Volunteering at Slave Lake

For those of you who didn’t hear about it, the town of Slave Lake was hit on May 15 with a wildfire that destroyed 40% of the town. Six weeks after the fire and just two weeks after the residents returned, massive amounts of rain caused the town to flood. It’s a pretty heartbreaking story and one that I’m sure will never be forgotten by the 7000 residents of the town.

On Sunday night my dad informed me that there was a bus heading to Slave Lake from Grande Prairie to help out for the day. So, at 10pm that night, it was confirmed that we could have a seat on the bus leaving at 5am the next morning.

Thanks to my uncoordinated sleeping schedule I did not sleep the entire night and joined my dad for a very early breakfast. As we drove to meet the bus, we realized that we had no idea what we were going to be doing—all we knew was that we were going to be spending the day in Slave Lake helping out. Despite the lack of any formal details we carried on and met up with this (note the top of the bus): 

The term "Mystery Trip is much more foreboding glowing against the dark 5am sky

This did not instill much confidence. We got on anyway and after a long (and still sleepless) three and a half hours, we were in Slave Lake. They brought us into a MASSIVE mill that had been abandoned due to the whole town effectively shutting down. Inside was a giant pile of garbage bags and boxes filled with donations from people all across the country. Our job was to empty the bags and sort the clothing into their different sizes and genders and pick out stuff that wasn't in good condition or in current fashion. At this, a 65-year-old volunteer asked, "What about the young people?" and I was very glad that the hipsters were taken into consideration. We decided to keep the clothes unless they were in bad shape or extremely, extremely horrendous.

The shear size of the pile made it a rather daunting task, but once we got to work we were able to develop a rhythm and it was actually quite enjoyable. There were 32 of us on the bus and we were joined by eight members of a correctional facility. We each had our own table where we could dump our bags out, sort through them, and then place the good stuff into the storage bags. 

Just a part of the pile

Our view as we worked

The large storage bags we used for organizing

Our tables and some sorters at work

With donations coming in so quickly and from all over the country, we found some pretty interesting things. Here are a couple of my favourites:

• A perfect-condition Halloween costume of the yellow Teletubby—because that’s the first thing people look for after a disaster. I was also amazed that I was able to identify it as Laa-Laa (who knew colourful, pudgy aliens were so memorable?)
• Six identical dark green t-shirts that had home-made cut up collars and sequined shoulder pads.
• A tie skirt. Yes, a skirt made entirely out of ties sewed together.
• An entire garbage bag of traditional Ukrainian garb.
• A barely used $400 padded motorbike jacket and an adult wetsuit. Congrats to the amazing person who gave up those.
• Brand new, pointy, white, men's Italian shoes. This is not entertaining until you consider that someone donated these to a small town in Northern Alberta.
• A bag full of wigs. Again, not really typical disaster-relief stock material.
• More than one Santa outfit for a dog. If I had my choice I would have immediately placed these in recycling, but sadly, I wasn't the one who found them.

I also learnt a lot about donating, myself. Seeing as there were so many donations to sort through (more on that later), bags that were donated without much thought or care were considered less than helpful. I learnt a lot of quick tips about donating that I didn’t know before:

• This is NOT a time to get rid of your garbage. I literally went through bags with used diapers in them. While the thought is nice, nobody really appreciates it. If you are done with your oil-stained, used-to-be-white-once t-shirt that you won from a beer company and now use as a car rag—throw it out!
• Wash your clothes before you send them. I was shocked at how many items had dirt or pet hair on them that could have easily been removed with a simple wash. A lot of clothes were also found folded inside out. Take the two seconds and arrange them effectively.
• Tie or tape pairs of shoes together—a simple thing that will help with the organizing and stop a sorter from throwing them in the recycling because they can’t find the matching shoe.
• If you want to be loved and admired by the sorters, go so far as to organize and label your donations. Nobody admitted to it, but secretly we all looked for garbage bags that had a masking tape label already on it. We organized it into Boys (0-2, 2-6, Junior/Teen) Girls (same), Mens (S, M, L, XL), and Womens (same).
• Donate more than clothes. I didn’t really think about this one because clothes are always the first things that come to mind, but there is a lot more that people need. Bedding, linens, bathroom items, kitchen items, accessories, pretty much anything you use on a daily basis, are all important. 

