Conversations With Courage

My sister had told me about her friend China, whom she’d met many years ago through China’s mother. When China was 18 months old a drunk driver crashed into her parent’s car. China suffered severe injuries to her brain, resulting in both cognitive and physical impairments. Yet she lives on her own, she cooks for herself, shops, and is an artist. What most impressed me was her spirit, exemplified in her bright fabric art. Music: “The Good Old Days,” by my friend, Toronto and Bahamas based singer/songwriter/musician Jenny Mayhem. You can hear more of Jenny’s great songs and purchase individual tracks at: https://jennymayhem.bandcamp.com/

I recently met and interviewed Marian Smith, who holds a Masters in counselling psychology from the University of BC.  In addition to her private practice, she teaches seminars in communication and healthy relationships, post-traumatic stress, grief and loss, anger and depression, disordered eating and spirituality. I first encountered mindful practice as a participant in an 8-week Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction workshop led by her partner, Brett Peterson. Both Marian and Brett have taken workshops with Jon Kabat-Zinn who founded the idea of using a secular meditative approach, based on sound Buddhist philosophy and practice, for therapeutic application. In this brief (ten-minute) interview excerpt Marian discusses the usefulness of being present as way to bring attentive awareness to our emotional state(s) and to ground ourselves.  From mindful-living.ca:Mindfulness is helpful for therapy as it helps individuals to open to the intensity of emotions we are afraid to feel. It provides a protective distancing that enables us to create and maintain an observing ego through which we can confront emotions that were previously avoided because they were unpleasant or overwhelming. Once these emotions are permitted to surface, they are made conscious and their subversive power begins to lessen. The practice of mindfulness enhances perception, allowing us to become intimately acquainted with our mental habits and distortions. It helps us to perceive the distinction between a thought and its related emotion. [This interview is also available on video at https://vimeo.com/127212471]

This February a young mother posted a video on Facebook asking for help. Her ex-boyfriend had threatened and verbally abused her. After the police were unable to locate him, she went public. She had no idea how quickly the video would result in action, and how many it would reach. I interviewed her ten days after the first video was published.

Do animals have a a right not to be eaten by human beings? Do they have a right not to be used as instrumentalities by humans? If they do have such rights, are these part of a larger constellation of rights such as the right to procreate freely without the interference of human beings? If animals have rights, what is the basis for their possession of rights? Do all or only some animals have rights? Do those animals that have rights all have the same rights, or do different animals have different rights?  So asks Gary Steiner, the John Howard Harris Professor of Philosophy at Bucknell University in Pennsylvania, halfway into his book, Animals and the Limits of Postmodernism (Columbia University Press 2013).  And if we can imagine and create some rights for animals, as proposed by several early Greek philosophers—Pythagoras, Theophrastus; by Rousseau in the 18th century and Darwin in the 19th, and most specifically, in terms of rights, by Australian philosopher Peter Singer in his seminal work Animal Liberation (1975), then where does that leave us, as humans?  The courage to speak out for animal rights, for a new moral relationship between species, is explored by Gary Steiner in this interview from June 2013, recorded in Victoria, BC. 

Leonard Schein grew up in Los Angeles, studied psychology at Stanford, and ended up as Vancouver’s independent movie theatre impresario and founder of the Vancouver International Film Festival. How did he make that transition–and why? In 2014, as the 33rd VIFF ended, Schein announced his retirement and his new focus, philanthropy. In this interview, he discusses the connection between psychology, movies, and cancer prevention.

I met Tova Jamernik at Work BC, an employment counselling centre in Vancouver, when I was unemployed, without benefits, and desperate to find a job, any job, for which I was qualified. Along with an employment counsellor, Tova and other facilitators helped me and others focus our job searching, learn how to best respond in interviews, revise our resumes and keep on track over the long and often dispiriting period between jobs. In this, part 1 of my interview with Tova, she emphasizes the usefulness of the information interview*, where one is seeking information from an individual who works in an organization, industry or career that is attractive to you, without asking them specifically for a job. * http://www.ryerson.ca/career/students/searchforajob/identifyjobleads/informationinterview/ Update to this story: In March 2014 I found a job, a job I love, working with great people! Some of the skills I learned from Tova and other counsellors helped me in the interviews with managers and supervisors.

Amy Huva is an environmental chemist and sports fanatic from Melbourne, Australia. After two years working for the Australian Federal Government in Canberra, she moved to Vancouver where she works for Climate Access, a global network of climate and clean energy communicators, serving more than 2,000 members in 57 countries. She discusses how each of us is complicit in climate change, and why we need to expand the conversation beyond environmentalism to include all sectors of society. (Image Source LarvatusProdeo.net; music by Lee Rosevere from the Free Music Archive: Sunset, from his album All These Simple Things)

Making documentaries takes stamina, determination, passion, and consumes years of a filmmaker’s life. For over six years (as of 2014) David Vaisbord has been filming one community in Vancouver and its struggle to keep, and then to rebuild, social housing. It was called Little Mountain and it was Canada’s first social housing project, built by the federal government, post-WWII to house, initially, servicemen’s families.  And then the federal government divested itself of the neighbourhood, selling it to the provincial government, who in turn would sell the land to a private developer. Who tore it down, displacing hundreds of low-income families from a viable, safe community. This is David’s story of how he got involved with Little Mountain, and how it became more than a documentary film. It became a crusade. (You can also download the mobile Podbean app to your smart phone) Until June 23, 2014, David is raising funds to complete the documentary. Please consider helping him make a feature film (there are, as he says, some fun and creative perks for various contribution levels) at https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/little-mountain-film

