mylesk

Myles Kitagawa
Associate Director, Toxics Watch Society of Alberta
Co-manager, Alberta Environmental Network
#1, 6328 A 104 Street
Edmonton, Alberta T6H 2K9

phone: 780 439 1912
fax: 780 433 3792
e-mail: comments posted anywhere in this weblog will be forwarded to me.

www.toxwatch.ca
www.aenweb.ca

Please take note that due to increasing work-related traffic to this site, there will be a slight increase in the use of 'Friends Only" post filtering. Please comment to be added.

RT @501Places: What is the soundtrack to your travel memories? http://bit.ly/1tqeFM #travel #vegas For me, Beautiful Life by Ace of Base!
about 4 hours ago from web

K from the Alberta Capital Airshed Alliance asked me to "say good things about airsheds" when working on the proposed new CASA business plan.

I'm posting this here because, darn it, sometimes 140 characters just isn't enough.

2.1 Review and asses the roles and responsibilities of CASA and existing and future airshed zones. Explore the role of CASA in supporting airshed zones to undertake management roles and align with regional planning through a multi-stakeholder process.

It actually pains me that I haven't posted in over a month. Paradoxically.

About a month ago, I started feeling symmetrical sensations in both my hands. Never in the same place two days in a row. I think it was the backs of my hands on the first day, but I can't remember the order over the weeks. Every day I've felt some sensation - tingling, ache, numbness, stiffness - somewhere - in the fingers, the wrist, the thumb, the knuckles. And usually symmetrical; on the same spot in the left hand as the right, on the same day.

I haven't been to a doctor yet, but have acquired a now complete collection of input devices for my MacBook - two ergonomic USB keyboards, a tablet, a track-ball mouse, a touchpad (plus gel-pads) - that I rotate through every work day to keep from over using any single part of my hands. This system probably explains why the sensations seem to move around every day.

Hannah brought The Carpal Tunnel Self-Help Handbook home for me from the Edmonton Public Library and I learned that this kind of repetitive strain injury is either caused by inflammation of the tissue surrounding the arm/wrist/hand nerves; or by the buildup of scarred connective tissue on the nerves themselves. And that pretty much everything is good for treating carpal tunnel syndrome from asprin, Percodan, beer, table wine, meditation, yoga, ice packs, heating pads, Valium, steroids. Pretty much everything except work, and fibre.

In addition to my new zoo of peripheral input devices, I've been making great use of my Skype account's phone-out feature and calling people when I'd have otherwise e-mailed them. When I do type, I try to slow down and press the keys rather than striking them.

Dear Expedia and Ramada Hotel Downtown Calgary,

In response to your e-mailed invitation of October 7th to provide customer feedback, please accept the following report on my recent experience with the services of your organizations under Expedia Itinerary #129410729766 for two rooms at the Ramada Downtown Calgary on September 22, 2009.

This was a business trip for a September 23rd board meeting of a policy development group made up of industry, government, and non-government organizations called the Clean Air Strategic Alliance (http://www.casahome.org/?page_id=10) of which I am vice-president and co-chair. The two reserved rooms were for myself and for a fellow board member, Ms. Nashina Shariff, who was also attending this meeting in downtown Calgary. Ms. Shariff is a regular guest of the Ramada Downtown Calgary and we are both frequent users of on-line booking services, though this was our first reservation using Expedia.

Despite holding e-mailed travel confirmation from Expedia, we were advised by reception upon arrival there were no reservations for us. The duty-manager (Wayne) further explained that we were among a 3-day cluster of customers who had been sold rooms at the Ramada that were not in fact available and that the Ramada was working with Expedia to resolve these situations. No other rooms in downtown Calgary were available and my colleague and I ultimately imposed on some relatives of mine who live in convenient proximity to downtown at 9:30pm that night.

On September 25th I spoke with Eric of Expedia about the status of refunding to me the cost of the two rooms. I was assigned Case ID #54247290 and instructed that I was to secure faxed confirmation from the Ramada that the two rooms were not available to us. I spoke again with Wayne, Ramada duty-manager, who advised that such documentation had to be issued by General Manager Frank Stewart, and that this would be done when next Mr. Stewart was available.

