I’m chasing my tale over at NJN Network, writing, filming and not much personal time. Argh. Getting back to music with an appearance at Baba’s last night. They say you could hear a pin drop during “I can’t get over you.” Promise promise promise to record and post soon…

Another Zone, by Stephen Pate

Is love there when you’re not at home
Or is it there when you’re all alone
Or when you’re talking on the phone
Or in another zone

Is it strong when you are weak
Has words no lips can speak
Has a smile when life is bleak
Never angry or in a pique.

Yes love is never overdue
Like a book when you’re through
Never gone even when you
Are away but for a day true
For love is words I love you

Change is in the air. I’ve got the flu so a fever induced me to consolidate all my blogs into NJN Network. Thing usually work out better when with a fever. During one session years ago I invented the word “Aquilium” from aquila for “eagle” and yum for yum because I was hungry.

A couple of years ago I recorded “Your Song” in a fever over two days spent dragging one instrument after the other into my home office. Your Song by Stephen Pate I’ve got to record that again when I’m not wonky but it’s cute that way with all the strange timing and strings. I played those violins one by one, whew!

So this week it’s cold cum flu driving me nuts and turning out 15 stories yesterday. It’s 6 AM and the count is 9 stories already today. It’s always this way – waking and sleeping. Now back to sleep. If you’re not feeling well either, I’ll commiserate with you.

Seagate has admitted the unusually high number of problems with its Barracuda 1 TB drives, Barracuda 1 TB 72000.11 drive failures on Jaunuary 16th, 2009. The word got out and back to Seagate at warp speed. After initially ignoring the problem, they promised a firmware fix and data recovery services according The Register, who first reported the story. “The company will provide a free firmware upgrade for those affected by the problem, and if you’ve lost data thanks to this firmware issue, it will provide free data recover services as well.” Link to Seagate to see if your hard drive is affected or read the Register story here. All’s well that ends well.

And should you care?

By Stephen Pate
January 18, 2009
with reports from ZDNet and PC World

Of course you should care. We all like something new and Windows 7 promises to be new. The release date is rumoured to be late 2009 but Microsoft is officially saying 2010.

There are Windows 7 Beta’s flying around and some people say it’s faster than XP and Vista. How much faster? Twice as fast but then speed isn’t everything.

Other people hate the changes since they like the old interface, even before Windows XP.

Love it or hate it, faster or slower – Windows 7 will dominate operating systems and our computing lives from 2010 onward. That is until Windows 8.

By Stephen Pate
January 17, 2009

We hate change and resist it with a passion. Now that the word is out about Windows 7, the articles are everywhere: should you wait for Windows 7, get Vista or try to keep Windows XP? CNET has a user story which is interesting if not instructive.

Of course you should upgrade to Vista. Why not? You heard it had bugs? For a generation raised on technology it’s hard to believe we are so stuck in the past.

Here’s a stunning revelation: every operating system since the beginning, since Noah pre-released Ark 1.0, had bugs and incompatible drivers, devices and programs. That’s the nature of technology. New things are better, hopefully, but always different and usually a bit of trouble. There is one law I’ve learned: you can’t go backwards in technology or life. Try driving your car backwards to the store, work or Toronto.

Everyone online and friends told me to avoid Vista and for the first time in my life I listened. When I bought two computers with Vista, I wasted time trying to revert to XP which is a great operating system but out of date. I got my copy of XP on 9/11 which is sort of weird but it ran out of steam eventually, like George Bush always talking about terrorists as if life didn’t move on. Wi-fi connections with Vista are much simpler for example.

HP ought to be shot for not updating their drivers to Vista sooner. They did this once or twice before and it reflects their muddle, lack of profit or stubbornness. It also gives their competitors a window of opportunity to take market share. Try a new printer manufacturer like Lexmark, Canon or Dell. HP aren’t the only or best printers on the market.

I use Sonar for audio recording and the bulletin boards tell you to stick with XP which is a crock. So we ran around trying to prop up Sonar on old XP boxes. Then Cakewalk upgraded Sonar, not Vista, to use Microsoft’s new and better audio drivers. Wow, Sonar works much faster with less latency. The lesson is Microsoft and the other manufacturers are in a competitive race to improve technology to meet our demands for faster, cheaper and more. When they make a leap forward, run with them. Should Microsoft have kept patching XP forever? Why?

