Funny Girls & Dynamic Divas

Toronto’s women’s advocacy agency, Sistering is having its annual fundraiser on June 14, 2012, and these evenings always guarantee a good laugh for a great cause.

Sistering is a women’s agency serving homeless, marginalized and low-income women in Toronto. Their programs and services help women gain greater control over their life circumstances. Their advocacy focuses on changing the social conditions that put women at risk. And their service philosophy is to ensure that women’s dignity is not eroded by poverty and homelessness.

All proceeds from the show go directly back to Sistering and supporting the community of homeless, underhoused and socially isolated women who attend the drop-in programs and use the Sistering services each day.

This year’s headliners include the wildly popular and talented:  Sandra Shamas, Elvira Kurt, Liberty Silver, Jane Bunnett and many more!

 

TD Children’s Book Week

This is the TD Children’s Book Week, and twenty-nine English-speaking authors, illustrators and storytellers will visit schools, libraries, bookstores and community centres in every province and territory across the country.  The theme for this year is Read a Book, Share a Story. 2012 marks the 100th anniversary of Lillian H. Smith becoming the first trained children’s librarian in the British Empire, and the Book Week theme highlights the important role that librarians play in sharing books and creating lifelong readers.

The library in the poster for this year’s book week is the Lillian H. Smith branch of the Toronto Public Library, the branch I am proud to frequent.  See the griffin on the right?  He’s the very one I think of when I tell the story of my eldest son’s name.

I have to admit, when I heard the theme for this year’s events, I was a bit puzzled.  I rather take it for granted that children’s books are, by definition, for sharing.  Isn’t that the best part of the whole reading aloud part of the day?  Snuggling up and sharing a story.  But when I looked closer, I discovered that the books that the organizers want us to share with our children are books about libraries and books about children telling stories.  Books about books!  What could be more perfect?!

So, pop in to your local library, check out the Book Week site, and see what’s happening, story-wise, in your neighbourhood this week.

Your Thoughts Will Soon Be Worth A Nickel: No More Pennies

Are you living in Canada and have you heard the news? The Canadian government has announced its intention to withdraw the Canadian penny from circulation.  Effective this fall, the Royal Canadian Mint will cease distribution of pennies to financial institutions.

I heard about this because our school is having a penny drive fundraiser, in hopes of collecting enough coins to buy a barbecue for future fundraising events.  And I thought I would pass this on to you, moms, most of you, in case you’d like an easy fundraising idea that might be fun to do with your kids.

(Before I go on, I’d like to note that to write this post and to collect pennies with my children, which I absolutely am going to do, I am suspending that part of me that is driven near crazy that children and parents and schools have to nickel and dime (and now penny) their way to supplementing the costs of a good school experience.  Just so you know.)

It strikes me as being painless and geared for success – for who would say no to emptying the pennies in his or her wallet, pocket, or drawer, especially now that they’ll soon hold no value?  (And maybe some other coins might be dropped in the bucket too.)  But it seems like fun, real life, hands-on opportunity to introduce a range of ideas to our kids, including the concept of money itself, counting, collecting, giving, and even historical change (remember when a penny could actually buy something?  I don’t, but it could once). Older children and no doubt their parents could enhance their penny knowledge by reading up on articles like this one, for who amongst us knows what an 1870 penny is worth now (31 cents) or why the initials KG appear on the penny below the maple leaf (initials of the artist who created the penny’s maple leaf twig design in 1937). 

And if a collective penny drive isn’t something you feel like spearheading at the moment, you could always just gather up those cents lying around with your kids and give them away. 

But remember to save a few.  So one day your kids can tell their kids about how they remember when the penny used to exist, and can present samples of the relic to your grandchildren who may themselves be gearing up for a nickel drive when the nickel goes the way of the highway too.

Kid Safety: My Encounter with the Cops

A few weeks ago, I was pushing my baby in a stroller on the way to pick up my son from school.  I was walking along Queen Street, a main artery in downtown Toronto.  I passed a new eco-shop selling no-VOC paint on sale, and although I didn’t really have time to make a stop, I ran inside just to ask how long the sale would last.  When I did that, I left my baby in his stroller parked in front of the store.

