Who is behind TheThinkProject2018?
Welcome to my TheThinkProject2018 Blog.
I hope my inspirational, motivational, grass roots messaging and other designs give you something to think about - and raise subjects to talk about with family, friends and fellow workers. And I hope you will wear or carry messages that you think are particularly important (whether created by me or other designers) - so that we, the grass roots - have a way to physically show the things we think are important, and the things we disapprove of.
Who am I?
In this day and age, it's good to know who is behind what's out there on the Internet, and have some idea of their back story.
My name is Debbie (Ryan) Sheridan. I was born in Newfoundland, Canada - a few years after Newfoundland, a former British colony joined Canada.
I am of Irish and English ancestry, and come from a large, strong minded, opinionated family. I am the oldest of 7 children.
Dad's family lived in a Newfoundland fishing outport, which was isolated, and could only be reached by ship or boat. It was one of many outports eventually resettled under Joey Smallwood (the first Premier of Newfoundland). I wrote a poem about Resettlement when I was a teenager and won a Bronze medal in the Lieutenant Governor's Poetry awards. Even now when I reread it, I remember how special Little Paradise was, especially by lamp light in the evenings, as we gathered round the kitchen table, playing cards and other games.
My father's father was an inshore fisherman in Newfoundland. The outport he lived in had a large Co-op where the fisherman sold their cod and other fish at one cent a pound.
Grandfather could neither read nor write. I don't know why that was. Grandmother could. But Grandfather Ryan was a critical and analytical thinker who could talk intelligently about just about anything, and he was very innovative.
I spent many happy summer holidays there. Grandfather managed to rig up running water from a brook, and they had an indoor toilet. Due to lack of electricity though, light was by oil lamps or flash lights, and cooking was on a wood/coal stove. There were no roads or vehicles other than fishing boats and dories. Grandfather had an old radio that ran on tubes. At 3 or 4am each morning grandfather would turn it on to listen to the weather report and a bit of news, before heading off fishing. I would often join him in the early hours, and share fresh made bread toasted over the open flame of the stove in a wire basket - then slathered with butter and home made jam. But I wasn't allowed to go fishing with him. It wasn't because I couldn't swim. (Grandfather couldn't either). It was because I was a landlubber (prone to sea sickness if it was at all rough).
We kids walked over the hills on paths, well worn by feet, picked berries and splashed about in ponds. It was a simple, happy life, free of modern technology. I have relatives who still live there, and other who return there and the surrounding bays in summer.
Dad was sent to the city of St. John's for his education. He became a communications technician with CNT (Canadian National Telecommunications). I remember going to work with him during summer holidays. He helped keep the telephone equipment operating and the machines that sent telegrams, and eventually more complex messaging - when telecom computers eventually filled rooms.
Dad is probably part of the reason that in my later years I took an unexpected active interest in democracy and social justice etc. People would go to Dad and ask him to write to the government or a business on their behalf, if they had a problem. Dad would write out a letter in meticulous, minute longhand - then would get me to type it on our old Remington typewriter. Dad could type with all his fingers, and I only knew how to tap it out with one or two. Much as I moaned about having to do it, he made me do it (and retype it if I made too many mistakes.) He obviously was a much better typist than me, and my mother had been a stenographer before she got married. But I think Dad wanted me to type it out - to make me think about the issues he was writing about. Years after I left home he would still tell me about the latest problem he was helping someone with.
My mother's father was an official in Customs and immigration when Newfoundland was a Colony (and I think afterwards). He would be invited to Garden Parties at the Lieutenant Governor's. He took my mother along a couple of times - which resulted on one occasion in a trip to the hairdressers for a Beehive hairdo (even as a child I thought this was a crazy hairstyle), and a posh new outfit. He was well educated. I don't remember Mom's mother much - other than being a sickly lady who was always in bed, who would inspect my hands and teeth to insure I passed Victorian muster. She insisted I wear an apron, no matter what. When I was very young, she had me banned from the kitchen, below stairs quarters (where I used to hang out with much adored Maggie, their maid) for quite a while - after an incident when the very old fashioned phone rang in the adjacent room, Maggie wasn't there, I had seen how that old-fashioned phone worked, and climbed on a chair - and joined in the Party Line conversation (which needless to say I was not supposed to be part of) - to the consternation of those talking. (Now I appreciate the importance of private communications.)
They lived in a 3 story townhouse that had a dumbwater between the basement where the kitchen was, and the dining room on the middle floor. This was a marvel to me. In addition, beside the dumbwater, in the Dining Room they had an Encyclopedia Brittanica. When at their house, I hung out in the Dining Room, going through the illustrated Encyclopedia Brittanica - which opened my eyes to a wealth of previously unknown things, places, and ideas.
I loved the Encyclopedia Brittanica so much, that I saved my allowance, so that when the local supermarket sold the Columbia Encyclopedia at I think it might have been $2 a volume, I bought the first two volumes. My grandfather then bought all the rest to encourage me to read. I have never lost that insatiable interest in information and learning about new things..
