onwards and upwards

On the go, up to Olympus. I am working away diligently on corpobligation.com, transferring news from TCBCO to corpobligation, getting ready to launch a fair trade importing business, starting rickshawing, and generally staying cool when the heat rises!
Where are you going to be on Canada Day? Taking a rickshaw ride with Tim!
Drop me an email or call me if you know my number. You can also call Ottawa rickshaws: (613) 853-0012 and ask for me.

Ideas for a better world

Buying less giving more
Composting - not as bad of smell as expected...Compost now
Chocolate being good for you
Love making across barriers

And minibuses...stay tuned

Paul Potts is in the semis and is a youtube phenomenon

It turns out I was not the only person to enjoy Paul Potts' take on opera. A video of his is at the top of youtube at this moment and he seems poised to go ahead to the finals!



Yes He WON!

Frisbee

Hey folks,

So more frisbee is underway tonight at 6:00 (friday)

At Strathcona park - walk on Somerset East towards the rideau river until you hit water, then take a few steps back and you will be in frisbbee land. Hope to see lots of folks there.Bring friends. Drinks after at the house ("Le maison" pub).

Bienvenue a tous,

T
PS I don't care where you are living now, please make an effort to make it out!

Highschool redux

Remember when you had to ask for permission to go to the washroom? Remember when you had to go to school and sit still no matter what they were talking about?

Well, 9 years later, and seven years spent earning 6 letters after my name, I find myself back in highschool redux. A term I use to describe the re turn combined with reflux, that lovely stuff that they show in pepto bismol commercials.

Have to remember to wake up for those 1:00 classes, where we review common sense / the lessons we knew in kindergarten but have had drilled out of our heads.
Namely,

don't hit your friend, don't steal from your friend, be nice and the whole world will smile

See the neighbor rant and carl sagan movie below

Paul Potts - Salesman to Opera Star

I don't like opera, except Paul Potts. The only times I have gone to it I have been bored despite the directors best efforts (Salome - Atom Egoyan) or just bored (efforts (Die Valkarie - Toronto, Ring Cycle 2005).

But the way Paul Potts sings in this brief clip was inspirational. The way he expresses a feeling through singing opera absolutely blew me away! I will try to follow along with his development, and career, but he is appearing on "Britain has talent" at the moment and I do not have a TV.



The song is "Nessum dorum":

Verses (from the original libretto)[1]

Il principe ignoto

Nessun dorma!... Tu pure, o Principessa,
Nella tua fredda stanza
Guardi le stelle
Che tremano d'amore e di speranza.
Ma il mio mistero è chiuso in me,
Il nome mio nessun saprà!
Solo quando la luce splenderà,
Sulla tua bocca lo dirò fremente!...
Ed il mio bacio scioglierà il silenzio
Che ti fa mia!...

Voci di donne

Il nome suo nessun saprà...
E noi dovremo, ahimè, morir!...

Il principe ignoto
Dilegua, o notte!... Tramontate, stelle!...
All'alba vincerò!...



Score text[2]

Il principe ignoto

Nessun dorma! Nessun dorma! Tu pure, o Principessa,
nella tua fredda stanza
guardi le stelle
che tremano d'amore e di speranza...
Ma il mio mistero è chiuso in me,
il nome mio nessun saprà!
No, no, sulla tua bocca lo dirò,
quando la luce splenderà!
Ed il mio bacio scioglierà il silenzio
che ti fa mia.

Voci di donne
Il nome suo nessun saprà...
E noi dovrem, ahimè, morir, morir!

Il principe ignoto

Dilegua, o notte! Tramontate, stelle!
Tramontate, stelle! All'alba vincerò!
Vincerò! Vincerò!

Translated from the score.

The Prince Let no one sleep!... Let no one sleep! Even you, o Princess, in your cold room, watch the stars, that tremble with love and with hope.
But my secret is hidden within me, my name no one shall know... No!...No!... On your mouth I will tell it when the light shines.
And my kiss will dissolve the silence that makes you mine!...

The Chorus of women No one will know his name and we must, alas, die.

