The write stuff

I remember seeing a commercial for this movie a few weeks ago and thought that it actually looked pretty funny. I'm pretty wary of teenage comedy's as usually the level of well thought out humour, intelligently designed plot, likeable characters, and enjoyablility is just not there for me. This movie on the other hand was very funny, well thought out, and well acted. Emma Stone plays Olive, a clean cut and generally invisible except to her few friends, teenage girl who finds herself a victim of the High School rumour mill when she tells a friend a lie. Her friend wants her to come camping with her family, Olive is uncomfortable with their strange habits (such as eating topless) and tells her friend that she can't come because she has a date with a college freshman. The next week her friend takes her vague responses to her questions as an indication that she must have lost her virginity to this mystery man. Olive decides to go with it so her friend will get off her case and ...

Michelle, Danaya and I went to see the Theater Calgary Production of "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" last Friday night. We arrived in good time and so, for once, I actually had time to sit and read through the magazine about the play we would be watching. I found the story to be very interesting and then the author of the story perhaps even more so (worked for the Gov't, drove a hippie bus around the States encouraging the use of LSD, etc). Also there was a brief history of thought about psychology and the treatments for emotional and psychological maladies. It was disturbing to say the least and made me feel good about how far we have come as a society in both understanding and creating effective treatments. We have truly come a long ways, but we still have a ways to go. This play looks at some of the abuses that were common inside mental institutes when the patients were treated more like prison inmates than the ill. Into this redundent and hope deflating environ...

The air is crisp and cool, the leaves a vibrant array of reds and golds, and teenagers occupy the streets enmasse. If the literal date didn't make it clear, then everything else would...it's Fall. Fall is one of my favourite times of year. As a person who depends heavily on my senses to tell me about the world around me, Fall brings the world alive in a frenzy of delightful sights, smells, and sounds! The other thing Fall seems to bring is overwhelming busyness. This part I am not so very fond of. Not that I don't love learning new things, getting exercise, and  having something of a social life, but I find that I overbook myself sometimes and end up feeling stretched rather uncomfortably. I have a responsibility to myself to work on maintaining health as I still find my immune system still somewhat weakened. So far I am finding myself torn energy-wise between work, CCASA, singing lessons, yoga, my Church's Spiritual Formation group, reading my rather large book ...

I remember hearing about CCASA (Calgary Communities Against Sexual Abuse) about a year ago when I was in the midst of coming to terms with my own difficult past. As an adult survivor of childhood sexual abuse I wished that I had had the support and care that one needs after a traumatic event to develop the proper mechanisms for dealing with the acute stress reactions that tend to occur after. Of course it doesn't help that I was very young and the mind refuses to deal with issues beyond its coping abilities therefore showing up for many children in the form of stomach aches and chronic nightmares. Denial is so much easier than facing your demons, but eventually they refuse to be ignored. I've faced my demons and will continue to do so for the rest of my life, but like many survivors I want to help other survivors, or even better, educate the public so that the next generation will not be as afraid to tell a loved one when someone is hurting them...

One thing continually bothers me as I read Diana Gabaldon's richly detailed story of Claire Beauchampe, a doctor who innocently walks into a stone formation in Scotland and winds up in 16th century Scotland. Much has happened since this beginning...Claire has married Jamie Fraser the young and impressive Scottish Laird (against her wishes), fallen madly in love with him regardless of a precarious beginning to their relationship, followed him around as they attempt to evade the English, fought with him at the battle of Culloden, been forced back through the stones to safety with their unborn child, raised their child with her ambiguous husband from the future, returned after her child had grown up so that she could find him, made a new life with him in an American Colony, and been surprised by the appearance of her daughter and new son in law in 16th century America. Through their many, often rediculous, adventures there is that one thing that my brain ...