I wasn’t there. I’m in Canada. I might get some things wrong. But from what I have pieced together this is what happened.

Protest at Israeli Embassy in Cairo

On May 15, 2011, Mosa’ab and Tarek separately made their way to the Israeli Embassy to the protest on the 63rd anniversary of Nabka. When they got there, the protest was already in progress. The protesters were non-violent. Some of them may have burned an Israeli flag. The army threw several canisters of tear gas into the crowd. There was a verbal confrontation between some protesters and a soldier, and some pushing on the barricades. The army fired live ammunition into the air. At least one person, Atef Yehia Ibrahim, was injured from a shot to the head and was taken to a hospital. Many of the other protesters were rounded up by the army. Tarek managed to continue taking video while he was caught by the army.

Hykestep Military Prison

The next day, Tarek’s sister Nora Shalaby spent hours figuring out that they had been taken to Hykestep military prison. She talked her way into seeing Tarek and Mosa’ab for 5 minutes. At that time they said they were ok and had been treated well. Another prisoner named Sadaty had been badly beaten.

The day after that, they were taken to a military tribunal to be questioned, although the army gave conflicting information about that. It is very difficult to find out what is going on.

Apparently they, and the others detained from the Israeli Embassy protest, will be held for 15 days, during which they will be questioned, and perhaps turned over to a military court.

The Egyptian army has been repeatedly sending civilians to military courts. That’s not supposed to be the way things work. Many people have been given prison sentences as a result of participating in peaceful protests. It’s an ongoing problem.

Mosaab ElShamy after voting in the Egyptian constitutional referendum

This is a photo of Mosa’ab Elshamy on March 19, 2011. His thumb is pink to indicate that he had voted in the referendum on the constitution. He stood in line for hours to vote, and he wrote “Voted I don’t care how corny it is, but I’m keeping this to tell my kids about it someday. http://twitpic.com/4b1j5h”

I’ve been reading tweets and blog posts by Mosa’ab and Tarek, and looking at their photos. They have participated in and documented the January 25th Egyptian revolution from the beginning. They have inspired me, and informed me with their courage, their eye-witness reports, their senses of humour, their insights.

This situation is likely to keep changing daily. Here are some sites that I’ll be checking to get ongoing information.

People
Tarek Shalaby’s sister Nora Shalaby (@norashalaby on Twitter), Flickr, Blog
Lawyer Ragia Omran (@rago_legal on Twitter)
Mosa’ab ElShamy’s brothers:
Abdallah ElShamy (@abdallahelshamy on Twitter) reporter for Al Jazeera
Anas ElShamy (@anaselshamy on Twitter)
Mohammed ElShamy (@melshamy on Twitter)

Free Mosa'ab ElShamy and Free Tarek Shalaby pages on Facebook

Twitter hashtags
#freemosaab
#freetarek #freeshalaby #freetarekshalaby
#freeomar
#freehossam
#freeamr
#atefyehia
#israelembassy #israeliembassy
#egypt

Sites from Mosa’ab and Tarek themselves, unlikely to change until after they are released
Mosa’ab Elshamy:
Twitter (@mosaaberizing)
Flickr (Mosa'aberising)

Tarek Shalaby:
Twitter (@tarekshalaby)
Flicker
Blog
Facebook page with photos from Tarek’s trip to take medical supplies to Libya

They were also featured in a book called Tweets From Tahrir.

Sites about the incident itself
Mosa'ab ElShamy's photo of the street on the way to the protest
A video of Mosa'ab ElShamy just before he was detained by the army
The video taken by Tarek Shalaby as he was being detained by the army
Article from Cairo newspaper Al-Masry Al-Youm about the protest.
New York Times blog about the protest.
Handwritten medical report on Atef Yehia Ibrahim (includes frontal lobe damage)

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This seems like a basic idea that we could all agree upon, right? A safely non-partisan issue. Something that we could expect from our politicians as a starting point, something we could almost take for granted.

I wish it were so, but in this election, and indeed for the past few years, Canadian politics has suffered from a disturbing disrespect for factual data by participants at some of the highest levels. There has also been an increase in government secrecy and a tendency for government MPs to attempt to evade responsibility for their actions.

I happen to think it is important for government decisions to be made in an open and transparent manner, not in secret. I also think it is important for people to take responsibility for their actions, and to be accountable for them.

To shed some light on these points, let’s take a look at some example scenarios.

