A LITTLE MEDIA GOES A LONG WAY

Thanks to Cam Tait of the Edmonton Journal for helping us celebrate Hope Foundation's 20th anniversary with an article about our history. UNIQUE ORGANIZATION PROVES A LITTLE HOPE GOES A LONG WAY

broadcasting from denver

Thanks to Carol Jeanotilla and her Hope Journal program, I spent a pleasant 45 minutes chatting about hope. Rumour has it that feedback was received from as far away as Brazil. Here are Carol's instructions for downloading a podcast: Go to www.castlerockradio.com/archives.html Simply find The Hope Journal listing, click on us and then click on the air date - 4/26/12 - to listen any time 24/7.

LIBRARY IN THE MORNING

For the last week I’ve been going to the library everymorning before going to work. It’s a pleasant place, a library in the morning, in your housecoat, with your hair still askew and your eyes barely open. I am preparing a summer reading collection, biographies, fiction, a little history, a really fine assortment of materials to keep me happy all summer. What better place to do it than at the CNIB Library, now that it has revised its website? If you are an eligible client of theirs, you can browse for books, locate audio and braille editions, and download them to read on your own personal machines. It’s a miracle really. If he were here, I am certain that Sir William Mulock would be delighted by the development. He was, in his day, a forward-looking fellow, the kind who would implement snazzy new ideas. In 1898, Postmaster General Sir William Mulock granted free postage, known as franking, for all braille material sent through the mail. Later, after the invention of sound recording, audio books were granted the same privilege. It would be impossible to calculate how much it would have cost to distribute all the braille and talking books by mail over the past 114 years. Until very recently, almost all blind canadians ordered books from the CNIB Library in Toronto and waited for them to arrive in the mail. But times have changed. I was getting CNIB books by mail before Canada had its 100th birthday. I was getting them before anybody got to the moon. And getting books free in the mail was a wondrous thing which I loved, and I doubt if any Canadian was more grateful to Sir William than I was. But getting books on the Internet, in the cool of the morning, before leaving for work is even better.

THE FUTURE IS NOT THE PAST

Statistics predict the future based on the past. They are important in telling us how things were. And here is something to remember when you get to thinking that things never change for women. For more than 100 years there was virtually no chance that the Premier of Alberta would be a female. And then, in 2012, there was only one question: In the race of five leaders, which of the two female contenders would get the position?

HOPE LADY ON DENVER RADIO

Join Wendy Edey and Carol Jeanotilla on a live broadcast of The Hope Journal Show from Denver, Thursday April 26, 9:00 AM Mountain Daylight Time. Wendy will be discussing the psychology of hope, the language of hope and the role that humor plays in hope. Listen-in live on your computer by going to www.castlerockradio. The broadcast will last 1 hour.

FAMILY VIOLENCE TREATMENT HAS CHANGED

This week I attended the Knowledge Sharing Forum for the Alberta provincial Family Violence Treatment Program. It was truly an enlightening experience. The room was filled with probation officers, group facilitators, addicitions counsellors, social workers and psychologists. The mood was distinctly positive. I hadn’t really known what to expect, but I do know I wasn’t expecting that. The last time I attended such a meeting they were talking about confronting the offenders, forcing them to take responsibility for their actions. The tone was aggressive. It was hard to find a place for our hope and strengths strategies in that emotional climate. But that was then, and this was now. I met many hard-working people who are deeply proud of the work they are doing. The work is positive yet honest. There is a recognition that many offenders hope to be something other than violent, that they would do things differently if they knew how. There is an enthusiasm about working constructively with that hope.

iPhone CHANGES THE WORLD

My sister brought her iPhone to my house, loaded with an ap for blind people. She took a picture of the Angel Food box.
“Angel Food,” said the iPhone. That impressed me a little bit, but only a little bit. We’ve had the ability to convert text to speech for 30 years.
She took a picture of the flower vase on my table.
“Glass flower vase,” said the iPhone. Now that impressed me. Of course I already knew it was a glass flower vase, but a thing that can take a picture of a flower vase, and translate that picture into words, might just change the world.