Alexandra Samuel's Blog

Free tix to Sex and The City...and some help for sex trade workers

Alexandra Samuel — Fri, 30 May 2008 15:27:16 -0700

Today marks the release of Sex and the City: The Movie. With the news that SATCTM tix are selling out, your friends at Social Signal (part of the original Change Everything team) want to save you from the nightmare of a Sex-less weekend. We've got twenty tickets to the 8 pm show on Saturday, May 31st, at the Fifth Avenue Cinema on Burrard Street.

The first twenty girlfriends to e-mail me (alex [at] socialsignal [dot] com) will be our guests on Saturday night. We're also working on a plan for pre- or post-film cosmos (let us know what works better for you when you RSVP).

If you'd like to pass on the love, Social Signal will match any ticket-sized donations you make to WISH, the Women's Information Safe Haven.WISH provides female survival sex workers with shelter, essential needs supports, and alternatives to their high-risk lifestyles. You can donate online or in person on Saturday night.

We hope to see you on Saturday!

Fighting lice in Vancouver

Alexandra Samuel — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 00:48:59 -0700

We knew this day would come. Lice...yuck!

As we struggle to contain the lice outbreak on our kids' heads, we share the following resources and insights:

Think carefully before using pharmaceutical lice remedies like Nix. They are based on a natural derivative from chyrsanthemums, but that doesn't mean they are necessarily safe or effective. At the very least, you may find that your household gets MORE itchy before it gets LESS itchy. (That's how it worked over here.)
Don't just treat your household. Ensure your daycare or school CAREFULLY examines all kids' heads, and commits parents to treating kids with lice or nits.
Educate yourself. The most detailed resources we've found are at http://www.headlice.org
Spring for the fancy tools. The plastic lice combs that come with most lice treatment products don't begin to do the job. The tea tree oil-based Lice Stop product available at natural health stores contains a much better, metal comb; you can also buy a higher a quality comb from your pharmacist.
Expect to spend a lot of time and money solving the problem. We're currently spending 2-3 hours per night going over each head with a finetooth comb; and we've already spent $100 having bedding and clothing laundered after we ran out of hot water. (To kill lice, you have to use HOT water and HOT dryer heat.)
Consider getting professional help. We've just called in the pros at http://www.lice911.ca to make sure we get the job 100% done.
Build lice checks into your routine. We realize our little one has likely had this problem for a while. If we'd been doing weekly lice checks, we could have tackled this problem much earlier, and had an easier time of it. From now on, we're doing weekly checks on each kid.
Whatever you do, don't blog about your family's lice. It will only lead to trouble. I'm just sure of it.

Change the web, change the world

Alexandra Samuel — Mon, 19 Nov 2007 15:04:34 -0800

How we perceive technology has a lot to do with how we use it. I've recently written a blog post that talks about how we can personally use the web to support social change. In Five ways to shape the soul of the Internet, I argue that

The social value of the Internet is determined by how each and every
one of us uses the Internet as a communications medium, social space
and support tool. How we experience the Internet in our daily lives --
whether we experience it as a dehumanizing void in which e-mail
replaces face-to-face interaction, or as a meaningful community in
which we discover new commonalities and connections -- is a choice we
make every day, with every message we send or browser page we load.
Those choices can add up to personal and social alienation, or personal
and social transformation.

A beacon to find your life path

Alexandra Samuel — Tue, 07 Aug 2007 20:49:14 -0700

OK, I'm cheating a little here -- I already love my work a lot of the time. But recently I connected with someone who is helping our company bring its work into even closer alignment with our values and our goals.

Alanna Fero is a career consultant and personal coach who helps people figure out how they can bring their work into alignment with their values. She knows how to bring a values-aligned career or business to life -- to get from aspiration to vision to the nuts-and-bolts of how to get yourself from here to there.

And now she's launching a book that will make her approach accessible to a wider audience. Love Made Visible will be released on August 15. Launch details below:

LOVE MADE VISIBLE RELEASE PARTY

5:30 – 7:30pm August 15th
The Royal Vancouver Yacht Club
3811 Point Grey Road Vancouver BC (at Highbury, just west of Alma)
Book Signing, Light Refreshments & Great Networking
Please RSVP by August 12 to launch@alannafero.com

On May 16th, I'm turning off...

Alexandra Samuel — Fri, 11 May 2007 00:46:21 -0700

1. My hair dryer (so no cracks about the 'do, ok?)

2. All the #@*!!## beeping, noisy kids' toys in our house. Let them play with carbon neutral, quiet blocks for the day.

3. My TV. I can read the American Idol results online. ;)

What will YOU turn off?

