Calendar Girl Blog: David Suzuki

David Suzuki, the brain and talking head of The Nature of Things was in town on Monday for what I'll call an environmental pep talk. The place was packed...maybe 500 or so...ranging in age from walkers to diapers.

I expected to come away depressed. 'Suz' as my friend Anne calls him, has been warning the world about our nasty, gonna wreak the joint behaviors for some time now. He's 70. And he does not mince words.

Instead, we were treated with a tour of some of his life's high points . And in part, a picture of the hip side of being an activist.

So this is the latest and yet relatively easy way for you, yes you to care about Mother Earth. And here's why you will want to do this. Think 2030. What kind of Canada would you like for yourself, if you're still this side of the daisy's , or for your offspring, be they yours or your grand kids? Would you like them to have outdoor air that they don't have to fear? How about clean drinking water from the earth? Trees? A few other animals beside squirrels?

OF COURSE YOU WOULD.

Is this likely to happen if we stay on our present course?

OF COURSE IT'S NOT.

Right then. We need a plan. Go here. Join over 200,000 other folks in The Nature Challenge. There's power in numbers.

Calendar Girl, should genetics and general luck of the stars shine down on her, will be 72 in 2030. After hearing David speak, 72 seems pretty snappy. On the other hand, Calendar Girl sees the decline in our environment and worries/wonders if enough people notice too. Year 2030 could be pretty ugly.

Calendar Girl

Tags: Calendar Girl Blog, calendar girl blog, Breast of Canada Calendar, Sue Richards, David Suzuki.

Calendar Girl Blog: Art Jammers needed

Over the last couple of months, I've been working with a talented bunch of artist on the task of re-designing the Art Jam program for the Canadian Clay and Glass Gallery. We are now testing our effort.

To test, we need bodies. Fresh bodies with open minds that can see the virtue in spending 3 hours being creative with a dozen other folks. We're hoping for women and men over 18 and under 110. You do not need to believe yourself to be creative. Ideally, you live in the Golden Triangle area. The workshop is in Waterloo. Our next session is Monday night.

Calendar Girl invites anyone interested in attending to contact her by leaving a comment on this post or an email through her profile page.

You'll laugh, you'll cry......from laughing of course.

Calendar Girl

Tags: Calendar Girl Blog, calendar girl blog, Breast of Canada Calendar, Sue Richards, middle of normal.

Calendar Girl Blog: Ears Unplugged

The hills are alive with the sound of pretty much everything. Yes my friends, Dr. Ear was successful. The truck load of offending wax that had melted on my ear drum has been sent to ear wax heaven. He let me look at the wad. I gasped in perverse delight.

I will repeat my warning of yesterday with an added safety suggestion. If you must do yoga in the bath, then please use ear plugs. Or, only do poses that keep your precious little audio units out of the water.

Calendar Girl would like to thank the readers who inquired, 'off the record' about my ill fated bath yoga. Your sensitivity to my affliction was heart warming to say the least. Now Calendar Girl can get back to our previously scheduled program of finding a wad of cash to set the 2007 calendar in motion.

Calendar Girl

Tags: Calendar Girl Blog, calendar girl blog, Breast of Canada Calendar, Sue Richards, middle of normal.

Calendar Girl Blog: Plugged Ear

Never do yoga in the bath if the pose requires you to submerge your ears for any length of time.

Especially if you like a fairly hot bath.

I've learned that ear wax melts, then hardens again. Depending on many factors I'm sure, the new location of wax can render you deaf-ish.

Calendar Girl will be seeing Dr. Ear tomorrow. Meanwhile, she is required to marinate her ear in olive oil to soften the problem. A second hot bath did not melt the wax back to a new or even the original position.

I'm just saying. There's danger in them thar bathtub yoga routines.

Calendar Girl

Tags: Calendar Girl Blog, calendar girl blog, Breast of Canada Calendar, Sue Richards, middle of normal.

Calendar Girl Blog: The Ads, Librarians and Ugly Breast Sites

Please don't hate me.

The ads you see have the potential of easing the pain of publishing by generating some revenue. Since putting them up on the weekend, Calendar Girl Blog has pulled in about $5.00 extra dollars. Not much if you look at it one way, but say this happens every day for a year. Or say, the ads are so compelling that you need to click and discover more about the advertiser and $5.00 turns into $27.40 a day. The sky could be high for Calendar Girl. And the printers bill could be covered.

