Tired of waiting

I went out and bought a flat of pansies at Fiesta Gardens and today I planted then in our front yard (dirt patch).





Other than the odd crocus there is nothing in bloom on our street, except for these guys. I am tired of waiting.







In my old home of New Westminster, spring comes on gradually, beginning in February. Wave after wave of flowers, starting with the crocuses and daffodils, through the primulas and tulips and into the rhododendrons. We had winter pansies to get us through the winter season.

Here, spring is late but fast. After a long winter it really feels good to see the daily changes, the rising temperatures, the robins returning, and the crocuses and snowdrops piercing through the remaining snowbanks. It's kind of exciting.

I can't say I prefer one over the other, but I do miss February flowers.

We don't get much sun on our side of the street, so the pansies will have to make do with this.

The inevitables: taxes and knitting

According to the weatherman this may be the last sunny day of the week, and I spent it hunched over the computer trying to do my income tax. Sigh.

Well, it doesn't look too bad. I have one question about one deduction and then it's done. Couldn't get through to the IRS of course, this being the month when taxes are due, so I'll give it one more shot tomorrow and then if I can't get through I'm going to just put the whole thing on hold until I get back from Belize. No matter what happens about that deduction I still get a refund so it doesn't matter if I'm a bit late. Looks like my tax refund will take a chunk out of the cost of the trip to Belize.

Lots of news at the knitting group tonight. Jennifer applied for and got a job as a permanent librarian, but at another branch. She's kind of down about it, she doesn't really want to leave Parkdale. But, it means she's permanent now so she has job security and all that.

The odd thing is that now that she has this new job, her old position at Parkdale is open, and even though she was not permanent when she was in that position, it will now become a permanent position. The way the system works she can apply to get her old job back, and provided no one senior to her applies for it, she could very well get it. So it's possible that she will only be at her new job for a few weeks and then return to her old job, but as a permanent librarian! That is what she would really like to happen. So she has to go to the other branch in order to become permanent, but she can come back as soon as she's permanent. Isn't bureaucracy grand.

The other bit of news is that Rhonda dropped by to say goodbye before moving to Cape Breton. She brought along her husband to meet all of us. Laurie jumps up and says "Ah, the infamous Rod! How nice to meet you!" Rod went around and shook everyone's hand, and then held court with one joke after another. He's got that Cape Breton accent and the sense of humour, it was fun to listen to him.

I asked him what he did for a job and he said he was a deep trench construction worker. He only does construction in deep trenches, up to 50 feet down! I said, there can't be much of that kind of work in Cape Breton and he agreed. Most of his work is out west in Alberta, putting in pipelines. He goes out there for 36 day stretches and then the company pays his way home for 9 days. Not bad!

Rhonda asked about the Long Tail Cast On and I ended up showing her how I do it. I apologized for not yet having learned the right way to do it, she could do it my way until somebody shows her how to do it right. Well I suppose if I teach enough people to do it the way I do, then it will be just as right as any other way. Hmmm. Maybe I could teach a course, MzOdell's Long Tail Cast On.

Jennifer was knitting a dish cloth like the one she did last week. When I arrived she said she was making it for herself, the last one was a birthday present for a friend. But then Rhonda came in to say good bye and Jennifer was almost finished the dish cloth, so she speeded it up and cast it off and wove in the ends and presented it to Rhonda as a housewarming gift. Rhonda said it was too beautiful to use as a dish cloth and Jennifer said then she wouldn't give it to her, if she wanted it then she had to use it as a dish cloth. I said to Rhonda that she could just use it on clean dishes.

So that's it, I almost have my taxes done but I still haven't learned to the Long Tail right, and maybe I'm not going to. But I will get the taxes done.

White squirrels of Trinity Bellwoods

On my birthday last weekend we went to the Dakota Tavern for Bluegrass Brunch, and then afterwards we went for a walk in Trinity Bellwoods Park.

There are some albino squirrels living there and Isaac managed to get a couple of photos of one that we saw. Here's the best picture.






It kind of looks like a white rat, until you see the tail.

My birthday knitting bag

I finally took a couple of pictures of my new knitting bag.










Here it
is, inside and out.



Thanks Gretel!

Another foodbank day

Just got back from the foodbank. Gorgeous day. Started out with thunder and lightning, but by mid-afternoon it was really warm and sunny.

Two weeks ago at the foodbank things were quite dismal, hardly any food available. It's depressing when that happens, you have to tell folks that you don't have much to give them and they are so disappointed. One patron said he heard on the radio that donations were down, that folks give lots at Christmas and the early part of the winter, but as spring approaches, donations go down.

So someone from Daily Bread, the foodbank mothership here in Toronto, went on air to ask for donations and last week we were swimming in food! It was amazing! Meat, milk, fresh veggies, lots of canned goods, lots of bread. But we were also inundated in patrons, it was an exhausting shift. Usually things quiet down after an hour or so and the second half of the shift is fairly leisurely, but last week we were run off our feet until closing time.

Today we had lots of food again but not so many people, so it was a bit more relaxed. The only excitement was a fight broke out on the sidewalk in front of our door. I don't think they were our patrons, just passersby. Two women, just pounding each other out and shoving each other against our door. Nobody wanted to open the door to let our patrons out for fear of getting involved in this fight. But one of the volunteers finally did open the door and yelled at the women that we had called the police. They left pretty quick. It was true, someone had called the police, but it was funny because none of us knew the address! I was trying to read it backwards on the glass of the front door.

My favourite fellow volunteer, Dennis, was there today. He didn't come last week because he put his back out. We sure could have used him last week! I teased him, told him how hard we all had to work because he wasn't there. He just laughed. I told him I was going away soon, he said he'd miss me. Aw shucks!

One very tiny older woman I was going to take through had a handful of plastic bags to put food in, and she said she had to blow her nose so she was fumbling with the bags and I offered to take the bags while she got out her kleenex. I actually reached for the bags and touched them, which really upset her. She told me off. Told me I was interfering with her freedom as a human being. I of course backed right off and apologized to her, several times even. She was really put out.

To change the subject I asked if she was ready now to get some food so she followed me to the food area, but kept lecturing me about how it was inappropriate to touch her. I agreed and said I wouldn't do that again. After I'd partially filled one of her bags she relented and said it upset her but she realized I didn't do it on purpose. But I better not do it again. Finally after we'd filled her bags and she was ready to leave she asked me my name. When I told her it was Anne, she grinned ear to ear and told me that was her middle name. She was very happy to meet another Anne. So I guess we're friends now.

