Apr 26, 2009

UNIVERSE WITHIN by Gwen Randall-Young WHEN I was in Maui recently, I watched a mother whale and her calf cavorting in the ocean. She was teaching her baby how to slap the water with its pectoral fin while some distance away, a male rested lazily near the top of the water, keeping pace with the mom and calf. I was told that a male – not the father...

WRITING ON THE WALL by Paul Rogat Loeb A few years ago, I heard Archbishop Desmond Tutu speak at a Los Angeles benefit for a South African project. He’d been fighting prostate cancer, was tired that evening and had taken a nap before his talk. But when Tutu addressed the audience he became animated, expressing amazement that his long-oppressed country had...

by Nick Loenen IN BC’S CURRENT electoral system, the political parties – and increasingly only the party leaders – control which names will appear on the ballot. Voters are given a list of candidates from which they may choose one name only. The public is forced to express absolute support for a local candidate, a party leader, a party and a...

THIRTY SOMETHING by Ishi Dinim MY STORY isn’t finished yet. Sometimes, I get so caught up in it that I find it hard to see out of it, to separate myself from watching the ink dry. Today, I crawled up on a ladder and cleaned my windows from the outside for the first time in several years. I had been living with filthy dirt between the world and me and it...

Apr 25, 2009

INDEPENDENT MEDIA by Steve Anderson SINCE MY last column, in which I wrote about the decline of journalism, the bleeding of jobs and the threat of local news outlets going “black” continue. Along with a slew of recent layoffs, Canwest is attempting to sell off parts of its media empire. Journalists have now become active in reporting the...