The carving called Luminary YEG-GA began its travels with P.M. in Summer, 2016. This particular e-space and #ePublicHistory confirms that females are not the only participants in Project YEG-GA, even though they definitely constitute the vast majoriy of collaborators. It is also worthwhile to remember here that the Homeglen School of One is a 50% female owned and operated Alberta enterprise, a feature that extends to the original development and maintenance of Carving Vignettes. Meanwhile, anyone who values the historic and historical contributions, experiences and contributions of their sisters, mothers, female ancestors, colleagues, partners and treasured friends has been encouraged to participate. This feature of the Project Y150 YEG-GA is further emphasized in the first two introductory vignettes of this e-space authored by the School of One Carver, and, in particular, when he documented his thoughts on the day of the U.S.A. 2016 election in the second vignette found below. In the third vignette, called "Hashtag History #1", P.M. examines the "social media attack" directed towards Brazil's female president as she faced impeachment.

The amiskwaciy Academy 2016 Spring Feast Remembered
Narrative completed: 12:05PM, November 7, 2016. 10°C

Today is the day before the election in the U.S.A. and I have decided to revisit a few moments that led up to and included the presentation of Luminary YEG-GA to P.M. in Spring 2016, a few weeks before P.M. and P.M.'s partner M.L. departed for an exciting adventure to Brasil during the times of woe for the female president and the Summer Olympics. The YEG-GA carvings and the larger Carving Vignettes advanced literacy program, in particular, are intended to help people mark time, delineate personal space and articulate memories. The occasion marked by Luminary YEG-GA seen here was the Spring Feast at the amiskwaciy Academy, April 22, 2016, and the portrait of the carving was taken at the table where I was joined by a group of seasoned veterans of a "Worldwide Waterways" history class outlined above and B.S.W., a member of the Samson First Nation currently completing her Ph.D. in Anthropology.

The amiskwaciy Academy is an extraordinary educational institution found near the Northern edges of Edmonton's Downtown. Since we began to collaborate on a gallery for the Global Art Project almost two years ago, the amiskwaciy Academy has always been extremely kind and generous to me. I always leave the institution feeling extremely positive about our present and the future, especially because each time I visit the school I always learn something new and worthwhile. There is no question that the program they offer students serves as a fine, World-class example of how Indigenous traditions can be promoted and taught along with the highest standards of the "Western" education curriculum. The amiskwaciy's pedagogical approach does not require nor embrace notions of "assimilation", "syncretism", or even "hybridization". In sharp contrast to the history of failed and frequently racist approaches to Indigenous knowledge and education throughout the Americas during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, including the sorry past of Residential Schools in Canada, I have had the pleasure to learn and observe how the school successfully utitlizes a teaching method which the leading African scholar Nehemiah Levtzion would likely interpret as "cultural dualism".

The three-image slide show found here is actually derived from editing one image, in this case a portrait of Luminary YEG-GA perched on the top of a small candy dish neatly situated in the centre of the table surrounded by B.S.W., select "Waterways veterans" (including P.M.), P.M.'s partner, and me, the School of One Carver, at the Spring Feast, April 22, 2016. Collaborators of both the Global Art Project and Project Y150 YEG-GA are aware that I usually use one or two images of my own for the introductions for each "e-space" found in "Travel Accounts" or "YEG-GA Vignettes". Furthermore, faces, body parts and materials subject to international conventions regarding copyright are supposed to be left out or kept as "fuzzy background" in the portraits, a feature of the larger Carving Vignettes program which has meant that I have "cropped and smudged" images on more than a few occasions as a further part of my own contribution to collaborations and the integrity of the larger project. Invariably, this editorial idiosyncracy has led to the development of these timeless, two-to-four-frame "micro-videos" which will run as long as e-tourists are visiting the e-space. Here, too, the idea to develop an "infinite micro-video" comprised of only a few slides seemed a most appropriate way to introduce this particular e-space since P.M. is an emergent and talented filmmaker with an extremely bright and shiny future. As far as the "primitive technique and presentation" I have marshaled here is concerned, I do not "photoshop", but, instead, only move pixels around by "e-painting through digital smudge" after the images are cropped. The movement suggested in the micro-video entitled "Eau Canada Before the Flight" is actually derived from my observations of birds in flight in the North Saskatchewan River Valley during the Spring and Autumn seasons. The patriotic credentials of this vignette are further confirmed by the red "Maple-leaf digital smudge" found on the top of Luminary YEG-GA, a "virtual motif" which also imagines community cohesion and collaboration around a "cognitive fire".

