Chicken Bus Tales

Vivien, Linda, Kim, Catherine

Everything happens for a reason. I hiked up to Raven Lake today. We started to get up in the snow and were about 20 minutes away from the cabin (our final destination) and we ran into these two lovely ladies. They informed us that there were very fresh (within the last 20 minutes) grizzly tracks just ahead. They had made the decision to turn around and leave the grizzly alone, after all it is HIS territory, not ours. We asked our new friends if they wanted to team up and finish the last part of the hike, because with 4 of us, the grizz would likely leave us alone. As we were romping along, we saw more and more tracks and they got fresher and fresher. We ended up following his tracks and Vivien (a 71 year old amazing outdoors woman) said, "I think we should leave this grizzly alone and head back). We decided to listen to our elder as she seemed very wise to her environment, and this definitely wasn't her first time in bear country!

I am so happy that we ran into these amazing ladies. They are very wise and wonderful women. Vivien, as it turns out, is an author. She has written several books and she writes for a guide book company. She has traveled the world and her own backyard, she is a mountaineer of sorts and she had so much wisdom to impart. I probably asked her 100 questions on the hike down. Vivien has taken incredible photos of her journey's and she has a website. Her website is: www.chickenbustales.com (you should check it out!) that chronicles her adventures and showcases her incredible photography and books she's written. I do believe we met these ladies for a reason, not only to save us from a potential grizzly encounter (as they are looking for their big protein at this time of year) but I also feel like they shared their years of knowledge and wisdom about the outdoors with us.


Vivien is inspired by nature, her art is motivated by the natural beauty in our world; the mountains, streams, trees, rivers, bears, squirrels, birds. I think we should bring our students outside and see if they are inspired by the natural beauty that surrounds us. There is so much adventure outside, we must show our students that there is a world beyond video games and structured sports and clubs. Being in the wild allows your imagination to run wild!

Two Boys

Both Boys.
One White.
One Black.
The difference, however, is not colour.
Here stands a boy;
A brother just like every other.
TV is but who he is a follower.
A big phat sweatshirt whose name is Echo.
Then jeans that are much too big for this fellow.
His shoes are new with no dirt in view.
His baseball cap sideways,
With a tag from his crew.
All of his attire is what he desires.
But only he, and the people on TV,
Care that his socks are Nike.
Standing there beside him is his friend.
This boy in a very different trend.
This, also, seen on TV.
But different from his buddy, homey G.
A boy who thinks he is like no other,
Rebellion is what he has discovered.
However, his ripped t-shirt,
From the time of Siskel and Ebert,
Is also a fancy of many.
On his feet are high tops and no socks.
The difference these mates create,
Is nothing but different family traits.
Why is style so important?
For boys to express their emotion?
When who you are is what you say.
What you wear is simply
Foreplay for the eye of a potential soul mate.

-Catherine Eagles

This poem I wrote, oh geeze, probably almost 10 years ago now! Whoa I'm old! Anyways, I was working at a hot dog stand at the Butchart Gardens in Victoria, I was bored and noticed these two boys and a poem sprang out of nowhere. I had never written any poetry, but this came to me as I was observing these gentlemen. I wrote another poem that day, but I can't find it. That was the extent of my poetry writing to this day!
I think this tells me that anyone can be a poet! This poem I'm sure does not follow any kind of poetry rules but to me it is poetry. I think to engage ALL students in poetry, there must be some freedom. I don't believe there are borders to what poetry can be. Release poetry from its cage! haha.

Hope in Shadows

The quote in the first photo reads: "Life is not a dagger stained with the blood of hatred. It is a branch filled with the blossoms of love and compassion. Life itself is restless for peace in the world. Let its noble dream materialize." The word "hope" is a common theme in the worlds of the oppressed. Hope is often the thing that keeps people going when their life is in peril. Hope is sometimes the only thing people have.

Hope in Shadows is a great initiative born from the community of the Downtown Eastside (DTES). I know that many of you didn't grow up in the lower mainland and perhaps have never been to the DTES. It is a place of paradox, it is full of love and hope but also poverty and despair. It is a community and home for those without a home, for those that have been rejected from all other communities and homes. For some it is a place they go because they are lost. The stigma attached to the DTES is that of hopelessness, drug-addicts, prostitutes and filth. I've heard several times, "I just don't understand why those people can't just get it together, it's their own fault they are like that." That isn't true at all. Most of the people that live in the community of the DTES have experienced complex trauma in their lives and/or suffer from a severe mental or physical disease. They haven't had the luxury of having support, health care or a family to take care of them. The easiest and most available way for people to deal with their pain is through drugs. It is a vicious cycle that is extremely hard to break. That said, there is a strong community in the DTES where they support each other and it is a place full of HOPE. I could talk about this for hours, so I will end it there.

The Hope in Shadows project is amazing. It provides people of the DTES an opportunity to celebrate their community and an avenue to rehabilitate themselves through meaningful employment by selling the calendars.

I thought it would be a great idea to pair students up, give them a disposable camera and get them to take pictures of their school community or their home community. I would then, collect the cameras, get the pictures printed or in digital format, choose the "winners" - the top 12 photos and get the students to design a calendar with these photos. You can fill in the blanks of how this would happen. There would have to be strict expectations and guidelines, that's for sure!

Paradox

Artivism: today we were talking about artivism and what that means. Willow spoke to the fact that art is often a medium through which people heal themselves because it allows them to express themselves without having to articulate it into words. I use art as a medium to release anger, frustration, guilt, and even rage. Most people who know me know that I'm not an angry or ragey person, but I have a complex and deep understanding of the inequalities in our world both local and global, both human and environmental, and this often results in a lot of frustration. If I try to express myself using words, often I can not articulate myself well enough or my words fall on deaf ears. I use collage as a method to formulate my thoughts and express what I see. I have made lots of collages that I call counter-culture collages. This one is the most PC of them all which is why I chose this to post!

This one is called, "Paradox" and as you can imagine all the images are paradoxical. I feel that often the best way to get across a message is through stark contrast and illuminate paradoxes, that is what I was trying to achieve with this. This is the first time I've ever posted this anywhere on the internet and I rarely show anyone my collages, only people I really trust. I'm not sure why I don't share them, I think it's because they are for me, they aren't for anyone else because it's my way of venting and releasing.

Ocean -- Vast. Deep. In Peril.

I showed y'all this full page add that I found in The Citizen that was produced by Enbridge but I wanted to share it blog style as well. It is an interesting tactic use by large corporations to use marketing gimmicks such as this to appeal to the ignorant. I don't mean ignorant in a rude way, I mean it in it's literal sense (to people that just don't know). For anyone that doesn't understand the complexities of the potential negative effects of the Enbridge pipeline, they would not know the hypocrisy of this ad. This ad precisely describes the beauty of the ocean that this pipeline would potentially destroy and odds are that it will one day. This could be one of those pieces that could be used to teach students to look and think critically about what media portrays. These ads must be effective because a full-page spread in a newspaper is not cheap!
Emma found a counter-poem to this one and sent it to me:

The Ocean --
Vast. Dying.
We thought it was limitless.Deceiving
The life that dwells there is not on vacation,
Has no other home.
No gateway to swim to greener waters.
Is an ocean without life an ocean
Always?

Wisdom

As teachers we should strive to be this wise. Strive to instill wisdom into our students, not merely teach to the curriculum. We are their elders after all.

the dot

This is another great book by the same author as "ish," Peter H. Reynolds. Same sort of idea as "ish" but just a different story...it speaks to those students who may not think they are artists or creative.