Oops, I poisoned my kids

Alexandra Samuel — Mon, 30 Apr 2007 17:25:15 -0700

Last month's "how the hell didn't I know that" moment was the discovery that Avent bottles, which both of my children have been drinking from daily for just about their entire lives, contain a suspected carcinogen.

I came across this info not through a consumer alert -- that went out in 1999, before I was a parent and paid attention to these things -- but because I set out to investigate the rumour I'd heard that plastic wasn't safe for food storage.

Edward Groth, the Consumers Union scientist behind the 1999 story leading to the alert, wrote that

There could hardly be more contrast in these two perspectives. One, based on firm conviction but no data, asserts that there is no effect of bisphenol-A in baby bottles, because none has been observed scientifically and because one part per billion of BPA is "too low" an exposure level to have biological effects. The other, based on simple, undisputed scientific facts, notes that polycarbonate bottles can expose babies to unimaginably large numbers of molecules of an estrogen-like chemical, several times a day. We must ask, on what basis can we presume that such exposure has no biological effects? What if "low-level" exposure is not intrinsically "safe;" what if, instead, our inability to measure effects has created an illusion of safety? In short, a precautionary risk assessment in this case would emphasize not the lack of concrete data showing harm in babies exposed to 1 ppb of BPA in their formula, but rather would recognize that 1 ppb is not necessarily a "low" exposure. It would assess the difficulties of knowing whether or not the quadrillions of molecules a baby ingests daily have any harmful effects on the tiny consumer's developing systems.

The dispassionate observers at plasticsinfo.org note that:

Polycarbonate has been studied and tested for nearly 50 years, and its use in products that come in contact with food is regulated for safety by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) as well as governmental bodies worldwide.

Bisphenol A (BPA) is a key building block in polycarbonate plastic. In recent years, a number of researchers from governmental agencies, academia and industry have studied the potential for trace levels of BPA to migrate from polycarbonate products into food and beverages under conditions of typical use. Extensive safety data on BPA show that polycarbonate plastic can be used safely in consumer products.

As a result, the use of polycarbonate plastic for food-contact applications continues to be recognized as safe by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, the European Commission Scientific Committee on Food, the German Federal Institute for Risk Assessment, the Japan Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare, and other regulatory authorities worldwide.

By dispassionate, of course, I mean that plasticsinfo.org is the web site for the American Chemistry Councils' Plastics Division, which "represents leading manufacturers of plastic resins".

While I'm sure that the American Chemical Council wants nothing more for my baby than a long life full of plastic-purchasing opportunities, I'm afraid I can't take their "don't worry, be happy" message on this one. I've just gone out and purchased a supply of Gerber GentleFlow bottles at ToysRUs, which are made from polypropylene. If money were no object I'd go to Crocodile Baby on Fourth and buy the BornFree glass bottles.

And please note that BPA in baby bottles is by no means the only source of concern about kids and plastics. Check out the Smart Plastics Guide: Healthier Food Uses of Plastics for Parents and Children from the Instittue for Agriculture and Trade Policy. I've collected more resources on this topic and bookmarked them on del.icio.us.

Sing, sing a song

Alexandra Samuel — Wed, 07 Mar 2007 21:15:31 -0800

I'm coming out: I'm an American Idol fan. I'm guessing that the reason for my fandom may be at the heart of the show's popularity: I would LOVE to get up on stage and open my mouth and have a big, beautiful voice pour out of it.

As things stand, I can at best hope for half that equation (the standing up on stage half). And given that the only thing to pour out would be a fine, even at times kinda nice voice, but nothing special and nothing to hit the high notes with, I don't see myself getting up on stage anytime soon.

One of the great things about having young kids is that it has gotten me past my self-consciousness about my just-okay voice, and has me singing regularly for the first time in years. Not just the Raffi repertoire, either (though we do a mean Baby Beluga). Our daughter has a great Simon & Garfunkely repertoire from her father, and a decent command of the Broadway standards thanks to me.

But ten minutes at bedtime -- and maybe another five in the shower -- isn't cutting it. What I'd really like to do is petition to universe for do-over, and ask for an Idol-worthy set of pipes...not to be on American Idol, but to light up a local choir, or take a page from Opera Man and go cruising around the city a capella.

In the absence of the Universal Do-over, I want to start singing more, even within the constraints of my current instrument. Won't you join me? I'd love to see Vancouver turn into one giant, unselfconscious, slightly off-key streetscape.

If your answer is yes....sing it!

Vancouverites, please try CareSquare

Alexandra Samuel — Mon, 29 Jan 2007 13:16:22 -0800

One of our small supply of trusted babysitters has fallen in love with someone in Nanaimo (hint to fellow parents: DO NOT encourage your babysitter to go visit that ex-boyfriend in another town). So we're back to searching for fresh blood, and wondered whether there might be room for a web app to help.

