Hit the Books

This week I had my first Chinese test.

Photos by Conor

I wanted to write this post two days ago when I actually had it, but I was too exhausted from staying up the night before, eating chocolate chips and avoiding actual studying. It was just like my old college days, but with less stamina!

Over many difficult hours of diligent chocolate consumption I was able to create the material for my 3 minute presentation, a comparative discussion regarding the weather of my current city and hometown, and my feelings on the issue of "weather".

How many pictures of me until you feel like you were actually there?

This test was for my weekly Chinese class, and I'm very glad we had it. I definitely don't work hard enough on my Chinese by myself, and I'm the type of student that needs tangible goals and challenges like tests to push myself to really hustle. I guess living in the country where knowing Chinese would make so much easier isn't... tangible... enough for me.

I fully understand that this is a small milestone, come on, it's not even an HSK test, but I'm thankful for any Chinese that I pick up that can actually stick FOR CRYING OUT LOUD PLEASE LET THIS STICK. We're taking a break from class for winter course and Spring Festival, so I'll be out of practice. Ask me about the weather in a month; we'll see if this testing thing works.

Taking on The Arminator

This week I saw The Moonlight Sonata of Beethoven Blatz.

Awarding winning novelist Armin Wiebe tries his hand at playwriting with a project that he says wasn’t enough to make a novel out of: a strange blend of zany Russian antics, Mennonite accents, and secret lesbian vibes. To me, those elements have trouble coming together.

Wiebe obviously tried to create something unique, but the play made the characters carry most of that load in the absence of great storytelling. In the large gaps that resulted between plot points, I sat quietly waiting and watched a shell-shocked Russian play a broken piano, and a Mennonite girl yell in poor English about how she wants a baby. It seems that they were hoping the audience would find the German jokes funny enough to maintain interest, but I was tired of backwards phrasing and unknown German words shortly into the first act. Perhaps because no one has ever “learned” me no German words outside of playing Wolfenstein? Mien leben!

Many of these story gaps featured the Mennonite couple, Obrum and and Susch Kehler, agonizing over whether or not the ever-befuddled Blatz should remain a guest in their quaint prairie home, but the worst part is that the audience is forced to feel their agony as well. Will he stay, won’t he, just make a decision about it already! Instead, this entire issue goes nowhere; even at the end of the play Blatz is still hammering away on the keys, and people still can’t make up their mind about whether they want him or not. In between discussions on this topic, Susch confides in her sexually confused friend Teen, instead of addressing the problems head on. It’s like high school secrets in a one-roomed schoolhouse.

Wiebe said in a classroom question period later that the play started from a true anecdote that happened to his grandfather, and the rest is his own fiction. I’ll admit, that true story was pretty good, and definitely my favourite part of the play. After Obrum accidently uses poison ivy to do some forest paperwork, he’s left with a rash in an already sensitive area that makes wearing pants an impossible ordeal. Onstage, it resulted in some laughs with Obrum’s well-acted humiliation and some artfully done close calls on full frontal nudity. I smiled. Plus it reminded me of this:

Apart from saying this, Wiebe seemed very unimpressed with speaking to audiences, especially in a talkback session immediately after the play. Some of the questions were barely answered, like not giving any background information on his decision to have an emerging homosexual woman as barely a side note to the play’s plot, and offering no response to the question of his inspiration behind “all the sex” in the play.

Having had these types of sessions with creative writers all throughout the past school year, I wouldn’t be surprised by more hushed answers and dull feedback. But as we learned from our session, Wiebe was once an instructor at Red River College! Shouldn’t he be more comfortable expressing himself to a class of students, especially on matters concerning his own work and processes? I’m sure students would have found it hard to learn under an instructor who can’t explain why he makes decisions in his writing.

Overall, I’d give this play 2 out of 5. Although annoying, the accents seemed very accurate, and the actors, set, and lighting worked well. But as for the plot, it barely moves.

Here’s an excerpt from Wiebe’s message in the production’s program:

“The characters wrestle with doubts and fears as they act or resist their impulses: Can a man reach to heaven if he never looks to the sky? Can a woman only bake with what a man has to give? Can a woman hunger so much that she will reach where she should not reach? … “


The characters definitely ask all of these questions, but don’t watch this play if you’re expecting any answers.

Busy Work- Facebook and Twitter

Connection VS. Content
I think the difference between Twitter and Facebook is the reason people read what they do on each. To me, people are looking for Facebook connections, and Twitter content. 

