Category Archives: VanRamblings

Engaging in the Life of the City | On Presenting to Council

May 2, 2018BC Politics, Politics, VanRamblingsRaymond Tomlin

With the well-attended protest Tuesday evening by residents of West Point Grey, Dunbar, Kerrisdale and Shaughnessy — demanding of our provincial government that Finance Minister Carole James reverse the imposition of a newly-created school surtax that will see homeowners living in homes assessed at more than $3 million (you know, the wildly sympathetic 1%) paying up to an additional $26,000 per year in property tax, or as Georgia Straight editor, Charlie Smith, writes in an opinion piece published today …

“It’s disingenuously called a school tax, but the money goes into general revenue. The so-called “additional school tax on high-valued properties” imposes a 0.2 percent levy on residential portions assessed between $3 and $4 million, starting in 2019.

That adds up to $2,000 in extra property tax per year.

For the residential portion above $4 million, there will be a 0.4 percent tax rate applied. That adds an additional $4,000 in property tax per $1 million in assessed value. Anyone who owns an $8-million home, for example, would end up paying an extra $18,000 in property taxes to the province.

Last evening’s Trimble Park protest of the wealthy following a day of boisterous and demanding protest at Vancouver City Hall, with protesters demanding of our civic and provincial governments, the immediate commencement of construction of thousands of new, affordable homes to house not just the homeless, the working poor and seniors, but those first responders and wage earners raising their families in Vancouver, a city where the average “affordable” studio apartment rent starts at $1750 (and this, on the east side of the city!), with $2450 a starting point for a one-bedrooms, $2800 to $3450 the range for a two-bedrooms, with more than $4000 each month established as the market rate for a three-bedroom apartment, the imposition by the John Horgan BC NDP of the “school tax” necessary to fund affordable housing, and to help the tens of thousands of children enrolled in British Columbia’s public education system to be lifted out of poverty and wont, where children might attend the school in the neighbourhood, having slept in a home that provides safe haven and security for them, an important provincial government social justice initiative, long overdue and absolutely and utterly necessary.
Protests garner attention, be they organized by the weathy or our society’s disenfranchised, the media eager to provide coverage.
Sometimes — but not often — the protests result in a near immediate change to government policy. Old fogey and democrat that we are, and as many protests as we are wont to attend — and we do, because it is of critical importance that we stand with our neighbours, friends, our sisters and our brothers to demand that citizen voices be heard on a societal issues of concern — VanRamblings believes even more strongly in a thoughtful and empowering engagement with government, in multi-faceted campaigns designed to impact on the decision-making of government.
Through the composition of and posting of pointed, poignant, thoughtful, well-researched and well-argued hand-delivered letters to the offices of our elected officials and government administrators; along with reams and stacks of hand-delivered, signed petitions containing hundreds and thousands of signatures, arguing to our electeds that citizen voices must be heard on issues respecting the livability of our city and province, we can make a difference.
Or, when a specific issue of concern to you and your neighbours has been placed on — as will be explored below, in this instance on — a City Council’s agenda, VanRamblings believes strongly in a thoughtful and empowering engagement with government, a respectful engagement that encourages reasoned and thoughtful input into the final decision-making that will take place around the Council room table, towards making ours a more just city, region and province.

