Born to Run

Born to Run: A Hidden Tribe, Superathletes, and the Greatest Race the World Has Never Seen by Christopher McDougall
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Running is not something that I like doing unless I have a basketball, am running bases, or playing some sort of sport.  Having started running in the Running Room clinics a friend lent me this read.  After devouring this interesting novel about a tribe of people who run as their more used form of transportation, the Tarahumara, several well known American runners organize a race down in the Copper Canyons of Mexico.  A fantastic read that will make you think you too can run for miles and miles.  While I continue to plod along, I shall allow this read to motivate me as I learn to run for the sake of my body and its abilities.


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Canadian Geographic Nod

We take a break during this regularly scheduled thesis writing time to make an important announcement.  About one month ago I was re-introduced to Instagram, one of the big 2012 website explosions.  This website is a photo sharing site on which those who post retain the rights to their own photos (unlike Facebook and others sites), can use quick filters to alter shots, and look at other people's creative talents.  I only have about 52 pictures up so far but I am finding a great place to post current pictures and past travel pictures that are sitting on my hard drive but deserve to be seen.  Here is my Instagram feed: toniavoyage (pics also on the right hand side of this blog).

Like all social media there are tricks and tips on how to increase traffic to your pictures and connect with other photographers.  By photographers, I mean people who actually take interesting shots with creative perspectives and interesting compositions, not people who take selfies (pictures of themselves) or food pics (just eat it, don't capture it every single day).  So I have been connecting with people, making comments, learning what hashtags connect with the type of people I am trying to connect with, etc.

This week I received a nod from a magazine that I look at on a regular basis and have a goal to be published in some day, Canadian Geographic, one of the premier photo magazines in Canada.  They liked the following picture that I took back in early December:

Art Books Architecture

The photo is a combination of a new art installation on campus near the University Centre, winter and architecture.  In the foreground on the left, the art installation includes old brown and black books encased in decorative plexiglass or plastic, suspended in a larger decorative rectangular prism also made from plexiglass.  The gold, dark yellow and brown leafing and designs set around the books and prism enhance the artwork's details and compliment the colours of the books.  The middle ground leads the eye down a lightly snowed on path, lined with planter boxes and trees, until the eye extends into the background, the Administration building enveloped in a sunset, the most iconic structure on campus.

This small but significant nod made my week.  Approximately 80 million photos are uploaded onto Instagram on a regular basis, and I was LIKED by Canadian Geographic.   Go me!

Back to thesis work I go.  More photography later!

Bare: The Naked Truth About Stripping

Bare: The Naked Truth About Stripping by Elisabeth Eaves
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

"Somewhere behind my desire to be both a reporter and a stripper lay an impulse to conceal.  Stripping - in competition with acting and espionage - is the ultimate job for someone who's instinct is to present different facades of who she might be.  There is nothing more illusory than a woman pretending to be a sexual fantasy for money." - p. 5

This book was on the wrong shelf when I entered a university library about a year ago.  It has been reminding me it is there waiting to be read for many months and I decided to pick it up over the holiday season.  It was on the apartment shelf as a classmate, during my first year of my Master's degree, announced in class one day that she was completing a PhD about women, their bodies and stripping because she stripped to pay her way through her bachelor's degree several years earlier.  I work hard to be an open person and I easily delight in meeting people whose lives are vastly different than mine and who are willing to share their stories of their life experience.  This book was perfect after I had spent several hours talking with my classmate to begin to build a healthier and more realistic perspective of stripping, the why, who, for what reasons, etc.

"I learned that no one is neutral about female bodies.  If they aren't sex objects used to sell every conceivable good, they are political objects, causing bitter debate on how to manage their fecundity.  And where not sexual or political, they are imbued with society's ideals with fears, turned into Miss Liberties, Virgin Mary's, and Wicked Witches.  Everyone had an opinion on what to do about female bodies, and sometimes it feels as if the only people who get in trouble for holding such opinions are young women themselves.  Some of us, though, have to live in them, and we each get by in our own way." - p. 6-7

Eaves explains how she first became involved in stripping and we meet several of her colleagues, who become friends, and their work as strippers, what purpose is serves in various lives, for some the cycle of dependence that is created in this industry, and the rules of safety that are continuously broken by purchasers and strippers alike.  Eaves teaches the reader that every woman had a line that she has drawn about the sexual work she is willing to perform, and sees many women move and bend this line under pressure from others and due to economic circumstances.