To do's to do

Today I made a "To do" list and it doesn't look good. I've left a bunch of things to slide and now I've got to take care of them. My plans for the summer are starting to take shape and that means I've got to start doing something about them. Pity.

The weather has really changed in the past week, it really is spring. In the space of one week I've gone from winter jacket to spring jacket to no jacket. There's so many things I'd like to be doing here and instead I'm gearing up to leave.

Sam has invited me to consider a week of kayaking and snorkelling in Belize and I think I'm going to do that. Then I want to go to Nova Scotia, possibly build a kayak there. Then out west to BC.

But here, I have a shelf full of library books I haven't read yet, and about 30 books on my Hold list. I've got a bag full of new yarn I haven't touched yet. Sigh.

Half I just want to sit here and read and knit and take bike rides along the waterfront and just hang out. Half I want to get in the truck and go.

If I go to Belize I think there are a few things I have to do to get ready. And I have to get my income tax return out of the way. Well, the thought of a week in Belize is a very pleasant motivator.

I think I can do this.

Darwin and his bulldog at the ROM

The last lecture I attended at the ROM last weekend was about the Darwin exhibit. The exhibit follows the timeline of Darwin's life and work. It starts with an introduction about the state of evolutionary thinking in his time, the various ideas about how the great variety of living things came into being. There were two main lines of thought, that God created everything as we see it today and nothing has changed, and that there was some sort of evolution of living things from past forms to current ones, but how or why it occurred was a mystery. Then it traces Charles Darwin's life from early childhood until his death (1809-1882). The last area is about the aftermath of his ideas on evolution, how the Darwinian Theory of Evolution has fared since his death. I think I will try to take Tristan to this exhibit, it has a lot of interactive parts that he will appreciate.

I've done a lot of reading about Darwin over the years so there wasn't much that was new to me, but I thought it was well done. There was one interesting little anecdote about Thomas Huxley, "Darwin's Bulldog". After Darwin formally presented his Theory of Evolution to the Royal Society, the theory came under considerable attack particularly from religious critics. Huxley took it upon himself to defend the theory, which he did admirably. Hence his nickname. At any rate, before all this happened, he applied for a position as a professor in the biology department at the University of Toronto. One of his references was written by Charles Darwin. However, he was not hired. In his stead, U of T hired the brother of the current governor of the province of Ontario (well, actually he would have been the governor of Upper Canada, since Canada as a nation and Ontario as a province did not yet exist), who had some rather unfortunate theories of his own about evolution and taxonomy. While U of T fell victim to nepotism, Huxley remained in England to become Darwin's Bulldog, a fortuitous end to that story. As part of the exhibit they have two tortoises, an iguana and a frog. I saw the tortoises move so I know they are alive, the frog looks alive but I never saw it move and the iguana looks like a statue of a sleeping iguana draped over a branch. They say it's alive but I've been there twice and it hadn't changed position at all.

When the gods were young, where were the women?

As I mentioned earlier, I attended three lectures at the ROM on Friday and Saturday. One of those lectures was Robert Mason's Of God, Art, Technology, and War: Wirth Gallery of the Middle East. Mr. Mason is a very entertaining lecturer and essentially described the museum collection of artifacts from the Middle East that illustrate the development of various technologies and religious beliefs over time.

Mr. Mason described the development of tool-making from chipped stone implements to bronze and steel weapons, and the development of monotheism by the gradual synthesis of local gods and goddesses into a single Deity.

The earliest settlements often had skeletons buried beneath house floors, family members were buried right inside the home to keep them close. Sometimes they were exhumed and their skulls removed, and then encased in plaster and kept above ground, presumably as a lasting memento of the dear departed. He said that the first temples were actually homes converted for that purpose. So there was a gradual development from ancestor veneration/worship to the veneration of local deities in buildings specialized for that purpose. As settlements coalesced into states and empires, local deities merged into pantheons and ultimately into a single God, with supporting gods, goddesses, angels, saints, etc.

There was some interesting stuff about the origin of cherubs and seraphim. Cherubim were originally (two-)winged guardians of the Torah, perhaps derived from earlier winged human-headed lion-bodied creatures pictured in early Mesopotamian friezes. Seraphim have four wings, and are often represented as four-winged heads. There was one artifact, a kind of ceramic egg with seraphim painted on it. Mr. Mason explained that this was used as a kind of barrier to mice on olive oil filled hanging lamps in churches. Originally they were actually made of ostrich eggs.

The three major monotheistic scriptures of course come from this area. The Torah is thought to be an accumulation of several versions each with a slightly different emphasis, probably written at different times in different areas of present-day Israel. One version is clearly influenced by the Babylonian Captivity, this version includes the story of Noah's flood. Another version was most likely written by priests (Leviticus and Numbers), directing Jews on the proper practice of their religion, right down to the correct measurements of boxes to hold the Torah. There is one version most likely written by early Israelites, and another written by early Judeans (inhabitants of Judah), who were rather critical of the lax religious practices of the Israelites.

The Christian New Testament was put together officially several hundred years after the birth of Jesus. The first Christian texts were letters written by Paul, some of the Gospels were written a while later, and then finally around 300 CE the official version of the Christian New Testament was decided on. The Nicene Creed summarized the belief requirements for being a Christian. There has been some disagreement on the contents of the Nicene Creed, so various Christian Churches have restated belief creeds somewhat differently. There is no common agreement on what it takes to be a Christian, so it is difficult for some Christian sects to worship with other sects in the same place. Too much disagreement on the definition of Christian.

The Q'uran was written during the lifetime of the prophet Mohammed, there was no argument about what he actually said or did not say. There is one simple belief statement of what is required in order to be a Moslem: "There is no god but God, and Mohammed is His Prophet." In spite of later divisions into sects, all Moslems can worship together in any Mosque. There is of course some disagreement around interpretation of the Q'uran, but no disagreement on the requirements for membership.

I came away from this lecture with the rather uncomfortable feeling that all of this left out the female of the species. There was a lot of talk about the development of technology from the earliest times to the time of Mohammed that was largely focussed on weapons development. This seemed to be the most important use of metallurgy (agricultural implements were mentioned but not really discussed). There was a brief look at fertility tokens, figurines of female bodies, and the persistence of female goddesses in the form of Mary the Mother of God and "God's Wife" ( a figure appearing in one version of the Torah), but other than that, culture and religion appeared to be a largely masculine phenomenon in Mr. Mason's lecture.