First, the way to be approved on Twitter and get friends is simple: if someone likes what you say, they’ll follow you. Unlike Facebook, there is no collaboration in the process of two people connecting on Twitter; it’s just driven by one person. With Facebook, both people need to approve the connection (friendship) and this means there’s more involved than whatever the message is. Friends and family are easy to accept, but a person needs to support or appreciate a product or business before they’ll engage in its community. On Twitter, it’s “What are you saying?” on Facebook it’s “Do I know you?”

What do you say?
After speaking with people it’s become clear that these different levels of connection create different messages. In the comfort of a closed (or at least semi-closed usually) Facebook community or group, it’s much easier to display personal pictures and dispense personal information. Quite the opposite, Twitter’s extremely public format of quickly sending messages out into the world for all to see means that people can either be more guarded about personal information, or become a different character to tweet.
                
Getting strategic
Using Facebook needs to be part of a community approach that allows people to feel a sense of belonging to your brand. It creates a place where strangers can come together and be united, discussing their similar interests or ideals, and allows you to play a large role in that community. By being active and personal in your community, you can help suggest and shape people’s view of you.

Twitter on the other hand is much more one-way. Although celebrities often tweet responses to fans and commenters, it’s much more likely to see messages being sent out without direct replies. If your brand has/is news, links, and information you want shared, Twitter is a good tool, but don’t expect as much correspondence as you would get on Facebook.

Not even a writer yet and I'm already bitter.

Today I write about being a writer.

Is it me, or is there NO money to be made in creative writing anymore? Through seminars and book readings that I’ve attended over the past few months, interaction with published writers has painted a pretty dismal picture: that it’s pretty hard to make it as a writer.

Today for example, Julie Wilson visited our class (bookmadam.com, seenreading.com), and it seemed to me that although she’s involved in a variety of writing projects she enjoys, it was only recently that any of them have rendered any profit.

So in response to the question- how would I want to do be published, I’m hoping that whatever I’m hypothetically writing is great and attractive enough to warrant a traditional publisher. To me it seems like that’s the way to make enough money to get by; Wilson, for example, is making money now that she’s writing True Blood fan materials. Although Matt Duggan, another author who visited us, spent two years working on a project that was basically scrapped, maybe this is an example of a publisher doing what’s best to make money. Not every writing is good, so perhaps using a traditional editor and publisher system is the best for finding out if your work is any good before you release it to the world. 

If that doesn’t work out, it’s back to the drawing board while I post my work online for free. What’s the alternative, making $12.95 a week self-publishing or hawking it on Amazon? Come on. Isn’t writing professionally all about the money? Otherwise I’d have a job and just own a notebook for weekends.

I pswear it’s a pseudo-event.

Today I talk pseudo-events.

Long-time blog fans will know of my love for Conan O’Brien, and it turns out not only is he still king of late night comedy, he’s also king of publicity. To promote his new show on TBS, Conan and his staff did a ton of stunts, videos, Tweets, and more, including one event that I’ll highlight here: buying a blimp.

Conan was quick to remind viewers that he is the only talk-show host ever to have his own blimp, and he took every opportunity to use it to his advantage. By combining real life blimp action with extremely close social media coverage, Conan created more attention for floating vinyl than ever before. Conan sent the blimp to hover over baseball stadiums during the playoffs, and flew all around the states and Los Angeles where the show was set to be filmed. While this happened, he filmed commercials in the blimp both for rotation on TBS and YouTube, videos which collected over 800,000 hits on YouTube. Viewers could also track the blimp with a special Conan badge on Foursquare, in real-time on Google Maps, while his nearly 2 million Twitter followers received frequent Tweets from Conan about the blimp’s movements, and pictures were constantly made available on Flickr.

Whew! With all the social media coverage that Conan employed, he also generated a ton of buzz from media such as The New York Times, USA Today, and television news all over the country, making his return to television a widely celebrated and noticed event. 

Sexy by Andrew Parker

Today I became I model for my own self-serving purposes.

People who have seen The Andrew Parker Show may remember me referencing my new fictional line of cologne coming out, Sexy by Andrew Parker. Although this was just something I blurted out during filming, when we got an assignment to design our own ads I immediately thought ‘Hey- here’s a chance to promote my hypothetical fragrance!’ So I assumed the role of Andrew Parker and took some pictures of myself.