Example Scenario 1:
If I say “Why are you treating punishing crime as a priority, when statistics show that the crime rate is going down and already quite low?”

What would you think of someone who replied:

1) “Even though the crime rate is low, we think this policy is important because of X.”

2) “Everyone knows that the crime rate is going up!”

I think I can have a reasonable political discussion with someone who chooses reply #1. How can I have one with someone who chooses reply #2? They are denying the factual data outright, and they are refusing to explain themselves.

Example Scenario 2:
If you are a Member of Parliament who disagrees with the recommendations of a staff report, what would be a reasonable course of action?

1) Acknowledge receipt of the report by signing it. Put into effect a program that goes against the recommendations of the report. When asked about it, explain the reasons you disagree with the report and why you have chosen to do things differently.

2) Alter a report that has already been signed by other people to say the opposite of what the staff recommended. Put into effect a program based on the altered documents. Publicly claim that you are following the recommendations of your staff and the report. When someone catches you, lie about altering the document. When that doesn’t work, blame the staff for not giving you a way to disagree with the report.

If someone chooses option #2, they are refusing to take responsibility for their actions. They are also showing a willingness to falsify data and lie about facts.

These examples I’ve given are not hypothetical scenarios. These are summaries of real situations where Conservative Party MPs chose option number #2. Not only that, they have shrugged off the episodes as no big deal.

I can’t go along with that. I can’t respect that.

And the sad thing is, these are not isolated incidents. There is a pattern of the Conservative party showing little respect for factual data, and claiming that it is unnecessary for them to explain themselves or take responsibility for their actions.

I will mention some more examples here. The ones I’ve mentioned so far are a sort of paraphrase of the Conservative government’s response to statistics about the crime rate (for example Stockwell Day’s comments about unreported crime) and the Bev Oda scandal.

Requiring government agencies to have the Prime Minister’s permission before releasing information to the public.
I kid you not, government agencies have to fill out a ghastly thing called a “message event proposal” and get it approved by the Prime Minister’s Office before they are allowed to talk to the public.

I find it appalling that they are being silenced in such a way. Prime Minister Harper insisting on controlling what his caucus members say is distasteful, but within the bounds of our expectations about how political parties might choose to operate. But controlling and micromanaging the communications of all of our public servants? That’s a lot more than a decision to stay on message as a political party. That’s censorship and a way to stifle dissent. It’s also a way to use public funds to do advertising and spin doctoring.

Destroying the long form census
The Conservative government changed the long-form census so that it is no longer mandatory. This effectively destroys the census, since it becomes a voluntary survey instead, and has problems with bias because of that. The quality and accuracy of the data will be severely reduced.

Tony Clement, Minister of Industry, defended the government’s decision. First, he said that the voluntary survey will have no effect on the quality of the data. This is simply not true. Ask anyone who has taken a basic course in statistics.

Then, Tony Clement claimed that the chief statistician of Statistics Canada had told him the data would be equivalent. The Chief statistician Munir Sheikh had to publicly resign to make the point that he had said no such thing.

Blaming the staff, and lying about what the staff said seems to be a pattern here. This is part of the disrespect for facts that I am talking about, and also a way of avoiding taking responsibility.

Tony Clement claimed that a reason for destroying the census is to stop people from going to jail for not filling it out. He seemed quite surprised to learn that no one has ever gone to jail for refusing to fill out the census. He also seemed to be unfazed by a proposal by the opposition parties to revise the census law to remove jail time as a punishment. This suggests to me that jail time is not the real issue here.

Tony Clement claimed that another reason for destroying the census was to protect the privacy of Canadians. My interpretation is that is if the Conservative party cared about your privacy, it wouldn’t be making an election promise to require all internet service providers (ISPs) to monitor all internet internet activity and turn over the information to the government without a warrant. (It’s part of their tough-on-crime policy that they’ve promised to implement within the first 100 days of taking power based on Bills C-50, C-51 and C-52 that they introduced this past session.) The census is far less invasive in comparison.

My take on the census is that it is about destroying the ability of the government and ordinary Canadians to have accurate information about the country. It is also an indication that the Conservative party thinks that such accurate information is irrelevant to how they decide what laws to make. They would rather make laws based on ideology and guesswork than consult the evidence. And they don’t want anyone else to have access to accurate information either.