Where were all the women in this? Squirreled away in tents and backrooms raising the kids and washing the dishes? As an aside, I saw an early cuneiform (earliest form of writing, on clay tablets) collection of proverbs in the Wirth gallery, including one which I can't repeat exactly, but it was to the effect that what is kept secret among men soon becomes public knowledge in the women's quarters.

As I wandered around the Wirth gallery after the lecture, and from there into the adjacent Triple-AP gallery of indigenous arts and crafts around the world, I looked at the art and craft of metalwork, pottery, ceramics, and calligraphy in the Wirth gallery and then textiles, basketry, featherwork and woodcarving in the Triple-AP. Another visitor remarked critically that these artifacts were new, some dating from only a year or two ago (a woven cellphone case, a T-shirt with an indigenous drawing and inscription on it). They somehow didn't seem appropriate in a museum, they weren't old enough.

It dawned on me that such artifacts don't preserve very well, you don't often see textiles from 5,000 years ago, and if you do, they are not in great shape. And these are exactly the kinds of things that were "women's work". When you look at what is retrieved from archaeological digs, so much of it is the kind of thing typical of male arts and crafts. Female arts and crafts tend to be much more difficult to preserve. It is hard to determine who actually made and developed pottery and ceramic arts, it could have been men or women or both. But it is easy to get a distorted view of historical development when you only have half the story. The "soft" arts and technologies are just not well represented.

But looking at surviving indigenous cultures, we get a much better idea of the cultural and technological contributions of women. Housework and childcare are traditional female spheres of work, but so are farming, animal husbandry, textile production, and the production of "soft" religious artifacts and pottery cooking ware. Many male religious ceremonies rely on the use of items produced by women, even though the women may be excluded from the actual performance of the ceremonies.

As Lisa Colombek pointed out in the previous lecture, we come to the museum collections of artifacts with our own contexts and stories, we come away with our own insights and understandings.

My 60th birthday cake

For further description of the day, see Gretel's blog post.

The fine art of curating

I just spent the last two days attending lectures at the ROM. The benefits of membership. They just opened another new gallery, nicknamed the Triple-AP (Africa, Americas, and Asia-Pacific), whose theme is the arts and crafts of indigenous peoples of those areas. The lecture series on April 4 and 5 was in honour of the four new galleries that have opened since January, including the Triple-AP (and another gallery that will open next week).

I picked three lectures to attend: Of God, Art, Technology, and War: Wirth Gallery of the Middle East; An Introduction to Darwin: The Evolution Revolution, and Islam in the Wirth Gallery of the Middle East. I visited the Wirth gallery twice after hearing the lectures on that gallery, and also visited the Darwin exhibit before and after the Darwin lecture. So a fairly intense round of museum stuff!

I mentioned a while ago my "ROM rant", a whatever-happened-to-the-old-ROM-that-I-used-to-know kind of rant, and the lecture on Islam in the Wirth Gallery answered that question for me. The lecturer, curator emerita Lisa Golombek, described the history of the Islamic collection from 1965 when she first started working with it until today. She said that the museum went through several philosophical approaches to displaying artifacts, starting with a kind of esthetic approach in which artifacts were arranged in symmetrically pleasing arrays. "Interactivity" meant having cases with drawers full of artifacts that visitors could pull out to view. She said that was very popular.

Then there was the phase in which artifacts had to be displayed contextually, there had to be a kind of storyline or narrative that explained the context for displayed artifacts. A lot of energy went into designing contextual displays, and this inevitably meant that there was not room to display the entire collection, much had to be put away in storage. Not even in drawers to pull out "interactively", just completely out of view. For decades.

How this translated for the Islamic collection was that they designed a three-part gallery depicting a mosque, a bazaar and a home to display religious, domestic and cultural or commercial objects. Artifacts related to each of these settings were arranged as naturalistically as possible. She said that for the most part visitors loved it, they said they came away with the experience of having visited a real Middle Eastern city. Never mind that time periods and regional styles were all mixed up together. However, she said that the one group who did not appreciate this approach was Moslem students. They felt it demeaned Middle Eastern culture and Islam to be depicted in this way, they felt like they were being portrayed as dirty and backward.

After the Michael Lee Chin Crystal was constructed they completely redesigned the Islamic collection to fit into the unusual space of the Wirth gallery in the Crystal. The gallery is odd-shaped and has no vertical walls. They could not hang anything on the walls nor were they allowed to have any display cases touching walls. Everything had to be freestanding. And, they had moved away from the contextual philosophy to yet another new approach. This new approach is in effect the opposite to contextual; provide no story, no context, just put the artifacts out and let the visitors bring their own stories and contexts to the gallery.

Personally I like this approach. I am in favour of having all of the "stuff" out on view rather than being patronized with the Museum's decision on how I should view and interpret it. But, when one walks into the gallery, there does not appear to be any right direction to go, any thematic arrangement. It is chaotic and overwhelming, so much stuff! My own feeling about that is childish delight. So much to see, so much to explore! But I overheard a lot of comments from other visitors about the chaos and lack of thematic direction. This is definitely not everyone's cup of tea.

After the lecture I went to the gallery and searched for particular items that the curator had mentioned. I guess she had given me a context to work with and I went looking for the items that were part of that storyline. But that was only one small part of what was there; after the other lecture related to this gallery I went back again and looked for some of the items mentioned in that lecture. Another context, another story, all in the same place.

I have more to say about the lecture series, but I'll save it for later. This was an intellectual feast for me, and I enjoyed it immensely. My 60th birthday present to myself.

The summer of 1975

I was going through photos on my computer this morning, to post to another website. Some of them trigger incredible memories.

This photo was taken in the summer of 1975, obviously a double exposure. Don't quite know how that happened, but it worked out rather well, I think.

The person in the red shirt is me. The two silhouettes in the background are friends, Wayne and Judy. The structure is the framework for a house I was building in the woods of Baxter's Harbour, Nova Scotia. It was hexagonal in shape, in a building style combining post-and-beam and board-and-batten. I call it merry-go-round.

The house burned down in 1993, eighteen years after it was built. I only lived there for two years, I was living on the other coast when my son called me to tell me about the fire. The house had acquired a name of its own, it is still referred to by neighbours as Nimrodel.

