Adios 2009

Five hundred twenty five thousand six hundred minutes.

That is the number of minutes we lived in 2009. That is the number of minutes that we had to share, to laugh, to cry, to observe, to participate, to bring attention to, to mourn and to celebrate.

I feel so blessed to have shared many of those minutes with so many of you. 2009 was an amazing, challenging and rewarding year.

I racked up numerous air miles as I visited Australia, China, Hong Kong, the U.S. , Turkey, France and Ireland (and Ireland and Ireland and Ireland - I have more green stamps in my passport than almost any other!)

I stood at the top of the Great Wall of China and saw it stretch before me further than the eye could see.

I took a ferry from Hong Kong across to Kowloon and got swept up in the maddening crowds.

I had dinner with RWB in Sydney

I felt peace listening to the Azan in Ankara, even it was at 5 in the morning.

Friends, in difficult situations, exhibited a grace that left me inspired by their strength.

A walk along the Rhone in Lyon during the Festival of Lights swept away the stress

My friend graduated from law school and I felt so privileged to have been there to witness the end of her journey and the beginning of the next.

A trip to Vancouver allowed me to introduce Trixie to the wonders of the Spicy Caesar!

New friendships were forged and older friendships were strengthened.

I will never forget the feeling on April 25th, as Laura and I sat in the Theatre of the Canadian Museum of Civilization, and watched six months of hard work unveil itself on the stage. Our production of A Memory, A Monologue, A Rant and A Prayer was a wonderful success and in that moment I felt as though we were doing something, really doing something.

I have completed my first semester of Grad School and I love it. It has been difficult, at times, and very fun at others but not for a single moment have I regretted the choice to do my Masters.

But as much fun as reviewing the year is, I don't want to spend too much time on it, for as the quote says, "living in the past is a dull and lonely business; looking back strains the neck muscles and causes you to bump into people not going your way." With that in mind, I am looking forward to the new year and it all has to offer.

I have plans for 2010 (of course I do, I always have a plan) and look forward to sharing them here.

In the meantime, I am reminded of a favourite quote from the West Wing. It says what I hope I am to my friends and it is what you, my friends, are to me:

I want to be a comfort to my friends in tragedy. And I want to be able to celebrate with them in triumph. And for all the times in between, I just want to be able to look them in the eye.

Happy New Year - may the coming year bring you love, peace, health and happiness!

A little bit of magic

One of the things I love about music is the infinite interpretations there are to any one piece. If you listen to classical music you know that no two orchestras or conductors or soloists perform the music exactly the same way. In the Rock/Pop world there an unending number of covers of classic songs - an exercise that allows a new discovery of the song or a revealing look at the layers underneath it that may have been ignored or unseen until now.

Recently Bruce Springsteen was given a Kennedy Centre Honor and in tribute there were several performances by his contemporaries. The love and respect shown by the performers and the joy on Springsteen's face as he listened felt every single note is nothing short of magic.

Here is a sampling of some of my favourite moments:

Merry Christmas

There is a blanket of snow softly covering the ground. The air is crisp and cold enough to see your breath but not so cold that you shiver and freeze. There are stars and puffs of smoke bleating from chimneys all along the street. It is, in a word, beautiful.

Today is the year's greatest day of anticipation. It's a day given to noble, hopeful and optimistic thoughts.

And who am I to fly in the face of that?

I have been blessed this year, as every year, with love and friendship - sometimes from the most unlikeliest of places. And tonight I simply want to say thank you.

Thanks for:

* the laughs

* the tears

* the conversations

* the understanding

* the pushing of limits

* the love

* the reminder that we are all connected

* the compassion

* the passion

* the support

* letting me be who I am

* and for being who you are

I give thanks for those of you in my life every day and will do so again tonight.

Embrace the optimism this time of year gives us all and have a very Merry Christmas.

xoxoxo

Invictus

to survivors....of everything.....everywhere.....

Out of the night that covers me
Black as the Pit from pole to pole
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul

In the felled clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloodied but unbowed

Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade
And yet the menace of the years
Finds, and shall find, me unafraid

It matters not how straight the gate
How charged with punishments the scroll
I am the master of my fate
I am the captain of my soul

I remember

I remember where I was 20 years ago today.

I remember watching the news, in horror.

14 women. Dead.

Because they were women.

I remember trying in vain for hours to reach a friend who was a student at L'Ecole Polytechnique.

I remember being grateful she wasn't an engineering student.

I remember being stunned. And baffled. And angry. And shocked. And scared.

It was the very first time in my life that I had witnessed that just being female could be enough to get you killed.

I grew up in a family of strong men. Sometimes loud men. But men who love, respect and cherish women. Men from my grandfather to my father to my uncles to my brother and to my cousins who all believed that there were no limits for the women in the family. We could do whatever and be whatever we wanted.

