A petty abuse of authority

One of the drawbacks to being raised on stories about King Arthur and Robin Hood is that seeing abuses of authority make me want to leap to the defence of their victims.
For instance, I was waiting on the Skytrain platform today when I saw a man hauling a bicycle up the escalator. As he got [...]

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Todd Stephens, Nisga’a artist

Six weeks ago, Haisla artist John Wilson sent me pictures from the Freda Diesing School’s mid-term show. Since then, I’ve been trying to contact the artists whose work impressed me. Eventually, I hope to buy work from three or four of them. But, so far, the only one whose work has found its way into [...]

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Hens and eggs

A story told to me this afternoon at the local parrot and exotic birds supply shop:
A customer comes into the store. She’s about fifty, well-dressed, and articulate enough that she’s probably well-educated.
She wants to buy a Moloccan cockatoo, so the woman who owns the store starts talking about the pros and cons of buying [...]

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Museum of Northern BC Provokes First Nation Outrage

March 19, Prince Rupert, British Columbia – The Museum of Northern British Columbia is prolonging a dispute over the carving shed, an artist’s work space on museum grounds, by refusing to negotiate, says Tsimshian master carver Henry Green. In fact, the attitudes of curator Susan Marsden and the museum directors has outraged local First Nations [...]

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Why newspapers are failing

Everywhere I go, I hear what’s going on,
And the more I hear, the less I know.
-Oysterband
Why newspapers are failing is probably not of much interest to their readers. However, to journalists, the subject is understandably of absorbing interest, and they write about it endlessly. They have reason to be nervous, of course, with most newspapers [...]

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Expanding out from West Vancouver

When I was four, going to the kindergarten two blocks from home seemed an enormous expansion of my horizons. Even then, I had a vision of my horizons becoming vaster as I grew up – a vision that I still have, although now I wonder if a time when come when they contract as I [...]

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Bird-watching in the living room

If I want a day of bird-watching, I don’t have to leave the living room. With four Nanday conures – a type of small South American parrot – in residence, I can even do my bird-watching from the comfort of a chair. And, since three of the four Nandays are male, much of what I [...]

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A review of North Star: The Art of Lyle Wilson

Like most enthusiasts of Northwest Coast art, I am familiar with Haisla artist Lyle Wilson mainly because of his gold and silver jewelry. I was vaguely aware that he was also a carver, but for every pole I’ve seen by him, I must have seen a dozen of his gold or silver bracelets or pendants. [...]

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Looking back at Linux.com

I wrote for Linux.com for five years, so anything I say about the transfer of the site from SourceForge to the Linux Foundation is hopelessly biased. Still, while I wish the Linux Foundation every success with its new community-oriented version of the site and hope to do some writing for it, I am sorry to [...]

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