I’m leaving tomorrow to visit family in Brazil – destination: Brasília, the capital. I lived there for a year and a half in 1994 and have visited twice since then. This time I want to see what Brasilia has to offer in terms of food. I haven’t had time to do much research about it but I’ll add here links of places I come across as a pre-trip planning guide. Let me know if you know of any place I should check out.

Restaurants:

Girassol – looks like a vegetarian restaurant with some good references.

Mangute

Markets:

Saturday mornings: 703/4 Sul

Organic Growers’ association: 112 Sul (wednesdays)
315/16 Norte e 709 Sul (saturdays)

CEASA – supermercado orgânico

List of health food stores

I love wrapping gifts but I always feel bad for all the paper that goes to waste wrapping gifts. So this is my solution for this year – using old magazines!

On December 6th, 1989, Marc Lépine went on a shooting rampage at the École Polytechnique in Montreal, killing fourteen engineering students and injuring many others before committing suicide. While the case resembled many other school shootings, it has been for long a symbol of the need to fight violence against women since Lépine’s victims had one thing in common: they were all women. In his suicide note, Lépine blamed women for the failures in his life and explained why he wanted to kill women in particular and why he chose an engineering school, considered a male domain, as the site of his last stand against women and women’s rights.

After the massacre that shocked a nation, tributes were erected across Canada and women’s groups were able to lobby for the successful introduction of a long gun registry to control the availability of firearms. Every year, on this date, the subject of violence against women and women’s rights in general resurface but if you read the coverage of this year’s anniversary on the Globe and Mail, Toronto Star, or even the CBC, a sad reality comes to the fore: how little has changed and how we have actually suffered set backs. The Toronto Star editorial points out how feminism has become a pejorative term while the Globe and Mail interviews one of the survivors who sees a recent bill to discontinue the gun registry (which has been passing successfully through the House of Commons) as a “slap in the face”. Twenty years later and women are still murdered by their fathers, husbands and boyfriends. Even in Canada, women are still paid less than men for doing the same job.Our conservative government has quietly cut support to the Status of Women Canada, which provides funding to community groups working to combat violence against women. The government has also made it more difficult for women to fight for equal pay.

People like Stephen Lewis, Greg Mortenson, and Nicholas Kristoff have all been pointing out that the great human rights issue of the 21st century is the treatment of women across the globe, particularly in the developing world. Many of the challenges affecting the globe today such as terrorism, over population, health crisis, poverty, etc can be addressed by supporting and educating women. Greg Mortenson, who has dedicated his life to building schools in remote areas of Pakistan and Afghanistan, has shown that when you educate a boy, he leaves his village seeking better opportunities but when you educate a girl, her whole village benefits as she applies that education not only to her own family but to the whole community. Stephen Lewis’ work to draw attention to the plight of the HIV/AIDS epidemic in Africa has shown that the epidemic is also gendered – women are infected in disproportionate numbers and it is grandmothers who bear the burden of raising the next generation. In Half the Sky, Nicholas Kristoff and Sheryl WuDunn lay out the three main issues plaguing women around the world today: sex trafficking and forced prostitution; gender-based violence including honor killings and mass rape; maternal mortality, which needlessly claims one woman a minute.

In this holiday season, think about how you can get informed and help at the local or international level. One simple way is to lend money through Kiva to women in the developing world who are trying to raise their families and ensure the education of their children. You can find many other suggestions in the Half the Sky Movement website, the Stephen Lewis Foundation, or Greg Mortenson’s site. At the very least, honour the women killed in Montreal in 1989 by educating your boys and girls to see women as being as worthy of life and respect as men, and if you are Canadian, write to your MP about the gun registry.

Some of you may be wondering about the post below. It all started a few weeks ago when Alan found some old medium format negatives sitting in a box and decided to scan them. We thought it would be nice to file the pictures in the computer. Our chins dropped to the floor as soon as we finished scanning the first negative – the amount of detail was simply unbelievable. As you can see from this photo, every line in the wood is clearly visible. It definitely took him back to the good old days. That’s when he started talking about getting another medium format film camera. After scouring ebay for days and reading many reviews, he settled on the Minolta Autocord, a twin lens reflex, considered one of the best among TLRs. He found such good deals on them that he bought two and gave me one. I have to say that I fell in love as soon as I looked through the ground glass viewfinder. Alan still has his old light meter so we can find out the right exposure and I can’t wait to try the camera out. But before we could take them out, he took one of the cameras to be cleaned and refurbished at this joy of a place that the folks at Downtown Camera recommended. The store was as far as one could possibly go through public transit but certainly worth the trip. While Alan got his camera, I snapped some pictures of some of the treasures in there:

Alan almost bought another camera while we were there. A Mamiya RB67:

And this is the one I want (here shown in just the body, minus the back and the lens). Alas, I’ll have to wait until I get a job since it goes for anywhere around 1,100-1,500$:

I love pictures of people.

Although I have no problem in chatting with strangers, I’m much more self-conscious about asking them if I can take their picture. Most people actually don’t mind and are flattered when you ask but for some reason I often feel shy about asking. This saturday we went to the Distillery District and while sitting outside having a coffee, I couldn’t help noticing this older Chinese lady sitting beside us. She was colourful but what attracted me was the peaceful vibe she emanated. I finally broke down and before we left, I asked her if I could take her picture. She smiled shyly and mumbled something while pointing to the entrance of the restaurant. I guessed she was saying she didn’t speak English and her companion was inside buying the coffee. So I remembered the advice of a photographer when prompted how to ask to take someone’s picture when there’s a language barrier: I raised the camera to eye level and made a questioning look while smiling. She blushed slightly but sat up, very proud. I took the above picture and showed it to her. Her reaction warmed my heart: she gave a little excited shrill and gave me a big hug. Made my day.

Job applications, thesis, teaching, disease in the family, it seems the whole world is conspiring to keep me from this blog. All is well, just super busy.

Fall is in the air and I’m in the midst of midterm marking, lecturing, and writing. But today is sunday and we’re off for a hike with TBN. Hopefully I’ll be able to take some nice pictures along the way.

Ontario’s Greenbelt is an area of protected greenspace and farmland, where some of the best agricultural land in Canada is located.To promote the Greenbelt, volunteers and sponsors put together a bicycle ride each year called the Tour de Greenbelt. I saw an ad for it last year but we weren’t cycling as much then so postponed our participation till this year. There are four different rides to choose from and although I really wanted to do the one through the Niagara vineyards, we were busy that weekend. The second choice was the ride out of Newmarket, a small town north of Toronto. Why? Because it would start and end at a farmers’ market and I couldn’t pass that opportunity!

The weather forecast wasn’t good. After weeks of perfect weather, they were calling for rain on Saturday but we bought some rain gear and decided to go anyway. In the end, the weather held, the sun came out at certain points of the ride and the rain only came when we were back in Toronto. It was an amazing day! We’ll definitely do some of the other rides next year; maybe we’ll even volunteer! Click below for a slideshow: