Off to Permaculture Workshops EAC

Its all happening July 31st-August 1st 2010 at Fern Lane EAC's nice new home in Halifax.

Adrian Buckley from the South Shore is one of the presenters.

I hope to green up my garden - and my life  - even more!

Metro Transit misses, but CHAD rocks !

by AVA JANE, transportation & entertainment editor

Saturday, my little brother (aka MR RYAN, if you please) and me and Rebecca went off to Mic Mac Mall on a - wait for it - a CITY BUS.

WOW !

Mr Ryan was soooooo impressed.

He'd never been on anything but a yellow school bus and maybe Acadian Lines - but now he had a great view of the Bridge to Dartmouth and the big harbour.

The bus driver said we might see a glimpse of the Gay Pride parade but it had been re-routed - sadly no sightings to report !

BUT - but, we did get to hear some of the Concert on the Commons (thankfully ,The Black Eyed Peas hadn't arrived yet - Mommy was pleased we got over that hump ) - instead we heard a nice singer from Cole Harbour .

You rock Chad !

Now that I am back in Hub-City, I will keep up my blogging - because - "a good reporter is NEVER off duty..."

A little doll can mean so much

by AVA JANE, seniors reporter

Friday, Rebecca and I went to the monthly "OUT TO LUNCH"

lunch, aka the St Mary's University Faculty Women's Association, at Lillian's home.

We had a lovely lunch and Lillian , who is normally quite reserved, told me about her little blond doll that she had fallen upon at a yard sale at Northwood Manor.

It looked exactly like one she had to leave behind in Europe when the Nazis came in and it reminded her so much of her happy life before the War.

MO goes PO: Photos of Martin Henry Dawson

Still the best place in town to get those oh so scarce photos/images/pictures/photographs of Martin Henry Dawson:

MO goes PO: Photos of Martin Henry Dawson:

"HERE IS A SMALL COLLECTION OF PHOTOGRAPHS OF MARTIN HENRY DAWSON"

My tummy was Phil-ed at Phil's

by AVA JANE , food reporter

For supper, Michael took me and Rebecca to Phil's Seafood on Quinpool Road.

Good food, good prices, great staff and service.

Best of all - a children's menu and a coloring book and crayons.....

Jock does my hair up right

by AVA JANE, fashion reporter

Today I went downtown with Rebecca to get my hair by a "Big Person's hairdresser" - Jock of CAS SPA .

He does Rebecca's hair, and my mother and dad - and my great aunt Donna as well.

He said I was 'gorgeous' - did my head swell !

Then we had lunch at subway - yummy ....

Meinhard Doelle putting up more Solar Panels

by AVA JANE, energy reporter

This morning, I heard some men making noise outside and asked them what they were doing - they were putting more solar panels on the roof of my friend Nikola's house.

I was surprised they were willing to work just after a huge clap of thunder and lightening burst about a half kilometre away -- brave men - some people in Rebecca's house were still shaken hours later when we met them at Park Lane....

Inha tells of hungry North Korean children

by AVA JANE, Diplomatic reporter

On my second day at JUNIOR MEDIA CAMP at PIER 21, we learned that children in North Korea are very hungry and they have to obey the bosses or they die.

Mrs Inha told us that people can't leave and it is very hard even to get in to help.

We are lucky to live in Canada...

A Date with Spiders & Snakes!

Ava Jane, SCIENCE Reporter

I was playing with Nicola and asked her if she would like to go to

the venom show at the NS Museum of Natural History.

She said yes and we walked over to the Museum for the show at 2:30PM.

The man from the Ottawa Zoo talked first about the Kane Toad which was poisonous but ONLY if you ate it.

If the toad was scared, it would excrete white poisonous bumps that could kill a creature and make a human very sick. These toads use their venom to protect their babies or frighten away predators.

Next was a rattle snake which only uses its venom for emergencies which is true of all venomous creatures.

Finally he brought out something and he said "a lot of people are afraid of this".

(He was right ---it was a tarantula !!)

