ pound Thompson Turkey standards, 12.5 pounds is very small indeed). But the stuffing still filled my biggest mixing bowl almost to overflowing.

I set out the ingredients for the paste cover, which meant separating eight eggs and juicing an onion (many tears, little juice).

This is certainly the most ridiculous ingredient in the whole recipe, but here is how to make it. Chop the onion roughly, put it in the blender with a little water, and blend to a pulp. Place the pulp in a strainer and use a spatula to push it around until it grudgingly bleeds out a quarter cup of juice. Don't sniff this liquid, at your peril.

DAY TWO: Christmas Day

I began to prepare the turkey around noon, aiming for a 6pm dinner time.

I stuffed the turkey at the front and back. The recipe says "reasonably full," but I'm not sure what that means. I crammed as much as I could in there, and I was still left with a lot of stuffing to cook in another dish. In fact, I stuffed the turkey so full it was going to burst unless it was sewn up. It looked like Frankenturkey.

Then Frankenturkey went in the oven at 450 degrees until it was "browned all over." While the turkey was browning, I ran around my apartment opening the window and pointing an electric fan directly at the smoke detector. The haze from the sizzling, spitting turkey set off the smoke alarm three times and hung around my place all day.

Slopping the yellow paste cover twice over the turkey was fun, but required fast work.

After that, I sat around in the haze of smoke all afternoon and read Don Quixote with stinging eyes. I stopped every 15 minutes to baste the turkey in an apple cider/giblet stock liquid.

Towards the end, the turkey had to be flipped. According to the recipe, I cooked the turkey breast down the whole time, and towards the end turned it once. I had help for this, and boy am I grateful, because this isn't a one-person job. I wore a silicone oven mitt on one hand, and a regular oven mitt on the other. I grabbed the turkey around the middle below the wings. It almost got away from me twice.

The result was not as black as I thought it would be, and not as juicy as it could have been (the recipe says never cook it longer than nine or 10 minutes per pound, but I was afraid to give my friends food poisoning, so I left it in longer).

Still, the turkey fell apart under Pete's carving knife, so it was plenty juicy enough. It had a lovely flavour, and it still got plenty of praise around the dinner table. The stuffing was full of great little crunchy bits, and the bones made the best turkey soup I've had in a long time.

I won't cook this turkey again, but it had to be done.

Every time I complete a recipe that scares me, I remember they're not so hard: take little steps...they're all simple...keep going and don't stop.

I hope you all had a very happy Christmas and the coming year brings your heart's desire.

The Pierre Berton-Morton Thompson Turkey: descent into Christmas cooking madness

2011-12-23T10:27:00.003-04:00

So this is the first Christmas that I have not gone home to Toronto. I had a good visit with my family in early December as I was on my way back from South America, and I decided that it just didn't make sense to return a couple of weeks later. I'm in Halifax working, although I have Christmas Eve to Boxing Day off.

Don't feel too sorry for me, because I have lots of friends who are also staying in town. On Christmas Day I'll be sitting down with six other people to enjoy a turkey dinner...and to make the occasion extra special, I'm doing the turkey.

Not just any turkey, either.

In honour of my first Christmas away from home, I volunteered to do the Morton Thompson-Pierre Berton Turkey. I have been fascinated by this recipe since 2004, when I clipped it from the Globe and Mail after Pierre Berton's death. I've made several turkeys in my time, but I've never dared to try this one. This turkey has 44 ingredients, 13 steps, flips the turkey once, and if you do it right, the bird will emerge pitch black from the oven. When you look at the recipe (and you MUST look at it), you will understand why I'm fascinated and a bit nervous.

This is a turkey that lends itself to stories. Legends say that when Morton Thompson published this recipe, his readers thought it was a joke. Other legends say that Thompson was not sober when he concocted it.

I will be using Pierre Berton's recipe as laid out in the Globe, but other variations of the recipe are readily available on the Internet. This one challenges readers to "see who has the guts to try this." This one calls Morton Thompson a "sick bastard." And this version includes drink recipes-within-the-recipe with directions like, "Mix this altogether [sic], and have another sip of your drink."

I have sometimes wondered if the entire recipe is a massive practical joke. Whether it is or not, it seems to me this turkey has a particular fascination for writers. Morton Thompson himself was a newspaperman.

Maybe all we want - all I really want - is to pin the tale on the turkey.

I will let you know how it turns out.

Back from South America!

2011-12-17T10:33:00.001-04:00

Hello everybody! I'm back from South America, and what a wonderful time it was. There is so much to tell you I feel a bit overwhelmed with all the catch-up blogging I want to do.

If you want the quick version, take a look here for the pictures with captions.

I was travelling with Curtis, who turned out to be a very good travel partner indeed, because we did not kill each other or have any fights at all. Also, he is a much better map folder than me, and that always helps.

We landed in Rio de Janeiro when it was about 29 degrees outside and blindingly bright. Rio is an enormous city with all of these beautiful soft white beaches, but it's as if someone plopped down whole lot of green, jungly, incredibly steep mountains right on top of the city. The city is just built around the mountains, with all these big expressways tunnelled right through the mountains to the other side.

We were staying at the top of a steep street, partway up a mountain. Behind our hostel's back wall was jungle, and a little further up, the favela Morro dos Cabritos. Our street was so steep.

We climbed it at least twice a day, every day. Four blocks in the other direction, we could walk to Copacabana Beach.

Brazilian men like to wear tight little Speedos, and often they will just walk down to the beach wearing only that and carrying a towel. Due to the fried food and meat diet, they don't all have great beach bodies, either. Still cringing after a couple of Speedo-sightings.

We stumbled across a massive street party in a rough-edged neighbourhood called Lapa. We went to an old cabaret-turned-cultural centre called Casa Rosa looking for samba, but instead got two packed dance floors with house/rave DJs and delicious capirinhas. (Go on, check out the links - you have to listen to samba while you read this).

We took the tram to the top of Corcovado, which is the mountain with the famous stone Cristo Redentor statue. On a clear day you can see the statue from every part of the city. We also climbed Pao de Acucar, a mountain by the sea that's surrounded by a beautiful jungle-park. It has amazing rock-climbing routes. Curtis and a guide/circus artist named Duda climbed it using ropes and harnesses. I used a cable car.

People say that Rio is dangerous. We never had a problem, but we easily could have. There are locks and thick bars on every house and shop. At night they are shut tight, so the street is a long tunnel with nowhere to run or get away. There are broken bottles lining the tops of walls so no one can climb over. The streets are very empty at night, and that has to tell you something.

After Rio, we took a 20-hour bus ride south to Iguacu Falls, an amazing national park on the border between Brazil and Argentina. We viewed the falls from the Argentine side, where you can get right up close and touch them. You get soaked from the spray, but your clothes dry in five minutes because of the heat of the sun. The whole park is just miles and miles of waterfalls and a jungle FULL of butterflies.

After spending only two days at the falls, we went on to Buenos Aires, which turned out to be my favourite place of all. Lots of old crumbling Spanish buildings, wide avenues with trees and sidewalk cafes wherever you look. We were there just at the end of the blooming season for jacarandas, the wizzly trees that bloom with purple flowers before they get leaves. I love the jacaranda trees. The colour is so bright and they are all over the city.

It seemed like a city where old things are preserved. We went into the most glamorous bookshop in the world, the El Ateneo Grand Splendid, housed in an old theatre.

We stayed at the "Ritz Hotel," now a hostel. Big old building with a spiral staircase going right up the five floors and a jerky elevator where you had to close yourself into the cage via sliding accordion doors. When we checked into our room the first day we thought there was some mistake. Twenty foot ceilings with a musty-looking chandelier, a heavy carved wooden wardrobe, a balcony with a view down to the National Congress, a square pedestal sink and a bidet that scared me by shooting water five feet into the air when we investigated it. I felt like maybe Carlos Gardel had just checked out the day before, to embark on his fatal 1935 plane flight.

People in Buenos Aires love to go out at night and I saw lots of single girls walking in the streets past midnight. There's no point in going out for dinner before 8:30 at the very earliest, and even then, it's better to wait until later. Most days settled into a rhythm: get up around 9, have coffee and croissants at the bar beneath our hostel, wander around seeing things in the morning, sit at a sidewalk cafe in the late afternoon, come back around 6, sleep for two hours, get up and get ready for dinner, wander out for dinner at 9, and come back home around midnight. Repeat.

Anyway, this is getting ridiculously long, and I have so much more to say about Buenos Aires that I'll just post it now and go more in-depth later. I know some of you have already seen the photos, but....stay tuned for videos!

How I made a radio documentary

2011-11-07T22:07:00.005-04:00

I'm very proud that my radio documentary, "Ground Support" is finally finished and broadcast yesterday morning. It was about homeless veterans of the Canadian Forces. Earlier this year I met a group of veterans who've taken it upon themselves to search the streets and shelters of Halifax to find homeless veterans.

The homeless vets often have mental health issues and addiction problems, left over from their years in the Forces.

You can hear more about the issue here.

It took me eight months to complete this story. I first met Jim and Gary, two of the men in the story, back in February when I was doing a news story. I stuck with them, met new people who entered the story, and did interviews on my days off.

It was a commitment, but it was a wonderful opportunity to see a story unfold over time. That is not something I get to do every day, but it was worth it.

I said to Jim just a few days ago, "This was your story," because that's true. But he said to me, "Yes, but you told it."

**

In other news, I'm headed to South America in just a few days. It's a little tough to believe, really. Doesn't seem real at all. People at work have been sweet: they are giving me tips for things to do, clipping me newspaper articles, putting me in touch with friends, and telling me stories.

I have a whole list of things to do: soccer games, seeing samba costumes, dining on Argentinian steak, tango lessons, wine tasting workshops, climbing mountains, lying on sunny beaches, looking at jacaranda trees. Plus lots more I'm forgetting right now. I'll tell you all about it when I get back!

How to start a war with your neighbours

2011-10-06T21:43:00.002-03:00

My neighbours and I are embroiled in a down and dirty guerrilla war. I live in an apartment building of about 30 units, and the territory we are fighting over is the big old-fashioned radio in my apartment lobby.

It's a chunky radio the size of a coffee table and it is always on. The lid flips back, and underneath there is a turntable and the tuning dials and some silver buttons.

I admit I started the Channel Changing War. One day, about a year ago, I was coming in and thought I'd tune the radio to something I liked. It was playing a top 40 station. I tuned it to CBC Radio 2.

It stayed that way for a while, broadcasting classical music and Canadian alt-rock-pop-folk-jazz. But that didn't last very long, because after a week or two I came home and noticed it was back on another top 40 station.

I turned the dial back to Radio 2.

A few days later, the radio was tuned to country.

We went back and forth between CBC and quite a few other channels on the FM dial. I don't even know which neighbours I'm fighting. It could be all of them. I only change the channel when no one is around to see me do it...and so do they. No one can prove anything - unless they read this blog, I guess (hello, neighbours!).

Anyway, the Channel Changing War settled on a country station a while back and I decided to just grin and bear it until....

Last week, I came in and stopped absolutely dead when I recognized the voice of Norah Young from the CBC Radio 1 program "Spark." Couldn't believe my ears. I didn't do it. So who did?

A few days later the country fans recaptured the dial. But now I'm back in the fight, because somewhere in the building I have a secret ally. So if you're reading this, secret radio ally, good on you. Keep it up! I've got your back.

Where am I going?

2011-09-28T19:58:00.001-03:00

I did something very, very, very exciting today. I booked airplane tickets! I'll give you a few clues as to where I am going. Ready?

Clue #1: I've borrowed Darwin's "Voyage of the Beagle" from the library
Clue #2: I read Che Guevara's journal, the book on which 'The Motorcycle Diaries' was based
Clue #3: A while back I made this fish stew for dinner
Clue #4: I've become very fond of a lime-flavoured drink called a capirinha lately
Clue #5: I practiced counting in Spanish and Portuguese (needs a lot of work)
Clue #6: I took a crash course in tango with my lovely travel partner
Clue #7: I'll have to cross the Equator to get there

Can't you guess where I'm going?

What it means

2011-09-18T13:49:00.001-03:00

My very good friends Lenn and Jolene got married Friday, and although the adjective that's usually applied to weddings is "beautiful," I daresay this one was more beautiful than most.

Two moments stood out for me.

The first moment was the bubbles. I was a groomsman, so I spent most of the day with Lenn and his brother, driving around and getting things done. The very last thing we did was go to a store to buy, of all things, a bubble machine. He and Jolene had talked long ago about having a bubble machine instead of confetti.

"I want them to float down over her as she comes down the aisle," he said. He knew the wind might be wrong, and he knew she might not even see them, but he wanted her to have bubbles. So at the very last minute, we drove downtown and we got that bubble machine.

Just before the bride arrived at the altar, I looked up. All I could see was this massive bubble-storm floating away on the wind, behind everyone's backs, in exactly the wrong direction.

Later in the evening I was standing in the crowd and my purse started buzzing. I answered, and it was a friend of ours who moved to Paris almost a year ago, calling to wish Lenn a happy wedding day. I handed the call to Lenn, told him who was calling, saw the stunned look on his face.

It was not until Lenn stepped outside to take the call that I realized our friend had stayed up until three in the morning, Paris time, just to be sure of calling at the right moment. I am not much of a crier at weddings, but I went to the bathroom and bawled off most of my mascara.

I know these are not the really important highlights of the wedding. But the point I wish to make here is I saw love also in the low-lights, the background, and the mishaps of the day.

After all, it is not what happened, but what it means: "One sees clearly only with the heart. What is essential is invisible to the eye."
-Antoine de Saint Exupery, Le Petit Prince

How to do live radio

2011-09-13T18:53:00.005-03:00

It only happens once in a while, but sometimes I get great pleasure out of a news story.

I'm not talking about heart-warming stories that give me the emotional warm fuzzies. Nor do I mean educational stories and need-to-know stories, which give me a kind of cerebral boost. I like those for their own reasons, but I think I get the most laughter and enjoyment out of stories that are just plain weird.

Take the other week, for example. Downtown Dartmouth was engulfed in this rotten smell. People compared it to dead fish combined with sewage, and it lasted all afternoon and into the evening. No one could explain where the smell came from.

And, come on, that's great, right? Not huge news, but still a quirky light spot in my day. But the best was yet to come, because when I turned on my radio the next morning, Rob North was reporting on the stink live from the Dartmouth waterfront.

"I don't think it's overstating to call this the granddaddy of all stinks, or a place where bad smells can go to learn how the job is done," Rob said on live radio.

I think he was taken by a fit of inspired hyperbole, because he went on to compare the stink to a hog farm spreading liquid manure and a dead whale on a beach. I tell you, forget making my morning - that made my WEEK.

It probably made a lot of other people's week too, because I noticed people both inside and outside the newsroom got downright poetic trying to talk about the odor.

It "festered" in a "pungent intensity of stench." It was "skanky" and "smelled like death." Some people compared it to the stink that assailed us last summer from the Halifax sewage treatment plant: "You know how a glass of wine has different notes?" one person mused. "This was worse."

I thoroughly enjoyed this story, which was created out of air, out of thick air. As Oscar Wilde said, tongue firmly in cheek: "In matters of grave importance, style, not sincerity, is the vital thing."

Here's the link to Rob's famous report.

How to become Halifamous

2011-08-26T11:18:00.005-03:00

We have a word around this town: Halifamous. We use it to talk about local people who live in (or partly in) public life, and whose faces might be known for such things as fronting a cause, making films, writing books, running for politics, owning a business, or appearing on television. Sometimes my friends think I fall into this category. Well, I'll tell you exactly how Halifamous I am.

The other night I was covering the Jack Layton memorial walk, and was following my cameraman around in the crowd. I was holding a mic that says "CBC News."

A man with a deeply tanned face in a white ball cap came up to me. He was smiling.

"Excuse me, I'm sorry to interrupt," he said. "But my friend here thinks you're Elizabeth Chiu. Are you?"

He pointed to his friend, who was also very tanned and sitting nearby. His friend had light blue ear buds stuck in both his ears, and did not take them out. He waved.

"No," I said. "Actually, I'm Shaina Luck."

The first man slapped his knee lightly and turned to his friend. They looked like they were construction workers coming off shift. "See, Kevin?" he said. "I told you she wasn't Elizabeth. Sorry about that."

People ask me that all the time, I reassured him. Not a problem.

-"You guys do a great show though. You sure you're not Elizabeth?"

-"Yes, I'm sure. I'm Shaina Luck."

-"Really?"

-"Yes. I'm Shaina Luck. Pleased to meet you."

We shook hands all around.

The first man sized me up again.

-"Elizabeth is shorter than you, isn't she?"

Yes, I agreed. Elizabeth is shorter. She also has shorter hair, I pointed out. He shook his head in an I-shoulda-known-that way.

"Well, you're not Elizabeth," he said, trying to camouflage his disappointment. Then he was struck by an afterthought and grinned brightly: "But you're just as pretty as her!"

Nice save, boys. Nice save.

Me / Elizabeth Chiu : Can you spot the differences?

Why you need to see the world

2011-08-06T19:10:00.003-03:00

My family are headed to Europe today, without me. We used to take trips together (eleven of us, sometimes). They invited me to come with them but I said not this time, I've got work to do here. I'm fairly sure the big ole family vacation is over for me. But I'm not over with travelling. Just started, actually.

The novelist Henry Miller wrote, “One’s destination is never a place, but a new way of seeing things.” Travel is not about comfort. Rather the opposite: we travel to be made uncomfortable, to be challenged and maybe just a little bit frightened.

On the road I've been all of those things, which is probably why happy moments on the road seem, by contrast, more full of joy than any others.

In the southwestern Chinese mountains of Yunnan province, near the Tibetan border, I was once sicker than I've ever been before (or since). I couldn't eat anything and I couldn't keep anything down. I spent the night stumbling between a bed in a rooftop room made of split pine boards, down a ladder to the open central courtyard, and into the communal outhouse, which was a squat hole in the ground.

During the night I thought of a fellow I'd gone to school with, a fellow who'd been offered a full-time job at a newspaper back in Halifax (while I'd spent my time learning to ride a motorcycle and thumbing through the Lonely Planet).

How sensible he must be, I thought, as I dry-heaved into a hole of sewage.

In the morning when the sun came up, I wrapped myself in a blanket and sat on the roof. The sky was so wide open. I thought: "I wouldn't change places with him for anything."

At this stage in my life, I'd recommend travel over buying a house, over starting a family, over a master's degree. Watch the sun come up over some strange city, eat food you can only order by pointing, share things you're carrying with children, get ripped off by con artists, haggle, win, lose, get violently sick, be rescued by strangers. It changes you.

I would also recommend a one-minute film called "MOVE" from director Rick Mereki, which along with its companions "EAT" and "LEARN," is a good reminder of all the reasons to hit the road.

MOVE from Rick Mereki on Vimeo.

Why I carry the tripod

2011-07-31T14:36:00.000-03:00

Hello, folks! The blog has fallen silent for a while, as I've been working on a variety of things. Mostly items at CBC News NS, but I've also been (slowly, slowly, slowly) pushing along a few projects of my own, including some things for Halifax Magazine and a couple of ideas for longer radio pieces. I enjoy working on my own projects, but today I decided to talk about how much I like working with other people. Specifically, camera people.

Sometimes people tell me how much they liked (or didn't like, in some cases) a particular story. That's always good to hear, but it's not all me.

Half the story, and sometimes more than half, depends on my camera person. Honestly, I figure most television viewers naturally pay more attention to what they see than what they hear me say.

The camera people with us are mostly men, and one woman. They always do the driving. The vans are their territory, because they spend so much time on the road. Every van is different, according to which camera person uses it: they carry CDs, satellite radio, GPS, snacks, rain gear, fleeces, rubber boots, all kinds of things. They carry a lot of gear in case they have to stand out in the rain and the cold, clutching a metal camera that sucks the heat right out of the hands. It's heavy - like two 20 pound sacks of potatoes, with a camera on one shoulder and a tripod on the other.

A good camera person makes my job a lot easier. If all is going well, we see the same things and interpret them the same way. There is discussion. We shape the story together.

I remember someone in j-school telling me, "You should always carry the tripod for your camera person," which I took as a reasonable suggestion for how to get the equipment from point A to point B.

Now I think it's funny that I offer to carry the tripod, and often they say, "No, it's fine," because they've got it covered. So I just think of it as a reminder to be nice to my camera person, because he or she is carrying the team right now.

How Mike and I won a dance competition

2011-06-17T12:45:00.000-03:00

Last week I sent in a story idea featuring a friend of mine named Mike. I haven't seen Mike in a couple of years, but we keep in touch over Facebook and I saw recently that he'd posted a couple of videos and pictures about his plans to scatter his father's ashes over Cape Breton using a remote controlled plane. He and his dad used to fly the planes together, and it was a wish his dad had for a long time. I thought it would make a great story, and Elizabeth Chiu did a really nice job on it, so here it is.

After we did the story, I was reminded of how Mike and I met.

I've been a salsa dancer for ten years now. I've sort of worked my way up to an intermediate level (although I'm getting very rusty again). Anyway, I know enough to show other people the basic steps. I also have a lot of salsa-dancing friends. Three years ago, in early November, a friend of mine asked if I would help her out with a company Christmas party she was organizing.

Six dancers had to partner with six of the company's department heads, teach them how to do a routine, and compete in front of everyone at the party, just like on the show "Dancing with the Stars."

I didn't think I was good enough to be a dance teacher, but I said yes. That's how I got partnered with Mike.

He'd never danced before. "But," he told me, "I'm willing to put in the time to work on this." He's a wonderfully friendly and open person, and boy, did he mean it when he said he was willing to work hard. We got together every week, sometimes twice a week.

As we practiced, we came up with our secret weapon. Instead of trying to learn fancy dips, spins, and ballroom tricks, I thought it would be better if we designed a section for Mike to just let loose and be himself.

So we danced our partner routine just like all the other teams, and then....Mike stepped away from me, took off his hat, threw it to a startled lady in the audience, and started to shake his booty all on his own. He was so happy he was grinning like a chimpanzee at the dentist's. His co-workers went nuts.

Mike won that competition, hands down. All I had to do was set him up. In salsa dancing, we say: "He is the frame. She is the picture," because most people tend to watch the lady. For once, we turned that notion on its head.

Someone told me afterward, "You're a better dancer than Mike. But I couldn't take my eyes off him. I guess that's part of his charm."

Why you shouldn't wait

2011-06-10T22:59:00.003-03:00

It is graduation season, and this year's crop includes my brother (congratulations, David!), several friends who are finishing masters degrees or medical degrees or job contracts, and many students I've got to know from King's College.

They are all doubting and worrying about their careers. This seems to be the congenital disease of our generation. I wish there is some way I could tell them to stop giving themselves ulcers.

Fortunately, Robert Krulwich, an American science blogger and journalist, says all the things I want to say more eloquently in a commencement speech to this year's Berkeley Journalism class. It's a long speech, but I highly recommend you read it.

Essentially, he suggests if it's in you to write, then write. If it's in you to report, report. Whatever it is you are called to do, explore it. If you cannot get anyone to hire you to do what you want to do, do it anyway and let the hiring take care of itself.

Naturally, some readers of Krulwich’s speech do not agree. One called it “pie-in-the-sky nonsense.” Another said it was “playing into the hands” of others.

“Stitching together piecemeal assignments and Waiting to Be Discovered is exciting and fun when you’re in your 20s and early 30s. It’s not sustainable when you’re a grown-up making mortgage payments,” wrote a third. (I would like to point out that “stitching together piecemeal assignments” is not exciting and fun at any age. I don’t think this man has ever done it, or he would know better).

In my view, this is not about selling your services for nothing. This is about practice.

Even if you come out of school at the top of your class, you need experience. You will make mistakes, and you want to make them when you’re practicing so they will do the least amount of harm.

Let’s think of it this way. Imagine that instead of being a reporter, I play the violin. My dream is to play with a symphony. Perhaps if I’m lucky, and very talented, I land that gig right away. But it’s more likely that I don’t. What should I do then?

Maybe I wait tables by day, and at night I practice. I practice three hours a day, four hours a day, maybe more. We expect this from musicians. This is perfectly normal.

It is no different for a writer. James Michener said he was constantly telling his students, "You can be a writer. Now get to it." He said he had no time to waste on “people who want to have written a book.”

I've talked to other young journalists who have said wistfully, "If they would only give me a chance to try.”

My friends – I can’t say it better than Robert Krulwich did.

“There are some people, who don’t wait,” he said. “I don’t know exactly what's going on inside them; but they have this…hunger. It’s almost like an ache. Something inside you says I can’t wait to be asked, I just have to jump in and do it.”

These people don’t have a clue what they’re jumping into, but I think it’s clear that if you’re not being given a chance, you might as well just go take one.