On yet another note, a Guelph University Librarian is blowing the stereotype of prim and proper out of the water with this saucy pronouncement.

And get this, some creepy site called Boobmeat is using this blogs content on their site. I don't know what to do about that. Thoughts??

Calendar Girl continues to try and squeeze water out of stone. Boobmeat....what a bloody drag.....

Calendar Girl

Tags: Calendar Girl Blog, calendar girl blog, Breast of Canada Calendar, Sue Richards, middle of normal.

Calendar Girl Blog: Daffodil Trail

Photo Credit: Sue Richards

My neck of the woods is in the early, sassy days of spring. Sassy enough for the picnic starved types like me to head out of town, a whopping 10 minutes, and dine on the bridge connecting the top loop of the Daffodil Trail.

Far from the middle of normal....sometimes known as the centre/center of normal but subsequently changed due to the American and Canadian differences in spelling the word centre/center and the inherent confusion that would provide....the Daffodil Trail was created by someone named Jane. Pretty normal name I'd say. Simple concept too. In fall, plant a whack of Daffodil bulbs...picked in part because the wild, furry creatures of nature find them repulsive...then in spring, enjoy the riot of colour/color. All seems so middle of normal to me. But get this, me and my picnic partners were the only folks on the trail. A trail which has a shelf life of about 14 days before it becomes the Daffodil-done Trail.

Our town has a population of 110,000 people. The trail is not hidden. The Daffodils are pretty clear about their position.

Calendar Girl enjoyed the solitude, beauty and injection of yellow. A further note: April is Cancer Awareness month. Daffodils are the Cancer Society's bloom of choice. Maybe Calendar Girl should fill Breast of Canada with Daffodil pictures. Would that be closer to middle of normal?

Calendar Girl

Tags: Calendar Girl Blog, calendar girl blog, Breast of Canada Calendar, Sue Richards, middle of normal.

Calendar Girl Blog: Finding the Middle of Normal

Bare with me.

Let's face it. The Breast of Canada calendar does not fit into the middle of normal. Ironic as that is given the gals who choose to be models are pretty much your everyday types. But the packaging of the calendar, what with it being all arty and sepia toned with messages about health and stuff to watch out for pushes BoC into some other world far, far away from the middle of normal. Middle of normal gets pornography. Middle of normal doesn't want real breasts, doing nothing special except being themselves.

I suspect if you did a bit of accounting, you'd find the middle of normal or MON as I may now refer to it, to be a pretty rich spot. I'm guessing that it's the 'place to be' if you're trying to sell something, crowded with folk who don't really want to stand out in anyway and aren't interested in 'changing the world' but have money to throw around.

Here's the latest lightbulb in a higher wattage than before. I need to get me closer to the middle of normal if I'm going to be able to keep publishing. Which means one of two things. At least. Either I change my products look to fit in to MON. Or I get MON to see what I'm doing as normal. The former would be easier if I wasn't such a freak. The later is a David and Goliath gig.

Calendar Girl hates being so conflicted. She wishes she had a trust fund to rely on so she could leave middle of normal to being middle of normal. But reality exists. And so does her dipping bank account.

Calendar Girl

Tags: Calendar Girl Blog, calendar girl blog, Breast of Canada Calendar, Sue Richards, middle of normal.

Calendar Girl Blog: Middle of Normal

My brother has to be medically monitored every 6 months thanks to a bout with cancer in 2004-2005. Last night we did one of our marathon phone calls which included his report on the results of his latest tests.

He: My blood work came back exactly in the middle of normal.

Me: Middle of normal? I have a brother who's blood is the middle of normal? No wait, I have a brother who IS the middle of normal.

He: What's wrong with that?

Me: Nothing. I'm happy for you. And it's funny how different we are.

Calendar Girl wonders how she strayed so far from "the middle of normal". But then again, perhaps our bloodline is but a small part of what defines us.

Calendar Girl

Tags: Calendar Girl Blog, calendar girl blog, Breast of Canada Calendar, Sue Richards, normal.