Turns out, someone else has already thought this all through. CareSquare is a well thought-out online community that helps parents find available caregivers, and lets you rank trusted caregivers and see those who are trusted by your friends (or their friends). There are a few hundred caregivers already in the network, but surprise surprise they're mostly in the San Francisco area.

So fellow Vancouverites, hear my plea: if you are a parent, caregiver, or sometimes babysitter, please add yourself to CareSquare. If we can get a few dozen Vancouverites using the tool, it could turn out to be really useful.

Recruit allies and supporters

Alexandra Samuel — Fri, 08 Dec 2006 16:00:46 -0800

ChangeEverything.ca is an opportunity to expand your organization’s constituency and audience – and not just by reaching out to people already on the site. CE can be your gateway to a whole universe of social networks and online communities, if you know how to use it. Here are some ideas for using your involvement in CE to find even more potential supporters online:

Before you can find your potential new allies online, you need to identify the keywords and phrases associated with your issue, work or organization. For example if you and your friends want to start a community garden, you might look for content related to “garden”, “organic”, “vegetables”, “gardening” PLUS either “Vancouver” or “Victoria”. Once you know what keywords to look for, you can start searching for kindred spirits in a variety of online communities.

Finding bloggers. To find bloggers – even those not on CE – use a blog search tool like Technorati to search on each of your keywords. If it’s a broad subject, like “climate change,” be sure to search on both the keyword AND your community name. For example, search for blog posts that contain the words “climate change” AND “Vancouver”.

The results of your search will show a list of blog posts that contain those words. A quick glance will give you a sense of which blog posts are actually related to your issue, and which just happen to include your keywords. If you use Technorati you can filter your results to show just those posts that come from blogs with “a lot of authority” or “some authority” (use the pull-down menu below the green bar at the top of the page) – these are the blog posts that will be read by the most people.

Now, leave a comment on the blog post that links to the change you’re working on on Change Everything. Be sure to respond to the blog post so you’re not just spamming. For example you might leave a note saying, “It’s great to read your thoughtful comments about the impact of SUVs on climate change. Maybe we could ban them from East Van as part of making it the first carbon neutral community in Canada. We’re working on this on Change Everything – see http://www.changeeverything.ca/neighbours_for_a_carbon_neutral_east_van”

Your comments are like a trail of breadcrumbs leading people to your work on Change Everything!

Finding photographers. The Lower Mainland and Victoria are home to a lot of enthusiastic photographers, many of whom are sharing their photos online. These photo sharing communities – like Flickr, which started in Vancouver – let amateur and professional photographers share their work and organize it by topic. If you look for your keywords on Flickr – like ”climate change” and “Vancouver” and you’ll find photos related to your interests. Leave comments on these photos leading back to your Change Everything blog posts and changes, just like you’d leave comments on a blog post.

Finding readers. Lots of people now track their favourite web pages using social bookmarking services like del.icio.us (kind of a community version of your Explorer favourites folder), ma.gnolia or Digg. But you don’t have to sit back and wait to become a favourite. First, sign up as a member of ma.gnolia (or del.icio.us or Digg). Then when you write a blog post or add a change to Change Everything, you can store it as a bookmark in ma.gnolia. Be generous with your keywords – save it under “climate change”, “environment”, “eco”, “carbon neutral”, etc. – and other ma.gnolia users will discover it when they browse or search through bookmarks on the ma.gnolia site.

Accepting my imperfection as a mother

Alexandra Samuel — Fri, 08 Dec 2006 12:03:15 -0800

Maybe that's more realistic than "be a better working mom". One thing I've discovered talking with my fellow moms -- working and nonworking alike -- is that we're all plagued by a similar sense of inadequacy. I feel guilty I'm not around more for my kids; a friend who works part-time worries that she's not providing a strong working woman role model for her boys.

My husband observed that the best indicator of the unrealistic expectations on us moms is the number of different phrases about "bad" moms: smothering vs neglectful. hovering vs cold, etc. Whereas the only derogatory thing you ever hear associated with fatherhood is "absent father". In other words, dads get full marks simply for showing up; moms have to worry about being too loving or not loving enough, too engaged or too distracted.

All those labels go through my head when I've spent a long day at work or (more frequently) had a hard time disengaging from work and really engaging with my kids once we all get home. I try to remind myself that (a) everyone blames their parents for something (!!) and (b) whatever my regrets at not having more time with my kids, I'm not cut out to be a full-time mom. I'm a much happier, relaxed and engaged mom for having work that I love, and nothing is better for my kids than a happy mom.