Monthly Archives: September 2010

The Pocket Cemetery


Roadside Memorial Day

It had to happen. Roadside memorials being a bitch to set up and maintain and what with friends and relatives forever asking to see pictures of the latest anniversary or holiday grave decorating, a cemetery app was inevitable. It’s handy – literally – and Facebook update ready (I’m assuming because if one can’t update the graveside status for the FB peeps – what good is it really?)

And it’s creepy wrong on levels of levels. There’s so much that’s sick on both sides of this app – seller and buyer – that it’s hard to know where to begin.

It reminds me of prayer cards.

My Catholic experience with death and funerals includes holy “baseball cards” with pictures of the deceased, born on and expiry dates, a prayer of some kind and a cool religious icon on the front.

Which, I guess, is creepy too except that you didn’t carry them around and whip them out like the latest baby photos.

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Elmo’s Cleavage Issues


Elmo

Image via Wikipedia

The Children’s Television Workshop has always endeavoured  to be “relevant” in a pop culture sort of way. They also, apparently, use celebrities in a bid to lure parents to watch their shows with their children. It leads to conversation. Probably.

So the music video with Katy Perry and Elmo is in keeping with the whole “learning”  while “watching with mom and /or dad”. Though I’m guessing this is totally a dad lure.

Right thinking Mama Grizzlies all over the real America where patriots live found this whole girl-flash-in-the-pan-singer in a skimpy dress thing far too inappropriate for their tender pre-schoolers. The reality TV that mom and dad expose children to is far less risqué.

So, the epi was ditched.

Thus spake Moral America.

Despite the itsy-bitsy bit of fun-bag stuff going on, the thing that should have bothered parents missed them by a mile.

While it’s unclear if the parody of her own song was meant to teach kids directions or opposites or something about friendship, one that it does drive home is the fact that one day a little girl’s male friends are going to shun her and she will spend the rest of her life chasing after them.

There’s a message worth censoring.

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The “ease” in Easy


Kevala Jnana of Mahavira

Image via Wikipedia

The business of yoga enveloped me the past couple of days. In many ways, teaching yoga and teaching public school has much in common. Paperwork. Association dues. Insurance, though I have to admit I never once carried a liability policy in my twenty years of teaching and coaching children.

And there is the money side.

Yes, yoga isn’t all asana and heavy breathing. Perhaps the yogis of Patanjali‘s time wandering like minstrels or jongleurs, spreading enlightenment for table scraps and a night’s lodging, but yoga teachers today would have a difficult time getting anyone to take them seriously if they wandered the streets of Edmonton pushing shopping carts and setting up their mats on the sidewalks of Whyte Ave.

It’s interesting (my catchall phrase for when I don’t have all my opinions in a row on something) how the yoga teaching has fallen into place. I’d anticipated filling in here and there and maybe having a class at the studio in town to call my very own. Not what has happened.

I have three classes at the studio and two more to start at the community hall across the street in October. I’ve turned down other offers for work since yesterday afternoon. Stuff I would have taken if not for the fact that I have other stuff already that conflicts.

Another graduate of the training who I keep in touch with remarked on how lucky I am to not have to run work down and I am reminded of something related to the practice of asana/poses – that we are to find “ease” in each posture.

If that is the goal of yoga than it is also the goal of life because I have learned that yoga and life have nearly everything in common.

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