Happy Birthday Maddie- the chocolate lab that we fell for

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Maddie at Lost Lake

Four years ago today my daughter selected a little brown ball of love to join our family. Through highs and lows that life throws our way, this goofy chocolate lab from a breeder in Vernon BC has not just endeared herself to us but helped us remember what joys life tenuously and unpredictably offers. Maddie has become a valued member of the Smith’s as much as any other. Man’s best friend is not just an idiom but a core truth we all hold as a sacred trust. Our old golden retriever, Levi, set a high bar that I thought would never be reached be any other creature. He was a partner that carried my children into adulthood with love and devotion. He taught us all a humility and sense of duty. Well tonight we celebrate another of God’s creatures milestones. Maddie has endured family obstacles and supported our ventures not just as an loyal obedient observer but as a beacon of love.  This dog loves everyone. Whether walking with my wife and I or hanging out at our daughter’s apartment or scrambling abound with our 94 year old grampa, Maddie is such a joy. We avoided having another pet for years because of the responsibility but Maddie has made us realise so many lessons of life. Life is bigger than us. She never judges or demands. She only just shares her joy of life freely and exuberantly.  Each day she greets us with gladness like she hasn’t seen us for weeks. Her loyal love for our family is boundless and infinite. We should al be so kind and undemanding. Well- now she wants a walk! Gotta go… Happy Birthday Maddie!

Author rips Goldwater for comments

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Last week Marina Nemat, author of Prisoner of Tehran, was voted off by the CanadaReads panel. Ironically the scandal that arose was salvo with the winning selection last night with the winning Something Fierce by Carmen Aguirre. In either case, the dialogue about writing, writers and books is a healthy sign of a democratic society maturing. I’m proud to be a Canadian this week.

Globe and Mail background…. ……

On Feb. 6, at the Canada Reads debates, Anne-France Goldwater called my first memoir, Prisoner of Tehran, untruthful. It’s so easy to point a finger at another human being, claim that she has not told the truth, and walk away. But what if that person, the bullied, is a survivor of torture?   Suggesting that an account of torture is untruthful is like picking up the lash and beating the victim again. My feet literally hurt as I heard Goldwater’s comments.  I have been called a liar, a traitor, and a whore before, but on those occasions, I knew exactly where those comments were coming from; I could understand their origins. They either came from the agents of the Iranian regime, a regime that has a long history of running smear campaigns against dissidents abroad, or from members and supporters of extremist Iranian political groups. By writing Prisoner of Tehran, I stepped on many toes, and it was only natural to get a reaction from those who saw me as a threat for political, religious, or ideological reasons. But why was Goldwater calling me untruthful? I couldn’t see a reason for it. No reason at all. She was a Canadian lawyer. She was supposed to protect the innocent – or so I thought.

………. No more. No less. I live to testify. Without it, my life loses all meaning.  Canada took me when I had nowhere to go. It allowed me to gradually find my way back to myself and to the reality of the person I have become, a woman who breathes because she has a story to tell, a story that is not only hers but, in a humble and imperfect yet honest way, is also the story of thousands of others …..Dear Ms. Goldwater: The witness is the cornerstone of the justice system. If we throw stones at her, we have taken a step toward burying freedom and democracy. Canada and Canadians deserve better than this.

Marina Nemat is the author of Prisoner of Tehran and After Tehran: A Life Reclaimed.

Special to The Globe and Mail

Something Fierce wins CanadaReads jury

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I am not surprised considdering how articulate and poignant Shad’s representation was all month. I’m so proud of him and Aguirre. What a fascinating process this CBC CanadaReads is! Sure wouldn’t find this on FOXnews.  Copies can be found on display or on ereader.  -ASmith

“The panel has spoken: congratulations to Carmen Aguirre (and her defender Shad) for winning this year’s battle of the books! You can watch all the debates online.
A Canada Reads 2012: True Stories Contender and long-listed for the Charles Taylor Prize for Literary Non-Fiction.”

A gripping, darkly comic first-hand account of a young underground revolutionary during the Pinochet dictatorship in 1980s Chile. On September 11, 1973, a violent coup removed Salvador Allende, the democratically elected socialist president of Chile, from office. Thousands were arrested, tortured and killed under General Augusto Pinochet’s repressive new regime. Soon after the coup, six-year-old Carmen Aguirre and her younger sister fled the country with their parents for Canada and a life in exile. In 1978, the Chilean resistance issued a call for exiled activists to return to Latin America. Most women sent their children to live with relatives or with supporters in Cuba, but Carmen’s mother kept her precious girls with her. As their mother and stepfather set up a safe house for resistance members in La Paz, Bolivia, the girls’ own double lives began. At eighteen, Carmen herself joined the resistance. With conventional day jobs as a cover, she and her new husband moved to Argentina to begin a dangerous new life of their own. This dramatic, darkly funny narrative, which covers the eventful decade from 1979 to 1989, takes the reader inside war-ridden Peru, dictatorship-run Bolivia, post-Malvinas Argentina and Pinochet’s Chile. Writing with passion and deep personal insight, Carmen captures her constant struggle to reconcile her commitment to the movement with the desires of her youth and her budding sexuality. Something Fierce is a gripping story of love, war and resistance and a rare first-hand account of revolutionary life.(Mosaicbooks.ca)

@tlspecial, 1/9/12 9:45 PM help kids read

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c2651fe6-1c0e-46a4-9429-cc524be5e555_normal.pngMoira Ekdahl (@tlspecial)
1/9/12 9:45 PM
RT @skrashen: To help children in rdg: (a) make school day longer, or (b) invest in libraries & TLs? bit.ly/yBnEn9 #bctla #bctf #bced

Studies show that children who do not do well on reading tests often have little access to books. Studies also show that increasing access to books through libraries increases how much reading children do, and more reading results in better reading, spelling, grammar, writing, and a larger vocabulary.

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Why Alex can’t add… Globe

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http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/opinions/margaret-wente/why-alex-cant-add-or-subtract-multiply-or-divide/article2271359/

December 15, 2011

Why Alex can’t add (or subtract, multiply or divide)

By MARGARET WENTE
From Thursday’s Globe and Mail

‘Rote learning’ skills like times tables and long division are out, to the chagrin of many parents and teachers

A parent I know went to an information session about math at his kid’s school. After listening to the visiting curriculum expert explain how important it was for students to “understand” the concepts, he asked: “So, how important is it for them to learn the times tables?” The expert hemmed and hawed and wouldn’t give an answer.

Parents across Canada might be surprised to learn that the times tables are out. So are adding, subtracting and dividing. Remember when you learned to add a column of numbers by carrying a number over to the next column, or learned to subtract by borrowing, then practised your skills until you could add and subtract automatically? Forget it. Today, that’s known as “drill and kill,” or, even worse, “rote learning.” And we can’t have that.

“The designers of the new curriculum have decided it would be a really good idea not to teach these things,” says Robert Craigen, an associate professor of mathematics at the University of Manitoba. He sat on the province’s math curriculum committee for years. Unfortunately, nobody was interested in what he had to say. So today, he’s got calculus students who never learned long division. “The undergirding motive is: We want to teach understanding, and all this mechanical detail gets in the way of understanding.”

…..   ( Globe and Mail, Wente)