Links:

An an excellent "vimeo" introduction to Reconciliation may be found at: What is Reconciliation?

Background of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission within the History of Canada as well as associate resources may be found at: TRC

Information about the amiskwaciy Academy may be found at: amiskwaciy Academy

It's About Time Before the Count, Alberta Avenue Edition
Narrative completed: 1:48PM, November 8, 2016. 14°C

Today is the historic election in the U.S.A. and it will be several hours before all of the votes are counted. I am still trying to decide just why an election there should be included in an alternative e-Public History (#ePublicHistory) project that revolves around the the 150th anniversary of Canada. Like most Canadians, however, I realize that the history of the agency, experiences and contributions of females found in the geographical area encompassing this Northern nation has been frequently influenced by developments in the country located directly South of our border. The potential election of a woman president in the U.S.A. also reminded me of how I hoped that P.M. would consider a vignette about the political affairs surrounding the female Brazilian president when I presented Luminary YEG-GA at The Carrot Community Arts Coffee House a few hours after the amiskwaciy Academy Spring Feast on April 22, 2016. The Carrot is a non-profit establishment devoted to lending support to the artists and the "transitional", significantly immigrant, neighborhood found in and around Alberta Avenue, Edmonton.

Yesterday, I watched the President of the U.S.A. give a campaign speech in support of the female contender for his office. He included one of his older, original accounts he used when he was first elected in 2008. As "POTUS" explained, his campaign was given a huge impetus from a "gold-toothed" African-American woman from a small town in South Carolina who inspired people by saying, "Fired Up! Ready to Go!" Even though I studied and worked in the Gulf South of the U.S.A for sixteen years, I never thought about abandoning my Canadian citizenship or my beloved nation permanently. Nevertheless, my partner and I will always be eternally grateful for the kind treatment, opportunities and education people of that country so generously gave to us, and it is just as important to acknowledge that that some of my closest friends and scholarly mentors from that nation are women. We hope that the people of the U.S.A. will be able to resume their pursuit of happiness mandated by their Declaration of Independence regardless of the outcome of this election which has attracted so much attention here and around the World, including from the first female Canadian Prime Minister. On another proud, personal note, my mother occasionally reminds me that my maternal Irish great-grandmother was a suffragette who moved from Brooklyn, New York, to Alberta in 1915, the year before female citizens obtained the right to vote in this Canadian province. I wonder what that talented Irish seamstress and her daughter, my Brooklyn-born grandmother, would have thought about this momentous election in the U.S.A.