New Westminster, British Columbia City Council Chambers

New Westminster, British Columbia, City Council Chambers

Monday evening, an activist friend of VanRamblings presented to New Westminster City Council, having already forwarded to the members of Council an expression of concern regarding issues of ingress and egress from her multi-family dwelling condominium complex respecting a proposed condominium complex that is to be built adjacent to my friend’s existing multi-family building, being presented to Council on Monday evening, with a recommendation for approval by senior staff employed within New Westminster’s Planning and Development Services Department.
In addition to concerns respecting ingress & egress, in her hand-delivered letter to the Mayor and each Councillor, my friend expressed concerns as to privacy respecting the overheight, glass-fronted balcony, bay window facing “wall of clear glass” building that would have her new neighbours looking directly into my friend’s home, and that of her neighbours.
In respect of the proposed condominium complex presented Monday evening to Council for approval, not to put too fine a point on the matter, in its currently-proposed configuration, my friend argued, the new building was utterly unacceptable to her, her husband and her neighbours.
If changes were not made to the configuration of the proposed new condominium, my friend and her neighbours would suffer grievous harm.
The proposed new complex is to be constructed within the well-consulted-upon, neighbourbood-negotiated-and-approved RS2-CD77 zoned neighbourhood, and given that the complex in order for it to be built in its currently proposed configuration would require of Council their approval of several relaxations of the zoning bylaw, relaxations that would confer a much ‘healthier’ economic benefit to the developer bringing the proposal forward, to the detriment of the interests of my friend and her neighbours, my friend would argue, “relaxations” respecting height, density, frontage to the street, and overshadowing would result in a condominium complex that would work a hardship on her and her aggrieved neighbours.
My friend would argue to New Westminster City Council, that Mayor and Council must not approve the development at their Monday evening meeting, that Council must send the plans for the new condominium complex back to the Planning Department, not for further consultation — because no consultation had ever taken place with her, her husband or her neighbours, resident in the building that would be most greatly impacted by the proposed new condominium complex — and if Council were to do such, my friend would argue, it is entirely likely that the commencement of a respectful consultation process with she and her neighbours would result in the development of an in-character to the neighbourhood building, reconfigured to reflect the addressing of the concerns she and her neighbours had raised in their letters and presentations to Council.
Presenting to Council. Daunting that.
In the days prior to presenting to Council, VanRamblings was asked, “Do you have advice for me before I address Council on Monday evening, any pearly words of wisdom that will help make this most difficult situation I face in addressing Council somewhat easier for me, because speaking before members of an elected body is not something that is usual for me, and if I am to tell you the truth, hardly constitutes for me a comforting and welcoming diversion from the protean concerns of my daily life.”

Here is what VanRamblings wrote to my friend, advice that pertains to you should you ever present to Council, which VanRamblings believes you should do often, an aspect of your civic responsibility you should not — and must not — forego, if you are to feel the life of the city deep within you, your participation in civic affairs the lifeblood of our city.

1. Don’t be nervous. Sometimes, it’s okay to be nervous — but you don’t have to be. Focus on the information you’re imparting. When you set about to relay to Council the issues of importance to you, any
nervousness will fade into the background, because your presentation is not about you — it’s about imparting information of value to help the Councillors you’ll meet on Monday evening make the proper, the humane, the necessary and the right decision, for you, for them, and for New Westminster, a decision that will serve not only to represent you and your husband’s interests, but that of your neighbours, as well as all the citizens of New Westminster, and perhaps, most importantly, the interests of the City Councillors who you’ll be addressing Monday night — because you have to know that they want to do the right thing, they really do. Let them know that you believe they want to do the right thing.

2. Introduce yourself, tell them a little about yourself and your husband, humanize yourself for them, let them know where you live — describing your neighbourhood in near-poetic terms. That’ll take 45 seconds of your allotted five minutes, but it’s a good, humanizing and important to do.

3. Stay calm, stay focused, don’t raise your voice, but do speak firmly, clearly and with authority, and with that good ol’ fashioned wit and charm for which you are so well known.

4. Be respectful.

5. Do not refer to the developer — or any good that the development might do (the developer can speak for herself quite well enough).

6. Decide on three (four, at the most) key points you want to make: the exhaust from the cars coming to and from the parkade of the newly-proposed building, exhaust that will filter directly into the apartments in your building, exhaust fumes that will be a hazard and will impinge on the quality of life for the resident owners in your condominium; the overview / privacy concerns; the necessity of sober second thought on the development proposal and the absolute necessity of Council sending it back to Planning for further consultation. DO NOT use the word disingenuous when speaking with the members of Council, do not call out the process — that will be off-putting for them, and for the members of the Planning Department who will be present Monday night — and who, if all works out well for you, you’ll be working with to come up with a new, livable and much more appropriate development for the neighbourhood.

And in closing, I reminded her, “You’ve got five minutes. Stay calm, focused, be of good cheer, but dead serious, be respectful, and be appreciative that Council is affording you an opportunity to speak to them.”

Alas. In the wee hours of yesterday morning, I learned from my friend — a person of salty countenance — that she had “slipped up” … twice.
During my friend’s address to Council, forgetting herself for a moment, she used the word “shitty”. Mayor and Council were aghast, my friend reports, as the electeds she was addressing experienced an onset of the vapours not seen since Gone With the Wind’s Scarlett O’Hara’s feinting (the correct spelling) spells, my friend ever-so-gently chastised by the Mayor.
My friend could live with that. What she couldn’t live with is that midway through her address to Mayor and Council … she cried, her voice still one of authority, but catching, she finding herself perhaps in need of oxygen.
My friend wrote to me …

When they told me I could go on in a second round, I said no. I told them this was hard enough, I would finish then would just go outside and have a good old cry. Then, I stood at the back of the room and was seen wiping a tear from my eye. Then, I left the chamber, came back loaded for bear. Not an insincere act in that performance. I DID cry. That was my response. I just refuse to apologize for it.