Refusing to say how much “tough-on-crime” plan would cost.
The Conservative government refused to hand over detailed cost estimates of the tough-on-crime plan to build more prisons and require minimum sentencing. This is one of the two incidents that the Speaker of the House Peter Milliken ruled to be a “breach of privilege” that puts the Conservative party in contempt of Parliament. The other incident was the Bev Oda scandal.

This is a very basic question. “How much will it cost?” This is information that all Members of Parliament have a right to expect to have access to. Yet the Conservative government wanted the other parties to vote to approve their plan without having answers to that question. Vic Toews, Minister for Public Safety, and Rob Nicholson, Minister of Justice, claimed the information was a “cabinet confidence” (basically a state secret) and refused to provide the information for almost two years.

There are other examples. I’m running out of time to post this before voting begins, so I’ll just mention a few more.

• Proroguing parliament to avoid a vote they didn’t like (and thereby disrespecting our parliamentary traditions)
• Going to court to avoid releasing documents about how Canadians sent Afghan detainees to torture
• Refusing other freedom of information requests for so-called reasons of national security
• Pressuring the CRTC to change its regulations to allow false news to be broadcast
• Firing a whistleblower who shut down a nuclear power plant that was at 1000x the usual risk of safety problems.

To be fair, there have also been some positive moves toward transparency by the Conservative government. For example, the pilot project to release of government data to the public through the data.gc.ca website happened on their watch. But overall, the pattern of their behaviour has been to move our government and our political discussions in the direction of secrecy and disrespect for facts.

The Conservative party came to power in 2006 in part because they ran on a platform of transparency and accountability. They also said they wanted more public debate on issues such as international agreements, and more free votes in the House of Commons. If they had actually followed those principles, I would be a lot happier right now.

Instead, they are in the process of re-making our political system to be systemically worse on these types of issues, and have taken lying and falsification and suppression of facts to extremes that I have never seen before in Canadian politics.

Shall we reward them for this on voting day? Is this truly a matter of pesky political bickering about details that ordinary Canadians care little about? Or is this something that matters to Canadians? I know I care about it deeply.

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I will update it whenever I feel like it. Enjoy.

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I thought I’d list some of the sources I’ve been following regarding the Arab Revolution, in case anyone reading my blog finds them useful.

I have created lists on my Twitter account of people who are saying things about the revolutions. Some of them are actually participating in the revolutions, others are translating and transcribing what their contacts have said, and some aren’t involved but are commenting on it. I have a list for several countries. The ones for Egypt, Bahrain, and Libya have the most people on them. I’ve been adding to the lists as I go along.

My twitter lists:

libya-feb17
egypt-jan25
bahrain-feb14
algeria-feb12
yemen
iran-25bahman
morocco-feb20

If you want to see what’s going on in general on a topic on Twitter, you can follow its hashtag. A hashtag is a word or abbreviation that has a number symbol in front of it that people mutually agree to use when they are tweeting about the same topic or event.

Twitter Hashtags:
#libya #feb17 #libjp #umbrella #toktok #gaddafi #gaddaficrimes #kaddafi #qadhafi #benghazi #tripoli
#egypt #jan25 #tahrir
#bahrain #feb14 #lulu #pearlroundabout #lulupickuplines
#algeria #feb12 #algerie
#yemen #yf
#iran #25bahman #1esfand #iranelection #tehran
#morocco #feb20 #fev20
#tunisia #tunisie #sidibouzid
#saudi
#syria
#gaza #palestine
#jordan
#cameroon #cmr11 #douala
#gabon #revogab #alibongo
#zimbabwe
#mauritania
#ivorycoast #cotedivoire #civ2010 #gbagbo #abidjan
#kenya28feb
#djibouti
#china #jasminerevolution #cn220
#wisconsin
#revolution #revarabic

I have been impressed by Al Jazeera’s coverage, and my respect for CNN has increased, particularly my respect for Anderson Cooper, Ben Wedeman (bencnn), and some of the other reporters who are on the ground.

Videos:
Al Jazeera English Live Streaming and Youtube Channel (Streaming also available on Youtube)
CNN Anderson Cooper 360 video podcast (RSS)
Alive in Libya

I’m not sure how effective it has been as of yet, but Avaaz.org organized a project to get cameras and other media devices into Libya, which was shut off from international reporters. I donated to it. It will be interesting to see the results.

© Ellen Kaye-Cheveldayoff, 2011. | This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 2.5 Canada License. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: africa, arab, egypt, media, non-violence, revolution, twitter, video

I’m not sure I can adequately put into words what Mandelbrot’s discoveries and work mean to me, and the effect they have had on my life.

Let’s start with the name of my blog and website: Strange Attractor. I’ve been meaning to write a post about what a strange attractor is. I even have my own haiku definition of a strange attractor:

Eavestroughs of chaos
Funnelling beauty into
Following strange paths

A strange attractor is a concept from chaos theory and nonlinear mathematics. Some strange attractors are fractals. That’s probably all you need to know for this post.

The Mandelbrot Set

Benoit Mandelbrot did groundbreaking work on fractal geometry. He coined the term “fractal geometry”. The Mandelbrot Set, which the most famous and recognizable fractal in the world, is named after him because he was one of the first people to run a computer simulation to see what it looks like, and he was the first one to study it in detail. He is one of the key people who, building on the scattered mathematical oddities of the past, formed the fields of study we now call chaos theory, fractal geometry, and nonlinear science.

I was introduced to fractals by my high school math teacher, Darren Luoma, and it changed my life.

I never looked at a tree the same way again. I had new ways of looking at art, new ways of recognizing patterns. The structure of imagined things and real things in the world unfurled in my mind in new configurations. I had a sudden feeling for how something so tiny as DNA could encode something so complex as life.

A dissatisfaction I had had with the oversimplification of the world into the clumsy abstractions I’d been taught was suddenly alleviated. (At least some of the dissatisfaction regarding geometrical relationships in nature was alleviated. This type of dissatisfaction about the limitations of abstractions on a variety of topics is still very much with me.) There were now new abstractions that explained things better, that gave me different and fascinating ways to understand the world. It was like a space opened up inside of me. It was like my mind untangled and grew.

The following quote is a famous one, and once I understood the fractal models of the structures of clouds, mountains, coastlines, bark and lightning, there was no going back to the previous simplifications.

“Clouds are not spheres, mountains are not cones, coastlines are not circles, and bark is not smooth, nor does lightning travel in a straight line.” — Benoit Mandelbrot, The Fractal Geometry of Nature, 1983.

It was the indignation and dissatisfaction I had been feeling, expressed. Clouds are not spheres! No they’re not! You can model them as spheres, but you lose a lot of what makes them interesting if you do so. More importantly, a sphere is not the only available tool, nor is it the best tool, for modelling them. What this quote brought me was vindication and a doorway to something better. The ideas it referred to let me escape from the monopoly on my imagination of the previous model I’d been spoon-fed.

If I ever have children, if I teach them to draw trees, the lesson will start with a simple bifurcating algorithm. They’ll probably pick up the other model, a circle or triangle with a line, from their teachers or peers. It’s not that the other model is bad. It’s actually quite useful in a variety of situations. But it’s not enough for me. And if it’s the only model you have in your imagination of a tree, you can end up thinking that that’s all there is to a tree, without even realizing the abstraction that just took place, or what you’re missing out on. It’s like the problem of imposing legibility, that is, making a map, then forgetting the territory, then attempting to change the territory to fit the map and wondering why it doesn’t work, and leaving carnage in the wake. Ok, not necessarily the carnage part. But usually something gets lost in the process of doing something like that, even if it is no more nor less than the flexibility of a mind.

Fractal Tree

The Mandelbrot Set is quite beautiful. I had a visceral, aesthetic response to it. By exploring it, I got more than abstractions, I got a feeling for them. I got experience. There are some things you can know abstractly that are different when you know them from experience. I spent hours delving into deep parts of the Mandelbrot Set, and then I’d come back for more. The wonderful thing is, there was always more. That’s what infinity means.

The Mandelbrot-Julia set was the first 4-dimensional object that I attempted to visualize. There was a setting in the computer program I was using, Fractint, that displayed one 3-dimensional slice at a time. I moved through it, slice by slice, thinking about how to put it together in my head.

Fractint, by the way, was made by the Stone Soup Group, which was named after the story of the stone soup. In retrospect, that was my first introduction to the ideas of software collaboration and freedom, which have become important to me.

I could go on with more examples and stories about what Mandelbrot’s work, and fractals in general, mean to me. I think I’ll stop now. I feel honoured to have benefited from his ideas, and to have lived at the same time as him. I feel sad today, but also I feel like saluting him. Goodbye Benoit Mandelbrot, and thank you.

