writers

Canadian Content Contributor on Squidoo

I put my name in to be the Canadian Contributor on Squidoo.

This is what I wrote:

I am a proud Canadian and I do like to write about, research, and teach the world about Canada and Canadians. I already publish a content feed on Scoop.it about Canadiana. Mainly bits of things I find online or happen to think of myself. Scoop.it gives me a place to stash links, share ideas and knowledge. I have over 3,000 views and 41 subscribers, not a lot but it does give me a nice start for promoting any Canadian posts I make as the Squidoo Contributor. Anyway, that’s just numbers. The fact is I was born in Toronto and have grown up all over Ontario. As a younger woman I travelled alone across Canada on the Greyhound bus, staying in youth hostels, meeting other young travelers/ backpackers. I do love it here and travelling (on a shoestring) was a great way to see more than the cleaned up tourist places. These days I photograph abandoned, derelict farm houses. Travelling around Ontario (day trips and some over nights) I see a lot of backroads, get coffee in local restaurants and I keep in touch with other explorers across Canada through the groups I founded and moderate on Flickr. I especially like Canadian music, literature and movies/ TV shows. Here we get so much media from the US it can be overwhelming. I make a point to support our own Canadian media by watching and listening to CBC, the oldest Canadian broadcaster and the most Canadian focused of them all. If you want to know about Canadian music, writers and others you can count on the CBC to have current news and old facts in their archives too. I studied Canadian Literature as a course in high school and college. I do read a lot of everything, not just Canadian, but I am aware of Canadian writers and did belong to an online group (until it folded). I had thought to start up another group but that does take a huge amount of time and energy so it on a project on the backburner. Meanwhile I continue to write my site for writers and it does have some focus on Canadian resources (just because that is what I find most useful for myself, as a Canadian freelance writer). I have probably written too much but I would very much enjoy covering the topic of Canada for Squidoo. Partly because as a Contributor I hope to be given some extra promotion on the site and then be read and heard. (So important to feel someone is actually reading and listening). Also, I would be happy to bring some niches of Canadian culture, history and art to light.

I’m sure I had paragraphs but they didn’t work with the form used. So it is a solid block of text, mainly here for my own amusement.

Adipositivity – Dude Week

Adipositivity –  ( Twitter link ).

The Adipositivity Project aims to promote size acceptance, not by listing the merits of big people, or detailing examples of excellence (these things are easily seen all around us), but rather, through a visual display of fat physicality. The sort that’s normally unseen.

The hope is to widen definitions of physical beauty. Literally.

The photographs here are close details of the fat female form, without the inclusion of faces. One reason for this is to coax observers into imagining they’re looking at the fat women in their own lives, ideally then accepting them as having aesthetic appeal which, for better or worse, often translates into more complete forms of acceptance.

The women you see in these images are educators, executives, mothers, musicians, professionals, performers, artists, activists, clerks, and writers. They are perhaps even the women you’ve clucked at on the subway, rolled your eyes at in the market, or joked about with your friends.

This is what they look like with their clothes off.

Some are showing you their bodies proudly. Others timidly. And some quite reluctantly. But they all share a determination in altering commonly accepted notions of a narrow and specific beauty ideal.

Bookmark adipositivity.com and check back often, as new photographs are added regularly(ish). And please help spread the message. The Adipositivity Project: Changing attitudes about the aesthetic validity of big women, one fat fanny at a time.

I looked at a lot of photos on the site. But, I loved this one best of them all.

Today in Soap Opera Land

I’m watching the soap operas today. Some I never got watching before but was too busy with other things to change the channel. Some I watch sporadically. I don’t know which are the popular soaps in the ratings and which get the most viewers.

One of them has actors that have grown old on the soap. Now, it’s great to have them around, still having a storyline. But, it is a bit too geriatric to have them as the major stars still, crowding out the storylines of the younger people. Not that the older generation has no stories. But it is the younger generations who are more active with career, marriage, having children and juggling it all. If not featured, they should be at least balanced out with the older generation.

Another thing, the one that annoyed me, was the young woman with a career and supposedly a brain, could not make dinner. She had a recipe to follow and yet when the guy comes in she is all aflutter with flour in her hair, the dinner mucked up and etc. Now, this is an intelligent woman. Is she pretending to be a ditz? Is she really just this incompetent? Or have the writers gone too far on an old fashioned stereotype? I think it’s the last one. I think the writers need to change their attitude about women. We can be pretty, fashionable and clever too. We can even read and use a recipe to cook dinner or bake a cake.

So that is my take on the soap operas today. Have you watched any lately?
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Originally posted to : PNN is closing at the end of January, 2011. Another social site bites the dust. For all the people online there just aren’t enough to support all the social sites that keep trying to live and thrive.

Looking at Courses at Georgian College

The problem is that none of these seem to be available right now,  cancelled, or in another town. I’m going to send a note and see what they say about them and the availability.

Writing for Profit (COMU 0055)
Turn your love and writing talent into money through editorial publications, promotional material, greeting cards and ghost writing. This course is for committed writers who want to make money through freelance work.

Intro to Writing for Newspaper (COMU 0032)
Community newpapers are always looking for savvy writers and this five-hour workshop will help you break into the local scene by helping you think and write like a seasoned reporter. Learn how to hook your reader with great leads and write with precision using Canadian Press style.

Creative Writing Fundamentals (COMU 0048)
While learning the basics of good writing, students are introduced to a variety of writing styles and Canadian writers. Classes consist of lectures, discussions, readings, critiques and films. Students are encouraged to read aloud their short works of prose and poetry to receive constructive, oral feedback.

Cartoon Basics (DART 0084)
This course introduces the basic elements necessary to design and construct cartoons for a variety of media. Instructor Bob Kain.