Last Sunday we had a small but spirited group. Bernard Kelly read an "out-take" from his novel in progress. Diane Bracuk read two poems in memory of her late black lab. Giovanna Riccio continued her reading of the dramatic monologue "Vittorio." Christine Bruce shared her motivational (and pun-packed) e-mails with us. Gil Gauvreau showed us his first "home movie," with all the ironically employed tropes that that implies. Theo Heras sang two songs, one in support (or celebration) of Martha Baillie, who read (far too few) pages from her novel
The Incident Report..
Some comments from the participants:
Diane: Diane Bracuk let herself go to the dogs — or at least a dog, her beloved black lab Gordie whom she sent off to Dog Heaven around this time two years ago. Walking her rambunctious, high spirited dog was a source of daily joy for her, which she commemorated in two poems, "Black Dog of Happiness" and the (very prosaically entitled) "Walking Gordie." Although she also loved her cat, her dearly departed Wussy, she promises no "Ode to Felines" at future Cafe Q events.
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Christine: I read from my collection of motivational email, which I send to my flock of short-distance recreational runners to provide feedback on their goals, to reinforce lessons learned, and to encourage. The tone of these emails is colloquial and upbeat, usually identifying each member by name and by accomplishment. Further, each email reminds the group of events both past and future, so they can look back with pride and ahead with anticipation. And finally, I always try to make the emails playful so my athletes don't see the running as hard work, but rather as an enjoyable experience. I'm passionate about making people more aware of their bodies through sport, nutrition, and sleep and stress patterns, resulting in happier, healthier men and women making more intelligent fitness decisions.
For more information, visit www.therunabouts.ca.
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Gil: I looked something up today (Monday, March 31) , and it turns out that "Impossible is Nothing" is not a mistranslation, but is actually the current Adidas advertising campaign slogan. Yikes! I had meant to check this possibility out at least 20 times while I was editing, but never got around to it because it just seemed like a mistake to me. But funnily enough, after screening it in a public forum, I was (belatedly) overcome with a strong urge to check it out.
For the linguists in the viewing audience, I discovered this on a Chinese-English linguistics web site.
"Nothing is impossible" is an ordinary utterance, while "impossible is nothing" has rarely been used until recently. However, few can tell whether these two sentences convey different messages. This article attempts to analyze their semantic differences by referring to predicate logic and thematic structures and reaches the conclusion that the latter conveys a different message from the former. [...] "Nothing is impossible" denies the existence of things that are impossible, by claiming that everything is possible. "Impossible is nothing" believes that the thing that seems impossible is not a fact but an opinion. [...] Impossible can be used as an adjective as well as a noun. Therefore, "impossible is nothing" and "nothing is impossible" are both correct.Ooops...
But athletes (who may have already been exposed to the campaign) and linguists aside, I think the average person visiting China for the Olympics, and seeing the phrase for the first time, may be prompted to make the same erroneous assumption of mistaken translation (as I did) because of the plentiful examples of bad translation that do exist. (If "Tongue of Movies" somehow is proven to be linguistically correct in English, I will swallow mine forever.)
Otherwise, it was a terrific Sunday afternoon.
Yesterday we had an interesting mixture of contributions, beginning and ending, one might say, with the male gaze. 
Finally, Courtney Fairweather talked to us about Vanessa Beecroft [pictured below] and Pietra Brettkelly's documentary on Beecroft recently shown at Hot Docs [http://hotdocs.bside.com/2008/?_view=_filmdetails&filmId=51988278] and read to us from her own essay on "relational aesthetics" [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relational_Aesthetics] and the French critic Nicolas Bourriaud [pictured right].