How to find stories

2011-05-26T14:03:00.003-03:00

I have an anxiety problem about coming to work without a story pitch. Every day I need to be able to say that something new and interesting is happening. If I don't, I feel I haven't contributed very much.

This is a common ailment. A very good reporter told me that he sometimes wakes up and thinks, "Ugh, got to find a story today." He also told me that we all have our different ways of finding them.

I've been making a list of resources for story ideas. I've used all of these in the past, some with more success than others. It's a good reference so I'm going to post it here, and I'll try to keep adding to it if I find any more.

-Go to neighbourhood meetings and talk to people. This should be the best way to get good stories, but it's time-consuming and probably the most ignored. When I'm feeling civic-minded I'll go to a meeting in the evening. Sometimes people there say something gold...sometimes I doodle for two straight hours.

-Go to places where people gather: coffee shops, public meetings, protests, open houses, community centres, the local convenience store, libraries, the medical clinic. Talk to people there. Look at the notices in the windows.

-Read constantly. Read the newsletters that come in your mailbox from local businesses. Read your municipal councillor's message to the community. Read bulletin boards. Read everything with words on it.

-Check Facebook. What are your friends saying, protesting about, attending, getting angry about?

-Check Twitter. What's the buzz? Location-based tweets are getting more and more specific. What's trending in your area? Try checking lists other than your own home page. Many people curate public lists based on region or interest ("Fab from Nova Scotia" or "Local writers"). Engage and ask questions. Reply to comments.

-Check blogs. You can find blog directories listed by region on Blogger and Wordpress, or (since like-minded bloggers tend to link themselves together) you can just go where the related links take you. Everyone from neighbourhood associations to business groups are starting blogs and posting their issues online.

-Keep an eye on media outlets: CBC, the Herald, the Globe, Metro, CTV, Global, Rogers 95.7, The Coast, allnovascotia.com. Make sure to include the small town papers and the even smaller neighbourhood newspapers (like the Chebucto News, the Trident, the Masthead, the North Dartmouth Echo). You can even try the gossip papers. I've never found many ideas I could use from the international media, but they're worth a skim if only for a good read.

-When you're in a coffee shop, have a skim through alternative media like student newspapers and homeless papers. Tune the car to community radio stations like CKDU once in a while.

-Say 'yes' to being put on mailing lists and let people know that they should feel free to email you upcoming events. Don't say yes to all of them because that can be overwhelming, but it's not bad to be on a few lists if you've found them useful in the past.

-Look at the listings of federal, provincial, and municipal tenders. Try neighbouring provinces as well.

-If you have access to newswires such as the Canadian Press, check them.

-Government grants can make for good stories, like the federal government's disclosure of ACOA grants

-Check the Utility and Review board's new decisions. Check out both what's recently been decided, and what's coming up for a hearing.

-The Nova Scotia courts have a searchable decisions database online. Be aware there's sometimes a delay between the release of a decision and when it appears online.

-The provincal government puts out the Royal Gazette of its activities in two parts. Part I is the Province's official weekly government record of proclamations and other statutory notices. Part II is all regulations filed with the Registry of Regulations.

-The city of Halifax has a planning website that breaks down building proposals and developments. Also on the city website, you can find the past and upcoming agendas and minutes from council. Council is further broken down into six community councils, which also have their own agendas and minutes pages. A huge help is the HRM Event Calendar (on the left hand column on the main website).

-Events listings such as those on Kijiji's community page are broken down by activities, groups, events, etc. SNAP Halifax also has an Event Calendar It's a long shot but never say never. It worked for me once.

-And most importantly...keep your eyes and ears open.

Phew!! That's a long list, and it's mostly Halifax-specific, but definitely not exhaustive. If you know a good resource, post it in the comments and I'll add it.

I don't check all of these sources every day. I just do what I can, and there are still days when I come up dry, or nearly dry. There's a lot of dross to go through before you hit gold. But I will leave you with this quote:

“The way to get good ideas is to get lots of ideas, and throw the bad ones away.”

- Dr. Linus Pauling (American theoretical chemist and biologist, 1901-1994)

When words aren't enough, you need pictures

2011-05-13T16:50:00.005-03:00

I've decided this blog is getting a little word-heavy and I ought to insert some pictures to break up the monotony. I finally caved and got an iPhone a while back and I must say it has made life considerably easier. And since an iPhone has a camera, I've been taking lots of little snapshots of things I see in passing. I'm not taking pictures with a particular purpose in mind, since they usually stay buried in my phone and they're not well-composed in any way. In fact, most of the time they're barely in focus. I just document things so I'll remember.

Here are a few: A latte with chocolate on top at the Bike and Bean cafe just outside Halifax, cooking Brazilian fish stew for supper, still water at Long Lake, a small fish a bird dropped on a rock at the lake, and an lighted-up public sculpture at my library.

Why typewriters will never go out of style

2011-05-06T15:15:00.000-03:00

Last week I had the fun of doing a story about typewriters. The last mechanical typewriter factory in the world has shut down. You can still buy electric typewriters, but there are no more typewriters powered purely by human fingers.

I was pleased that I got to do this story, as I am fond of typewriters. I own a vintage Underwood Number 5 that I picked up at a flea market for $25, and I brought it to work.

It's really not so long ago that typewriters were common in newsrooms: this reporter from the Ventura County Star says when he started in 1982 his office had only a single clunky word processor.

Lots of people told stories about how CBC used to use typewritten carbon copies in canary yellow and green, which had to be divided and distributed by the copy clerk (that is why we still call notes we prepare for the host "greens"). It was funny to see how the typewriter brought out this flood of stories. People wanted to play with it, examine it, and experiment on it. It was as if punching at the keys and hearing the clicks was some kind of memory trigger.

Another thing that surprised me when I started to make calls about typewriters was finding out who still wants and uses them: people in their twenties. I thought I was the only one, but it seems I am not. One of the last typewriter repairmen in Halifax told me all the young people always want the oldest typewriters, and the older the better. I guess we're all just looking to get that memory trigger secondhand.

How to make young people vote

2011-04-20T20:40:00.007-03:00

Unless you've been living under a rock lately, you'll know that a Canadian federal election is underway. You may have also heard about the youth vote movement. Vote mobs are surprising the country; Rick Mercer's challenge to the 18-25 set might change things yet.

Even Raffi is getting on board with a new version of Baby Beluga.

And since this is the very, very, very last election that I will fit in the 18-25 age bracket (my 26th birthday falls about two weeks after the election), I'm going to speak for my age group here.

The buzz generated by the vote mobs may get a slightly higher turnout. I hope it will. I hope it brings out the highest youth voter turnout ever. I hope it brings out the highest voter turnout ever, period! But if we're serious about getting young people to vote, I think we should have started long ago.

There was a federal election when I was 6, 7, 11, and 14 (1992, 1993, 1997, and 2000, respectively). Look at all those years when I was old enough to get what was happening, yet not old enough to vote. Look at all those chances to teach me, and everyone else my age, about the democratic process (and that's not even counting any provincial or municipal elections or by-elections).

My dad took me to a polling station during one of those elections. I think it was either 1993 or 1997, I'm not sure which. We were on our way home from school, and he stopped for a few minutes to vote in a school gymnasium with a lot of tables with big white cardboard hoods on them. Dad showed me the card, mostly black with some names and white circles on it. He went behind a cardboard hood to mark the ballot (I asked who he voted for, but he declined to tell me).

I know that I asked, "Can I do it?". My gosh, they were lining up to do it. It was very easy. All you had to do was make an X.

Of course they told me, "You're not old enough yet." I remember how that annoyed me, because what kid likes being told she has to wait to grow up to do something? I distinctly remember making a mental note that when I was old enough, I would come back, go into the little cardboard booth by myself, and make my X.

I didn't understand the full implications of making the X, but I understood enough to know that it's the adult thing to do.

Election day is May 2. Please vote, and if you have children, please take them. You are allowed three hours for a civic duty that takes twenty minutes....why don't you use the remaining 160 minutes to cross town, get your kids from wherever they are, and take them to vote in an unhurried way? That would be the best use of those three hours I can think of.

Take them in diapers, take them in strollers, take them out of daycare and take them after school. It will do them good.

How to live the freelance life

2011-04-09T22:38:00.004-03:00

A few weeks ago I was invited to a panel at my alma mater, King's College. The panel was called "The Freelance Life," and I was asked to speak to the final year journalism students along with two other great local freelancers, Lola Augustine Brown and Chris Benjamin.

Kim Pittaway, who is herself a freelancer, is teaching the magazine workshop at King's, and she organized the panel. Kim asked us to speak for a few minutes about ourselves, and to offer the students some pros, cons, and advice. I've been freelancing for three and some years now, and I am probably the closest to the students in terms of age and life experience.

I decided it would be easiest to start with the cons, dispense some advice, and then follow up with the pros (because surely, to do it the other way around would be just too depressing). Here's more or less what I said.

Cons
Freelancing can be lonely, and full of fear, uncertainty and self-doubt. Those things all start crowding in on you when you are sitting at home, doing the work to GET work, and you don't have any certainty of work tomorrow, the next day, or next week. There really is fear involved - fear of failure, fear that you won't ever get work, fear that you are useless at life and you should just go do something more productive, like work in a bank or something. If you can't deal with that fear, you aren't meant to be a freelancer.

Advice
The best advice I was ever given was from another freelancer. She said, "Reduce your costs." Learn to live cheaply - if that means learning to cook, giving up your iPhone, or getting a roommate, then you'd better do it. While you're at it, get your finances in order, because the one thing you do not want is to have financial problems hanging over you when the fear, uncertainty and doubt kicks in. Financial fears will just compound with work fears, and you'll be paralyzed. At the very beginning, you'll want a part-time job with some flexibility, so that you can be financially stable while you build up your freelance network. Start a website, because it's your top marketing tool to show people what you've got. But don't let anyone tell you that you cannot make money doing this. People ask me all the time if I actually make a living. I want to reply, "Do I look dead yet?" (I don't, of course...) It's not easy and I don't make a huge amount from freelancing, but I do make my living entirely on what I write, and each year gets better.

Pros
Ahh, and now the pros. They might seem small and puny compared to the raft of problems detailed above, but believe me, this is a good life, and that's why Lola, Chris, and I chose it. You will never have to do something that you don't believe in or think is worthwhile. The great pro of freelancing is that you overcome the fear and doubt, and once you learn how to do that, it's a very empowering feeling. Lola made the interesting point that some of her friends who had jobs in publishing companies faced cutbacks during the recession, and there was a climate of fear in their offices. Having a "regular job" is not a guarantee that you won't have fear in your life. I think in this sense freelancers have the head start, because they have learned to take their fear in little doses, and in that way they become strong enough to deal with an otherwise lethal dose. I really believe that if you can do this job, you can do anything.

How to do a television story

2011-03-27T19:01:00.005-03:00

It has been quite an exciting week! On Monday I tried television news for the first time. From now on I'll be working for both radio and television, because we are an integrated newsroom and the goal is for everyone to be able to flip between both mediums.

None of the basic principles change, but there were lots of new things to try. Firstly, since I've always flown solo on everything I've covered, it was a new experience to have a partner. I worked with two different cameramen/video producers for the story (not at the same time. We shot the piece over two days).

Now, I've voiced plenty of radio pieces, so I didn't see any problems with doing the same for television. But I was a little anxious about getting the on camera part right. That's the part where I walk towards the camera and talk directly to the viewers. At that point we shot my standup, I hadn't written a script yet and I was wondering what to say. To me, it felt like we were doing things out of order.

Steve, the cameraman I was working with at the time, stopped before opening the door to take the camera and tripod out of the van, thinking about how to explain this to me.

"You already pretty much know your story before you go out," he said. "You're just getting people to tell it to you."

In the dust on the van's side window, he drew two circles. Those are the pieces of the story, he explained. He drew two curvy arrows connecting the two circles.

"That's your on-camera. You fill in the blanks," he said. You sum up what's been said. You help people understand.

Then he drew a triangle in front of the two circles. "And you would lead with your most exciting thing. That could be something that you say, or something that somebody else says, or interesting pictures."

You've got to grab people's attention with television. Actually, you have to do that with any medium, but with television there seem to be some new tricks in the eye-catching bag.

Recently one of the reporters had to talk about a certain number of people, so he went to the Saint Mary's football stadium to do his standup. When he said, "This will affect enough people to fill this football stadium," the camera zoomed out so that the viewers could see exactly how many people he was talking about.

Nancy Waugh, the executive producer of news, discussed this with me after my TV debut (a story about buses, shot mostly at a bus stop). The piece was fine but we talked about how to draw the viewers in further. It's not wrong to get involved in the story.

"If you had got on the bus, that would have taken it to a whole other level," she suggested. There aren't a lot of set-in-stone rules when it comes to TV, Nancy said, and it's a good thing to think about how to push those boundaries.

One thing to note is that if you don't shoot it, you can't use it. To a certain extent you are limited by what pictures you have (that's a problem I remember grappling with when I was at Journeyman Film). On the flip side, I was watching this video about journalism and data visualization (highly recommend you watch it, because it's fascinating even if you're not a journalist), and was blown away by this fact: half of our brain is hardwired for vision. More than any of the other senses, we are programmed to understand the world by seeing it. Pictures matter - better learn to use them.

P.S. I was mildly surprised this week to find out that other people in the newsroom are reading my blog. I always figured only a fairly limited group of people would care to follow the ins and outs of my life. But of course I'm pleased, because if there's something here that interests you, that's great. Maybe you have feedback for me. So hello, new readers! Feel free to leave a comment...or you could always come find me in person.

Why a safe space enables hope

2011-03-20T16:13:00.003-03:00

A week or two ago I did a story about an owner of a set of apartment buildings who was fined for fire code violations. I went to look at the buildings, and I thought that they did not look well kept. I later heard that there actually had been a fire there last year, a fire that put a family out of their home. The family is suing the landlord for injuries and emotional distress.

All this made me think about the place where I live, and how I am grateful for my home.

The apartment where I live is roughly triangular, with odd walls and chimneys sticking into the main living space. It feels like when they constructed the building they were pleasantly surprised to discover that they could fit one more person in it. But all in all it's a cosy little place, and I love it. I wake up in a place I feel safe, where things look neat and beautiful, and it helps me get out of bed every day.

However, there was a time when I almost moved somewhere else, somewhere that would have made a big difference in my life.

Just before I found this apartment, I was in a bit of a time crunch. It was a breakup with a live-in partner, and living in the same space as my ex was nearly impossible. We tiptoed around each other for days, avoiding being home as much as possible. I had to find a new place, fast, but my budget was roughly comparable to a university student's budget, and since it was the beginning of September, every place I could afford seemed to be taken.

One day I arrived home after viewing an available apartment with an application in my hand. I filled it out, and then sat on the edge of my bed and looked at it.

My ex, Jake, was home. He saw that I was filling out a form, and he poked his head in to find out what the news was. Then he saw that I was sniffling and he asked what was wrong.

I told Jake about the cheap apartment, deep in a dodgy part of town. I told Jake about the superintendent, who opened the double-locked door and told me, "If you ever have any problems, you call my cell, and I'll call the police right away." I told him about the dingy florescent lights and the washing machines that were constantly being busted for quarters.

I had a form in my hand that said I was asking to live in a place where I felt drained and vaguely frightened. Why? Because the rent was cheap and I'd despaired of finding anywhere else within my price range.

Jake listened patiently, and then he did one of the kindest things I've ever seen anyone do. Remember, at this point, I had told him approximately one week before that I was moving out and ending our nearly eight-year relationship.

He took the application out of my hand and held it up. "This is for people who don't have hope," he said quietly. "That is not you." He put the sheet of folded paper back into my hand. He picked up my other hand and put it on the paper, so that I was holding it pinched in my hands like clothes pins hold a sheet on a line.

"Why don't I help you tear it up?" he said.

And with his hands assisting mine, we tore the application in half, and then in half again. I dropped it in the green plastic wastebasket that was standing beside my desk. And that was the end of that.

What I learned from the newsroom

2011-03-05T18:16:00.004-04:00

After the first two days of working in the newsroom I had a feeling that things were going fairly well, but sometimes it was hard to gauge. One precious commodity in the newsroom is feedback time and advice. These are so important to a newcomer because its the only way to get better. And many, many people generously gave their time to teach me the following things.

On the whole, the feedback I was getting wasn't negative, so I let it be, until Stephen Puddicombe, our national reporter, gave me a suggestion.

"How do they like you?" he asked me. I replied I wasn't sure - things seemed to be going all right.

"Ask," he said.

"Build relationships with people," Rob North, a long-time CBC reporter, told me. It's one thing to get opinions on the pre-broadcast item, he said. But there's also value to be had in dissecting a post-broadcast item. He suggested that every now and then when I had a question about a particular piece of work, I run it by people who had time and get their opinion.

Good writing is descriptive writing, Rob explained. "Imagine that there are pictures slapped on to your script, and you have to tell me what's going on," he said.

Rob went on to explain, "Lots of good ideas don't get through." He told me to save them up, work on them, and bring them up again when the time was right. If you believe in the story, don't let it go. I had a story about a group of veterans who were spending the night with the homeless, hoping to find homeless veterans and connect them with the right services. My gut told me that it was the best idea I had, so I pitched it. Turns out that this very story was picked up by the national radio news.

Stephen Puddicombe came to see me half an hour after I pitched my veterans story. Puddy (as everyone calls him) is the national reporter for Halifax, so he will often handle the stories for the national news. But he told me that he didn't want to take my story - he thought I should do it. Twenty minutes later I heard him on the phone with Toronto, telling them about me. "Yeah, she's young," he said. "A few years out of school, I think." I skedaddled, not wanting to hear any more. Afterward Puddy came over to my desk and told me that Toronto was about to call me to find out what kind of person I was. "DON'T BE SHY," he ordered. So when the phone rang, I wasn't.

Puddy took a lot of time with me that day, although I'm sure he had his own work to do. Before I went out to do interviews, he reminded me to pay attention to what the interviewees had to say. "A lot of reporters go into a story thinking their shit doesn't smell and they know everything," he said. "I just try to let THEM tell me the story."

After I came back and was putting everything together, Puddy read over my script, listened to my editing job, and checked in with me regularly just to see that everything was going well, and stayed an extra half hour late on a Friday just so he could hear the finished product. None of this was his responsibility, and he gruffly said that he was just doing it for the story, but I'm grateful anyhow.

The first time Puddy listened to my story, he said that my voice was fine but there was a problem with the way I pronounced my P's and he wanted me to do it again. He showed me how to position the microphone better and told me to stand up. "Did you ever see a musician sitting down to perform?" he asked.

At the end of two weeks, I learned a lot. I am going back on Monday, and this time I will stay for the month of March. I'm sure there's much more to learn, but I'll keep working away and improve as much as I can. I take it as a high compliment that Puddy saw me passing one day and called out in his gravelly voice:

"Luck, you're a keeper."

What it's like to work in the CBCNS newsroom

2011-02-26T08:08:00.008-04:00

For the past two weeks I backfilled as a reporter at CBC News Nova Scotia. It was a wonderful time, and I thoroughly enjoyed the experience. Although I've worked at CBC on and off for the last three years, freelancing and associate producing on Information Morning, this is the first time I have been in the newsroom as a daily general assignment reporter. For that matter, it's the first time I've returned to daily news since I was at the Chronicle Herald five years ago.

I was told that the pace was fast, and that's true, but after a couple of days it settled into a rhythm. Every morning at 9:15 there's the story meeting. We sit around the boardroom table, perhaps a dozen reporters, and the executive producer goes around the table, looking each one of us in the eye and asking the same question: "What have you got?" They did not give me any soft treatment on this: the new girl is asked the same question as the old hands. It's important to always be looking around, talking to people, and finding out about the world around you, because you want to be able to answer that nerve-wracking question with something good.

Then we go away and work on our stories for the day. Television reporters disappear, accompanied by cameramen. Radio reporters take their recorders out and start working the phones. Web writers start ingesting the stories as they come in, enlarging them and supplementing them with maps, timelines, or pictures for the website. Every hour the newsreader disappears into one of three studios to read the headlines. On every wall and many desks there are banks of televisions that are on constantly, tuned to different channels. There is a radio that gets turned on every afternoon to the competing stations so we can hear what they are doing. A large clock on the wall ticks out the seconds. Racks of video tapes (yes, we still use tape as backup - the quality is better) are fastened to the hall walls. The Radio-Canada reporters call across the room to each other in French (as I was seated near them, I discovered that my comprehension is better than I thought).

By 4:30, the cameras are back and TV reporters are flying in and out of the edit suites, getting their pieces put together and checking to make sure all their scripts and their 'supers' are right (those are the words overlaid on top of a person on screen identifying him as "Cnst. Joe Smith, RCMP").

Radio reporters file for the 4:30pm news, the 5:30pm news, or the next morning's news, depending on their story. TV reporters file for the 6pm newscast. The two hosts of the 6 o'clock news, Tom Murphy and Amy Smith, start doing set-ups around 5, giving teasers about the upcoming stories. A camera is set up on a tripod right beside my desk, right in the middle of the aisle of the newsroom. Tom sits down on a desk across the way and talks to the camera: "Tonight, Preston Mulligan will have an update on the family of an oil worker fleeing from Libya...."

If my phone rings or if I walk across the background of Tom's shot while he's on the air, that's all captured and broadcast. Later, during the news, reporters will stand in the same spot and talk to Tom live from the newsroom. By 6pm, most people's day is done and they head home. A skeleton crew will keep watch on the late night news until 11 or 12pm, and then the room will have a few hours of quiet until the early morning shift begins around 5:30am.

You have to focus intensely in order to get the work done, but at the same time, I learned to keep half an ear open for new developments in the room.

You might think in all this hustle and bustle that I would get lost or trampled on. But I did not. I kept up with the herd, had a few adventures of my own, and learned a lot from some generous mentors. I'll tell you all about THAT next time.

Why I love opera (and you might too)

2011-02-15T21:21:00.002-04:00

Recently I came across an astounding story for my other blog, about a young woman who is giving free singing lessons to junior high girls. She's teaching them proper breathing and singing technique for all kinds of styles, from pop to opera. (The story also aired on Information Morning today, and you can listen to it here).

The teacher, Ann, is a classically trained singer, and she told me that the first time she demonstrated opera for the girls (who range from grade five to nine), their eyes widened in surprise. This is not a wealthy neighbourhood and most of the girls have never heard opera from a CD before, let alone live in a small classroom. Now, the girls request opera every time she visits. Some of them want to learn how to sing it.

"The thing with opera is, it’s hard to get the full effect of opera singing off a recording," Ann told me. "It’s really when you hear it live, you feel the reverberations from the sound. I only really got interested in opera once I realized I could sing it myself, because it’s really fun to sing. It feels very good inside to sing, it’s a very healthy thing."

Ann's story made me so happy I felt like singing, myself. At home in Toronto my parents have a large collection of classical music, including opera. My mother would often put on opera selections on the weekend, so I would wake up on Saturday morning to Puccini's Nessun Dorma cranked through the house. Once, an opera student visited my English class and sang Mozart's Voi Che Sapete three feet from where I was sitting. I know exactly why Ann Denny's girls' eyes go wide.

Opera is often seen as elitist or inaccessible. It is not. Cheap seats to the opera can be had for less than the price of a movie ticket. Opera recordings can be borrowed from the library for nothing at all - and unlike the more popular recordings, they are always available. And speaking of movies, if you don't have an opera house in your town, the Metropolitan Opera in New York is broadcasting some of their performances right into movie theatres all around the world.

Most importantly, if you listen closely, opera is about the inner story that you've lived and endured and had to come to terms with in your mind. Operas tend to stick to a few major themes: love, doomed love, hate, anger, revenge, ambition.

In his novel The Lyre of Orpheus, Robertson Davies elegantly expressed that opera is actually very simple: it is always about an enormous, universal, quintessentially human emotion. Not one member of the audience will go through life untouched by these ideas.

"There they all sit, all those stockbrokers and rich surgeons and insurance men," Davies wrote. "They look so solemn and quiet as if nothing would rouse them. But underneath they are raging with unhappy love, or vengeance, or some point of honour or ambition."

"They go to La Boheme or La Traviata and they remember some early affair that might have been squalid if you weren't living it yourself; or they see Rigoletto and think how the chairman humiliated them at the last board meeting; or they see Macbeth and think how they would like to murder the chairman and get his job. Only they don't think it; very deep down they feel it, and boil it, and suffer it in the primitive underworld of their souls."

When I listen to Nessun Dorma, or Che Gelada Manina, every love story is my love story; every moment of despair is my own. It could be the same way with you. I'd recommend giving it a try. Maybe opera will remind you of something so beautiful it can't be expressed in words, and makes your heart ache because of it.

Why it's not okay to tell white lies: my letter to the CRTC

2011-02-03T09:32:00.007-04:00

The CRTC has been in the news a great deal lately, notably for its ruling on usage-based billing for Internet, which the Conservatives have just announced they will overturn. I'm pleased to see this, and I've been following this fight closely, even joining in with petitions and letter writing.

