Street Level

I got a marriage proposal this week.

It was certainly not a serious one, coming from a female friend, but I got her point.

I was listing the things I was doing in preparation for an upcoming trip out of the province — things like getting most of the boys’ lunches ready, making sure every stitch of clothing is clean, leaving notes throughout the house on what to needs to be done.

She was trying to tell me that I’m doing the Beaver Cleaver’s mom thing, and she’s right.

I’m trying to ensure the fridge is loaded up with easy-to-cook meals and have already colour-coded a Mapquest printout showing the most direct route — in my mind — to the site of the youngest son’s recital this month.

This is not because their dad is incompetent.

On the contrary, he’ll do just fine without me, won’t miss the snoring and will no doubt enjoy a respite for the nightly fight-for-the-blankets I subject him to (he’s the fighter, I’m the hoarder).

Maybe it’s a touch of obsessive-compulsive disorder — although if you saw the house, you’d know it’s more likely I have obsessive-relaxive disorder.

It could be my own deep-set inability to accept that the men of the house can manage great without me.

Or, it may just be that I like things done my way.

Which should have the older children nervous.

Part of this upcoming trip is to spend a week with the three adult children (chronologically speaking) in Ontario.

It’s been a couple of years since I last saw them and, during that time, they’ve experienced those nasty little trip-ups that many hit when starting out on their own.

There have been job searches, lousy-paying jobs, lousy-houred jobs, unexpected household expenses.

They’ve learned that when mom says SAVE YOUR MONEY, it would have been a good idea to do that.

So, on this visit, there are two major priorities: I get to meet the boyfriend who’s been mentioning the word marriage to the daughter (I’m going to define elopement for him), and the girlfriend who moved in with my middle son a few years ago and has yet to speak more than three words on the phone to me.

Apparently, both are somewhat nervous of my arrival, and my children haven’t helped calm their nerves.

They’ve been brutally honest: mom isn’t like most moms.

She’s blunt, she’s not embarrassed to ask anyone anything and she is not shy at expressing her opinions.

At least, that’s how they view me.

Which leaves me with just one question: When did I turn into my mother?

I can remember her visits, where nothing was done the way she would have done it.

I didn’t fold the laundry right. I used too many spices in my cooking and not nearly enough salt. My hair was too long. My younger kids were too loud. Why don’t I plant some roses in the garden?

She pretended to like my husband, but he wasn’t someone she would have chosen for me. He has a beard, he doesn’t wear ties, he golfs — what do I see in him?

I gave up trying to explain it, so wisdom dictates I not even try to get my kids to explain their choices to me.

She never did understand my career choice, and I often heard that I was wasting my talents.

That’s going to be a hard one to avoid myself, since I had such great plans for the kids. And not one of them came to fruition.

There are no doctors, or lawyers, or even plumbers among the three of them.

But that’s okay. I’m gonna fool each of them.

I’m getting off that plane having spent the preceding hours with this mantra: it’s their life. Just like I wanted my mother to understand mine.

It’s a good lesson to learn, even at my age.

Posted by Dale at 6:03 a.m. Comments

It’s been a rough few weeks for Coun. Arjun Singh, culminating in a pretty strongly worded dressing down by Mayor Terry Lake earlier this week.

It seems Singh the politician wasn’t created from the same cookie cutter as all the other pols who sit around our council table.

He’s taken flack about this from the beginning. He talked too loudly. No one understood him (a comment that bordered on racism, from my perspective).

He asked too many questions.

The criticism hit a higher level when he dared to suggest the unthinkable — we need to institute a plastic tax to reduce the amount of plastics we’re putting into our landfills. Heresy!

Throw in the New York computer technology-democracy conference and his defence of the people behind the Save Public Waterfront campaign and you’ve got a city councillor who is definitely on his own path.

And this is good.

Shortly after his election, when many people were probably still trying to figure out how Singh got elected, I speculated he will eventually become one of the best councillors Kamloops has ever had.

That comment drew a lot of flack from friends, colleagues, people I don’t even know, all wondering if I’d lost my mind.

I haven’t. Herewith, all the reasons why I still think Singh is a great councillor.

