Foxwarren – S/T
Tik Tu – Shuma
No Name – Room 25
Gouge Away – Burnt Sugar
Faim – 7″
Idles – Joy as an Act of Resistance
John Prine – S/T
The Weather Station – S/T
Jennifer Castle – Angels of Death
Author: Nic Olson
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Books of the Year: 2018
Go, Went, Gone – Jenny Erpenbeck
Fighting for Space – Travis Lupick (read my book review here)
The Fire Next Time – James Baldwin
The Break – Katherina Vermette
The People’s History of the Russian Revolution – Neil Faulkner
2312 – Kim Stanley Robinson
World of Apples – John Cheever
Legalizing Drugs – Steve Rolles
Farenheit 451 – Ray Bradbury
As We Have Always Done – Leanne Betasamosake Simpson
Policing Black Lives – Robyn Maynard
Neil Degrasse Tyson – Astrophysics for People in a Hurry
America: A Farewell Tour – Chris Hedges
Malcolm X: An Autobiography – Alex Haley
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East End
This story first appeared at Poached Hare. It is now available as an audiobook here, and for sale in book form, here.
I think I’ll walk to the East End. Yeah, the East End. I got some stuff I need to get out there. I’ll come back down to Lester’s place later, ‘cause he’s got a place now. He’s not answering the door, but he’s not going anywhere. Can’t even walk. It’s only a hour and a half walk from downtown. I’ll go straight down and maybe warm up at the McDonalds. I’m already at the big trees around the hospital. Might as well keep on going.
Gotta step over that pile of snow that someone left. Just shovelled to the end of their property. Not a damn millimetre more. Give me a shovel and I’d shovel the whole block. Give me a house and I’d have a sidewalk to shovel. Give me $20 and I’ll shovel whatever you want for a hour. Give me $20 and I’ll shovel the bullshit coming outta your mouth.
…Click here to read the rest of the story…
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Advocating for Alcohol Harm Reduction Policy in Regina, Saskatchewan, Round 2
To read a literature review on the topic of Managed Alcohol Programs, you can click the link below. The literature review was done by lead author Erin Nielsen and co-authored by Gabriela Novotna, Rochelle Berenyi, and myself.
To read CBC Saskatchewan’s coverage on it, you can click here.
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Poem for the Camp
Three flags whip and crack
over the Ledge like Canada Day celebrations
or hangfire warning shots
It’s Deano’s 52nd
we go to McDonalds after an hour
deliberating where he wouldn’t get kicked out, if alone. We talk
about Willie Nelson. He eats a BigMac,
I finish his fries.
I used to come to the Ledge to rev the engine at rabbits
padding along the asphalt
at cyclists
at things I didn’t really get
Deano and I talk
about finding bikes in dumpsters. Later, alone,
I stop at a grocery store alley
find an unopened pizza and wonder
which of these dumpsters he might’ve been sleeping in
the moment the trash was picked up
and the compactor closed.
One time with a girl
through a crack in the stairs
I saw someone move in the Legislative basement
like a dungeon
keeper of secrets I had yet to learn
bigger than a limestone building
I sit in the cold, consider
what it would feel like to have my body valued
like expired frozen pizza
or my blood used
to restore the big copper dome.
Toes and head numb, I add more wood to the illegal sacred fire
and think about Willie Nelson.
-Regina SK, March 16, 2018
(Justice for Our Stolen Children Camp, Treaty 4)
This poem was first published in Tour Book #2.
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The Payphone
The following excerpt is from the story The Payphone, first published online at Lunch Ticket, and now available as an audiobook and in print at BallsOfRice.Bandcamp.com. Artwork by Alex Murray.
A man wearing a navy paisley bandana and wire-frame glasses pedaled his bike to the corner, stepped over his seat, and coasted on one foot to the bike rack at the side of the liquor store. He slotted his front wheel in the rack, strode four steps over to the unsheltered public payphone, lifted the handset, inserted a quarter, dialed the number to his daughter on the east end of town, and waited. He needed to call her Tuesday, today, to see if his cheque had arrived. His watch said 4:42 p.m.
No dial tone started, nothing, until he heard an automated woman’s voice say in her cold, impersonal way, “Credit twenty-five cents. Please deposit twenty-five cents.”
The man forgot that the phone company raised the price by one-hundred percent, to fifty cents. He patted his pants pockets, checked his jacket, checked the sidewalk, even checked the pouch attached to his bicycle, and couldn’t find a quarter. He couldn’t find two dimes and a nickel. He couldn’t find anything. There was no one around for several blocks to ask for change.
“Fuck sakes!” the man cursed. He slammed the phone against the liquor store’s brick wall, breaking the earpiece off. He dropped the receiver and biked away.
Finish the story at Lunch Ticket.
Balls of Rice 