The Prince Vanish, o night! Set, stars! At dawn, I will win! I will win! I will win!


Apparently Pavarotti sang it with the three tenors...a bit over the top in my opinion

Carl Sagan says "everyone I know is from Earth"

A lovely message to all. We are all born here. On a planet. We worry about how to get over racism, religious strife, sexism, class, good vs bad hair...but we are all from here...

Contrary to popular belief, I am not an organizational genius

This is a picture of a corner of the dining room...the rest of the apartment was cleaner than this...at least after Iain's help

banana hands

This is the best video on youtube:

This dark German techno tells the tale of a young man und his appealing attributes. Completely produced in Helena Montana!
Milky Pirate Shirts, Steins and Boxers!!! - www.cafepress.com/nandrews
My MySpace Page :)
www.myspace.com/nandrewsproductions

Gotta love CBC and Hockey

A single tear for Ottawa...the fans and the kids were so excited.

Return to routine

Back at Bridgehead, drinking fair trade tea, I am having a good time working on my CSR paper and talking about the Tunisia paper. It is pretty wild to return to the land of milk and honey. My superwealth relative to the Tunisians I recently shared louages (minibus) with is strikingly clear, while I drink the higher-priced-guilt-reducing-fair-trade beverages.

The Ottawa Senators are playing tonight in Anaheim and the city is prepped with a guy selling T-shirts on the street and cops clustering in preparation for the anticipated celebration / riot. I predict celebration rather than riot but we shall see. If I can find the battery charger I will try to take some picks.

Tim's back in Ottawa

I have arrived in O-town. Looking forward to ultimate on Friday. Good luck on Thursday with the last of the Law Society of Upper Canada licencing exams. I look forward to writing these in November.

Hope all are doing well.

If anyone wants to save me from watching youtube, give me a call.
T

Futbol balls in Tunis and Toronto

So I am back from Tunisia and delighted to be in a cleaner and greener environment...the wealth of Toronto is actually a bit surprising as is the loneliness/isolation of the neighborhood.

There is a father, son and grandfather playing or practicing soccer in the giant lush park near my house. The 7 or 8 balls they are using to practice seems especially bizarre relative to the soccer games of Tunisian vacant lots and busy streets. Kids in both countries were having a decent time, but I think the kids of Tunis had a slightly wilder lust for the game. Anyways, here is a link to fairtrade soccer balls.

Sefyu "Senegalo Ruskov"
Uploaded by BECAUSE_MUSIC

Tuna and Tunisia

I have just enough time on my hands, between traveling around on mini-buses, Steve the camel, and hanging out at the beach, to write you a quick hi. The hi-lights: reading on the beach, assistance from Chanda on actually working on my last paper of law school, Matmata (starwars) a hamam (see below), camel ride into the Sahara (where I thought only crazy tourists go, but I was wrong: apparently our guide enjoys the peace of extreme heat, wind, sand, and creative insects)

Hope everyone is doing well I will be back in Ottawa by next Monday.

replies appreciated,
Tim
P.S. I can't stop these tiny ants from coming out of my computer...gaaaah
PPS Are people still going to use their UOttawa accounts? I don't know if they expire or not, but I am full time on mitbrown@gmail.com or tim@tcbco.ca

Matmata:

I write this email from an underground hotel in Matmata, Tunisia. Starwars was filmed here and Luke Skywalker had his last meal with his Aunt and Uncle on a planet named after the town just down the road (Tatooine).

I love the story and myth behind Starwars and it is surreal to come to the desert that Luke and Annakin grew up in and wanted to escape. So far I don’t want to escape but we shall see. There are lots of pictures stuck in Chanda's camera and I look forward to posting them at www.timcampionbrown.com what a convenient web address!

Chanda and I are quite the traveling team: negotiating with taxis, louages (minibuses), and salespeople (almost exclusively men). I return to Canada on May 31 and Chanda follows after on June 13^th or 14^th.

So I am almost finished law school at the U of O just one last paper. It is about corporate social responsibility and the roles that corporations play in the human rights standard setting and regulation process. If that sounds vague, it is because I am still working on the focus. Hopefully, by the time I send this email the focus will be clear in my head.

