Lisa Hrabluk

Damn, I fell down the well of online information and it took me a while to climb out.

I’ve got a vase of lilies blooming beside me, the sun is shining on my keyboard and I came across this neat little web project yesterday, courtesy of bookninja, that go me thinking.

Project Bookmark Canada is going to mark the spots across the country that are imagined by writers and then described in their books and poems.

Michael Ondaatje & Toronto mayor David Miller will launch the initiative Thursday, April 23 by installing one of the bookmarks – a permanent marker that describes the book and the passage that references the area. The first bookmark is going in at the Bloor viaduct, which is referenced in Ondaatje’s In the Skin of a Lion.

Its a cool idea. I just finished reading Old City Hall by Robert Rotenberg, which is set in Toronto and makes a point of mentioning Toronto landmarks, and – don’t laugh – I just read the Twilight series, and while it is a bit overwrought, author Stephenie Meyer, does make the Pacific Northwest region one of the central characters in her vampire love story.

Some other books that stand out for me are:

• Wayne Johnson helped me understand Newfoundland in a far deeper way than any history book with his novel Colony of Unrequited Dreams;
• Robertson Davies was inspired by Kingston for his Salterton Trilogy, Toronto for the Deptford Trilogy and U of T for his Cornish Trilogy – and I wanted to experience all of them;
• Stephen Leacock’s Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town is a book I reread and which has sat on my desk, next to my computer since my early days in journalism;
• Elizabeth Hay took me way up north in Late Nights on Air and of, course,
• David Adam Richards has captured the poverty of rural New Brunswick in his ongoing study of Miramichi in his novels.

If I were to put up a bookmark in Saint John, I would put it in the deep South End, to mark poet Alden Nowlan’s place in Canadian literature with his piece “Britain Street”.

This is a street at war.
The smallest children
battle with clubs
till the blood comes,
shout ‘fuck you!’
like a rallying cry ––

while mothers shriek
from doorsteps and windows
as though the very names
of their young were curses:

‘Brian! Marlene!
Damn you! God damn you!’

or waddle into the street
to beat their own with switches:
‘I’ll teach you, Brian!
I’ll teach you, God damn you!’

On this street
even the dogs
would rather fight
than eat.

I have lived here nine months
and in all that time
have never once heard
a gentle word spoken.

I like to tell myself
that is only because
gentle words are whispered
and harsh words shouted.

Where would you put a bookmark?

Newsweek has a great story about Michelle Obama’s impact on the presidential race and in particular the way she presents herself.

Usually, the lives of black women go largely unexamined. The prevailing theory seems to be that we’re all hot-tempered single mothers who can’t keep a man and, according to CNN’s “Black in America,” documentary, those of us who aren’t street-walking crack addicts are on the verge of dying from AIDS. As writer Rebecca Walker put it on her Facebook page: “CNN should call me next time they really want to show diversity and meet real black women that nobody seems to talk about.”

The win, when it comes, won’t be of biblical proportions.

The ideological sea that divides America isn’t going to part Tuesday night because, despite the fervency of his followers’ belief, Barack Obama is no saviour.

If we are to draw a Biblical analogy, he has more in common with John the Baptist, who wandered alone to prepare the path, and with St. Peter, the first apostle and upon whom a new church was built.

Barack Obama: part bricklayer, part prophesy-offering story-teller.

Ian Brown in Saturday’s Globe and Mail, wrote a lovely feature story about Obama’s appeal to people in Washington D.C. Near the end of the piece he interviews a 17-year-old named Tempestt Newton.

For her, Mr. Obama isn’t “The One;” he isn’t “That One,” as Mr. McCain called him during one debate; he is just one of what she hopes will be many.

That’s it. This sentence coalesced my thoughts about this fascinating U.S. election campaign. I want to see Obama win because I do believe he represents change, but not just a change of policy or even of style.

Obama gives me hope that there are others like him, who want to reach beyond the divisions we have in our communities, whether they are class, race, gender or ideology, and begin to build consensus among citizens.

I hope that an Obama presidency attracts people to public office who up until now have stayed away.

However, for that to happen, political parties must be willing to cede ground to other voices in their party, who may not be the first choice of the flacks and hacks.