The total cost of the building materials in 1975 was under $2,000. It was too bad that it burned down, but it was never intended to be a permanent building, so while I was sad to hear that it was gone, I was kind of amazed that it lasted as long as it did.

I guess what I like about this photo is the mix of feelings it evokes.

The wonderful summer living in the woods of Baxter's Harbour.
The horrible summer of living in a tent with two toddlers in the woods of Baxter's Harbour and simultaneously trying to build a house.
The gratitude to friends who helped me.
The waking up every single morning for five weeks aching in every conceivable muscle of my body.
The chaos.
The pride in accomplishing this project.

A long tail out of context

I spent well over an hour, maybe two, at Romni Wool on Saturday. Mostly in the basement where they keep the yarns on sale, sacks of roving and huge spools of weaving warp thread. You can get totally lost at that store, both literally and figuratively. Time just stands still.

While I was in the basement the staff person there was talking to another lost customer about Long Tail Cast On. I was eavesdropping. I thought I knew LTCO, but when she started to demonstrate it to the other lost customer, I realized that I didn't know the half of it. Her method was so elegant compared to mine. I get the same results, but my style is much more fiddly and awkward. It was such a pleasure to watch her doing it. She repeated the demo several times for my edification and then assured me I could find pictures and videos on the web. She was right, and I did, here and here.

She asked me where I learned to knit, and I said I couldn't remember. It was either at home or at Brownies. I didn't want to blame my awkward method on my mother or Brown Owl (who probably taught me correctly but somehow I mangled it), so I just said I couldn't remember.

Eventually I had spent more money than I cared to know about and it was time to check out at the cash register. There was as usual a line-up. But a very pleasant line-up, all knitting chitchat. The guy behind the counter is a knitter too, he is generous with knitting advice and discussion. In a good way.

So, another staffer came into the store bearing some metal frame contraption. She announced to the guy that she had found a rack. He looked up and admired her rack.

He said, "That's a much better rack than mine."

We all looked at each and stifled smiles.

But after a few more comments about the superior rack, another guy in the line-up said, "This conversation could so be taken out of context!" and everyone laughed.

The staffer with the rack and the cashier both grinned, and he repeated his remark with emphasis and gestures to his inferior "rack". It was true.

I love it that the biggest yarn store in Toronto, possibly Canada, has avid knitting men working there and equally avid knitting men shopping there.

Very bad Bunny

Whoops! I spoke too soon about Bunny being a lady.

Bunny has learned how to get up on my bed. This morning I did not make my bed.

She got up, pooped everywhere, AND..

....AND...

she peed right in the middle of my sheet and the sheep fleece mattress cover under it.

Bad Bad Bunny.

Excuse me while I go clean up the mess.

Who let the dog up?

On Saturday Isaac and family went out for the better part of the afternoon and evening. I was out for most of the afternoon. Which left the house to the animals, Bunny and Dobby.

Bunny is a mature lady, she tends not to chew things she shouldn't, but not so Dobby, he's just a youngster with a lot of chewing to get through!

Anyway, when I returned to the house I saw Dobby on the couch trying to rip open a bag of cereal. He'd been alone for a few hours and I guess tired of it.

I managed to get the cereal away from him before he had it spread everywhere, then I started piling furniture, cushions and bedding on the couch to try to prevent him from getting up there again. It's not so much that he's not allowed on the couch, just that he tries to chew the couch too...

I went upstairs and a little while later came back down again and there he was, asleep on the couch!

I guess he thought I piled all that stuff there for his sleeping comfort.

After taking a couple of photos I left him there, as in, let sleeping dogs lie.

This sock is done like dinner

I finished my sock. This was a bit of a dilemma for me.

The Yarn Harlot's book launch is tomorrow, part of the event is a great Sock Picture Scavenger Hunt, and to participate I would need an unfinished sock on the needles. Which I would have if I didn't finish it. But it has literally been years on the needles, and I was this close (thumb and forefinger squeezed together, fingernails separated by microscopic space) to done with it. I just couldn't bear to leave it any longer.

I suppose I could---quick---start the Second Sock (they do come in pairs), but quite frankly, I'm ready for a break. Even though this is My Very First Sock Ever, I do understand about SSS (Second Sock Syndrome), if I don't start it now it may never get started, but still, I want the break. So I think I am going to pass on the scavenger hunt. Even though half that bag of yarn is designated as sock yarn.

And Pete, if you're reading this, we are way ahead of you, we've been praying exactly that for some time now. Almost all of us. Except maybe those silly people who voted for our current Prime Minister and haven't Thought Better Of It by now.

More docs and too much shopping

My Saturday afternoon was spent on Queen St. and in particular at Romni Wool and the Knit Cafe. I came home with a backpack full of yarn. Earlier in the day I had been at Michael's to pick up the last of the yarn I think I'll need for my mother's afghan, and between Michael's, Romni Wool and the Knit Cafe, I spent over $150 on yarn. The day before I placed a couple of book orders with Amazon.ca, also amounting to about $150. In two days I spent over $300 in books and yarn. Talk about shopping therapy! Gaah!

The problem is, that it is hard to stop. I had to force myself to leave the Knit Cafe because there were four more skeins of yarn I had my eye on. And yesterday I spent over an hour adding more books to my Amazon wish list (well, actually I have 5 wish lists, mea culpa). I think I need to get back to my old library way of thinking. It's better to borrow and read than order, own and maybe read.

Isaac and I watched a couple more Hot Docs films this weekend.

One was Kids and Money, a set of interviews with kids in LA USA about money, shopping, and status. Very interesting look at how we/society train/influence our kids to be consumers. How buying stuff is integral to self image and fitting in at school. They have to have the right clothes, some of the kids in this film spend several hundred dollars a week just on clothes (and more on accessories, make-up, etc), some of them don't but would if they could. Some of them beg their parents to buy the stuff for them, some of them go out and get jobs to pay for it. Some of them recognize how insane this is and the stress their parents are going through to keep them satisfied, but they don't seem to be able to stop themselves. They are addicted, their self-image is at stake. Watching this I could not help but think how smug all the advertisers must feel that they have been so wildly successful in creating the consumer culture. As Barbara Ehrenreich says, we (the USA, and Canada to a lesser extent) are the designated shoppers of the world, we keep this devastating global economy going by consuming what the rest of the world produces.

