Extremely belated, but on October 30, I went to see the Tanya Talaga Massey Series Lecture with my friend and colleague Ali. It was extremely touching and highly important and it's taken me a over a week to actually connect it to some other learnings that I really think I can factor into the classroom. I was most taken with her insight into the strengths of familial connection as youth suicide prevention -- and the strain or absence of these in places wracked by intergenerational trauma -- and how this is the responsibility of everyone, moving forward. She was also so dead set on education as the key to reconciliation, and her praise of teachers in being that missing link, well. Touched.
I have been thinking most, though, of her philosophical inquiry: Who are we? What are we doing here? Where are we going?
I've had the sort of week since that will take me awhile to speak about in this place, but this *will* connect -- and one of my goals here is "Do more public speaking", so, as Sarah Silverman says "Just... uh... put a pin in that."
What does this have anything to do with my goal "Go greener," you ask?
I had a doctor's appointment downtown prior to the lecture, and to bide my time, I figured I would use Toronto's Live Green Perks app to find a place to grab dinner and a place to sit and get some marking accomplished over coffee.
I found Mystic Muffin, which was actually a Lebanese restaurant with excellent falafel and high, seemingly loyal, traffic. It was nice to just sit and observe the to-go interactions. The owner also sent me away with three falafel balls in a tupperware container of mine as a first time customer gift.
The next place I attended was Cafe68, where I showed a coupon for a two-for-one medium coffee and they had no idea what the app was (new ownership since July), but honoured it anyway. I was able to get some necessary marking accomplished and also tune in to some background noise conversations about how age is only a number, anyway, so what does it matter if we are all always 18 inside anyway? It was nice.
I spent the following week, until yesterday, in Ottawa, and I tried to find a similar app - but, no dice.
I did, however, stay at The Lord Elgin, where they have this really cool Stay Green incentive program -- bypass a day of room cleaning, get a $5 voucher for their downstairs restaurants: one being a Starbucks. I (obviously) did so, and cashed them in for some vegan snacks for the train ride home.
Original goal list posted here
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