A Closer Look: Jody Paterson

Workshop leader Sandra Sosa and avid students Making art with garbage isn't a new thing, but I hadn't really grasped the potential of it for poor countries until I watched a roomful of young Hondurans last week transform aluminum cans into pretty little sepia-coloured etchings. One of the things that really stands out here in Copan, and I suspect in Honduras overall, is the absence of local crafts. The goods available for tourists are the garden-variety woven bracelets and leather-thong necklaces found in tourist markets around the world, and few are made here. At the workshop in La Cumbre last week, the 40 or so people who had crowded into the one-room school for the two-day event were carefully pressing designs into empty beer cans to make picture frames and folding little pieces of old chip bags into lovely earrings. I could really see that with a little marketing advice, these guys could get something going on.  Chip bag earrings There's a rather anemic tour...

Eight fairly chaotic days on Vancouver Island, and now I'm back in Honduras reflecting on how it feels to be taking holidays in the opposite direction. They say you can never go home again. I don't know who "they" are or what sparked them to say such things, but it does seem that the things you remember fondly about a place don't hold up well when you go back for a second look. I did take much pleasure from seeing my family and a few close friends while on the Island. It's top of my list to figure out ways to see them more often, whether by luring them south or doing more of those meet-you-in-the-middle holidays that my cousin in Darwin is so good at making happen with her family. And of course, receiving an honourary doctorate of laws from the University of Victoria was an amazing experience. But the food and the chocolate and the nature walks I'd been fantasizing about weren't nearly so enticing as I'd remembered. The meals were too rich fo...

Early morning in good old YVR, where we arrived at 6 a.m. today to settle in for our five-hour wait until the next leg of the flight kicks in. Bad connection, but so it goes with points flights. Had a wonderful but insanely busy eight days on the Island. Great to be back, but I'm still looking forward to the return to Honduras, and not just because it's about 15 degrees warmer than the Island right now. More on that later, but right now I'm posting (most) of the speech I gave at UVic on Friday as I accepted my honourary doctorate, which was a total thrill. Speech at UVic, June 15: They say that the thing that guides a life passion has its roots in your teen years, and certainly that was the case for me. While I wouldn’t have known to call it social justice at the time, I was 14 when a group of us at Lake Trail Junior High in Courtenay stood up for a young classmate – a girl we didn’t know at the time - who was being unfairly judged. I not only got a lifelong frie...

I'm feeling like the blog's just a little too much "all about me" lately, but hey, it's a big week. The Times Colonist team I was part of won the Michener Award on Wednesday for its coverage over two years of the plight of families dealing with Community Living B.C., and today's my big day at the University of Victoria, when I receive an honourary doctorate of laws. So allow me one more indulgence: A link to Jack Knox's very kind column on me in the TC this morning. Nice thing to wake up to in this rushed and harried week back home, and such things certainly do make my mother happy. We'll be returning to Copan Ruinas bright and early Monday. I'm enjoying all the food and friends here in Victoria but I have to admit, it's a bit of a culture shock coming back and I'm looking forward to our rather quiet, simple life in Honduras. But first, a big party and lots of great, greasy snacks.

Back in Victoria for a week and here's an irony - we went to our storage locker yesterday only to discover that  things are missing and somebody had put a different lock on. So we come back to sleepy Victoria after six crime-free months in one of the most "dangerous" countries in the world to find ourselves victimized at a storage place we picked expressly because it was supposed to be safe. We were dealing with an 18-year-old alarmed-looking clerk yesterday and had arrived 45 minutes before closing, so we still don't know anything about how this could have happened. She called the manager and he said he'd meet us there this morning, which is kind of alarming in itself when you think that he couldn't be bothered to deal with a troubling turn of events at that very moment. At any rate, we're going back today at the moment the place opens, and I'll be in full-on indignation mode. Here's hoping that "24/7 video surveillance" they promise ...