Lise's Ramblings

In five-cent increments, the twitterverse buzzed with tweets that will make millions of dollars flow to support mental health.  From a social-media metrics perspective, the #BellLetsTalk (French version #BellCause) garnered impressive reach, which rivalled #SOTU for President Obama's State of the Union address. Even by adding the long form (#stateoftheunion), as of this morning there was only a five-million gap between the BellLetsTalk hashtag and the State of the Union hashtags. Impressive. How did it happen? Collective thanks to major leaguers, mobile technology, multitudes of do-gooders and an annual marketing campaign for all the activity on January 28, 2014.  Entertainers like William Shatner, Jann Arden and Ellen Degeneres encouraged their fans to retweet the #BellLetsTalk messages about mental health. Thousands upon thousands of followers responded. Millions in all. Who else helped the cause? Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield. Olympian Clara Hughes. NHL fra...

In " To be or not to be...dominant for centuries " I paid tribute to a literary great. Today's post celebrates the staying power of a rock-and-roll team: The Rolling Stones. Back in 1963, Mick Jagger figured The Rolling Stones wouldn't last more than a couple years. Considering the reckless lifestyle of band members, their larger-than-life personalities, and the excesses of the 1960s, it's surprising the bad boys of rock survived at all, let alone to play on for all these years. Fortunately for fans and artists alike, Mick was wrong; this summer marked the band's 50th anniversary. While the band's composition has shifted since the Rolling Stones took to the public stage at London's Marquee Club back on July 12, 1962, the talented frontmen, Mick Jagger and Keith Richards, have remained at the core.  Shepard Fairey designed an anniversary version of the band's iconic logo (shown above). The original, created by John Pasche, easily ranks...

LOL. BFF. ZUP. n00b. RT. OMG. ROFL ... ad nauseam Bemoaning English's demise in today's instant-messaging world? There's an app for that. Just kidding. JK. But, if you search amid the language shortcuts and the Interweb, I promise you will find people who take short attention spans and 140-character limits as a positive challenge. Sure, Lady Gaga, Charlie Sheen and Justin Bieber have far more followers that the owners of the Twitter bios below, but wouldn't you rather read these instantly identifiable, witty and snappy entries?   As   Shakespeare wrote in Hamlet,   "...brevity is the soul of wit."  True, clever bits are      AWESOME!!!

I remember tearing up when a young woman sang “Oh Canada ” on Parliament Hill to kickstart the Canadian Breast Cancer Foundation’s CIBC Run for the Cure back in 2002. Granted, that is a particularly emotional run. Cindy and Kelley at Friday's performance Sometimes the lyrics of a song can overwhelm you. Other times, the way someone sings a tune can open the floodgates. On Friday evening, I had the pleasure of experiencing the perfect storm…beautiful lyrics belted out by an incredibly talented songstress, PEI ’s Kelley Mooney. Opening for another PEI artist, Catherine MacLellan , at the Moncton Press Club, Kelley outshone the headliner. Not only did she perform a number of original pieces from her current album (Tomorrow) , she also sang her version of a classic Leonard Cohen tune. Now K.D. Lang, Jon Bon Jovi and many others have covered “Allelujah,” but Kelley takes it to a whole other level. She rewrote the lyrics to tell the Easter tale, and even Leonard Cohen has given...

Tailspins from global financial woes have countries struggling to regain stable economic footings. Full recovery is far off and requires varied steps, but early moves involve industries and governments alike searching for efficiencies, paring budgets, dropping services and product lines, and cutting jobs. At times like these, you’ll find employees react by evolving into one of the following four characters: the ostrich – those who adopt this head-in-the-sand response believe that as long as they ignore the situation it doesn’t really exist Chicken Little – apart from spreading rumours and cynicism in a sky-is-falling way, poultry tend to accomplish little more than dampen morale and play the martyr    the fairy-tale villain – colleagues who never pulled their weight before suddenly seem busy and engaged, but then their self-protectionism becomes obvious as they kiss butt, throw adversaries (anyone at all) under the proverbial bus, manipulate people and situati...