I am so sorry for men (and the women who emulate them), who think there is something wrong with crying. I find it one of the most liberating of the physical autonomic responses.

VanRamblings responded as follows …

In my time sitting as a member of Vancouver’s Board of Variance, when each of the 30 appellant individuals or groups Board Chair Terry Martin, and my fellow Board members Quincey Kirschner, Jan Pierce and Bruce Chown on whose presentations of appeal we adjudicated — on issues of critical, life-changing import — not once, in hundreds of appeals, no matter how stoic the presenters, not once did an appellant get through their five-minute presentation without crying, wholly unexpectedly to them, but not for those of us who sat on the Board.

Thirty seconds or a minute in, you could see and feel the presenter’s demeanour change, an utter surprise to them, their voice catching, a look of roiling pain on their face, and then the first tear, and before they even realized it, they were crying, sometimes inconsolably, at times the meeting drawing to a halt, a recess necessary before proceedings could continue. Humanity and life, human existence laid bare in a large committee room with a long polished oak table, five members of the Board of Variance, the male members in suits and ties, resplendent in our freshly laundered and ironed white shirts, the women dressed in casual but elegant business attire, but these were not your regular and expected meetings of an august, quasi-judicial body of civic governance … this was spiritual transcendence writ large on the human tableaux we call life. Crying, you say. Good for you. Serves only to prove that you are human … but you knew that already.

Update: My friend writes to say that New Westminster Mayor and Council rejected the development application as proposed.
And so, today’s column draws to a close.

Later today, VanRamblings will publish our interview with former Vancouver City Councillor Tim Louis, on the Thursday evening première of The Rankin File: Legacy of a Radical — a world début for Teresa Alfred’s warts and all biography of Harry Rankin, one of the most impactful men ever in the governance of our city, a champion always for the working man and woman, the wage labourers whose concerns had so long been ignored by generations of right-of-centre civic government in Vancouver, dominated for generations by the Vancouver Non-Partisan Association.

Hey, You. Don’t Ask Me. Just Google It. C’mon Now. Really?

April 29, 2018VanRamblings, Web & TechRaymond Tomlin

VanRamblings loves our Apple iPhone 8 Plus, the prospect of acquiring the latest iPhone one of the factors that kept up alive and hopeful during our dreadful, scarifying and none-too-pleasant 2016 – 2017 battle with cancer, the terminal, inoperable hilar cholangeocarcinoma that was destined to make us a goner — but, as you can see, did not come to pass.
We’ll say why, we’ll write about the miracle, another day — but for now, we’ll just say that it was VanRamblings’ readers, those strong, clear-minded persons of conscience that have read VanRamblings (who we thought, at best, found us annoying) who pulled us through, it was your love and spiritual and tangible support that, quite literally, saved our life.
We’ll write about our cancer journey in a series of posts that will likely begin once the current Vancouver civic election has come to its glorious conclusion, electing (we imagine) once-in-a-lifetime candidate Christine Boyle, and one of her outstanding, ready-for-prime-time colleagues (either Brandon Yan — we wept openly during his address to OneCity Vancouver members, last Sunday); the energetic and very bright, Ben Bolliger; or new dad, R.J. Aquino (three kiddos now, RJ, in a house full of joy); Pete Fry, who along with Christine Boyle, represents the single most important candidate to elect to Council, come October 20th; our friend (and, boy, are we proud to write that), and a true hero in our city, in our province and for our age, Sarah Blyth; the incredibly-principled and on-your-side, Anne Roberts; generational candidate and democrat-to-her-core, Sarah Kirby-Yung; our fave guy (you’ll read why later), Rob McDowell; the very decent, bright and accomplished, Catherine Evans; and we’re not sure who else at this point, all of the candidates above it is our intention to write about, at length and often, in the days, weeks, and months to come (each of whom, and all of whom, constitute our favourites in the current election cycle, for Vancouver City Council — just in case you were wondering).
However, we’re not here today to proselytize about candidates in the coming civic election, our mission today is decidedly more prosaic.
Heck, it’s Sunday — not a day for partisanship.

Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell. The 2018 ‘Heck, Just Use Your Cell’ Version
At least a half dozen times a day — when we run into a friend on the street or at the grocery store, while we’re out with a colleague or neighbour at our favourite local espresso house, when we find ourself near recumbent in the seating area at the Vancity Theatre waiting for the doors to open for the next film, or while we’re on the bus engaged in conversation, or in any one of another myriad of other circumstances, inevitably and much to our consternation, VanRamblings’ friend, neighbour or colleague will ask a question; not our opinion on a matter of debate, not something about which we might have information not readily available online, just a simple question that could be answered by the person VanRamblings is with simply taking their galldarn, latest model smartphone out of their pocket, and looking up the information themselves, on their state-of-the-art cellphone.
But do they? Do they take the phone they’re paying $70 and more a month for out of their pocket, check the Cineplex app if they want to know where a particular movie in town is playing or what time it starts, or fire up their smartphone’s Safari or Chrome browser, or tap on any one of the apps on their smartphone — ranging from their IMDb, CBC News, Google Maps or Weather app, to their readily available SoundHound, Shazam, TSN, Sinemia or Amazon app — hell no, they don’t. Yep, you’ve got it: they ask VanRamblings, because we’ve got a near photographic memory, an uncanny ability to recall or contextualize information, and because we’re a font of relatively useful facts — a burden we bear, but not gladly and well.

Time for a number of stories. Hang onto your hat.
The wonderful, hope of our future, Danika Skye Hammond — political activist, environmentalist, youth advocate and current BC Young New Democrats Facilitator Co-Chair (who Jeff Lee, former civic affairs reporter with the Vancouver Sun, will want to get in touch with this summer, given that both now live in or nearby the Kootenays’ beauteous Creston Valley) — was brought on last year as Volunteer Co-ordinator on current Attorney General David Eby’s winning re-election campaign, Danika — always with a genuine and heart-filled smile on her face, always with a cheery greeting at the ready, the single most humane, competent, no nonsense, and well-organized campaign co-ordinator we have ever worked with, during our 55-year history of working on federal and provincial NDP campaigns — daily wrangled some 400 eager (some new, some veteran) volunteers, each of whom needed direction, each of whom Danika kept in touch with to schedule shifts for any variety of activities in the community (Patti Bacchus & VanRamblings managing to secure a year-long case of incredibly painful plantar fasciitis, resultant from the two of us knocking on so many doors, traipsing through the neighbourhood and climbing up and down those damn stairs, while wearing ‘inappropriate for canvassing’ flat-bottomed shoes) by texting them on their smartphones. Imagine! Technology put to good use.

Every volunteer on David’s campaign, save one — a nomination candidate for office in the current Vancouver civic election campaign — who whined to Danika about his not having a cell phone, and could she please call on his home phone (which he never answers) instead, and yada, yada, yada. All his kvetching was for naught, of course. The solution? VanRamblings took this luddite (a teacher in the public school system for some 30 years!) to Virgin mobile at Oakridge, secured a new Apple iPhone for free, along with 6 gigabytes of data, unlimited calling in Canada, as well as an unlimited international text facility — all for only $45 a month, with a promise that we’d negotiate with Telus to reduce his $340 monthly Optik TV, Internet and home phone bill down to a more reasonable $140 each month!
Many years ago when travelling through Mexico, and shopping at the Libertad Market in Guadalajara, VanRamblings was surprised to discover that we love the art of the deal (no, not Donald Trump’s phony, soul-destroying ‘art of the deal’, but), the back-and-forth and human connection involved in negotiating a reasonable settlement as to the cost of goods — just about as much fun as it is possible to have with both feet planted firmly on the ground. We still, to this very day, love the art of the deal.