Now maybe these ads will mean nothing to anyone besides the 20 people who saw that show, but finally Electronic Publishing class is working for me!

Here's my ads.

Kerry Ryan, the Warrior Poet

Today I interviewed a writer.

Kerry Ryan is a Winnipeg poet who just released her second collection, Vs. Her work has also appeared in a number of literary journals, but this latest collection heads in a completely different direction than you might expect. It’s the story of her journey into the world of amateur boxing, as she trained and competed in a white-collar boxing match last year.

I attended Kerry’s book launch at McNally Robinson last week and was fascinated by this young woman who went out punching people in the face and came back to write beautiful poems about it. She was definitely someone I wanted to talk to more, but I thought it would be best to keep a safe distance from her right hook. So we sent each other some emails, and here’s how it all went down.

AP- Hey Mrs. Ryan. I really enjoyed your reading last night; the whole poet-boxer thing fascinates me. How do you decide what to write about?

KR- OK, first off- please call me Kerry. (Otherwise, I feel like you're talking to my mom. :) ).

I'm a pretty lazy writer, so I usually write about things that are close at hand: if it's winter, I write poems about being cold; if I'm traveling, I write about landscape; if I'm spending a lot of time at the boxing club, well, I end up writing about boxing.

AP- You said during your reading that competing in boxing was one of your accomplishments that you're most proud of. Is this what made it a subject important enough to devote an entire collection to?

KR- I didn't set out to write an entire collection about boxing. I started writing the poems as I was training, as a way to process mentally what I was learning in the ring, and also as a way to rationalize my decision to fight. I thought they might one day be a chapbook or a section of a collection. But the more poems I wrote, the more it seemed like a cohesive story and suddenly I had a full length manuscript.

AP- Writing poems while training… isn't that distracting? Do you mean these poems are coming together in your head as you're physically training? You didn't write anything during an actual fight did you? That just sounds dangerous.

KR- Sparring required total focus, so poems were the last thing on my mind when I was in the ring. I started working on the collection during the same time frame I was training for my fight and I came to see writing as part of the process. First, the training was completely consuming, mentally. I really couldn't think about anything else for a couple of months, so it seeped in to my writing life. But I also used the writing to try to get my body and brain on the same page. I've always learned best by writing a concept out in my own words. So, I approached learning to box in the same way.

Check out the rest of the interview with more of my hard-hitting questions by clicking on this post!

Books and Jazz- Yes they both still exist.

Yesterday I went to a book launch.

The McNally audience 

June “Pepper” Harris, a musician and playwright from Chicago was at McNally Robinson last night to launch her new autobiography, I Used to Be Coloured But Now, I’m Black! Between live jazz music songs, Harris read from her book and told of her experiences.

The evening started at 7PM with quiet jazz music; two guys on upright bass and piano soloed together as Harris walked around and met everyone, welcoming old friends and even shaking my hand. Harris then told a couple stories, and her friend read from the new book.

I Used to Be Coloured But Now, I’m Black! tells the story of Harris’ life so far: her early days of performing in the Chicago nightclub scene in 1962, the racial difficulties she faced, and the world travels her music has sent her on. Harris also read excerpts from her book about these topics, expressively and laughing, engaging the crowd as she shared her memories.

Harris reads from her new book

 She read of her time performing in Qatar and how through her music she was able to connect with the women there, even though they were so culturally different. She was in Qatar on September 11, 2001, and told of the reaction to 9/11 she experienced from both American and Muslim peoples. She also shared her dreams of peace, laughing, “Maybe jazz musicians should be heads of state. There would be no wars- we musicians like to sleep in.”

She read of her blind date in Norway; asked to a classical concert that promised to be too incredible to pass up, but with a man she worried would look like “nine miles of muddy Mississippi back road sludge on a rainy day.” He turned out to be a dreamboat.

She closed her speaking with thoughts on her book’s title. Being one of the first black entertainers in her scene, Harris faced racial prejudice but has clearly risen above it. Her title represents the changing socially acceptable titles for her, but Harris says it hasn’t changed her a bit.

“As a kid they called us Negros. Then they decided that was bad, so they said coloured. Then I was a Black-American, then a Black-Canadian, then an Afro-American, well guess what folks- I’m a woman.”

She wrapped up the event by singing a few songs: a silly, fun song she had written recently called It Ain’t All That Hot Out, a spoken word number about her reactions to finding a giant black snake in her house as a child, and another poem she read while the band continued to back her up. She slipped between her roles of musician and author smoothly, and seemed as comfortable swaying and scatting as she did reading her stories.

