Saturday, May 16, 2020

Canadian companies retool for pandemic, why not climate change?


Here's an opinion piece that came out this weekend on the CBC-Manitoba website.
Pandemic proves companies can change in an emergency-so what about that climate crisis?
True confessions:  I actually wrote this at the end of February.  I didn't write this in response to the pandemic.  However, the news was changing so fast at that time, nobody had room to run it.  I was supposed to check back in at the end of March. Well, we all know what happened by then...I was at home, home schooling and so was everyone else.  I forgot all about this piece.

I reread it at the beginning of May...and changed about three sentences. (that's about all I have time for, right now!)  It seemed more likely than ever that Canadians could make fast change if the political will was strong enough...so I resubmitted and it went live this morning.

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Friday, May 15, 2020

May stories

It's been such a long time since I posted here...because I've been swamped with real life stuff.  Homeschooling, job issues, and a death in the family in NYC --not the virus but she died alone in the hospital because of it--awful.  
I decided to  show this last month mostly in pictures...with one article link.  Thanks to the Vancouver Jewish Independent, I still get to write a column every so often!  This one is about how three big world religions find common ideas to discuss and help us get through during these challenging days. 
In our province, our PC (Progressive Conservative) premier, Brian Pallister, has decided that this would be a good time to cut the budgets of Manitoba's universities and also to cut public sector jobs.  
According to every economist and all the business leaders and columnists in the media, this will create an even more depressed provincial economy...think of Herbert Hoover in the US for a reference point. 
 However, our premier keeps pushing this.  It will definitely affect our household--our biology professor--and since my work is uneven or nonexistent these days, it feels very personal.  We made signs and went in our car to a couple social distance "honkathons" at the Legislature Building.  Here are the signs.

We've been doing school at home.  Kids built a 'bonfire' for Lag B'omer...and played outside, of course.  (This would be jousting with pool noodles, on hobby horses, if you have not seen this particular version of the game before.)  We also had hotdogs and I had to bake buns for them.  Cause it would not be a day outside without them...

I've been knitting whenever I can, mostly to maintain my sanity...and I finished the next Woolly sweater for the kid who is growing a lot but still really wants to wear a sweater with sheep on it.


There were some pretty great Mother's Day cards.

The professor took boys on a lot of bike rides, which gave me time to do crazy stuff like work and have an hour by myself.  (Hahah, not kidding.  One hour!!)
I've baked a lot of bread. Our local bakery is closed, we shop about once a week, and these people in my household are like locusts!  You'll note here that now I have to cool the bread on a rack on top of the refrigerator.  When Sadie the dog stole and ate an entire loaf of bread (anyhow, that's what we think happened, although she may have shared some with Sally, hard to say?)---well, I got creative.

It's been a long month...but I hope you'll still come back and check in and I'll find time to write more...
  Stay well!  Wash your hands!  Take care.

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