The ABCs of Early August

 Sometimes it's hard to tie in multiple topics into a single blog post. Today's entry works alphabetically.

A = AML Think Tank

On August 1, the members of the executive board of the Association for Media Literacy met for their annual Think Tank. I enjoy this get-together for several reasons. It's always held in-person, and there's something special about gathering together in the flesh. Even when we are chatting informally prior to any established agenda, we are "doing" media literacy. One of our newest members, Sarah, brought this really cool adult Happy Meal box and we all loved passing it around and remarking about all the great discussion possibilities. I brought my Portugal scrapbook and people really looked intently at how it was set up and my choice of photos. (Why do I always pick pictures of Karen Ambrosh eating food?) The meeting itself was very productive and helped set the stage for the upcoming year.

B = Baltimore

My husband and I took a mini-vacation to his hometown of Baltimore (although technically we were in Baltimore County) for a few days. If you recall, last year, we took a 3-day trip to Huntsville between my AQ responsibilities. My husband doesn't like to travel as much as I do, but he agreed to use the Civic Holiday weekend to visit his mom with me. We just went to Maryland in March of this year, so it's only been a few months since our last jaunt. The focus, in addition to the familial time together, was for crab. 

My relationship to crab is a fascinating one, and shows that time and influence can alter even the hardest opinion. I used to intensely dislike crabs. When my hubby and I were engaged and I first visited his family, they bought a bushel of crabs for us to eat, and I didn't partake. I found it yucky. Even the favored spice of Maryland, Old Bay, was gross to me. As my husband tells it, many years afterwards, during one of our summer vacations to see his family, I asked to try one of his fried jumbo lump crab cakes and discovered that I actually liked the taste. Now, I'm more crab-crazy than he is. I ate:

• crab fries and a crab cake from Conrad's for dinner on Friday
• a crab cake dinner from the Double T Diner on Saturday
• Chesapeake Benedict (eggs benedict with crab) for breakfast on Sunday AND crabby tots (potato tots smothered in crab imperial and cheese) and a crabby pretzel (a huge soft pretzel covered in cheese and crab imperial sauce) from Red Brick Station on Sunday
• a crab cake from Casa Mia on Monday (with some Chicken Chesapeake Pasta we bought to take with us and eat tomorrow!)

crab from Conrad's

crab from the Double T Diner

crabby tots from Red Brick Station

the sign in our hotel

crab from Casa Mia

C = CNE Job Fair

I was tempted to use the C for crab, but I wanted to mention something that happened just the day before August began. My son is still looking for employment, and he applied for work at the Canadian National Exhibition. He was given a link to register for tickets to a job fair on July 31. This event actually made the news, because 37 000 people showed up to this fair, even though there were only 5 000 jobs available. (You can read about it here from Now Magazine, from CBC, from CP24, and from BlogTO.) He lined up at 11:00 am and at 3:00 pm he threw in the towel and left, frustrated and discouraged. This is a terrible situation. My son, and many other young adults like him, are eager and willing to do almost any job, but despite the signs claiming that businesses are hiring, they aren't. When I was young, our teachers used to tell us to do well in school, otherwise we'd "end up working at McDonalds". Now, it'd be a dream come true for my son to be able to snag a job at McDonalds. How times have changed. Doing well in school and earning a diploma or degree does not guarantee you a job. I hope I'll have better news to share related to my youngest one's quest for a paying position. 

(This is a photo of me finishing my "Braiding Sweetgrass for Young Adults" book and making a serious dent in my "Education for the Age of AI" book while waiting for my son at the CNE grounds. I "took notes" by taking photos of pages I thought made good points. My shoes were super-cute but gave me bad blisters!)

So, even though it's August, there's lots of learning going on. This coming week, I begin teaching 4 TL AQs for York, and the following week, I start taking my ESL Part 2 AQ as a student with Queen's. My activities during those first few days of August show that learning can be social, unexpectedly transformative, and challenging.