A minute later, through the glass storefront, I saw a police car pull up and wondered what was happening.  Then a police officer strode to my stroller and looked inside, all the while talking into a microphone held against his mouth.  I realized then that their concern was my baby.  Immediately I went to them.

I told them I was sorry for the scare.  I explained that while I should have brought the baby into the store, I had stepped inside without him very briefly because the store had a glass front through which I could see the stroller.  I was probably no more than 12 feet away from my baby at any time.  Then I said I was sorry again (and would repeat this several more times).

The officer speaking into his microphone visibly relaxed as I spoke to him, but presently another officer emerged from the passenger seat.  He stormed toward me.  “Are you crazy?!” he yelled.

I work for government authorities, sometimes relating to enforcement, and I have a sound appreciation of the scope of their powers should they turn their attentions your way – and I didn’t want this.  I also felt empathy for the officers, even the one who was shouting at me, because I knew they believed they were helping and that they see more the underbelly of our lives in the city more than I ever would.

So my goal was not to defend myself, but to defuse the situation.  I remained calm, accepting the yelling and the lecture.  I was remorseful and compliant until the second officer told me that he could report me to the Children’s Aid Society.  Suddenly, I had had enough of the over-reaction.  I turned and looked directly at the officer.  Clearly and evenly, I said, “If you feel, in good conscience, that you need to do that, then I totally understand.”

It was as if I cut the strings that were holding him up.  His shoulders slumped down and he said, in a different, quieter tone, “Well, you could make a complaint about me for the way I’m talking to you.”

I told him that I would never do that.  And I wouldn’t.  I didn’t enjoy the shouted reprimands, but I could plainly see that the officer was genuinely afraid, if not by what he saw, by what he might have seen.  “You know what we just saw before coming here?” he told me.  “A girl, maybe 9 years old, alone in the alley, playing with her dog!  Where are her parents??”

You will be pleased to know that I did not mention Leonore Skenazy and her 9 year old free-ranger to him.

I went on my way, but I was affected by this encounter.  I was sorry for what happened and felt fine about receiving a reminder to be careful, although I preferred the first police officer’s approach obviously.  I did not, however, think that I had done anything dangerous.

Yes, it’s possible that someone might have seen the unattended stroller and tried to swipe it away.  Just as it’s possible that someone will whisk away one son away from the slide or the baby sleeping in the stroller when I’m at the opposite end of the playground pushing another child on a swing.  Or that someone will steal my children out of our backyard when I let them play there while I’m inside the house, usually in the kitchen facing the yard, but sometimes even while I’m using the washroom upstairs.  It’s possible.

But it’s much, much more likely that our children will die in the vehicles that almost all of us use every day.  Statistically, cars are primary kid killers.  But who views getting in (buckling up, of course) an inherently dangerous activity?  Do police officers scream at you for taking unnecessary risks when you get in the car with your kids for optional trips, ones that are accessible by transit or within walking distance?  Ought they?

While I could have done without the drama from the second policeman, I’m fine with getting a reminder to be attentive with my children.  It’s hard to argue against safety.  But fear and paralysis I’m willing to tango with.  I noticed that after my encounter with the police, I had a heightened sense of awareness – essentially suspicion – of basically everyone I passed on the street.  Who are you anyway, and are you looking at my kids?  Ususally I let the boys ride their bikes and play in the lane behind our house while I stay with them.  But that day I shepherded them into the house because somehow I didn’t like the look of someone else who was out there.  In other words, I was afraid.

I had to shake it off.  I suppose some people manage to live like this, but if I were to worry when I went out the door that someone might abduct my baby were I to leave him momentarily unattended in a stroller in broad daylight on a main street, I simply would be unable to go out.  I can’t function like that.  I can take safety measures generally, but I can’t live trying to take preventative measures for that level of trauma.

There’s a degree of risk that exists everywhere, and terrible things are happening everywhere.  I am painfully aware of this.  But there are good things happening too, lots of them, even if they don’t make it to the front page of the news.  In the very neighbourhood where I had my “talk” with the police about its dangers, and at the very same time, people are creating community, food and beauty out of an ignored patch of land.  I choose to focus on this and other tangible evidence of goodness because I want to see more of it and be a part of it.  I will always make this choice over worrying about minute possibilities of horror.  Because in the morning I want to get out of bed, and explore and enjoy the day with my children.  How else would I be able to do it?