Tunisia has been a surprising blast. I had heard a lot of things about how much Chanda was harassed by the men on the street. Last night, we realized that perhaps they are just in an arrested adolescence: constantly hanging out with their buddies, avoiding the kids, while the girls (their wives) are doing their own things. With me around the harassment has slowed to a drip and the only times we are yelled at are when we walk through touristy markets.

We had a good time by the coast and drank lots more “café directs” (espresso with milky foam). I have had enough of beaches at least until I can find an English book.

_____

Hamam:

And of course the question on everyone’s mind is “how was the Hamam?” Hamam, you ask? A hamam is apparently like a Turkish bath although I didn’t find that description helpful either. Basically, it is heated steam room, where you scrape skin off of your self as you sweat and then you throw water buckets on top of your head. It is a little frightening seeing how much skin comes off. Chanda says that the amount of skin coming off shows how dirty we are. I personally think that the skin belongs on my body.

But the piece de resistance is the massage. I love massages and I indulged in them in Thailand, where I found the traditional Thai massage quite harsh, with the massager using feet and their whole body to stretch and manipulate. But, the Hamam massage was way more intense. The massager appeared to be ex-navy (complete with fading anchor tattoo) and had about three teeth. Our communication was a bit rough, so he relied on leading me by the hand and in kicking my hands into the correct locations. I lay directly on the wet tiles and the first thing he did was massage my back…with his feet…I was lying on tile and there was a bathing suited man standing on me. The back massage part was intense but then he stood on my legs and feet which moved into the excruciating zone. After this he proceeded to alternate between crushing different parts of my body using his hands or slapping me like he hadn’t seen me for ages. Anyways, after the relaxing massage, he proceeded to peel the crap out of my back and front, leaving me with a good size hickey on my neck. The hickey would have been hard to explain except that Chanda has received several from her hamam visits. Good times all around. (Matt, did you get hamamed (not hammed) when you were here?)

________

Camel: Name - Steve, Occupation, eating bushes and following "le premier"

On the way to Douze, we met two of the friendlist Tunisians I have encountered, who were really funny and had clips of some very serious looking Mujahadeen doing kung fu and then kicking one guy off of the screen. They were great fun and insisted on paying for our louage trip and for the coffee, to which we had invited them. They turned out to be sergeants in the Tunisian army and had little advice for me in my endeavours to become a $py. This was apparently uncouth.

Upon our eventual arrival in Douze, Chanda convinced me not only to get on a camel but to ride it into the Sahara. Fortunately, Steve was friendly and we did not stray too far from Douze, Southern City, the "gateway to the Sahara." Good couscous, friendly conversation and Arabic lesson. So tired I couldna see a thing by 10:30. Sahara means desert in Arabic, so apparently I have been calling the Sahara the desert desert. Oh well. Ok done now. Going back to the pool to rest and write.

PPPS: Yes Tuna is on everything in Tuna. But of course in French the fish is called Thon (tone) so I don't think too many people here have noticed. Although our army friends did point out that we were eating a lot of "Tunisie" or Tunisia.

Religion, Belief, and Your Neighbour's Nose

So you believe in God.

So you don't.

So you want to know what I believe in, you want to know it all.

Well, I believe in love, golf gods (lower case but vengeful characters), chocolate helps deal with dementors, and that my neighbour is important.

If you want to talk about religion, then go, walking please, talk to a Priest or a person who you feel has a closer connection to God than you do. Just don't go to your neighbour and start shouting, biting, kicking or shooting. Because your freedom, to borrow John Stuart Mill's phrase, ends at your neighbour's nose.

And lest you feel you have an obligation to save others, please remember the Golden rule or the saying of the Prophet PBH, or the words of the Torah or the words of Confuscious...

Don't bother others unless you are willing to listen to them talk back to you. Be good to your neighbour.

With thanks to Ernie Tannis

Man and Woman in a Chinese restaurant in Tunis

- This is not a personal story, but I was there -

Who knows who arrived first? Was it the man who took a bench seat and ordered a meal and then a beer? Did the woman come in after, and seek out a seat - with a view of, but a distance from, the front door? Did she notice him on the way to the table or was she just relieved to get off of the street into a relaxed setting?