Siobhan Humston, my friend Derek von Essen texted me, has a “heart of gold, and she’s easy to love.” It had taken me several weeks to arrange this interview because she keeps moving around from place to place; she was one day away from returning to Mayne Island, which is one of the islands between the Metro Vancouver mainland and Vancouver Island, for a five month stay in a cabin, when we recorded the interview in my apartment.  Her current work is a series of mirrored photographs taken during a year-long residency at Harrison Hot Springs, two hours east of Vancouver, where she lived in a former ranger’s cabin on the lake.  Does it take courage to be a full-time artist? I asked her. “I think it would take courage NOT to be an artist,” she replied. “But it does take tenacity.”  She’s raising funds selling her Totem series of photographs to help with tuition for an MA program, which she’s been accepted into for fall 2014, at Falmouth University in Cornwall England. The one year intensive is called Arts and Environment. Read more at http://humstonstudios.wordpress.com/get-smart-campaign/ The music is by Nine-8th Irish: “Wise Maid” available at Free Irish Music.

Is giving to charity a courageous act? For some, perhaps. For others, it’s a convenient, ethical deduction from their income tax. And for others, it is a lifelong pursuit and passion. Such is the philosophy of John Bromley, the founder and CEO of a unique Canadian foundation, CHIMP, which acts as a “personal charitable foundation” for individuals and small groups.  He’s talked about it on TEDx, and now, in this conversation, John goes into more depth about giving and about why it is courageous to give money to others.  End music by the Irish group Dobroide, Blues del Gorrion, and sound effects are recorded by Klankbeeld (Netherlands), both on freesound.org.

Rhiannon Johnson walked 2,209 miles (3,555 kilometers) from the US border with Mexico north on the Pacific Crest Trail toward the border with Canada. Although stymied in northern Washington by sudden and dangerous snows, which prevented her from reaching Canada, she nevertheless accomplished her goal of walking alone, confronting her fears, pushing herself anywhere from 15 to 30 miles a day, footstep after footstep.  Forester Pass, California, 13,153 ft. elevation. Rhiannon estimates she totalled 400,000 ft of vertical elevation, in both directions (eg, the equivalent of climbing 400 Empire State Buildings with a loaded pack).

She’s ninety-one, a veteran who served with distinction as commissioned officer (Lieutenant) with the Women’s Royal Naval Service. A respected, and now retired, executive director of Vancouver’s largest homemaker agency, she was a champion lawn bowler who raised three children on her own at a time when single parents were the exception. 

June 20, 2013: Warm weather and heavy rainfall causes the snowpack to melt and the rivers whose headwaters are in the Rocky Mountains to rise rapidly to record levels. Downriver, communities brace for the flooding, not expecting it to be as devastating as it would be just 24 hours after the warnings. Many areas of Calgary, through which the Bow and Elbow rivers flow, had to be evacuated. The staff at the Calgary Zoo, on St. George’s Island in the Bow River, were suddenly tasked with removing hundreds of animals while the river continued to rise over the island, working overnight in glacial water. Dr. Malu Celli standing in what was the South America building at the zoo. (Leah Hennel, Calgary Herald) In this podcast, Dr. Malu Celli describes the overnight rescue of the animals, and what it was like for her and fellow staff to do what had never been done before. The closing song is by Blake Reid (http://blakereid.ca/)

Becoming Minimalist is Joshua Becker’s mantra, his website and his family’s guiding philosophy. After years of living as a “normal suburban household” with piles of stuff in the garage and every room, Joshua, his wife and children began a slow and steady process of de-cluttering their lives, and found a new simplicity which he began sharing, initially with friends and relatives worried about their new-found minimalism, then more widely. Today, becomingminimalist.com has thousands of readers and Joshua has published two books (available on his site) about the challenges and rewards of living with less stuff, and how to go about it. My Skype interview with Joshua took place on the “Black Friday” weekend in November from his home in Arizona.  Length: 16:59For more informationhttp://www.becomingminimalist.com/ A list of the 10 most important things to simplify in your life Closing music: Ann Alee, Infant Holy, Infant Lowly, courtesy FreeMusicArchive.org

Several years after officiating at his eldest son’s same-sex marriage, Reverend Frank Schaefer of the United Methodist Church in Lebanon, Pennsylvania, faces a church sanction which may cost him his credentials to preach. [Reverend Frank Schaefer. © The Washington Post]Schaefer lost support among some in his congregation for his support of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgendered people and their right to practice Christianity in his church. When a member of his church lodged a complaint against him, suddenly he and his family became news. “I did not want to make this a protest about the doctrine of the church. I wasn’t trying to be an advocate,” The Rev. Frank Schaefer, a father of four, testified Tuesday in a hearing to determine his punishment. “I just wanted this to be a beautiful family affair, and it was that.”  Rev. Schaefer took a visible and increasingly clear stand over the course of Tuesday’s proceedings, wearing a rainbow-colored stole on the witness stand. He declined the church prosecution’s offer to ”repent of and renounce his disobedience to the (Methodist Book of) Discipline,” the Associated Press reported, and refused to promise that he wouldn’t officiate at more same-sex unions. [Fabien Tepper, Christian Science Monitor, November 19, 2013] My conversation with Frank Schaefer was recorded on Friday, 29 November 2013.

Vancouver artist Leon Phillips grew up in a small farming town in Saskatchewan, “making snow angels instead of playing hockey like the other boys.” Unusual for the time and what we think of as a conservative Prairie community, his mother fiercely defended his right to be who he was. Now she has advanced dementia and Alzheimer’s, and Leon with his sister must fight an entrenched healthcare bureacracy to give her the care she needs–and deserves.CLOSING MUSIC: Carrie Akre singing “Courage” If you’re listening on an iPhone, iPad or iPod, you can download the mobile version of this podcast http://mjscox.podbean.com/mobile/ [Podcast edited with Hindenburg Journalist Pro]