Green Lunches

At a recent meeting of my book club, we discussed a scene from Mad Men: after enjoying a picnic at the park, the Draper family gets up and gets into the car, and Betty, left with all the clean-up, shakes out the picnic blanket and leaves all the garbage on the grass.  Gasp!

Today, after millions spent on signage to deter littering, and the efforts of environmental groups to draw attention to the afterlife of litter, we have all been trained out of dropping our lunch litter on the ground.  Do you share my visceral response to seeing garbage dropped on the ground?  I really do have a powerful physical response to seeing that.  We now pick up after ourselves and Put Litter in its Place, or whatever slogan fits you best.

The next stage of the battle, though, has to be to reduce the amount of litter that lunches generate.  I’m hoping that in 50 years’ time, when our grandkids are watching a retro-2010 sitcom set in a school, the packaging in kids’ lunches will elicit the same kind of gasp we let out when watching the flick of the picnic blanket.

At my kids’ school, there are several initiatives under way to reduce the amount of garbage generated by the daily graze.  The school offers a twice-weekly hot lunch programme from Real Food for Real Kids.  RFRK is company that serves both herbivore and omnivore hot, healthy, organic lunches, and they strive to provide as much local food as possible.  Kids bring in their own re-usable food containers and cutlery, cutting down on packaging and waste, and they bring in their own drinks.  Twice a week, the lunchbox is a breeze in the morning, and all I have to do is toss in some fruit or veggies for the recess snacks.  Litterless, easy, clean.

image credit

Another initiative at the kids’ school is the Boomerang Lunch: all the wrapping, plastic bags, paper–all the materials that would go into the garbage after eating lunch–now comes back home in the lunchbox.  Let me tell you, this is the best thing ever to raise awareness about lunch litter.  Packaging looks lovely when the lunch box is organized just so, and the granola bar is nestled in next to the baggie of carrots.  When that wrapper and baggie come home, though, the message also comes home that we have to find alternatives to the mountains of waste we generate daily.  I am a huge fan of the Boomerang Lunch and how it makes me think twice before reaching for the individually wrapped snacks that are so temptingly convenient.

Kids are also encouraged to bring water bottles to school, instead of drink boxes and other disposable drink containers.  Our family gets only an average mark on this one.  Because the kids can still recycle their drink boxes at school, I do not feel the same kind of revulsion I feel when I think of the garbage generated by ”family-sized” boxes of individually wrapped snacks.  I hate cleaning the tupperware juice containers, with their fiddly nooks and crannies, and, germaphobe that I am, I worry that I’ve never gotten them clean enough.  I like to send a soy milk in with the son who does not get enough protein, and I send it in a drink box.  Apple juice I will send in the tupperware, but anything with pulp, or smoothies are out.  A work in progress that one.

Greening the lunch box has been a relatively effortless way to reduce and recycle, and the kids get involved when they look at the snack options in the grocery store.  Individual bags of crackers are now not an option, and we buy the bigger (and cheaper!) bulk size and put them in our own containers.  Not hard to do, easy to feel good about.

The Family that sneezes together…

I love Family Day.

What’s not to love? It’s a day off of work and school, where the only obligatory activity is to spend time with your family and relax. As this Toronto Star article states, it’s a holiday that “doesn’t involve turkeys, presents or backyard fireworks, and that’s perfectly fine with Toronto families.” It’s also perfectly fine with me.

So what did my family want to do? Well, we did have brunch planned, and we did hope to catch the re-released Star Wars: The Phantom Menace in 3-D (full disclosure: the kids wanted to see it. I like to pretend Star Wars movies one through three never happened…).  Maybe a nice long walk.  If time permitted, we were going to do some baking, and then curl up on the couch together to watch some TV.

What did we do? Well, Sebastian woke up with a fever on Sunday, and by Monday wasn’t any better, so he napped most of the day, and then Daniel started to look green and his tummy started to hurt, and I threw my back out sometime Sunday morning and was just starting to feel better on Monday, though my legs were still wobbly so I wasn’t up for going anywhere, really.

You get the idea. We did nothing. Bupkiss. Nada.

