Summer is (almost) on us, the urge to swim is overwhelming… But why are our lake waters becoming greenish and gluey? Continue reading
For 2014, here is this fresh comic page, scanned at 600 dpi, resized to 300 dpi, then retouched in greytones. It will be the first page of Honors Road, a science fiction manga, from my own Gardeners universe. (It will be published in French and English). It is always a challenge for me drawing sea shore, especially the foreground shallow water.
On the last day of the year, I set myself time to draw comics. Allan Watts suggested to think about what would you like to do if money was no object. Drawing comics is my favourite activity. It helps me crating or re-creating new worlds, and adding to the collective imaginarium.
And this is valid for all fields. Reading, sciences research, music, or even contemplating nature in silence feed our imagination.
Here are two artists-bloggers I discovered recently: Melanie Gillman, who make a good use of color pencils. And I visit the Zen Pencils blog, by artist Gavin Aung Than. The artist draw cartoons from inspitrational quotes.
My good 2014 resolution : each month, I will choose a graphic artist website and give a small amount (5$, a large gourmet coffee)in his or her Cookie Jar.
Artists, musicians, writers, even the more popular among us, do not accumulate great riches. Bottom line-seeking companies, even the most successful, now frown upon paying the artists and even steal their work when they can get away with it.
*
Despite the freezing cold, I wish you all a new year filled with joy and creativity!
Posted in Art, Comics, Society
Tagged Alan Watts, artist, Comics, Gavin Aung Than, manga, Melanie Gillman, New Year, Science-fiction
This is what I added on my Holiday cards this year, as Canada Post announces its plans to shut down the door-to-door mail delivery in cities.
It is a small tribute to all the men and women who are often the sole contact with older people. Already, Canadians living in the country have to drive to their new superboxes. I hope that my future city mailboxe will be in walking distance.
And the Beatles song will never resonate the same way ever:
Please, Mr. Postman…
No need to know how to draw: just do a quick red sketch in the bottom left of your envelope, with a kind word. You may do a small delivery truck if you feel up to the challenge instead of those rounded red mailboxes.
December 14, 2013 in Event, Society
Tagged Canada Posts, Holidays, Postman, Thank-you
From my new imprint Sunday Artist Studio, here comes the brand new Otaku Ladies comic book, in time for the Toronto Fan Expo!
The Otaku Ladies are a trio of uncanny geek girls solving various problems… and sometimes creating them!
Sample of interior art.
Come and meet me at table A-78 (with author Liz Strange) of the artist’s alley, Toronto Fan Expo, South building (at the Metro Toronto Convention centre)
Sunday Artist Studio will publish YA and all-ages stories.
As this comic, Negotiations (a silent SF short 8 pages story, originally published in ZIdara9). Rémi Paradis did this nice cover formatting. I will have a few there as well.
Coming soon: Honor Road (SF, 12 part story) 
Honor Road is set in the same universe as The General’s Garden, but a few years later. 
Excerpt from The General’s Garden, 24 pages, B&W, SF.
Posted in Society
Tagged art, Comics, Independant publishing, Otaku Ladies, Toronto Fan Expo
My YA novel Mica, fille de Transyl is a 2013 Trillium Award finalist!
Organised by the Ontario Media Development Corporation, the Trillium awards reward literary excellency in Ontario.
The OMDC supports the province’s creative economy by providing innovative programs, services and funding for the film & television; book & magazine publishing; interactive digital media & music industries.
Moreover, this year, two of the three YA novels belong to the spec-fic genre (outright science fiction for me, anticipation for my colleague Daniel Marchildon). The third novel is in a more familiar crime story genre.
So, as I predicted, SF is finally rising as an acceptable literary genre. It has taken a long undergroung toil and 14 SF novels from my part, to get to see this.
Here, a pic ofthe three Trillium Finalists… at the opening of the Timmins first book fair in April 2008|
From left to right: Daniel Marchildon, Claude Forand, Michèle Laframboise, happily signing together!
