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Gratitude |
LIX MONTHLY E-NEWS - SEPTEMBER 2006 |
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Hey LIX Chicks! This month's five-minute infomercial was presented by Robin Berry who gave us an interesting and useful presentation entitled Top 5 Habits to Keep Your Computer in Good Health. Everything from the importance of having spyware removal/virus scanning software to physical and virtual cleaning of your computer. |
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Those of us who thought backing up our files meant printing them on paper and putting them in a filing cabinet, learned a lot. (No wonder I keep running out of space in my old two-drawer cabinet.) And did I mention the chocolates that Robin's wife, Mary Beth, passed around during the presentation? Robin is the proud owner of Robin's Rainbow Computer Services. To find out more about Robin and her company, check out her web site at www.robinsrainbow.com. Mary Beth is a private chef and caterer and can be reached at (613) 868-6936. We were honoured this month to have LIX member, Donna Sharkey, talk with us about the Cluny Project...an outstanding fundraising effort that she started after visiting Sierra Leone earlier this year. Donna was in Sierra Leone researching the conditions of women and girls who have survived the war. What she found disturbed her so incredibly that, when she returned to Ottawa, she decided that she had to do something to help. Here's a short excerpt from background information to Donna's project: "The war is over, the suffering is not. Picture a girl of 10 years old torn from her village after her family has been massacred, carried into the jungle by rebel soldiers. She is raped repeatedly. She is forced into slavery, to cook for the soldiers, carry their water, smuggle their weapons, serve their sexual demands. When the war that has devastated her country finally ends, she is 13 and pregnant and HIV-positive and alone." But what is truly amazing is that in Sierra Leone
Donna also found 17 nuns from the Order of St. Joseph of
Cluny. These nuns are running schools, clinics, food programs,
counselling services and skills training courses and they are making
a difference in the lives of the women and girls of Sierra Leone!
Despite their small numbers and sparse resources, the Cluny Sisters
go into the countryside where the needs are greatest. One of their
programs is a re-training school for girls who have survived female
slavery in the rebel army. The school teaches them practical skills
such as sewing and crafts...the products of which they can sell.
The school also provides them with land on which to grow crops.
Despite all they've endured, the girls are rebuilding their lives,
becoming self-sufficient, helping to support families!
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| Busting Out |
Upcoming
Events of Interest |
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A Breast Health
Workshop for
Martina Navratilova
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3. Busting Out: A Breast Health Workshop for Lesbian and Bisexual Women...Monday, September 18th at Centretown Community Health Centre, 420 Cooper Street, 7:00 - 9:00 pm. FREE! Brought to you by the 'Making Us Visible: Promoting Access to Breast Health and Breast Cancer Services for Lesbian and Bisexual Women' project of the Sherbourne Health Centre of Toronto. The workshop will be facilitated by Cheryl Dobinson who is the project's coordinator. 4. This year's AIDS
Walk For Life is being held on Saturday, September
23rd. A number of LIX Chicks will be walking. If you'd
like to join them and/or sponsor a walker, please go to www.aidswalkottawa.ca.