But this post is not about that fight. This is about another CRTC fight, which has been sort of flying under the radar amid all the hubbub about more expensive Internet.

The CRTC has proposed changes to the television and radio broadcasting regulations that state, among other things, that media shall not broadcast “any news that the licensee knows is false or misleading and that endangers or is likely to endanger the lives, health or safety of the public.”

Why is this a problem? Because false news now has a second criterion - it also has to put somebody at risk. The fact alone that it is false does not necessarily rule it out. That's like saying, "It's okay to tell white lies," (a debatable position at best).

Michael Geist, a law professor at the University of Ottawa, blogged, "In other words, it would perfectly permissible for a broadcaster to air false or misleading news, provided that it not endanger the lives, health or safety of the public."

This Magazine argued that relaxing the standards of truth is "dangerous for democracy."

Me? It just gives me an uncomfortable feeling on the back of my neck. I wrote to the CRTC today, and I said this:

As a member of the public and a journalist, I wish to express my concern that the CRTC is permitting agencies to broadcast “any news that the licensee knows is false or misleading and that endangers or is likely to endanger the lives, health or safety of the public.”

I believe that this regulation is too loosely worded. It should be, "any news that the licensee knows is false or misleading," full stop.

The function of news media is often to sway opinion rather than to directly affect the "lives, health, or safety of the public."

Opinions based on false or misleading information can be extremely harmful. They may have an effect on life, health, and safety, but this connection will not be traceable or enforceable. At that point, it is too late.

I have no problem with the original wording of section 5d of the regulations: "A licensee shall not broadcast...any false or misleading news."

If you too wish to register a comment or complaint on this (or any other CRTC ruling), here is the place where you can do so. You have until February 9 to comment.

How to be alone

2011-01-29T16:22:00.002-04:00

I haven't had a lot of time to blog lately, so I'm pulling out an old post that I wrote some time ago and saved. It's still very relevant, and I'd like to share it.

It's a very lovely five-minute film by filmmaker Andrea Dorfman, which features a poem and music by Tanya Davis. Both are from Halifax, and this film was shot locally.

It's called How to Be Alone, and it circulated on the Internet like a wildfire back in the summer. I've loved it since I first saw it a few days after it appeared on Youtube. More than two and a half million views later, it is still spreading.

I find this film calming when I am down. It's taken me a long time to learn to be alone, but I'm trying. When I am tired and anxious and I get the prickly teary feeling in the bridge of my nose I play this video, and I hit replay as many times as it takes for Tanya Davis' voice to soothe me. Perhaps this sounds close to obsessive-compulsive behaviour, but I don't care if it is. It helps.

The filmmakers probably did not mean this as a serious self-help instructional video, but I've eaten alone, I've gone to the woods, I've made small and tentative steps to pick up an art that I had and I lost. Here's a secret: Remember when I went to St. John's in September? Do you know why I went there?

The film told me to: "Go to an unfamiliar city. Roam the streets; there are always statues to talk to, and benches made for sitting give strangers a shared existence, if only for a minute, and these moments can be so uplifting, and the conversations you get in by sitting alone on benches might have never happened had you not been there by yourself."

Believe it or not, that too helped.

In a way this is a sad film, but I find its effect on me is exactly the opposite. I call it a hopeful film. It doesn't say that it's better to be alone, but it says if you learn to be good to yourself and deal with the thoughts in your head, then being alone is okay.

There is a fine line between being alone and being lonely, but the distinction is important. I belong to me, and I am learning to understand me, and there is something pleasing about that. I carry the first line around in my head like a mantra: "If you are at first lonely, be patient."

Happy New Year!

2011-01-09T18:12:00.001-04:00

Happy New Year.

We are now well into the year, and approaching the time when it makes no sense to reflect on the old year, just to put it behind us and deal with the new one. So I'd better get my reflecting done and over with.

2010 was not a bad year, but it was a difficult year. I spent a lot of it questioning what I was doing, where I was going, and what I really want. I questioned everything from my professional life to matters of the heart. It felt like a rebuilding year. Things came together, but not much came easily.

I went through a crash course in freelance hustling, did a lot of networking, started a website, and had a lot of baggage to process before any gentlemen callers were admitted ("It seems like you overcame some big psychological barrier," said my mother).

Last year I made some resolutions:

1) Slowing down to think before I speak, before I act, and particularly before I write.
2) Learning to be more humble.
3) Turning off the computer more often and connecting with real human beings.
4) Worrying less about what other people think of me when there's nothing I can do about it.
5) Letting grief go.

I didn't get them perfect, but I made progress, and I'm happy with that. It seems to me as if I've reached a good place to start, and there is much to build on. If last year was a foundation, this year I'll be able to start shaping things.

So without further ado, here are a couple of resolutions for 2011:

1) Envying the success of others is a waste of time. Throw that out.
2) Return to dancing. It made me happy and I don't make time for it anymore.
3) Concentrate on doing fewer things, but focus on exploring them in depth and doing them right.

Merry Christmas!

2010-12-24T17:32:00.004-04:00

Merry Christmas, everyone. I am home and feeling very lucky and loved. Here's my gift to you. It is a short story by O. Henry, which is pretty well known and often parodied. It's cheesy as fromage, but still sweet. It has been on my mind for a week or two. At a dinner table of twelve people, a friend of mine cracked a joke referencing this story, and everyone else looked a bit blank. So maybe it isn't as well known as I thought, and that seems like a good reason to post it here. I wish you all a wonderful Christmas. Here's a little love for each and every one of you.

The Gift of the Magi, by O. Henry (1906)

One dollar and eighty-seven cents. That was all. And sixty cents of it was in pennies. Pennies saved one and two at a time by bulldozing the grocer and the vegetable man and the butcher until one's cheeks burned with the silent imputation of parsimony that such close dealing implied. Three times Della counted it. One dollar and eighty- seven cents. And the next day would be Christmas.

There was clearly nothing to do but flop down on the shabby little couch and howl. So Della did it. Which instigates the moral reflection that life is made up of sobs, sniffles, and smiles, with sniffles predominating.

While the mistress of the home is gradually subsiding from the first stage to the second, take a look at the home. A furnished flat at $8 per week. It did not exactly beggar description, but it certainly had that word on the lookout for the mendicancy squad.

In the vestibule below was a letter-box into which no letter would go, and an electric button from which no mortal finger could coax a ring. Also appertaining thereunto was a card bearing the name "Mr. James Dillingham Young."

The "Dillingham" had been flung to the breeze during a former period of prosperity when its possessor was being paid $30 per week. Now, when the income was shrunk to $20, though, they were thinking seriously of contracting to a modest and unassuming D. But whenever Mr. James Dillingham Young came home and reached his flat above he was called "Jim" and greatly hugged by Mrs. James Dillingham Young, already introduced to you as Della. Which is all very good.

Della finished her cry and attended to her cheeks with the powder rag. She stood by the window and looked out dully at a gray cat walking a gray fence in a gray backyard. Tomorrow would be Christmas Day, and she had only $1.87 with which to buy Jim a present. She had been saving every penny she could for months, with this result. Twenty dollars a week doesn't go far. Expenses had been greater than she had calculated. They always are. Only $1.87 to buy a present for Jim. Her Jim. Many a happy hour she had spent planning for something nice for him. Something fine and rare and sterling--something just a little bit near to being worthy of the honor of being owned by Jim.

There was a pier-glass between the windows of the room. Perhaps you have seen a pier-glass in an $8 flat. A very thin and very agile person may, by observing his reflection in a rapid sequence of longitudinal strips, obtain a fairly accurate conception of his looks. Della, being slender, had mastered the art.

Suddenly she whirled from the window and stood before the glass. her eyes were shining brilliantly, but her face had lost its color within twenty seconds. Rapidly she pulled down her hair and let it fall to its full length.

Now, there were two possessions of the James Dillingham Youngs in which they both took a mighty pride. One was Jim's gold watch that had been his father's and his grandfather's. The other was Della's hair. Had the queen of Sheba lived in the flat across the airshaft, Della would have let her hair hang out the window some day to dry just to depreciate Her Majesty's jewels and gifts. Had King Solomon been the janitor, with all his treasures piled up in the basement, Jim would have pulled out his watch every time he passed, just to see him pluck at his beard from envy.

So now Della's beautiful hair fell about her rippling and shining like a cascade of brown waters. It reached below her knee and made itself almost a garment for her. And then she did it up again nervously and quickly. Once she faltered for a minute and stood still while a tear or two splashed on the worn red carpet.

On went her old brown jacket; on went her old brown hat. With a whirl of skirts and with the brilliant sparkle still in her eyes, she fluttered out the door and down the stairs to the street.

Where she stopped the sign read: "Mne. Sofronie. Hair Goods of All Kinds." One flight up Della ran, and collected herself, panting. Madame, large, too white, chilly, hardly looked the "Sofronie."

"Will you buy my hair?" asked Della.

"I buy hair," said Madame. "Take yer hat off and let's have a sight at the looks of it."

Down rippled the brown cascade.

"Twenty dollars," said Madame, lifting the mass with a practised hand.

"Give it to me quick," said Della.

Oh, and the next two hours tripped by on rosy wings. Forget the hashed metaphor. She was ransacking the stores for Jim's present.

She found it at last. It surely had been made for Jim and no one else. There was no other like it in any of the stores, and she had turned all of them inside out. It was a platinum fob chain simple and chaste in design, properly proclaiming its value by substance alone and not by meretricious ornamentation--as all good things should do. It was even worthy of The Watch. As soon as she saw it she knew that it must be Jim's. It was like him. Quietness and value--the description applied to both. Twenty-one dollars they took from her for it, and she hurried home with the 87 cents. With that chain on his watch Jim might be properly anxious about the time in any company. Grand as the watch was, he sometimes looked at it on the sly on account of the old leather strap that he used in place of a chain.

When Della reached home her intoxication gave way a little to prudence and reason. She got out her curling irons and lighted the gas and went to work repairing the ravages made by generosity added to love. Which is always a tremendous task, dear friends--a mammoth task.

Within forty minutes her head was covered with tiny, close-lying curls that made her look wonderfully like a truant schoolboy. She looked at her reflection in the mirror long, carefully, and critically.

"If Jim doesn't kill me," she said to herself, "before he takes a second look at me, he'll say I look like a Coney Island chorus girl. But what could I do--oh! what could I do with a dollar and eighty- seven cents?"

At 7 o'clock the coffee was made and the frying-pan was on the back of the stove hot and ready to cook the chops.

Jim was never late. Della doubled the fob chain in her hand and sat on the corner of the table near the door that he always entered. Then she heard his step on the stair away down on the first flight, and she turned white for just a moment. She had a habit for saying little silent prayer about the simplest everyday things, and now she whispered: "Please God, make him think I am still pretty."

The door opened and Jim stepped in and closed it. He looked thin and very serious. Poor fellow, he was only twenty-two--and to be burdened with a family! He needed a new overcoat and he was without gloves.

Jim stopped inside the door, as immovable as a setter at the scent of quail. His eyes were fixed upon Della, and there was an expression in them that she could not read, and it terrified her. It was not anger, nor surprise, nor disapproval, nor horror, nor any of the sentiments that she had been prepared for. He simply stared at her fixedly with that peculiar expression on his face.

Della wriggled off the table and went for him.

"Jim, darling," she cried, "don't look at me that way. I had my hair cut off and sold because I couldn't have lived through Christmas without giving you a present. It'll grow out again--you won't mind, will you? I just had to do it. My hair grows awfully fast. Say `Merry Christmas!' Jim, and let's be happy. You don't know what a nice-- what a beautiful, nice gift I've got for you."

"You've cut off your hair?" asked Jim, laboriously, as if he had not arrived at that patent fact yet even after the hardest mental labor.

"Cut it off and sold it," said Della. "Don't you like me just as well, anyhow? I'm me without my hair, ain't I?"

Jim looked about the room curiously.

"You say your hair is gone?" he said, with an air almost of idiocy.

"You needn't look for it," said Della. "It's sold, I tell you--sold and gone, too. It's Christmas Eve, boy. Be good to me, for it went for you. Maybe the hairs of my head were numbered," she went on with sudden serious sweetness, "but nobody could ever count my love for you. Shall I put the chops on, Jim?"

Out of his trance Jim seemed quickly to wake. He enfolded his Della. For ten seconds let us regard with discreet scrutiny some inconsequential object in the other direction. Eight dollars a week or a million a year--what is the difference? A mathematician or a wit would give you the wrong answer. The magi brought valuable gifts, but that was not among them. This dark assertion will be illuminated later on.

Jim drew a package from his overcoat pocket and threw it upon the table.

"Don't make any mistake, Dell," he said, "about me. I don't think there's anything in the way of a haircut or a shave or a shampoo that could make me like my girl any less. But if you'll unwrap that package you may see why you had me going a while at first."

White fingers and nimble tore at the string and paper. And then an ecstatic scream of joy; and then, alas! a quick feminine change to hysterical tears and wails, necessitating the immediate employment of all the comforting powers of the lord of the flat.

For there lay The Combs--the set of combs, side and back, that Della had worshipped long in a Broadway window. Beautiful combs, pure tortoise shell, with jewelled rims--just the shade to wear in the beautiful vanished hair. They were expensive combs, she knew, and her heart had simply craved and yearned over them without the least hope of possession. And now, they were hers, but the tresses that should have adorned the coveted adornments were gone.

But she hugged them to her bosom, and at length she was able to look up with dim eyes and a smile and say: "My hair grows so fast, Jim!"

And them Della leaped up like a little singed cat and cried, "Oh, oh!"

Jim had not yet seen his beautiful present. She held it out to him eagerly upon her open palm. The dull precious metal seemed to flash with a reflection of her bright and ardent spirit.

"Isn't it a dandy, Jim? I hunted all over town to find it. You'll have to look at the time a hundred times a day now. Give me your watch. I want to see how it looks on it."

Instead of obeying, Jim tumbled down on the couch and put his hands under the back of his head and smiled.

"Dell," said he, "let's put our Christmas presents away and keep 'em a while. They're too nice to use just at present. I sold the watch to get the money to buy your combs. And now suppose you put the chops on."

The magi, as you know, were wise men--wonderfully wise men--who brought gifts to the Babe in the manger. They invented the art of giving Christmas presents. Being wise, their gifts were no doubt wise ones, possibly bearing the privilege of exchange in case of duplication. And here I have lamely related to you the uneventful chronicle of two foolish children in a flat who most unwisely sacrificed for each other the greatest treasures of their house. But in a last word to the wise of these days let it be said that of all who give gifts these two were the wisest. O all who give and receive gifts, such as they are wisest. Everywhere they are wisest. They are the magi.

Last minute not-Christmas shopping

2010-12-22T15:42:00.003-04:00

Phewf.

Today was my last half-day of work before the holidays, and I spent it buying company props and supplies for our film shoot in January. This is part of my work for Journeyman Film Company, which you may have seen me talk about in my last post. The props list for this film shoot is a bit bizarre, because it involves a lot of comical tableaus and visual gags.

My own Christmas preparations were done a while ago, but as I got jostled by the crowds, it was a bit like trying to fill out all the bits of some bizarre Christmas list all over again. Here are some of the things that I have to get (some, I admit I didn't manage to find today):

-Juggling balls and pins

-A sailor's dress uniform

-A case of granola bars

-Chemical heat packs for slipping inside your mittens

-A large plastic plant

-A top hat

-A surfboard

-A gorilla suit

-A stocks

-A loveseat

-A globe

-A wetsuit

-An oversized teddy bear

You just try to rush around the city filling out this list on December 22nd! This should be a very interesting shoot indeed.

Anyhow, that is on hold for the moment as I am officially on vacation until January. At the moment I'm waiting in the Halifax airport for my flight to Toronto. I wish everyone who is travelling a safe trip, and that you all reach your destination as soon as possible.

An open call to end violence against women

2010-12-13T23:16:00.008-04:00

Last week, I looked at the calendar and realized that two important dates fell in the same week. December 6 was the anniversary of the Montreal massacre, where 14 female engineering students were shot dead just for being women. December 10 was Human Rights Day, the day that the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was signed. It's also the day that I usually set aside to write a letter in support of Amnesty International's campaign to free a prisoner of conscience.

This year I didn't write a letter, because I want to write this instead: an open call to end violence against women everywhere. We know this is a problem, a disgraceful problem, and it must stop. Simple as that: it must stop.

I also want to tell you a story to show you why this is on my mind.

A few Saturday nights ago, some friends and I were at the Celtic Corner in Dartmouth. We were laughing and flirting with people and eating wings, and when we walked out - Pete and Curtis and I - we were all feeling pretty happy. It was just round midnight and raining like someone turned the shower on 'Drench,' and freezing cold too, so we were in a hurry to get to the car.

We brushed right by a group of three skinny students who were standing on the sidewalk not far from the bar. The two boys had hoods up and the girl had big bug-like glasses and a scarf over her head. I heard them run up behind us and turned around.

"Guys, would you help us with something?" said one of the boys. He had a scraggly dark beard. He pointed to a couple about ten feet away, who were disappearing into a parking lot. "We just saw that man hit that woman in the face, and now he's taking her away with him."

The other boy was on his cell phone. They'd called the police to ask what they should do, and the cops said to keep an eye on the couple until a cruiser arrived.

The couple were walking away quickly, and all six of us turned and walked along behind them in the rain. Pete ran along a bit faster and called out to them. "Excuse me, miss - is everything all right?" he shouted. I heard a muffled sort of yes. Pete ran back.

"She's crying," he said. "He's holding her hand but it's not all right."

"Would you guys just relax?" the man shouted at us. It was dark and hard to see them if they got too far ahead. The couple went up a flight of stairs and waited for a few minutes to see if we would go away. When we didn't, they went down the back way and on into a park down by the canal.

They thought that they'd lost us then, because when we caught up they were standing still and arguing again. And all this time, the cops were still on the phone with us, asking us where we were, telling us that they were coming.

Finally, the man hustled the woman onto a footbridge that led over the canal, and just as they did, we saw two blinding spotlights from a police cruiser pull up on the other side of the bridge. We saw several officers get out and speak to the couple, while the three students went forward to make statements.

Pete, Curtis, and I walked back, completely soaked, a little bit shocked, and not entirely sure if we'd done the situation any good at all.

"It's no good," Pete said. "When I called out to her, she said everything was fine. She won't press charges, and he'll just do it all over again. I hate that. It's an unusual situation for something like that to happen in public - but I'm glad those three were there, and I'm glad that they decided not to just let it slide."

With my cold hands in my coat pockets, I crossed my fingers for her, and for all of the women like her.

Taking a risk on a new experiment

2010-12-06T21:52:00.002-04:00

It's been a while since I posted anything here on Chebucto West, and this is why: I was working.

Okay, we all know that I already work - freelancing is a lot of work - but this is a regular, Monday to Friday, 9-5 sort of job. It's with a great small company called Journeyman Film, located in Dartmouth.

This is a six-week contract, and I'm going to pack a lot into the next few weeks.

Why did I want to work here? Well, a lot of reasons. Firstly, they are good filmmakers and good storytellers, whose repertoire ranges from marketing videos to documentaries. Bragging rights: I like being able to walk into the back study and see a Gemini sitting on the bookshelf.

Secondly, I wanted to learn more about film and video storytelling. As I've told you before, this is an area I'm interested in strengthening my knowledge.

And thirdly, I thought I'd be good at it. I like to say that my job is a bit of everything: research, note-taking, summarizing, analysis, people-wrangling, scheduling, and sandwich making.

We've got several film shoots coming up in the next few weeks, and they have to be put together. That means everything from researching the background information to copy editing scripts to casting the actors to buying the green beans we'll use in the kitchen scene.

Many people have asked me if I will continue to freelance while I am working at Journeyman. And the answer to that question is: yes, of course, though naturally I have to take on fewer commissions. But a good story is a good story, and even though I am learning and concentrating on a visual medium, I see no reason to turn off my radar for news, for magazine features, and for my beloved radio pieces. I'd even say it helps to be able to see things from the perspective of many mediums.

And since at Journeyman we also blog, below I've excerpted the post I wrote for the company blog about how I and Matt Chisholm (my fellow thinker in the picture), are handling the work.

From the Journeyman Film Company blog:

Since I arrived at Journeyman a few weeks ago, there has been so much to learn: everything from handling our project management system to wearing slippers at work. Any time you settle into a new job there’s a steep learning curve, but I’m glad to say that I’ve had company in working through it.

Many people applied for this work, but it was difficult to find exactly the right person. Eventually Mathew Welsh and Nic Fieldsend concluded that the ‘right person’ actually existed in two people: me, and my counterpart, Matthew Chisholm.

We’re kind of like R2-D2 and C-3PO, though I won’t tell you who is who. We work in the same room, consult on decisions, and occasionally talk to each other in silly accents.

It’s been good to work with someone else, and I’m glad that Journeyman decided to try a creative staffing solution, because we’re learning from each other. Ultimately I hope what we’ll become is not just two halves of the same job, but two people with their own specialties, who are versatile enough to fill in for each other. That’s good firepower any way you look at it.

But we can only ramp up our firepower if someone decides to invest in us and give us a chance to learn through experience. It so happens that at Journeyman we do a lot of thinking about this. We’ve worked on past projects such as the Come to Life campaign to encourage young people to stay in Nova Scotia. We’re working on projects now such as this film for the international video game development industry, to encourage them to come and live here.

Recently I came across a blog post from Stephen Lund, the head of Nova Scotia Business Inc, where he argued that keeping young people here is up to everyone. “Hire a recent graduate,” he wrote. “Don’t insist on 3-to-5-years’ experience. Don’t give young people a reason to leave because they may not come back.”

As one of the people that Stephen is speaking about, I agree with his argument about the need for flexibility from employers. There must be a willingness to try something new: like hiring two people with complementary skills.

And I think that what employers will find is that we are very willing to work – and work hard – to make sure that an experiment succeeds.

You want us to cooperate? Not a problem: Chisholm and I were on a last name basis by the second day. You want us to minimize demands on your time? Then we’ll sort out each other’s technical problems and teach ourselves in order to get the job done.

I bet that’s just what C-3P0 and R2-D2 would have done.

How to work the night shift

2010-11-17T18:43:00.006-04:00

Yesterday I was the last one out of the office. The sky had already been dark for hours, and the halls were quiet except for someone mopping in the bathroom.

This is because I was working the evening shift. On that shift I cover any evening events, make sure that all of the odds and ends are written and in their correct places (and if not, write and insert them myself), and print off the scripts for the next morning. I have to leave everything in apple-pie order for the crew to come in at 4:30am, pick up their scripts, and run with them.

Some people don't like that sort of shift. A writer I know at the Toronto Star's website likes to post what she calls "sad night shift tweets." I don't mind so much. Let's look at it this way: they are letting me handle a job alone. That's trust.

There can be an eerie feeling in an empty office building, especially at night. Some of the lights are off, and I can imagine the ghosts of the people who should be at those empty desks.

I unplug the headphone jack so that I can hear whatever audio piece I'm working on without any interference. Sometimes I sing songs to myself, open the window, or trot back and forth between desk and photocopier, despite the "No running in the halls" sign.

Once, when all my work was done and I was on my way home, I went into Studio A and sat down at the piano. There's a glossy black Yamaha upright in there, pushed up against the inside wall. I touched a key, let it vibrate. The studio is built with sound in mind. I closed my eyes and the note seemed to last impossibly long, a humming inside my head that hardly faded in volume. Finally, I opened my eyes and released the key. Inside the piano the damper came down and the humming stopped.

I dug deep into my memory and pulled out the only thing that ever comes to mind when I sit down at pianos: a little gavotte in A major by Handel. I memorized this long ago, when I was still taking piano lessons. How long? I'm not sure. I think I was oh, nine or so. Why any part of it is still with me, I do not know.

My fingers were hesitant, and I couldn't quite grab the muscle memory back through the fog in my brain. Sounding it out didn't seem to be working, so I launched into the gavotte at full tilt. Suddenly, my fingers snapped into action, and there it was: I was playing again. Not much, and not well, but it was something.

This is what it sounded like.

The life and death of Neil Allan Smith

2010-11-04T20:48:00.004-03:00

Some time ago I heard a story on the radio that I've been meaning to share with you.

The story was about the life and death of a middle-aged man named Neil Alan Smith. He lived in St. Petersburg, Florida. He worked as a dishwasher for minimum wage at a seafood restaurant called the Crabshack. He bicycled four miles back and forth to work each day. He liked the Red Sox, Aerosmith, and Celine Dion. He was a quiet man, who always paid his rent, was private about his personal life, and seemed to be generous with the money he had.

On September 12, he was struck from behind by a hit-and-run driver, while cycling home from work. He was thrown from the bike, hit his head on a post, and never regained consciousness. For six days he lay in the hospital. Then he died.