During the week of September 28th I inquired again with Expedia to confirm that the fax from Ramada had been received. Expedia could not confirm this. I immediately left a voice mail for Mr. Stewart asking for confirmation that the fax had been sent, but received no response.

On October 7th I spoke with Jane of Expedia who advised that no fax from the Ramada had yet been received and that I needed to continue efforts to acquire this documentation. Given the frustration I’d experienced to that point, I asked Jane to call Ramada. She put me on hold and acquired the required information by phone within 15 minutes. She then advised that the next steps for Expedia processing my refund may take up to 30 days! (Jane, herself, was the most helpful person to deal with in this entire transaction.)

The cumulative effect of:
- arriving at Ramada reception with a colleague and having apparently mismanaged our reservations
- relying on relatives late at night for accommodations
- the administrative work that was asked of me between Expedia and Ramada; and
- the length of time that returning my money is expected to take

leaves me with a profound and unresolved dissatisfaction with this situation.

Sincerely yours,
Myles Kitagawa
http://mylesk.livejournal.com/256987.html

I like ranked lists. Sometimes I'll participate in conversations with, "my third favourite [movie] is [Jaws]..."

My least favourite pop musical is Queen: We Will Rock You. My least favourite vacation was China.


Favourite jokes get listed in chronological order rather than ranks.

1. How many hipsters does it take to change a lightbulb?

2. What's the difference between a ten story fall and a one story fall?

3. The joke about the old farmer, his wife, and the 747.

4. Knock, knock. Who's there? Banana. Banana who?

5. Habia una vez un perro llamado chiste. Se murió el perro y se acabó el chiste.

6. How many surrealist painters does it take to change a lightbulb?

---

Just reading this list makes me laugh.

In the last eleven days, I have been to three museums. Not a usual occurrence.

Labour Day was the closing day of the Ron Mueck show at the Alberta Art Gallery. Ron Mueck is a hyperrealist sculptor from Australia who renders human subjects in silicon and fibre-glass in detail right down to the hair follicles, but changes the scale dramatically. Hyperrealism is one of my favourite modern art forms as it utilizes the best aspects of art and craft and also manages to avoid the awful deficiencies of most other modern art forms. (Please click the hyperlink for exposition of these deficiencies.)

Mueck sculpted a giant baby.


Though I’m pleased to have been able to see a Ron Mueck “show”, why is it that two pieces constitutes an art show these days?

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( Read more... )

As you might recall, the Edmonton neighborhood that I live in, Queen Alexandra, is named either for Alexandra of Denmark, Queen of the United Kingdom and the British Dominions and Empress of India from 1901 to 1910, queen-empress consort of Edward VII. Or for Salome Alexandra, the only Jewish regnant queen, last woman ruler of Judaea, the last ruler of ancient Judaea to die as the ruler of an independent kingdom, and grand-niece of the great warrior, Judah "The Hammer" Maccabee.

I prefer to think of the latter.

---

On August 7th and 8th, the Queen Alexandra Community League held its 2009 casino fundraiser to support the on-going delivery of the organization's programs including playground re-development as well as operating and maintaining the community league hall.

On behalf of the QACL Board and all of the Queen Alexandra residents who enjoy these programs, I'd like to extend our thanks to the following community league members who worked the casino:

Doug Bailie
Lisa Watson
Iga Speur
Helen McLean
Judy Troyer
Shirley Lowe
Ann Brown
Norm Shandro
Nona German
Russ Miyagawa
Sharon Skwarchuk
Lindsay Telfer
Marco Campana
Tracy Kitagawa
Will Jang
David Crowther
Ken Mah
Helen Wong
Kim Sanderson
Janet Schwegel
Suzanne Cook

Special thanks goes out to those people from outside our community who helped with the fundraiser:

Vicky Beauchamp
Gerry Beauchamp
Marianne Garley
Doreen Almonitis
Tom Olenuk
Estefani Fujita
Kory Lowden

And extra-special thanks to those who came in from out-of-town to help:

Jolene Shannon
Betty Brown

Brace yourselves: some of the characters in my stories are based on real people.