At the end of the venom demonstration, he said he would let people hold the animals and so he got a volunteer to hold the tarantula so that others wouldn't be afraid to hold it either.

Then was a scorpion and he told us that it has a stinger at the tip of his tail. He got a volunteer to hold the scorpion so that others

would not be afraid of it stinging them.

We were told to keep our hand flat when holding the scorpion or the tarantula.

We all had a turn holding the King Snake, the Tarantula and we touched the beautiful Boa Constrictor. What an exciting time we had!

SNAKES, SPIDERS AND SCORPIONS, venomous all!!!

Just remember this!!! "ALL SNAKES are venomous but not all are poisonous....

False Alarm on Shirley Street

A (nother) EVERGREEN NOVA SCOTIA EXCLUSIVE.....

By AVA JANE, staff cub reporter

A good reporter is never off duty.

I was relaxing by watching a movie, Tuesday evening, after a hard day playing with Nikola, when I heard sirens and went out on Shirley Street, wearing my blanket - and saw flashing lights of a firetruck and men in yellow suits.

Very soon the truck and the men disappeared.

Next morning, I am on the way to my bus, to go to work.

What do I see, but a young man with a cute black and white and brown dog, (which I subsequently learned was called "Lucy"), sitting on the steps of the house where the fire truck had been.

He seemed a friendly type, so I asked him a few questions about the fire truck.

He said he wasn't aware that the house alarm was directly wired to the fire department and that setting off his house alarm by mistake would bring the truck and fireman in all their gear.

The fire captain was nice - he just warned him and didn't fine him $500.

Lucky man !

I got a nice surprise too - when the fire captain left in his big fire truck that night, I waved and the crew smiled and honked the horn !

Narrow escape at Pier 21 as ceiling fan crashes in front of patron

Exclusive to EVERGREEN NOVA SCOTIA

You are reading it here first.

by CUB REPORTER, Ava Jane

______________________________

Dateline HALIFAX :Monday, July 19th 2010 , 2pm

______________________________

We had just started "Storytime" at Pier 21's Junior Journalist Day Camp when we heard a loud crash-smash-bang.

We all said '"what was that ???!"

The class soon found out, as an eyewitness had seen the whole thing and told our teachers.

A large grey ceiling fan, at least 500 mm in diameter, fell down on the escalator, just in front of a man descending upon it.

He ran off. The staff stopped the escalator because they weren't sure what had happened at first.

The staff quickly gathered up all the pieces of the broken fan before it could get caught in the escalator's interior.

There was definitely nothing visible left of the incident, when I went on the escalator two hours later.

A close call for everybody !

Junior Journalist day camp, report two

by AVA JANE, trainee "cub" reporter

HI!

MY FIRST DAY AT MEDIA CAMP WAS AWESOME! Made a new friend named Matti.

First was 'Fun Time'; played the name game---getting to know each other, a little bit about where we were from.

We watched videos about Greece's problem, which is that it didn't have enough money for ice-cream.

Then we talked about making a budget and did a sheet about budget. Then we went to the gym and learned an Irish dance that Becky taught us. Went back , had a snack and had free time.

Had a story and while we were reading the story, BOOM! something from the ceiling fell onto the floor outside the classroom.

We did a craft that was a flag made out of some ripped up paper.

We went to the gym again and played a game that was throwing a dodge ball then you have a set of three balls numbered and you have to remember your number, you go around in a line one at time and throw the ball and whoever gets the closest wins.

We went to the classroom and did another craft that was a flag made from beads and a string.

I left for home at 4Pm on the city bus with my great aunt.

THE END by... AVA

Ava Jane, CUB REPORTER, first report

I am handing my blog over for this week to a dear friend of mine, Ava Jane, Halifax's newest reporter....enjoy !

*****************************************

Junior Journalist Day Camp, Day One:

08:11 AM july 19/2010 : headed out to work - hoping to catch the 8:14 Number Seven bus heading for the corner of Barrington & South Street.

A little walk would bring me to Pier 21 and my first day on the job - wish me well !