Posted in Society
Tagged children's book, Ontario, Science-fiction, Trillium Awards, YA novels
When you feel a dull pain in the chest, you go see your doctor, then you heed his or her advice. You don’t protest, saying: Balance my diet? Exercise? Well my fortune-teller says I can do as I please, so don’t bother me with your “facts”!
But what if a whole government chooses to follow the fortune-teller’s advice? And if it closed all the medicine faculties of Canada, listening to the singsong voice of the fortune-teller… or the fortune makers?
The federal government has decided without consulting any scientific authority, to close the ELA, among other government-supported research programs in Canada.
The Experimental Lakes Area (map here), is a unique whole-ecosystem research facility in northern Ontario. It is the fruit of forty years of research, and capital and human investment.
Like a tree, it has grown into a world -renowned scientific facility on freshwater ecology. It has served diligently to protect the public and the environment, putting in light the role of phosphorus in the eutrophication of lakes (to know more about the subject, read The Algal Bowl, by Vallentyne and Schindler, 2008, or my account, here).
A few of the subjects tackled by research teams:
nutrient pollution and noxious algae (the photo here)
impacts of “acid rain” on lakes
recovery of lakes from acidification
impacts of reservoir flooding
sources of toxic mercury in fish
impacts of “climate change” on lakes
removal of nearshore vegetation
impacts of hormonal mimics
impacts of cage aquaculture
As I explained in an older post, the work of scientifics faces a huge perception challenge by the “I want simple answers NOW“ crowd. Scientists toil endlessly to collect data, to accept errors, pursuing the course regardless of the difficulties. They strive to understand the natural processes and the impact of humans activities on our freshwaters and their myriad of lifes.
The ELA is a collective book that must stay open for all to consult.
To build this 58-bead necklace of knowledge took years. The Experimental Lakes Area, nurtured by students, teachers, citizens, embodies the strong human desire to learn.
We should create a movement called Ignorant no More.
*
— A few links
The Experimental Lakes Research Area website
A sound reflection on government science, part one and part two
A witty article explaining some scientific expressions
Fight to save Experimental Lakes Area runs its course (http://www.kenoradailyminerandnews.com/2013/01/02/fight-to-save-experimental-lakes-area-runs-its-course) Cet article suit les démarches de
Attention Bryan Hayes: This water issue hasn’t gone away (https://www.sootoday.com/content/news/details.asp?c=51916)
List of federal MPS – find your own MP!
Save ELA: http://saveela.org/what-can-you-do-to-help/
Facebook group for ELA. https://www.facebook.com/groups/saveela/
Sense of Wonder – portrait of me discovering SF at 12, in my father’s library
Letter to my conservative members of Parliament,
You are all fathers and mothers.
You engrave your valuables and appreciate the ability to track your stolen jewels. You acknowledge the importance of driving lessons and of drunk driving control. When you renew your car plates licenses, you do not feel treated like a criminal.
When your personal physician warns you that you consume too much fat, you listen to his advice. You do not put his science(1) in question because you would rather eat a bag of chips. When a dangerous toy threatens the health of our children, you act upon it.
Unless the toy is a gun, from a simple rifle to semi-automatic assault sniper weapons. Then, you suddenly cross your arms.
Against all the facts and the experience of criminologists and police, you mention a “feeling of freedom,” or a “feeling of being treated like a criminal.” Just like the census long-form and the renforcement of imprisonment, against science, reason and verifiable facts, you oppose a “feeling”.
This “feeling” has been built from scratch by the propaganda of the arms dealers. Helped by powerful American associations, they aim to protect the billions of dollars in annual market sales of weapons, holsters, and ammunition in Canada. They use the same worn-out buzzwords, a mix of freedom and paranoia, hatred of others, by flattering the “vigilante” part of us.(2)
If at least your government proposed an alternative… but no. No limit to the number of weapons, as easy to get as chocolate tablet, acquired by an unchecked individual. Not even a mandatory engraving on guns. No GPS chips on them. Maybe you are expecting a superhero?
I do not write to make you change your mind, nor prevent you from making this act of autodafe by burning the registry.