Up until a few years ago, I liked to work at the beta stage for Windows, each and every version. It was exciting. We learned a lot and felt cool to keep ahead of the pack. I installed lots of trouble but none of that killed me and since people were paying me to be in the know that paid off.

And the silly talk didn’t start with Vista: it’s been the same right back to Windows 3.0. Oh, don’t install that or you’ll go blind. Windows NT? No stay with Novell. Windows for Workgroups? No that doesn’t work which was a lie because we had a WFWG system at work and one at home.

Naysayers are everywhere in life, even in technology. A lot of them write for magazines and feed on fear. Here’s my decision grid on when to upgrade:

- Like to try new things and learn from experience – beta stage
- Need some new feature or productivity – when released, you need and can afford it
- Somewhat nervous – wait one year or Service Pack 1
- Run a major IT network – at least SP 1 or 2
- Own a typewriter – stick with DOS

Stephen Pate was introduced to an IBM 360 in 1970 and it was love at first sight. In 1980 He founded Island Computer Ltd, a systems integrator, and Aquilium Software, an international water and electrical software developer, which he took public. He has been writing about technology since 1981. He has had a long term working relationship with Great Plains Software and Microsoft including participating in the world wide launch of Windows NT. When he has the time, he loves listening to complete Italian operas. He is a musician, songwriter, journalist, social advocate, business person and collector of life’s experiences who spends too much time on the computer.

The word is Plasma is going almost gone with LCD’s getting better each month. The real reason is manufacturers can’t make money on plasma at the lower price points.Plasma is still better at sports and deep blacks but c’est la vie.

LCD vs Plasma in 2009

Stephen Pate

The Register reports 1 TB Seagate Barracuda drives are failing at abnormally high rate. Back up back up back. There is no posted fix.

Stephen Pate

By Stephen Pate

A new tech standard endorsed at CES (PC World) promises to replace Bluetooth which has been too long promising and too little doing it. Yahoo Tech reports

“TransferJet wireless capability is getting closer to reality. The technology, which is being developed by major camera makers Sony, Olympus, Canon, Kodak, Nikon, is intended to make it easier for to transfer your images between devices wirelessly. Now Toshiba is getting behind the wireless standard showing off a laptop here at CES that uses the technology.”

“Toshiba’s demonstration included a laptop with the technology embedded in its palm rest, and embedded into a mobile internet device from Toshiba Japan. Take the camera, rest it on the palm rest, and it will automatically sync your files over to your laptop’s hard disk drive. The device needs to be within 2mm of the transfer area.”

Sounds cool to me. I’ve supported Bluetooth for years and find it totally useless except for drivers who want to pretend they are Men in Black.With the major camera makers onside, we should see it available by next Christmas.

By Stephen Pate
with stories from Phone Scoop and Bloomberg

Motorola, the original handset manufacturer, is getting read to exit the biz. Phone Scoop reports they may be laying off half their workforce.

“Phone Scoop has learned that Motorola’s handset division is expecting a large round of layoffs as soon as this week, according to someone familiar with Motorola’s plans. The layoffs are confirmed to be significant and may amount to 50% of the entire handset operation.”

That would be no surprise to me: my last Motorola RAZR is a case of unfinished engineering. The software to sync with Outlook never worked no matter how hard I pushed support. If you pick it up on your hand, as opposed to your mouth, the ringer can be inadvertently turned off.

Bloomberg reports 4,000 layoffs for the struggling cell mfg.an. 15 “(Bloomberg) — Motorola Inc., the second-biggest U.S. seller of mobile phones, cut an additional 4,000 jobs as consumer demand languishes under the strain of the recession.”

The recession is a precipitating event. The reality is Motorola lost their way when competitors had more than human engineering behind their phones. They were easier to use in today’s connected world.

I’ve been using Motorola phones since those bricks back in the 1980’s. I had a cool voice activated car phone in 1988 that would respond to “Call Home” with a robot voice. The StarTAC was a revolutionary small phone that re-defined how small a cell phone could be. My brother who worked for Siemens was responsible for product development of the StarTac screens and early development of the color plasma for cell phones.