Calendar Girl Blog: Facts & Arguments

For those of you who don't subscribe to Canada's national newspaper, The Globe and Mail, please allow me to toot my own horn.

I've been published in the newspaper!

Yes it's true. This morning as I cracked open my daily rag, there on the last page of the front section was a blogging story I'd written....or perhaps more accurately laboured over, complete with very fetching artwork.

A reader reads, a blogger writes fleshes out my evolution into my latest identity of...Blogger.

Indeed the world is one strange place. When I take a moment to reflect on the differences between my life and that of say my mother born in 1913, I can only shake my head. What would she say if she were around today? "Honey, how wonderful that you're pouring out your heart into thin air for total strangers to read."

Calendar Girl loves blogging. But there is nothing quite like having her words laid out on good old fashioned paper. No doubt mom would approve.

Calendar Girl

Tags: Calendar Girl Blog, calendar girl blog, Breast of Canada Calendar, Sue Richards, Facts and Arguments.

Calendar Girl Blog: Other Calendars

About once a month, someone from somewhere in the world emails or phones to ask if I would be kind enough to tell them how to make, market and sell a calendar.

Inevitably, I have mixed feelings.

By nature, I'm generous with ideas. I've got more than my lifetimes share so I'm happy to cast the extras far and wide. That's one side of the coin. The other side includes the feeling that no more calendar competition need be created. Or at least, I don't need to help create competition. After all, how many calendars does a household need?

Yet another side of the multi-sided coin is the thought that Breast of Canada is one of a kind and not likely to be affected by competition. Then of course there's the learning curve that I bent myself around. Do I spare someone else such a personally transformational experience by spilling my beans?

Further to this is the ABC'S of publishing an annual product. Practical stuff like the sheer weight of the boxes bearing 50 calendars, the best before date that renders the products worth from full to half price over night, the need for a one year timeline, the dim distribution scene, the front loaded costs of creation, the risk of world events that shift consumer habits, the constantly increasing shipping rates.....makes the idea of 'fundraising calendar' seem instantly foolish.

Calendar Girl does not want to piss on anyone's parade. But when I hear the chirpy voice of yet another person who wants me to tell them how to make a calendar, my cynical self rears up.

Calendar Girl

Tags: Calendar Girl Blog, calendar girl blog, Breast of Canada Calendar, Sue Richards, fundraising calendar.

Calendar Girl Blog: Good Thursday

I've always liked Good Friday.

And so, with the power vested in me as a calendar publisher and a person with imagination, I will extend that goodness to include today...Good Thursday.

So as not to appear bossy, Calendar Girl will add that your participation and chosen style of engagement in Good Thursday is entirely up to you. Plus if word spreading is your gig, please spread away. Otherwise this will be our little secret.

Calendar Girl

Find out about a Good Calendar by going to Breast of Canada Calendar. Very good then.

Tags: Calendar Girl Blog, calendar girl blog, Breast of Canada Calendar, Sue Richards, Good Thursday.

Calendar Girl Blog: Therapeutic Breast Massage

I'm told that the April's blurb about Therapeutic Breast Massage is a hit with the Misters of several households.

Calendar Girl realizes this would be all in the name of breast health of course.

Calendar Girl

Tags: Calendar Girl Blog, calendar girl blog, Breast of Canada Calendar, Sue Richards, therapeutic breast massage.

Calendar Girl Blog: Camera Separation Anxiety

I'm heading towards the end of my second week, cameraless. As I walked home from my downtown excursion today, several potential photos caught my eye. But alas, I was unable to capture the shots because my camera is in the shop.

So I came home and charged my batteries instead.

How strange that something which took me three months to buy, that I feared not being able to figure out, took hold of my imagination so swiftly. I am but a shadow of my former camera totting self.

Calendar Girl may be exaggerating here. With temperatures soaring to bare foot highs and her still wrapped in her winter garb, Calendar Girl may be experiencing 'seasonal change disorder' and not 'camera separation anxiety'. Tis so hard to keep all the myriad dysfunction straight.

Calendar Girl

Tags: Calendar Girl Blog, calendar girl blog, Breast of Canada Calendar, Sue Richards, camera.

Calendar Girl Blog: Irony

Faces to Watch, published by the Guelph Mercury, our daily paper, hit the news stands on Saturday. The special, annual edition featured Guelphites deemed 'watchable', in the kindest sense of the word. Those listed have been favoured as being on the brink of bigger and greater things.