He thinks outside the box. Sure, sometimes he’s waaay outside the box, but at least he’s willing to consider new ideas, look at radical approaches and engage others in a dialogue about them. (This would be a great time to point out some communities in North America have adopted a plastax, seeing its wisdom, Kamloops not being among them.)

He’s not afraid to speak out. I’d bet Arjun has said more words at council meetings during his first term than Joe Leong and John De Cicco have in their multiple terms.

He is thoroughly engaged in the community he represents. He has his blog, his council/City Hall related website, even his Facebook page on the Internet welcomes feedback from the rest of us. He shows up at so many public events not to get his picture in the paper but to ask questions, to listen, to learn, to do his job better.

And he’s certainly not afraid to challenge the statements of others on council. In fact, that’s what led to his criticism from Lake, who appears to have been in a testy mood already at the last council meeting. The mayor berated Nancy Bepple, one of the pair behind a movement to rezone a parking lot next to the Interior Savings Centre back to park zoning, accusing them of scare tactics.

Seems a bit harsh and certainly uncalled for. Anyone who has read their petition (which, by the way, has more than 2,000 signatures on it, or who has read their website knows that they are being proactive, trying to address a potential situation, rather than reacting after it happens.

That’s smart. There’s too much of this “council makes a decision, people don’t like it, they gather to fight it but gee, too bad, because it’s already got forward momentum.”

Beyond that, the gall Lake showed in criticizing Bepple for exercising two fundamental human rights — to protest and to speak — is, well, revealing, I would say.

Singh spoke positively about Bepple’s work. I’m betting that didn’t please Lake because later, when Singh started to discuss the recent sweep and arrests of prostitutes on the North Shore, he was criticized again, this time because he hasn’t completely read some report about policing.

That wasn’t the point. Singh was suggesting adding someone from the city’s social planning council to the police commission — which is a good idea.

It’s fine to say that Lake and councillors Pat Wallace, Jim Harker, who sit on the police Committee, have social consciences. There’s no doubting they do.

But it’s the members of the social planning council who are solely looking at that tattered safety net, who are helping to address the gaps and take advantages of the assets, who understand the kind of problems the recent rouse of prostitutes has caused. That kind of a voice should be heard by the policing side of our community.

It was a good idea Singh floated out there. It may not be something a cookie-cutter politician would say, but that’s good.

Keep on talking, Arjun. Some of us are listening.

Posted by Dale at 6:52 p.m. Comments

So this is what it feels like to write on a wall.

It’s addictive. I want to stop but I need to keep doing it, all thanks my friend Angela, in Calgary, who suckered me into joining Facebook.com.

And I hate her for it because, try as I might, I can’t ignore the darn site.

Yup, I snuck on it this morning to see if anyone had written a message on my wall, which I gather is the terminology the programmers use when they mean “send a message.”

Guess it’s trendier to call it a “wall.”

Anyhow, there it was, a shout-out (I’ve learned that word recently, too) from Dustin Fuhs, a friend who moved to the Coast and sort of vanished off my radar.

This was neat. I had to reply.

Of course, I had really nothing to say to Dustin other than “Hi, how are you?” and “What’s up?”, but that was enough.

Got an invitation from Coun. Arjun Singh to become one of his Facebook “friends” and I jumped at it, too.

Then I had to check out all of his other “friends,” and wasted some time trying to figure out who they are and why they know Arjun.

And I readily agreed to a couple of other Facebook “be my friend” requests. Didn’t even hesitate — just clicked the link and went for it.

The addiction has gone even further, though.

I actually flipped through 500 Facebook members who went to my high school.

I didn’t know any of them because it seems the young’uns are jumping on this bandwagon a lot faster than us old folks.

But, this is how this 50-something mother of five has been spending time recently — and no, boss, not all of it was on office time.

But some was because I had to do research for this column, of course.

That research turned up some fascinating information.

Facebook isn’t just a website.

It’s a cultural phenomenon that is shifting society.

It’s changing the way we communicate and adding an entirely new educational discipline, the study of computing with “real-life applications.”

A professor at Cornell University said computing has become social, and that aspect needs to be the focus of study.