This means that my social circle is, at times, a large, ad hoc editorial board whose members occasionally advise on matters of accuracy, content, censorship, and application of editorial policy rules. One of the principle editorial policies of The Ephemeral Tourist is Policy 6: What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas.

Today's story has been scrutinized by three editorial policy group (EPG) members: Mom, Donna-lee (my sister), and Amandi Khera; each of whom (initially, at least), advised fairly strict application of Policy 6.

"Don't be stubborn," EPG Member Mom, said as she, Donna-lee, and myself met for dinner and assorted ales upstairs at O'Byrne's Irish Pub. "You've got your mind set on telling this story."

"Well, that's essentially what I feel like my life is for," I explained, feeling more like a writer than I ever have. "My life is about experiencing things for stories. What I think I need to write this story is the right frame." Mom didn't know what I meant by "the right frame".

"He's going to make it about the dancing," Donna-lee explained. "He'll tell the main story up to [this point], and then end it today with the dancing. That way he leaves out the bad stuff and keeps all the funny stuff."

It was exactly what I was thinking about. I've felt like a writer for less than a minute and I'm already being told that I'm formulaic.

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( Read more... )

It seems like everyone in Amandi Khera's life takes turns telling her she should quit smoking. Contracts have been negotiated on napkins and promises made to persuade her to quit. I know that she knows she should quit. I think I’ve told her she should quit maybe three times, but not too many times considering that we’ve known each other for going on eight years.

But if Amandi Khera were just a character in stories that I made up, I’m not sure I’d write her quitting smoking. I’d probably keep it as a character-tag; a signature action that she always did to help cement her image in the reader’s mind. There is a media-file photo of her in the files at the saffron office from a set of pictures shot on Edmonton’s Walterdale Bridge with the Epcor Unit 11 power plant in the background. Amandi is leaning against the green bridge rail in her denim jacket, looking slightly side-long at the camera. Between the fingers of her right hand hangs a cigarette ~ held with neither affectation or remorse. Just matter-of-factly there, as though it were an inseparable element of her character.

---

On August 29, Amandi and I took a four-day, three-night trip to Las Vegas as a kind of relief reward for spending the summer of 2009 doing too much work. The idea was floating around that Amandi might quit smoking on the trip. My Mom, who doesn’t know Amandi very well, but likes her (so much so that she made a point of telling me, “I don’t know Amandi very well, but I like her”) agreed to give us a ride out to the Edmonton International Airport. Donna-lee came along for the ride as well.

With our suitcases off-loaded on to the airport curbside, we waved farewell to my mom and sister as they prepared to drive away. The passenger side window rolled down and my mom leaned over to say, “Don’t smoke while you’re down there, or you’re grounded!”

“Okay, okay,” Amandi said, smiling, and holding up her hand, as though playfully placating my mother.

“I’m talking to him!” Mom said.

When Hannah laughs really hard, tears well in her eyes, she wrinkles the bridge of her nose, and she hangs her head, leaning against something solid like the kitchen counters.

A bit of dialogue that we repeat often goes like this:

Myles: You sure laugh a lot.

Hannah: You make me laugh.


Something I've said only once: When I die, if I go to heaven I think it will be like this ~ I get to re-live all of the times that I've made you laugh.

---

One evening a few weeks ago, Hannah spotted a shred of newsprint that was stuck to the back of our living room couch. She picked it off the couch with her fingers and started to carry it in the palm of her hand to the kitchen waste pail. The scrap of newsprint, which was actually a moth, fluttered up from her hand into the air before her and she hopped backwards, making a surprised squeak sound.

"When I die, if I go to heaven I get to re-live all the moments I've made you laugh - and that one."

Following the tried and true corporate practice of interlocking boards, I serve on the board of directors of an Edmonton theatre company whose principals are also board members of the Toxics Watch Society of Alberta.