Motorola knows technology but what they don’t understand is how to write software that is easy to use. Samsung, Nokia and other phone manufacturers have less arrogant development teams that are not living in the past like Motorola. Their reaction to the bad software problem on the RAZR told me three years ago they were history. Snooze you lose in this market.

from the two-steps-forward-one-step-back dept

From TechDirt

Apple got a lot of press last week when it announced that it was going to remove the DRM from songs it sold through the iTunes Music Store. That’s a great thing in itself, since it removes the barriers legitimate customers faced in playing back music they purchased on the device of their choice. But details are coming out, and it’s not all good news: the songs are watermarked (via Slashdot) with the email address of the iTunes account used to purchase them.

This is certainly better than DRM, but it’s still not great. The biggest issue is that it links files to a particular consumer — which will likely lead to the RIAA using the watermarks to attempt to “prove” that people actively shared songs and sue them. It seems inevitable that the label cartel will attempt to use the marks to inflict liability on users if music bearing their email address appears online. Which is great, until a person’s iPod gets stolen and the music ripped from it, or a friend grabs music off of somebody’s hard drive without their knowledge. The RIAA’s legal strategy has been based on flimsy evidence; removing the DRM but adding watermarks simply gives them another way to “prove” people shared music they purchased online, even though the marks won’t actually prove anything.

When I was 13, someone paid me $10 to write 350 words per week for the Halifax Mail Star. It was a record review column where I gave my teenage opinion on 4 new albums a month: rock, country, jazz and pop. Most of my life, someone paid me to write or promised to pay me. I’ve written on theatre, arts policy, technology, business consulting, poetry, short stories and journalism. I’ve written for newspapers, magazine, journals, for hire, and for the web.

Somehow with Web 2.0 and social media, creative people have gotten suckered into providing content for social media sites for nothing.

MySpace, Facebook, YouTube – the whole bunch of them are making money off creative people who post their work for free. Those companies are making money.

What changed the rules, as in you work you get paid?

This won’t last long or the creative quality of the content is going south.

Cabinet

Once again I have been passed over for a Cabinet post. Just what is it that I’m doing wrong?

Peter Rukavina

By Stephen Pate
January 11, 2009
with story suggestion by Tech Dirt

While DRM is moving off iTunes music, Apple is still protecting video and proprietary systems like iPod with DRM. DRM or digital rights management makes it harder to download music and ruins CD’s even if you’ve paid full price.

You hate it. I hate it. Everyone hates it except the big labels, content providers and Apple.

Deeplinks reports the whole story Apple Shows us DRM’s True Colors

In fact, an inventory of Apple’s remaining DRM armory makes it vividly clear that DRM (backed by the DMCA) is almost always about eliminating legitimate competition, hobbling interoperability, and creating de facto technology monopolies:

* Apple uses DRM to lock iPhones to AT&T and Apple’s iTunes App Store;

* Apple uses DRM to prevent recent iPods from syncing with software other than iTunes (Apple claims it violates the DMCA to reverse engineer the hashing mechanism);

* Apple claims that it uses DRM to prevent OS X from loading on generic Intel machines;

* Apple’s new Macbooks feature DRM-laden video ports that only output certain content to “approved” displays;.

* Apple requires iPod accessory vendors to use a licensed “authentication chip” in order to make accessories to access certain features on newer iPods and iPhones;

* The iTunes Store will still lock down movies and TV programs with FairPlay DRM;

* Audiobook files purchased through the iTunes Store will still be crippled by Audible’s DRM restrictions.

DRM only slows down sales of products and frustrates novice users. Hacks are easily available online.

By Stephen Pate

January 11, 2009

Over the past week it became clear that Facebook has suffered a major security breach.Several people are reporting getting wall post messages but nothing is posted to the wall, such as

From: Facebook (wallmaster+etywsqae@facebookmail.com)
Sent: January 12, 2009 5:15:15 PM
To: subneb@ (hotmail.com subneb@hotmail.com)

Sarah commented on your status: “Always wanted to try viagra or cialis? Now is your chance..Free”http://www.fortmurk.com

It appears email addresses have been stolen from Facebook and setup on another server to execute the spam sales pitch.

SC Magazine for Security Professionals says the wall hack spams the user email accounts from Facebook and recommends users not click through the link.

We tried the link and it appears to be a pill pushing site which could be a prelude to a trojan attack. The spam artists have foiled Facebook’s security so far and are said to be sophisticated.