Until December 6, 1989 told me that there might be people who didn't share that view. It was the shattering of a dearly held illusion.

But most of all I remember the 14 women. We will never know what they could have brought to our country. What role they could have played in our national discourse on any level be it political, religious, scientific.

I remember them.

I remember.

****
Here's a link to a powerful article by Stevie Cameron from today's G&M

Breaking chains

Letting go can be a difficult thing. It can be a long, arduous process and one where you can often think you're done only to find out you're not.

I have this beautiful necklace that I stopped wearing over a year ago. It had been given to me by a friend; unfortunately the friendship was a fraud, as it turns out, and it soured me on the necklace.

I have struggled with what to do with the necklace. Sell it? Throw it out? Give it away?

It sat on my dresser in its cloth case silently, quietly demanding that I do something. I pulled it out on the weekend and looked at it again and the necklace took on another meaning. There is something about the design that now has resonance with another part of my life that is so completely separate from the person who gave it to me. And as I looked at it more closely I realized I wanted to wear it. I want to wear it because it now ties to something else that matters to me. Something that is honest and real.

As I was untangling the chain to put it on, the strangest thing happened.

The chain snapped.

Broke away, dropping the pendant into my hand.

And then I realized that the last tie is gone. That last reminder of manipulation and lies is broken and the necklace is free to be mine. And I am now able to wear it. Free of ties that bound it to an unfortunate period.

Free at last.

World AIDS Day

Today marks the 21st annual World AIDS Day.

21 years of calls to action

21 years where the number of people diagnosed significantly outnumbers the number of people able to access medication

21 years of fighting for attention, fighting for engagement and fighting for a voice.

21 years and we are both further ahead and further behind.

It is so easy to view HIV/AIDS as just a disease – as if a disease can be dismissed as being just something. If you were to ask North American teenagers today about HIV/AIDS some would tell you they have no idea how it’s contracted, others would express shock that it is still a terminal illness and some would tell you that it’s no big deal – you just pop a couple of pills like Flintstone vitamins and get on with your day.

It’s true, the mortality rates in the Western World have significantly increased since AIDS first made its appearance. And the innovation and discovery around anti-retroviral medication has allowed many people to live fuller and more productive lives than those who came before them did.

But the world does not begin and end with the Western World; a shocker to be sure.

Southeast Asia, China and yes, Africa – they are on fire with HIV/AIDS. The disease continues to spread there at such a rate there is little doubt this is a pandemic – not some wimpy H1N1, can barely get out of the starting gate pandemic. But a full fledged, generations are dying out pandemic.

The theme to this year’s World AIDS Day is Universal Access and Human Rights. And it’s time we realize that Universal Access is a human right and that the denial of other human rights is directly related to the rise of HIV/AIDS infection.

HIV/AIDS cannot truly be combated until all 33.4 million people (roughly the same population of Canada) have access to the anti-retroviral medication. Those who oppose public health care in the United States engaged in scare mongering with threats of death panels but the real death panels, the ones that should strike fear in to all of us, are the governments and pharmaceutical companies that put up road blocks or install trip wire along the path to Universal Access.

But what is really standing in the way of meaningful, long lasting change is the lack of action on the gross human rights violations around the world. The continuing spread of HIV/AIDS in the developing world has its roots in gender inequality. In many parts of the world women remain distinctly lower down the scale than men. They have little say over their marriages, their sexual health – even the ability to have safe sex or say no to sex. In some cultures male promiscuity is celebrated and encouraged – regardless of the impact it has on their partners.

The cultures of rape in play in the DRC and the Sudan and the rape as retribution in Zimbabwe have all had a devastating result on the spread of HIV/AIDS. We allow the situation in Darfur to continue unabated, the situation in the Eastern DRC is worse now than it was in any of the previous 12 years of the conflict and yet there is no real change coming.

On Facebook, Starbucks a contributing member to Product (Red) announced that today it will be donating 5 cents from every drink sold in Canada and the U.S. to the Global Fund. It is a wonderful gesture by a company that does not have to do it. Could they do more? Sure. But their effort is greater than a number of large multinationals are making. And yet if you read the comments on the Facebook page you will see some shocking remarks from people saying that Starbucks should be giving the money to veterans or to local HIV/AIDS charities and if Africa can’t sort itself out, they certainly aren’t going to buy a latte to help.

Somehow we’ve lost Doctor King’s lesson that “injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere”.

We are all connected and to think otherwise is myopic. We have a responsibility to help Africa find its way, to help ensure that women can say no, can ask for a condom, that men don’t take it as an affront to their masculinity to wear one. We have a responsibility to ensure that there is adequate nutrition and clean drinking water for all – after all, what good is access to ARVs if you have no food to absorb the medication? We have a responsibility to help those countries in conflict find their way to peace.

Universal Access and Human Rights.

Here’s hoping that it doesn’t take another 21 years to achieve either of those