He must know what he’s talking about because he’s heading a multi-year research project, Getting Connected: Social Science in the Age of Networks, that was given $2 million from the National Science Foundation (NSF) and another $60,000 from Microsoft.

All to study how we “socialize” through out computers.

A professor at the Rochester Institute of Technology got $150,000 from the NSF to create a course in social media.

Her students will be studying blogs and wikis (which I have just learned are websites that allow visitors to add, remove, and edit content. Not sure how they differ from a blog, but apparently they do).

Even the Washington Post is a Facebook fan, adding it to its own website with an eye to helping people become more engaged in politics.

So, of course, the people behind this site, who probably were just computer geeks like many others of their age, are sitting on a billion-dollar gold mine which they haven’t bothered to sell yet.

It’s scary to think what they might get when they do decide to retire from the business.

Kind of makes me glad that my oldest son took a job over my objections and is now a techie for Hewlett Packard learning html, java and a lot of other stuff I don’t understand.

Our conversations now go like this:

“How’s work?”

Followed by a lot of wows, ohs, unhunhs and absolutely nothing that indicates how confused I am by it all.

Gotta be nice to that kid.

He may be my pension plan in coming years.

In fact, probably should invite him to be one of my Facebook friends.

Right now.

Posted by Dale at 9:04 a.m. Comments

Kamloops resident Jackie Jones isn’t homeless — yet.

But she’s one of many who live on that precipice, where one unexpected bill, one delayed cheque, and the world she’s been slowly rebuilding for herself and her young child will come crashing down.

And that day might come sooner than she wants.

You see, Jackie readily admits she’s not the smartest person around and, in an attempt to start a home-based business that would work for her and address her disability, she missed some of the hoops the government has applicants go through.

She didn’t realize it, though, started the business, watched it fail miserably and shut it down.

While she doesn’t have the income she made from it — at least the income that is on the books, which is offset by the expenses she incurred — the provincial government thinks she made that money, so they’re not paying her the June instalment of persons-with-a-disability benefits.

And they want her to repay the amount of income they say she made during those few months she tried to establish her business.

And that means no money for Jackie and her daughter.

Jackie told her story to about two dozen people who gathered at the Henry Grube Education Centre this week to brainstorm ways to address homelessness in Kamloops.

Most represented agencies, landlords and concerned citizens.

Jackie represented the homeless. And she was only able to do that because someone looked after her child and she caught a ride to the centre, something she said isn’t easy for other single parents out there who want to be part of the solution but find the process isn’t user-friendly — at least not marginalized-user friendly.

Jackie’s not the typical homeless person. Even her disability is one of those invisible ones that make it hard for her to get services. She can walk, talk, make sense, isn’t looking for the nearest crackhouse, not waiting for Welfare Wednesday to blow her cheque at the liquor store.

Her disability, while invisible, makes it hard for her to do some of the simple things of life: carry her daughter, do the laundry, carry bags of groceries. Each time she picks up any weight, it causes her excruciating pain.

When she applied for benefits, she was told to find a place to live.

That’s not easy in a city where there are few vacant apartments and townhouses.

Jackie told the group she found some that were cheap, but they weren’t places in which she wanted to have her daughter live.

In fact, she said, she wouldn’t even want a dog living in them.

She finally found a place that met all her physical needs, and in which she wasn’t afraid to let her daughter live — for $1,000 a month.

That’s too much rent, she was told by her government worker.

Find something cheaper.

Go to the agencies out there.

And she’s done it. She’s gone to those agencies. They all have waitlists.

For example, Interior Community Services, which provides housing to families, has about 250 families — yes, families — on that list. And these aren’t people looking to move out of a dive into something better. These are families that ICS executive director Paul Sibley told the group are virtually homeless. ICS doesn’t even consider moving someone who already has housing into one of their vacancies.

The Elizabeth Fry Society, which also provides housing, has a waitlist of more than 100.

So there’s Jackie.

She knows she’s paying too much rent. She’s not getting her benefits in June. She’ll be getting reduced benefs for months afterward. She’s trying to build a life for her and her child.

