HAPPENINGS

No, the title is not referring to (what I heard was) a cool gay bar in Winnipeg. 

It is referring to what I've been up to recently. Specifically, what I've been writing about. Here is a list of links to some of my recent online work:

http://kristy-hoffman.blogspot.ca/2012/02/flying-high-again.html#comment-form

http://kristy-hoffman.blogspot.ca/2011/10/mean-spirit-beautiful-mind.html

http://kristy-hoffman.blogspot.ca/2012/03/when-beverly-rowbotham-was-murdered-she.html

http://www.winnipegfreepress.com/local/gun-laws-tie-farmers-hands-159983105.html

http://www.winnipegfreepress.com/local/disabled-womans-specialized-bike-stolen-164116216.html

http://www.winnipegfreepress.com/local/return-of-bicycle-joyous-for-woman-165392056.html

http://kristy-hoffman.blogspot.ca/2012/10/something-to-remember.html

http://kristy-hoffman.blogspot.ca/2012/10/to-some-its-garbage.html

http://kristy-hoffman.blogspot.ca/2012/10/conditional-love.html

Thank you for reading.

CONDITIONAL LOVE

Fan support for the Winnipeg Blue Bombers is not unconditional.

Season ticket holder Max Asper affirmed, without reserve, that whether he stays to watch the end of the game depends on how well the Bombers play. 

“If they’re winning, I stay the whole time, but if they do something like what happened today I leave early,” Asper asserted as he and friend Benjamin Lipson deserted their seats on Oct. 22.

The announced attendance of 30, 360 lessened during third quarter as both men, alongside dozens of fans, split. The Bombers were losing to the Montreal Alouettes with a score of 25-10.  

“I call myself a big Bomber fan but no one likes to see the Bombers lose,” Asper declared while passing a hotdog cart outside the stadium.

James Dennis took a bathroom break when the Alouettes seemed certain to win. He does not usually stay until the end if the Bombers are losing by a lot, however.

“I have left quite often, even once at half-time, when they were losing badly. Sometimes whenever I leave the Bombers come back and win the game,” Dennis said, stroking his beard and chuckling.

Such was the case for Asper: with a final score of 26-25, the Winnipeg Blue Bombers beat the Montreal Alouettes by a single point.

The Canadian Football League (CFL) comprises eight teams from across Canada. It has two Divisions; the East and the West, and after Saturday, the Bombers are tied with the Alouettes for first place in the East Division because both teams have now won ten games and lost six.

Darnell Adams insists that a comeback similar to the one from Saturday’s game is always possible. 

“I jingle my keys at people who leave the Bomber game early because it’s disrespectful. You never know when they are going to make the best comeback in sports history like they almost did a couple weeks ago against Montreal!”

Adams, a season ticket holder and amateur player in the Manitoba Major Football League, contends that when fans walk out, the Bombers are not discouraged.

“It motivates them, they play better. Not all the time but most of the time. That’s what I like to believe in my heart of hearts.”  

TO SOME, IT'S GARBAGE

Harvey Smith, Winnipeg city councillor for Daniel McIntyre, declared the Garbage and Recycling Master Plan concerning for low-income Winnipeg residents and those on a pension at yesterday’s council meeting.

“I am concerned about people on low income being able to afford this, people on pensions,” Smith stated, the shake of his grasp evident as his coffee cup quivered.

He was referring to an additional $50 Winnipeg residents will begin to see on their water bills near the end of 2012; tax dollars that will help Winnipeg rise from its current 15% diversion rate.   

Concern was also expressed by Mynarski councillor Ross Eadie, who disapproved of the sole dollar amount to be collected by all residents, regardless of income or garbage production levels. 

“I cannot vote for this garbage plan if we do not do it in a fair way,” he noted minutes before the motion was passed.

Residents will receive bins for waste, and the plan orders a charge for bags additional to those inside on top that tagged to water bills. While well-intentioned, it remains questionable if the initiative will encourage a healthier environment through increased recycling or merely provoke residents to eliminate waste in a way that is harmful.            

Lucy Morales-Katz, a Fort Rouge resident, is convinced the latter is underway.

“I believe the new plan will prove, for many people, to be more of an incentive to discard garbage illegally than to recycle.”

Charleswood resident Jennifer Harris agrees, even citing an example.

“There is a small field by Murray Avenue, north of Main Street; I’ve noticed a lot of people already dump their garbage there and I feel that this will only increase as people try to avoid paying extra.”

Many alternatives to the plan should have been considered, argued Harris’s husband, Kyle Harris.

“During fall and spring cleaning season, the city should create more places to drop off grass and leaves to be composted, rather than simply charging for extra bags of garbage.”

Jennifer Harris nodded her head in agreement and commented on the indiscriminate nature of a flat rate. She suggested census forms as an appropriate way to assign increases in tax dollars to individuals of varying income and garbage production levels.

“Census forms should be used to determine how many bins should be allotted to different households and the amount each household should have to pay.”

SOMETHING TO REMEMBER

Between 1980-88, Iranians lived in the dark.

“Every day after five or six o’clock it was all dark, and we should not have any lights on because of the bombing. The enemies come and see if there is any lights somewhere, they come and bomb that place,” said Azizeh Ferdowsi, 62.

Ferdowsi, an Iranian, entered Canada in 1988 with her husband, daughter, and son. The enemy was Iraq: a country northwest of her home in Bushehr, Iran, that invaded in September 1980 following the Islamic Revolution of the previous year.

“Canada was not involved in the war and we did not choose to come here,” she explained. “We were brought to Winnipeg as refugees.”

In 1979, Iranians rallied and protested an economic crisis that yielded high prices and food shortages across the country. The public outcry became the Revolution, Hossein Bashiriyeh wrote in The State and Revolution in Iran.    

In The History of Iran, Elton L. Daniel wrote the eight year Iran-Iraq war was over a number of things, including an agreement Iraq made with Iran in 1975 about the border between the two countries, the comfort Iran and Iraq offered the other’s enemies during early 1980, and fear, ideology, and emotion in general.

Ferdowsi does not know what the war was about.

“I do not know why it happened. And no result come of the war, but so many casualties from both countries,” she said while studying a map of the world mounted upon the wall of her office. “Many people from Iran’s side, we lost our homes, our kids, our properties. Myself, I had a house, but we had to flee the city, we had to leave everything behind: all the furniture, everything. We had to escape.”

A button pinned on Ferdowsi’s shirt pictures two girls: they are her granddaughters. Both her children are married now.

“At that time my son, 19 years old, he was ready to go to army. I didn’t want him to go to army. I remember we had a clothing store. My husband and I sold our store and then we give all the money to the smuggler to take my son to Pakistan, where he meet us in 1986.”

Her daughter was merely two.

“While we still in Iran, I had to go to the gas station to put gas in the car. There was a big truck just running and my daughter was screaming because the noise- she thought it was bombing.”

Ferdowsi blinks her eyes as she remembers what happened.

“I was screaming and I was telling him ‘shut down your engine! Because you are just staying there shut it down!’ Everyone was just looking for some gas to put in the car. If something happen they can flee to another city.”

In the dark one evening, Ferdowsi saw the light of an explosive.

“I remember a rocket came behind our building and many people were homeless there. They were killed. And all the blood was all over our wall on the building. And it was really scary, and we just screamed,” she shakes her head.

“We screamed.”