The image used for this multicultural, four-frame micro-video was taken at The Carrot Community Arts Coffee House a few hours after I attended the amiskwaciy Academy Spring Feast, 2016. The occasion provided me with the opportunity to congratulate P.M. and P.M.'s partner M.L. on their exemplary achievements as Business students at the University of Alberta, their respective graduation, and to wish them well on their Summer adventure to Brasil. This introductory vignette entitled, "It's About Time Before the Count", moreover, is also dedicated to the Canadian collective memory marked by the "Global Election" undertaken by our Southern neighbour today, November 8 -- in part so I can actually remember where I was and at least one thing I accomplished on this historic day which many television commentators have convinced us will be a watershed. The timeless micro-video integrates my own interpretive reading of comparative concepts that originated in the pre-Columbian Americas (and the area of Mexico, in particular), and combines and constrasts those notions with a few ancient Eurasian ones I have encountered within the pursuit of Global History during the past several years. The face of all YEG-GA carvings, including Luminary YEG-GA, is drawn directly from childhood memories of my Eurasian paternal grandmother, an extraordinary woman who survived the Russian Revolution, tumultuous times in China during the 1920s, the hardscrabble life of rural Alberta during the Great Depression, and the frosty International climate of the Cold War, which, fittingly, ended just before her death. In short, she was an unassuming witness to an incredible "pre-Internet" Global History and voted in every election held in Alberta after she became a Canadian citizen without the benefit of social media. I also really wonder what she would have thought about the fortunes and the treatment of the first female presidential candidate in the U.S.A. Meanwhile, the "rotary lip scrolls" found in each of the four quadrants and the Luminary YEG-GA at the centre of every frame hark to Mesomerican concepts regarding how to recall four previous eras together in the present (2 + 2 + 1) according to the rhythm and cycles of seasonal light. The different "positions" articulated in each quadrant (with each "lip scroll" always the "mirrored opposite" of its respective horizontal and vertical neighbours) suggest unity, balance, and harmony found within alternative perspectives, and illuminate divergent, multicultural Canadian possibilities for a brighter future.

Links:

Please visit and support The Carrot Community Arts Coffee House. For further information, see, The Carrot

In this vignette, P.M. recalls the journey to Brazil in Summer, 2016. As the following vignette documents, that was a signficant time in Brazilian politics since it marked the impeachment of the female president of the country. P.M. and the School of One Carver noted important comparisons between the treatment of the Brazilian president, the female candidate for the presidency of the United States and even the female Premier of Alberta on social media and wondered if the resulting "hashtag history" was consistent with Canadian values during the twenty-first century.

Luminary Reports, Brazil Edition
Account Received: Edmonton, November 24, 2016. 14°C

I visited Brazil during a turbulent time of political instability. The president, Dilma Rousseff, was in the process of being impeached due to controversial reasons mainly stemming from the upper-middle class’ lack of satisfaction with the social and economic decisions taken by the left(er) wing government who had been in power for almost four consecutive terms. Social media played a vital role in disseminating information that lead to many people’s perspectives being skewed by frivolous opinions inappropriate being understood as truths. This was ever present in the has tags that appeared, namely #ForaDilma, meaning Out Dilma. The full proceedings of impeachment would mean Michel Temer would then take over the presidency and hold the reins as the republic’s leader during the exhibitive hosting of the 2016 Olympics. Coming to fruition, social media once again played a vital role in disseminating information that lead the hashtag #ForaTemer which was famously held by musician and political-activist Caetano Veloso during he opening ceremonies of the Olympics. After an informative analysis, researchers found that over half of those using the #ForaTemer hashtag, also used the #ForaDilma hashtag at one, or more, points of their online pandering.

Here in these two portraits, spanning day and night, my travel companion Luminary is sitting on the window sill of a 7th floor beach apartment in Guaruja, SP. This is a very popular vacation spot for tourists, especially those from Sao Paulo (the country’s biggest and most populous city) due to its one-hour-driving-time proximity and the wide offerings of day and night time activities beyond the beach. During the summer month’s, this city gets very crowded and wait times for simply buying milk can range up to an hour of standing in line to get in the store. During the off season, the beaches are fairly empty, mainly consisting of weekend travellers and locals going for walks and refining their surfing skills. Far beyond where the tourists and locals wade, when the weather is clear, one can observe very large ships in the horizon who are, in fact, extracting oil from the under ocean’s waters.

Due to a significant reason for Dilma’s impeachment being the controversial corruption scandal with PetroBras, Brazil’s largest oil company, I thought it perfectly symbolic of the distance that most people are, in fact, to the real truths behind what is happening and the limited amount of information and sight that most have when giving opinions. Ultimately, most commentators on the impeachment are just like Luminary, in that they are seeing very far away ships while faced with very immediate problems in their surroundings. Carelessly believing them to be related, opinions were formed out of limited communication between government and citizens and therein we now face very stormy, cloudy and ultimately unclear times in Brazil.