So, this fellow now has a brand-new, free Apple iPhone, with a great, instantaneous texting facility that the good, young folks at the Virgin kiosk give him instruction on, supplemented by further instruction from VanRamblings on the Canada Line trip to Broadway and the #9 bus ride to David’s campaign office on West Broadway, where we showed a delighted Danika Skye Hammond (future, much-beloved Premier) that a new smartphone has been acquired, passing on the new telephone number (employing a 778 exchange, the remainder of the number identical to this fellow’s home phone) — and what does this guy do? Yep, he takes the phone home, places it in a drawer, never takes it out of the drawer (even a year later), while continuing to pay the $45 a month plus tax.
Needless to say, no more work on David’s campaign. VanRamblings asks this cogent question of you: do you really want this fellow representing your economic and social justice interests on a publically-elected body?
VanRamblings would like to comment that, “Perhaps the fellow we write about above represents a not-so-out-of-the-ordinary use of new technology.” But we don’t believe that’s true. Every single one of our elected officials in Vancouver, as well as all senior staff at City Hall, Park Board and School Board, all but live on their cellphones — comfortable with and appreciative of the technology, the whole idea of having a powerful computing device at your fingertips representing the most powerful communications device each might have ever imagined.
Yes, when it comes to use of technology among our erudite, wit-filled, endlessly curious, adept and engaged political friends, who view their smartphones as an entirely necessary, revolutionary device, VanRamblings supposes we run with a pretty tony crowd, for which we are grateful.

Still, it seems that not everyone among our friends — and everyone among your friends, we’re willing to bet — sees their smartphone as the revolutionary device that it is (and just wait til 5G comes in … wow!!!).
Nevertheless, we’d appreciate it if the folks in our circle of acquaintances & friends never, ever, ever again ask us a question that they could answer for themselves simply by pulling their cellphone out of their pocket.
Concerned about your data cap?.
Migawd, there’s free WiFi everywhere across our region, on our streets (both Telus and Shaw have established WiFi on every block in Metro Vancouver), in all of our public buildings (City Hall, School Board, Park Board, our community centres and pools), in most retail businesses (high traffic retail outlets like Starbucks and McDonald’s have reliable, lightning-fast WiFi inside their stores).
Let’s face it, with your smartphone handy, you’ve got lightning in a bottle — how incredibly fortunate we are to live in an era when transparency of communication is so readily available, where we really do have access to an information highway that only a few short years ago was unimaginable.

VanRamblings will leave you with the following story …
On Friday evening, having ridden our bike to a nearby grocery store, and while we were shopping inside the store, a young girl holding a smartphone whizzed past us, crouching down a ways along the aisle, talking to beat the band on her phone, which was directed towards the shelving that held a variety of sparkling beverages, an animated conversation taking place with another girl, a friend it seemed, who appeared to be in the process of planning a party of some sort and who were, together, shopping for all of the items that would be necessary to purchase in order to make the party a success, the girl on the other end of phone just as animated and excited in her commentary as the young girl crouching a ways down the aisle.
“Slumber party,” a woman approaching with a buggy said to me — the woman, clearly the girl’s mother, who could see the look of amazement on our face at what we were seeing transpire. “A slumber party, and a birthday party for her best friend,” the mom said, nodding in the direction of her daughter. “I’m just here to place the items in the buggy, and pay for the whole thing when she’s done. Fascinating, isn’t it? Realistically, would either one of us have thought, even a few years ago, that in 2018 we’d find ourselves in an era when a young girl would have access to a technology like Facetime to do her shopping with a friend, when her friend lives miles away, across the water, in a whole other community?”
At which point the young girl in the store arose from her crouch, waved her mother over to load the 2-litre bottles of sparkling juices into the buggy, and off the two went to continue their scurry around the grocery store, in cheery and focused pursuit of the “perfect” items to make the slumber / birthday party the success that it was most definitely destined to be.
VanRamblings asks: if a 9-year-old girl is as comfortable with technology as she surely appeared to be, employing her smartphone to its maximum capability to make her life easier, to enhance the quality of her life, to take the greatest delight in ‘shopping with her friend’ who lives kilometres away, on the other side of the water, the communication just as peerless and joy-filled as one wish and hope for this young girl / woman of promise and capacity, is it not possible that we — each and every one of us — might develop the same facility with, the same ‘you don’t even have to think about it’ love for a device of utility, a device with access to wisdom and knowledge, and information that will serve only to make our lives easier and perhaps, even, more fulfilling?
And, oh yeah: Don’t Ask Me. Just Google It. C’mon Now. Really?

