When I finished school work for the degree that’s been my identity for the past six years late last month, I was pretty sure that everything would just come to a halt. I’d wake up leisurely and sip sangria on patios. In other words, that life as I know it would be replaced by summer vacation in the traditional sense. Well, it hasn’t, and I maintain a page long weekly to do list of responsibilities I have created myself rather than those imposed by UofT. It was kind of a relief to realize that it wasn’t the university that propped up my identity, and that I’m pretty much the same person attached to it or not. And luckily I don’t have to give up the perks of my student card quite yet!

One of the things I am trying to make time for is attending more events in Toronto that help me learn about various development-related issues. I started this week with Well, Well: an Evening of Dialogue on Social Change, a debate between Mark Kingwell (philosopher/writer) and Malcolm Gladwell (thinker/journalist). Like a snapshot of a chat these two men might have over a fast-food lunch, the talk only allowed them to skim the surface of their insight. Each gave a 15 minute talk on their view of social change in which Gladwell tore apart society’s reliance on awareness to create change and Kingwell spoke in depth on the vital role of empathy using, somewhat obscurely, the story of St. Paul’s conversion. They both agreed that the change came in the doing not the talking about, but the common ground ended there. As Gladwell said himself at some point, the two were trying to tackle completely different realms of reality, with Gladwell focusing on change that has happened lately, and Kingwell trying to sum up the universe. In the end, it was a bit silly to try to cover Social Change in an hour!

In stark contrast to the mainstream Well event, on Saturday night I went to the screening of Threads of Wrath. Directed by Emanuelle LaPierre-Fortin (a classmate from the development studies program at UofT), the movie worked to unpack the understandings of fairness in market relationships for cotton producers in Burkina Faso. LaPierr-Fortin’s explicit goal is to stay away from oversimplified understandings of fair trade, suggesting in her film that fairness goes beyond just a dollar figure. She reflects on the issue of “multiple oppressions,” avoiding a consumer-producer dichotomy and highlighting the different levels where unfairness occurs (locally, nationally, internationally). If you want to check it out, there’s one more screening on May 25th, 4-6 at the Centre for Social Innovation. The fair trade wine and chocolates alone are worth going for (or would have been had my current detox not prevented me from indulging).

Finally, on Sunday evening, I checked out Dilip Mehta’s film The Forgotten Woman that I missed during Hot Docs but is now playing at the Carleton. I’d seen Water when it first came out (by Dilip’s sister Deepa) and went into this one wondering how they would be different. Where Water is a stylized story of two women’s experience of widowhood with brighter colours and better looking love interests, The Forgotten Women is a broad survey of the situation of widows around India. Mehta seems careful to capture all angles, from widows in grinding poverty to the widows who lunch. All however, had experienced some degree of social alienation because of the death of their husbands.

This week? Contact (Toronto Photography Festival), Doors Open Toronto, and my first ROM walk.