test blog 3

Red Sox! Baseball! Today! The beginning of a new baseball season is a harbinger of spring, bringing hope, renewal, and... the end of school! In a few days, I'll be done with another term and can turn my attention back to the rest of the world, including wmtc. Also in a few days - Tuesday at noon, but who's counting - I'll be finished with 75% of my degree, three of four years. I'm extremely restless and eager to finish. Since starting work as a library page, I'm working hours equivalent to a full-time job, plus school, and I'm really feeling it. Some days I feel like I just can't do it anymore. But then I get some rest... and, as Jackson Browne said, get up and do it again, amen. Each semester is 13 weeks, and I figure I can take another 26 weeks of this. Meanwhile... baseball! Today!

Anyone who follows Canadian immigration had to see this coming, although I admit I didn't think they'd do it in one fell swoop. Just as they have done with refugee claimants, the Harper Government TM created a backlog of immigration applicants... then they got rid of it. More than 280,000 people who have been waiting years for a decision on their immigration files could be soon be chopped from the list as the federal government moves to streamline its immigration practices. It’s a decision some immigration lawyers are calling a betrayal by the government that they say is changing the rules too late in the game. “These people have had the rug pulled out from underneath them,” said Montreal-based lawyer David Chalk. “The government of Canada invited people who had certain qualifications to apply, these people invested time energy and hope." Citizenship and Immigration Canada said it’s coping with half a decade of application backlogs by focusing efforts on skilled immigran...

How did I fail to acknowledge the passing of Adrienne Rich? She gave the world so much - in politics and in art, and by example. Recognizing my own mind in Rich's prose was one way I realized I was a radical. From The Guardian : Adrienne Rich, who has died aged 82 of complications arising from rheumatoid arthritis, was one of the most influential and political American poets of the last century. The author of more than 30 widely read books of poetry and prose over six decades, she believed that art and politics are indivisible. Her radical focus on feminism, sexuality, civil rights, Jewish identity and the anti-war movement positioned her as a leading activist as well as writer. In her poem Snapshots of a Daughter-in-Law (1963) she described the drudgery of marriage and domesticity before feminism had properly found its feet: "Banging the coffee-pot into the sink / she hears the angels chiding, and looks out / past the raked gardens to the sloppy sky." Motherhood was ano...

If you haven't seen the abortion-related Doonesbury cartoons that many US newspapers refused to run, you can read them here . Go Garry Go. More importantly, if you would like to see what the Texas sonogram law means in real life to real women, you can read one woman's heartbreaking story here: 'We Have No Choice': One Woman's Ordeal with Texas' New Sonogram Law . Subtitle: "The painful decision to terminate a pregnancy is now — thanks to Texas' harsh new law — just the beginning of the torment." Update. A doctor's resistance . Thanks to reader hhw for posting in comments.

With the Toronto Public Library workers back at work after a ten-day strike, here is an assessment of their settlement, from a TPL librarian (my friend and comrade) who is active in the union. The lesson is it's better to fight than to run away when you are a city-worker union dealing with the Tory assholes that dominate these days. We got a better deal than anyone else in TO, with a host of concessions beaten back and even a couple of small improvements to benefits. However, we still gave up too much on the job security provision. Partly, we were moving from a MUCH stronger clause than other city units, so to bring us closer to them would require a big loss. But the blunt truth is that the concession leaves many (as in, more than half) workers vulnerable. I take two, related lessons from this. Jobs are becoming even less secure, which is scary, and terrible. And we must fight, fight, fight for our rights as workers, because we may win some battles, and we will certainly win more b...

A reader - or at least someone who stumbled on my blog at some point - emailed me with a request. When I replied, I received this auto-reply: Your message to xxxxx was not delivered because this mailbox does not accept mail from the Gmail system. Gmail not only invades the privacy of its users, but of their correspondents. Please re-send using another service, or call or write. This is an interesting approach to Google privacy issues. It assumes that other email systems don't glean information from users the way Google does. I'm not sure we know that to be true. Unlike those old anti-spam systems that asked the sender to type a confirmation, this is just a block. Unless it's a simple auto-reply, written to appear to be a block, as a kind of protest against Google, while the email is actually received, and possibly kill-filed into trash. Either way, this person isn't too concerned with receiving email. All my email accounts are through Gmail. I have email at both my wor...

Ontarians, already living so close to the bone, are being told we must sacrifice even more - because corporate tax hikes cannot even be discussed. Ask the 1% for a solution and you'll get a solution that satisfies the 1%. Ten months ago, Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty appointed former TD Bank Economist Don Drummond to head the Commission on the Reform of Ontario’s Public Services, to deal with a projected (and likely overestimated) debt of approximately $16 billion. Ontario’s deficit was a result of the global economic crisis triggered by the gang of banking bandits to which Drummond belongs, but Dalton McGuinty asked the same gang to suggest remedies. It is therefore not surprising that the Commission’s recommendations are heavily biased in favour of the 1%. Despite rhetoric to the contrary, the pain will be absorbed by the most vulnerable in society and ordinary working people, because McGuinty directed Drummond not to keep revenue generation off the table, including increasin...