The Magical Device Known as the ‘Instant Pot’, an Indispensable and Must-Have Addition to Any Kitchen | Innovative Technology

April 28, 2018Food & Health, VanRamblings, Web & TechRaymond Tomlin

What Exactly Is the Instant Pot?
The Instant Pot is a 7-in-one, or 9-or-10-in-one, multi-cooker that does the job of a slow cooker, electric pressure cooker, rice cooker, steamer, yogurt maker, sauté and browning pan, and warming pot, a kitchen appliance that is designed to consolidate the cooking and preparing of food to one device.
Depending on the model you choose, you can use an app on your smartphone to programme your Instant Pot, or forego the model that makes Greek yogurt, or purchase the 10-in-1 Ultra model that steams without pressure — a godsend for al dente veggie enthusiasts — and has the ability to customize and memorize settings for each user … or not. Instant Pot beginners may simple choose a programme setting and press the “Start” button without any further tinkering, while more seasoned chefs can spin and punch their way through several additional options.
Want to know a bit more about the history of the Instant Pot? Watch this CBC News video that aired last November, just prior to Black Friday …

VanRamblings purchased the Instant Pot because we wanted to shake up our eating habits, to try new recipes, to prepare healthier meals, with more fresh veggies and more vegan items in our diet, as well as more soups — particularly in the cooler autumn and winter seasons.
VanRamblings also enjoys farm-fed, free-run, organic chicken, and thought it was well past time to come up with a few new recipes to complement our tried-and-true favourites, such as this delicious chicken stew, which we had for dinner last evening, along with fresh asparagus, and an organic carrot, apple and raisin salad, with a creamy, vegan homemade dressing.
For many — including VanRamblings — the Instant Pot is a life-changing kitchen device. We intend to prepare at least one new Instant Pot recipe each day over the course of our first year of ownership of this amazing device. Did we mention we prepared perfect poached eggs, in 2 minutes, in the Instant Pot, this morning? Really easy to prepare, no fuss and no muss.

A couple of Sundays back, a friend was over for an Instant Pot Umami pot roast dinner — he said it was the best dinner that he’d had in ages.
In the coming weeks, VanRamblings will set about to make creme brulée in our new Instant Pot, as well as potato salad for the upcoming David Eby picnic. We’ve already enjoyed incredibly delicious BBQ chicken wings prepared in our Instant Pot, as well as perfect basmati rice, garlic mashed potatoes, beets, broccoli with garlic, and apple sauce — as well as a myriad of vegetarian and vegan dishes.
We will also set about to make several different Indian recipes, with Aloo Baingan Masala set for dinner with a friend mid-week, next week.
Almost all of the recipes above may be found in Amy + Jackie’s 47 easy Instant Pot recipes for the newbie. Worth clicking on the link, we’d say.
Heard enough? We’ve only just begun (we’re only kiddin’ … sort of).

You’ll want to read these Instant Pot testimonials and reviews, like this review by Kevin Roose in the New York Times.
There are five Instant Pot Facebook groups that we’ve joined, each with tens (or, even hundreds) of thousands of members. We’ve already signed up to all of the Facebook Instant Pot groups listed below, and not a day goes by when we don’t find some new and delicious Instant Pot recipe.
As Claire Lower, with the Skillet division of Lifehacker.com writes, you should have no problem joining any one of the following popular Instant Pot Facebook groups that have taken social media by storm …

Instant Pot Beginner Recipes and Tips: This group is great for crowd-sourcing recipes, getting a grip on all those buttons and soothing your newbie jitters.
Instant Pot Vegan Recipes. Everyone should eat more vegetables, and you don’t have to be vegan to enjoy all of the creative plant-based recipes offered in this group.
Instant Pot Vietnamese Food Recipes: Quick, flavourful pho is the only reason you need to join this group, but be sure not to sleep on the Bo Kho, sticky rice, and milk tea.
“Dump and Push Start” Easy Instant Pot Recipes: This group features only the easiest “fix-and-forget” recipes for unfussy, single-appliance meal making.
Instant Pot for Indian Food: The Instant Pot makes short work of grains, legumes, and intensely-flavored sauces, lending itself extremely well to Indian cuisine. As someone who wishes to wean herself off of takeout, I find this group extremely exciting, says Ms. Lower.

Okay, okay — we know you’re busy. We’re close to wrapping this up.

Our favourite Instant Pot recipe so far? Hands down, it’s the Vegan Penne Rigate, where you pretty much just throw everything into the pot, give things a stir when it’s done (about 20 minutes, including de-pressurizing time), scoop it out of the pot and onto a plate … and mmmmm, delicious, you’ve never eaten a tastier pasta dish in your entire life.
Who’da thunk that penne, extra virgin olive oil, chopped onions, shallots, garlic, mushrooms and zucchini squash, when combined with a touch of sherry wine, a pinch of oregano and basil, a cup of vegetable broth with 2 cups of water, light soy sauce, Worcestershire sauce and fish sauce (omit these two items if your preparing the vegetarian or vegan version of this dish), and a pinch of kosher salt and black pepper, topped with a 5.5 ounce can of tomato paste just plopped right on top of everything … would together constitute a little taste of heaven on Earth?
Not to mention, the best galldarn thing you’ll ever eat!