The St. Petersburg Times duly reported the accident and Mr. Smith's subsequent death. Then, on the online version of the story, an anonymous commenter cruelly wrote, "A man who is 48 and working at the Crabshack is surely better off dead."

The newspaper removed the comment, then it went further. It assigned a reporter, Andrew Meacham, to write a compassionate profile on the life of Neil Allan Smith.

This story, and the story within that story, brought me round from a day that had been a bit wilting. I didn't feel very good about humanity in general, and I felt still worse about myself, but that changed a little bit when I read the St. Petersburg Times.

Mr. Smith is completely appropriate in the everyman-ism of his name. I imagined him as my brother, my neighbour, my friend, or myself. Several years ago, J.K. Rowling spoke at Harvard's commencement, and she said this: "Imagination is not only the uniquely human capacity to envision that which is not, and therefore the fount of all invention and innovation. In its arguably most transformative and revelatory capacity, it is the power that enables us to empathize with humans whose experiences we have never shared."

In other words, imagination is what makes us human, and it takes a bitter lack of imagination to lead someone to pronounce a 48-year-old minimum wage worker "better off dead." So thank you, Andrew Meacham and the St. Petersburg Times. My imagination was feeling worn, but you helped me polish it up, and for that I am grateful.

Photo courtesy Tampa Bay Online.

"No man is an island entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main…any man's death diminishes me, for I am involved in mankind."
- John Donne, Meditation XVII, Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions.

Brilliant marketing, or lovely moment in an airport?

2010-11-01T21:55:00.009-03:00

There's a three minute video which has been streaking through my Facebook feed all day, posted by various people. I finally watched it, and discovered to my surprise that I really enjoyed it.

It's an advertisement for a cell phone company, which was done by a group of acapella singers who orchestrated an appearance at international arrivals in Heathrow airport.

I sent this video to a friend, warning her that it was a little ridiculous, a little cheesy, but somehow, sweet.

"I'm tearing up at work," my friend wrote me back. "It's just nice. There's not a whole lot of nice in the world." Another friend wrote of the video: "This is brilliant effing advertising...and kind of lovely."

Yes, it is brilliant and kind of lovely, when advertising is usually exactly the opposite. It made me believe (rightly or wrongly) that the arriving passengers in the video were genuinely surprised and touched. It sold me the idea that not all surprises in life have to be ugly. This in turn surprised and touched me. Although this was obviously a completely contrived situation, it leaves me room to believe that there's something true in there.

Confession: I teared up a little bit too, right around the "I knew you were waiting for me" bit. Am I a sap? Yes. I'm far too much of a sap. But it made me think about all the times I've come through the automatic doors at an airport to see people waiting for me and smiling at me.

It's not just the ad itself, because on its own, the ad could be just a bunch of weirdos singing loudly and harassing passengers who want to get home after an overseas flight. It's the memories the ad evokes that make the thing lovely.

So do I care that it's an advertisement? No, not really - and that's the brilliant secret that smart advertisers seem to know. We're jaded by ads, so the best ones give us something back rather than hammering us with information. The Old Spice ad, for example, gave us all a laugh. T-Mobile reminded me of how it feels to be loved, and good Lord, that's not so easy to do these days.

Heck, if you can make me feel loved for three minutes, I'll even watch it again.

I experiment with video blogging and get in touch with my inner nerd

2010-10-30T11:55:00.004-03:00

Hello everybody! This is rather exciting: As you can see, I'm trying a video blog entry. In today's episode, I'll tell you about why I'm experimenting with this new medium, and a little news about what I'll be doing this weekend (hint: it's nerdy).

Recently I read about a great experiment in journalism and storytelling: a group of reporters in Britain invited the residents of their town to come and tell their stories - any story, in the way that the residents chose. I thought this was a fascinating idea. It's quite free-form, and you never know what you might get. But that seems to be the interesting part of it. You might get something amazing. What if this sort of event could be combined with the livestreaming technology that I just learned, to tell the stories of people in my neighbourhood?

As always, feel free to leave a comment. Let me know if you think this is a good brainwave, or if you like the video, or if you think I should get off the camera and stick to writing.

Ask your questions

2010-10-25T08:53:00.006-03:00

I was reminded of a good journalistic lesson this weekend: don't be afraid to ask simple questions.

On Saturday I went to the 2010 Joseph Howe Symposium, which is held every year on a journalism-related topic at the University of King's College. I've gone to this conference two years in a row now, and find it kick starts my brain and makes me think about journalism in a different way. King's happens to be my alma mater, and I found it very soothing to be back in the blonde wood desks and chairs of the Alumni Hall. I brought my notebook, but barely wrote anything down. I just listened.

There's a time after every talk where the audience can ask questions, and I had one or two: mostly about the process of writing (an author's relationship with the editor, and about interviewing techniques). Now, I'm actually a shy sort of person, and it's not easy to get up in front of 150 people and say something into the microphone. On the other hand, I think when you're scared of something, that's a good indication you need to take a running leap at it and conquer it.

I watched several older men get up and ask long, long, long winded questions. In return they got confused, meandering answers. I thought, "If I don't ask my simple question, no one else is going to ask it for me." So I crossed my arms to warm up my chilly body, and I could feel my heart thudding as I dug my thumbs into my ribs, and I stood up to ask a question that I could put in one sentence.

Turns out, several veteran journalists told me afterward that they liked that question. They were interested in the answer. Simple is good.

Later, I got to talk all about questions with Linden MacIntyre, host of the CBC TV program the Fifth Estate, and Sally Reardon, his retired executive producer.

"You want to make people feel good about themselves," Linden told me. "Interviewing is like dancing...there is no ego. This is not a competition...the best question is why."

"Be very specific," Sally said. "Then you won't waste people's time."

Consider the lesson learned.

The above picture is King's professor Dean Jobb (left) interviewing Linden MacIntyre. The conference was livestreamed over the Internet, and the archive can be viewed here.

Happy anniversary, Chebucto West.

2010-10-20T09:49:00.002-03:00

I started this blog one year ago today, and so this seemed like an appropriate time to examine what I am doing and where it is going. A year ago I had jumped into a scary new phase of my life, and I needed to talk to someone.

This was ridiculous, because there were plenty of real people in my life who I could talk to, but there's always something lost in translation. Either I can't quite say what I mean to the real people, or they don't quite understand. With a blog I can imagine that out there, somewhere, someone is reading it who understands even if I don't explain well enough. Someone out there who can read between the lines and intuitively understand all my nuances (I know this person doesn't exist, but let me have my imaginary comforts).

I don't ask you to read this blog, but I'm glad you do. It's amazing to me that anybody could be so interested in my life. I'm not witty or funny, I don't give out recipe tips or cat-training advice, and although I'd like to think that I have my good moments, I doubt you came here for the pure beauty of my prose.

This isn't the kind of Julie & Julia blog that is going to land me a book deal and a movie (but for the record, if it happens, can we get Jo Chim to play me, please?).

In the end, Life in Chebucto West really isn't very useful except as a vent for my highs and lows. It has become another way of feeling understood, of feeling less alone. It does work - thanks to you. With your help, I think everything will be okay.

I know there are a few people reading this who are just like me: frightened that you won't succeed in life, sometimes worried about money, lonely by times. Some of you haven't found love yet, or you've lost it, or just missed it. Some of you haven't found jobs yet, or not the right jobs. Some of you worry that maybe you've made some bad decisions, that you will never see the world, never get to live out any of your dreams, never do one significant thing in your lives.

Look, I don't have any of the answers. But I like to imagine that you understand me, so feel free to imagine that I understand you. You're not alone. Believe me, everything will be okay.

When I'm 64

2010-10-18T17:39:00.003-03:00

I've been thinking a lot about relationships. Lately, after a long silence, suddenly it seemed as if there were a multitude of offers on the table. Frankly, I'm scared of all of them for differing reasons. I think it's time to be patient and wait...just wait.

I often like to think about my friend Cathy, who is 40 and more full of energy and spunk than I could ever hope to be. She can go to a morning salsafit class, follow it up with a shoreline cleanup, run home for a quick shower and a change, then go to a birthday party and dance all night. In between doing those things, she'll pop by my place to pick up the casserole dish she left with me after that potluck last weekend.

She also happens to be single, and though I think she would like a companion, I've never seen her whine about it. Sometimes when I am feeling blue I will call her on up just to hear her tell me that everything is going to be all right.

She once told me this story, which I've paraphrased somewhat, but you get the idea.

"When I was working at an old age home," she said, "there was this vivacious old lady in her 90s. She was this smart, active, larger-than-life creature who made everyone laugh."

One day, Cathy and the other staff got worried because they noticed that this sprightly lady had failed to come downstairs for a meal. This was unlike her, and they knew something must be very wrong. So Cathy went upstairs to the old lady's room, and discovered the woman lying there, sobbing her eyes out.

"She was crying as if her heart was broken," Cathy said, dropping each word on me like a depressing little raindrop.

This woman had been in the shower and had lost something down the drain: a pearl earring, given to her by her late husband. This 90-year-old woman met her husband when she was 64. She recognized, in her sixties, what she had been waiting for all that time.

"She'd never been married before then, never wanted to. She just never found the right person," Cathy said. "She never married after. He was the love of her life, and he died, and these earrings were what she had left."

"So when I get down, I think of that," Cathy concluded. "I hope I won't have to wait until I'm 64, but you never know. There's always hope."

So if you're reading this and you're worried about when the universe will furnish you with the relationship you're looking for, I hope you'll worry a little bit less. I hope if you wait a little longer, you will find that the wait was worth it. I hope in the meantime you try to make yourself happy. We have all the time in the world.

Art doesn't come in boxes: Nocturne

2010-10-17T09:11:00.003-03:00

Not sure why I'm incapable of sleeping in, but here I am, blogging at 9:00 on a Sunday morning. I was up late last night at Nocturne, Halifax's public art at night festival. For my Toronto readers, it's similar to Nuit Blanche.

All the galleries were open, closed shops became performance spaces, and buskers were out in force. There was also parade that reminded me of a cross between a New Orleans jazz band (trumpets, trombones, and a whack-load of drummers - you could hear them coming from three blocks away) and a Rio Carnaval (fire jugglers and torches, giant sea creature floats like a giant octopus made of pool noodles and a snake made of flexible air ducting, glowing lanterns as long as my arm).

Nocturne lasted from 6pm to 12am, and I had a good time wandering around the downtown with a friend. The whole area was packed with people. You might think that looking at art in the dark was a serious, introspective activity. It wasn't. People were laughing, joining the parade, blowing up balloons until they popped, wearing silly hats, talking to perfect strangers, playing with glow in the dark paint, shaking noisemakers.

I saw many beautiful things last night, but that was the best one: People meeting in public space, discussing what they saw and what they thought, making something together.

Don't ever let me go

2010-10-14T12:46:00.002-03:00

Now that all 33 miners and 5 rescuers have emerged safely from the bottom of that Chilean mine, I can breathe a sigh of relief and let this really be the good news story that I've been hoping for all along.

Goodness knows, I need good news. The front page of my paper just depresses me. I feel like a "stupid, lazy, or complicit editorialist" if I'm not delivering news that takes a bite out of someone. I feel like I need to be tougher, or more hard-hitting, or something.

Just right now, though, I don't feel very tough. I've been struggling to stay optimistic lately and I've been thinking about how much I would like a hug.

I watched CNN's coverage of the sixth miner emerging from the rescue capsule. I don't know who the first person he hugs is - it may be his wife or girlfriend, as he kisses her - but the thing that moved me was not the kissing or the tears, but the part where he rubs her back. They are already wrapped as close as can be, but he reaches out with his right hand and rubs her back so roughly that it's like petting a dog, his hand sticking and scraping across the material of her coat.

Please forgive me for a self-indulgent post, but I like seeing that. I like thinking about that feeling: Hug me, because I can't believe you're really here. Thank goodness for someone to cling to. Just keep holding me, and don't let go.

What I'm thankful for today

2010-10-11T11:01:00.004-03:00

Happy Thanksgiving. Today, I'd like to offer you a list of the things that I am thankful for:

My family, who support me and love me from far away.

My friends, who watch out for me and have my back. I am particularly thankful for someone who did this at considerable personal cost - thank you, my dear friend.

The kindness shown by my ex's family (him, his girlfriend, his mother, father, two brothers and their girlfriends) who, believe it or not, invited me to spend Thanksgiving with them. "We're friends, no matter what happened in the past," they told me.

Good health, knock on wood.

Work that is challenging, fulfilling, and a lot of fun.

All the things that I've been given, especially when other people who deserve them just as much don't have any.

An idea of what I want and what's important to me, which allows me to shape my life and give it some direction.

Self-respect, which took time to learn and without which I would self-destruct.

Last goodbye

2010-10-07T00:29:00.003-03:00

When you are young and come from away, sometimes you go back to away. It upsets me to watch smart, talented young people leave a province that desperately needs them. But how can I blame them?

Many of my friends in this city are young and rootless, and some of them are restless. Our families live elsewhere, so there's no weight from four generations of graves to hold us back. We have nothing to bind us to Halifax except our jobs and each other, which is almost, but not quite, enough.

Last week Curtis and I took Emma to the airport so she could use up her one-way ticket to England. She had two overweight suitcases, one carry-on case, a purse, and a pink flower patterned ski bag stuffed full of clothes. She had a great job offer and five weeks to make sure the rest of her life fit around it (apparently a significant part of Emma's life fits in a ski bag).

We helped her push her things to the check-in desk, hugged her, and watched her line up for security. Just before she got to the head of the line, we ran up as close as we could and began to sniffle loudly.

"Our little girl," Curtis croaked in falsetto, "All grown up."
"Look at her," I replied, scrubbing my face with an imaginary hankie. "Going out into the big wide world."

And Emma laughed, and we laughed, and then she was gone.

I was listening to the Wailin' Jennys song Last Goodbye today, thinking that the title sounds so melancholy. Who wants to say goodbye to a friend forever?

Then I thought that maybe I was reading the song all wrong. Surely the day that I've said my last goodbye will be a happy one. No more loss after that, nothing left but meetings and beginnings. It makes me hopeful in a ridiculous, romantic, impossible, happily-ever-after way, but I do it anyway, and keep dreaming about a day when goodbye is an unnecessary word.

Follow me: how I want to see you use Twitter

2010-09-24T09:23:00.006-03:00

My mother, who is my blog's biggest fan, recently asked me, "I've been looking at the Twitter feed in the right hand column of your blog. Can you explain those funny symbols? They seem to be some kind of code for talking to other Twitter users."

For quick reference, you will find a comprehensive guide to the code here.

Think of Twitter as a virtual cocktail party. That cocktail party would be very boring if everyone only talked about themselves and the tiny details of their lives.

Since Twitter is a constant stream of conversation, the whole point of the code is to link your words to further topics. That's what I want to see from the people I follow.

Show me links. I want to see that you are reading and analyzing. I want to know what's going into your head (because if nothing's going into your head, then it's empty and I'm not interested in following someone with an empty head). I want to know what you find funny. Be aware that I will judge you partly by the links you post, so make 'em good.

Show me #hashtags. Which conversations have you entered into? What topics do you think are important? Are these topics that I could be interested in as well?

Talk to @otherpeople. If this is a cocktail party, that's the equivalent of introducing me to your friends and acquaintances. In the back of my brain you will get a bit of credit if you introduce me to an interesting person.

Yes, there is a personal element to Twitter - it's meant to be about you. I'm not saying that you should NEVER post your own point of view, and NEVER talk about what you're doing in your personal life. If you have a hilarious anecdote that happened to you this morning, if you just ate the most amazing meal of your life and you want to share a photo of it - by all means, share. I like those little stories as much as the next person.

On the other hand if you want to tell me, "I watched the latest episode of Dexter last night. Then I cut my toenails".....frankly my dears, I don't give a damn.

If you want to think about it from a writer's point of view, the best Twitter users follow the "show, don't tell" adage. If you want to think about it from a journalist's point of view, think of this:

The news pages form about 75% of the content of the paper (my rough estimate). The columns and op-eds form about 25%. That's the way I want to see you Tweeting.

The only person I follow who has entirely text-based messages (i.e. no hashtags, no RTs, very few links) is the Dalai Lama (@DalaiLama). He's interesting enough on his own. The rest of you? If you want to hold my attention, you're going to have to bring some backup.

Goodbye and good luck, Costas.

2010-09-18T12:22:00.005-03:00

Yesterday, the Maritime airwaves lost a familiar and beloved voice. Costas Halavrezos, the host of the CBC Radio show Maritime Noon, gave his final broadcast and bowed out into retirement.

Maritime Noon is an hour-long interview and phone-in show. For years Costas has sat in the host's chair, behaving on the air just as he is in life: friendly, well-rounded, intelligent, articulate, and polite to all.

It doesn't matter whether the callers are rambling, pointless, rude, or just bizarre, Costas treats them all with respect.

That was my experience with Costas too. On my first freelance job at CBC I worked on a solitary computer beside Maritime Noon's pod. Costas made a point of introducing himself to me. He crossed the floor and offered me a piece of orange. This meant a lot to someone who was feeling young, very inexperienced, and afraid to screw up. Later when I had the privilege of working with him he did not change one bit.

Shortly before the final broadcast yesterday, the newsroom clustered around cake and coffee to say goodbye. There were messages from across the Maritimes, and even from across the country.

When Costas gave his farewell, for the first time in the brief two years I've known him I wondered if he was nervous. He rocked back and forth from one foot to the other as he was talking. I watched his black plimsoll shoes flex as he shifted his weight from foot to foot.

But his smooth radio voice never wavered, and his delivery was never less than spot-on. This is not a surprise to anyone who knows him. Costas gave what some people later called the best retirement speech ever: witty, to the point, and in good taste. This too is not a surprise.

He thanked everyone in the room for his or her contribution to public radio. He said that the Radio section has gone through some tough years, which he hopes are over now.

While Costas talked, I looked around at the newsroom. It looks a bit like a family. There were two sweet toddling little girls, and newborn baby Ben who slept through everything as he was passed around like a show and tell toy. There are younger cousins, aunts, and uncles. It is a community that I felt lucky to be part of yesterday.

I am certain that what Costas did every day is the proper way to care for any community (a family, a radio show, a country). Listen courteously to each other, treat each other as human beings, respect the time and intelligence of the other person.

Here's to those who have that rare thing, common decency, and who show the rest of us how to use it. Here's to Costas.

How to enjoy a new city when you don't feel like being alone

2010-09-08T20:36:00.001-03:00

As I mentioned in my last post, I was in St. John's, Newfoundland for the weekend, and I went there knowing that I would be spending a fair chunk of time alone.

However, I knew I wouldn't spend all my time alone - nor would I want to. Introspection is great, but sometimes I get downright sick of it! I met plenty of people in St. John's who helped me to pass the time. Here are some of them.

First off, I had one constant travelling companion. If you are going to a strange new city to be alone, it is a good idea to have a just-in-case companion, and I chose Captain Robert Scott. His diary of his ill-fated (and fatal) journey to the South Pole chimed in tune with my theme of travel. The very name of his expedition - Terra Nova - is Newfoundland.

I began my Terra Nova Expedition on Friday afternoon, at the beginning of four days of uninterrupted sunshine. The first person I laid eyes on in St. John's was my friend Laura, waiting for me at the bottom of the airport stairs. Beside her in a baby carrier was her four-month-old daughter, Sylvia (Sylvia has the bluest eyes, but she slept through my entire visit).

I ran down the stairs to meet Laura, more or less tripping on my own feet. Over pizza for lunch, I asked Laura about finding out she was pregnant with Sylvia. I always knew Laura would be a great mother, and though it was a surprise to me (let alone to Laura), "that was that," Laura says. "And she's fantastic!"

After lunch, Laura and Sylvia had to go back to Summerville, where they live now. I barely had time to climb Signal Hill and get back down before my phone rang. It was my friend Andrew O'Brien, who lives in St. John's and works at O'Reilly's bar on George Street, and he was calling to tell me that he was heading into the city to take me to dinner. We walked along George Street and had chowder, rolls, and beer.

Andrew's big news is that he's taking off for Rome, Qatar, and South Korea for the next three weeks. He's visiting friends in Rome, and when he discovered that it only cost a little bit more to go on to South Korea, he says he asked, "Why not?"

On Saturday, I went to The Rooms, and as I walked through the galleries, I noticed a security guard eyeing me. He seemed to want to say something, so I stopped and let him. We chatted a little while, and I found out that his name is Moti, he arrived in St. John's four years ago from Ethiopia. He has re-trained as a computer programmer but in Ethiopia he was a newspaper reporter. Moti wrote a book about the government, and spent three years in jail because of it. He was released due to a campaign by PEN Canada. Within a week of getting out of jail, he fled to Kenya and applied for refugee status at a United Nations High Commission for Refugees. "It is a tradition that after you are released from jail, you may be killed," he says. Within a month he was in St. John's. I asked if he chose St. John's on purpose. "No - this is where they sent me," he replied.

During the whole trip I stayed at the City Hostel on Gower Street. I always stay in hostels if I can, and I choose the dorm rooms. Each hostel is different, and if you are alone in a city I highly recommend hostels as a way to find company. This one was about half full of MUN university students waiting for residence to open, and half full of travellers visiting Newfoundland for a few days.

It was at the hostel that I rolled out of bed one morning, stood up to stretch, and came face to face with May. The top bunk hadn't been occupied when I last saw it the night before. May is a hiker from Canmore, Alberta (the last I saw of her, she was hitchhiking on the highway with a sign that said, "Cape Spear...please!") and within ten minutes we had learned enough about each other to decide to go to the song session at O'Reilly's together.

It was also at the hostel, in the kitchen, that I met Yuri, who is from Russia and hiking Newfoundland. May, Yuri, and I made a plan to cook dinner together and then to go out for the evening. Dinner turned out great, and so did the evening.

"I'm not a good dancer," Yuri said as he pulled me up onto the floor. No one else joined us, they just stared at us as we whirled about, all alone on the floor before the stage. "You are never going to see any of these people again," Yuri said. "Who cares?"

We had a grand evening.

And now, confession time: There were times when I wanted to crawl into my shell, say no to dancing, say no to conversation, say no to new people. I went to St. John's to be quiet in my head, right? But that's the other reason I went to St. John's alone. Being with people is a necessary complement to being alone...and it has a way of whisking you off for bigger adventures.

If I hadn't gone alone, maybe none of this would have happened.

Adventure could be ready to pick you up and carry you any time. We have so little control, sometimes you have to run with it. You have to say, "That's that - Why not? - Take me with you, please!"

So maybe it would have felt more comforting to travel with a partner, but I don't happen to have a travel partner right now, and the world is so big. There is so much to cover, and it doesn't matter if no one I know is ready for it right now - I'm ready. How can I know that later there will be a better time? I can be alone and NOT alone in St. John's. If I can do that, I can do a whole lot more. I still want to see the world.

Here's the story in pictures.

How to enjoy a new city on your own: St. John's

2010-09-07T16:24:00.007-03:00

I went to St. John's, Newfoundland for the long weekend. I went on my own. I went for a number of reasons: Because I've never been to Newfoundland. Because there was a seat sale. Because I've been working a lot lately and I wanted to take a few days off to recharge.

Also, I went to St. John's because I wanted to find out if I could still travel on my own. I've been in a lot of exotic places around the world, but almost always with other people. This time I wanted to be quiet with my own thoughts. I was practicing how to be alone. I was pleasantly surprised to find how much enjoyment I got from the experience. Here's how I did it.

I arrived on Friday afternoon, and went to the top of Signal Hill to survey the ground and anticipate all the possibilities of the city. I went to Cabot Tower, read the interpretive panels, and listened to Marconi's signal coming faintly out of the earpiece in the display. I smiled to think about how important this man was in the development of radio transmissions. Then I climbed down the long way, walking down the cliff trail and through the Battery neighbourhood.

After nightfall, I walked to George Street to see the pubs start to crawl. For a while I watched a circus of bare legs and shoulders pass by, and then I walked home in the dark. It was so warm that I could smell the flowers in the window boxes before I could see what they were. I tried to do a lot of observing that first night. The houses in my neighbourhood were old style homes, like Halifax saltbox houses with the front porch cut off, all painted in the jelly bean colours. Together they looked like paperback novels nestled up against each other.

I didn't take my iPod or laptop to Newfoundland. It's too easy to plug in to your electronics and be somewhere else, and you don't want to miss overhearing the sounds and sniffing the smells of the place where you are standing.

In a new city I always go to a market. I lay on the grass outside the St. John's Farmer's Market (for sale: crafts, ice cream, breads, pies, produce, jam, handmade soap, coffee, fresh donuts, and two West Indian food stalls), eating blueberries from Harbour Grace and drinking lemonade out of a borrowed mason jar. A man gave me a nasturtium blossom to eat - it tasted peppery.