Except…we didn’t do nothing, exactly. We were home, together. We cuddled. We napped. We read together. The boys played lego and Wii and watched a movie.

It was relaxing and nice, and while I wish we’d been feeling better, I also recognize that it’s kind of ridiculous that we all had to get sick to have a day of blissful nothingness together.  So while I can’t say for sure that next year’s Family Day won’t involve brunch and movies, I can say this year’s was all right with me.

Terms of Endearment

For my grandmother, it was “Sausage.”

“Hello, Sausage!”

“Dinner’s ready, Sausage!”

“’Ow do, Sausage?”

It never failed to make my brother and me giggle, so we got a dose of humour with each dollop of love.

It’s not a term of endearment I can use readily, not least because I’m vegetarian. Somehow, that term of endearment needs to be uttered in Yorkshire, within plain sight of a dry rock wall. I do use it, and when I do, though it might not roll off my tongue, it does bring back fond memories of my grandmother. I’d like my children to hear it so that I can give them those memories, too, but, sadly, it always sounds a bit false to me, a bit forced.

Terms of endearment should roll off the tongue, and I like to use them a lot.

“Hi, Love!”

“Good morning, Sunshine.”

“Sleep tight, Sweetie.”

I even call them Schnuggiewookems, in a pinch. This is particularly popular in front of friends. Or at hockey games.

But the word I use when they are hurt is Lambie.

Each of my three boys was brought into the world with the help of the same midwife, who had the gentlest hands of any person I have ever met. Truly, it felt like a blessing to be touched by this woman. As it turned out, each of the boys was also ripp’d untimely from his mother’s womb, as Shakespeare said of Caesar, so although she did not deliver them, she was the first to hold and examine them and care for them in their first six weeks. Newborns aren’t terribly fond of being examined in their first six weeks, though, and they squawked like stuck pigs when she unwrapped them from their swaddling. That’s when the terms of endearment kicked in. She had a voice to match her hands, and she would coo and sympathize and talk to them right through the exam.

“Oh, Little Lamb, I know it’s cold. Nearly done, Lambie.”

Her voice soothed us all as she saw them through those overwhelming newborn days of disorganized brains and flailing limbs. She tamed the chaos of the newborn world with gentle touch and gentle words.

So now, whenever one of the boys is hurt or upset, that’s the word I instinctively reach for. It’s a realization that just came to me today, how I hold my midwife’s word in special reserve and how each time I say it I think of her. And my boys and I both get a bit of balm from a word that makes us think of sympathy and healing and being held in good hands.

Artsjunktion: Donate Your Art Supplies

Do you remember dot matrix printers?  Do you remember the paper that went into them?  The accordion-folded, perforated sheets, with holes all along the side?  Before my first-grader’s holiday party at school in December, I had the enormous pleasure of folding and tearing off all those perforated edges (I love doing that!!) so that the kids could use the paper for their craft projects.  That’s when I found out that the paper was something that his teacher had scored at Artsjunktion, a depot where teachers can pick up art supplies for free. 

Here’s how it works.  Businesses and individuals donate anything from hubcaps to hockey helmets, socks to stickers, teachers pick up the free supplies, and children turn them into art.  It’s all kinds of awesome: less goes into the landfill, stuff gets repurposed, creativity abounds, and it’s free.

One year, a sock manufacturer donated boxes of odd socks.  The art teacher at our school picked them up, and her students made sock puppets. 

If your workplace is cleaning out old letterhead, bits and bobs, odds and ends, please consider whether it can be used to make art before you put it into the bin. 

If you live in Toronto and can contribute or want to let your child’s teacher know about the programme, here is the contact information:

Old Orchard Public School

Eileen Orr

380 Ossington Ave.
(@College St.)
416-393-0894
eileen.orr@tdsb.on.ca

If you don’t live in Toronto, share the idea with your city council!

For the Love of Reading

An article in this Monday’s Globe & Mail about the (lack of) love of reading has got me thinking.  Kate Hammer writes that

A new report released Monday by education advocacy group People for Education finds that while literacy and standardized test scores have climbed over the past decade, the number of students who report that they like to read has dropped, from 76 per cent of Grade 3 students in 1999 to 50 per cent in 2011.