Harris sings too!

Harris has clearly been through and seen many things in her life, all the while never taking herself too seriously. She was an interesting and fun person in her book reading, and I Used to Be Coloured But Now, I’m Black! seems like a perfect extension of her personality. 

Listen to Harris kick it on her Myspace page.

Check out McNally's upcoming events here.

interesting title here- Creative Writing Short Story Assignment

Today I published my own writing.

As an assignment for my Creative Writing class, I’m giving a gift to all my readers: a slimmed-down version of my short story. Does writing a story on your own blog count as publishing? No. To make it a little more manageable for online reading, I’ve cut out all the beautifully worded descriptions and some important information necessary to the storyline. Kidding! Enjoy it my babies...

The Pamphleteer

Percy listened to his fish tank’s filter running, barely audible amidst the melodies. It had been months since the tank boasted any residents; it now stood forgotten and empty, save for a thick coat of algae that covered its contents. The rocks, the glass, the No Fishing sign; it was just as well there were no fish, for such an infestation would be grounds for animal cruelty.

Percy paid his rent and still had enough left over for a sandwich every day, but no one knew where that money came from. It seemed most of his days were spent only by sleeping in until late and sitting on the fire escape staring into distant fantasies until it was time to sleep again. He often played an acoustic guitar, but everyone in that neighbourhood did and no one was making any money. In fact, he was on his way home from playing guitar and singing into a microphone at a tiny bar in the back of an electronics store when he got the news.

Percy had always thought Armageddon warnings came from beards and robes, poorly drawn signs, ringing bells. But this one came from none of those, and he was completely taken aback. He had nearly dropped his guitar case as he jumped, jolted from city blindness and a world of his own, a hand and paper slapped into the middle of his chest.

“The world is ending in three days,” offered the man on the street.

“Thanks pal,” said Percy as he tried to continue.

“No really,” the man insisted as he pushed Percy back, hand and paper still sticking to his chest. He looked at Percy, his eyes hard and unyielding, without trace of doubt or madness.

And now in his bed, although the sunlight had long disappeared and his eyes were closing, he thought of the man. He rolled over and flipped on his bedside light, grabbing the pamphlet from the floor and studying it yet again. No matter how strange this warning was, Percy found himself scared more by its hopelessness. The page offered no solution or salvation, just a statement that confirmed the man’s words and Percy’s worst fear: it was official; the world was ending in three days. And now he was supposed to fall asleep?

*                             *                             *                             *                             *                             * 

Percy saw something wonderful. A pretty Asian girl was getting on to a bus as he passed the station, the sign shouting to him that she was headed to Boston. He thought of going to talk to her, but what would he do? Stop her from leaving? Don’t go, I need you! Or ever worse: get out- you’re going to Boston? I’m going to Boston! That only worked in the movies, and even then rarely, and the instigator always had some distinguishable characteristic that Percy felt he was lacking.

So he had walked on, past the bus station and the Dumpster outside that often attracted the city’s lowest, back to his apartment and a better block of town. He turned down the back alley that suddenly opened to his right. Skulking around puddle and garbage he walked back to the fire escape, which he knew to be rusty or broken or something; either way always pulled down and stuck. Up the ladder to the stairs, this was almost as quick as the normal man’s route he usually took. On the fourth floor however, he stopped, hesitated, completely innocent, when his eyes misjudged and his foot slipped off the first step. As he reached to the wall to steady himself, he gave a glance, which quickly became a look, through the window into the apartment in front of him. A woman stood by the far wall, wearing only one of those too-large shirts with buttons that you assume to be her man’s, painting the wall a fresh coat of light blue, and doing a poor job. Her long legs flicked out gracefully from under the long shirt, both already dotted with spots and specks of paint. Percy had always wondered if he could paint such a beautiful scene, but he never had the supplies.

*                             *                             *                             *                             *                             *    

The sunlight was unforgiving; this room had too many windows. Percy nearly smacked the woman standing behind him with his guitar case, ungainly, but for once not because his mind was drifting. He swiveled his head and squinted his eyes to close out some of the bright. The line in front of him moved slowly, frustrating and terrible, Percy thought he was going to get his license renewed or was waiting to ride a rollercoaster. Finally he reached the ticket counter, after having several quarter-hour intervals of queue time to doubt his decision and support his decision and choose his time and count out his money, so it was only a moment before he strode confidently away with his ticket to Boston.