Mmmm, scrumptious and delicious cheesecake prepared entirely in the Instant Pot

Now, we could go on extolling the many virtues of the Instant Pot, how preparation and clean-up is a snap (cuz, pretty much, everything just gets thrown into the pot, you can use the sauté function to soften onions or brown meat), how the Instant Pot not only helps you to make incredibly wonderful dishes in no time at all, or that the Instant Pot is not only a runaway international success, it’s a runaway Canadian international success, how no kitchen should be without one, and more, so much more.
But as VanRamblings is going to suggest in our Sunday column, sometimes you just have to put in the work yourself. Top 5 Instant Pot Hacks and Tips, 9 Instant Pot Don’ts, or A Beginner’s Guide to Using Your New Instant Pot — videos on all of these topics may be found on YouTube, along with a video for Starbucks Sous Vide Bacon Eggs Bites, and so very much more.
Once you’ve become aware that the Instant Pot exists, and you actually set about to purchase one (we like the 6-quart, 7-in-1 version which is, by far, the most popular model), you’ll begin to see references to the Instant Pot wherever you go; it’s sort of like a cult.
But a rare instance of a good, self-motivating, healthy for your body and for your mind, norm-challenging, community-building, Canada-supporting and vegan-friendly cult — and when you start to prepare your first Instant Pot recipes, you’ll come to find in short order that your new Instant Pot, sitting there on your counter, is an insanely easy kitchen device to employ on your new culinary road to a comestible bliss you didn’t know was even possible and so easily accessible to you, requiring surprisingly little of your time, with deliciously appetizing results that are just short of out of this world!

Indie Cinema, The Summer and the Salvation of Good Movies

April 27, 2018A & E, Cinema, Jude and Megan, Pop Culture, VanRamblingsRaymond Tomlin

VanRamblings has always loved the cinema, from the time we held our younger sister’s hand to keep her safe, while on our way to the Grandview Theatre, just south of 1st Avenue on Commercial Drive on the east side of the street, every Saturday in every month throughout 1955 until near the end of August in 1958, when our family moved to Edmonton, where our movie-going regimen was kept up — alone this time, on the bus at the age of eight heading downtown during the most unforgiving of 40-below winter nights cascading towards the Rialto Theatre to see the latest Hayley Mills film, for we were in love with Hayley Mills and never, ever missed one of her films … through to the mid-1960s when we were once again resident on Vancouver’s eastside, just north of Semlin Drive & 1st Avenue, in the neighbourhood where we were raised, and where we lived for most of our first 18 years of life, through until … now, to this day, when this year we celebrate 50 years as a published film critic, and ardent lover of film.

Not for us, the big blockbuster films that have dominated movie landscapes for most of the past three decades. No, we’re a ‘window on the world’ foreign film aficionado, as Rocky Mountaineer President and founder Peter Armstrong will tell you if you ask him, and we love small, lower-budget independent films to near distraction, and we love reading and writing about the film festivals that dot the cultural landscape throughout the year, from January’s Sundance Film Festival — founded by Robert Redford in Salt Lake City in August 1978 — to the Berlin “Berlinale” Film Festival in February, to March’s annual, Austin, Texas-based South by Southwest (SXSW) Film Festival, followed in April by Robert DeNiro’s Manhattan-based Tribeca Film Festival — and this next month, the grand mama of them all, the prestigious and much-anticipated Cannes Film Festival, which has taken place on the leisurely French Riviera every year since 1946.

As we write above, VanRamblings loves independent — or, indie — film. But what is indie film? Hang on to your hat, because here we go …
Indie films are movies produced with a low budget, most often by small, boutique production companies, and produced for less than $20 million.
Originally, the defining quality of indie media (film, music, publishing, etc.) was that it was produced outside of the traditional systems of production. So in film, for example, movies produced without the support of the major Hollywood studios would be independent films, or “indies” for short.
After a few decades of independent media, however, aesthetic patterns and themes have emerged that make “indie” more of a style or genre label.
Confusing matters even more, in recent years the six major Hollywood studios — Fox, Paramount, Warner, Sony, Universal, and Disney — have brought indie films in-house, with Disney acquiring Miramax, Paramount (Vantage), Sony (Classics), Fox (Searchlight), Universal (Focus, Working Title), and Warner (New Line, Castle Rock), the major studios competing each year for prestigious Oscar attention with their much-ballyhooed “independent” art house releases, most of the films acquired by the studios but not financed by them, from many of the film festivals mentioned above.

