Dispatches from the discomfort zone

Forget about a list of election post-mortems from me. Just bop the bigot: including the bigot within.  Leonard Cohen on the rewards of abandoning hope in exchange for “the lowly practices of self-reform.”  Musings on the anthopocene:  we are conjuring ourselves as ghosts that will haunt the very deep future.

Feeling vulnerable? Encrypt everything.  Exhausted by tangled conspiracies? Adam Curtis weaves archival footage into a tapestry of interconnectivity. “We are creatures born into a world that seems to demand our understanding, but will never grant it.”
Linguistic morphology.  Free science. Calls to disarm, and other slacker pleasing directives.  Writing about music may be like dancing about architecturebut this essay by Zadie Smith really swings.

Sometimes tragic times call for emergency sex. Sometimes they call for beer.And sometimes, “hershey’s kisses are not enough!! I want full hershey’s penetration.” (xo Stephen Colbert). But always, ever, hard times call for furious dancing. That’s why Salish Sea Solutions aka Gary & Andrea are stoked to present…. OKA!! This weekend on Salt Spring Island and across Turtle Island. Check the facebook page for a bonus Friday afternoon meditation/yoga/didgeridu session and come early to hear Luke Wallace’s revolutionary folksongs.

Australia’s electric dreamtime wizards coming to Mahon Hall Friday November 18th. Tix $25 at Salt Spring Books or catch them Sat the 19th in Vancouver at the Waldorf

This week in Andrea Palframan

Site drops: inspired to be webcrafting for these tech utopians.  On the earthier side ~ got land? Want land? Check out SSI Farmland Trust. Proud to promote this natural repellent as a tool to protect families from malaria.  And, a memoir about finding & keeping true love in a transgender marriage. 

All them sites were crafted by yours truly… possibly explaining the absence of newsletters over the past couple o weeks. My bad. Let’s just call it a monthly newsletter shall we?

If you have communication needs from writing to web development, get in touch & see if my tricks & tools can help you do good, beautifully.


Yes my friends, we’re still here and we’re hella uncomfortable. May these profoundly disturbing times conjure up beautiful trouble. When nothing is sure, everything is possible. While it may be very tempting to denounce, to call out, to blame and to shame ‘the other’, the reality is that we are still all in this together— beautiful losers, driven by longing and love. And — if we’re willing to work on it —  we’ll lean that way forever.

I’ve seen the nations rise and fall
I’ve heard their stories, heard them all
but love’s the only engine of survival 

— Leonard Cohen

Fight the power. Power the fight. In the ugliness of battle, we tend to forget that the root of this struggle is the love of life.

xoxoxoo Andrea