The second film was called Flow: For Love of Water, about the state of water resources in the world (dire). The main message seemed to be that as water becomes scarce there are forces trying to commodify it that are making the scarcity of water both a serious social injustice and an environmental hazard. It is beautifully done, combining both a serious warning and a hopeful demonstration of what can be accomplished when ordinary people put their minds to it.

The connection between the two was that at one point in Flow an Indian (from India not North America) elder talks about what is necessary for change to happen. He says it has to start inside each person, each person has to come to grips with what is important in life, and then act on it. And what kids in the other film are being taught is that owning stuff is what is important in life, consuming resources is what is important. It will take a while for most of them to learn any different, but that is time we can ill afford.

So you can imagine how guilty I am feeling about my own little episode of shopping therapy this week. But I do love looking at that bag of yarn!

But for what it's worth we also watched a wonderful film about Cirque du Soleil preparing a show on the Beatles. No guilt-inducing moral, just lots of nostalgia value, not to mention artistic value.

Taking root: the vision of Wangari Maathai

The other night I watched a documentary that will be in the Hot Docs documentary film festival in Toronto, April 17-27 (2008). It is called Taking Root: The Vision of Wangari Maathai.

I had never heard of Wangari Maathai before seeing this documentary. What an amazing woman! She was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2004, and she is so deserving, such an incredible Elderwoman.

She founded an organization called The Greenbelt Movement in Kenya, there is a website dedicated to her, and an entry for her in Wikipedia. The film was made by Lisa Merton and Alan Dater of Marlboro Productions.

I can't praise this film enough, it is beautiful and inspirational and it brings to light a woman who truly qualifies as Great. It also brings to light a history of Kenya that is a pointed indictment of colonialism and its lasting effects on the land and people subjugated by it. Lest we forget.

Wangari Maathai started an environmental movement among women of Kenya to plant trees. It was to address some of the environmental degradation due to both colonial and postcolonial destruction of forests, and also to provide firewood and building materials for the communities of the women. This movement blossomed into a protest movement against the imprisonment of political activists and against the destruction of national forests for private profit.

There is one episode in the story where police attack a peaceful demonstration by mothers of jailed activists. Wangari is brutally attacked. Immediately the women around her disrobe, exposing their breasts. This was to shame the men attacking them. They said that for a man to attack a mother is one of the most shameful things he can do, and for a mother to expose her breasts to him is the sharpest rebuke a woman can make. And it worked, the policemen were indeed thrown into disarray by the act, and Wangari was quickly transported to hospital for care. It also made international headlines, shaming the Kenyan government of the time.

Wangari Maathai is articulate and passionate, she inspired the women and men around her to take action, and she clearly linked environmental and social justice issues. This film is a wonderful tribute to her.

If you get a chance, go see it.

Smile, you may be on Flickr...

Yesterday my son got an email from a colleague pointing him to a
photo on Flickr, of himself! Someone he did not know photographed him
and put the photo up on Flickr.

Raccoons...

Gretel sent me an amusing link.

It reminded me of a photo I thought I had taken a few years ago of a couple of raccoons that visited my condo patio. So I went hunting through my photo archive for that photo. After much searching I finally found it, and now I know why it was so hard to find ---

--- because it was a crappy photo!

You'll just have to take my word for it that the grey blob is a raccoon.

In my defense, I was balancing a morning mug of coffee in the other hand.

For way better photos and a very amusing story, follow the link above.

Lies I might have told

I woke up around 3.00am this morning, thinking about my blog.

I was thinking of posting an item about my grandmother. I had the whole thing written in my head, a few illustrations to go with it, and then I realized that I couldn't remember how many sisters she had.

So I made it up.

Then I felt guilty about lying in my blog. What if someone read it that knew how many sisters my grandmother really had?

Then I remembered a letter I wrote to my Great Aunt Dora (the one sister I know for sure my grandmother had) back in 1968, and how I said something in that letter that was not true (out of ignorance and carelessness).

That really made me feel bad.

So I turned on the light and played Sudoku for an hour to get it out of my mind.

The things you think at 3.00 in the morning!

So many things, so little time...

Isaac and I went to The Local pub on Roncesvalles last night for their Bluegrass Monday night. It starts at 8.30pm but last time we went at 8.30 there were no tables or seats left so this time we went early and got a table close to the little stage at the back. Really glad we went, I so enjoyed the music. I asked a fellow sitting near us what the band's name was and apparently they are "between names", he thought they might now be called The Hamstrung Stringband. Whatever their name, I really enjoyed them. The woman vocalist was terrific, so was the banjo/mandolin player, and the fiddler and the guitar player... the bass player also played steel guitar but sadly we didn't hear a lot of that. We left in the middle of their second set because Isaac has to get up early for work and I didn't want to walk home alone late at night. Am glad I went at all though.

Isaac tells me that Toronto doesn't really get spring, it goes straight from winter into summer. Or, spring is what we have now, old snow on the ground, mud on the warmer days, and trees that look like they are ready to burst into leafery. He says in a matter of weeks we will see it go from subzero to plus 27. He promises flowers, double digit temperatures and no snow in less than a month. I'll just have to take his word for it. I'm used to a spring that starts in February and meanders along until June in Vancouver. Followed by a brief summer, an even briefer autumn and winter rain starting again in October.

I am also starting to think about my plans for after winter. I am getting antsy to travel, to be on the road again. I keep checking the weather in Edmunston New Brunswick. When it starts staying above zero at night there then I can drive to Nova Scotia, because somewhere around Edmunston is where I will have to sleep overnight in the truck. I'd like not to freeze.

Last night I was talking to Isaac about what to do with Bunny. We discussed various options: leave her here, send her to PEI on the Seafood Express, or take her with me in the truck. Right now I'm leaning toward taking her with me, with the Seafood Express as Plan B. She is four years old, which makes her middle-aged. Bunnies can live to ten years and beyond, so she has a few good years left.

I happened by Matt Anderson's website and I see that he is playing in Mississauga in April. Oh my. I would love to hear him live again. And at the Yarn Harlot, she has a book launch planned for April 1st, that's on my list too!

It may be cold but at least it's sunny

On Friday I went cycling along the waterfront. Well, sort of. There were long sections where I had to walk because the snow was too deep.


Somebody commented on me walking through the snow with my bike, "Good to get the bike out, eh?" And I said "Sure is, even if I have to walk it!" Which it was. Good I mean.




The Whistling Swans are gone, I guess they have returned to the Arctic now that it is spring.