Related links:
New York Times Obituary of Benoit Mandelbrot
Benoît Mandelbrot’s Wikipedia Page
Fractint’s Wikipedia Page
Mandelbrot Google Image Search
The Most Famous Fractal: The Mandelbrot Set (PBS Nova)

© Ellen Kaye-Cheveldayoff, 2010. | This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 2.5 Canada License. | Permalink | 3 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: chaos, fractal, freedom, geometry, haiku, math, nonlinear, software

I now have a new favourite scene of that play. It is the one where Touchstone (the court jester who fled with Celia and Rosalind) and Corin (I’ll call him Sheppard Dude) are talking to each other (Act 3 Scene 2). Ben Carlson, who was playing Touchstone, and Randy Hughson, who was playing Sheppard Dude, stood still, in the middle of the stage, looking out at the audience as if watching the sheep in a landscape. I don’t know how he did it, but there was something in Touchstone’s expression and posture that just said “I can’t believe I’m here looking at sheep. I now have a job that’s about as exciting as watching paint dry, except that it’s greasier and smellier and sweatier.” It wasn’t an angry bitter thing. More like incredulous and amusedly resigned. I couldn’t see the Sheppard Dude’s expression as well as Touchstone’s, because of where I was sitting, but he looked happier, content with the world, grinning widely. The two of them just stood there in silence for about a minute, not saying anything, holding their forked (sheep-driving?) walking sticks, and it was the funniest scene in the play. I was already laughing and laughing, and so was a lot of the rest of the audience, and then the sheep bleeting sounds started, from the speakers hidden at the edges of the stage and that made it even funnier. I’m still laughing as I think about it to write this. I’m not sure I can convey how funny it was with words. You might just have to see it to appreciate it. Then, when the Sheppard Dude’s line is something like “So, how do you like the shepparding business?” you just know how Touchstone feels about it. You know already how unimpressed he is with the whole thing. So that one line is made from a bland conversation opener into something that escalates the joke that’s already happening. Then when Touchstone dryly asks Sheppard Dude about his philosophy, you can see how he’s making jokes and banter to amuse himself while out in the sheep field. There’s a motivation in there, and some empathy for the characters, not just a bunch of jokes that seem to come out of nowhere to liven up the play.

Randy Hughson (left) as Corin and Ben Carlson as Touchstone in As You Like It. Photography by David Hou. Image property of Stratford Shakespeare Festival

Ben Carlson is absolutely amazing as Touchstone. He stole every scene he was in. I don’t think I’ve seen one of Shakespeare’s clowns played to be so funny. I usually appreciate the jokes in a Shakespeare play, but feel like some of them are lame, and even the funny ones don’t usually have me doubling over in laughter for minutes at a time. I often get the feeling that we’re supposed to be partly laughing at the clowns, instead of laughing with them. Carlson’s Touchstone came off as intelligent, aware, and made even the jokes that I’d usually think were a bit lame hilariously funny. According to my friends, who know less Elizabethan innuendo than I do, he made the innuendo clear too. For example, Touchstone’s speech about whether it’s better to be single or to be married and “wear the horns” (which is slang for being cuckolded) came through clearly to them, whereas I think I was the only one laughing when Rosalind made her speech about how a snail is considerate to women’s honor because it always wears horns, or when the guy was lifted up on the lords’ shoulders during one of the songs, wearing antlers because supposedly his father and his grandfather had worn horns, so now it was a family tradition.

The naughtiest, funniest piece of innuendo, to me, was when Touchstone was making fun of Orlando’s poetry to Rosalind and making up his own rhymes. His own rhymes were so much better, and wittier, and I think that came across because of the way he said them. When he said “Winter garments must be lined, so must slender Rosalind,” my friend and I looked at each other like “Did he just say that? Did that mean what I think it meant?” and cracked up. His hand gesture for that one was something like, with his fingertips and thumb tip pressed together pointing in the same direction he sort of moved his arm, twisting upward, like the tips of his fingers were burrowing upward into something. At least that’s the mental image I have of it; it happened so fast, I might be wrong. His patter for the rhymes was so quick that you didn’t finish laughing from one when boom, you were hit with the next one, and yet each one was clear and understandable.

Another thing I liked about the production was the way that they made all of the songs modern jazz-like pieces, with some of the techniques that make watching a musical interesting. A lot of the time when a song comes up in a Shakespeare play, they have some guy with a guitar or lute droning on in an Elizabethan sort of way, and I often don’t hear what the words are, and I think to myself “Why are we even doing this? Why is it here?” In this production, even the hey nonny nonnies made some sense because they treated them almost like jazz scat. I liked the song segments in this show, which I’m usually at best ambivalent toward in a Shakespeare play. Good thing too, since music seems to be a significant part of the play.