Outside on the sidewalk it seemed the porter was only helping old women stow their cases beneath the bus, so Percy opted for independence and waved off the boy’s halfhearted advance to assist.

“It’s alright sir, but thank you!” his tone conveyed his glee. The bus revved and ran as it stood on the drive, while Percy’s heartbeat raced to match it. He opened his bag one last time before sliding it aboard, checking to see that his watercolours and brushes and photographs of flowers would not be crushed if the boy should happen to be careless. Satisfied; he boarded, the whooshing doors closed behind him and he found a seat near the back to nap in. He only had two days left, and there was so much to do.

News Feed: Andrew Parker is writing about Facebook.

Today I commented on The Social Network.

The Social Network tells some of the stories about Mark Zuckerberg and his creation of Facebook. Today Facebook has over 500 million users, with people spending over 700 billion minutes per month on the site; feats that have made Zuckerberg the world’s youngest billionaire. But, as the movie tagline says, he didn’t accomplish all of this without making a few enemies.



The Social Network's poster

In an interview on The Colbert Report, Aaron Sorkin, the film’s writer, says that the film is fact, but he included 3 different versions of the story in the movie. As Facebook’s beginnings led quickly to court cases and legal action between the creators, there is debate over which version that came out of the litigation is correct. Sorkin also said in that interview,“We don’t know what the answer is. It’s also more fun because the audience gets to decide who’s right, who’s wrong, who’s good, who’s bad- we just want to start fights in the parking lot.” (watch The Colbert Report episode here)

Aaron Sorkin

But in any of these stories, it’s almost impossible not to notice that as Stephen Colbert put it, Sorkin portrays Zuckerberg as “something of a genius-jerk.” Zuckerberg’s motives and ethics in leading on his partners in a strikingly similar idea for a project are called into question during the court hearings, as evidence is presented that Zuckerberg dodged contact with them and even misled them while simultaneously developing his own take on a social networking site. Even though, as the Zuckerberg character says in the movie, he made it better than them, I still couldn’t help feeling like that original idea was stolen from his partners. But what made me think poorly of Zuckerberg the most was how he treated his former best friend and CFO, Eduardo Saverin. Zuckerberg is not portrayed as having many friends in college, yet he turns his back on the guy who believed in him and supported him from the beginning. Without the cash Saverin put up to fund the project, Facebook would never have happened. Beyond accusations of intellectual property theft, I was disgusted more by the idea that Zuckerberg, while pulling in more money than he knew what to do with, couldn’t repay his best friend for all he had done.

Although as I left the theater I felt guilty for supporting Facebook, I don’t think this movie will hurt Facebook’s popularity. Current users are too far immersed in their online social activities to delete their account based on events that happened 10 years ago, and I’m sure many people will be impressed by Zuckerberg as a young entrepreneur and check out his work. However, I think that most people who are not already on Facebook will now be even less likely to join, using this tale of questionable origins as another reason against supporting such a company and its founder.

Zuckerberg’s actions in response to the film have also been called in question. Although he has dismissed the movie in a few ways, by saying that it’s a fun, overly-dramatic look at years that were just hard work, and saying that the movie’s audience is too numerically insignificant in comparison to Facebook’s fan base to have any impact. (Taken from PR Post- Zuckerberg, Hearst and Hollywood: PR Lessons Learned From the Past, by Tiffany Gallicano.) I find this believable, but Zuckerberg also happened to donate $100 million in Facebook shares to the Newark school system on the movie’s release date, a timing he claims to be coincidental. This, as Gallicano goes on to say, is unbelievable. True or not, Zuckerberg’s “philanthropy” on the very day that this story comes out makes him look like he’s only trying to protect his reputation.

If the movie was as fun and insignificant as he said, Zuckerberg’s actions were unnecessary, and only make me think that there must be some truth to the movie’s inferences. It seems like a cover-up, and to me, only casts more shadow on Zuckerberg’s dealings. As Gallicano quotes, to say that the timing of this donation was coincidental only insults Zuckerberg’s audience, and I’m sure many will be skeptical.

Mark Zuckerberg on Oprah, where he made his donation annoucement

Give money to charity, great; support school systems. I think it’s absolutely expected of people as rich as Zuckerberg to be giving back, but don’t wait until you look bad to do it! Had Zuckerberg already setup a charity and been donating regularly, it would have been a lot easier for him to simply point to his ongoing positive actions, and they would be viewed as genuine philanthropy, not self-serving penance.