My back was killing me by the seventh hour, but it was worth it. At one point I had a near heart-attack when I realized that my cellphone, which I had placed on the table, was no longer there! I looked out over the thousands of bags we'd spent all morning packing and wondered what the chances were of hearing a tiny vibrating phone in one of them. Thankfully, I found the phone 20 minutes later a good ten feet away from my table. Yikes!

After eight full hours and really good lunch, we were all completely wiped out. Thanks to a lot of coffee and sugar I survived despite my all-nighter, but I was ready to crash the second we got on the bus to go home.

On the way home the bus driver took us through the actual town and narrated where the fire had spread. It was certainly a humbling experience looking down a street where an entire suburb had once stood and seeing nothing but the foundations of the homes. The most amazing part was how much the fire skipped around. There were remnants of a house sitting right beside buildings that were completely unharmed. In one case the garage was completely untouched but the house was gone. It certainly stands as a reminder about how temporary and transient our belongings are.

What's left of a residential street

A house left with melted siding as the house in front of it is completely destroyed

Stairs leading up to what used to be an apartment building

The town hall/the town library

Remains of a house

Remains of a city transit bus

Another look down a typical residential street

These pictures show pretty heart-wrenching scenes, but we can take comfort in the fact that nobody was killed in the fire. The residents had enough warning that the entire town was able to evacuate before the fire rushed in. It will take years to recuperate, but the residents have every intention of rebuilding the entire town.

The encouragement came at the end of the trip where we got to see the final product of our work:

This is a curling rink that the town turned into a shelter for the donations. Anyone who was affected by the fire is able to go in and take whatever they need. It was definitely cool to be able to see the direct effect of our work.

At the end of the day my dad and I guessed that between the forty of us sorters we had probably worked through about two full semi-loads worth of donations. We were proud of our work as we had organized about a quarter of the pile that was sitting in the mill. To our astonishment, as we drove away the bus driver pointed out ten more semis that were lined up outside the building, waiting to be unloaded! As if that wasn't enough, he said that there were FIFTY more waiting in other towns around Alberta. Combining what had yet to be unloaded, what we had worked on, and what had already been organized, we figured there were over 100 semis worth of donations to Slave Lake!! How amazing is that! There were so many donations in fact that the government is trying to relocate the fifty semis to other places that need it more (considering that, in the short time we worked, we organized more than enough to clothe the entire town of Slave Lake a couple times over). It definitely stands as an encouragement and an amazing testament to the power of people uniting under tragedy.

Blogging It Up

Another day of unplugging and it is going great! Yet again I am amazed at how much you can get done when you're not taking those five minute quick flips through Facebook. I am currently reading "Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire" and it took me two weeks to get through half of it, and then yesterday I read the second half in two sittings. I'm sure I'll write a blog about my thoughts on it later, but the point is I'm actually taking on the monstrous stack of books that I have piled in the corner of my room!

The other great thing about not having Internet every other day is that on the days when I DO have it, I am much more productive. I know that my time is limited and therefore I (like to think) am a better steward of my time. In my perusing today I found two more blogs that I will be adding to my daily scan and I thought they were interesting enough to post about.

The first is Austin Kleon's at www.austinkleon.com/blog. You may have heard of him before, but he is the guy who does the Newspaper Blackout poems. It's a pretty simple concept--take a newspaper, black out words, form a poem--but it's the simplicity and creativity that I love. It combines the task of creating art out of someone else's work and the act of solving a puzzle or code. It takes a small thing, something that we all have access to throughout the day (a newspaper) and makes it into a canvas. Perhaps I like it because it reminds me of my days as a young churchgoer. The only way I could concentrate through a whole sermon was if I spent the entire time circling each individual "e" or "a" in the church bulletin. Sometimes I would get creative and use different shapes to highlight the individual letters, and, if the sermon was long enough, write codes using the different shapes. I swear some of my most creative moments happened in the margins of church bulletins.