"And I was tempted to see sex work as more of a symptom of social illness than a cause.  The sex biz was nothing more that a sophisticated arbitrage operation, dealing in morals rather than financial instruments...At some point women had become artificially divided into two types - the good and the childbearing ones, carefully trained to disdain sex so that they wouldn't stray, and a separate, pro-sex class.  The second group were despised and disparaged so that the good women wouldn't want to join them.  One group of women ended up with respect but no freedom, and the other with freedom but no respect.  But economics abhors a vacuum, and the whore class...rushed in to fill the chasm between men's actual desires and the social structure that they, with women, had built.  I don't think the divide between the two types of women would go away until all the girls were raised to be free, responsible and unashamed of sex.  And until society had bridged the sex-ed gap - porn for boys and religion and romance for girls - there would always be Lusty Ladies [the stripper club Eaves worked at]." -. p. 138-139

A book that was telling and a strong mixture of social and political commentary shaken together with the lives of women and how their work infiltrates all aspects of their lives.  Give it a read!


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A Little More Understanding and Equality

May we spend 2013 spending more time learning more about people, analyze and improve how we treat each other, and see the ways that we can improve relationships with each other to coexist with more understanding and equality.

Here are two examples of ways in which people are changing the world to create a more positive, considerate and thoughtful sphere on which we live.

Idle No More:

Religion and Homosexuality:

A BYU's student review of the new LDS Church website about homosexuality.

May your holidays be merry and bright!

December 21: Are We Gone Yet?

It is the end of the world today.

Well, maybe not.  

Most likely just a normal December solstice.

Either way I am repeating the same questions I posed to friends and family as I did several weeks ago on the day 12/12/12 near 12:12 PM.  

How to Make $$$ During the Holidays

A few weeks ago on Facebook....

Old Jasper

This past October I took a chance to drive from Winnipeg, Manitoba to Jasper, Alberta....OK, I was headed to an academic conference and I couldn't afford to fly so 'took a chance' might be over stating a bit.  I had to drive.  While in the mountains I was reminded how much I love them and how lucky people are who live near them.  When they were in my backyard I certainly did not take advantage of them as much as I should have.

During my drive I pulled over repeatedly for about two hours on the way home, taking pictures, feeling the peace and quiet, and watching the daylight play on the scenes before my eyes.  Here are a few shots that I played with on my computer that remind me of the old postcards you can buy in tourists shops.  Pictures such at these can also be seen on the walls in the old Canadian Pacific hotels as framed tributes to the historical past.  These are new though, and mine.

An old picture in a new time

Like pictures of old with one glaring addition :)

Light and fluff on rock

Welcome Home: Travels in Smalltown Canada

Welcome Home: Travels in Smalltown Canada by Stuart McLean
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Twenty years later this book is still a relevant piece of Canadian literature reflecting on the lives of those individuals who live in rural communities.  Working hard to survive and communities these people share with McLean what they love about living in small towns, what endures them to their community members, and the various ways in which they are attempting to survive together as urbanization increases and their rural populations decrease.  From a hockey town in Manitoba, to the historic town of Maple Creek, to the far reaches of a bay town of Sackville, the reader is taken on a soft and melodious journey through the eyes of those who live and work in rural communities.  I wonder if he has written an updated version.  I think McLean should.

The most interesting part for me was the meeting McLean secured with the person who created the Canadian flag, George Stanley living in Sackville, New Brunswick.  He was asked to create a version of a potential flag by a member of parliament as he had strong interests in history and heraldry (a means of identification, usually focused on country or familial commitment).  He based his single maple leaf design on outfits Olympians wore during the 1928 Olympics, the games my grandfather Doral Pilling and his room mate Percy Williams both competed in.  "One of the images I have carried with me all my life is a photograph I saw when I was a boy.  It was a picture form the 1928 Olympics in Amsterdam of Percy Williams breasting the tape and winning a gold medal for Canada.  He was wearing a white jersey with a red maple leaf on his chest.  It's an image that has always struck with me."  Recently a book was written about Percy Williams by Samuel Hawley titled, I Just Ran: Percy Williams, World's Fastest Human.  Another book to read especially since the author consulted with my Aunt Arta Johnson who was instrumental in documenting her father's, Doral Pilling's, oral history which included stories about the 1928 Olympics and the athletic tours he participated in as the team returned to Canada.  I also have two cousins who have taken this maple leaf motif from their Olympic uniforms and had tattoos made from them.  Family stories and choices coming full circle.  Thank you McLean for shedding more light on a family story of which I was unaware.


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Keep Shining

While I plaster my blog with videos....here is one a cousin shared with me.  She was able to see Shad in London.  You and I get to enjoy his video and powerful music through YouTube.  Thank you to all the women who have taught me so much.  Keep shining.

I Love Jezebel!

For all those people who were disgusted at the type, amount, bizarreness, and uneducated number of rape comments made during the American election, this article is for you and me!

Team Rape Lost Big Last Night

Summer 2012: Mermaid Camp

As some of you may know, I have 12 (going on 13) nieces and nephews.  They are a constant source of entertainment, joy and hilarity for their aunts and uncles.  One of my sisters, Marcia, was talking with her two boys at the beginning of this summer about camps they may want to join.  Their younger sister, a three year old, was listening in and piped up, "I want to go to Mermaid Camp".  Uh?  My sister did not know what to do as she had never heard of such a thing.  Upon telling us the story, we family members joked that we could tie the kids legs together and throw them in Shuswap Lake, in amongst other sassy comments.

As we gathered at Shuswap for a family gathering, Marcia decided she was going to give her daughter a Mermaid Camp.  She went to the dollar store to make a few purchased, we gathered our make-up, nail polish and other assorted elements that could be included in our first ever, Mermaid Camp.

Marcia gathered the nieces and made fin-like invitations to distribute to the family.  We were all invited to Mermaid Camp at 2:30 PM on the porch.  Be prepared to be done up!

The adults began to put make-up on the girls, paint nails, coif hair and have an all round good time.  Sadly I could not find any ocean, sear or Little Mermaid music for the event but as you can see, we were having a great time.

Audra, the little girl who started Mermaid Camp,
having her nails done by Aunt Lurene.
(One of the best pics I took.)

Not aware her hair is on end.

Strike a pose!

We kept decorating each other.  Laughing at the feather eyelashes, the sparkled rings, and the fun colours of make-up.

Audra, in the rapture of Mermaid Camp

Our neighbour, Autumn, came to join us. 

Finishing touches

A late-comer just getting started.

Three little mermaids from school are we....

...even the adults got into it...

Well hello Cheri!

Adult nail time, care of Sabrina

Funny thing happened on the way to Mermaid Camp, the nephews showed up.  With trepidation, at first, they began putting on rings....

....then they let the Aunts start doing their hair.....they did not realize that this was only the beginning....

Stunning smile

With a lovely red flower 

With lovely red lips

....next came those crazy feather eyelashes....

Then the Aunts went wild with a no-holds-bar approach to Mermaid Camp.  Anyone on the deck was either getting done-up, was doing the work of decorating another person, taking pictures (like moi), or posing for a picture. 

Work is kids!

Work it Andrew!
(One of the best pictures from Mermaid Camp.)

....then Ozzy Osbourne Mermaid Camp started....

Group shots were next on the list of things to do at Mermaid Camp.

Love the smiles and other assorted facial expressions.

Pose it children!

Then it was treat time: banana vanilla ice cream milk shakes in fancy glasses.  

Thank you to all who made the delish milkshakes!

We had a great time and it was really fun seeing my nieces and nephews participate in some gender bending and enjoying every minute of it.  I was even more impressed by my siblings who just watched it happen, provided the space for their girls and boys enjoy doing something new for fun, for family bonding and for a great time.  

This may become a tradition.

A decorated child

Phew!  Mermaid Camp is exhausting!