PEOPLE POSTCARD PLEASE...

I appreciated the idea of creating / using a postcard as an initial introduction and representation of ourselves. (And yet I didn't conceptualize and pull it together until the day before our first session - I'm a procrastinator). 

With my postcard, I chose to use the front to reflect the content/focus of our course. In one of Stephen's first emails to us, he introduced the term "upstream" conditions / considerations, to us... and I really like this term. To me it's a term that is very tangible, topical and visual  - i.e., look upstream to better understand what is happening here downstream. Don't just focus on the surface, literally and figuratively.

Note: Photo credits to me... for this and all photos on the postcard!

The cover photo is from my visit to the Landmines Museum just outside the town of Siem Reap in Cambodia. I made three trips to Cambodia in the early 2000's and was both saddened and captivated by it. To my mind, the photo elicits a number of questions related to health and active living. Another boy was across from this boy, enjoying some passing, when I took the photo. As I see this photo again, I wonder/infer... Did the boys have their lower legs blown off while being active and having fun doing exactly what they were doing in the photo? Are there as many girls as boys in Cambodia who have lost limbs and lives due to IEDs (Improvised Explosive Device)? If there are fewer girls than boys, perhaps Cambodian girls are engaged in less physical activity than boys ... (or perhaps just different activities away from IED's?). And I observe that we really haven't heard much campaigning/activism related to landmines since the world lost Princess Diana.

What do you Observe/Wonder/Infer ("OWI") from this photo? This is why I ask the question "How do things look upstream?". Well, isn't that a loaded question given the history of Cambodia. And the question at top ... "How are you?" - often answered with "I'm fine" or "I'm well". What does that mean, really - and do we really even want to know or have the time to consider how someone really is when we (often) casually ask this question? It all goes deeper... as do the topics of this course! Hence my cover.

The backside and inside of my postcard represents my personal "agency". (Still finding this term odd used in this way!?!).



I love being active in a diverse number of ways, including physically active. Kayaking in Deep Cove with a couchsurfer, teaching swimming as a Life Skills teacher at the Taipei American School pool, heading out for a bike tour to the Alps in southern Germany with Martin!! Water and bicycles have been key modes and mediums in my "action" through the years.

Oh, and the postcard also represents the fortune I've had and the buzz I get (among other things) from being a traveller! The photos are placed in Siem Reap (Cambodia), Marburg and Weisenhorn (Germany), Deep Cove (Canada), Taipei (Taiwan) and Koh Tao (Thailand). 

I'm hoping that we could still pick one day of our course when we all bring our postcards back to the classroom and place them around the room along the whiteboards... just to browse at during our breaks. So much nicer and easier to see them this way rather than flipping through blogs.)

Finally, I included a poem I wrote. More on that in my next post. 

And, luckily (but by design, actually), I had two empty inner flaps to fill on the postcard when I arrived for the first night of our course. So I hastily - making me 10 minutes late - inserted on one flap a snippit from a very interesting and uplifting encounter I had just had with a chap named "Bill" on the skytrain ride to Surrey City Central, SFU! This snippit, that encounter - this character - about which I spoke that first night - is now the subject of my Assignment 2 narrative piece. 

And that, folks, is the flow of life... and my postcard! 

(Michael... don't forget your idea... "Postcards from the Edge"!)