Or did the woman take up her strategic position in the back corner of the restaurant first? Maybe the man came in and brazenly took up a seat with only a table - a chair - a small divider -another bench seat - and her table - to divide them?

Maybe it will help if I describe them. He: 40ish, Asian, eyes that could smile easily and the lines to prove it, perched on a chair, full of action but relaxed in repose. She: late 30s, blonde-brown hair, smiley but fatigued from the calls of the street and the stress of work, travelling to meet with the local affiliate, now in a space of respite from the street.

They each drank from green bottles of beer. Maybe he had already eaten or else he would eat later. She ordered a plate of some sort: rice, maybe with some meat.

But of course this is all background to the topic at hand: relationship?

His eyes as already described looked quick to laugh as he peered around the restaurant. His glance brushing against a poster (of the Asahi Beer woman, strangely incongruous in this Tunisian Chinese restaurant) must have met her gaze once. At least once. Did it linger? Who can know? Perhaps, she was the one who caught him in her vision and transformed him from stranger to potential comforter.

There is something about this transformation, when one of the other millions of people sharing the earth with us, steps out of the line and smiles or frowns or shares an emotion. An emotion that comforts or challenges. Tells us of an inner depth, a possibility.

I should say the restaurant was completely empty except for me and two other expats, and the servers and presumably some sort of cook in the back. I know little more, but I imagine that in an effort to connect they would have shared a smile and perhaps commented on the food or the weather, perhaps asked about the day.

I imagine that he joins her at her table. She clears a space for him to place down his beer. He interjects with a claim that her kindness is unnecessary. They smile again and pause. What next? The pause lingers.

Then both speak at once. Another moment of pause and then she begins to talk. She talks of her day or life or perhaps the challenge of travelling alone in a strange country. He listens intently without hearing a word but with hearing a tone. Her voice soothes. He feels the hairs at the back of his head perk and goose bumps running down his spine. She pauses at his silence and he smiles to encourage her to go on.

She continues with more confidence and faster speech to tell her stories - to connect to another human being - in a way that has been impossible since her trip began. He is nodding but she realizes he is not following. She slows again and asks a question. He smiles broadly and gestures her to continue.

She asks if he speaks English.

He responds with "English"

She tries, "francais, espanol, arabic?"

"Francais, oui, je parle francais..." he says clearly and rapidly, far to rapidly for her school french.

She remember just a few phrases and a bit of Spanish, "un petit peu lentement".

He nods and continues at a slower pace to introduce himself and to tell her of his day. Now his voice speaks of a rythm that connects to her in an unexpected way. She attempts to catch as many words as she can. The story of his day relates to his work and travel that is certain but he is speaking of something familiar to her.

He slows down and stops. She realizes that there is another awkward pause and she fills it with
"oui, oui."

Silence continues. He drinks. She picks at her food. They smile again.

---

I imagine that they had a night of passionate love. I imagine that they had a night of sharing and stayed up late talking. I hope at least that they were able to connect. That is why we live and that is why I noticed that man and that woman in a Chinese restaurant in Tunis, Tunisia.

Government holding back virtuous CEOs

I sincerely hope that the statements made by corporate executives from Johnson & Johnson, PG&E and Dupont were sincere and honest. This video produced by the Sea Studios and linked to by Business for Social Responsibility.

CHECK IT OUT - Ahead of the Curve: Business Responds to Climate Change.

Goodbyes and nostalgia

Law school is over for most of my friends. I just have a few last assignments...boo

This weekend, we had quite a bash. It was like we were new and we were old friends. Talking to everyone and sharing hugs, laughter, secrets.

What a day.

P.S. Still obsessed with CSR.

sLEEP & torture

Sleep the stuff of dreams and resilience
Thing I lack
Weather for stormy mood or twisted dream
I stare on and on waiting
I can't get that sleep groove back

And on a different note Canada is now actually by word of the Prime Minister and Minister of Defence defending its practice and complicity in torture. Professor Attaran, of Ottawa U was way ahead of the curve on Canada's policy on prison of war transfers in Afghanistan.