Speaking of eating, it's such a social activity that walking into a restaurant and eating a meal on your own can be difficult at first. Try a place where the vibe makes you feel good. I ate at a lovely place called The Sprout, a vegetarian restaurant on Duckworth Street.

Or, if you're eating alone and adventurously, try something new. I amused myself one day by having lunch at the first and only Afghan restaurant in Newfoundland (Specials: Monday and Tuesday, chicken curry. Wednesday and Thursday, lamb curry. Friday, chicken AND lamb curry).

I went to the Basilica, to be quiet in a church, see who was worshiping and how they were doing it and to commune with the stained glass. Then I stepped across the way to The Rooms, the St. John's art gallery and museum, to find out what people make of their own culture. I spent several hours there and haven't enjoyed an art gallery so much in a long time.

I found the best way to get to know the city was to walk everywhere, but I love to learn something about a city by jumping on the public transit system, so I took the bus to the Botanical Gardens. Did you know that the St. John's buses sell newspapers in a small box by the driver?

Speaking of newspapers, a great way to enjoy a city is to read a local paper in a coffee shop. I sat in Hava Java on Water Street, reading all the papers, including the alternative monthly.

Just before I got in a cab for the airport, I walked up Signal Hill one more time. I surveyed the city again, and thought about all the things I'd done, all the things the city held, and everything I could have done in St. John's but didn't.

And no, even though I went to St. John's intending to enjoy it on my own, of course I didn't spend the ENTIRE weekend without company. Next stop....St. John's, Part Two: How to enjoy a new city when you don't feel like being alone.

P.S. Want to see my pictures?

Live simply, buy less: My Little Day Downtown

2010-08-28T10:30:00.006-03:00

The single best piece of advice I was ever given about freelancing (and maybe about life in general) was this: Reduce your costs. Learn to live simply.

I was amused to see in a recent New York Times article that this is not considered sexy. Read to the bottom of the page, though, and you'll see that it IS considered smart. Other New York Times articles in the category of "Things We Already Guessed" include some that suggest having money does buy happiness....but it's not everything.

To quote Joel Plaskett, I'm so cheap, I might as well be free. Appropriately enough, I am free. The truth is, you don't need a lot of money to get by, especially if you're young and dependent-less and you can manage your debt (if you have any).

Last week I set up a story for Information Morning about the Downtown Halifax Business Commission's new marketing campaign called Big Day Downtown. The business commission gave 30 local bloggers $100 each. The bloggers could spend the money any way they wished, with only two conditions: they had to spend the money downtown, and they had to blog about the way they spent the money. For some examples, check out Kristen Pickett's food blog With Bite, or Perry Paris, who very kindly decided to spend the money on someone else. Yesterday we gave away two $100 gift cards to listeners as prizes.

I thought this was a fascinating marketing campaign, but all this got me thinking about shopping, buying, and spending. Though I applaud the efforts to bring people to the downtown area, I thought about how all that jives with my mentor's advice to live simply. It doesn't.

So here's my answer: a Little Day Downtown. This is a true-to-life list of some things that I've thought about buying recently, but didn't. I've partnered each item with what I did instead.

Red Converse All-Stars from Renaissance ($54.99)
Do I really need these? I went into my closet and dug into my many old shoe boxes. I opened them up and looked at all the pairs of shoes I have that I haven't worn in a long time. I selected a kickass pair of mules (comfortable, stylish, Italian leather) and wore them to work, wondering why I'd left them in the closet for so long.

A stainless steel screw-top travel mug from MEC ($22)
I carry coffee and tea around with me in the morning, and I wanted a travel mug that I could cover and throw into my backpack. I wanted something that wasn't plastic and wouldn't leak. Instead of the steel mug, I took a Mason jar from my kitchen cupboard. Glass doesn't leach anything, a Mason jar is sturdy enough to take a few bumps in my bag, and the screw top never leaks.

Cake or Death: The Excruciating Choices of Everyday Life, by Heather Mallick from Bookmark ($20)
How easy was this? I went to the library - a miracle of civilization. They have a better collection than any bookstore, and they let you take all of it away for free. Free!

Bar of dark chocolate from Uncommon Grounds ($2.50)
Instead, I took a walk in the Public Gardens. If you think that sounds like a poor substitute, consider this research, which suggests that activity can help reduce all kinds of cravings.

So that was my Little Day Downtown. This leaves me with 51 cents...just enough to make a couple of phone calls. If you're really nitpicky, you'll notice that I didn't calculate for tax.

I love buying things, and there's nothing wrong with it. However, from a practical and spiritual point of view, I think of this: "Live simply so that others may simply live." -attr. Gandhi

The best job ever

2010-08-24T22:31:00.004-03:00

It's official: I have the best job ever. I say this after putting in a 12-hour day yesterday and a 10-hour day today...but I'll tell you why.

Yesterday I got to go down to Tusket, in southwest Nova Scotia, for a story that involved hiking and canoeing.

Here's the story: the Nova Scotia Nature Trust just acquired 460 acres of property near Tusket. The property contains two very endangered plant species: the pink coreopsis and the Plymouth gentian. They're both small pink flowers, very pretty. The acquisition was made possible by Jack and Darlene Stone, a couple who used their life insurance policies to leave a legacy to the Nature Trust. When Jack died last year, the benefits came to the Nature Trust, and with that they bought the property. It was a lovely story which will be on Information Morning tomorrow at 7:23, if you're in the area.

It was a long, tiring drive to get down and back in the same day (not to mention doing three hours of interviews and chatting in between). But it was completely worth it. The story sounds beautiful.

It also confirms all the reasons that this can be a truly amazing line of work. I got outside, I walked in the woods, I helped paddle a canoe up a river, and I saw two rare endangered species and a grass snake. All in a day's work. How much better does it get?

Bonnie Sutherland, executive director of the Nature Trust, checks our map.

As we try to return up the river, the current is too strong. Peter Green has to jump out and pull the canoe upstream while Bonnie and I paddle furiously.

Bonnie paddles back across Wilson's Lake.

Darlene in a stand of hemlocks.

Darlene Stone (right) and a friend admire the property.

Sally Jo Gallant, stewardship coordinator with the Nature Trust, shows off a pink coreopsis.

The journalism tools they never told you about

2010-08-21T11:40:00.001-03:00

Earlier this spring, a journalism student from Ryerson University in Toronto contacted me. She wanted to interview me and create a profile about me for a school assignment. I was surprised, but I said I'd be happy to help her out, and we spent an hour on the phone one evening talking about what it's like to get established in this business, at this time. Last week she sent the finished profile back to me.

It's a bit curious to think of myself as being in a position to give advice, but I'm happy to help. Older freelancers have helped me many times, and I am returning the favour.

As Robert Niles points out in the Online Journalism Review, a new crop of J-students will soon arrive at school.

In my first year, I attended a class where we were told by Edward Greenspon, then editor-in-chief of the Globe and Mail, "You are not journalism students. You are journalists."

Niles would agree. "Conduct yourself as a journalist, at all times. Anytime you post online, you publish," he writes.

This blog counts as publishing. As I've pointed out elsewhere, anything that you write can and will be used against you in the court of public opinion. "Don't undercut your hard work with moments of Facebook foolishness," Niles says succinctly.

So while we're on the topic of advice, I started to think about all the other things that I should have told my student from Ryerson in the spring, but never did. Here are some of them. They don't take the place of skills like good news sense, good interviewing, and strong writing, but I've discovered that they are indispensable.

1) A good memory for people. Some people say they are good with faces, and some people say they're good with names. But the one isn't very helpful without the other, is it? You WILL run into old sources on the street. You WILL get a call back from one source just as you were all prepared to speak with another. Learn to switch gears in about two-tenths of a second. I do those word-association/visualization games in my head to remember names (yes, I really do). Don't have a good memory? Work on it.

2) Good posture. If you are shy - and many of us are closet introverts - this does wonders. Do you know, sometimes I think that I was being completely self-abusive when I decided to work at journalism. People have told me, on short acquaintance, "You're the quietest person EVER." I know that people can see this. But confidence does wonders, so when I have to make a phone call that I am afraid of making, I've found that this is helpful. Sit up straight, raise your head, and put your shoulders back. Imagine that the person you are calling is sitting in front of you, and look him in the eye. If the interview is to be done in person, square your shoulders and walk briskly towards your target. It is then much easier to say in a sprightly voice, "Good MORNING, Mr. Mayor." Your body knows when your mind is afraid. Change this.

3) A small mirror or other reflective surface. I use the back of my iPod. Check your hair. Check your teeth. People react better to those they find attractive - or at the very least, those they find neat and tidy. This is a fact. We already look kind of bum-like. Minimize it.

4)Business cards. They're cheap to get at Staples and they are rather more professional than writing down your number on a scrap of paper. Plus, it's an awful lot of fun to design them and hand them out. I always carry mine, even when I am "off-duty." People will ask if you have a card. Don't get stuck tearing tiny chunks of paper out of your notebook.

5) Be kind. Understand that everything you give will bring you some kind of benefit. Volunteer for something. Listen to people with genuine interest. Give people the benefit of the doubt. There isn't a soul out there who is not worth five minutes of your time.

Keep out: My almost-public private life.

2010-08-17T00:36:00.002-03:00

I joined LinkedIn recently, after realizing that my business contacts were starting to add me to Facebook. Previously, I tried to keep my private life contained for friends on Facebook. I've since realized that I simply can't make multiple Internet personalities work. Some people make this work through private profiles and suchlike, but I've given up. Online privacy no longer exists, if it ever did.

It's been said that if Google can't find you, you don't exist. I keep an eye on what pops up when my name is Googled, because if I want to keep working, I can't afford to not exist. Worse: I can't afford to exist in a negative light. My online presence has quickly become pretty key to the way I work.

If you see me online - it doesn't matter whether I'm blogging, tweeting, Facebooking, podcasting - I know about it. I've decided that's the part of my story I want you to see.

I tell you, sometimes that's hard for me. Unfortunately, I understand myself better when I make an effort to explain things. I'm not a glib talker. I need to write things down, I need to talk things through, I want to tell my whole story and my thoughts. I want to know that somebody is listening, and the Internet gives me that. According to a recently released Pew Institute report, I am not alone in this. Sharing, for my generation, is the new normal.

"Publicy will replace privacy. Privacy will appear quaint, like wearing gloves and veils in church," said one respondent to the survey.

Sometimes I'm tempted to let everything I'm thinking spill out onto this blog, but I don't. I let a lot out, but not everything. Maybe I'm quaint: wearing a veil over a few bare, boney little personal thoughts. If I'm lonely, if I'm sad, if I'm stuck in a holding pattern of the blahs...well, that's my problem. It shouldn't be the Internet's problem.

Yet for everyone it is very important to have some space where their most private thoughts can be freely expressed.

I have all the regular ways. I call a friend, or my mother. Sometimes I look in the mirror and talk to myself. I write letters and don't send them. I maintain a private blog with a password, and a black hardcover journal. Those are the places where I get to be free. I guess that's not really so different than the way things used to be, is it? Plus ca change...

Image courtesy last.fm

The illusion of lunch

2010-08-11T16:46:00.010-03:00

Ford Prefect was so right.

"Time is an illusion," he told Arthur Dent. "Lunchtime, doubly so." Ford was a mere wisp of illusion himself, a character in Douglas Adams' inimitable book, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Still, he was absolutely right.

You can tell when it is lunchtime at work because there is a lineup at the microwave. Sandwiches and tupperware containers emerge from the lunchroom fridge. Everyone carries their food back to their desk and continues working in between bites. I do the same.

This is not the way it's supposed to be, officially. I am a casual worker, paid by the hour. It is my right to take one hour, but it's hard to go against the office culture. One doesn't want to look like a slacker - or miss an important phone call.

I was once chastised by a colleague for not taking lunch.

"I know it's hard," she said. "But remember the lockout? This is what we fought for."

I never realize until after I get up from my desk how much it helps to take a break. Simply switching gears from work to playing on Facebook doesn't cut it. I need to move around and look at something new in order to come back refreshed.

Yesterday I went to a free lunchtime yoga session on the Halifax waterfront, hosted by Fusion Halifax. They've organized quite a few health and wellness events lately, including a rally called Take Back Your Lunch today.

This isn't at all about being less productive. Quite the opposite. Today I was getting nowhere at work - my phone calls weren't being returned, I'd done everything I could, and was casting about for make-work projects.

So I got up and went out to the Public Gardens. I walked for twenty minutes, and saw flowers, ducks, sunshine, and happy people eating ice cream. I stretched out my arms and my back. I ran into a contact and caught up with her. I ran into a colleague who works in a different part of the building, and learned something from him about documentary making.

When I came back I felt like a perfectly healthy, normal human being again. I don't have anybody looking after my health but me. So I'll take back lunch. It's good for the stomach and good for the soul.

Pay us what we're worth

2010-07-30T16:04:00.001-03:00

Here's a letter I've received many times. I got it again this week:

"This is a great pitch. We'd like to use it. Unfortunately, we aren't able to pay you - but we'll put your byline on the story, and we'll promote your work through our website."

One of my earliest editors was Kevin Cox of allnovascotia.com. Kevin spent much of his time slouched back in his chair at his desk, barricaded behind piles of paper, shooting off editorial salvoes into the business world. He never cared to mince words, and he once told me, "Some people think that they shouldn't have to buy their employees' loyalty. But what else do you think they're working for?"

I love my work, and I'd almost do it for free - but not quite. One has to pay the bills somehow.

I have sympathy for publications that are stuck with a tiny or nonexistent freelance budget. Still, sympathy doesn't pay my electric bill, and here are a few reasons why I almost always choose to reply to the above email with a polite, "Thank you for your interest, but no."

1) "We'll put your byline on the story."

It bothers me that this is held out as a carrot: I deserve a byline by default, not as a reward. I did the work, so I put my name on it. If I have no pay and no byline, then I have exactly nothing. Bylines also serve the readers. If I did a poor job, then the readers need to know who to hold accountable.

A byline gives a story more credibility and allows me to stand behind my work (as well I should). If you don't intend to run my byline, then you should negotiate its removal and pay well for the privilege of taking it away from me.

2) "We'll promote your work."

Okay, there is a good side to this. If I'm a new freelancer, this can be valuable in order to build a portfolio of published work. But there are an awful lot of writers out there, especially on the Internet. It's hard to stand out when I've got that much competition. Chances are, one article for this non-paying publication won't promote me enough to raise me significantly in the eyes of other (paying) publications.

If my article is the absolute cream of the crop, then a little promotion will bring it to the top. Then again, if my article is the cream of the crop, don't I deserve to be paid for it?

3) Think of the others.

Making a bad deal hurts more people than me alone. Say that I choose to accept an unfair or non-existent wage from a publication. I guarantee that publication is not going to raise the wage for the next writer to come along. The next writer will be offered the same deal, and the next, as long as the deal continues to be accepted.

Most writers accept that they'll never get rich off writing. Also, what one person considers 'fair' may not be another person's idea of 'fair.' Freelance rates are notoriously flexible. Therefore, the only yardstick that I can possibly go on is what I think is fair based on my experience. I think about what I've been paid by other publications for similar work and try to estimate as best as I can.

Suppose everyone else did this too, and never accepted a deal that he or she privately felt was unfair? The rates would still be flexible. But on average, they would be fair.

I've learned that if you believe your idea is a good one, then you owe it to yourself to flog it a bit harder. One publication said no, but if you send it somewhere else you may find a buyer. Most buyers want to buy something exclusive, so if the article is already being promoted somewhere else, then it loses some of its value.

If you're going to work for free, never lose sight of the fact that you are working first of all for yourself. The "byline and promotion" trade can be a fair one. It all depends on the circumstances. If you don't get paid in money, make darn sure that you get something else in return: solid experience, new skills, more exposure, or the satisfaction of working for a charitable cause.

This is called fairness and decency. Loyalty doesn't come free.

Feeding Frenzy

2010-07-26T11:45:00.006-03:00

Last week I learned some interesting things about freelancing.

News can be a feeding frenzy. It's not so easy to find news - it takes time and effort and a lot of ground coverage. Journalists often tend to read other news sources and then take stories from each other to re-cover.

I did it myself, just last week: I read a small community paper from my neighbourhood, saw a news item that was unique, and used it as a starting place for my own article on the same topic. I sent the idea to a larger paper, which accepted it gladly.

This is certainly accepted practice, but I sometimes wonder whether it's ethical.

In the case I just outlined (which featured a community art project), I called the artist and asked if he would be interested in being interviewed a second time. He said yes because he was hoping that the story could bring about further art projects for other people. I decided that was enough justification to take the story bigger.

But then someone did the same thing to me.

I run a news blog called Outside the Circle, where I write up little news stories that I find in my neighbourhood. I used to think of this as practice, but I've taken to breaking real stories on the site. These are stories that I'm not seeing anywhere else in the media.

Last week I broke a story about a homeowner with a battered coastal property, who was unable to get a breakwater for his property. I posted it on the web. I didn't have time to think about if I could pitch it in the mainstream media. In two days, CBC Radio's Mainstreet program picked up on it, put their own reporter on the story, and aired it.

I was somewhat surprised, because I'm scheduled to work for Mainstreet next week. I wondered why I couldn't have done the story for them. I called the show producer to ask.

He replied that he hadn't realized that it was me behind the OTC website. If he'd known that it was me running the site, he said, he would have waited.

"My advice would be to pitch around before you post," he said.

I can't say that I was thrilled about the whole episode. My producer was right, of course, and it's a good lesson to learn, but in retrospect it was not a pill I enjoyed swallowing - mostly because it was all my own fault.

So.... here's what I learned: trust your news judgment. Do the work to do the pitch. Don't put something into the public sphere unless you're prepared to let it become public property. Your work will inevitably be used by others (so try to make sure that you're paid for it first).

P.S. Speaking of my work becoming public property, you may notice the 'Share' buttons located at the bottom of every post. Now you can quickly and easily disseminate me via email, Blogger, Twitter, Facebook, or Google Buzz.

If this isn't enough, and you wish to print, Digg, Delicious, StumbleUpon, MySpace, or OTHERWISE spread the word, check the 'Sharing is Polite!' box in the right hand column.

We're not in Chebucto West anymore, Toto.

2010-07-21T17:42:00.002-03:00

This is my first mobile blog post ever because I am writing this on my new MacBook. Hooray! I've been casting envious eyes at laptops for a good long time now, and I finally caved about a month ago.

There's a whole new generation of workers who carry their office around with them in the form of a laptop and mobile phone, camping out in coffee shops and libraries and airports.

I normally work from home, and I prefer a quiet environment with few distractions in order to do my best work. I wasn't sure how I felt about the mobile office culture. But now that I've joined their ranks, I see the advantages of working from a coffee shop.

For a reasonable price, I get a good cup of coffee, free wi-fi, a subscription to all of the daily papers and magazines, social interaction with other people, a comfortable desk and chair, a good people-watching streetview, and an escape from the stifling summer heat of The Hellhole That is My Apartment.

It's unlikely that you'll see me in Second Cup or Starbucks, as I do my best to try out independent cafes. Here are some of my alternate offices:

The Trident Cafe and Bookstore

This is my favourite coffee shop in Halifax. It's one of my strongholds of civilization: a place where I've never heard a voice raised in anger, where people always say "please" and "thank you," where I feel compelled to put my cell phone ringer on silent, where nothing bad could ever happen. The Trident is best during the mid-afternoon. Go there for the smell of strong coffee, classical music, old furniture, tea served in real cups and saucers, people reading newspapers, and books, books, and more books.

Uncommon Grounds on South Park Street

Uncommon Grounds has become a mini-chain, but I like the location on South Park Street best. They once served me a cup of Americano that I took back to the counter and announced, "This is the best cup of coffee I've had in a long time - I think it might have just saved my life." I like Uncommon Grounds best in the evening because it feels like a cozy concrete bunker half submerged in South Park Street, and because the staff sometimes hand out excellent day-old sandwiches at closing.

The Armview

The Armview is my default, the closest thing I have to a neighbourhood bar/restaurant/cafe. It has a cheerful orange awning and an excellent view of the Armdale Rotary and the Northwest Arm. I love that I can walk there and back home. I also love the funky retro decor and matching music, the gigantic houseplants, and the sun-soaked patio.

The Spring Garden Road library

The central library at the foot of Spring Garden Road is one of my favourite places to work. I always choose the second floor, which is the reference department. The program and facility space is insufficient, but I like the old art deco building. I think it has character. A new central library is in the works, and I hope it will keep up the same spirit.

The Nova Scotia Archives

This is a library of a different type, and I think it must be one of the best-kept secrets for researchers in Halifax. You have to register (free) to use the archives, but it's well worth the trouble. The Archives hold hundreds of years worth of photographs, maps, books, and newspapers on microfilm. The staff is very helpful. I've killed hours pouring over folders with topics like "The mysterious legless man of Clare" and early planning maps of the city.

And while I'm at it, I have to mention The Hub, a very neat idea whose time has come. I've never worked at the Hub, but I've heard great things, and I hope to check them out someday.

Sidney returns!

2010-07-11T11:32:00.000-03:00

Back in February, I wrote a documentary on Sidney Gould, who is in his 80s and attends classes at the same fitness studio I do. When we met, I was struck by his strong personality and wonderful sense of humour. Sidney was 87 at the time (he's 88 now) and he told me how he joined this fitness studio after the death of his wife. It changed his life; it made him feel young again. Sidney is a born storyteller, and I knew as soon as I met him that his story deserved to be told on the radio. Here's a link to old posts mentioning Sidney, or you can also scroll down and click on "Older Posts."

I went to CBC producer Christina Harnett of Maritime Magazine, and told her I wanted to do a documentary on Sidney. I'd never done a doc before. She took a chance on me. It turned out to be one of the most popular shows of the season. It was, by far, my favourite story I've ever told (yet).

Sidney's story was re-broadcast today (Sunday, July 11), as part of the Maritime Magazine summer season. If you missed him, you can catch him on Maritime Magazine's website. You can also hear Sidney on my website, in the radio documentary section.

This story is very special to me, and in honour of this re-broadcast, I want to tell you why.

In the fall of 2009, I went through a bad breakup. It was a bad season, altogether. Then, just when things were at their absolute worst, Sidney walked into my life. We talked, we liked each other, and I felt a kinship with his story.

After his wife's death, it took Sidney four months before he could say to himself: "I'd better pick myself up and start moving on with life." It took me four months, too. We both started again as spring came on. We both started again by forcing ourselves into some kind of activity: in my case, I forced myself to write Sidney's story.

There were times as I was writing Sidney's story when I stopped typing and got a little teary, thinking about how he must have felt when he was alone in his apartment, after Esther was gone.

So I wrote this story as simply as I could. To me, the story was about climbing back up out of a bad place and learning to be happy again. And as I wrote it, something amazing happened.

I haven't yet found the words to say it to Sidney directly, so he doesn't know this: This story helped me to pick my chin up and carry on with life. It was an incredible gift.

Apparently, I wasn't the only one. I received a lot of emails from complete strangers in the months after the broadcast. Every single message said a variation on this thought: Thank goodness for people like Sidney. We all need to approach life with his optimism, hope, and vigour. I've posted some of the emails below.

Shaina: Just a quick note to tell you how much I enjoyed your documentary on this wonderful man. My wife and I just spent a week at our cottage and a topic which seemed to keep coming up as we relaxed around the fireplace was the impending shift in our lives as she joins me in retirement in 3 years. We both seemed to have difficulty in expressing similar hopes - that we work hard at maintaining a positive attitude and a strong zest for life as we get older. We realized that this was far more important than ensuring we had a nice car, a beautiful home etc. I listened to your documentary on CBC this past Sunday and realized that Mr Gould was the absolute role model and inspiration for what we aspired to. This evening, my wife and I listened to it together and I can tell that it lit a very positive spark in both of us in terms of what we hope for during our retirement years.

Hi Shaina, How are you? I heard your story about Sidney earlier this evening. I am in Toronto. I am currently a Toronto girl, as you were. Home is Paris, really. (France, not Ontario.) I was extremely moved by your story. I share both Sidney's and your passion for life and living. I love dance and I am so thrilled that dance-related activities have helped Sidney. I absolutely embrace his and Esther's 60-year union. I am 34, and am going through a seemingly "end-of-the-world" heartbreak. When I hear stories about couples who manage to keep it together for so long, I am inspired. Your story gave me hope that I desperately need. I thank you for sharing your artistry with others. At times, it makes more of a difference than you could imagine.

Hi - Caught this by accident on CBC tonight (I love CBC for things like this) - loved it. Very moving, and inspiring. A lovely, rounded portrait - thanks!