Pictures of Martin Henry Dawson

PICTURES OF MARTIN HENRY DAWSON

It is odd that with all the information about Martin Henry Dawson on the web, I have never seen a picture of him on any site but mine and Michael's.

So here are a few pictures of Martin Henry Dawson - enjoy !

( taken circa 1938, 1923, 1915, 1942,1912 from top to bottom...)

SANSCOEUR is the worst-est heart disease, for sure

I had to run to my dictionary just to understand the subtitle just under the header for the blog titled MO goes PO.

Something about SANSCOEUR being the worst possible heart disease.

Finally 'got it' - and you know what ?

It is !

Nice photograph of Martin Henry Dawson, by the by, under the subtitle of that blog - moody and blue...

MO goes PO: Pneumococcal capsule,Hyaluronan,Penicillin like el...

MO goes PO: Pneumococcal capsule,Hyaluronan,Penicillin like el...

Electrons,protons and neutrons , ie plus (+), minus (-) and neutral - that is one way to look at how our body treats foreign objects, I guess....

Modernity becomes PostModernity: MO goes PO

When I was a kid, we liked our bread white, our clothing to be artificial and we wanted everybody to be white, middle class, protestant, not an immigrant - and a man.

Times have changed - we prefer wholewheat bread, prefer natural to synthetic and we welcome diversity and speak of vibrant communities made of all kinds of different people.

And we don't medically label school kids as morons and cretins, as they did in my schools - we don't beat aboriginal kids who dare to speak MicMac.

Times have changed - we are kinder and gentler to others - we call this change the shift from Modernity to PostModernity.

PoMo in the 'in jargon' for all this - a way of making all the big words in the postmodernist toolbox - and there are lots of them - seem a little more downhome and friendly.

But when did the transition from Mo to Po start ?

My partner, Michael, thinks it happened between September 2nd 1939 and September 2nd 1945.

PoMo is often seen as an aesthetic thing, of interest only to avant garde artists and young architects.

Michael - characteristically - thinks this is 180 degrees wrong.

"The Mo-Po Revolution was above all a change in general morality or ethics throughout the Western World - starting in 1945, we quickly decided it wasn't polite anymore to make fun of Jews, or Negroes, or Indians, or DPs ,Hunkies and Polacks."

"Nor to make fun of retards and crips, immigrants, gals in the office and fruits."

If Modernity's mantra was "Some life is unworthy of life", postmodernity said, in effect, "all life is worthy of life".

"And a little respect and dignity."

Michael thinks it was this inchoate movement during World War Two, that pushed Martin Henry Dawson to break a wartime regulation at the age of 46 - to break a rule for probably the first time in his life.

He kept on breaking the rules until he changed our whole world for the better, forever...

Michael's new blog is called MO goes PO - check it out !!

Martin Henry Dawson - at last !

Martin Henry Dawson, 1896-1945, at age 16 in 1912

Michael has finally started blogging about his research on Martin Henry Dawson - about time I say.....

Michael's father on "Warming Earth"

Rowland (Dr Rowland C Marshall), Michael's father lives out along the Eastern Shore in Seaforth - 3/4 way down the 207 Highway.

He has a real art studio - a really old building that was once part of the community's first church - at least 150 years old.

He also has a virtual art studio -"Rowland's Seaforth Art Studio" on Google Sites.

He has posted on it the entire contents of his latest artistbook,

Warming Earth" .

Beautiful paintings, prints and poems expressing his worries about the fate of this old Earth if the mass of fresh water locked up in the ice of the Arctic is suddenly dumped into the ocean's delicate heat transferring system.

Well worth a look....

Google Sites and Google Blogger - free and easy

Michael Marshall turned me onto the advantages of having a blog and a website via the people at Google.

I saw how much work it took Michael to make even a simple but reliable website by hand - back in the early days of the Greens in Nova Scotia.

I don't do much on my blog - just type a bit and post, but Michael really goes to town on his.

He spills out his failings for all to see - like his goof this week regarding his belief that there were no photos of The Black Stork doctor, Harry Haiselden.

Oopppps !!!!

When Michael discovered his error, he apologized to all - on his blog....