Last night, the board of Theatre YES convened on the patio of the Hotel MacDonald for a meeting to, among other things, review the mission and mandate of the company.

The people serving on the Theatre YES board bring a variety of ambitions and expectations to the organization. Synthesizing these interests into a coherent expression of purpose requires first that they all are articulated in some form so that the group can understand the range of their scope and overlap. Board members were assigned the exercise to draft a mission/mandate statement for the company from their own perspective, as though the company existed only for their own personal ambitions.

My current thinking is this:

---

At Theatre YES, we believe:

1. Our world is complicated, and media that attempts to simplify makes the problems of a complicated world worse.

2. Better solutions to our problems are possible where people have the benefit of many perspectives.

3. Perspective is built on powerful stories shared with empathy.


Theatre YES artists tell these stories. Our goals are:

1. To identify and grow the Edmonton audience that is searching for stories that are both relevant to the real world and different from their own.

2. To present stories - classic or modern, from around the world and around the block - that will affect the perspectives of this audience.

3. To connect this audience with non-theatre communities that are working on real solutions in a complicated world.


Theatre YES. Expect Affect.

On August 24, 2003, I wrote:
The dark green, 1999 Toyota Tercel looks pretty much like any other of its popular make and model in the City of Edmonton, but it is unique. The silver disk next to the trunk lock is a subtle clue, the cap to the ignition key lock box. The Car Sharing Cooperative of Edmonton is the only organization providing mobility service to Edmontonians without the burdens and liabilities of private vehicle ownership.

Hannah and I took the Tercel through the unfamiliar suburbs of Riverbend yesterday afternoon, investigating the hypothesis that upper middle class garage sales are qualitatively different from those “downtown”. (I still find it difficult to consider Queen Alexandra “downtown” but people call it that.) Riverbend garage sales are dominated with children’s goods – outgrown clothes and toys, Happy Meal promotionals and books. It wasn’t until we moved to Aspen Gardens did we have a find: a 1/4 sized ping pong table.

Our driveway at the 1912 is a grass, gravel and dandelion space with the decaying garage on one side and the parked Festiva on the other. We set up the ping pong table and played about ten games with a final count of Myles 9, Hannah 1. Hannah took to ping pong enthusiastically.

“I’m glad we got the ping pong table,” she said after we packed it up for the day.


On Friday evening, August 22, 2009, five years and 363 days later, Gil, Amandi and I were relaxing on the deck and the 1/4 sized ping pong table happened to come up. Old Strathcona is crowded with Fringe Festival goers and we had decided to meet for beers at The Suite rather than brave the patios of O'byrne's Irish Pub or another Whyte Avenue Bar. I was very pleased by Gil's comment about my prostrate knapweed crop as he biked into the Vacant Lot of Eden.

"It looks like a lawn," he said.

"Awesome! Thanks!" I replied. "It's my weed topiary." Wikipedia says, topiary is the art of creating sculptures in the medium of clipped trees, shrubs and sub-shrubs. The word derives from the Latin word for an ornamental landscape gardener, topiarius, creator of topia or "places". I am sculpting a lawn-shaped patch of knapweed.

---

Hannah just read the nearly six-year old text over my shoulder and declared that she doesn't trust my writing because I don't remember things accurately. I pressed her about which part wasn't right: that I won nine out of ten ping pong games? That she said, "I'm glad we got the ping pong table"? It was the line, Hannah took to ping pong enthusiastically.

Yes ~ I can see the problem with writing about another person's subjective experience. Hannah isn't just a character that I'm making up, whose feelings about something I simply declare.

---

Coincidentally though, remembering things is actually what I want to post about this morning. Earlier this week I woke with with an interesting epistemological issue.

"I either couldn't sleep last night because my back hurt," I told Hannah. "Or I dreamed I couldn't sleep because my back hurt."

I'm finding it an unsolvable question.