The Mute Swans were doing a lot of flying, wish I could have caught one on camera. They are so huge, it's amazing to see them in the air. Saw one with his tail up in the air and the rest of him underwater, like a two-foot high white buoy.

I got some pictures of the Oldsquaws (now isn't that a lovely name for such a beautiful bird?), but not of the Buffleheads or Mergansers, which are still here but keeping their distance.



And I got some pictures of a mystery bird that looked a lot like the Western Grebe but smaller. And sure enough, I looked it up and it is the Horned Grebe, about half the size of the Western Grebe.

This fellow was diving for fish, I watched him gobble down one that he caught. He saw me watching him and hung around for awhile to see what I would do. Eventually I got bored of watching him watching me.


This picture is an amalgam of three pictures I took of this bird.

Saturday morning we took Dobby for a walk in the off leash area of High Park.

The off leash area is huge and consists of several trails through the woods as well as an open area on a hillside near the allotment gardens.

The trails were quite icy.

Tristan has recently learned to whistle, I took a couple of pictures of him and his mother whistling.














And Phelan, the little guy on his Mom's shoulders, is the Birthday Boy today.
He is Two.

Happy Birthday Phelan!

Mystery solved...

...I know why my bread wouldn't rise. I went back to the same store to buy more flour and realized that the bin for hard (bread) wheat flour was right next to the bin for soft (pastry) wheat flour and I may have dipped into the wrong bin last time. The colour is slightly different and when I brought home my new flour and checked the colour against the old flour, the colour was slightly different in the same way. I was trying to bake bread from pastry flour.

My very own Easter bunny

In honour of the first day of spring and the coming Easter weekend, I am posting a photo of my 'roommate', Bunny. And a lovely roommate she is! This is her 'good' side, she's blind in her other eye due to a raccoon attack a couple of years ago.







Wednesday afternoon is my shift at the foodbank, near the end of the shift we were told there would be a meeting right afterward for all volunteers, a kind of Q&A session to keep us up to date on what was happening with the foodbank. A few of us sat around waiting for the meeting to begin and speculating on some of the rumours about what this meeting was all about. None of which proved to be true, as rumours usually aren't.

Anyway, how shall I say this, it was a 'spirited' exchange? A lot of stuff got said, perhaps a good deal of it that shouldn't have been, but on the other hand maybe it should have. I don't know! Definitely left me wondering about the future. And sufficiently tense that I did not sleep all that well last night.

Somehow I am going to put all that out of my mind and try to carry on as just a once-a-week volunteer. I get a real positive kick from being there on Wednesday afternoons, I don't want to give that up. I like that each week at least one patron expresses the opinion that they are glad I am there. Don't want to give that up either. I am growing familiar with some of the faces, enjoy greeting people that come by regularly and enjoy working with volunteers who appear to be enjoying the same things I am.

I know there are problems, after all, the very existence of a foodbank is a statement about the problem with how our society and culture works. But I like that I can send people on their way out the door with smiles on their faces, that they get more than just groceries when they come by. And so do I.

A putative naturopathic cure for what ails me

I went to the naturopathic clinic at Parkdale Community Health Centre on Tuesday. In December I had gone to the PCHC to find out about seeing a doctor there and they told me that they would not be accepting new patients until February and in February I went back and signed up and eventually I got a call from them to attend an orientation session which happened Monday.

At the orientation the woman leading it mentioned this naturopathic clinic that happens there every Tuesday, staffed by naturopathy students. So I put my name on the list for it, partly out of curiosity and partly to get an alternative opinion on this seemingly unending series of colds and upper respiratory ailments I've had this winter. And Tuesday morning they called and asked if I was available later in the day.

So off I went. Sat there for an hour describing in gory detail all the colds I've had this winter. Felt kind of silly, after all it's only a cold. However she dutifully noted all my symptoms, discussed them with her supervisor and came back with a bottle of murky liquid and a list of additional medications I should buy.

I'm to take 3 teaspoons of the murky liquid every day, 6 grams of vitamin C a day in 1000mg doses every couple of hours, and another medication that I will have to find in a health food store. And I'm to run a vaporizer at home, the theory being that coming from the moist climate of Vancouver to the cold winter dryness of Toronto, my mucus membranes are suffering and vulnerable to infection. As good a theory as any.

Other than that, it was a cold wet day. Well, cold by Vancouver standards and wet by Toronto standards. Isaac and I went for lunch at the Rustic Cosmo on Queen West, across from the PCHC. They make really good home fries. Actually all the food was good, but the home fries especially. Isaac had the Brunch Burrito and I would have too except I was planning on having a burrito for dinner so I had a sandwich and salad instead, and picked at the really good home fries on Isaac's plate. All good.

My bread won't rise

My bread won't rise. Last two loaves rose a bit and then fell during baking. I didn't change my recipe or my ingredients and they just fell. Don't know what is going on. Don't think it was the weather, both loaves were baked on sunny days. The other odd thing is that I actually did have to change the recipe (so I lied!) because when I put the dough in the breadmaker it was way too wet after the first mix-and-knead. So both times I had to add somewhere between a half to a full cup of flour. And the way it fell makes me think that it needed even more flour than that. But why?!? I don't understand.

I've been baking bread, either by hand or with a breadmaker, for over 35 years. So I think I understand bread. "I think" being the key words here. Well, I'll buy some more flour and see if it's something about the flour.

Addendum: I notice some people are Googling "bread won't rise" and ending up here. I did eventually figure out the problem, see "Mystery solved..."

I have three knitting projects on the go now.

The sock,









...the bedspread,







...and a new thing, a kind of cably square that I am designing myself. Started with a cable pattern I got from the internet, did a small square of that,

...then used the graph notation for that pattern to design something of my own that I am now trying to knit up. We'll see how it goes.








I taught Tristan how to finger knit and he did one project, a scarf about a foot long for one of his stuffed animals. I'll post a picture of it when I can get him to bring it back to photograph. I am hoping to get him to knit a couple more and then move him on to "real" knitting with needles.

I initially tried to teach him to knit with needles, but in watching him struggle with it I realized that it was kind of like learning to drive on a standard shift car. Not only do you have to learn and pay attention to actual driving on the road, but you have to simultaneously learn how to use the stick shift. Too many things all at once.

Tristan was trying to learn the steps in making a knit stitch and at the same time figure out how to hold the needles and yarn. Some things you take for granted until you watch a novice try to do it.