And so my mug sat, amoung the 29 people profiled.

My current juxtaposition of ongoing struggle to keep Breast of Canada afloat and this community wide accolade is not without irony.

Instantly I turned into an introvert. As I read profiles of other movers and shakers in town, I felt pressure building. Did I need to do something now?

Calendar Girl finally snapped out of her self induced daze on Sunday evening. No, she did not need to 'do' anything. Apparently, she already had.

Calendar Girl

Tags: Calendar Girl Blog, calendar girl blog, Breast of Canada Calendar, Sue Richards, Guelph Mercury.

Calendar Girl Blog: Spring Sprung

It's been a while since I've been under the weather. But I have succumbed to the plethora of germs surrounding me. I regret to claim, I have the mother of all head colds.

My head's juices are running like the sap in a maple tree. This accompanied by wildly unpredictable sneezing. I will need to call in a toxic cleanup crew or face recurring illness from the well spread germs forever.

Calendar Girl will be calling it a day in due time. Holding her 300 pound head in one hand and hankie in the other makes it difficult to do much else.

Calendar Girl

Tags: Calendar Girl Blog, Breast of Canada Calendar, Sue Richards, illness.

Calendar Girl Blog: Advertising

I tried to place the following advertisement in the Business to Business section of the Globe and Mail newspaper.

Wanted: Philanthropist
Cancer Prevention Education Project
Call Sue Richards: 519 767-0142
kculture@sentex.net

I was told NO. I sent them my resume, as a way to assure them I wasn't selling snake oil. I was told NO again.

The reason: There is no return on investment.

When I suggested the social return, I was told that did not matter.

Calendar Girl finds this somewhat perplexing. Thinking that she somehow had the word Philanthropist twisted in her mind she looked it up in the dictionary. She continued to be perplexed.

Calendar Girl

Tags: Calendar Girl Blog, Breast of Canada Calendar, Sue Richards, Philanthropist.

Calendar Girl Blog: Avant-Breast

Calendar Girl is pleased to say that 6 artists have already signed up. And she's thrilled that the entire idea was cooked up by yet another brilliant local talent, Jen Turnbull. Jen will be driving Avant-Breast through the next several months. Calendar Girl can sit back and enjoy watching the creative process unfold.

Calendar Girl

Tags: Calendar Girl Blog, Breast of Canada Calendar, Sue Richards, artists.

Calendar Girl Blog: April

I just turned my calendar to April.

Even though it is snowing as I type, I'm certain that the April image reflects the weather situation somewhere in the world. And even though the shot was taken in my backyard, when I look out there amidst the swirling snow, I see little resemblance to the lust utopia that will be my little slice of paradise in the coming months.

Without the topfree women of course.

Calendar Girl wishes she could post the April image for all to see. But given the breastfreedom featured in the photo and the sheer amount of porn shopping that the web supports, she's reluctant to subject her models to the leering eyes of who knows whom.

Calendar Girl

Tags: Calendar Girl Blog, Breast of Canada Calendar, Sue Richards, April.

Calendar Girl Blog: Gareth Lind

The extraordinary talent of Breast of Canada calendar graphic designer Gareth Lind gets a big night out this Thursday in Guelph. Unfazed by the up and down world of publishing that Gareth has witnessed me ride, Mr. Lind is releasing his first comic book, Attack of the Same Sex Sleeper Cells.

Tis' a talented man that Gareth. His weekly comic strip is meaty, funny and smart. For Gareth, the personal is political.

Echo magazine has this to say...."We are fortunate to have an island in the stream of drivel that would wash all the thought out of comic strips, a sanctuary where wit and artistry combine to form the panels of cartoonist Gareth Lind's Weltschmerz... Mating excellence in design and print quality and Lind's thoughtful and incisive social commentary, the inaugural collection from the Weltschmerz series sets a high standard for later collections."

Calendar Girl is some proud of her pal, neighbour and breast friend Gareth. She's got her 20 bucks all ready to trade in on a copy of this fine piece of work.

Calendar Girl

Tags: Calendar Girl Blog, Breast of Canada Calendar, Sue Richards, Gareth Lind.