Either way, you should check out the site, because it's cool, and he posts things like this:

and this:

(Most of them are more poetic or longer than these, they were just some that I liked. Credit goes to Celeste for showing me this site.)

The second blog that I found today is Blake Mycoskie, the founder of TOMS at www.startsomethingthatmatters.com. Legit guy. Anyone who starts a business based on giving and manages to grow it into an incredibly trendy product is awesome in my books. I remember when they started selling TOMS in Tehillah back in 2007 and they were only $40. Man do I regret not buying them then. Also, I would just like to make a formal complaint that there is not a single shop in Calgary that sells size 14 TOMS (I know, I know, buy them online, I just don't think it's fair that's all).

Moving on. I am particularly interested in TOMS lately because they're growing their business to be about more than just shoes; it's evolving into an entire One for One company which now includes eyewear. For every pair of sunglasses you buy, they supply someone in a impoverished country with the right glasses or surgery they need to see. Everything you'd want to know about that can be found here. It's good stuff. I'm hoping he posts on his blog a lot because he's a guy I could definitely see as becoming one of my entrepreneurial heros. Plus, he ends every post with "Carpe Diem". Who doesn't love a good Dead Poet's Society reference? Amiright?

Here's a clip from his blog:

Unplugging

I missed a day. But in a really really good way.

I was challenging myself to write a blog post every day and I still very much intend to keep that challenge, but another challenge came into my life.

My father, step-mother, and I were sitting around talking yesterday. The topic got on technology and how much we depend on it. They had been considering cutting their cable for the summer and I told them that, as much as I hated it as a kid, having only three channels (and that fourth channel that if you squinted hard enough and stood in just the right spot in the living room) was one of the best things my parents could have done for me.

I know that this is an issue we all face. As I was telling them about the "evils of technology", I couldn't help but note that twinge of hypocrisy rising up in me. I am certainly not the best example of a technology-free life. I am on my laptop a lot and often need a movie or show running to fall asleep to (I hate it, but it's true). But, the more we talked about the implications, the more ideas began to take shape. As we all know, it's not that technology in itself is bad, it's just amazing how much it dominates everything that we do. I pulled from one of my favourite books, Donald Miller's "A Million Miles in a Thousand Years" which talks about living a better story. It says that it is impossible to live a good story if you are too busy watching someone else's. It's a simple statement, but a powerful one, and one that I'm sure you could unpack in many different ways.

All of this culminated in an agreement to start small and see where that goes. We decided to cut out screens every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. That means no Xbox, no TV, no Internet. Obviously some of these things are more tempting to certain people, but it's all about the solidarity. This literally means unplugging the chord which controls all of these things (quite convenient really) for the day.

Monday was our first test. I definitely entirely forgot and checked Facebook first thing in the morning. Oops. But once upstairs I was quickly reminded and the knowledge that my father was going to suffer more than I was was a big encouragement. It was a busy day to begin with, but it is AMAzing how much more you can fit in a day when you're not flipping open the computer every once in a while just to do a quick check. I wouldn't say I'm a drastic over-user of the Internet, but I couldn't help but notice what a huge difference it made yesterday. The biggest change came at the end of the day when we were all sitting around after supper. With no Xbox to run off to for my stepbrother and no TV to flick on for the post-supper digestion, we sat in baffled silence, asking ourselves... Now what? It was entertaining in that sad and pathetic kind of way, watching ourselves react to this seemingly unique experience. In the end we settled for a board game--which turned out to be quite entertaining--and an early night; who knew having to be creative all day took up so much energy?