The rogue Facebook application is suspected to be Secret Crush according to Facebookadvice.com

A new and more virulant wall post has been sending pictures of child torture to Walls, More Facebook Spam … Don’t Click This!.

Be careful. Re-set your password and push Facebook email to your junk folder. Do not use the same password for Facebook and other sites since the hackers can see what they want on Facebook apparently.

Facebook faces new challenges everyday besides running out of cash. Will they survive?

MacDonald's, whoa did the price go up!

By Stephen Pate

The humble hamburger just got the heist when MacDonald’s upped the price recently to over $8 with taxes for the Angus burger meal.

Wendy’s is only slightly behind them with new higher pricing.

The poor girl at MacDonalds tried to tell me the price was the same.  I’ve had a MacDonald’s hamburger too many times not to be a connoisseur on quality and price.

I wouldn’t mind paying more if the staff were getting something close to  a living wage, north of $10 per hour.  That is not the case for PEI’s wage slaves working in fast food joints.

So cheap and quick is only quick now.  Just quick and greasy.

None of the fast food hamburgers is a great meal.

My favourite hamburger in town is at Baba’s on University Avenue where it’s something less than $10 and more than I can eat. Real meat,  great fries (or rice if you are sensible), some veggies and they serve beer. Cedar’s serves the same thing but the atmosphere is wrong for me.

Tell me what’s your best hamburger and why? Anywhere in the world will do.

Mark Zuckerberg, CEO and founder of Facebook, BusinessWeek photo

You have to thank people when they help you now that my Facebook is back.

Dear Mark Zuckerberg (sent by Facebook)

Thanks for the prod to Appeals Support.How many emails can I send without breaking the rules?I know you hate the question but what if you have to take the Interstate to San Francisco and they don’t tell you which lane to stay in, when to pass and what the min and max speeds are? Then State Troopers are pulling people off the road when they decide it’s the right thing.

Your process, respectfully, is contrary to natural justice and any other business rules I have seen. I’ve been in IT since 1971. I ran and owned three IT companies, the last one was publicly held. We would never conceive of being arbitrary in dealing with customers.

Usually companies bend over backwards to provide excellent customer service and not tick off customers. You must know Facebook is getting a bad rap.

I remember when IBM treated customers like mushrooms. I was a customer and a VAR-MAP. We vowed never to do business with them again as a community and when Microsoft came along and then Compaq, people left IBM in droves.

It will happen to you if you don’t become more customer centric. No one can defy the laws of physics.

Facebook has made great strides but you can disappear in Flikr-time if you abuse the people who put you there, especially in Web 2.0 Remember, the customer is king.

Steverino

Turn this up loud!

One of the great advantages of Catholic football teams is the Hail Mary, a hopelessly long pass near the last seconds of the game. Make it and the game is won. Protestants don’t have the luxury on calling on the Blessed Virgin for anything let alone last minute football game reprieves.

So my Hail Mary to Mark Zuckerberg worked.

He sent me a nice, short note, not one of my strong points, and hocus pocus the “Appeals Support team” turned on my account.

I think the whole thing is juvenile. An appeals department run by a bunch of 22 years old Fascists! Facebook is trying to get even with adults over their end-of-GenX status.

Courts have appeals. First they write laws and tell you what the speed limit is on the InterState. Then they give you a ticket, you hire a lawyer and go before a judge.

Facebook is like vigilante justice in Mad Max – everybody’s got a weapon the charge and sentence are carried out with the pull of a trigger.

And now for some music

Mark Zuckerberg, founder and CEO of Facebook, photo by Scott Beale / Laughing Squid

Laughing Squid

Hey it works in football and why not in Web 2.0.

Over the weekend I sent Facebook CEO and founder Mark Zuckerberg my “sad compliant” about the Fascist disabling of my Facebook account. I miss ya all yes I do, I do.

Today he replied. First my message and then Mark’s reply. You never know: the ball can get caught in the end zone and touchdown, two points. Game over, cheerleaders all weekend.

I still don’t get it. The Facebook page for Kyle Bambrick is supposed to have 5,000 new members in one weekend. It’s not logical that my precious and dear 1,200 friends are a bother .

Message

I am a former computer exec – went public 1997 retired 1999 at age 50. I have post polio syndrome and decided to become a disability and social advocate.

I had a great Facebook account with 1,200 friends. I sent birthday greetings each day to dozens of people, shared videos, photos all the things Facebook is about. I was polite.

I am also a social activist and apparently had my account disabled for reasonable free speech.

One would hardly think a young Web 2.0 company like Facebook would practice discrimination illegal under the ADA and Constitution but that appears to be the case.

I am a prolific blogger, maintaining 12 blogs daily plus multiple video sites and pursue disability activism relentlessly.

While a reasonable person, I take umbrage at my account being disabled.

I intend to start another blog just to discuss the Fascist behaviour at Facebook unless my account and all groups are operational post haste.

Here’s a sample post. http://electicmindbeautiful.wordpress.com/2009/01/02/dont-mange-merde-even-from-the-fascists-at-facebook/

If you want to make me famous, just leave my account disabled. Or you can explain what is going on. I will then have a topic to write about with a world wide audience.

You may own the company but we believe in free speech and disability rights in our world.

Cheers, and let the games begin. Stephen Pate

Mark’s reply - hope springs eternal right?

Hi,

This sounds like an issue that Facebook’s support team could help with. I’ve forwarded this message along to them, and someone from that team will reach out to you as soon as possible.

Thanks,

Mark

Related stories

Don’t mange merde even from the Fascists at Facebook

Going out of business sign for Facebook

Charlottetown, just another June day (CBC News photo)

By Stephen Pate

We are not writing stories about the weather. Too many writers without a thought in their heads are writing stories about weather all the time.  You can search Google for weather stories until your brain is numb and then watch “Survivors”. We think weather only clutters up a story. Does it really matter to music if the night was dark and cloudy?

The chances are 100% that the night will be dark and cloudy isn’t that far behind.

My characters are angry because an elephant is standing on their foot. Or their lover just slept in a threesome with the librarian and their best friend. Or the guitar string broke while impressing the salesman at a music store with “Stairway to Heaven”.

Sunny, windy, rainy and snowy – of course it’s snowy for the love of Peter Paul and Mary. It’s winter time and we live in Canada.

How can snow be news except for some person who just moved here from China or Dubai? For them, snow might be news since Richard Brown told them about the Garden of Eden on PEI.

So here’s our weather for the next three months: cold days and nights, with wind sometimes heavy and snow sometimes white.

The sun will shine from 7 AM to about 5 PM. If you can’t see it, take an airplane ride: the sun is always shining above the clouds.

Paste this on your morning coffee cup, bathroom mirror, computer screen and front door.

When in doubt, stick your head out the window. You may be pleasantly surprised by warm, calm and sunny weather. Or not.

We’ll report the weather again in April. You will have saved days of your life and hours of insipid conversation by not worrying about the weather until then.

Later on this spring, when the weather improves, look for our new book: Weather and whether or not you can change it.

We are printing only 1,877 copies for the immigrants who made Robert Ghiz and his friends rich with their PNP money.

Web 2.0 Fascism

By Stephen Pate

My dad taught me never to take shit from anyone. Talk about an independent streak. That was a pretty brave thing for him to teach a little crippled boy since everyone has to mange merde most of your life.

That streak of independence, a poor man’s Cool Hand Luke, has stuck with me. Cool Hand Luke combined inebriation with ne pas mange merde. He continued to act inappropriately and generally doomed himself.

Thus my variation on the theme is don’t take shit but keep yourself out of trouble, sort of a high wire act.

I’m been reasonably successful at relationships, jobs, career etc. until the coup de gras at which point I walk away, fight or get even.

As you might gather, I’m not a joiner. I’d rather quit the JW’s, Rotary or any other body into group-think. I’m into free think.

Friends have been importuning me to re-join Facebook. I do miss the fun but I don’t hang around with Fascists. While we think of Mussolini and Hitler as Fascists, the term has become synonymous with  “exercise of strong autocratic or dictatorial control” (Merriam Webster Online Dictionary)

Facebook is the Web 2.0 version of Fascism. Actually, there is a lot of Fascism on Web 2.0.

Have you read those agreements you sign to get free this or that on the web. They can take your personal information, sell it to anyone or use it anyway they like and you can’t do diddly.

I knew this in the back of my mind and Peter Rukavina’s article reminded me that Facebook was not a nice company.

Then they started hassling me. Wrong move. I don’t menge merde for anyone. First sending messages to all my friends was bad. Then sending to 500 was bad. Like true Fascists, Facebook won’t let you know the limits so you have to guess if you’re going too fast on the 401.

At the last 200 messages was too many. So one day I sent 1,200 and watched them panic. Disabled. Well I’m already disabled so that was no threat! I laugh at your stinkin’ rules.

There is a real Fascist story below that event but I’ll save that for another blog.

So all my 1,200 Facebook friends, RSS this blog or send me your email address.

Mine is stephen_pate@hotmail.com and has been since Hotmail opened. I’ve got tons of gmail accounts but I love Hotmail. So basic – if you’re not in my email list, bingo you’re spam. What could be easier?

Stay free and I will remember you.
You’ll see me hanging around
Singing on a street or in a bar
Laughing with my friends
Keeping free but never far
Always there and always caring
I’ll remember you oh yes I will.
@ copyright 2009 Stephen Pate

By Stephen Pate

Lessons in life can come from unexpected quarters and people you wouldn’t suspect. I learned honesty not from the bible as my mother wished but from a humble woman named Rose Llewellyn.

Rose Llewellyn was from Antigonish, Nova Scotia. In 2002 after she died, I discovered that her sister was married to one of my cousins.

Rose was married to Dick Llewellyn, a radio engineer on the the Baffin, a research ship with the Bedford Institute of Oceanography.

They lived in Edmonds Grounds in Armdale, Nova Scotia. Edmonds Grounds was a family estate across from the Horseshoe Island beach, at the foot of Quinpool Road.

It’s called Spinnaker’s today and all the old houses are gone. The anchor from the Mont Blanc flew 3 miles in the air and landed there during the Halifax Explosion. We used the anchor as first base playing scrub baseball.

Scrub baseball 1st base or Mont Blanc anchor blown to Edmunds Grounds Armdale NS by the Halifax Explosion

I knew Dick first because he was teaching me radio electronics when he was ashore.

Joe Lewin, one of my best childhood friends, came from Antigonish to live with them when his mother got sick. We chummed around for many years until Joe moved back to Antigonish.

We didn’t go the the same school because Joe, Rose, Dick, and all my cousins on my Dad’s side were Roman Catholic. He went the the Catholic school.

My mom was a Jehovah’s Witness so we went to public school. Despite my mother’s warnings about Catholics, Joe and I hung out fishing, swimming, boating, playing cowboys and Indians and all those things boys do.

I spent a lot of time sitting at Rose Llewellyn’s kitchen table, eating cookies and listening to Rose talk about life. Even when Joe was back with his mom, I would visit Rose. She was my second mum. When Dick came home from sea, he would be a second dad to me teaching me all about resistors, capacitors and DC electronics. He helped me build my first radio from a kit.

One day during school lunch Rose asked me to go to the IPC Store and pick up a few things for her. I liked the job because she would tip me 5 or 10 cents, even if the walk was hard for a kid wearing a leg brace.

So off I went through our secret path in the pine woods, across the school yard and to the IPC store where the Purcell’s Cove Road meets the Herring Cove Road. When I got back, Rose counted my change as she always did.

“You have ten cents too much,” she said.

We counted it again and sure enough the girl at the store had given me back too much money.

“We can keep it,” I said.

“No, you better take it back,” she insisted.

“They will never know,” I protested.

And then came Rose’s last word on the subject “Do you want ten cents to stand between you and heaven.”

Now JW’s believe you didn’t go to heaven. My mother had also taught me that Catholics and the Pope were the next thing to the devil as in liars, thieves, fornicators and drunks.

Here I was Mr. Goody-Two-Shoes, holier than thou, JW boy being taught a lesson in honesty from a Catholic. This was a moral and religious quandary that shook me to my boots.

Gulping down my pride, I turned on my heels and trudged back through the woods, across the school yard where the kids were lining up for class, past the principal who gave me a dirty look and into the IPC store.

The girl didn’t thank me or reward me and the Heaven didn’t open up to angels singing on high about my honesty. I went to class late and got a detention.

I just knew that Rose Llewellyn was the most religious and honest woman I’d ever met and she was a Roman Catholic.

Rose taught me two lessons I’ve never forgotten.

One – right wing Protestants or any religion for that matter don’t have the franchise on morality and honesty.

Two – don’t let a dime get between you and heaven.

By Stephen Pate

January 1, 2009

Being a social advocate is not the easiest job. You are constantly prodding a reluctant government and society to change.What keeps me going is the progress we have made in just a few years. Certainly the recent passing of Kay Reynolds and thinking about her life’s work spurs me onward. She and others who worked tirelessly for the benefit of others are examples to us even after they pass on.

We have made great progress even in the past two years. When I tried to get anyone interested in the $1 million cutback in disability support spending in 2006, there was nothing but a wall of indifference. Today people are discussing disabilities and other social issues regularly in the paper and in public. Yes the Liberal government has tried to deep-six disability reform but they will not succeed. Ghiz will be gone and we will have significant reform.

Two years ago, people tried to belittle my letters to the Guardian an Graphic about disabilities and seniors without wheelchairs. Today, those are recognized social problems. Poverty is moving from a charity case to a problem we can solve.

Government corruption is no longer a backroom story: it’s headlines and even story of the year with the PNP Immigrant Scam. The December 27, 2008 story in the Guardian Deal over Internet angers Liberal got the public talking with 57 comments that discussed underlying issues such as 1) the need for more open tenders, 2) political patronage and 3)corruption and deceit in the Ghiz government. It was a decent discussion of the social and governmental ills I have been writing about for two years.

I was encouraged by the level of discussion and the number of people who used their real names which rarely happened in the past. Islanders are getting fed up with the corruption of the Ghiz government and taking the leap to open and fearless criticism. Especially encouraging was I didn’t have to make a single comment to keep it moving along.

So despite the fact we don’t have seniors in the Disability Support Program, nor has the cutback been returned, nor has UPEI put accessible parking back on campus, we are making progress. We will solve these and other problems.

I take little credit for what is happening. Consider the 22,000 people on PEI with disabilities who live through their pain and challenges. Consider too the tireless caregivers, parents, spouses, friends and helpers who make their lives bearable. These people are saints.

Some people thank me for being an advocate with emails and one-on-one comments. Other people take it on themselves to tell me to bugger off.

On New Year’s Eve an old friend decided that Old Ang Syne need to come at 5 PM. According to him, he was already over the 0.8 reading.

First he showered me with faint praise for the good work I do then gave the example of the person I should be. Apparently someone had accomplished more in 10 short years than all the other social advocates on PEI and they had a NICE personality.

After supper he called back to continue the thread until my migraine was out of control. Such is life.

This I take with a grain of salt since I am a nice person and get along with more people than I can even remember. If I wasn’t social, my work would be impossible.

However, after someone who is abusing the poor, the disabled or the otherwise disenfranchised refuses to help, change or even acknowledge the problems at hand, well I do put them on my public exposure list. And that’s the way it works.

You know I have a disability which is characterized by fatigue so you might wonder how I get all the writing, research, videos and everything else done. Sharon Cameron, deputy minister of Social Services and Seniors asked me that question, perhaps hoping to discover my Achilles Heel.

Well, I’m not telling you will tell you a story!

At about the worst time in my life, in the middle of a family crisis and when walking had become next to impossible I said to my lawyer “I apologize for being so slow.”

He replied “You get more work done in a few hours a day than ten new associates all week. I could use you.”

That’s not a boast, just a promise to not quit until the work is done. If you would like to help, don’t hesitate. Volunteer to help someone today and any day.

Jesus said “The harvest truly is great, but the laborers are few: pray you therefore the Lord of the harvest, that he would send forth laborers into his harvest.” Luke 10:2

Everyone can be a worker for social justice and make PEI a truly beautiful home for all. This is not Stephen Pate’s cause: it’s belongs with all of us.

As we begin 2009, we will renew ourselves and work to accomplish good the task.

Happy New Year.

I got your email alerting me to the best books of 2008 from Indigo so I clicked through and picked Jospeh Boyden’s Through Black Spruce. After reading the gushy publishers blurb I stopped.”From internationally acclaimed author Joseph Boyden comes an astonishingly powerful novel of contemporary aboriginal life, full of the dangers and harsh beauty of both forest and city. When beautiful Suzanne Bird… “

If the publisher is already over the top with their prose, what could one expect in the book? Certainly not understated writing?I passed since I already had a membership card in the Survivors’ and Oprah Over-The-Top book clubs.