KAT: Welcome everyone to this week’s Evan and Gordon Talk. This week I will be stepping in for Gordon as he has tirelessly posted a whack of articles all in a row and could probably use a bit of a rest. Even the reds need their sleep.
Today Evan and I will be talking about weddings [and marriage].
And no, I would like to clarify for you all that Evan chose this topic. Not me. And don’t gender stereotype. It’s bad for your health. Continue reading
Posted in Evan and Gordon Talk, feminism, money, religion, sex
Tagged age, Christians, couple, emotions, Evan and Gordon Talk, feminism, finances, financially sound, husband, marriage, money, sex, wedding day, wedding expenses, weddings, wife, young
GORDON: Ladies and gentlemen, good evening
KAT: Greetings fellows!
GORDON: This is Gordon of Evan and Gordon Talk, and with me tonight is Kat- filling for Evan who is wandering the Canadian wilderness naked in a desperate bid to find himself.
KAT: We all wish you good luck Evan, beware of bears.
GORDON: Our subject for this evening’s discussion is regulation (primarily of the food and beverage industry, though the subject obviously spans far more than that). Continue reading
Posted in America, business, Canada, Economy, environmentalism, Evan and Gordon Talk, food, health, news, politics
Tagged America, anarchist group, Barber, BP, california, Canada, capitalism, Clarence Thomas, Dumpster Diving, Famer, farm, farming, FDA, food and beverage industry, Food Not Bombs, government, Homeless, law, legal, MMA, Monsanto, Raisin Committee, regulation, USDA
So this one time on Food Revolution Jamie Oliver tried to convince a group of kids that chicken nuggets were too disgusting to eat by showing them how nuggets are made from the skin, cartilage, internal organs and other worthless chicken leftovers. Unfortunately for him, the experiment backfired.
Ahhh Monsanto. The distributors of Agent Orange. Surely they aren’t still around wreaking havoc… right?
Alas, they are still very much around, and have been busy building themselves into food industry giants.
Posted in business, food, Shame Day
Tagged Africa, Agent Orange, Bill HR 933, blog news, Federal Government, food, GMO, Haiti, Hungary, India, money, Monsanto, Obama, patent, Policy, profit, seeds, society, United States of America, Vandana Shiva
Do you know what an obstetric fistula is? I sure didn’t before I lived in Niger. It’s not really a term we hear often in North America. This is primarily because most of us have access to pretty great health care, but also probably because most of us don’t give birth before we are in our late twenties.
Nicholas D. Kristof, journalist and co-author of Half the Sky describes the situation of a patient with obstetric fistulas in an article he wrote called New Life for the Pariahs:
This is a childbirth injury, often suffered by a teenager in Africa or Asia whose pelvis is not fully grown. She suffers obstructed labor, has no access to a C-section, and endures internal injuries that leave her incontinent — steadily trickling urine and sometimes feces through her vagina.
She stinks. She becomes a pariah. She is typically abandoned by her husband and forced to live by herself on the edge of her village. She is scorned, bewildered, humiliated and desolate, often feeling cursed by God. Continue reading
Posted in Africa, health, media, money, morality
Tagged Ali Heller, anthropology, blog news, child marriage, Culture, Danja, half the sky, internet, media, Nicholas D. Kristof, Niger, obstetric fistula, Poverty Porn, racism, sex, Short term missions, teen mom, Violence, West Africa, Worldwide Fistula Fund
These are some of the kids at the Place of Rescue orphanage in Cambodia.
The reason I want to talk about these kids is because on June 20th one of my best friends was evacuated from her home in Calgary, B.C. due to extensive flooding.
There was actually a lot of cool stories I began hearing after the flood. Like the time the city asked for a few hundred volunteers to come out and help clean out flooded homes and a few thousand showed up instead.
But the coolest story I heard was actually about those kids at the orphanage in Cambodia. About six days after my friend was evacuated kids and staff at the place of rescue pulled together and sent a total of $900 to help with flood relief in Calgary. Apparently they had each been given the equivalent of about $12 Canadian money by the Cambodian prime minister’s wife not long before the flooding here in Canada. When they heard about the damages they decided to send some of the money they had been given to help with flood repairs. The reason I find this so exciting is because here in North America we tend to think we don’t actually have any real problems.
And we are constantly told about the horrible things happening overseas and why we should send money to help stop these horrible things from happening.
I’m not saying these horrible things aren’t happening. I’m not saying there isn’t a real need, or even that we shouldn’t send money overseas. All I’m saying is that we need them just as much as they need us. When the discussion of poverty is constantly framed in a way that leads us to believe we have the power to save lives it tends to lead to a bit of a god complex.
Not to mention that it also allows us to forget that often we are part of the problem. According to Blaine Sylvester, director of the Calgary-based Canadian
Foundation Place of Rescue, the kids at the orphanage don’t feel like they are so poverty stricken that they can’t share with their Canadian friends: “The children may live in spartan conditions and sleep 10 to a house with a house mother, but they’re safe, they’re secure and they’re loved.” While Canada and the States are ranked well below countries like Fiji, Nigeria and Ghana on the Global Happiness Index we still assume North Americans need to teach countries we perceive to be “3rd world” how they ought to live.
But while more and more North Americans begin to suffer from donor fatigue, the kids at Place of Rescue seem more than happy to teach us how to give.
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