Advertising: Buyer Beware Blog

     My group explored external hard drives and their dependability for our Buyer Beware project. In our personal experience we have found them to be unreliable, so we wanted to get more information about their failure rates, what brands are best, and how to take the best care of these product.

     In our primary research, we tried to get information from every side to create the most complete and exhaustive results. As much as possible, we tried to put ourselves in a consumer’s shoes. To do this, we went and purchased a hard drive ourselves. We also conducted interviews with employees at electronics stores and John Pura, a Media Technician at Red River College. We tapped into his expert opinion because it’s a viewpoint that many consumers don’t have access to, and we knew his personal experience and knowledge would provide good insight.

     Our secondary research was exploring the Internet’s articles, forums, and product reviews for information and others’ opinions.

     The brands that kept coming up in our research as best and highest rated were Western Digital, SeaGate, and LaCie.

They scored high ratings in online product reviews and came highly recommended by our expert interviewees.

     Unfortunately, most hard drive manufacturers don’t disclose their failure rates. So instead, warranties become very important. In our research we found that hard drives are susceptible to failure at any time, so it’s crucial to choose a product with a long warranty. It’s also important to shop smart; there are many issues that consumers should think about before purchasing an external hard drive. The issues that we addressed in our report were: operating system (do you need both PC and Mac?), portable vs. stationary, Firewire vs. USB interface, stability (look for a sturdy model), and of course, warranty.

Lastly, we picked up as many tips for proper care as possible. In a nutshell, make sure you keep your hard drive cool and secure, run computer programs that cleanup disk space and diagnose problems often (many of these programs come standard on your computer), and remember that any product can fail, so back up important files in more than one place.

Political Virgin

Today I went to something political.

     Instead of Journalism and Public Relations classes, my class attended a mayoral forum here at school for the civic election coming up on October 27. It was my first time at anything political, let alone a full-out forum, so it was new experiences all over the place. The sights, the smells, ah my.

     The forum was driven by questions posed to each candidate, mostly from students. The answers led to interesting discussion, and at some points, somewhat heated debate. Many of the issues we had discussed earlier in class came up, so it was good to see topics I recognized. This also satisfied my curiosity about how the candidates would respond to the issues, and proved Vogelsang right that many times, their response was nothing concrete at all. As mentioned in class, Katz has been reluctant to share some specifics about his plan if he’s re-elected, but to me there were several instances where each candidate could have been more forthcoming and precise with their responses. There were a few times when students sat down, and I got the feeling they still didn’t have their question completely resolved.

     In spite of this, I believe both candidates were able to present themselves as wanting to advocate for the poor, strengthen communities, and reduce crime, although many times they had very different ways of going about it. For example, Katz disagreed with Wasylycia-Leis’ plan to provide work for ex-criminals as a form of rehabilitation, saying what sounded more like he’d basically like to provide jobs for everyone who needs and earns them. Both candidates want to strengthen communities, but to me it’s that Wasylycia-Leis has a much more grassroots, complete plan that centers on involvement and cooperation (between businesses, community centres, police, and families), while Katz feels the need is just for more cops and policing.

     Also, both Katz and Wasylycia-Leis differ on their plans regarding making Winnipeg more sustainable and green. Both want more public transit, but in different forms. Katz has talked for a long time about a light rail transit system, while Wasylycia-Leis thinks rapid bus transit will solve the problem.

     What really struck me were the candidates’ answers to Allison’s question regarding Winnipeg’s failure to properly recycle glass. Both had commented earlier on the fact that Winnipeg is behind other Canadian cities in sustainability, with low transit ridership and no composting cited as examples, and had said they wanted to improve this. But when faced with the glass question, only Katz was able to describe plans in motion or efforts being made to recycle glass and encourage more recycling, while all I got out of Wasylycia-Leis’ reply is that “recycling is good.” The Winnipeg Free Press’ coverage of the event agreed, saying that she ran out of time before she was able to provide any real answer to the question. Unfortunately for Wasylycia-Leis, this seemed to happen more than once. Richard Cloutier, the moderator from CJOB radio, kept things moving at a steady pace, but he seemed to need to cut her short much more often than Katz.

     Although the two-hour length of this meeting daunted me, to my surprise it didn’t feel like a lifetime. Would I go again? Only for double credit like this!