Finger knitting allows you to produce knitted fabric really fast using only your fingers and yarn, no needles. When a kid has mastered that, and Tristan did really quickly, then (s)he can move on to using a knitting frame or spool or "real" knitting with needles. Large diameter wooden needles are probably best, they are not so slippery and you can see what you are doing.

Some local notes, Brockton Village

A little bit of local history.

This nondescript building is a plumbing store. It is in the process of closing, the owner is retiring and selling off everything. He used to run it with his son Sam, but Sam died last summer of cancer, leaving a wife and small children. Everyone in the neighbourhood sooner or later went to that plumbing store, because just about everybody is renovating. Everyone lived in fear of Sam's Dad, who was sarcastic and critical of amateur plumbers, which all of us are. So most of us tried to go when Sam was around not his Dad. Soon we'll be on our own, no more plumbing store.

Gretel used to take photos on her digital camera of whatever plumbing disaster she was working on to the store to show to Sam or his Dad to get their opinion of what she should do or buy. Women fare a little better there because we're kind of used to men being snooty about such things, but a lot of men find it hard to deal with.

The other thing about this building is that it is the original Town Hall and Jail of Brockton Village, before it amalgamated with the City of Toronto. See the bars on the ground floor windows? Think Jailhouse.

This house is just down the road from the plumbing store. Also nothing extraordinary to look at, except that it is one of the oldest houses in the area. Originally a farmhouse that stood on the edge of the village of Brockton.

These semi-detached houses we call The House That Can't Decide. Because of the colour combination, and also in the summer the red house has vines all over the front porch and the green house porch is bare. Like they are opposites, whatever one decides to do the other does the opposite.

The grey house next door is the farm house I was talking about.

See the picture panel just to the right of the doorway on the red house? This is a painted tile picture of a saint or holy person, or possibly the Virgin Mary. All the Portuguese in the area have these painted tile panels by their doors, they have them shipped over from Portugal.

Isaac and Gretel say that in Portugal you see them everywhere. Portugal was one of the last outposts of the Moors in Europe, even after they had been driven out of Spain they remained in Portugal for some time after. So the art and architecture is heavily influenced by the Moors, and among other things they are into painted tiles, so you see a lot of that in Portuguese homes.


This mural is painted by a Brazilian man. There are at least three of his murals around the area, this is maybe one of the most striking. A lot of the Portuguese here come from the Azores or from Brazil. I think this mural really captures a Brazilian flare.

And that's the local history lesson for today.

Sunday CBC

On Sundays I try to stay home to listen to the radio, CBC Radio One to be exact. Sunday is the best day on CBC radio. It starts with The Sunday Edition with Michael Enright, proceeds through Stuart Maclean's Vinyl Cafe ("It ain't big but it's small"), Spinal Tap (Jonathon Goldstein), Tapestry (Mary Hines), Writers and Company (Eleanor Wachtel) and Cross Country Checkup with Rex Murphy. I love The Sunday Edition primarily for the music but also for the news and discussion. The music is mostly jazz, and Enright's taste in music closely coincides with my Dad's. It brings back strong happy memories of Sunday mornings at home as a kid when Dad would play his jazz records on the Hi-Fi, and throw open all the windows to regale the neighbourhood with his music. I so associate jazz now with Sunday mornings. And what a treat to discover Michael Enright's Sunday morning show with the very same music.

Karen Armstrong being interviewed on CBC Tapestry today, she talks about the Bible and how it should be read or interpreted. She tells this funny story.

There are some rabbis discussing the Bible and one of them (sorry, I don't remember names) gives a particular interpretation that the other rabbis disagree with. So the one rabbi, call him Rabbi X, calls on God to perform a miracle to support his argument.

Obligingly, God causes a tree to move several feet to the left (or the right, whatever, I'm bad at details), but the other rabbis are unimpressed. So Rabbi X calls on God to tell them that he is right, and again God obliges and a celestial voice declares that everything Rabbi X has said about scripture is absolutely true.

But again the other rabbis are unimpressed. One of them retorts that once scripture is recorded it no longer belongs to God, but rather it is inscribed in the heart of every Jew and belongs to each of them to interpret as befits. Hearing this, God smiles. "My children have defeated me" he says, meaning that they have grown up.

Hear hear.

I only got to listen to part of Writers and Company when Gretel came to remind me that I had said I would babysit the kids while she went to Taiko, so I didn't listen to Cross Country Checkup. Instead I watched The Bee Movie with the kids. We had frozen pizza which I served to them on the couch in front of the movie screen. Phelan managed to eat all of his, but the poor little guy fell asleep with his empty plate in his lap. No Bee Movie for him!

Saturday afternoon, bare pavement

Warm sunny day, everything melting! The sound of running water everywhere under the piles of snow.

Today I can see bare pavement under two of the four wheels of my truck. My truck is half-sitting on bare pavement! Yay! Isaac says we are on the wrong side of the street, over the next month or so we get to see the lawns on the other side of the street emerge from under the snow, turn green and even sprout flowers, while our side stills sits under umpteen feet of snow.

A friend in Vancouver wrote to tell me they have daffodils. I wrote back "What's a daffodil?" Isaac says whenever he gets one of those flowers-in-Vancouver emails he replies, "Yes, and can you see the sun?"

Isaac had the doors open to let some fresh air in. The furnace was off all day. I'm thinking of taking the plastic off the bedroom window so I can open it at night because it is getting too warm to sleep. All good signs of weather moving in the right direction.

I have yet another cold, in an unending string of them. Bad cold but fortunately not the 'flu. I went down to Queen Street to find a drugstore that carries decongestant. These days a plain decongestant is hard to find, they are all contained in combination "cold and flu" drugs. But I just wanted a decongestant. I understand that they stopped putting plain decongestants on the shelves for two reasons, one being that a strong decongestant can cause heart problems if one is susceptible and the other being that the decongestant drug pseudoephedrine is used by some as the base for making illegal methamphetamine drugs. So most drugstores now keep decongestants behind the counter, you have to ask for them, and the really strong ones (e.g., 120mg pseudoephedrine) just aren't available at all. Which is fine, I used to like the strong stuff but these days it seems a bit too strong for me, I am happy to settle for 60mg or even 30mg. But I don't want all that other stuff they put in (antihistamines, NSAIDs and cough suppressants).

Anyway, I went into this one drugstore and after checking the shelves waited to talk to the pharmacist. Who was talking to a hunched over older woman who had a problem with some medication she had previously purchased, and then with how it was rung up on the cash register. The pharmacist was trying to explain and answer her questions. It went on and on and on, and just as it looked like the pharmacist had finally answered all of her questions, she came up with yet another question. The pharmacist patiently answered each question, while I tried to be patient too. Finally finally the woman asked a question that the pharmacist could legitimately pass off to another drugstore employee and then she immediately moved on to me.

I asked for a decongestant that didn't have all "that other stuff", waving my arm vaguely in the direction of the shelf of cold and flu remedies. She got this very serious look on her face and asked me if I suffered from high blood pressure. I said No. She then turned to look at the shelf behind her. Now, while I was patiently waiting my turn I also had scanned that shelf and had seen a decongestant there that I recognized, Eltor 120mg. Wow, the strong stuff! Turns out that's the only one they carried. I hadn't seen that stuff in years, I was sure it had been discontinued. But, no it hadn't and it was the only decongestant they had so I got to buy it. I will have to cut it in half to take it since I no longer have the tolerance for that high a dose, but I know it works well. I am so pleased with myself for finding it.

Sun and snow in the City

One more big snow storm here over the weekend, plus the time change. It seemed so strange to turn the clocks forward in the middle of blizzard.

Turning the clocks forward means Summer Is Coming!

Blizzard means No It's Not!

But nice bright sunny days afterward hint at the possibility. Let's hope.









See the heaps of snow?











See the snowy street?




But melt is happening, you can hear it.

Downsizing, how to

Barbara Anne commented on a previous post about me divesting myself of "things" and how did I do it. I'm not good at advice, all I can say is that I have made several major moves over my adult life and each time have had to sort through and pack up everything. On two occasions the cost was covered by someone else so I didn't have to worry about how much to move, but my last move from the west coast to Toronto had to be done within a very tight budget so I spent a couple of months sorting, reducing and packing. For two months that's all I did. It certainly was not easy, having to get rid of stuff after many years is painful. But I was kind of gearing up for the process for more than a year beforehand, thinking about it and talking to friends about it and wondering where the heck to start. It just looked impossible. But eventually it came down to realizing that I was stalled, I could not move forward in my life until I sold my condo, and I could not sell it and move out until I had reduced the pile of "things" to a much smaller pile.

Another friend of mine faced the same dilemma recently, she also did not know where to begin and was putting it off as an impossible task. But eventually she too came to the same realization I did and then was motivated to start. So I suppose the secret is to be motivated, to have a darn good reason why you need to reduce the pile. Even after completing the move I still felt I had not purged enough, I still have way more stuff than I think is a good idea. In Toronto I have a large closet, more than eight feet wide, full of clothes I never wear but cannot bring myself to get rid of. You just never know when an occasion to wear something one more time might arise! Even coming to Nova Scotia for a few months, I brought much less clothing but still I bet half of it I will never wear here. On the other hand there are some books that I purged that I wish I hadn't. I try not to think about that. I admit that since that last purge I have begun to acquire more stuff, mostly yarn and books. I am not too concerned about the yarn, it will eventually all get used up, but the books might be a problem.

When the movers looked at my pile of stuff to move across the continent, they told me that my books were going to be the most costly part of my pile of stuff to move. It cost me roughly a dollar a pound to move my belongings, I'd have been better off keeping more furniture and getting rid of more books. That is a big dilemma, it's really hard for me to part with books, and I still regret the loss of the ones I did manage to get rid of. But I survive the loss, I don't mourn interminably. So I guess that is the only advice I can pass on: yes it hurts to lose stuff that has sentimental value, but you survive it. And I think it is easier to deliberately divest than to lose it accidentally or through theft.

Here's a funny story about losing stuff: on a previous move from a house to a condo a few miles away, I moved everything myself in my truck. The last truckload was all the left over odds and ends, not properly packed because this was the last load and I was impatient to get it over with. So on the highway headed toward the condo, I happened to glance in the rearview mirror in time to see a small box  sail out of the back of my truck and land in the ditch on the side of  the highway. I was going too fast and there were too many cars behind  me to pull over, so I just kept driving.

When I arrived at my destination and unpacked the truck, I could not  figure out what that box contained. There was nothing obviously  missing. Over the next ten years of living in that condo, every time  I couldn't find something I wondered if it was in that mystery box  sailing out of the truck. But mostly I eventually found the missing  item so I still don't really know what that box contained. Whatever  it was, it wasn't important.

Knit rip and knit

Jeff Healey died yesterday, he was only 41. What a great musician, what a loss. First Oscar Peterson, now Jeff Healey.

I was on Queen St the other day looking at the damage done by the fire. They've torn down the buildings destroyed by fire but because they are still cleaning up the site the street is blocked to traffic (except for streetcars). Lots of people walking by though, many with cameras aimed. You can still smell the burned smoky odour.

Laying low these days though. Mostly knitting.


I finished one narrow strip of my mother's bedspread/afghan and tore out one wide strip. Big decision that, one wide strip represents at least a year's work. But it was the first strip I did after Mum died, and I followed the instructions using 4.00mm needles as called for. What I didn't realize was that my mother was an incredibly tight knitter and that strip came out much looser and wider than the one she had completed.

The second strip I did using smaller needles, but still nowhere near as tight as Mum's. When I laid the completed strips out on the floor I realized that even though the strips I did using smaller needles were still larger and looser than Mum's, I could live with the difference, but not so the first strip. So I tore it out. In less than 20 minutes I ripped out a year's work.

I've restarted that strip, so far I have one inch done. It takes me about 45 minutes to do one inch, and the total length has to be around 85 inches I think.



Oh well, what's time when you're knitting?


The other thing I'm working on is a sock. Another old project. This one I started from yarn I found in Mum's stash, a very pretty multi-shaded denim wool. I started this one years ago, as something to do when I was bored with the afghan and to learn to knit a sock.

I thought I would add in a bit of pink yarn to reinforce the heel, but this week I decided that that was a mistake so on a ripping roll from the afghan strip I ripped that out as well. Probably just as well, that extra bit of yarn made the heel very stiff and difficult to knit, probably the reason why this sock has been years in the making.

I'm now turning the heel so I may actually get it done this year. Ha ha.

Something I did finish though is the wrist warmers. After multiple rippings I finally got it right, or as close to right as I can live with.