Each step you take during Walk for Life Ottawa
helps attain the goal of raising $100,000 for local HIV/AIDS charities. 6. Ladyfest Ottawa 2006. September 27th to October 3rd. 'Celebrating 5 years of Unbecoming Behaviour' with music, workshops, film and crafts by women. The event includes a number of lesbian performers. For details visit www.ladyfestottawa.com. 7. Under the Hood: A Car Awareness Workshop. Join LIX member Laura, an apprentice mechanic, as she 'walks you through' a demonstration car from bumper to bumper and explains all of the components, what they do and how they work together to make a car run. Learn how to change the oil, how important it is to change your car's fluids and have regular maintenance done, the difference between snow tires and summer tires, what a spark plug looks like and how it works, and how to change a tire (and where that tire is!). Laura has been working on cars since she was a little girl. She's been apprenticing for four years after receiving honours in Mechanics School. She is now working at Otto's BMW. Laura developed this workshop in Halifax in response to requests from her women friends who felt they were being ripped off by mechanics. The workshop had such an overwhelming response that Laura repeated it seven more times! The workshop will be held at Otto's BMW, 660 Hunt Club Road on September 30, 2006 and again on October 28, 2006 from 9:30a.m.-12:00 p.m. The cost is $30 and must be paid in advance to hold your spot. Light refreshments will be served. To register call Laura at (613) 719-9328 or email her at kingla2001@yahoo.ca. Only eight spots per workshop. P.S. Laura says to wear comfy shoes! 8. "The Voice" is a new Ottawa-based women's literary fundraising magazine...that will donate its proceeds back into various events and charities in the community. The first issue will be out at the beginning of October. The creators are looking for interested subscribers as well as women who wish to submit writing, photography or artwork for upcoming issues. The yearly subscription rate is $18. Find details on advertising, sponsorship, subscriptions, submitting work and more at: www.mwdesign.ca/TheVoice. 9. Our next LIX Coffee Networking Meeting will be held at Bridgehead at the corner of Bank & Albert on Tuesday, October 3rd from 7:00 - 9:00. After our 'go round' of introductions, we will have one five-minute infomercial before the social part of the evening. 10. Transgress. Capital Xtra presents an exciting new literary event as part of the Ottawa International Writers Festival. 'A sinfully sexy and gender-bending evening of transgressive writing' featuring Ivan E. Coyote, Sky Gilbert, Marnie Woodrow and Matthew Firth...October 6th at the Library and Archives Canada, 395 Wellington Street. Tickets are $15/$12 Student or Senior, and $8 for Festival Members. Tickets are available by calling (613) 562-1243 or from Nicholas Hoare Books, 419 Sussex Drive. 11. The Kiss. An evening for women presented by Bisougirls. Mix and mingle after work the 2nd Friday of every month. The next get-together will take place on Friday, October 13th. Doors open at 5:00 pm. at Club Soda, 222 Slater Street. One of the Bisougirls attended our September LIX coffee meeting and explained that the August KISS event was cancelled because of Montreal Pride. So if you're one of the women who went to Club Soda on August 11th and wondered just what the heck was going on, rest assured that the Bisougirls are back on track! 12. Help Heal the Wounds of Sierra Leone...at a benefit for the Cluny Project on Monday, October 16th at 6:00 p.m. at the Green Door Vegetarian Restaurant, 198 Main Street (across from St. Paul's University). Come and enjoy a buffet meal and hear Marie Therese Njie speak of her and her colleagues' work in Sierra Leone. Tickets are $50 for a full meal and there will be a cash bar. This event is spear-headed by LIX member, Donna Sharkey, who has done research on women and girls coping with trauma in Sierra Leone. After a recent trip to the country and experiencing first-hand the devastation there, she felt she had to do something concrete to help. For tickets, please contact Sue at suesmee@sympatico.ca or call (613) 232-0704. Come out and support this valuable project in aid of the women and girls of Sierra Leone! 13. HERO 2006: Capital Xtra's Community Achievement Awards will take place on Thursday, October 26th from 7:00 - 10:30 p.m. at the Grand Salon, Crowne Plaza Hotel, 101 Lyon Street. Tickets are $20 and are available at After Stonewall, mother tongue books, Capital Xtra, and Venus Envy. Dessert buffet included. Cash bar opens at 6:30. Nominate your heroes online at www.xtra.ca. 14. Don't miss this opportunity
to get away from the cold and snow in Ottawa with the second annual
Women at Sea tour! On February 24, 2007
women will be boarding the Star Princess and heading to the Western
Caribbean. Special tour price includes round trip airfare
to Ft. Lauderdale, a pre-cruise hotel room the night before the
ship sails, transfers to and from the airport, 7 night cruise, all
your meals and a Women at Sea t-shirt. Call George at the Cruise
Ship Centre (1-866-313-3309) for information on cabin availability
and prices or check out http://www.outstuff.ca/cruise.html
for details. As always, we encourage you to send us news
of events and/or workshops that you are involved in so we can add
the information to our Upcoming Events of Interest
section of this monthly news update. We need to know the who's,
what's, where's as well as cost, where tickets are available, if
pre-registration is required, and if it's a fundraiser, what organization
you're raising funds for. If the organization has a web site, that
web address would be helpful. Cheers, |
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