My mother was a housewife, because married women didn't often work back then. But she was an intelligent woman who would have preferred to work. She had no income of her own, but had been a trained stenographer. She advertised at the university (which was just up the road from us) that she would type assignments and theses. But she didn't just type what she was given. Nor did she just proofread it. If she thought a subject needed more information to back it up, I would be sent to the University Library to find more relevant information. I can't remember how young I was when I got a library card for the Memorial University library to do this - but I was such a common visitor, they didn't blink an eye. Then Mom would get me to proof read her final typed rewrite. Is it any wonder that ever since I was a kid, I have been interested in information, and researching stuff?
I did very well in school, and won scholarships to university. I studied medicine at Memorial University and graduated in 1976. Because our family wasn't well to do, I joined the Medical Officers Training Program, so got funding for Medical School, in exchange for working as a Medical Officer in the Canadian military when I graduated.
I was posted to CFB Edmonton after my internship - and was there from 1977-1980. I was trained as a Flight Surgeon, and in addition to normal medical duties and doing aircrew medicals, I investigated aircraft accidents. We also provided medical care for the Canadian Airborne regiment, which, at the time were based at nearby CFB Griesbach.
I met my husband in Edmonton, where he was in the Naval Reserve while doing his PhD at the University of Edmonton. He was born in New Zealand, (but his parents moved to Saskatchewan in Canada when he was 4.)
When my stint in the military ended, we moved to Halifax, Nova Scotia - where my husband initially worked with the Navy, and then was a professor at Dalhousie University. I did a 4 year specialty training residency in Diagnostic Radiology. When that ended in 1984 I worked as a Radiologist (and eventually became Chief of Department and Chief of Staff) at Truro Regional Hospital. When I started in Radiology, I had a vision that CT Scanning at Regional Hospitals would become a norm in Canada. It did, and it started at our hospital, thanks to an innovative Nova Scotian government that was willing to think ahead and cooperated with my research project.
Because I was determined to get a CT scanner at our hospital, I started using a Macintosh so I could type up questionnaires for the GPs to use for referral, and type up reports for the government. The documents were initially printed on a dot matrix printer, but as soon as a laser printer came out, we got one. Though never formally trained as a graphic artist, I have used graphics programs to illustrate ideas ever since, and can recollect how exciting the evolution of Photoshop was.
In the meantime my husband commuted 100 km to and from Halifax in horrifically dangerous weather in winter. Every time there was car accident, I was worried about him. He had relatives in New Zealand, and we had visited New Zealand several times. Eventually we decided not to wait until we were retired to move to a place with a better climate. In 1995 we moved to New Zealand. When asked why we moved from Canada, we jokingly say "We're climatic refugees".
My husband became a professor at Auckland University. Initially I did Radiology locums but for two years travelled frequently between New Zealand and Canada, because my mother had terminal lung cancer. Unfortunately a few years later, I had a series of serious medical problems and had to retire from medicine.
Despite being retired, it was not until 2013 that I metaphorically woke up - and began to really pay attention to the news and current affairs. I started to Blog on democracy, liberty, justice, Peace, privacy, government transparency, truth v lies etc. After a few years (when my Blog hit ~1 million views) - it went down Google's black hole of history, because I forgot my login to renew the Domain.) I then took up tweeting - but it has become increasingly apparent that various online platforms have been hijacked by powerful and influential agenda-driven entities. The grass roots public are not just mined for their data; that data is exploited in order to control what people say, think or do. Criticism or opinions that the Big Brother browsers don't like are deeply buried, well behind the paid ads and information they want to push. This is not how a Democracy operates.
A few years ago I started art lessons. Whether that was a factor in stimulating the Muses or not - one night in October 2018 I awoke with the idea of using my years of experience of illustrating ideas with graphic art and my newly learned skills in fine art - to highlight principles, values, and ethics. This vision to message from the grass roots up, I could see as clearly as my former vision to introduce CT Scanning at Regional Hospitals in Canada. TheThinkProject2018 was born.
I have explained in The Story Behind TheThinkProject2018 https://thethinkproject2018.blogspot.com/p/about-me.html and in The Grass Roots Messaging Vision of TheThinkProject2018 https://thethinkproject2018.blogspot.com/2019/02/the-grass-roots-messaging-vision-of.html more about what is going on in society that motivated this design project. This article is to give you an idea about the background of the person (me) who is behind it.
Beyond help from my husband, there is no external funding of this project. To the contrary, to date, I can't even get Google Ads to work on it.
I am very grateful to my husband for being so understanding and supportive over the years.
My designs are available on a variety of products here:
https://www.redbubble.com/people/Think2018
https://www.zazzle.com/store/thethinkproject2018
Most Saturday mornings you can find me inside the hall at the Ostend Market on Waiheke Island (New Zealand) where I sell over 200 of my inspirational, motivational, grass roots messaging and decorative designs on various items.
I've met people from around the world there, and engaged in discussions with them on various themes. Unsurprisingly, people from just about everywhere, and all walks of life, appear to share common positive values and concerns.
Where there is a will, especially a communal will, there is a way.
Together, we can help change the world for the better.
