Yule Heibel’s Post Studio © 2003-2009

Been there, done that

If you’re an urban planner for gypsies or something like that, consider this article in the Vancouver Sun today: Planners who figure out the best way to blend housing, workplaces, shopping and transportation keep blowing it because they don’t understand the frantic lives of modern families, a British study says. The big problem: People won’t live the way planners tell them to. Working couples live in the wrong areas, work in the wrong places and spend hours driving to two jobs and then ferrying the kids to sports and lessons after school. Their lives are so frenetic, says researcher Helen Jarvis, that many families need oversized wall calendars with five colours to keep everyone’s schedule straight. (…) “I’m not knocking planners for their intentions. I’m just arguing that in this very competitive climate that the U.K., like the U.S. is experiencing, families are having to cope with whatever resources they have at hand. They often live very sub-optimal lives.” Sub-optimal lives? I say, jolly well-put, old bean! Only, it’s not funny when you’re living it, which is one major reason this family got off the hamster wheel and moved to an island. If you’re lucky enough not to have been there yet — because you didn’t have kids “in the right schools” (i.e., schools you had to drive them to in ungodly congestion at ungodly hours of the morning), or you didn’t have the two-career thing going on because you could afford to avoid it, or because you weren’t, for whatever unpatriotic reasons, getting squeezed by the live-this-way dicta of succeeding on the hamster wheel — don’t worry: it’ll probably catch you up. Just remember not to run counter-clockwise.

The pockets of others: eco rant

I’ve written before (May 3, 7, & 8, eg.) about Betty Krawczyk, the Women in the Woods, and their attempts to engage the law in such a fashion as to have criminal contempt charges brought against Krawczyk. Her goal is to challenge the government’s forestry policies in the BC courts. Krawczyk and Jen Bradley, grandmothers both, were arrested while blockading a logging road in the Walbran Forest here on Vancouver Island. They were arrested in early May, it was very briefly reported, and then they promptly disappeared from the media. They were charged, but not with criminal contempt. They were released. Nothing was reported. Yesterday I heard a very brief CBC Radio report that Krawczyk was arrested again. She had returned to the Walbran to take up her blockade once more. I believe Jen Bradley was also re-arrested.

But just try to find out anything at all about these events in the local newspapers or via the web. Victoria Indymedia was posting stories about the blockade, but even that source has practically dried up, to the point where a frustrated reader, “Clueless,” posted a comment asking where he/ she could get more information. Another reader and activist, “David,” had filmed the most recent confrontation and arrest, and wrote that local media simply weren’t interested in his footage or in the story. In mid-April, when the Walbran blockade was still being planned, I wrote to our local newspaper to suggest that the event deserved some coverage. I was informed (via email) that the blockade might be “a very important matter to [Betty Krawczyk], but less important in the day-to-day work of a newsroom.” This might as well be called censorship. Many people on Vancouver Island and in British Columbia care deeply about the issues that Betty Krawczyk raises. As it stands now, you have to visit the Women in the Woods website to gather more information. Check in also on BC Pathways. Beyond that, it’s just a non-issue: away from our bodies, away from our minds, and into the pockets of others.