It is clear that you have seen the Light and that reason alone will not make you, at the very least, keep semi-automatic assault weapons on the register . Weapons such as those used for the massacre at my engineering school carried on in December 1989. Several similar acts of revenge have been carried out by a few “law-abiding citizens” frustrated, depressed or confused…
Lost in its religious delirium of the battle of Good against Evil, your government will make life easier for the criminals stealing weapons from legitimate owners, or buying weapons and ammunition for resale into traffic. (Ooops! Excuse me, someone stole my gun!) In addition, it will force (I mean: compell) otherwise very nice people to arm themselves for defense … and some might shoot before asking questions.
Combined with your hardened prison sentences and your cuts of social support, destroying the registry will raise the criminal activity, small-time criminals against which you bring out the big cannons.
This “small-time” crime rise concerns discouraged indigent people, lacking a future. Their outbursts of violence or self-destruction will delight the fans of trivia, sustaining our expensive legal system. Weapons as easy to buy as a box of chocolates, overflowing prisons, busy hospitals treating the victims of trauma will complement this flourishing economy.
As for serious crime, the organized greed deeply embedded in our institutions and finance? Your silence speaks volumes.
So now, you have come full circle, erasing my hundreds of volunteer hours to limit the social damage (plus the work of thousands of law abiding citizens, all freedom lovers as you are) done since the December 6, 1989 rampage, my own September 11.
But maybe you crave, without acknowledging it, the excitement of a city rife with crime. As long as it stay away from you.
***
(1) it would be interesting to settle your science limit. Where do science stops and ideology begins?
(2) And they feed the confusion about interdiction and control. There are hunters in my family, and none feel threatened when they register either their gun or their car license.
(The story of the market, told by itself)
1
Trade was my father
private property my mother
I am their blind offspring
my invisible hand
weaves the net
where the strong struggles
where the weak sinks
I am my own law
above all laws
the harsh and lush jungle
where offer and demand
copulate in total freedom
I am the market
In my veins flow
gold and silver
myrrh and incense
a river of desire flooding
the Stock Exchanges
I crown ephemeral kings
crashing on the morrow
TSX 300
Standard&Poor’s 500
New-York Montréal
London Tokyo Toronto
I relish the panic
shaking the floor
under the sheep
running for their Freedom 55
all selling at the same time
then jumping off the cliff
Black Tuesday
Ash Wednesday
Techno bubble collapse
I am the funnel
of frantic day trade
the competition black hole
the goodwill abyss
the glue binding
always bigger mergers
blessed by the Minister
catalysts of a wealth
more and more concentrated
capitalism is dead
long live monopolism!
2
I remember
the merchant fleets
sailing to new worlds
intrepid soldiers sparing no foe
northern spruces cut for timber
tropical forests burned to the ground
tribes decimated by small pox
fur trade slave trafficking
anemic African colonies
drained to the last drop
today
vampire derricks are sucking up
Earth’s rich dark blood
spilling it over the oceans
so many Exxon Valdez capsizing
on the beaches
where goo-covered gulls
totter on soiled sands
still I hunger
tomorrow I will bite
into the tender flesh
of the planet
eating my way
to its liquid iron-nickel core
that I will drink
with a long straw
3
I am the joyful dance
of the sales not to miss
Halloween Christmas
Boxing Day Easter
Mother’s Day Father’s Day
summer sales
back-to-school sales
giant warehouses selling adjusted fares
look at the price wars
my grocery manager is now
a humble cashier at Mega Mart
I am the peddler
of staggering mortgages rates
accordion indexes
volatile currencies
lost homes
ordered bankruptcy
consumers chained
to their credit cards
it’s like the Titanic
the rich in their safe boats
the poor drowning in their debts
I am the supplier
of private prisons
filled to the brim
with bodies fallen
between the cracks
of a social net
cast without conviction
by tamed governments
following a hard right diet
their deficit girdled
by savvy promoters
safe behind their gated communities
watched over by their praetorian guard
I am the call-girl
catering to the cartels
of organized cupidity
sitting on the pyramid’s summit
