Lisa Hrabluk

“This is perfect,” said Alexandra.

“Hmmmm….” I responded, lazily glancing off at nothing in particular.

“Do you like squirrels?” she asked.

“Squirrels? Sure, I like squirrels.”

“I like bears more.”

“You do? Why do you like bears?”

“Well, because they are nice like baby bears.”

“Oh. Okay.”

Alexandra looks to the right and points into the woods behind our house.

“The bears are in there.”

“They are?”

“Yes, they are for you. Mommy and Daddy bears.”

“Really.”

“Uh-huh.”

She looks at me.

“C’mon. We should go find them.”

“Okay.”

She swings her legs out of the hammock and steps onto the plastic table that doubles as a step.

“We can go barefoot. You don’t need your shoes Mommy.”

I slip out of the hammock and follow her lead – on tip toe, back hunched, finger to lips in the universal symbol for ’shhhhhhhh’.

“Let’s ask the people if they know where the bears are,” she whispers over her shoulder.

“Okay,” I whisper back.

“Excuse me but can you tell me how to find the bears?”

We pause and listen to their answer.

“Thank you. C’mon Mommy, they said the bears are this way. To the left.”

We turn right and creep around the tent.

“Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeee! A hawk! A hawk! Quick! Throw stuff at it and it will go away.”

We throw grass, dandelions and twigs.

“Whew. It’s gone. But it was a nice hawk.”

“It was?”

“Yes. It said to watch out for the crocodiles.”

Hugh Thorburn, the Nostradamus of our times.

I’ve been researching the political history of New Brunswick and just finished Politics in New Brunswick by Thorburn, a Queens U prof, who wrote in 1961. His assessment of the province is laughingly and depressingly still current in far too many ways.

Below are some of my highlights:

New Brunswick has not been affected by the dislocating influence of a new immigrant population bringing different folkways with it. Instead, it has been bypassed by the stream of immigration and has continuously lost a considerable portion of its own you and vigourous population. Small wonder, then, that the province holds on to old ways in politics. It has not had change thrust upon it since Confederation. – pp 41-42

Anything you can do, ACOA can do better:

New Brunswick is in no way an economic unit; rather, it consists of several small regional economies that have few interests in common and tend to compete for government projects in their respective areas. p.45

The view from the 2nd floor bunker at the Centennial Building:

The responsibility of government to respond to a complex array of representatives of local, region and special interests each alert to claim the desserts of its principals, results in a rather negative introversion that emphasizes the smaller and more local interests. p.50

Who’s your father syndrome:

…[E]very citizen belongs in his own community through long association and general acceptance. He has his place, which is his pride or his cross, and others recognize it. His family and its social position dogs him through his lifetime. He will be recognized by his family name and by where he comes from…

And my personal favourite:

It is a society which offers few advantages for the energetic young men who have completed their secondary education or obtained university degrees. These are tempted to emigrate unless the opportunities offered by a family enterprise or the practice of a profession present the makings of a career. Many of the members of the notable families find suitable employment and so remain, as do most of the unskilled and uneducated, who can find labouring jobs or stay on the family farm.

It is the educated and vigorous young men without moneyed connections who find suitable employment opportunities scarce, and many of them are drawn off to central Canada.

Those who “kick against the pricks” are encouraged to leave; those who accommodate themselves to things as they are tend to remain.

Perhaps such conditions, existing over a prolonged period, account for much of New Brunswick’s charm, but they are also responsible for its static and traditional outlook, its strong local loyalties and its calm and resigned acceptance of things.

Kick against the pricks. Did that mean the same thing in 1961 that it means today? There’s a bumper sticker waiting to be printed, I think.

This is turning out to be a weird week.

Today I’m speaking at a Lunch n’ Learn session for young and new entrepreneurs at our local economic development agency. The topic is “Getting Press” and I’m supposed to explain how you grab the attention of reporters and editors so they’ll do a story on you and your business.

Meanwhile, earlier this week, I spoke to two journalist friends about life after the newsroom. One, in Ontario, was recently laid off from a newspaper and the second, out here in the Maritimes, is a bit worried about their future at CBC. Quite literally I got off the phone with one of them and five minutes later the other called.

So I’ve got one group asking my advice on how to get into the newsroom so they can make money for their business and the other wants to know how to make money after they’re kicked out of the newsroom.

I have the same answer for both and it ain’t the old newsroom.

Buzz, influence (and god willing) money lies in the hands of communities.

Traditional media organizations have defined community as the physical place where people live – the town, city, region or country – but tech and social media companies have expanded that definition to mean like-minded people who gather online or in person to talk about the things they share.

Twitter is a massive community; so is Facebook.

Amazon.com (and .ca) has proven a corporation can create a shared experience and turn customers into community members.

Media organizations – yeah, those companies that need to continue to exist so me and my colleagues can continue to earn a living as journalists – need to evolve into online communities. That means inviting others to contribute to the conversation. Hint: That’s not the comment boxes at the bottom of stories. That’s the domain of ranters and that’s why the rest of us stay away.

I’m actually more optimistic about the future of news gathering and analysis than most of my colleagues. I think the music industry and iTunes offers a hint of where we are headed. People are willing to pay for certain things, particularly production quality and authenticity (straight from the source, or creator).

In the past the media organization was the assurance of both. In this new world, the journalist fills that role. That will mean writers and journalists are going to have to take those pitching skills they honed in story meetings and use it to generate business – and audiences. Some will get to do it within a newsroom, albeit a smaller one. Most, I predict, will do it from their homes – pitching to a variety of different places and, most likely in a variety of different forms.

That’s a scary new world for those of us who have spent our careers in newsroom working to deadline.

It’s also really exciting and I intend to enjoy the ride.

I want to be a face in the crowd.

Watching the Obama inauguration on TV and online, I was moved by the millions that gathered on the Mall. Ordinary people, most of whom weren’t able to see this new president except on large screens erected for the occasion, stood there for hours, in the cold, just for the opportunity to say ‘I was there’.

I want that.

I want to be drawn to something that is so deeply powerful that I am compelled to be at a specific place on a specific day at a specific time to bear witness.

I want to be there with my family, with my husband and with my daughter.

I want to hold her on my shoulders so she can see the size the crowd she is a part of, feel the twitchy energy of anticipation and perhaps, hold onto the memory of this powerful moment so, years later she can say of that point when her nation changed ‘I was there’.

Okay, I promised myself I’d keep the snark to a minimum but I’ve just got to get this off my chest and into cyberspace.

In our ongoing quest to lower our communications bill, Michael (that would be my husband Mike Hawkins, whose cooking talents are on display over at www.foodfunk.ca) figured out if we changed our Aliant business account into a residential account and then bundled that with our cell phones, we would save money.

Fabulous.

And then he called Aliant. A quite delightful person on the other end of the line then explained to him that in exchange for helping us – their valued customers – save some money, they would have to do the following:

1. Change our phone number.

Our old number that we have given out to God knows how many people over the past decade is registered for use as a business account. It would not be going with us in the move to residential services.

2. Not tell anyone that our number had changed.

Aliant business services and Aliant residential services do not talk to each other. They may smile occasionally as they pass each other in the hall, but these two branches of my communications provider do not and will not communicate with each other.

As the nice voice in the call centre told me when I called back to clarify some things, Aliant would not put an automated message on our number to inform people our number had changed because we were switching from business services to residential services. Instead our number has just disappeared – poof – into the telecommunications ether. Anyone calling us at our old number will be told: “The number you have reached is not in service. Please check the number and dial again.”

3. The change is immediate.

Well, at least Aliant delivers prompt service.

One small, final observation. I was connected to the residential services call centre to confirm the listing in the directory. Michael and I have different last names and I wanted it listed for both of us, so people could find either of us when they followed the above instruction and “checked the number.”

To add a second directory listing for the same phone number costs $1.49 or something to that effect – a month. Now, it’s a small fee – less than $20/year, but why do I have to pay a monthly fee to have my name and Michael’s listed in the directory? Is my name taking up that much space in Bell Canada’s digital archives? Am I eating up megabytes on www.canada411.com?

Considering the variety of living arrangements out there – married women who retain their family name, common law couples, blended families, gay and lesbian couples and platonic room mates – I’d expect a significant portion of Canadians with phone numbers have more than one last name using that number.

Why not waive the fee as a nice piece of customer service? Or at the very least, charge it once rather than add it to my monthly bill.

Not sure if the fault for all this lies with Aliant or with some antiquated CRTC regulation.

Either way, the Canadian communications dinosaur continues to lumber along…

Lots of stuff swirling around in my mind after a fantastic couple of days in St. Andrews at 21inc.’s Ideas Festival. Got home Friday afternoon and walked into a flurry of redecorating. We’ve been painting my home office – yea! – and so my office has temporarily been relocated to the kitchen table. Great for snack access, less so for thinking about stuff.

And of course, our office assistant has been deeply involved in this project, to mixed results.

Hi.

I always like a short lede; it’s the big introduction before the show starts.

This my little section of the web, I’ve laid claim to it – still decorating it to make it feel a little more like me – and it is here where I’ll be sharing my thoughts on the news that interests me (not always what shouts out at us from the front pages), writing about how well we’re all communicating with each other in this world of images, sound and text.

I’ve spent my professional career in newsrooms in both Ontario and New Brunswick, appeared on radio and TV and now I’m a freelance writer and editor.

Hope you enjoy the site,

Lisa Hrabluk