Shaina - I listened to your presentation on CBC Radio this Sunday am. Six years ago, and about to turn 60, I was feeling the onset of stiff joints, arthritis, gout, muscular soreness, carrying too much weight, limited mobility and so on. I decided to do something about it. My life to that time was one of eating too much and too rich, not getting regular exercise, and generally abusing my body in an outdoor life which included a lot of time at sea, commercial fishing, cutting and carrying firewood, etc. So, with a few self help books on nutrition and diet, I changed to eating mostly fruit, vegetables, fish, a little meat, some bread, few sweets and no 'industrially produced' food. Along with this came a regular 1.5 to 2 hour daily walk on the beach and in the woods with several sprints to really get the cardiovascular component. In summer and fall, I swim in the ocean every day and swim vigourously. It took a bit of 'push' to get myself going and, of course, at the beginning, nothing seemed to change. However, six years later, the results have been nothing short of spectacular for me. The gout has gone away. The arthritis is being kept at bay. My weight has decreased by 20 lbs and so on. The very best part is that one feels SO much better. Eat healthy - stay strong is our motto down here.

The World of Soccer

2010-07-09T17:40:00.004-03:00

On Sunday, the FIFA World Cup final will take place, and I'll be watching every second of it. The World Cup is the biggest sporting event on the planet - followed by millions around the world. Every four years, soccer fans get one hectic month of games, pitching country against country in a patriotic battle to the top.

For my part, sport fandom was a foreign concept. I hated watching sports. I'm Chinese-Canadian, born and bred in Toronto, now living in Halifax, but I don't even care for the Stanley Cup finals. But the World Cup got its hooks into me, and changed my view on soccer forever.

I convinced three friends to come on a journey to Toronto with me, in search of World Cup experiences and stories. I've been posting thoughts and pictures related to our trip.

It was quite the trip, and populated by interesting characters who all provided a different perspective on soccer. We met up with a fellow on the CBC World Cup broadcasting team, a food writer who studies culture and community, the host of the Metro Morning radio show Matt Galloway, and the mayor of Toronto, David Miller. This is not to mention the actual fans themselves.

I brought my radio recorder with me, and made a 15-minute radio piece about our trip. Unlike the other radio work I do, I have not sold this item to a particular show. This is just an expression of love for friends, soccer, travel, new experiences, and the world. Many thanks are owed to CBC for their patience, advice, and the use of their equipment. You can check it out on my website. It's filed in the documentary section, and it's called 'The World of Soccer.'

Out of control

2010-06-27T22:51:00.005-03:00

Did I say a few days ago that I enjoyed this feeling of life carrying me along with it? Being not quite in control, but okay with that?

I won't retract, but I'd better clarify. I do like this feeling that life is an interesting adventure when I leave some of the control up to chance...but there is a terrible, dark underside to that.

Sometimes, life throws things at you that you do not expect. I am reminded of this while I watch and listen to Toronto's G20 coverage. It hits particularly hard because the neighbourhood where all of this violence is occurring is my own, and I was just there, barely a week ago.

I wrote a few weeks ago about how hard it was to watch Bangkok burn. This is worse. I am horrified at the smashed windows and burning police cars, and I am equally horrified at the police response.

We are receiving reports of protestors trampled by police horses, of a Guardian journalist arrested and beaten, of riot police charging at peaceful demonstrations.

Open File and Spacing.ca have posted a disturbing video taken on Queen Street, around the corner from my house.

It is always hard to know which rumours are founded in fact, but in these chaotic situations I tend to trust videos, photos, and the word of accredited journalists.

I'm following the action on Twitter. Here's a sample of what I'm seeing.

CBC News technology columnist Jesse Hirsh: "I admit it. I've broken down and cried a number of times this weekend. Breaks my heart to watch police abuse and assault innocent civilians."

Freelance journalist Mary Gazze: "The #G20 crowd on Spadina was sitting peacefully, singing O Canada, then riot police boxed them in."

Globe and Mail reporter Anna Paperny: "Esplanade outside Novotel deserted, save for zillions of plastic handcuffs littering pavement where dozens (hundreds?) of people arrested."

TV Ontario's current affairs program host Steve Paikin: "So the police just started arresting people. I stress, this was a peaceful, middle class, diverse crowd. No anarchists"

Toronto, you will not be the same after this.

Newsflash!

2010-06-24T21:31:00.006-03:00

Extra, extra - read all about it!

I am so thrilled to tell you that I am working this summer for CBC Radio. I was in yesterday to work on a story, and the program manager came around to my desk to tell me that she would be able to offer me work. I received the schedule by email this morning, and I see that I am scheduled for quite a few dates between now and August. I'll be filling in for people while they're on vacation. I'll be switching between two shows: Information Morning, and the Mainstreet drive-home program.

Some of the weeks I only have one or two days of work, but other weeks I am working Monday to Friday. I will be doing many of the same things that I've done when I've taken shifts at CBC in the past: researching, writing up questions, chasing stories and doing the background work putting together the show.

People ask me if this means my voice will be on the radio more often. I answer that it's possible. Most of the work will be behind-the-scenes, but I may show up on the air. I hope that in addition to the research work there will be time to look for and produce stories just as I've always done.

My title is associate producer, which sounds rather official and gives me a little grin inside. My last day of scheduled work is at the end of August. I don't know what will happen after that, but I'm willing to (once again) have faith that something will turn up. It always does.

I feel like a backpacker on the move again. I'm wandering through my own life, and I have a general idea of where I want to go, but how and when I get there is a happy mystery. I travel along as light as I can, hitchhiking when it suits, sampling whatever looks interesting, making friends and exchanging ideas.

So I'll just buy a third-class ticket, close my eyes, turn my smile towards the sun, and let this adventure take me where it will.

Photo: I took this photo in Yunnan Province, China, not far from the Tibet border. A man was sitting alone on his roof in the middle of the day, blowing soap bubbles into the blue sky. Why he did this, I'll never know. Maybe there was no reason except for the pleasure of watching the bubbles drift freely away in the wind.

Books

2010-06-24T00:09:00.003-03:00

Well, I'm back.

It was a sweetheart of a road trip...good company, easy travels, fun adventures. I brought back a ton of tape in both sound and interviews, which I'll have to work into some kind of audio form that makes sense. In the meantime, we get back into our lives.

I'm still a bit dead from the trip, and from diving back into work, so I'm going to pull out an old draft post that I wrote before going away.

In "Storytelling," a few blog posts back, I thought about the relevance of stories to our lives.

I don't seem to have as much time for them anymore, but the longest and best stories are, of course, told in books.

The iPad came to Canada a couple of weeks ago, and one of the things that it will be able to do is read books via Amazon.com. In a Wall Street Journal article from last April, Steve Johnson considers the Kindle and the effect that digital technology will have upon books.

In honour of this, I added a new feature to the blog, one that I've been thinking about for a while. You may not have noticed it yet, but on the sidebar beneath my Twitter feed you will see my Reading List. I've picked two books that I'm reading, two I've read, and two that I want to read. I'll update the list periodically. If anyone has any thoughts or recommendations, please let me know!

Livin' the dream

2010-06-18T10:53:00.004-03:00

"Aaaahh! You're living the dream, Shaina!" wrote one of my friends in a Facebook message this morning.

I guess I am - though it might not be everybody's dream. I'm in Toronto with good friends, soaking up the sun and the World Cup spirit, cheering alongside people from Italy, the Netherlands, Korea, the Ivory Coast, Portugal, Brazil, Mexico, France, and many other countries. This is living out a dream I've had in the back of my mind for a couple of years now. It's been a fantastic road trip, and the story is best told in pictures.

I'd also like to tell you about another dream of mine that came true this morning. Ever since I can remember, my family has listened to CBC Radio, and my strongest memories of CBC are of listening to Metro Morning, the flagship morning show in Toronto's lineup.

It was one of the reasons I wanted to enter journalism, and one of the reasons that I love the CBC so much. And this morning I was a voice on the show.

It was a long chain of events that led to me being asked to come on the morning show to chat with host Matt Galloway. We talked about why I travelled from Halifax to Toronto, dragging three friends with me, just to watch soccer.

I told him that there's a spirit here which can't be matched anywhere else. There's something infectious in the air in Toronto during World Cup month. There's fierce nationalism and dirty competition and I love it.

Imagine if the world was very shrunk to the size of one small city. One city, small enough for us to see all our problems and squabbles in the right perspective. If you begin on a small scale, differences are not a bad thing.

I'm here to look at those differences, to sit in different pubs in different neighbourhoods with people from different backgrounds, and take a little part of each of them away within me.

This, too, is a dream of mine.

Let the games begin!

2010-06-11T00:36:00.006-03:00

After a very depressing two weeks - nothing but the blues, with the mean reds just to break up the monotony - the thing I've been waiting for is finally here.

The World Cup begins tomorrow, and I intend to get right into it and get happy again. In just a few days, we'll be on our way to Toronto, and I'm almost all ready.

I found a Globe and Mail pull-out chart showing all the teams, with neat little spots where you can fill in the score and keep track of things.

My aunt sent me a link to a cool World Cup sundial calendar, showing all the matches by country and date.

From South Africa's tourism department, here's a very amusing video of the diski (soccer) dance.

A very nice fellow who's working the CBC World Cup Broadcast Centre is going to watch a game with me and teach me all about the finer points of the game.

And finally, diligently discovered by a friend and fellow blogger, this excellent list of places to watch the World Cup in Toronto.

There's just one thing missing. I still haven't decided who I'm supporting.

Help me out - who should I cheer for? Who are you cheering for, and why?

(Image courtesy livesoccertv.com)

Advice from a friend

2010-06-07T16:21:00.004-03:00

I'm not having a very good day today. I didn't have a lot of work last week, and it doesn't look like there will be much work this week. I'm searching for stories, but sometimes there's a lull, and I hate them.

These lulls depress me and give me too much time to think. I start to think things like, "I'm going to fail at this profession. I will never make anything out of my life. I am going to die of a broken heart." Then I make toast and tea, put Leonard Cohen songs on the radio, and check the empty mailbox.

But just when I'm getting to the height of the melodrama, I remember that if I just keep doing my job, eventually something will turn up. It always does. The mailbox isn't empty ALL the time.

There isn't much that perks up my day more than getting letters, and I recently received a lovely one from a friend in Alberta (and to make this letter extra lovely, she slipped a couple of facial masques into the envelope!).

This friend is a fellow freelancer, and one of the nicest people I know. We graduated from King's together, and although we live in different provinces, we cover similar things and face similar challenges. We write letters primarily to encourage each other. Here is an excerpt from Jessica's letter.

"Dear Shaina," she wrote. "For all of those days we feel we need to hit the re-start button: a plan to re-energize ourselves:

1) Take care of yourself. You can get worn down pretty easy when you fail to get three regular-ish meals a day, plenty of water, sleep and vitamins. Exercise because you want to (this is where dance comes in!) not because you feel you have to.

2) Spend time with family and friends. Nothing will recharge your batteries quicker than knowing people care about you.

3) Care about others. Try a random act of kindness. You'd be amazed how liberating and good it feels.

4) Find/become immersed in a project you believe in. It's about becoming inspired and optimistic.

5) It's knowing that your path is your own - that you have no need to compare yourself - and knowing that you have cheerleaders along the way.

What we do is not a waste of time. It is fabulously thrilling and exciting and drives the passion of our souls. We do it because there is nothing else on this earth that so moves us."

Image courtesy of ajc.com. Some days I feel just like Leonard looks, and when I feel like that, I have to listen to this. This is a band from Newfoundland called "The Once," performing the Leonard Cohen song, "Coming Back To You."

Soccer

2010-05-29T08:39:00.006-03:00

Let me preface this by saying that I am not a soccer fan.

But I am a World Cup fan.

The last FIFA World Cup was in 2006, and I spent the summer in Toronto working at RBC Dominion Securities. The whole office went mad for soccer (or football, if you prefer to call it that). People hung flags from the walls, we scheduled our breaks around the games, there was a betting pool...the atmosphere was celebratory every day. I think it's more than likely that every nation in the world could be represented in Toronto, and CERTAINLY every nation in the World Cup is represented. This makes Toronto a very special place to be when the city goes soccer-mad.

For four years, I dreamed about a road trip to Toronto just so I could be part of that again. I pitched the idea to my friends two years ago. At first it was just a wild, fantasy idea. Then, we decided: why not make it real?

I can feel the World Cup coming everywhere I look. There's a schedule of World Cup broadcast interruptions up at work. The advertising has already begun. People have started to talk.

Yesterday I was working for Maritime Noon, and there was an excellent interview/phone-in with John Doyle, the Globe and Mail columnist about his new book, "The World Is A Ball: The Joy, Madness & Meaning of Soccer." I listened to the interview and peeped at him over my desk as he went by.

He made some beautiful points about the beautiful game. Doyle spoke about how the World Cup brings out fervent nationalism, but it's a good-natured nationalism. "We don't have world wars because we have the world cup," he joked.

There is no better time to be Italian, or Brazilian, or South Korean, but everybody knows that they're here to cheer for the best team and the game itself. We in North America see the frenzy for the Stanley Cup playoffs and we think that's big. It is a drop in the bucket, it is nothing, when compared to the love affair the world has with soccer.

And the best sign of all that the World Cup is coming?

This morning, when I went out for a run to the soccer pitch near my home, I found it. Abandoned in the wet grass and just glowing in the sun: a soccer ball. I bounced it off my knees and my head and chased it up and down the field. It felt awesome, and I now understand why this is the world's game. I understand it in my body, not just in my mind.

It's so simple. All you need is a ball.

Our road trip to Toronto begins on June 12. I can't wait.

For your listening pleasure, here is the song with which I have been obsessed for the past few weeks: K'Naan's "Waving Flag," the anthem of the 2010 FIFA World Cup. Every time I hear the drums begin, I get chills.

Soccer ball photo courtesy of PolishNews.com

5 Things You Should Know Before Dating a Journalist

2010-05-27T10:17:00.000-03:00

A few years ago Tom Chambers, a San Diego-based journalist (and booze slinger), wrote '5 things you should know before dating a journalist' on his blog, Rockmycar. Someone put the thing on Twitter recently, and it started to filter its way through the Internet. It's arrogant and cheeky and funny and may (or may not) be completely true.

Anyway, two unrelated friends sent it my way. I guess this ought to tell me something. All my friends ask how my dating life is going on a fairly regular basis. Ladies and gentlemen: it doesn't exist.

Oh, there has been the odd inquiry or two. But the truth is, I'm gun-shy now.

I think about dating like I think about going to South America. It sounds like fun, I like to imagine myself doing it, and I figure I'll get around to it someday. But at the moment the thought of doing it for real.... oh wow, that's a big step.

So, just for fun, I've excerpted 5 Things You Should Know Before Dating a Journalist. Check out the link above if you want to see the whole post.

Gentlemen, be warned....

1) We can figure things out. Understand, we’re paid to dig deep, find the secrets and wade through bullshit. We can pick up on subtleties, so what you think you are hiding from us won’t be hidden for long. Sure, we’ll act surprised when you eventually tell us you starred in German porn as a freshman in college — but we already knew.

We don’t take shit from anyone, so don’t lie to us or give a load of bullshit. We spend all day separating fact from fiction, listening to PR cronies and dealing with slimy politicians. If you make us do the same with you, you’re just gonna piss us off. And don’t think we’ll be quiet about it. We’ll respond with the vengeance of an Op-Ed page railing against society’s injustices — and we’ll enjoy doing it.

Just tell us the truth. We can handle it.

2) At some point, you will be a topic. Either through a feature story or an opinion column, something you do or say will be a subject. Get over it. Consider it a compliment, even if we’re arguing against you in print.

Think about it: we live our lives writing about life. If you’re a part of our life, we’re going to write about you, your thoughts or a subject springing from one of the two.

Don’t be upset when an argument against your adoration of Hillary Clinton turns up on page A4. We’re not directing the writing at you, personally — your ignorance was just our inspiration (there, doesn’t that make you feel better?).

3) Yes, we think we’re smarter than you. In fact, we know it. Does that smack of ego? Absolutely — but that confidence is what makes your heart go pitter-patter.

We have a strong, working knowledge of how the world works. That makes us great in conversation. We can delve into the intricacies of zoning laws, local and national politics, where to find the good restaurants, what’s happening with pop culture, where the good bands are playing and more.

But there are pitfalls.

Guaranteed, when you say “towards,” we will automatically say “toward” — “towards” is not a word. We’re not trying to call you dumb (even though you don’t understand the English language), it’s habit. The same will happen when you say “anxious” when you mean “eager” and when you answer “good” when someone asks how you are doing.

We carry ourselves with a certain arrogant air. Embrace it (that’s what attracted you to us in the first place, after all). Don’t be surprised if we’re not impressed when you say, “I’m a writer, too.” No, you are not. The fact that you sit in a coffee shop wearing black while scribbling in your journal does not make you a writer. Nor does the fact that you “wrote some poems in high school” or that one day you want to pen “the great American novel.”

Look, we’re paid to write. Every day. What’s more, our writing matters. It changes opinions, affects decisions and connects people with the world around them.

We’re not spewing our angst or trying to fabricate an aura of creativity. We write about the real world — with real consequences.

Our words go through three or four cranky editors who make us rewrite before it’s printed a few hundred thousand times and distributed all over town. You don’t do that unless you’re confident, even egotistical.

You may have some great journal entries, poems and rudimentary short stories — good for you. Just don’t assume we’ll accept that as on par with what we do (unless you’re really hot, then hell, you’re a better writer than I).

4) You’re not less important than the job — the job is just more important than anything else. One doesn’t become a journalist to sit in an office from 9 to 5 Monday through Friday.

We do take our work home. If news is happening, we’ll drop whatever we’re doing — even if it’s with you — to cover it. We’re always looking for stories, so yes, we’ll stop on the street to write something down, interview a passer-by or gather information for a lead.

On that same note, don’t get upset if you call us on deadline suggesting some afternoon nookie and we say, “I’ve got to put the paper to bed first.” That could mean hours from now, but we’ll have plenty of time to put you in bed later.

5) You won’t be disappointed. Journalists are intense, driven, passionate folk. We carry those same attributes into our relationships, making it an extremely fun ride well worth the price of admission. Our lives are never boring and each day is different.

Aaaand....we're live!

2010-05-25T09:58:00.000-03:00

What a great long weekend it was: perfect weather, a barbeque on Saturday, a Sunday lobster supper on Emma's back deck, a Monday afternoon of frisbee, with lemonade and beer on Friso's balcony.

I feel that this weekend of playing hard was deserved, because I spent last week working hard. I turned around three CBC radio stories in five days for two different shows. This is a new all-time record for me. Normally a story could take a couple of days.

I had to get up early to do two of those stories live on the air for the morning show. Information Morning starts at 6:00 and runs until 8:30.

Until now, I've never done anything live before. We've pre-taped everything and whoever is tech-ing the show inserts it so neatly that sounds live. But that's just radio greasepaint and sparkle. I'm actually home in my warm bed. Depending on how early they schedule the piece (6:10, anyone?), sometimes I'm sleeping curled among my pillows as I'm talking to you on the radio.

But it just so happened that due to last week's packed schedule, we didn't have the time to pre-tape these pieces. This was not bad news to me. I have been interested in trying something live for a while. They say it's a different vibe - a little more energy, a little scarier, but a little bit more fun.

And it is. We do it in Studio A, the big one with panoramic windows (unusual for a studio, because windows let in street noise and vibrations, but these were specially constructed with floating double panes to keep the acoustics right).

When there's a break for the news, Eileen the show director opens the door to the studio (double paned doors, too) and lets me in. I have a paper copy of my script in my hand. I get settled to Don the host's left around the round table and put on my headphones. Eileen adjusts my mic and then leaves. Through my headphones I can hear the people in the control room, Eileen and Pierre the show technician. They give me directions if my voice level becomes too quiet or I'm accidentally facing away from the microphone. That all takes about 15 seconds.

Then we're live again. The co-host introduces me to the audience, telling them why a strange new voice is about to come on. Then Don says good morning to me, and away we go!

Here's a Youtube video I took just before I went on the air (you can actually hear Bob the co-host promo-ing my piece about Spryfield). In the control room to the left is Eileen, the show director. To the right is Pierre, show tech. Behind the glass to the left is Bob, who's filling in for the regular co-host Liz, and to the right with white hair is Don, the show host.

Right place, right time, right person

2010-05-22T09:13:00.011-03:00

Over a month ago, a friend passed me a tip about a company that had developed a technology to ship lobsters to Europe via ocean container ship. Basically they have created aquariums for the lobsters inside the containers.

By an odd coincidence, I think that I was the first person at CBC to hear about this. I wanted to do the story, and I told my supervisors about it, but for numerous reasons it got bumped away from me. First the news reporters had it and were deciding whether they wanted to pursue it. Then the business reporter had it and I was told that she would pursue it.

I felt a little bit like a dog watching a ball being handled above my head (Ooooh, please throw it! Throw it! I just want to chase it!), but I wasn't overly upset about it. Nobody was maliciously trying to cut me out. It's inevitable that sometimes this will happen.

So I moved on to other stories and thought no more on it, until it unexpectedly popped up again. All of the other reporters were busy and unable to cover the story, so Maritime Noon came back to me. Would you like to do it, Shaina?

Would I? Yes, of course!

So on a beautiful Monday morning I drove out to East Jeddore, cheerful as a lobster who's just escaped from a trap. I was laughing to myself, thinking that it was very appropriate that I finally got to do this story.

Turns out, the place I was going was a wharf where I've been many times before. In another life, this was one of the places I had to drop off and pick up Jake (my ex who works on fishing boats, for those of you who don't know him).

In all the time I drove Jake to and from wharves, I learned one thing: it can be darn hard to find a wharf in Nova Scotia. To find this one, for example, you drive across the bridge to Dartmouth. Then you drive until Main street ends. Then you drive until Highway 107 ends. Then you turn right three times and drive until the earth ends.

When the earth ends at the Atlantic ocean, you're there.

I've driven that road more times than I can count - in the afternoon, in the evening, in the snow, at four in the morning, when I was sleepy, when I was pumped up on coffee - and there was no way on earth that I could miss it.

I challenge any other reporter in the city to find that wharf with as little effort as I did.

It turned out to be a great story. If you're in the Maritimes, tune in to Radio One on Tuesday between 12 and 1pm.

Photo: This was taken on the road, somewhere between Main street and the end of the earth.

Something sensational

2010-05-19T08:36:00.009-03:00

A lot has been going on in my life this week and I had some good blog posts lined up for you about interesting Nova Scotian/Shaina news. But I have to put those on the back burner right now, because I just had to reach for a kleenex to get some troublesome tears out of my eyes.

My thoughts are far away from Nova Scotia this morning, on the other side of the world.

Mark MacKinnon, the Globe and Mail's East Asia correspondent, is using Twitter to give moment-by-moment updates on what he is seeing in Bangkok. He is in the main commercial area of the Thai capital, Siam Square. So far he has dressed a bullet wound in a colleague's leg, sheltered from bullets behind a truck with frightened Thais, and taken pictures of all of it.

Bangkok is burning.

In another life, I remember happily romping around Chitlom Skytrain station, peeking into Lumphini Stadium, and shopping in Central World. Wat Patum was one of the first things I saw in Bangkok as I stepped off the bus from the airport. Now, it is the place where perhaps 1,000 people are sheltering from gunfire as I write this (including Mark).

I was bleary and jetlagged from almost 30 hours of flying and hanging about in American airports. The heat and noise in Bangkok was bewildering. I remember walking down one of the main drags beneath the concrete overhang of the Skytrain, looking for a place to stay. All of a sudden I was confronted with this red and white and gold temple right in the middle of these massive steel and glass malls.

A couple of blocks from Wat Patum, we found our place to stay. So I recognize the alleys in Mark MacKinnon's pictures. For a few weeks we lived in one of them. After wandering around Asia for a couple of months, we returned to Bangkok - same alley, same hostel, and it felt like coming home.

I was only in Bangkok for a few weeks, but I loved it dearly and all I can do for it now is pray. Here are a few Bangkok memories from three years ago.

Happy birthday to me...

2010-05-15T22:57:00.002-03:00

It was my 25th birthday yesterday. My friends took me out to dinner and we celebrated in grand style. Today, I've been thinking a bit about getting older. A friend of mine once said that he didn't really want to make it past 25. Another friend insists that she's not 26, she's just 25 with an extra year of experience.

Is there something special about 25? I suppose there are a few things that have changed along the way. In high school I had no hips. Now, I do. Not sure exactly what happened there, but I suspect pizza at midnight is no longer such a good idea.

People in my age group often seem to worry about whether they are reaching their life goals in time. I'm becoming convinced that there is no right time for anything, because the older I get, the less I seem to know.

Oscar Wilde put it this way: "I am not young enough to know everything." At this rate, in a very few years I shall know nothing at all. This does, however, make growing up much more exciting.

A few months ago I came across a lovely poem by American poet Mary Oliver. It describes cycles of life, and learning how to deal with the constant changes life throws at us. Here's my birthday present to you.