not seeing the children
at the pyramid’s foot
running from the death squads
I speak trough the mouth
of your machine guns
I am the market
of import-export
made in China
self-made men
who never smell
the decrepit shops
delocalized in Asia
close to the slums
where workers and rats
compete for scraps
I am the Free Trade
built on slavery
and inherited servitudes
of the cane workers
tax-free zones
maquiladoras eating
fifteen-year old
peasant girls worn out
by fifteen-hour days
like their shoes
then consumed
and forgotten
like the eight hundred roses
crushed in Ciudad Juarez
I am the market
of civil wars
in my Name
democracies fall
I freed you
proclaims the Titan
setting up a Tyrant
please taste the freedom
of buying my goods
at the price I ordered
otherwise
(suspension points)
I am the race
for the nuclear mushroom
to put fear into thy neighbor
and steal his place
on the checkerboard
I am the race to arms
filling bags of munitions
to better kill your fellow citizens
I am the race
for outer space
quick, quick, let’s find
a virgin world to bleed dry
4
I am the market
of good conscience
of charity well ordered
beginning at home
wealthy foundations
dainty patrons
aristocrats and oil kings
nabobs and starlets
all shining glittering
in those charity balls
listen to those fiscal escapees
singing hand over their heart
we are the world
we are the people
while their right hand
doles out drops of manna
to the poor
their left hand
scatters their savings
speculates on their rents
hides a treasure in the Bahamas
destroys their unions
negotiates with sub-contractors
in order to keep
a steady reserve of indigents
in dire need of their charity
I am the market
of preachers
selling eternity with a rebate
under a red and white striped tent
condemning flesh sins
forgiving venial sins
against hard currency
of born-again Christians
who forgot the Christ
but not the cash
praise the Lord !
all the faithful will ascend
to the fiscal paradise
I am the media’s Big Brother
putting fear in you
with scandal sheets
incendiary headlines
stirring hatred
towards the Other
the shabby
the scruffy
the dirty
the downtrodden
with their proffered hand
but what is the police doing
lock your door at night
and don’t forget
to give generously
to charities
I am the Leviathan
of agrobusiness
patenting Nature
cloning and copying
in the name of freedom
forcing its genetically
marvelous seeds
on workers’ families
doused with pesticides
5
I am blind
still I can hear
the shop hand whimpering
under the foreman’s weight
children soldiers trashing in their sleep
dreaming of their dead parents
muffled cries of the carpet-girl
nursing her bleeding fingers
shouts of the protesters
defying the tear gas
dry laugh of the machine guns
the last breath of the labor defender
murdered in my name still
as disappeared
Chico Mendes
Iqbal Masih
Digna Ochoa y Plácido
and countless others
I am the theater
of opposing wills
from quarrel to clash
see my hand becoming more visible
see the wool shorn from your backs
that you buy later at a dear price
see the dirty clothes on the shop girl
and the spider web linking her
to your signature dress
I am the mirror of your desires
the infinite sum of
your small gestures
your decisions
your demonstrations
your Porto Allegres
your imagination unhinged
to build something new
I hear billions of voices
murmuring
otro mundo es posible
6
I am the market
with my eyes opened
I see
looming over the horizon
a strange New Deal
countries celebrating
their fair prosperity
neighbors buying selling giving
helping around
taming abuses
green houses
healing nature
the Earth at peace
all fears vanquished
callousness running away
dignity coming home
*
how strange
I never knew
I had a soul
and eight billion bodies
7
We are the market
present and future man-woman-kind
creative force
a galaxy of exponential freedoms
mixed fragrances
of spices and fruits
gossamer fabrics fluttering
in the winds of change
fireworks without pain
children of the global village
laughing running jumping singing
under their elder’s eyes
holding passionate debates
in a hundred dialects
*
We are the market
and from now on
we walk together
****
(cc) Michèle Laframboise 2011
A first version in French of this poem has been read aloud at the Théâtre Nouvelle-Scène of Ottawa, on September 30th 2010.
This version has been rewritten for the day of Occupy Wall Street, happening on the same day as the Toronto Spec Fic Colloquium, on October 15th 2011.
Tagged Invisible hand, market, occupy Wall Street, poetry, Science-fiction, Toronto
The Harper time machine will send you sixty years into the past!