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Sometime between August 24, 2003 and the demolition of the 1912, on that patch of gravel and dandelions between our sagging old garage and the parked Ford Festiva, Gil, Amandi, Shipman, and I played each other in a round-robin tournament of 1/4 scale ping pong. We either did this, or I dreamed we did this. In the dream, there are Christmas lights strung overhead, adding colour to the night sky.

As we chatted on Friday evening, I asked Gil and Amandi if they remembered playing 1/4 scale ping pong one summer night.

"We played ping pong, and we burned old raspberry canes in your chiminea," Gil reported. The image of Shipman, lit with flickering orange light and poking the fire with a stick, flashed in my mind and I felt a measure of assurance ~ a bit of peace that comes with affirmation.

The weather for the summer of 2009 has been poor. The spring was cold and long and consumed some of July. Only its last weeks and some of August felt like summer. And now as the eighth month is ending, the air cools and I already have yellowed and crisp leaves littering my deck.

August 2009 means that we have lived in The Suite for two years now. The cool sunshine outside our back windows invited me to take my coffee out onto the deck this Sunday morning, wearing still my pajamas, with gumboots on my feet. I do not sit here often, and never before at this hour of the morning. And I am struck by how the time of day and perspective makes this place so wholly new.

Our yard is lit from the east, as though I’m sitting on the deck of a houseboat that has turned in its moorings. Sunday traffic on 109th street, beyond our wall of spruce and ash trees, is intermittent so the whooshing sound of tires on asphalt resembles tumbling waves. Crows and songbirds sound. A diesel horn.

Please take note that due to increasing work-related traffic to this site, there will be a slight increase in the use of 'Friends Only" post filtering. Please comment to be added.

Can Facebook be used as an image storage site?

I have to do some writing today, which means a blog post warm-up is in order.

On August 7th and 8th, members and supporters of the Queen Alexandra Community League worked its 2009 fundraising event at the Palace Casino, West Edmonton Mall. Alberta employs a “charity partnership” model where a crew of charity volunteers provides labour at a privately owned gambling facility and the night’s proceeds are shared among the government, the facility, and the club. The tasks are simple, but the hours can be gruelling. Ephemeral Tourist cast-members who worked the event were Hannah, Kari Anderson, Gil, Prairie Jamie, and Carlo Montoya. Lise Ellyhin came down with the flu, and we didn’t have to call in Amandi for emergency back-up.

The event connects in my mind with another conversation I had recently (with whom currently escapes me) regarding the contrast between “family values” and “community values”. The speaker was explaining how the term “family values” refers to the largely suburban population that prioritizes individual or narrowly-focused responses to social and economic problems - the people who live in gated communities and shop at WalMart as the primary means of coping with crime and enhancing prosperity. This contrasts with the idea of “community values” where the general welfare and solutions to social and economic problems are a shared responsibility. Primarily found in urban communities, these people favour more systemic approaches to issues.

Of course, no one is purely one or the other, but it occurred to me as I considered the list of people who were working at this event ~ which is the single largest revenue source to support the programming, overhead, and infrastructure of the league ~ in comparison with the number of people who live within the four-corners of this neighborhood ....

... well, I won’t draw any conclusions just yet.

It's kind of amazing to me that it was only 2004, five years ago, that Malcolm Azania's election campaign to be elected Edmonton Strathcona's member of parliament was overcome by scandal fueled by a blog post he'd written almost 15 years earlier. As a prominent, even strident, black activist, in his youth Azania had questioned the disposition of Jews in relation to the oppression of black people and had concluded that they were, decidedly, white.



There are many instructive stories about how blogging can be hazardous to one's relationships, career, or political ambitions. I've often wondered which one of my blog posts will come back to haunt me. The worst that has happened so far has been my being taken to task for creative license (attributing a line of dialogue to one person instead of another) and posting a political opinion of someone who wanted to remain politically neutral.