She knows she’s made mistakes, but she’s trying to fix them in a system that sees no grey — just black and white.

And she’s not alone. The agency representatives at the forum, the ones who are on the frontlines every day, working with people like Jackie and others who aren’t as strong in reparing their lives, live with this.

And they agree on the solution.

Kamloops needs housing.

It needs supportive housing.

It needs affordable housing.

It needs it now.

And the best guess, according to these people who confront this social ill every single day? Kamloops needs 500 rental units. Now. Today.

And there’s nothing grey about that fact.

Posted by Dale at 9:59 a.m. Comments

About a quarter-century ago — and boy, doesn’t that sound weird to say for someone who still thinks she’s a teenager — I found myself working with a supporter of the Progressive Conservative Party.

Now, this wasn’t extremely unusual, although the majority of those of us in the newsroom at this particular daily newspaper probably listed a bit more to the left than others.

But it was challenging.

My friend, you see, took great delight in goading me into debate, a not-all-that-difficult feat at the time, given my propensity to express my opinions to my co-workers.

This same man, recently retired and free from the anonymity under which newspaper editorial writers often work, seems to have undergone some sort of metamorphosis. Were I 25 years younger, I might even suggest he has finally seen the light.

Apparently, he’s no longer a believer in the infallibility of the Conservative party.

Now, you must know that my friend lives in Ontario, where Liberals are Liberals (not Social Crediters in disguise), NDPers really do believe the stuff their leaders spout off on and Conservatives are the progeny of Preston Manning and John Diefenbaker.

Those clear lines helped to define the parties, unlike here in B.C., where it’s really hard to know to which ideologies any of them plan to adhere.

My friend is not alone in his migration away from his party of choice to, in his case, the party of little choice — the Greens.

Consider another friend, one closer to home. I was really hoping Randy Patch would get the Liberal nomination. Not because I don’t like Ken Sommerfeld — I really don’t know him well at all, but when we’ve talked, he seemed likeable and sincere — but because I was sure Patch would take so many more with him.

It would have been interesting to watch the saga unfold.

But my Ontario friend has really abandoned his blue roots.

In a recent e-mail, he didn’t write about how things are going or how his girls are faring at school.

There was no gossip about all those people who spent decades putting up with me at our place of employment.

Nope. He just sent me one sentence. He said I was to check out a link on ndp.ca, and then I’d understand why he can’t vote Conservative again.

Now, I don’t look at that particular website. For some reason, I get e-mails about new press releases on it, but I just don’t bother because I really am not all that interested most of the time in what Jack Layton and his crew are doing.

It’s so much more fun to watch Stéphane Dion’s party try to dig itself out of the hole that he keeps filling up every time he makes an announcement, or to just watch Stephen Harper and marvel at how someone I know is made of flesh and blood can move through the world so cold and automaton-like.

But this time, I did check out the link and discovered the dozen reasons my old buddy has adopted for his inspiration.

It’s called the NDP scandal sheet, and it’s a compilation of 12 allegations against the federal Conservatives that, if others read them, might also lead to some concerns.

Many of them you’ve probably heard about already: Harper’s coiffeur (the one who talks to spirits, apparently) with the unreleased government salary; Heritage Minister Bev Oda racking up $6,000 in limo expenses for four days she spent at the 2006 Juno Awards — and that same Oda having to cancel a $250-a-plate fundraiser being organized by a woman who regularly lobbies Oda for CanWest.

But there were a couple of others that were also fascinating:

In March, 2006, Minister of International Co-operation Josee Verner paid an “occasional chauffeur” more than $4,000 for 124 hours of work — at $32 an hour — and didn’t list the expense on her travel forms.

Minister of Labour Jean Pierre Blackburn spent almost $150,000 on private jets that aren’t included in his travel expenses. For five of those flights, he was the only passenger. And for one, he rented a helicopter to take him on a trip that would have taken only 30 minutes by car.

It’s interesting reading. And it makes me wonder how many other voters are like my friend.

It’s not the big stuff that really gets to him as much as the little things, the sense of entitlement so many politicians develop while they claim to be looking out for the rest of us.

Posted by Dale at 8:51 a.m. Comments