This is a challenge that everyone makes at different times in their lives, and I think it's a really important one. Like I said, there are certainly good things that come with the Internet so I don't think it's something to throw out the window all together, but there is definite power in limiting it in your life. I'm incredibly interested to see what the next couple weeks or months is going to look like with all this free time on our hands. This means that my blogging schedule will return to being somewhat inconsistent, but since I consider working on my writing part of my "job", I will try to remain as consistent as possible.

Wish me luck :P

The Wilderness Downtown

Arcade Fire is a pretty hip band. I specifically use the word hip because they are a band that people love to hate. Don't believe me? Check out the tumblr: http://whoisarcadefire.tumblr.com. (On second thought, that site is pretty jam-packed with foul mouthed individuals, so this video gives the gist of it:)

People weren't too fond of a seemingly "unknown" Canadian band swooping in and snagging the American Grammy for Album of the Year. I absolutely supported this, being both a Canadian and a closeted revolutionary. I enjoy upsets. Of course the band went on to dominate at the Junos, but who really cares about that. (Ugh, I'm treading on some very thin hipster lines here, but I just don't want to jump into that post right now.)

Now, I must start off by saying I am quite a bit of a band wagon jumper on this one. I have had Neon Bible, their second album, on my Ipod for forever but never really cared to listen to it mostly because I thought it had to do with something sacrilegious. I have no idea where I originally got the album from... probably the OC soundtrack or something like that. That also being said, I'm still not a massive fan. Not because I don't enjoy them, I just haven't given them enough time to really settle a place in my heart. So, I'm not really promo-ing the band, just this one song.

But man, what a song. Ok, it's really not about the song at all, it's the whole experience that I love. I love it because this particular video got brought up in my postmodern class and my teacher praised it for its creativity and uniqueness. I'm so glad that it won a Webby (Internet awards for those of you who aren't geeky enough) and received at least some recognition. I give this music video double props because it went so far above other music videos. Not that that's saying much:

Typical Music Video:

• Start off with lead singer standing in some obscure place such as in the middle of a field or ocean (the more obscure the band name, the more obscure the standing place)
• Rapidly switch to group shot of the whole band during chorus
• Alternate between group shot of band playing in front of a crowd and band playing in obscure place. (Special added points if the instruments are somehow getting destroyed in the process)
• Flash back and forth between three or four different sets with the rhythm of the beat
• (Genre note: If this is a rap or hip hop video, don't forget to include scantily clad ladies during the first chorus. If this is a rock song, those instruments better be darn well near destroyed by the final chord. If this is a folk acoustic song, ensure that there are plenty of shots of big beards and sepia birds. Continue.)
• Cue bridge, which usually consists of a single moody shot of the lead singer, potentially with a zoom up on his face to ensure the solemnity of the moment.
• Flash into chorus, let those guitar chords ring out, and put particular emphasis on how happy everyone in the crowd looks as they celebrate this rad and hip band.
• End with camera panning away from band as they recklessly leave their instruments in a haphazard state.
• Scene

Original and Creative Music Video

• Anything other than that.

Now, back to the subject on hand. Granted, the actual scenes of this video aren't THAT far off from anything we've seen before, but it's all about the technique. It's about incorporating the viewer into the video, bringing it to life and recreating a different story built from past memories. Nostalgia fuels the song and encourages each viewer to take in the song with a different sensation. I relate with this because when I was younger, before anybody was allowed to read something that I had written, I had to ensure that the mood was set by playing the appropriate song beforehand. (Many of my emails began with "STOP. Read no further. Open up Itunes and Play [enter an inspirational or powerful song such as "You Raise Me Up" to set mood. Nothing adds power to angsty teenage poems like "You Raise Me Up"]." Perhaps this is why I feel the need to end every blog post with a music video; music just makes everything 1000x more awesome.

But I digress. Really you should just watch the video and enjoy it. (It does take a lot to run so I would definitely suggest shutting down most other tabs/programs to properly enjoy it). Tell me what you think.

