Clay and Wattles

More and more people have been asking me to update this site, so I thought I should at least prove I’m still alive. I’m in the middle of enormous upheaval at the moment – trying to juggle teaching, consulting, and my new City Council role. I’m hoping to be back on track in a few days, so please check back again soon.

By some estimates, for example, human beings have used more natural resources since the end of World War II than in all the rest of human civilization. This needs to be seen for the binge it is, and it probably needs to end – sooner rather than later, we need sustainable, steady-state societies that live off the planet’s interest and not its capital.

-Bill McKibben, The Age of Missing Information

I will be sworn in on November 6th at City Hall. I’m way too busy getting ready (and trying to wrap up my other work) to write much here right now. Stay tuned for further adventures of an activist turned politician.

Some are dinning in our ears that we Americans, and moderns generally, are intellectual dwarfs compared with the ancients, or even the Elizabethan men. But what is that to the purpose? A living dog is better than a dead lion. Shall a man go and hang himself because he belongs to the race of pygmies, and not be the biggest pygmy that he can?

-Henry David Thoreau, Walden

It looks like I’m going to be a Yellowknife City Councillor. I am pleased to report that I have been elected to Council (though by a margin of only nine votes – a squeaker). Thanks again to my supporters. I hope this site will get a bit more attention soon now that the campaign has ended.

Today is election day in Yellowknife. Don’t forget to vote!

If you are looking for my campaign website and platform, click here.

If you aren’t sure where to vote, the City of Yellowknife website has a map of polling divisions here.

Thanks again to all of my supporters. Now I just have to wait….

Three more days to go in the campaign!

If you are looking for my campaign platform, please click here.

I’ll be participating in four candidate forums over the next three days. Today there are two of them. In case you want to attend, here are the details:

Chamber of Commerce – Oct 10, noon, YK Inn ($35 admission for non-members)
Alternatives North – Oct 10, 7pm, City Hall
Northlands Condo Association – Oct 11, 7pm, City Hall
Association franco-culturelle de Yellowknife – Oct 12, 5pm, Northern United Place

Wish me luck!

Undoubtedly the very tedium and ennui which presume to have exhausted the variety and the joys of life are as old as Adam. But man’s capacities have never been measured; nor are we to judge of what he can do by any precedents, so little has been tried.

-Henry David Thoreau, Walden

I never had any other desire so strong, and so like to covetousness, as that one which I have had always, that I might be master at last of a small house and a large Garden.

-Abraham Cowley, The Garden, 1666 (via)