Tuberculosis, Indigenous Canadians and Genocide

I almost threw up this morning reading this article in the Globe and Mail. But I guess I don't even deserve to talk about my feelings because my pain must be so trivial compared to the suffering of Canada's Aboriginal Peoples. Canada, Ontario, Ottawa, the World are already awake. We know this terrible shit happened to other human beings. Let it never happen again. Reinstate the Kelowna Accord. Change the Indian Act to something like the Aboriginal Canadian Act. Get your shit together Canadian Government or else the protesters blocking the roads and railroaders will be reinforced by all of the uptight "wasps", yuppies, and starbuck's socialists.

Natives died in droves as Ottawa ignored warnings

Tuberculosis took the lives of students at residential schools for at least 40 years

BILL CURRY AND KAREN HOWLETT

From Tuesday's Globe and Mail

April 24, 2007 at 1:30 AM EST

OTTAWA — As many as half of the aboriginal children who attended the early years of residential schools died of tuberculosis, despite repeated warnings to the federal government that overcrowding, poor sanitation and a lack of medical care were creating a toxic breeding ground for the rapid spread of the disease, documents show.

A Globe and Mail examination of documents in the National Archives reveals that children continued to die from tuberculosis at alarming rates for at least four decades after a senior official at the Department of Indian Affairs initially warned in 1907 that schools were making no effort to separate healthy children from those sick with the highly contagious disease.

Peter Bryce, the department's chief medical officer, visited 15 Western Canadian residential schools and found at least 24 per cent of students had died from tuberculosis over a 14-year period. The report suggested the numbers could be higher, noting that in one school alone, the death toll reached 69 per cent.

With less than four months to go before Ottawa officially settles out of court with most former students, a group calling itself the Friends and Relatives of the Disappeared Residential School Children is urging the government to acknowledge this period in the tragic residential-schools saga – and not just the better-known cases of physical and sexual abuse.

Last week, Liberal MP Gary Merasty wrote to Indian Affairs Minister Jim Prentice asking the government to look into the concerns. Mr. Prentice's spokesman, Bill Rogers, told The Globe that departmental officials have been asked to meet with native groups.

Some of their stories, including tales of children buried in unmarked graves beside the schools, are told in a new documentary by Kevin Annett, a former United Church minister, titled Unrepentant: Kevin Annett and Canada's Genocide.

Mr. Annett, as well as some academics, argue that the government's handling, combined with Canada's official policy of removing children from their homes for 10 months each year to attend distant schools, does indeed fit the United Nations definition of genocide.

The UN definition, adopted after the Second World War, lists five possible acts that qualify as genocide, of which killing is only one. The fifth act is described as “forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.”

...

RAISING CONCERN

January, 1919

Duncan Campbell Scott, a senior Indian Affairs official, talks about the inadequacy of the school buildings in a memorandum to Arthur Meighen, then Superintendent General of Indian Affairs. “They were unsanitary and they were undoubtedly chargeable with a very high death rate among the pupils.”

December, 1920

A report to the Commissioner of Indian Affairs says 33 students at the Sarcee school near Calgary are afflicted with tuberculosis.

February, 1925

W.M. Graham, Indian Commissioner for Saskatchewan, says in a letter to Mr. Scott: “We will have to do something to stop this indiscriminate admission of children without first passing a medical exam. ... I quite often hear from the Indians that they do not want to send their children to school as it is a place where they are sent to die.”

February, 1925

Russell T. Ferrier, Superintendent of Indian Education, writes to Indian commissioners and agents, saying each child should be pronounced fit by a medical officer before being admitted to a school. “When a pupil's health becomes a matter of concern soon after admission, the consequent parental alarm and distrust militates against successful recruiting.”

March, 1932

The Department of Indian Affairs announces that as a result of spending cutbacks, it cannot authorize admitting children with tuberculosis to a sanatorium or hospital unless the patient requires “care for relief of actual suffering.” Karen Howlett