Another thing I noticed was how many of the characters silently reacted to what another character was saying, and so totally changed the context of the scene. I hadn’t seen a stage production of As You Like It before. I had only listened to the Librivox recording of it. Librivox is a volunteer-run project to make public-domain audiobooks. They have a full cast recording of it, downloadable as MP3 files. I liked it more than I have liked a lot of professional full cast recording of Shakespeare plays. I’m not sure why, but I felt more engaged by it. The women who read the parts of Rosalind and Celia were especially good. The guy with an Indian accent, who I couldn’t understand, was memorable in his own way. It was more amusing than annoying, since he didn’t have many lines. From listening to this version of the play, I had imagined that Celia was more or less cheering Rosalind on for the entire play. She makes a speech at the beginning about how they are like sisters to one another and love one another, and she seems supportive and pleased when Rosalind comes up with the cross-dressing plan, so I just sort of assumed that she felt more or less the same way while Rosalind was getting Orlando to pretend to court her.

In the Stratford production I just saw, however, Celia’s facial expressions and posture during pretty much any of Rosalind’s conversations with Orlando register shock, exasperation, disapproval, and amusement. She rolls her eyes, or goes to sit and wait it out. By the time she says basically “stop trash talking women” to Rosalind in Act 4, Scene 1, you already know how she feels about the whole charade, and you can almost feel the exasperation oozing out of her.

Cara Ricketts, who played Celia, was excellent. I’d seen her last year in A Midsummer Night’s Dream. I really liked what she did on stage. Celia’s relationship with Rosalind is arguably the centre of the play, and it was clear that Ricketts, and Andrea Runge, who played Rosalind, are strong actors who can carry it off, even in unexpected (at least to me) directions.

It wasn’t just the actor who played Celia who did the silent reaction or commentary sort of thing, though. Most of the actors silently reacted to what the person who was speaking said, in one way or another. Another memorable moment came when the woman Touchstone was courting, Audrey, played by the excellent Lucy Peacock, saw Touchstone go over to play the double bass during one of the songs, and her mouth fell open as she leaned forward. She managed to convey “I had no idea he could do this! I can’t believe I am marrying such an amazing man!”

I liked the set design too. There was a giant green apple that came down and hovered in the air. I’m not quite sure what that was about, but it seemed cool. There was a tree behind the stage to indicate the forest, in the forest scenes, that got flowers and leaves on it as time progressed in the play. At intermission, we saw a stage hand picking up white specks from the stage and putting them into a cardboard box that said “Used Snow”. The stage at the start was presumably the reigning Duke’s room, and had four globes in it. Why four? My friend quipped that it must be that when you rule the world you have to be able to see it at all angles from a single spot.

It wasn’t exactly set design, but there were people dressed up as trees and sinuously swaying, with flowers covering their heads including their faces. And there was a lioness who sort of stood around during the lioness story, and had a sexy walk when she left.

All in all, I had a great time, and would recommend going to see the play. This production runs April 30, 2010, to October 31, 2010, at the Festival Theatre at the Stratford Shakespeare Festival, in Stratford, Ontario, Canada. They have a bunch of other plays running too, including The Tempest, with Christopher Plummer, that promises to be spectacular.

The Stratford Festival website has a lot of supplemental information about the play, which can often be interesting. For example, they have Youtube videos of the director, Des McAnuff, talking about the play, an interview with the scene designer, and a production clip that shows the music. They have a study guide for As You Like It, study guides for other plays, and other materials for teachers, including a Shakespearean Insult game, with a list of insults in As You Like It. There is a blog by their archivist, and various other info including schedules for garden tours, backstage tours, chats with cast members, lectures, and concerts.

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I live in the neighbourhood the article mentions, and I think it is a great place to live. I cannot think of another neighbourhood I would want to live in more, in Waterloo. I take issue with the image of this neighbourhood as an ugly student ghetto. I think it is exaggerated and sensationalistic, and it is not at all how I feel about living here.

The Record article, like many of the newspaper articles I’ve seen about this neighbourhood, seems high on sensationalism and low on fact checking. For example, the photo in the article is of the house next door to me. It was recently bought by a young professional couple, the very people that supposedly are not being attracted to the neighbourhood. They are living in the house, and renting the basement to students.