Arcade Fire's "We Used to Wait":
http://www.thewildernessdowntown.com/

The Flying Troutmans: CBMM Review #1

I have stated in previous posts that I am not very fond of writing reviews. For some reason I am pompous enough to create an entire site dedicated to me and my thoughts, but I get uncomfortable when asked to offer up my opinion on media and literature. Go figure.


Regardless, I have a responsibility. But first, I must tell you a story. About a year ago I posed a question on Facebook as to what classes I should take in the upcoming Spring semester. I'm not going to write out the whole drama because I'm pretty sure that almost everyone who reads this blog was either present in it or a silent observer (yes, I'm looking at you). Anyway, you can read it all here or enjoy this tasteful synopsis:

Me: What classes should I take? I am indecisive and need impartial people to justify my actions.

BW: Canadian literature is evil.

MW: For shizzle, home slice.

KP: No it most certainly is not. 

MW: Ya-huh!

KP: Nu-uh! Here’s a rational explanation as to why it’s not.

MW: *in head* Careful Michael, we’ve seen this before. Here’s a diplomatic response that will lighten the mood, though, I must confess, I am still not a fan of Canadian literature.

KP:

After the dust had settled, the question of quality Canadian literature still hung in the balance. (All right, that’s not entirely how it went down, but if you really cared you would have checked out the longer link already).

To clarify things, I am not saying that there is no such thing as good Canadian literature. I know well enough that an invisible borderline between the US and Canada is not enough to distinguish between good and bad literature. Nor am I not a proud Canadian. Cause I am. Honest. I even go so far as to spell “favorite” “favourite” and “color” “colour”, that’s how legit I am.

But twelve years of having Canadian history repeatedly thrown at you in Social class does become a bit tedious. In my first year of university I took a Survey of Canadian Literature class in order to break my jaded high school preconceptions and stereotypes of Canadian literature. Sadly, not only were they not broken, they were reinforced with a 5-inch thick, steel, bulletproof wall (hyperbole, ten points). Despite my desire to love Canadian literature, I still found myself hating anybody whoever called themselves a pioneer as I wrote a ten-page essay on the symbolism of barns and canoes in Confederation poetry. No joke, here is an excerpt from my essay: 

“The title of the Italian sonnet, In an Old Barn, implies that the narrator has a deep appreciation for the romantic antiquity of a cattle shelter.” 

It goes on like that for 1,500 more words. (Ok, I’ll be honest, my own prose isn’t exactly outstanding). Despite a semester of a studying, the best Canadian image I could conjure up was of a lumberjack man and his Little-House-on-the-Prairie wife standing by their log cabins and homemade canoes, enduring the brutal winters and taking advantage of Native Americans. Also, there are geese flying overhead. 

The final conclusion we came to at the end of my Canadian literature class was that there really is no such thing as the “Canadian identity” as it is the amalgamation of cultures and concepts which defines it. I came to peace with this definition as our mosaic society is one of the things that makes me proud to be Canadian. Canada isn’t really definable (terrible stereotypes aside) and I like that.

Yet, here we are. Personally, I don’t know any Canadian authors that I would proudly boast about to my non-Canadian friends. To be honest, I barely know any Canadian authors at all, let alone ones that are worth bragging about. I get that Canada isn’t all about geese and rivers and rocks and trees, though I really don’t have any concrete proof to dispute this claim. Sad. So, enter CBMM. I'm looking forward to this challenge because I honestly do want to think of nothing but the highest of my dear home and native land.

So now, skip back to real time. I have since received six of the twelve CBMM’s from Kerry but unfortunately have only had the time to read the first one. And my first official thoughts are: I really liked it!

The first book Kerry sent was "The Flying Troutmans" by Miriam Toews. Prior to reading it, my expectations weren’t too high. I honestly thought that it was going to be a nice story about happy Christians doing happy things. Turns out it was nothing like that. Miriam Toews is really famous for her Mennonite book “A Complicated Kindness” which I’ve since heard a lot about and look forward to reading. So I guess I shouldn’t really have expected a nice Christian book about nice things, but this is all about breaking my ignorance anyway, so this is good.

