just got back from my trip. i am glad that i am alive and well, considering i had no idea how i was getting home. we ended up catching a ride with ed, a painter with hippie parents from aurora. we talked about gardening, immigration, car matenence, and granola munching. he was actually pretty cute for an old guy.

so yes.... myself, amanda, and zeesy were in montreal for the anarchist bookfair. we spent the majority of our time eating poutine with drum and bass dj's and admiring the greenery. the anarchist bookfair was amazing!!! i didn't buy any books but i did go to two amazing lectures; cindy from the institute of social ecology (ttp://www.social-ecology.org/), and matt hern (http://www.spinninglobe.net/prefacefielday.htm).

cindy's workshop was an intro to anarchism. i had been to her workshop before at the conference on organized resistance in d.c.. that conference was amazing!! it was organized by students who were affiliated with the animal and earth liberation fronts, as well as feminist, anti-racist, and queer positive activits. cindy's workshop goes over the western history of anarchism and breaks done some of the major ideas into bite size bits. the social ecology institute is an anarchist university from vermont and i talked to her afterwards about it. i've wanted to go there for a while but it has always been out of my price range. one of the other profs told me that i could work as a cook there and take free classes in the summer! they have a vegan/veggie kitchen so i wouldn't have to worry about cooking meat.

matt's workshop was on unschooling and it helped me a lot in thinking over my pedogogical theory for TIGed. he talked a lot about how students should have democracy in their education, and should choose what they want to learn. an interesting thing that he brought up is that he doesn't think children should be taught how to read. he told us that his daughter had taught herself and that children have a variety of ways of learning and should learn from curiosity, not force. i brought up equity in education and that was a big debate. matt was rejecting the idea of a cannon of learning. i was worried that if we just disolved the education system that communities would just pass down the existing prejeduces and hierarchies. his answer was that they existed anyways and that we needed to find a different way to institute democracy in education because right now we have no say at all. VERY interesting. there was a womyn in the workshop from the puerto rican school in chicago that was started by puerto rican nationalists back in the day. i had read about that school in BLU magazine and was really in awe that it was still around today. the CIA had raided that place a few times for bullshit charges. i really wanted to talk to both of them after but they dissapeared pretty quick.

i met a lot of amazing people and ate lots of good food. i also got a hole in my face! right underneath my lip.. kinda like an off-centre labret. i got home at 11pm last night and worked until 5am on the TIG macklin scrapbook.

it's like, woah.