SumWoman's Page

It sounds like you have some great skills in an important area of open source communication technologies. I am a filmmaker with rather good Photoshop skills, and have never tried animation.

I am also the former president of the Hastings Park Conservancy, that desperate group still trying to add some green space to what was once a glorious, Stanley-Park-sized forested outdoor space. So, I know "the PNE" well and have enjoyed the Fair, but still call that chunk of "public" land Hastings Park. My wish is that the PNE could be more like the Folk Festival in Jericho Park, a wild great time, but not an eyesore for most of the year.

Since we just got this web site going 4 months ago and have only been trying to build this network for several months longer than that, we are a newcomer to Vancouver networking. However, we have lots of fun trying to reinvent our city in a more resilient and more community-focussed way. We start just by having community potluck events and movie nights. Some of us are riding the train down to Bellingham this Saturday just for the day to witness their Transition "Great Unleashing". It should be an enjoyable time, and the train is just $25 round trip. Closer to home, there are also a bunch of food gardening events this weekend.

If you want to get a taste of a community potluck evening when we have already started local villages, let me know if you'd like to attend an event in Grandview, Cedar Cottage, Main Street, or even Kits. We generally try to keep these groups more private to encourage a tighter sense of community and security, but guests are always welcome. Since it is usually at someone's home, we have to be a bit careful, but you need only to ask.

Take care, and I hope to meet you soon to talk about your interests and learn more about your web work.

Randy

You have great interests. First and close to home, the movement to create a Housing Authority in Vancouver--as almost every large city in Europe and North America has, including even Whistler--is gathering momentum. The problem remains historically high land values and Vancouver's resistance to lease unused city-owned land to such an independent Authority. The city just wants "the poor" to move away, even if the majority of the city's employed are in fact too poor to buy or even rent here. It is a social, economic, and ecological disaster, separating less well-off people by greater and greater distances from their workplaces, and their wallets.

Onto other things: what's the harm of a few million tonnes of sulfates pumped up into the atmosphere? Or dust? Both are certain to cool the earth for a little while...or at least a few "scientists" think so. Acid rain from the sulfates? No worries, we've already killed all the those pesky fish in the world's lakes. They keep floating to the surface and stinking up the place when we "properly" dispose of a few harmless chemicals. Oh, and dust never hurts anyone. Choke, choke, cough, cough.

Yes, there is lots of money in disaster creation and "management." Read Naomi Klein.

Meanwhile, what sort of web work do you do? We adopted Ning (the "free," aka ad-supported CMS behind this site) because we had no one with the time, energy, or skills to learn Drupal. We don't love it, but we aren't aware of other options. Any ideas or suggestions?

Randy