I would also like to note that while there are sometimes loud noises at night, I have never seen anyone having sex on the sidewalk in several years of living near students. Nor do I think that having big backyards detracts from the quality of the neighbourhood. In fact, along with the mature trees, it is one of its charms.

Also, most students are quiet and studious. It is only a small minority that are bad neighbours.

I was disappointed to see the comments made by my city councillor Jan d’Ailly, as quoted in the Record article. For example, this one “I think it’s pretty clear that what’s there now is not working.” Also his plans to “file a motion next Monday that calls for changes to the area.” I’ve written him a letter to tell him my opinion.

Whatever the city does, there will be a lot of students in this neighbourhood, because of the location. I have reviewed the 20 year plans that the city has for the neighbourhood, and I think they are well thought out and sensible. I think it may be possible to improve the plan, but not on the basis of sensationalistic claims, and not with the unrealistic expectation that changing zoning will stop students from living here or attract more high tech workers to the area.

© Ellen Kaye-Cheveldayoff, 2010. | This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 2.5 Canada License. | Permalink | 14 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: ontario, urban-planning, waterloo

After intermission, Ms. Montero asked for members of the audience to sing to her a theme, one that other members of the audience would recognize. Then, she played the theme on the piano, and improvised using it as a starting point. Some of the tunes the audience requested were “America” from West Side Story, Happy Birthday, Summertime from Porgy and Bess by Gershwin, the entrance of Papageno in Mozart’s Magic Flute, the Theme from The Simpsons, and Somewhere Over the Rainbow. She said that classical music has a history of improvisation, and that it’s too bad that modern day classical performances so seldom include it. The improvised pieces she played used patterns of music similar to those found in classical pieces. I definitely felt like I was listening to a world-class classical musician improvise in the style of classical music, not jazz or another style of music, although there were small sectionss of the music here and there that were reminiscent of jazz.

After the concert, as she was signing CDs, I asked her how she learned to improvise. She said it is something that she has always done, and that she wouldn’t know how to analyze or teach it. It is instinctive and mystical, mysterious even to her. She said she plays from a mindset of no judgment and that she feels very relaxed and at home when improvising.

Gabriela Montero has been taking requests for improvisations over the internet, and releasing the results as MP3 files, since December 2007. I think that’s a fantastic idea, and I’m looking forward to listening to the results, if I figure out how to, since the website says the MP3s are available only for 3 days after the performance, and the link to subscribe to her email list appears to go to a domain squatter. She did appear on NPR’s Sing It and Wing It, and you can hear some of those segments, including an improvisation based on the song “You Are My Sunshine.” There are also some clips of her on Youtube, improvising various songs in various venues, including at President Barack Obama’s Inauguration.

All in all, I’m delighted that I’ve been introduced to her music. Thank you Perimeter Institute.

© Ellen Kaye-Cheveldayoff, 2009. | This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 2.5 Canada License. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: classical, music, ontario, perimeter-institute, piano, waterloo

So get yourself to the Stratford Shakespeare Festival and see A Midsummer Night’s Dream before it closes on October 30, 2009. Not only is it an opportunity to see the magnificent Geraint Wyn Davies, it is an opportunity to make jokes about his Bottom.

© Ellen Kaye-Cheveldayoff, 2009. | This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 2.5 Canada License. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: ontario, puns, shakespeare, stratford, theatre

One thing that I find a bit frustrating is navigating the City’s webpage and making sense of the information I find. I’m not sure what would change at the park if the plan is approved. I would like to see a summary of that. Perhaps one already exists, but I didn’t find it. If nothing else, the projected increase in population living near the park, and the introduction of Light Rail Transit along the railway tracks that go through the park will have an impact. Presumably this is accounted for in the plan.

Waterloo Park is one of my favourite parts of the city. I like to hang out there, sit at the picnic tables, walk by the water, admire the flowers and shrubs in the Victorian Garden, watch the wildlife, and sit on the rocks by the zoo. I hope that the park will continue to be as awesome in the future as it is now.

If you’d like to see what the park looks like, there are photos of Waterloo Park on Flickr, including some of my own.

Kudos to the City of Waterloo for involving the public in urban planning, and recognizing the importance of public spaces. Perhaps we can also get a blogging conversation going on about it. Anyone?

© Ellen Kaye-Cheveldayoff, 2009. | This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 2.5 Canada License. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: canada, ontario, park, urban-planning, waterloo, waterloo-park