Archive for: July 2011
How much is that doggie in the iPhone?
Our friend Teresa, a radiation tech at the Cape Breton Regional Hospital, volunteers at the SPCA. Lately she has posted photos of impounded dogs in the nuclear medicine department. On Monday, this caused a hospital visitor to remark that he really should get over to the SPCA and look for a new dog. His beloved labrador had died several months ago.
“I have pictures on my iPhone of all the dogs up for adoption, if you’d like to scroll through them,” Teresa offered.
The man did just that, until he came upon this photo:
“That’s Cheesie!” the man said. “That’s my friend’s dog!”
He explained that his friend’s mother was seriously ill. Cheesie had wandered off a few days ago, but his friend had been spending so much time with his mother in hospital, he’d been unable to mount a proper search.
“Well Cheesie is definitely at the SPCA—and up for adoption,” Teresa said. The man called Cheesie’s owner, and Teresa texted the photo to him.
Half an hour later, man and dog wee reunited.
How much sunscreen should you use?
And what kind?
David McCandless of Information is Beautiful has the graphic details.
(Which turn out to be complicated, especially for pale-faced contrarians.)
Supporting data here.
Rhonda’s Party: Best in show
(l to r) Producer Nelson MacDonald, Director Ashley McKenzie, and screenwriter Christine Comeau celebrate the underdog victory of their short film RHONDA’S PARTY in CBC’-TV’s Short Film Faceoff at a gathering of friends, crew, and admirers in Darrel’s Sport Bar, Halifax, Saturday night, as the TV monitor shows McKenzie being interviewed on the program.
The room exploded in cheers and whoops when CBC host Steve Patterson announced that McKenzie and MacDonald, both of New Waterford, had beaten out films from Vancouver and Montreal in viewer voting. The victory brings the young filmmakers $40,000 cash and $10,000 in equipment and supplies toward their next film, which is set in New Waterford.
Happy birthday
A roll call of Cape Breton musical greats gathered at the Dubinsky Family farm in Englishtown Sunday to celebrate the 70th (!) birthday of songwriter Leon Dubinsky (Rise Again; Josephine, She’s Got Her Diamond; Workin’ at the Woolco). Pictured here are Angelo Spinazzola, Ronnie “Drive’er McIvor” MacEachern, Fred Lavery, Scott MacMillan, Evie Dubinsky Carnat, and Leon. Singer Max MacDonald and keyboardist Ralph Dillon, original members of Buddy and the Boys, were also on hand.
The party, which also drew generous representation from Cape Breton’s dwindling Jewish community, included tributes to Leon and Evie’s father, ship chandler Newman Dubinsky, whose legendary summer birthday parties formed the template for yesterday’s celebration under long overdue sunny skies.
Two N-Dub* filmmakers need your help today
Director Ashey McKenzie confers with cast member
A few years ago, two Dal SMU students from New Waterford showed up at one of my movies and offered to help. Within a few weeks, they were organizing film selections for the following season, and doing a better job of it than I ever had. In their spare time, Ashley McKenzie and Nelson MacDonald organized the Coastal Arts Initiative which borrowed a basement room in former convent, transformed it into a cool exhibition space, and put on a series of innovative shows by a bunch of young New Waterford artists.
You read that right. Young. New Waterford. Artists. A bunch of them. In the space of a year, they showed more leadership than the two generations that preceded them.
Last Fall, Ashley and Nelson released the short film Rhonda’s Party, featuring the wonderful Glace Bay actor Marguerite McNeil (no relation). It recounts an unexpected and touching incident in the lives of two nursing home residents. The film debuted at the Atlantic Film Festival, won Best Canadian Short at the Montreal-based Young Cuts Festival, and went on to feature at the Worldwide Short Film Festival in Toronto, the St. John’s Women’s International Film Festival, Vancouver’s Women in Film Festival, and of course, the Cape Breton Island Film Series.
Glace Bay's Marguerite McNeil stars in Rhonda's Party
Rhonda’s Party is now one of three finalists in CBC’s Short Film Faceoff. If it wins, director Ashley and producer Nelson will get $50,000 in cash and equipment toward their next movie. They already have a script. It’s called Stray, and it’s set in… New Waterford!
Voting between now at 9 p.m. tonight Atlantic time will determine the winner, and your votes could put Nelson and Ashley over the top. You can call in your vote to 1-877-876-3636 or vote vote directly at the CBC Short Film Faceoff website. Each phone and each household is allowed five votes, but it’s not clear the scrutineers have any way of counting whether you vote too often.
These are two fantastic young Nova Scotians. Please take a few minutes to give them a few richly deserved votes.
* What’s N-Dub, you ask? Why, New Waterford, of course, as in N-double u. I’m sure you knew that.
Those aborted cuts – feedback
Civil Rights activist Warren Reed took the time to read the complex documents setting forth the Dexter Government’s furtive plan to slash medical benefits for residents of special care homes. The documents were posted here last night. The Dexter Government shelved the plan, which would have required residents making less than $2,000 per year to pay for needed medical supplies, dental treatments, vision care, and certain drugs including, in some cases, insulin and anti-seizure medication. The unannounced cuts, developed without consultation, were to have been implemented Canada Day, but were put on hold late Thursday after the Canadian Press wire service started asking questions of the Community Services Minister Denise Peterson-Rafuse.
Reed writes:
The documents evoke the fine old days of the workhouse. I thought Dickens was dead. The whole plan is so paternalistic and antediluvian as to be worthy only of incineration. Yossarian himself would perk up at the “Policy Objectives” section, which parses into something like, “The objective is the policy and the policy is the objective.”
Unfortunately, you have let a bit of unnecessary cliche creep into your language. As suggested below, you could have written the whole article without reference to “disabilities” (proposed deletions highlighted in yellow).
By reminding the reader that the policy merely affects the “disabled” you plant the thought that these people are different from us. They are us.
Warren has a point, though I think he carries it one step too far. That this policy would have applied only to Nova Scotians with disabilities is a pertinent fact readers ought to know. It’s not just a mean policy, but a discriminatory one that targets a group of Nova Scotians ill-equipped to stick up for their rights. Alas, having made that point, I then slipped into the common error of repeatedly defining the affected people by their disability. Warren is right. They are not “the disabled.”
They are us.