Once in, it took me a while to get used to the modern hipster names. The story is about Hattie, her depressed sister Min, her neice and nephew Thebes and Logan, and their dad Cherkis. Not a single Tom or Frank Penner to be found. The reason I did end up enjoying this book was because it was very quick; it’s kind of like reading an episode of the Gilmore Girls. The dialogue is fast, the message is deep but not deep enough to get lost in, and the characters are quirky but loveable.

That being said, I did have one major complaint: it has NOTHING to do with Canada. The unconventional family begins their roadtrip in the good ol’ Frozen North, but the vast majority of the book is spent driving through the States. It is ironic that a book that is supposed to prove the value of Canadian literature turns its back on Canada within the first couple of chapters.

So, I will end with this. It was definitely an enjoyable book (enough so that I bought "A Complicated Kindness" at Value Village yesterday). Yes, Miriam Toews is a good, Canadian author (and a Mennonite to boot), but "Flying Troutmans" is not really a Canadian book.

Here's a totally unrelated song for those of you who weren't particularly interested in any of this:

PS: If you're a keener and reading this right away I sincerely apologize for the wonky fonts; I'll fix it in the morning.

In the Land of Trucks and Oil

Alright, I promise these hiatuses won’t keep happening. My first month long hiatus was an actual executive decision to focus as best I could on school. Thoough, I’ll be honest with you, it was less of a decision and more of a “read Ulysses or else” kind of deal. Now school seems like a lifetime away and here I am, still not posting. Over the last couple months I’ve discovered that I am a very task-orientated person. I use this phrase because it is a lot more forgiving than “sucks at multi-tasking”. For the last couple months my mind has essentially looked like this:

• Must survive final essays
• Must get through exams
• Must figure out surgery
• Must have surgery
• Must celebrate/recover from surgery
• Must get to Grande Prairie
• Must figure out why I moved to Grande Prairie
• Must figure out class time schedule
• Must find job

Unfortunately for everyone else in my life, while one of those factors is occupying my brain, I struggle with addressing other issues/people as well. I beg you to bear with me.

My life is in a strange place right now. And by “strange place” I mean Grande Prairie. As I sit here writing I am staring out the window absolutely dumbfounded by the snow falling from the sky on June 3^rd. I know, I know, I really shouldn’t be too surprised, but here I am, surprised regardless. I moved to GP for a lot of reasons:

• To get to know my new step-family better
• To have time to work on my writing
• To make a lot of money at a well-paying Nothern job
• To attend classes for free at GPRC. 

All very good reasons, in my opinion. Currently, some of those things are going better than others, but I’m still optimistic.

As my friend who lived up here for the past month and I reflected, we noticed that living in GP doesn’t really feel real. It’s kind of like the surreal experience I had living in Spain, minus the gorgeous landscape, unique culture, interesting language, and endless adventures. Actually, living in GP does often feel like living in a different culture except instead of Spanish villagers and rolling hillsides you have rednecks and their trucks. Ok, I’m being a little harsh, though to be honest I am scared of wearing anything outside that is even remotely hipster for fear of the consequences. To be fair though, Grande Prairie is actually a very pretty town and it is doing much better than the ground-level expectations I had of it at the beginning.

As I keep my eyes peeled for a job I have a lot of time to work on past projects, which is really really good. Hopefully you will be able to see the fruits of those labours sooner rather than later. For now I just needed to post to get the ball rolling again. Here is a great music video and my favourite song right now to make up for this seemingly meatless entry.

PS: After re-watching the music video, I couldn’t help but note the strong redneck tendencies it portrays. Please do not think that this means that I am slowly becoming a redneck. I’m not. I have no intention of purchasing a gun, wearing a dear-head backpack, or running headlong into people to make them explode. I promise. It’s just a really good song by a really good band.