The federal Liberal party doesn’t seem to understand that – yet. Neither Michael Ignatieff or Bob Rae are true Grits in the mould of great Liberal leaders. Both have been on the national stage for two years and have failed to ignite any sort of following outside of Liberal party ranks and I doubt either ever will. Perhaps they can reengage the base and maybe, in Canada, that will be enough to win.

Hardly an audacious strategy.

Last June I did a CBC Radio commentary about cancelling my cable and my newspaper subscription. The decision was an easy one, made moments after opening the $100-plus cable bill that forced us to receive a bunch of channels we didn’t want in order to get the ones we did. As soon as the hockey playoffs were over (how very Canadian, I know), we pulled the plug. Being on a bit of a roll, I cancelled my subscription to the Telegraph-Journal, my local paper and the source of my income for eight years.

As I said in the CBC commentary:

My own version of spring cleaning: out with the old media and in with the new.
I don’t need yesterday’s news on my doorstep, when I already read it yesterday on my desktop.

That’s me the consumer talking, but I’m also a writer, so I’m torn as to how any of us are supposed to earn a living in this digital age. All those unpaid bloggers over at Huffington Post can’t be the future, can they?

We are in the midst of a massive migration.
Not of people, but of content.
Information is on the move – away from traditional providers like newspapers, cable companies, music labels, movie theatres and yes, even radio stations, and onto the web, where it can find a much larger audience.
Finding profits, that’s a little more difficult.
In these early days of the digital information age, it is easier to earn a reputation than to earn a living online.

Now it is November and we’re still cable and local paper-free. Michael’s order GameCenter from nhl.com, I’m watching Mad Men off a live stream on ctv.ca and I’m reading way too many American election blogs – mainly because they are always a day or two ahead of conventional media.

Seriously, have my fellow journalists forgotten how to tell a freakin’ story? They’re between a blogger and the campaign plane – watching both so intensely they’re lost all hope of originality. Blah.

Barack Obama told a new story; journalists need to follow his lead. I can’t believe the future of journalism is gawker.com; that’s part of it, but I believe, more than ever, people want context. They want their world explained to them in a homespun kind of way. Rather than political and corporate spin.

I’m still here and I’m still watching, listening and reading.
I, and others like me, still crave the content.
The question is, who’s going to provide it.
I read an interesting study recently that offered a dash of common sense with its analysis: there is only so much information each of us can absorb each day and that going online doesn’t mean we’re getting more information – we’re just getting it from more sources.
That should offers a glimmer of hope for traditional media and entertainment companies – but only for those brave enough to let go of that old business model that has them choose the content and the delivery system for me.
The online world doesn’t work that way.
Old Marshall McLuhan was right – the medium is the message.
All the Internet did was change the delivery.
And that’s changed everything.

The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) in the U.K. has told Exxon Mobil to pull an ad for liquified natural gas (LNG) that calls LNG one of the cleanest fuels in the world. Four people complained to the authority that the claim isn’t true when compared against all forms of energy and the authority agreed. Unsurprisingly, Exxon Mobil is appealing the decision.

The claim that LNG is clean fuel is routinely made by producers and distributors here in North America. It is, when we’re talking about fossil fuels (petroleum and coal), an argument Exxon Mobil made – to no avail – to the authority.

ExxonMobil said the ad was “accurate and truthful”, after the Advertising Standards Authority today upheld four complaints from viewers saying the ad misleadingly implied that liquefied natural gas was environmentally friendly when in fact it caused significant carbon emissions.

The TV campaign featured three employees talking about the energy challenges facing the world today, ending with the message: “ExxonMobil … Taking on the world’s toughest energy challenges.”

Negotiating through the new, environmentally-sensitive, public domain is proving to be very difficult for oil and gas companies. Not that long ago they were the swaggering Alpha males in the room. Now they’re more like the ever-so-uncool guy at work; we’re polite but we don’t really want to hang out with them at the office Christmas party.

To view the ad that the U.K. public watchdog doesn’t want on the air, follow this link, ExxonMobil LNG ad

For the full story in The Guardian — ExxonMobil to contest ban on ad for liquified natural gas