A Room Of My Own

Around my kitchen table last night after the supper was cleared ensued an interesting and quite ambiguous discussion regarding gift giving. My youngest was distraught as a friend had spent more than she on the gifts they had exchanged. We discussed the time and thought which was put into the gifts, and concluded that they were of equal ‘value’. That all being said, she still felt she needed to buy another gift to make up for the monetary discrepancy. This saddened me. Try as I might to teach my girls that money does not equal value – nor does it necessarily provide for the valuable gifts – the media, society, and our culture dictates loud and clear that money matters. That the dollar value is of import. That bigger is better. That love and respect can be bought. Moreover, that you can make someone happy by spending a certain amount of money on them. The challenge is to keep your values in place. This time of year certainly tests our values. We find ourselves caught up in pleasing other

This past weekend the girls and I ventured out on our annual search for ‘A Charlie Brown Christmas’ tree. On our way to a friends Christmas tree farm, we enjoyed the music of Vince Guaraldi in the aforementioned special. We reminisced about watching Charlie Brown and Linus on their pursuit to find the perfect tree only to find a myriad of aluminum, pre-decorated take-it-home-Christmas-will-be-perfect trees. Alas, lo and behold, there was one lonely, sparse pathetic tree just waiting to be loved; now known as the proverbial ‘Charlie Brown Christmas tree’. We have made the search for it our annual adventure. Upon arriving at the farm, we walked through the trails, found what looked like the best tree top and cut it down. That is, we cut the top down. I like this particular farm as the policy is to cut the top of a tree thus allowing it to re-grow. I am ever aware of the environment and my contribution to its preservation. That being said, I am ever aware that I want a REAL tree.

My bedside clock read 5:55am this morning; time to rise and shine. “Its gonna be a bright sun shiny day” was coming through CBC Radio 2 as my good morning wake-up call. Quite often as of late, I have noticed repeating digits during my day, or night, when I look for the time. At first I simply believed it was a coincidence and it was dismissed. Eventually, I started noticing just how often these coincidences were occurring and my curiosity was peaked. I was compelled to look into this phenomenon and, therefore, I did what any logical person in my position would do; I googled it. To my surprise, this phenomenon was quite common across the google informed world. To my relief, I was not a basket case, but rather someone quite special; a chosen one. According to many of the interesting sites, I was chosen to receive divine signs from God. Deep breath; thank you, God, for making me matter. I am one of a chosen few. From that point on, whenever I saw 2:22 or 5:55 or 11:11, I was compelled to

December 1, 2008 marks two decades of increased awareness, improved education and a deeper understanding of the HIV\AIDS pandemic world wide. Here we are twenty years since the first celebrated World AIDS Day; a good time to check our progress. Over time, we have seen society go through polar reactions to the HIV/AIDS pandemic. The range goes from irrational pandemonium in the mid 1980’s involving chaotic grocery shopping incidents and an assumed HIV infected sneeze on the produce, to today’s almost apathetic annoyed disposition. Has our reaction to HIV\AIDS become comparable to the general reaction to a car alarm? That is, the warning is there, but no one believes it is their car, so everyone just gets annoyed by the alarm. Everyone except the poor bugger you see running towards the car almost in panic mode abusing his key alarm button in his attempt to quiet the beast. The real beast is ignorance. Health Canada calls the epidemic here ‘severe and deeply troublesome’. Thousands of Can