Dove’s new Real Beauty Sketches campaign is getting a lot of buzz, but whether you call it a commercial or a “compelling social experiment,” I fear the real message might be in the last few seconds. If you missed them, look again.
I’m writing for the Centre for Nanoscience and Quantum Information in Bristol, UK this week, which means I’m learning some quantum physics. The most excellent surprise of the day was coming across Professor Sandu Popescu from the University of Bristol in an on-line video. He studies “the most fundamental aspects of quantum physics,” and aside from explaining some of the basic stuff I needed to know, he left me with a precious gem of inspiration.
It’s been three years since I defended my master’s in creative non-fiction writing at the University of Victoria, and since then I’ve done a lot more thinking about wilderness – about how it is both a real place and a construction, how it has its own essence regardless of where we find it. So on this three year anniversary of my defense, as my manuscript makes the round of publishers, I wanted to share Sherwin Arnott’s analysis of my work, from 2010.
People ask me to describe the highlight of the trip, and my answer surprises me. The highlight was how I felt. In cities crammed with people and overflowing with new sound, I was shocked to find the same calm I’ve experienced year after year on B.C.’s central coast and in the Arctic.
Fulton’s had their first Backyard Sugar Makers’ Workshop this past weekend, and I went ahead to meet to owners for a crash course on DIY maple syrup making. My story aired on CBC’s In Town and Out on Saturday, February 15, 2013. Click through to the full post for an audio link.
Another book review is up on The Coastal Spectator. This time, I took a journey with Jim Christy through a old tin of memorabilia he has been saving for decades. The book has an interesting form and some great stories, and it makes you think about importance of memories and souvenirs.
Cameroon has nicknames like “Africa in miniature” or “All-in-One Africa.” Apparently the country contains several of Africa’s major biomes: savanna and desert in the north, volcanoes and beaches in the southwest and an impressive swath of equatorial rainforest in the southeast. I have three weeks to explore it.
Beekeeping isn’t all honey and sunshine, oh no. There are parts of the experience beekeepers don’t often share. Like when you have to kill the bees and burn them. Our bees got sick, and this story of our attempts to kill them aired on CBC’s Living Out Loud, February 1, 2013.
Reviewing books is giving me the opportunity to explore new writers and publishers. My review of The Apple House, by Gillian Campbell, appeared on the Coastal Spectator in January, 2013.
The Whale’s Choice helped to kick off the New Year at the Sunday Edition. This program was originally broadcast in October 2012 and the introduction is posted in that original entry. January 6, 2013.
Did you know that there are 1,500 volcanoes in the world and only about 100 volcano observatories? The eruption of Iceland’s Eyjafjallajökull volcano in 2010 left millions stranded and cost airlines an estimated €900 million.
Leonard Lee of Lee Valley Tools has many informal consultants from around the Ottawa Valley who offer product ideas. Some of these ideas end up in the Lee Valley catalogue. Meet some of Mr. Lee’s creative inspirations in this story for CBC Ottawa’s In Town and Out.
“The Whale’s Choice” is rebroadcast on In the Field. Tuesday, November 20 and Sunday, November 25, 2012.
October 7, 2012: In this documentary, listeners share the extraordinary experience of being nose to nose with a humpback whale in the wild waters of Southeast Alaska. From Michael Enright’s introduction: “In the Pacific Ocean, along the coasts of B.C. and Alaska, moments of connection between humans and whales do happen. But they are very…
Summer 2012: ‘He came and dwelt among us.’ Meet Father Joseph Buliard, a missionary whose arrival in the Garry Lake region of Nunavut signalled the end of a traditional way of life, and a series of tragedies that emptied an entire region of its people.