"In Blackwater Woods"

Look, the trees
are turning
their own bodies
into pillars

of light,
are giving off the rich
fragrance of cinnamon
and fulfillment,

the long tapers
of cattails
are bursting and floating away over
the blue shoulders

of the ponds,
and every pond,
no matter what its
name is, is

nameless now.
Every year
everything
I have ever learned

in my lifetime
leads back to this: the fires
and the black river of loss
whose other side

is salvation,
whose meaning
none of us will ever know.
To live in this world

you must be able
to do three things:
to love what is mortal;
to hold it

against your bones knowing
your own life depends on it;
and, when the time comes to let it go,
to let it go.

Storytelling

2010-05-08T16:48:00.002-03:00

I'm in Toronto this weekend, and I don't have a lot of time to think out a fresh blog post, so I'm going to post this one. I often save drafts of blog posts, then return over time to work on them.

When I was about ten, I read The Lord of the Rings for the first time. When I reached the last page, I turned it. Having ripped my way through 1,069 pages, I still remember my confusion and disappointment when I found that the next one was blank.

It was just a fantastic story, and I grew to care about the characters as if they were my own friends. My books had no illustrations but I could see their faces (I resisted seeing the movies for several years - Elijah Wood is NOT my childhood friend).

I never expected anything from The Lord of the Rings except that it be a good story, which is its purpose for existing.

"I dislike allegory whenever I smell it," Tolkien is reported to have said. "Give me a cracking good story or a straightforward saga."

In a letter to publisher Stanley Unwin, Tolkien wrote, "the only fully intelligible allegory is real life." He strongly believed that stories need to apply to the reader's life. The reader loses himself in the story. When he emerges from the dream world, he returns to find the real world slightly changed by his experience of the book. There is no need to hit the reader over the head with an allegory; the reader creates his own.

Stories change our ideas of reality, not simply because we are entertained by them, but because they tell us something about ourselves.

I think one of the privileges in my life is that I get to tell people stories and then they tell me theirs.

I like it when some piece of work I have done elicits a response from other people - their stories of how they felt when they heard the piece, or memories that it brought up when they heard it. I don't know exactly why this happens, but I have a theory.

It only happens with stories "about people." Back in the fall, I was having some real trouble getting my thoughts straightened out. I made a few pitches, none of them successful. I was unsure what to do. My producer told me to look for stories that had personalities in them, stories that showed some colour and humanity. I had only a vague idea of what she meant, and it took a heck of a long time to figure it out.

When I started to understand, the stories got better. I've got a long way to go yet, but I think I'm starting to see that people are hungry for stories. Yes, we are: hungry for stories that tell us something about ourselves.

A story can also be an idea.

Stories seem to help us make sense of things. Life doesn't have a neat beginning, middle, and end. It is up to us to add the allegory that draws some sense out of what happens. I find it fascinating how sharing other people's stories is not just a passive act of receiving. We hear, and if they're good stories they make us ask: What do we need to do in order to live our lives? How can we possibly do it? Why should we?

Unexpected gifts

2010-05-01T13:34:00.003-03:00

This week, something unexpected happened to me.

I was writing a small story for a weekly newspaper. I had the whole story written, but I wanted a quote from a single mother for the finishing touch. I was following the newspaper story formula, and so far, everything had fit into the formula.

Anyway, I called a contact number I had for a single mom. I'd never met her or talked to her before, but I introduced myself and she said she was happy to chat. She is a young mom who has had several children. Only one is with her right now. She is also a student. She works hard to get by, and she has a sweet nature.

As we talked, I got the quotes that I needed, but then she began to cry. It was a phone interview. I still have the tape. Here is an approximation of the conversation.

--------------------
ME: "Sarah*, are you all right? Sarah?" No answer. Sniffles. "Sarah, I feel that I've upset you, and I'm sorry. I didn't mean to."

"No, it's all right. Just before you called I got off the phone with my mom. I wanted to celebrate my daughter's birthday a few weeks early, and she said that my family probably couldn't make it."

ME: "Sarah, I'm so sorry. Does your mother live far away from you?"

"A twenty-minute drive."

ME: "Oh, Sarah. I'm so sorry. Is there anything I can do?"

"No, it's all right. I'm used to this kind of behaviour from my family. I just really thought that my family would want to be with me to celebrate her birthday. They always act like that. When you don't have that kind of support from your family, it makes everything twice as hard."
-----------------------

I was thrown. I made sure she would be all right, I thanked her, I wished her daughter a happy birthday, and I gently let her go.

After that, I paced around my apartment for a while, feeling a little guilty but very lucky.

Guilty, because I had fallen into the trap of expecting a tight, easy, normal, unemotional answer that I could plug in to a story to make it complete. I was in a hurry. I had wanted a story that fit the formula.

Lucky, because instead, I had been handed a raw, emotional, beautiful slice of life. Instead of a polished and practiced answer I got a vulnerable, hurting human being on the phone. She had openly and generously trusted me with a story. Maybe she wouldn't want to see that story splashed across the front page of the paper, but she trusted me not to hurt her that way.

There are ways to tell a story that raw, but I knew that I couldn't tell it properly in the 500 words I'd been given. So I wrote the story in the normal way, and I will bring her a copy in person so that I can meet this woman who humbled me and reminded me to stay grounded and compassionate.

*Sarah is not her real name.

Music

2010-04-25T15:33:00.001-03:00

I haven't played the flute for a very long time. When I moved, I put all my music and instruments in the back of my closet and never touched them again.

But the other day I was sitting at my desk, typing away in silence. Even the radio was silent, which is a little unusual at my place. It was about four or five in the afternoon, the warmest part of the day. The window was open, and I gradually became aware that there was a noise coming from one of the nearby apartments. I think it had been going on for some time, but I was concentrating on a story and it only registered with my peripheral hearing (does such a thing exist?).

It was a hollow whistling noise, kind of airy and anemic and piercing, and it was trying to carry a tune. It was a flute.

I stuck my head out of the window, and saw on a neighbouring balcony there was a girl practicing the flute. I couldn't see her face because her music stand was in the way, but I think she might have been in middle school - certainly not older.

She was practicing a piece that had a lot of triplets. I don't think she'd been playing very long, because her sound hadn't firmed up into that clear melodic line that distinguishes flutes. It was weak as when you blow across a bottle. I watched for a little while and noticed that she often took breaks, probably because the lips quickly get tired of the same position when you are just beginning to play a wind instrument.

I went to the closet and took out my flute. I didn't really have anything in mind, but the next time she stopped for a break, I played a couple of scales. I'm so rusty that my sound wasn't very good either. I was standing behind the curtain, so although she knew my general direction she couldn't see me. She took up her piece again. I listened to her for a bit, then ran over a few things out of my old music notebook. Two flutes playing different things, but together.

After a while I went back to work and she got on with her practicing, but I left my flute on the windowsill.

From the album, "In Good We Trust," here's a song about taking your time to get to where you need to be going. There's no flutes in it, but it's got a lovely, warm, inviting sound. It's from Canadian singer-songwriters Harry Manx and Kevin Breit. It's called "Bottom of the Hill."

In praise of motorcycles

2010-04-23T13:28:00.002-03:00

I got Belle out yesterday. I've been itching to take her out of the storage place where she's been stashed all winter. For those of you who don't know her, Belle is my motorcycle. She's a Yamaha Virago, a little 250cc. I would have had her out long ago, but her battery was dead and I had to order a new one.

The battery was finally at the shop yesterday, and the weather was just perfect to get the bike out. It was sunny, warm, and not too windy. Belle felt a little rickety when I wheeled her out into the driveway. She made funny clicking noises. Her chrome is all covered in what looks like soot, and I think she could use some babying. I opened her up, put the new battery in, put some gas in her tank, crossed my fingers, and hit the starter. She croaked a bit, but on the third try the engine turned over. Sweet as a bell.

I put some air in the tires and decided to go for a ride. I went out towards Sambro, a fishing village southwest of where I live. I also decided to combine my trip with some work, so I hung my camera around my neck just in case I saw anything blog-worthy. It worked out very well...as I rode, I passed a lot of signs that had events listed for this weekend. When I saw a sign, I simply pulled over and snapped a picture of the sign. Later, I reviewed the photos and put together a quick weekend events listing for the OTC newsblog.

I got so good at it that I could snap the photos with one hand. I didn't even have to turn off the bike or shift into neutral. I just pulled over, held the clutch in with my left, snapped, and was off again. The paparazzi of Italy got their name from their scooters, you know. I used to joke that more journalists should travel by motorcycle. It gets you through traffic faster, it's an instant icebreaker at casual interviews, and now it lets me shoot and ride. Hooray for the opening of the season!

Food stories

2010-04-15T22:02:00.006-03:00

Tomorrow I am covering the opening party at the Mindful Mango, a cafe in the Bayers Road Centre. It's a coffee/sandwich bar business that sprang out of a partnership between our health authority and Connections Halifax, an organization that supports people with mental health conditions. The cafe uses local ingredients and all the profits go back into mental health programming. Some of the employees at the Mindful Mango are Connections clients.

I have a radio piece to put together for the Monday morning show. I like doing these sorts of events, although I just realized that I seem to be covering a lot of food events.

I've now done a story on high school students who cooked up a gourmet fundraising dinner, a story about a cooking competition using a surprise ingredient (turnips), and this story about the locally-sourced cafe.

As is pretty obvious to readers of this blog, I love food and cooking. As I think back to those events I covered, I don't find it at all surprising that food brought people together for good, fun causes. Food is very good for that.

I've been cooking a lot lately, too. Aside from the boeuf bourgignonne of a few weeks ago, here's a sampling of some other things I've been making: bread, pork chops in mustard cream sauce, homemade tortillas and guacamole, mushroom and spinach pasta, Brazilian rice and beans, Indian lentil dal.

No, I don't eat it all myself. I feed people. I don't much like eating alone, so I have been inviting people to dinner quite often, sometimes two or three times a week.

When I'm feeling down, cooking does make me feel better if I can motivate myself to do it. But I also notice that I tend to cook more, and cook best, when I'm feeling happy to begin with. Here's something the Globe and Mail recently had to say on cooking as therapy.

Being human, part two: Never trust something that isn't human

2010-04-13T14:59:00.000-03:00

A month ago I wrote about being human (and therefore fallible). I have a bit more on this subject rolling around in my brain.

People have talked at length elsewhere about how the media landscape is changing. Social media allows people to tell the world an awful lot about themselves. As I discussed before, it's humanizing, but sometimes we say too much. This can be particularly damaging for a journalist.

TechCrunch satirically suggests that if you take this logic to the extreme, you more or less stop being human, though we all admit the necessity of watching how much 'human' you let out into the wild.

At the same time, I'm trying to reconcile this idea with my other idea, which I expressed in my March 19 blog post about falling in love with Halifax. This idea says that I need to be a part of a community in order to understand it. Spryfield in particular has been burned a lot by 'parachute' journalism.

"The reporters only come when there's a shooting or a stabbing," they tell me. "The rest of the time, they don't care."

Trust goes two ways. If you didn't trust the reporter, why would you give up anything but a superficial truth? I need to be a listener in the good times and the bad times. Listening is a form of caring about what people have to say. Caring is part of being human. Ergo, I need to be human.

I don't think that these two things are irreconcilable. Delicate balance, maybe, but not impossible. Certainly, the best journalists that I know are the most human. The ones that people relate to and respond to are the ones that we know something about. A little personality isn't a bad thing.

I think that the people that I'm covering should be able to see me as a human being, not just as a kind of writing and recording device.

Why not? If I want them to share their personal thoughts and feelings, shouldn't they have a little bit of access to mine? Maybe that's what this blog is for. Maybe that's what blogs in general are good for.

Anyway, I'm going to give the last word on this subject to one of my most well-loved quotes. It comes from Mr. Beaver of C.S. Lewis' Narnia book, The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe: "When you meet anything that's going to be human and isn't yet, or used to be human once and isn't now, or ought to be human and isn't, you keep your eyes on it and feel for your hatchet."

For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction

2010-04-11T22:55:00.010-03:00

This has been a busy week! In the first part of the week I had a lot of shared meals with friends and I visited around Spryfield, getting acquainted with our immigrant resource centre and the Salvation Army. I'll be putting up a couple of Outside the Circle posts about that soon.

Thursday and Friday I worked on Information Morning, the CBC Radio morning show. I was very pleased to be called in on Thursday. I've freelanced pieces for the show over the past year, but I haven't done much working on the actual show itself. I'm not on the air, but I what this means is I get to work behind the scenes. Someone has to do the calling around, research, and setting up of interviews and creating questions to give the host. It always surprises me how long this can take, and how a day's effort can go into coordinating a seven-minute interview.

On Friday I had a bit of a frustrating day. The Keisha story keeps getting bumped back, because although the actual piece is complete, the follow-up is not ready yet. On Thursday I suggested a different way to do the follow-up, so what we're doing now is have me come on the show and explain what I've learned about autism services. I will bring clips that I've collected from people in the autism community to illustrate my points.

I have almost all of the clips collected, but on Friday I was trying to get the last one I needed: a comment from the school board. This turned out to be much more difficult than I thought. I was depending on getting it in time for Monday, and I wasn't able to do it. All inquiries have to go through the communications person at the board, Doug Hadley.

When I called him on the phone at 9 a.m. on Friday morning, Doug listened to what I needed and told me who he thought would be the best person to set me up with. Doug himself doesn't know anything about specific autism services. That's not his job. He said that he wasn't sure he could get me what I needed by the end of the day. "I'm just one person for the whole board," he said to me over the phone. "You can hear that I'm frustrated."

He manages to keep things pleasant and polite, but I don't envy him. I wouldn't like to be the person who has to field persistent calls every day, then hook up people with differing schedules and priorities. But Doug has to do this, because that's his job. I try to be pleasant and polite to him too, but I can't stop calling him either, because that's my job.

In the end, I didn't manage to get what I needed in time, so I will have to call Doug again first thing tomorrow morning. I believe that Keisha's story is a good one, and I want to get it on the air soon, because it doesn't do anyone (Keisha, the show, the school board, Nova Scotians, or me) any good if it's languishing unused in the computer.

And all this made me think a bit about what my job was, and what Doug Hadley's job is, and the way we interact. I'm sure that Doug is better paid than I am, and he probably has regular hours and a lot more job security. But like I said, I don't envy him. He's frustrated and I don't find that surprising.

I get to ask questions, to get curious, and to start actions. I like that. Doug Hadley gets to react to my questions, and he gets to react to everyone else's questions too. I found Friday frustrating, but at least for now I don't find my job frustrating.

Research

2010-03-31T18:03:00.000-03:00

Some time ago I mentioned Keisha, a 6-year-old girl who has autism and is also deaf. Keisha cannot speak, and her family is fundraising to give her private speech therapy.

I am responsible for a radio profile on Keisha as her family carries out their fundraisers. Today I am putting the profile together and it will go to air next week.

Telling Keisha's story has not been a completely straightforward process. Keisha's only six, and she has been affected by so many government programs and departments - health, community services, education, hospitals, non-profit organizations - but she needs still more help. Even Keisha's father Allen has trouble keeping track of all of the services that Keisha has used. I felt that it was important to see the bigger picture, but the bigger picture was confusing and took a while to sort out.

When you're in the thick of things like that, it's really hard to keep track of the vital questions: what is the problem here? Who is responsible for the problem? What needs to be done to make it better? These are big questions that go looking for answers throughout a whole province.

I want to understand, but it takes me a long time to wade through all of the information. I did my best to understand the whole thing, but sometimes I doubted myself.

I know that I only have five or six minutes to talk about Keisha on the air. It is not easy to tell a coherent story in that time, yet also include all the background info. I struggled with how to do this, until I decided to suggest to my producer that it would make sense to follow up the story with an interview with an expert from the Provincial Autism Centre, who can help disentangle the government services side. I have seen this work before, and I think it will work again.

So in the end, what I come back to is this: my job today is to tell a story about a little girl who wants to speak. That story will have to be guided by all of the background information that is floating underneath its surface. The only way to handle huge problems is to break them down into human-sized pieces, and that's what I have to do.

To hear Keisha's story and learn more about how families such as hers can navigate the Nova Scotian health/education system, tune in Tuesday morning to Information Morning, CBC Radio One, 90.5fm in Halifax.

If you are looking for more information on autism, hearing loss, early intervention, or special education in Nova Scotia, here are a few of the documents and links that I used in trying to understand this story:
The Atlantic Provinces Special Education Authority
The Progress Centre
Early Intervention NS
Nova Scotia Hearing and Speech
2001 Report of the Special Education Implementation Review Committee
2003 Response to the Report of the Special Education Implementation Review Committee

Mesdames et messieurs....Boeuf Bourguignon a la Julia Child!

2010-03-26T16:59:00.010-03:00

For several years now I've had a fascination with Julia Child. This fascination pre-dates both the book and movie version of Julia & Julie, amusing though they were. I love cooking, and I love cookbooks. On the very first page of the very first cookbook I ever owned - the 1975 edition of the Joy of Cooking - there is a quote from Julia Child.

"This book is number one on my list," said Julia of the JOC, "the one book of all cookbooks that I would have on my shelf - if I could have but one." But how can you settle for just one?

A week ago I finally splurged and bought yet another cookbook: Mastering the Art of French Cooking, Volume One, by Julia Child. I already own volume two, having picked it up secondhand two years ago, but volume one is where all the big names live - the celebrities of French cooking. Boeuf bourguignon. Cassoulet. Bouillabaisse.

Now, generally I am fearless in the kitchen, but Julia intimidates me with her chicken livers in aspic and pate en croute. I decided my first dish had to be her famous boeuf bourguignon.

So yesterday afternon I began to make the stew on top of the stove, browning the bacon (in oil) and the beef. As the meat, carrots, and onions were simmering, I turned on the oven to pre-heat for the long, three hour bake that finishes up the whole stew and makes the flavours blend together beautifully.

I started to set the table. I was in a festive mood and wanted to use my brass candlestick on the table. Noticing that there was a lot of old wax on the candlestick, I set it on a baking sheet and shoved it into the oven for a minute. I have done this many times - the wax melts and then I wipe it off easily with a paper towel. It has never been a problem before, but I think this time I must have somehow splashed wax onto the bottom of my oven as I removed the baking sheet.

A few minutes later, as I crossed the kitchen, I caught something orange out of the corner of my eye. I kid you not, the first thought that flitted through my head was, "I don't have a fireplace in here....oh, God."

A word of advice - if you start a wax fire in your oven, this is what you do.

Don't panic. Do not open the oven door. Turn off the oven and the stove. Turn on the range hood fan, if you have one. Open all the windows and doors. Wait for the flames to die and the oven to cool. Inspect your oven for any remaining traces of wax, and clean them up if possible.

Then, you continue with the recipe and, just to prove that you are not a total wash-out in the kitchen, you make some killer boeuf bourguignon - tender, savoury, and so fragrant that your guests follow the smell to your door.

Julia wrote at the top of the recipe, "carefully done, and perfectly flavored, it is certainly one of the most delicious beef dishes concocted by man," so as you and your stew bask in the praise of your friends, just give them a capable smile.

When you're alone in the kitchen, who's to see?

Microphones and comfort

2010-03-24T14:02:00.006-03:00

Last night I went to visit Keisha and her family at home. Keisha's family is her father, Allen, and Allen's girlfriend Tracey, who is Keisha's mother figure most of the time. Keisha lives with her mother every other weekend, and also visits her grandparents quite often, but I haven't met them.

I'm working on a radio profile of this family for Information Morning. Keisha is deaf and autistic, and she can't speak. Allen very much wants to send her to private speech therapy, but it's expensive.

I've met Keisha, Allen, and Tracey several times now, and we're growing more comfortable together. Autistic children aren't always comfortable meeting strangers, and it's common for them to avoid eye contact or communication (as a matter of fact, many non-autistic children go through a shy phase as well) so I was expecting Keisha to ignore me. This is pretty usual for her. But by accident or not, I did catch her eye a couple of times, which is more than ever before. Tracey said that Keisha seemed to be reacting well to having me in the apartment. I guess that's a good sign.

One thing that Keisha seems to like a lot is the microphone. It has a black, squishy foam wind cover that fits over the head of the mic. When it comes near her, she likes to hold onto the stem of the mic and rub the foam against her lips. Keisha rubs a lot of things against her lips - almost all her food gets a rubbing before she eats it. Allen and Tracey aren't sure why she does this, but they think it's a sensory thing. This is the way that Keisha explores the world. Allen has a microphone at home, so Keisha does understand what it does. But the wind cover makes mine much more interesting.

Maybe it was because I was already thinking about comfort levels, but when Keisha was playing with the microphone last night, I was reminded of something that my old radio teacher told me.

"You don't bring a recorder the first time," he said. "No matter what you miss, you never bring the mic out the first time." That's not always practical, of course, but when time allows it doesn't hurt to let people get comfortable with you. A lot of people find the cords and equipment and microphone intimidating. So when you're doing a portrait of a family, it seems like a good idea to meet them as people before the scary-looking equipment comes out of the bag.

Spring is here!

2010-03-20T14:23:00.008-03:00

Happy Spring! It's finally here, and it could not be a better first day! It's amazingly sunny and 17 degrees out. I've already been outside for hours, and when I'm done here I'm going out again to enjoy the sun while it lasts.

Over dinner last night, another friend who has been on anti-depressants for years told me that she was finally feeling ready to go off them (congratulations, honey - I'm behind you all the way).

"My doctor told me not to do it during the winter," she said, "but now that spring is here, I think I can do it."

Yes, there really is something about the spring. It makes my skin feel awake again, makes me want to run for miles, makes me want to do crazy things. Yesterday I saw strawberries at the store (confession: Florida strawberries, not Nova Scotian) and had to buy a package. I couldn't even wait to get them home...as soon as I left the store I picked the reddest berry I could find and bit into it. I felt as if about 700 years of winter dust was being washed out of my mouth.

This morning I went for a run in shorts, a t-shirt, and a sweater. Can you believe it? I ran to a soccer field in my neighbourhood and raced around it for a while, just soaking up the sunshine. I was feeling kind of silly so I raced in zigzags and leaped and spun around in circles with my arms flapping loose in the wind.

There was a shallow grassy trench at the edge of the field, about three meters across, and I decided I was going to jump it. I started halfway down the field, sprinted towards the ditch, had one second of doubt. Then I jumped. It was not a very intelligent jump - more of a throwing myself into a headlong dive towards the other side. I didn't make it, although I came close.

My toes grazed the ground first, followed by my knees, which took the brunt of the fall. I've got grass burn on them now! When the rest of my body hit the warm, grassy bank, I rolled over on my back and looked up at the sky. I thought, "My goodness, this is why I threw myself down here so clumsily...this is exactly where I wanted to be all along."

How I fell in love with Halifax

2010-03-19T11:22:00.002-03:00

I'm writing this as an upcoming guest blog post for Kimberly Walsh's excellent blog, East Coast By Choice. Kimberly describes herself as a geek girl, bookworm, writer and PR thinker in one. Her Twitter handle - that's how we met - is @AliasGrace, and she is a web content producer and social media manager for the CBC in literary programming.

Besides the fact that Kimberly was looking for guest bloggers, I wanted to write about this topic anyway. I've been thinking a lot about the reasons that community journalism has been pulling me in, and why I like it so much. I've also been thinking about the reasons that I chose to stay in Halifax and dig into it. That process started three years ago, after I graduated from school, and it has intensified over the last year. Even when I was presented with opportunities to leave, I chose to stay. I still dream about living other places in the world, so I can't say that I'll be here forever - but I'm here for now.

"Don't you think there would be more opportunities in a big city?"

I get that question way too much, and I'm really tired of it. I always answer the same way.

"Sure, maybe there would be," I reply. Then I explain that in spite of the opportunities a big city offers (and I haven't seen a lot of evidence that a big city would REALLY offer my dream job in journalism) I've got a network in Halifax. I feel like people here have time to listen to me.

I guess you could say that the real answer to that over-asked question is, "Hell NO!"

I moved from Toronto to Halifax in 2003 to pursue a degree in journalism at the University of King's College. I thought I'd be going home at the end of four years. Right up through the final months of my degree my mom was thinking about an East Coast road trip and planning how we could pack my things into the car for the return journey.

At the time this made me happy, because I didn't like Halifax.

I come from Toronto, Toronto. I'm a real downtown girl. I love the feel of a big city. Halifax was cute but it was a pain in my butt. I couldn't get decent Chinese food. The nightlife mostly consisted of beer. The transit system made me angrier than a wasp in a jar. I felt like a tourist on an extended, mediocre vacation.

When I decided to stay, I knew that I had to change my approach. No more tourism. If this was going to be home, I had to make it into a home.

I started to look for ways to become part of the community. I began to take dance classes. I volunteered at the library. I organized outings with acquaintances so that we could become friends. I paid attention to notices on message boards. I went to community meetings. I struck up conversations with my neighbours.