With indie films, the director’s approach is paramount, these auteur films creative, artistic and personal in tone, with subject matter that reflects the lives of everyday people, or as is sometimes the case, the marginalized persons or communities within our cities, provinces or states; indie films also often take on forbidden subject matter considered to be taboo by conventional society. Indie films will more often than not use music sourced from bands or indie music groups or artists, rather than employ original orchestral scoring to aid in the telling of the film’s story.
At the most recent Oscars ceremony, as the latest clutch of arthouse films — including Darkest Hour, The Shape of Water, Call Me by Your Name and Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri — were feted throughout the awards season, indie films grappled with Hollywood’s blockbuster addiction, and the new challenges presented by Netflix and Amazon.
While the big six Hollywood studios made 113 movies last year, taking in $11 billion in domestic box office and another $14 billion internationally, a record number of smaller-budget films were released from the beginning of January to the end of December 2017, most —&#32but not all — of the indie films released onto silver screens at a multiplex near you.
Why “not all”? Where did the “other” indie films secure release?

With 80 independent films currently set for production at Netflix, none of which will be given a theatrical release, in 2018 if you want to watch what might be a few of the most provocative films of the year, films made by some of the most prominent names in filmmaking, you’re going to have to stay home, or watch the latest Netflix “indie” on your smartphone or tablet.
Over the past couple of years, Netflix’s dominance of streaming platforms has proved game-changing for Hollywood, as they work to rewrite the film and TV universe to match its model. For anyone who cares about film and its future, that may be a scary thought, or sound potentially threatening.
But is it really?
Today, most studio greenlight conversations are at their most reductive: “Can we sell this in China?” By contrast, Netflix doesn’t care what “plays” in China, given its utter lack of presence in the country, and seeming lack of desire to gain a presence in the countries that comprise east Asia.
For now, the Netflix model injects a deep-pocketed force in the indie mix, their massive, near global reach casting a wide net, placing Netflix at the forefront of the wave of alternate narrative forms —&#32allowing producers to successfully argue for niche-audience titles that might struggle within the theatrical model —&#32while challenging the conventional distribution model.
As we write above, the early year annual Sundance, SXSW (South-by-Southwest), Tribeca and Cannes film festivals remain primary sources for the discovery of new directors and the first-rate indie films they take on the festival circuit, films that tend to garner critical and awards recognition at the end of each calendar year and, increasingly, films that are produced and screened only on Netflix. But not always. Cinema is not dead, yet.
Next month, VanRamblings will write about all the indie films that you can screen within a darkened, air-conditioned movie theatre, in this sure-to-be-sweltering upcoming summer season. In the meantime, look for …

Bisbee ’17. A Canadian première at next month’s 17th annual DOXA Documentary Film Festival, screening only once (so you’ll want to get your tickets now!), on Sunday, May 13th, 6pm at SFU Goldcorp Cinema, filmmaker and writer Robert Greene will be in attendance to present his latest film, and participate in a post-screening Q&A, responding to audience questions about a film that has variously been described as the “most talked-about documentary film of the year, an audacious, arresting dream-like mosaic”, Greene’s film focused on a traumatic 1917 immigrant deportation, when an Arizona sheriff —&#32backed by union-busting thugs hired by the mining companies —&#32rounded up striking workers, exiling them to the New Mexico desert … never to be heard from again. Greene’s film, while confronting an ugly truth, discovers a measure of healing and solidarity. See Bisbee ’17 next month at DOXA, or miss out on it forever.

C’mon back next Wednesday for more DOXA Documentary Film Festival coverage, which will fit nicely into our ongoing Vancouver Votes 2018 coverage. We’ll look forward to seeing you back here next Friday for feature coverage of DOXA 2018, and an interview with the tough, the brilliant, the wonderful, our friend, Selina Crammond, who this year succeeds the near irreplaceable Dorothy Woodend, as the festival’s new Programme Director.