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Today was a meeting of the Business Planning Committee of the Clean Air Strategic Alliance; a nine-member committee tasked with developing the proposed occupations and priorities for our organization over the next three years. One element of the draft business plan is a consideration of the differing definitions of pollution versus emissions; a topic for which a short discussion paper had been earlier co-written by myself and an industry colleague, and circulated to all the committee members. At the appropriate time on the agenda, the committee chair invited me to introduce the paper and start the discussion.

"I think I should start by describing my creative process," I began. "As you may or may not know, my formal education is in Comparative Literature, and my tendency is to think in terms of narrative and that's the comfortable way I like to write.

"So, when I'm writing a report, I actually start by writing a story - I describe the time, the setting, the characters. People are described and characterized, and I give them 'code-names'; and then I turn it all into a report by cutting all that stuff out, and leaving only the content.

"I'm telling you all of this because I can see that there is a typographical error in the draft report that you all have. So, if you are wondering who 'JJ' is in the report, that's actually refers to [our industry colleague], because his haircut reminds me of J. Jonah Jameson, from Spiderman."

This is a report on a conversation I was required to have with an amiable fellow representing the industrial perspective on the Clean Air Strategic Alliance (CASA). He is a lanky fellow with a triangular face and sharp features. His salt and pepper hair is cut in a flat-topped brush-cut. He is like a friendly J. Jonah Jameson.

Introduction
J. Jonah and I were tasked with an action item at the last CASA business planning committee arising from a debate we had about the words "pollution" and "emissions". The debate was purely semantic, contrasting the tone and meaning of the two terms.

Pollution Versus Emissions
I have always used pollution and emissions synonymously, though I will concede that pollutiondoes convey a stronger tone of disapproval than the more neutral sounding, emissions.

JJ's position draws a policy-based distinction between the terms. Many airborne contaminants are released to the air under some applicable policy or regulatory scheme. Some authority determines the permissible rate or volume of releases of by-product chemical substances into the air. Or a similar authority determines the permissible concentration of these chemicals in the air once released. In either case, according to JJ, the release itself is only an emission. Only when the releases result in exceedence of a set standard on the rate, volume, or concentration of an airborne substance does the emission become </i>pollution</i>.

Analysis
Used this way, the term pollution acquires material meaning signifying that an enforcement or mitigation action should be undertaken, whereas no such action is required when referring to an emission.

Interpreted this way, it would appear that industry's position is a more precise use of language to convey a distinction between emissions above and below a regulatory or management standard.

Pollution Prevention
Industry's definition of pollution becomes more problematic (to the ENGOs) when integrated into the concept pollution prevention.

ENGOs conceive pollution prevention as more than merely a management mechanism that may be used as an alternative to pollution control in order to maintain air quality at a compliance level. Strongly connected to the idea of continuous improvement in particular, and beyond compliance generally, pollution prevention is an industrial design idea which intends to provide the economic goods and services that society needs, while reducing releases even when those releases comply with applicable standards and guidelines ~ or more ideally, providing goods and services while avoiding releases altogether.

This progressive approach to air quality is captured in the recent Recommendations for a Clean Air Strategy which states:

While instruments such as ambient air quality objectives set a limit within which unacceptable risk to human health and the environment will not occur, continuous improvement assures that the magnitude of the increase will not be permanent and the acceptable risk to human health and the environment will decline over time.

If industry's definition of pollution holds, where only non-compliant emissions need require management, then pollution prevention would literally mean preventing exceedences of an applicable standard or guideline. There would be no conceptual driver to urge emitters to undertake any change or actions beyond mere compliance. And without such drivers, progress towards the CASA and Clean Air Strategy's expressed vision is less likely.

The vision of both CASA and the Clean Air Strategy is a two-part vision; one amenable to quantitative management, and another which speaks to how Albertans experience air quality;

The air will have no adverse odour, taste or visual impact and have no effect on Albertans,
animals or the environment.

The matter of detectable effects on people, animals or the environment is the domain of air quality science and is arguably managed through compliance with the systems Alberta has in place today. But even with compliance, many Albertans are not experiencing air which is free of odour, taste, or visual impact, and it is in these aspects that Alberta will need beyond compliance progress from all emission sources.