At first I found that I had to force the process, but the more I worked at it the more I found a sense of belonging in this rocky, foreign place. And the more I felt like I belonged, the more I realized that I actually liked Halifax. I liked Halifax a lot.

Another thing that happened along with this sense of belonging and liking for Halifax, was that Halifax started to like me. Opportunities opened. Work started to arrive.

All these things happened gradually over time. Things evolved, one into another. It was my own fault that I distanced myself from Halifax, but it was also my micro-decisions which changed that. I didn't understand my community until I became part of it. When I decided to become interested in my neighbours, acquaintances, and community, rather than live with my mind constantly flitting away to the "big city opportunities," I started to see the opportunities right in front of me.

Funny how that works!

Am I allowed to be human?

2010-03-15T11:50:00.002-03:00

As I mentioned last week, I've migrated all our Spryfield news to Outside the Circle (and if you're here seeking local news, please visit our new site. Read, enjoy, and help me make it better!). So Chebucto West is back where it started.

The thing that confronts me now is: where on earth is that? How do I comment on the news that I'm delivering elsewhere? Wouldn't that be breaking the number one rule of "objective" journalism?

To give you an example, last week I was researching a story and found that the situation behind it was more complicated than I'd imagined. I doubted myself and my ability to tell that story clearly. In short, I was scared of the story. I was in a period of self-doubt. I get them...everybody does. Part of being human.

I took a walk to the frozen lake, sat on a rock, thought about life a bit. Then I came home and wrote a draft for this blog where I talked at length about my fears and wondered aloud if I could hand this story off to somebody with more experience than I.

I'm going ahead with the story, but I didn't publish that blog post. A voice in the back of my head said, "If you put this up there and later publish the story, could this self-doubt cause people to question the quality of your reporting?" Once you put something up on the Internet, it's there for anyone to see, even if you remove it later.

Last fall, Washington Post managing editor Raju Narisetti closed his Twitter account. On the Post's Ombudsman blog, Andrew Alexander wrote, "In today’s hyper-sensitive political environment, Narisetti’s tweets could be seen as one of The Post’s top editors taking sides."

Not everybody thought this was a great decision. Brent Baker at Newsbusters.org snorted, "So much for speaking truth to power!" MG Siegler at TechCrunch wrote, "How deep does that rabbit hole go? Maybe those journalists should also refrain from stating their opinions at dinner parties. Maybe they shouldn’t be allowed to laugh at Michael Moore’s new movie when it comes out. Actually, they probably shouldn’t even be allowed to see it...Hell, they should really just disconnect their computers from the Internet. And maybe stop leaving the office. Also, they should probably just stop having opinions."

The question which came up last week in my own life has more to do with my perceived competence than my perceived opinion, but it's not such a stretch to say that my problems come from the same root as Raju Narisetti's.

In a March 11 editorial, the Vancouver Observer suggested some sensible guidelines, which basically boil down to, "think before you post."

I try to do this every time. Maybe sometimes I don't think hard enough, but I try. And as you can see, I did decide to expose some of my self-doubts to you, because I think that I am allowed to be human. Everybody already knows that I'm human, that I hold certain opinions about certain things, and that I can fail.

To be continued...

Outside the Circle

2010-03-07T13:03:00.009-04:00

Hi there! Once again, if you were redirected here from the CBC.ca website and you're looking for Sidney's Story, please scroll down to older posts.

Newsflash: the blog is going to get a lot simpler in the future.

If you are a regular follower (hi, Mom!) you may be relieved to hear that Life in Chebucto West's schizophrenic nature will soon be coming to an end.

A few months ago, Haligonia.ca contacted me (through Twitter, of all places!). They wanted to meet me and talk about doing some joint projects. Haligonia is a website based in Halifax. Their focus is entirely on local news, mostly through streaming video.

The way they work is they have a lot of bloggers who are 'syndicated' on the main site. Everyone contributes a little news, with the idea being that a little from everybody adds up to a lot. I would say that their main weakness right now is news content, and they know this. A lot of bloggers want to write about their experiences with food, fashion, or music, and that's all great, but Haligonia wants more news. There aren't a lot of bloggers who go out and find news and then write about it (because really, who would be crazy enough to do that? Gee, I wonder.....)

So our deal is this. I get a website (drumroll please) called www.outsidethecircle.ca, which is for all of the little news stories that I've been telling you about lately. Haligonia will distribute Outside the Circle content to its subscribers, but the OTC website and content belong to me. Of course, you can also follow OTC directly from its own website.

(And before you ask, yes, we were aware that OTC stands for other things as well).

The reason we've called the new website 'Outside the Circle' is two-fold. The area that I'm covering for this website is Spryfield, Armdale, Cowie Hill...all areas that are geographically outside of the Armdale Roundabout. For anyone who has never driven into Halifax, the Armdale Roundabout (formerly the Armdale Rotary) is a traffic circle that separates the peninsula from the mainland.

The rotary (as I still think of it) is a huge dividing line. Some people are actually scared of this thing. Those who live on the peninsula don't like to cross it, and those who live off-peninsula only cross it because they have to. The rotary separates us from the life of the city in a very real way. It amazes me that a circular strip of pavement not much wider around than a soccer field can affect our lives so much - but that's the way it is.

The other reason I chose this name is Spryfield has traditionally been seen as outside of the circle of power. Just like in any city, the power base in Halifax is concentrated in the downtown area. 'Suburban' areas like Sackville, Bedford, Dartmouth, and Spryfield are left hanging. Spryfield in particular is a low-income suburb, and so it's even more 'outside the circle.'

So in short, this is who we are. And what I'm saying with the name is: let's accept who we are and deal with it.

I've been waiting to tell you about my partnership with Haligonia for a long time, and I'm glad that it's finally the right time to talk about it. I'm very excited about the possibilities for telling Halifax more about what's going on outside of its circle.

What this means for Chebucto West readers is that this blog will return to its original purpose - meditations on my work and, very occasionally, my personal life. Hopefully you will be seeing more posts like 'Radio voices' and 'Journalist's responsibility.' I hope that by separating 'actual work' from 'thoughts on work,' the story here will be clearer for everyone.

New building for the Spryfield Single Parent Resource Centre

2010-02-25T15:06:00.022-04:00

Hi there! If you were redirected here from the CBC.ca website and you're looking for Sidney's Story, please scroll down to older posts.

Today I was at the Spryfield Single Parent Centre. This afternoon was the kickoff to raise funds for renovating the building. The SPC needs about $100,000 to add a new floor and renovate the existing space. See the pictures below! More pictures on Flickr.

It's a little cramped in the Single Parent Centre right now, but every inch of the space gets used. About 600-700 families from the Halifax area go there to meet each other and learn how to better take care of themselves and their kids. People come from as far away as Eastern Passage and Dartmouth for the SPC classes. For more info on their programs (doula, post-natal, pre-natal, nutrition, cooking, and more) call 902-479-3031.

A lot of people are coming together to help the SPC into their new space. Today there was a cheque presentation from J.L. Ilsley's fundraising dinner (see older posts), which raised about $1000 in total. J.L. Ilsley shop class students will also be helping to renovate the kitchen, building new cabinets and installing them.

Donna Williamson, executive director of the SPC, told me that they hope the renovations will be done by the end of the summer. In the meantime, the SPC's temporary home will be with the Salvation Army in Greystone.

Journalist's responsibility

2010-02-21T12:21:00.012-04:00

This morning I got up at seven and went to Sidney's place. Sidney made me a cup of tea and some sausage rolls (he'll never stop feeding me, no matter how I protest). He already had CBC blaring on the radio when I arrived. We sat in his neat and tidy living room, and listened to his documentary together.

When we first came on the radio, we were so excited. The phone rang within two minutes. It was a friend of Sidney's, saying "Are you listening to this?!" Sidney replied, "I'm listening to it right now! I'll call you back." We got up and did a couple little hip circles in celebration.

The doc progressed, and I could see that Sidney was enjoying it. He didn't look at me. He was staring off into the distance...not at the radio, but at memories. He was back in the dance studio, then he was back in the 1940s. He was surprised and pleased when we got to the scene where he met his wife in a dance hall. Months ago he'd sent me a YouTube link to Artie Shaw's rendition of Begin the Beguine, the old dance music we used. I snuck that in as a surprise, and he was especially pleased by it. That's why I love radio so very much. I defy television to transport you to another place like that.

But that can work against you as well, and I was a little afraid of what was coming next. I knew that in order to tell Sidney's story I had to take him back to when his wife, Esther, broke her leg. We had to travel back into the hospital where she died, and back to the lonely apartment with Christmas decorations that Esther never got to see. We also had to revisit his nagging fear that Esther could have done more to help herself.

I tell you, I was scared. When I recorded that story for the first time, Sidney was the one who was taking me back to that place. He did it at his own pace and comfort level. Now it was my turn to drag him back to one of the worst moments of his life. Bad things can happen when you do that. I didn't want to hurt Sidney, and I knew I was going to.

When I asked Sidney if he would like to listen to the doc together, all of this was going through my mind. What if he was angry? What if I'd done a bad job of telling the story? What if I got something wrong? I almost chickened out.

Still, I told myself that this was the last part of my job.

If I'm going to put this man's story out there for the world to see, then I have a responsibility to be there to take the blame if I get it wrong. If he thinks that he was misrepresented, then he has a right to tell me why.

This is actually an important part of any media outlet's code of ethics. It's why papers print letters to the editor, corrections, and occasionally, apologies. That's part of the reason why they sign their bylines to the piece. That's why radio reporters sign off at the end of every report. It's not just for self-aggrandizement, although maybe it's partly that. It's for feedback.

I wasn't required to be there in person to take Sidney's feedback, but I wanted to. I'm glad I did, because if I hadn't been there, I wouldn't have seen him wipe away a tear or two. He was back in his green chair. I went and sat next to him on a little stool. He patted me on the shoulder, and then we were okay again.

He wants a copy.

If you missed the broadcast, check Sidney out when his story goes up on the Maritime Magazine website next week. There was so much more to tell about Sidney that we couldn't fit in to this documentary. He had a career as a London bobby, a captain of two Royal Canadian Navy Prestonian class frigates (including the HMCS Beacon Hill, the last operational WWII Prestonian class frigate), and a semi-professional magician. He still performs magic shows for friends. He is exceptionally good at making a joker appear......

More pictures of Sidney's hula hoop class on my Flickr photostream.

Radio voices

2010-02-20T13:56:00.008-04:00

It's been a while since I told you any of the story behind the stories - that is, my story.

I've been telling other people's stories all week, what with finishing the radio doc etc, and I'd like to tell you a little bit about what goes into it.

After all the tape is gathered and the interviews are done, there's a lot of writing. It's far harder to write something short than something long, and radio is short. It took four or five drafts back and forth between me and my producer, Christina, until we got what she was looking for. She has great patience and she forced me to think carefully about what I was saying and do my best, which is what any editor is meant to do. Christina has a great smile, and she gives it the exercise it deserves. When she handed me back my script, smiling, and asked if I was ready to record - that was the best part.

I absolutely love getting in the studio. When the soundproof door closes behind you, the air goes all dead. There's a square table with four mics and headphones. In the middle of the table is a post with a light on top like the lights on top of a squad car. I could see Christina through the glass. I have gigantic 70s-style earphones on and I can't hear her unless she holds down a button to talk to me, just like a walkie-talkie. When she is recording, the light in the centre of the table glows red.

The CBC's suggested 'position' to talk on the radio is at the edge of the seat, feet flat on the floor, shoulders back and airway open, with a metre-stick for a backbone. Christina likes to slouch. That's how she sits when she talks to people in a relaxed way. I like to put my elbows on the table and lean forward, almost over the table, almost into the mic. That's what I do when Lenn and I are sitting up late over cake and tea and I'm telling him a really juicy story.

Christina and I recorded for almost an hour. She coached me through it, reminding me over and over not to put on my "Shaina, the broadcaster" voice, which sounds kind of distanced and fake. "You should sound like Shaina, my friend," she said. We practiced reading the script like a ringmaster...like I was on the edge of laughter...like I was talking to my best friend in the whole world. There was an empty chair across the table from me, and I visualized people sitting in it.

Different radio people have different tricks to get in the right mood. I've heard of people bringing in stuffed toys to talk to, or of mentally choosing just one particular listener to talk to.

So if you hear me tomorrow morning and it sounds as if I'm talking to you - just for you - then that's perfect, because you're right!

"Help Keisha Speak" Fundraiser

2010-02-19T17:18:00.008-04:00

I was at Ready to Rumba again today, taking pictures of Sidney. I needed photos for the Maritime Magazine podcast. They are just adorable, and so typically Sidney. I needed a place to store them, so if you want to take a look, I'm now on Flickr.

While I was at R2R, I noticed a sign on the door featuring this young lady. Her name is Keisha. Here's what the sign said.

This adorable six-year-old girl lives in Halifax and - like many her age - loves gymnastics. She loves swinging on the rings and hanging from the bars. But that's where the similarities end. Keisha is hearing-impaired and autistic. She is a vibrant, loving child who currently lives in a world without speech.

Keisha's dad is wonderful. He does his level best to open up the world for his daughter. However, with little funding and programs available, he struggles to provide the speech therapy ($120-$150 an hour) that Keisha so desperately needs. You can help.

"Help Keisha Speak" Showcase, Dance, and Fundraiser.
Saturday, March 6 at 7 p.m. at Ready to Rumba (225 Herring Cove Road, Halifax)
Enjoy an evening of dance performances and social dancing - while helping to raise funds to provide speech therapy sessions for this delightful - but silent - little girl.

Tickets available at the door - minimum donation $10. Not able to attend but still want to donate? Contact Nadia Farbstein at nadiaf@dal.ca

Second Tuesday Events Round-Up at Spryfield Roundtable

2010-02-18T17:02:00.005-04:00

I haven't had a lot of time to blog lately, since I've been so busy with radio stuff. But last week I did sit in on the Spryfield Service Providers Roundtable, a very interesting Spryfield institution.

The idea is that once a month anybody who's providing some kind of service to the public can come and talk about what they do, share ideas with other service providers, and keep each other updated. Regular attendees include public health nurses from addictions and mental health, the Spryfield Single Parents Resource Centre, the Chebucto Communities Development Association, the Salvation Army, the library, the community centre... It was nice to see some familiar faces there, as my coordinator from my volunteer work at the Chebucto West community health board was running the meeting.

It was a study in community governance. I'll give you an example - someone said, "I've got a man who needs some pro bono dental work, but I don't know any dentists who would." Other people immediately spoke up and said, "I know a doctor who keeps a list of such people, and I'll hook you up." It was neat to see connections happening right in front of my eyes.

The roundtable is open to the public, and it's a great place to meet people and keep on top of what's going on in the neighbourhood. Everyone was very friendly and open to me being there. I asked whether other areas had a similar roundtable and was told, "Nope! We tried to start one in Fairview a few years ago and it didn't really fly." Funny, eh?

I would have written about this sooner, but I didn't get a chance. And I'm sorry if some of these events are now outdated, but since many of them are monthly they'll come around again. Obviously, the first listing is the service providers meeting itself, which happens every 2nd Tuesday at 9am at the Captain William Spry Centre.

Here are some other things that are going on:

The Salvation Army's Good Neighbour Energy Fund is now accepting applications until April 30th for assistance with heating costs for low-income families. Call 422-3435 for more information.

Tenant Info rights drop-in by Dal Legal Aid, 3rd Wednesday each month from 1-3pm at the St. Paul's Family Resource Centre, 173 Old Sambro Road.

Mcintosh Run Watershed Association meeting, 3rd Monday each month at 7pm - Captain William Spry Centre.

Below: the completed bridge over McIntosh Run, looking from Herring Cove Road towards the Captain William Spry community centre.

Radio documentary to air featuring Sidney, my 87-year-old friend

2010-02-16T18:48:00.009-04:00

I've been very hard at work for the last week or two, putting together my first-ever radio documentary. I finished laying down my voice track today.

And I'm so pleased (and proud and excited!) to say that the doc will be on the air this Sunday. This is what I think of as Sidney's Story...the tale of an 87-year-old man who wouldn't let age get in his way when he decided to get fit. I think it's a very sweet and inspirational story about not giving up... even when there are a lot of reasons to give up.

Sidney lives not far from me. We go to the same fitness studio in Spryfield, called Ready to Rumba. When I met him, he was such a great character that I became determined to tell his story.

Despite the obvious differences between us - Sidney being an 87-year-old ex-navy captain and me being a 24-year-old radio reporter - his story struck a chord with me.

This is a story about fitness, and we will have much to say about keeping active in Sidney's story. I'll also be back on Maritime Magazine on Feb. 28th to talk with host Pauline Dakin about what I've learned about aging and exercise, scientifically speaking.

But on a personal note, this story is about more than just fitness. It's also a story about aging, about loneliness, about loss, about stubbornly holding on to life and finding a place where one can learn to be happy again.

Sidney's story will air in the form of a half-hour doc this Sunday, Feb. 21 at 8:30 am AST on 90.5FM in Halifax. You can listen online on the Maritime Magazine website.

If you aren't able to listen live, you will be able to hear the documentary archived on the Maritime Magazine website for the next five weeks, or to download it as a podcast through iTunes.

If you are interested in listening, I hope you enjoy it!

JL Ilsley students whip up a gourmet meal with chef from Gio Restaurant

2010-02-12T15:12:00.008-04:00

Mmmm.... I'm still thinking about the vegetarian strudel with sauteed peppers, mushrooms and goat cheese from Thursday night.

I was lucky enough to be able to have a bite of that strudel, along with some other yummy morsels, as I was covering an event at J.L. Ilsley high school for CBC Radio's Information Morning show.

Matt Pennell, the sous-chef from Gio Restaurant at the Prince George Hotel here in Halifax was at the school working with the students from the culinary arts class. The students were cooking up a gourmet dinner as a fundraiser for the Spryfield Single Parents Resource Centre and school scholarships.

The students served up the meal to 135 people. They got to learn about new foods and what it's like to work in a professional kitchen.

They raised over a thousand dollars in a single night, so great job there, guys! In the crowd I noted city councillor Stephen Adams eating with Halifax NDP MP Megan Leslie, along with many other Spryfielders.

I spent several hours with the students in the kitchen. They were great characters, very welcoming, and up for trying new things - we caught four or five of them on tape eating an anchovy for the first time. Big laughs: various verdicts say that anchovies taste a) salty, b) like cat food, c) like the smell of fish food, and d) good.

All this came together quite neatly - I learned about the event on Tuesday morning. On Tuesday afternoon my producer came around looking for ideas. By Thursday afternoon I was in the kitchen with the students, by 10 o'clock Thursday night I was mixing the tape down at the station, and on Friday morning the story was on the air. Now you can hear the radio story on my professional website, along with the Waterfalls story from a few weeks ago. Below are some photos from the event.

Playing with clay for the Water Falls art project

2010-02-10T23:04:00.004-04:00

On Monday I was at the Captain William Spry Community centre, taking part in the Water Falls community art project with Miro Davis. Miro showed me some more finished water drops, and the stories behind them are awesome. For example, a local blacksmith created a water drop shaped like fire. He brought a tiny anvil to press into the clay, leaving the impression behind. He told Miro that fire and water are both equally important elements of blacksmithing, and that's what water meant to him.

The clay shapes are used as moulds for clear plastic. Eventually, all the water drops will form a gigantic waterfall to decorate the community centre.

Since I wrote about this project and I've been along for the ride for so long, I thought it was about time I got to make my own water drop! We were told to think about how we could portray water in a personal way, so I made a candle with lots of melty, water-drop-shaped gobs of wax falling from it.

There are two more chances to drop in on a session and get your hands into some clay.

Feb. 13 from 1 p.m. - 4 p.m.
Feb. 24 from 10 a.m. - 2 p.m.

For more information on Water Falls, call Karen at 479-4485.

Below: This young lady's name is Jade, and she was also making a water drop at the session. Hers is a pond with a bridge over it.

Youth reaction to the Captain William Spry renovations

2010-02-08T19:34:00.005-04:00

When I was at the Captain William Spry centre the other day, I met up with some guys from J.L. Ilsley high school.

The renovations on the building were completed last May, but construction is still going on outside. The bridge across the Mcintosh Run river was just opened in December, and the grounds work has to be done in the spring. Many people still haven't had a chance to see the new renovations. Mary Angela Munro, this area's recreation coordinator told me that HRM Recreation was specifically hoping to make the centre into a more youth-friendly space. So I asked what the students thought of the new look.

The reaction was pretty positive. One said he liked the light, airy feel to the centre. Skylights have been installed to let natural light in. Another woman said that she felt the centre feels more welcoming now, since a security system that used to be near the door has been taken away.

Blogging and storytelling

2010-02-08T12:36:00.006-04:00

If you've been following along with the blog for any amount of time, it's probably becoming obvious to you that I'm experimenting with what it should be. There are lots of different ways to run a blog: some are very personal, and only become relevant to other people incidentally, and some are launched for the public and function more like news websites. There's also a blurring line where news websites encourage their employees to begin blogs. I've been taking a look at many of them over the past few months.

So what about this blog? Should it be a personal account of what I'm doing? There's some merit to that, and it's definitely relevant to the few people out there who want to know about the minutiae of my life (hi, Mom!). That audience is a bit limited though, and while it's fine for me to use this soapbox to vent to anybody who will listen, I think I could do more good if I tried something else.

I've thought about using this blog as a place to write creatively - little stories or poems or something like that. This weekend I thought it would be fun if I tried to Twitter in haikus (think I'll go with that for a while, but only on the weekends). There might be some good in that, but again, the audience who would care is pretty limited.

It sounds a bit hypocritical to say this on my personal blog, but I don't think I could even begin to tell my own story (or stories) properly. It's not interesting enough for many people to care, and I'm not good enough at the writer's craft to make people care.

The news option is appealing to me. I happen to be a journalist, or a reporter (more thoughts on that some other day), and I see a lot of potential in reporting on things that are going on all around me. Even simple neighbourhood news would be useful to more people. So that's why I've been practicing reporting here, and I hope soon I'll be able to tell you about some exciting developments that have come out of that practice.

While I'm on the topic of neighbourhood news, I've noticed that every time I write up a paragraph or two about what's going on in Spryfield it sounds dead boring! This may be because I'm a bad writer, but maybe it's also because I'm mentally switching gears between "fun" and "news." It's not so easy for me to bring the two together, and I'm not even sure I know how.

When I first started freelancing radio stories to CBC, they told me it was okay to inject a little of myself into the mix. Despite the golden rules about objectivity and bias and all that, if you can tell a fair news story in the way that you'd tell a friend about something that happened to you, it really sounds a lot better.

Do you have any thoughts or advice on how I could blog about news, yet keep it personal, fun, and readable?

So You Think You Can Dance star comes to Spryfield

2010-02-05T19:46:00.004-04:00

Miles Faber, who took third place in So You Think You Can Dance Canada, was in Spryfield on February 5 to teach a workshop series at Ready to Rumba dance studio.

Miles brought his hip hop, poppin', and lockin' style to a packed studio of hip hop fans, all sporting glow sticks and working up a sweat.

Miles has amazing control over his body. His demo of how he wanted the class to move made it seem as if his limbs were loosely connected with balls of string, and it drew a round of applause from the class.

Learning about St. Luke's United connection with community

2010-02-04T15:48:00.007-04:00

On Monday I was at the Chebucto West community health board meeting. I always feel I owe a huge debt to these people for helping me figure out how to get more connected to my community. We are in the process of creating a health plan to deliver to the Capital Health board. I've been reading reports and drafts and mulling them over in my mind, trying to offer constructive criticism about health. I think our health board is very reflective of our community - it has an excellent mix of ages and backgrounds. This isn't the type of volunteering where you see instant results, but I think it's an exciting time to be part of this process.

The meeting took place at St. Luke's United, rather than our usual location on Joseph Howe Drive. St. Luke's is in Tantallon, a place I've stopped in exactly three times (buying gas) and never explored.

The minister at St. Luke's, Kevin, introduced himself to us and gave us a quick run-down of the different ways that St. Luke's is used and what it does in the community.

St. Luke's is a very well-used space for connecting people. They run carpet bowling and stitching clubs, and all kinds of volunteer programs. Even though they are far from the downtown, they have a strong connection with the Metro Turning Point men's shelter. Kevin told us how St. Luke's is involved in building what I think he called a "sanctuary garden" around the shelter.

I liked when he described how children from St. Luke's are linking up with the Shambala school to make prayer flags for the garden. I'm not sure of all the details of the project, but the idea sounded cool.

I remember the prayer flags flying from the stupas when I was at the Sumtselin monastery in Zhongdian, China. They were really ratty but I loved them. They brought something cheerful to the landscape. Maybe they will do the same at Metro Turning Point!