A 26% drop in students who like to read is enormous.  Hammer cites three possible reasons for the drop:

reading at home may have come to feel like an extension of schoolwork for some students, who aren’t being taught to read for pleasure.

Teachers may be to blame for not picking out engaging books for students, and parents can also help by reading at home with their children.

The report also points to other factors, including declining numbers of teacher librarians in schools – only 56 per cent of Ontario schools have a teacher librarian now, compared to 76 per cent in 1999 – and the rise of new distractive technologies, including social media.

If I squint, I can see why the first two might be to blame, but I don’t really see how in the span of 12 years, the school system can have managed to turn reading into unpleasant work or that teachers are somehow now less likely to recommend good books.

No, my guess is that it’s the cuts to librarians that’s to blame.  They are considered a frill, non-essential.  I know it’s not sound math, but there must be a correlation between a 20% drop in teacher librarians over the same time span as the 26% drop in students who report that they like reading.  I don’t have to squint to see a link there.

It is a librarian’s job to be enthusiastic about books, to connect a child and the book he or she is meant to meet.  It’s not just about putting a warm body in the room so that an adult can scan the barcode.  Librarians know their shelves, they know their students and they know how to match one to the other.  Without that professional enthusiasm, of course there will be a drop in the number of students finding the books that spark, kindle and keep alive a love of reading. 

It wasn’t until reading this article that I realized that along with head chef and bottle washer, one of my jobs as mother has been librarian.  I read a lot about children’s books.  I read children’s librarians’ websites and periodicals, I keep up with new publications, and I absolutely adore reading about other readers’ favourite childhood classics.  I am discovering many of them for the first time myself, and my enthusiasm for the job is boundless.  I have, in effect, professionalized my own love of reading as I cultivate it in my children. 

I am almost certain that my kids would answer yes on a survey that asked them if they like to read.  (I have enough humility and experience to know that our children will sometimes surprise us with answers we do not expect.)  It’s because I have worked hard to match them with the right books, but as Roger Sutton points out in A Family of Readers, as they get older our children need independence in their choice of reading material:

Feel free to share, but give your kid plenty of room and privacy.  The current vogue for book clubs might lead one to think that the primary goal of reading is to have something to talk about with your friends.  While books do provide a durable kind of social glue, you might find that your child is not especially interested in sticking to you.  He or she will probably be more interested in the pursuit or discovery of like-minded souls, both within the pages of books and in like-minded fellows who see the brilliance, for example, of Neil Gaiman or Terry Pratchett or Francesca Lia Block.  Should your child invite you in, by all means accept, but don’t make the first move.  Let your kid lead.  Books require–and provide–privacy and independence.  

My concern is, when they throw off my guidance in the natural move to reading independence, I want someone to be there to keep my boys’ love of reading alive by continuing to find them books that keep them up for “Please, just one more page.”  If schools keep cutting library staff, that someone will be harder to find.

Great Kids Stuff Sale

Around town this weekend . . .

The North Toronto MOMS Group is hosting their bi-annual Great Kids Stuff Sale.  This large-scale mom-to-mom consignment sale benefits several charities in the Greater Toronto Area which is just one of the reasons that make this a must-check-out event.

Last year, I waded through the mountains of clothing to find a never been-worn, white eyelet baby dress (original price tag of $50 still attached) for $8 and a brand new polka-dotted Gymboree dress for $3 and a Curious George raincoat for $15.  One-dollar baby onesies in heaping mounds, fancy schmancy party clothes for next to nothing and the shoes, oh, the shoes!  Converse sneaks, red patent baby janes, puddle boots galore!  Halloween costumes and snowsuits are the most sought out apparel items of the fall sale.

It would take hours to sort through the mountains of toys, books and DVDs.

If it is gear that you are after, look no further.  Need an extra playpen for grandma’s house?  How about a Bumbo for $10 (regular $50)?  Or a Baby Bjorn for $15?

Planning to check it out?  Here are some insider tips:

• Bring a wish list and look for your most coveted items first.  The good stuff goes first!
• Do your research before you shop!  It’s the only way to know if $150 for that double stroller is a fantastic deal.
• Bring cash.  More than you think you will need.
• Most importantly, arrive early or else you will find yourself at the back of this: