Re(dis)organized

The Three Graces, by Canadian sculptor Gerald Gladstone, erected in the early 70's in the  Queen's Park complex, next to MacDonald Block, when it was still OK to spend public money on nice things. The western plaza of MacDonald Block is a secret garden with a short artificial waterway, featuring many fine pieces of public art. There are lots of places to sit under mature trees and enjoy shade and calming green. The plaza is deserted most of the time. 

My thanks to the vanishingly small share of my growing number of subscribers who answered last week's poll.

Your responses allow me these insights:

• I have no readers in any of the places listed in the first question
• I have at least one reader using my blog to learn English as a second language (I am deeply humbled, and now very nervous about getting the language wrong and ruining everything)
• The favourite topic of my readers by a long shot is "life of a government bureaucrat"

Without further ado then, let's make a long overdue visit to the Ruler and her advisors.

*************************************************

The Ruler of a small but pleasant realm picked herself up out of a pile of rubble, shook the plaster dust out of her hair, wiped more dust out of her eyes and looked around, assessing the damage.

The place was a shambles. 

The Ruler called out to the Wizard for help. Then she remembered she had been reassigned. She called for her new Advisors.

"Artemis? Pathos? Barney? Are any of you there?" She paused; heard nothing. She tried again. "Cyrus? Petunia?"

Cyrus, her newest most trusted advisor, also dust covered and a bit bruised, shortly appeared in what was left of her chamber door.

"Has the Great Troll been dreaming?" the Ruler asked Cyrus as she tried to get herself upright.

"It appears he has," said Cyrus. He helped his new boss to her feet. 

The Great Troll had long been a restless sleeper. When in his troubled dreams he kicked his great stinking feet, realms throughout the kingdom felt the blow. But for years the impacts had been small enough to dismiss as rumour. No one took them seriously. Until just this very minute.

"How bad is it?" asked the Ruler.

"We've lost about a third of the realm," said Cyrus.

"Which third? Artemis' shop? Barney's?" The Ruler knew her weak spots.

"Artemis'." 

"OK," said the Ruler, sucking it up. "So we're down strength. But we have what we need to carry on," she half said, half asked.

"Maybe," said Cyrus, trying to break the news gently. "We are renamed by this calamity and we have yet to figure out what that means."

"But we are good at that," said the Ruler, not daunted by the prospect, "conjuring stuff out of nothing is what we do."

"That is true," Cyrus replied, "but, you have a new Boss to the First Power and a new Emperor."

"I have not forgotten that," said the Ruler, moving abut her chambers putting chairs and other small furniture to rights. A thought came to her as she busied herself tidying up. "What of the File Perilous? Has that been lost?" she asked, daring to hope.

The File Perilous had come to the Ruler's realm not long before; it was hot as a pistol and bristling with poisoned spines. The Ruler and her Advisors had managed to extricate two of the poisoned spines and take the temperature down a notch. She hoped as her reward that another Ruler would be given the file. 

"That's the worst news of all," said Cyrus, and he pointed to the chamber door.

The File Perilous stood there, filling the frame, a horrifying apparition of heretofore unimagined girth and fury. The Ruler saw that where the two poison barbs had been removed three more had grown in their place. She could feel the heat from across the room.

"I'm back," said the File Perilous.

To be continued ...

Thanks for reading!

Have a great week!

Karen

  

Women In the News

Spotted on Gerrard Street by the Ryerson University campus. Whoever is responsible for these unpopular posters gets around. Click here for a story about other words of the prophet showing up in Don Mills that have a bit more to do with today's post.

Increasingly rarely these days, current events make me feel like progress is still a thing.

For example, male sexual predators are being called out by their female prey. Harvey Weinstein is just the most recent in a long list that started, from the narrow scope of my attention span, with Jian Ghomeshi.

More good news: at least one woman in the world is being paid the same as a man doing the same job.

These encouraging blips - even if they are both in the entertainment industry - make me think that small cultural shifts are possible; gender-based misbehaviour and inequality can be incrementally diminished.

And then along comes incontrovertible proof that the impulse to pick on women is still strong. Quebec's face covering law for all the disingenuous assertions of "universal application" would not exist if it weren't for Muslim women. 

Readers' Poll

I have 217 subscribers now, 100 more than I had a month ago. To support the continuous improvement of this blog, I would like to know a little bit more about my readers. If you'd like to help me with that endeavour, click here to answer a three-question survey.

Thanks for reading!

Have a great week!

Karen

Sorry Nick

Since October 2015, I have walked at least twice a day by a mural by Nick Sweetman surrounding the vacant lot, slated for redevelopment, at 307 Sherbourne Street, on the south east corner of Sherbourne and Gerrard.

Long-time readers have seen it before.

The artist painted this wasp last year to cover up graffiti on the original painting.

On Wednesday night, at about quarter to 7:00, a double-decker sightseeing bus eastbound on Gerrard, struck another vehicle which took out a fence and cedar hedge on the west corner while the bus crossed the intersection, jumped the curb, hit a power pole and plowed through the fence surrounding the vacant lot.  

It took crews working around the clock two full days to restore the power pole and clear all the damage to public property. 

The hedge across the street is still a ruin.

So is the mural.

Thanks for reading!

Karen

Guns Don't Kill People

San Gimignano: Really has nothing to do with today's post.

In the wake of America's record-setting mass shooting in Las Vegas on October 1, I find myself struggling to make sense of why Americans are struggling to make sense of this tragedy.

Everything the shooter did, up to the moment when he opened fire on the innocent, unsuspecting crowd was entirely within the letter of American law. 

There has been a mass shooting (where four or more people are shot) in the US almost every day this year. 

Somewhere between 11,000 and 12,000 (or possibly even 32,000) people die by gun violence every year in the USA. Up to two thirds of these deaths are suicides.

Americans have a 1 in 130 chance of dying by gun violence.

The sentiments of the people who adamantly support the second amendment of the US Constitution can be summed up this way: "nothing goes wrong most of the time and when it does go wrong, it's not the gun's fault." 

This is how I make sense of the dreadful events in Las Vegas this past week: American freedoms matter more to Americans than the lives they cost no matter how those lives are lost: at home with a bullet through your head, at a shopping mall at the hands of your three year old, at school, at work, or at a live concert on the Las Vegas strip. 

In the early days of the republic, the rallying cry was "Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty."

That can now be updated to "Somewhere between eleven and thirty thousand lives a year is the price of liberty."

Thanks for reading!

Karen