Don’t miss your chance to live in Conservatopia, a perfectly ordered society where scientific evidence is scorned in favor of “gut-feelings” and astrologists. Oh, is it “ideologists”?
On a score of subjects, like gun control, census and sensibilities, environmental protection, women’s rights, gay rights, crime and punishment, our thinking will be modeled by ideologists, printed and repeated by the monopolistic mediasphere.
By the same token, the no-longer-protected workers-on-call will learn to admire without reserve the knights of the industrial table. This table will be well-laden, since bail-outs and hefty subsidizing will be granted to banks and oil industries. What will be left of the governing body will heed their sunny voices.
Soon, the only remnant of the social net will be gushing charity balls held by big fortunes while putting some dough in fiscal paradises. And, of course, the “economy” will make sure that there will be an endless supply of poor in need of generous donators. As for those pesky artists, only the popular ones will rise to the top, and to hell with the others “elites” who will have to scratch a living in restaurants or call centers! (But the financial elites are OK, since they can silence their opposition with lawsuits).
Criminals will be seen as annoying weeds, always growing in underprivileged neighborhoods for no understandable cause. First Nations will not see many differences between now and the 1950s. They will continue to be left dependent and despondent, deprived of their pride and clean water, their shattered communities serving as moral ground for our own prosperity.
In Conservatopia, you will see the women’s back to their right place, embracing the family values of the fifties!
Their rights will never be directly attacked, of course: only slowly, very slowly eroded, any attempt to take their life into their own hands subtly discouraged, their associations deprived of subsidized resources, any girl pressured with beauty advices and strings ads, any job-family conciliation becoming a headache, until the only place left for them will be the relative safety of their homes and hearth (preferably with a loaded gun, beware of the criminals roaming free!)
As contraception fall out of favor in the religious abstinence virtue contest, more unwanted pregnancies will follow, where girls and women will have no choice but to endure their situation or flee or die (like in the Third-world countries.
With the power of monopolized media, citizens… no, tax-payers will learn to distrust their elected representatives (them lazy civil servants gobbling our hard-earned money!), unions and various social defense groups (them lazy artists!). Soon, the more gullible among us will clamor for a benevolent but firm dictator with a pretty haircut.
But no mustache.
Time travel towards the glorious privatized future!
When voting for the Time Machine, you will also have a peek to a glorious future! As the governing body dwindles and greater fortunes concentrates in fewer hands, the permeability between businesses and the benevolent dictator will increase. Delocalization of jobs will occur more and more. Educated homeless will become a frequent sight on our streets.
The fortunes will tighten their golden hold on the mediasphere, showcasing only the items that serve the business growth. All social and cultural needs will be provided by the private-for-profit sector. The population will also rely on them for their information sources (crime is rampant! be afraid, lock your door, grab your gun, and give to charities!) Other voices, deprived of money, will dwindle out and die. Citizens will have freedom of speech, but without power to change anything to their condition.
While this election is officially about economy, let me remind you that a certain amount of criminality is a good thing for the GNP (Gross National Product). Crime ensures an excellent living for greedy gang bosses, but also for their lawyers, clerks, justices, prison guards, police, journalists, all with our taxes. And some social workers would like to go to the roots of this useful evil?
Private prisons will grow like mushrooms over the country, and – low and behold! – get quickly filled. This same private sector will devise new ways of watching people. Big Brother not only will tap your computer (already does !) but He will make sure to present you with pre-approved choices. (You want your car red or black? No, we don’t carry electric cars, sorry Ma’am!)
As social groups, universities science faculties, unions, associations, artists will be left without subsidies or research grants, prejudice will reign unchallenged. Government will be redeemable only to the real powerful forces in the population: big companies. Only those have the resources to underwrite the scores of “Institutes” parroting their concerns.
You miss the Soviet era? The apparatchiks? The silencing of opposition voices?
Choose the Time Machine!
Welcome to Conservatopia !
Posted in humor, Science-fiction, Society
Tagged Canada, Conservatopia, Elections, Environment, mediasphere, privatized jails, Time machine, Women's rights
Echoes of a Sunday artist 
