Where it All Began

There was a lot happening onstage at the Princess of Wales theatre for a matinee performance of Jesus Christ Superstar. The young and constantly-moving cast put their full effort into the show even though there were a half-audience’s worth of empty seats.

There was even more going on in my head. First, there was the shop-grade N95 mask on my face imparting everything with a funny smell. Then there was the movie version with Tim Neely as Jesus Christ firmly imprinted in my memory, almost as firmly as the original cast album of JC Superstar that I listened to a thousand times and knew by heart, along with a YouTube compilation of all of the men who have tried to sing WHYYYYYY like Ian Gillan. So, that’s a rich and textured mind set to bring to watching a stage production. Oh, right, and when I was 19 years old, I saw Jesus Christ Superstar on stage in London, England, with Colm Wilkinson (who later became the Phantom of the Opera for half a lifetime) as Judas. 

What I really noticed this time was how much I completely missed the political part of the story when I was younger. This time I saw how the songs mix together the politics of the age – Israeli resistance to Roman occupation – with the spiritual story. So JC was a rallying point for everyone - spiritual seekers and revolutionaries alike - even though he kept reminding them that they had no idea what was going on and he was not the person they thought he was. So, Judas and Jesus were on the same page. Which is why they were on the stage together at the very end after the violent and moving scene where Jesus is put on the cross. If I could have added Christian faith to my mind set, I might have left the theatre in tears. 

There were probably some things to nit and pick about the production – some singers’ articulation was mushy; the band overwhelmed the voices sometimes; Caiaphas on stage couldn’t hold a candle to Caiaphas in the movie – but overall it was splendid. When it was over we stood on our feet and clapped for them for a long time. 

We're spending this Christmas at home - except for the few hours when Bruce will be at Toronto General Hospital waiting with his father for news about that pacemaker Ken asked Santa to bring.

I hope everyone has a safe and happy holiday, however you spend it.

Thanks for reading!

Merry Christmas!

Karen

Winter Solstice 2021 - Rebunking Revisited

In honour of the shortest day in the Northern Hemisphere, here's a message (you may have seen before) revised and updated from the print edition which included typos, lazy writing and an egregious error.

***

In the latter half of the 20th century – long after the song itself was made – claims arose about the “secret meaning” of the gifts of the Twelve Days of Christmas.

Persecuted Catholics, so the claims went, hid catechism in the words of the song, so the partridge was Jesus, the four calling birds were the four gospels and so on.

There’s no proof for these claims (and lots of reasons to doubt them). 

The one sure thing is that you can match just about anything to a list of numbers from one to twelve.

With that in mind, here’s a Canadian code for the 12 Days of Christmas.

Partridge in a pear tree – Alex Trebek on Jeopardy

Two turtle doves – The Ryans, Gosling and Reynolds

Three French hens – Celine Dion, Alanis Morrissette and Avril Lavigne

Four calling birds – The NDP, Liberals, Conservatives and Parti Quebecois (sorry, Green Party)

Five golden rings – Bank of Montreal, Royal Bank of Canada, CIBC, Toronto Dominion Bank and Bank of Nova Scotia

Six geese a-laying – Pacific, Mountain, Central, Eastern, Atlantic and Newfoundland time 

Seven swans a-swimming – The Group of Seven

Eight maids a-milking – The women’s Olympic rowing team

Nine ladies dancing – The Supreme Court of Canada

Ten lords a-leaping – Viola Desmond

Eleven pipers piping – Pizza Pizza

Twelve drummers drumming – the 1967-1970 National Hockey League

Thanks for reading!

It's brighter from now on!

Karen

The Allan Gardens are ever so slightly open for your holiday viewing pleasure (25 people at a time, please). The turtles seem glad for the company.

How Many 64-Year-Olds Does it Take to Change a Lightbulb?

      

These are not the lightbulbs under discussion. This is a holiday spectacle at the corner of George and Shuter Streets.

***

Like hopefuls auditioning for a spot in a Three Stooges revival, Bruce and I spent some time this past week wrestling with a 24-foot extension ladder. Last time I'd done that, I was 23 years old, painting the outside trim of my professor's house. I didn't know anything about house painting, or extension ladders. I proved the latter point when the ladder collapsed shortly after I'd used it to get onto the roof of the house. A stranger passing on the sidewalk saved me that day.

Our objective this week was the light fixture over our door, which sits a good twenty feet up from the sidewalk. The light bulb was not turning on.

We were hoping that it had just worked itself loose in its socket. It's been less than a year since the guys in Unit #7 hazarded a climb up that same extension ladder and changed the bulb for us.  

People Bruce's and my age are not supposed to spend too much time on high ladders. At first we put the ladder on the step. It was a shorter fall. But, a local walked by and said "that ladder's too steep." He had a point. So we put it on the sidewalk.

On the sidewalk, the ladder was at a safer angle, but fully extended. I couldn't think of anything I wanted to climb up less.

The opinionated local passed us again. He asked if we were changing a light bulb. I said "yes." He said "I can go up the ladder for you." 

Recalling the services rendered by a neighbour just the week before, I asked, "what'll you charge?" He said "Ten dollars."

"Sold," I said. 

 

He nimbly scampered up the ladder. He checked the bulb. It was burnt out and needed a replacement. 

We hadn't planned that far in advance. Bruce went to find a bulb. While the man hung out suspended twenty feet above the street, we made small talk about the weather. Bruce found a bulb and gave it to him. 

It was a bit of a struggle getting the new bulb screwed in. He said "birds have been in here." Once properly in the socket, the bulb worked fine. Our neighbour zipped down the ladder and expertly collapsed it. He was obviously the right guy for the job. 

I still don't carry cash, so Bruce gave him the money. We thanked him profusely. He said, "Thank you for the blessing. Have a Merry Christmas." 

Many's the time in spring I find fledgling sparrows on our front step. Sometimes they're just about fit to fly and survive to live their little birdie lives; other times they are hopelessly young and die on the step from exposure. When you find one of these sad little things, the advice is to put it back in the nest, but I could never figure out where the nest was. 

Now that I know, my next saviour to come along will be asked to remove the old nest and put a screen over the fixture.

Thanks for reading!

Get that booster shot!

Karen

In Memoriam: Brenda Christine Connor

From Toronto.com: A wheelchair painted white and adorned with flowers, a memorial to 59-year-old Brenda Christine Connor at the corner of Dundas and Sherbourne Streets. She died on Nov. 18 after being struck at the intersection by the driver of a cement truck. More than 40 people attended a memorial service for her on December 14, 2021.

Carrying Cash

Last Sunday morning, Bruce headed out to go see his dad.  Then Kim and Kevan, who'd been visiting for the weekend, left for the train (early, because of the usual anxiety about missing things) leaving me at home alone to do some pottering around. I made the beds. Got started on the Christmas cards. Then I heard my phone ping. It was a text from Kim. She wanted to know if Kevan’s phone was on the hall table. 

It wasn’t. Nor in the kitchen. But, ever so faintly, I could hear a phone ringing. I couldn’t figure out where it was coming from, until it dawned on me to look outside. I opened the door. There was a neighbourhood denizen sitting on the steps opposite ours. I could clearly hear the phone now. I asked the man if he had the phone. I descended our steps and saw Kevan’s phone, on the sidewalk, where it had lain for at least the past half hour. 

I picked it up, answered it (Kim was calling) and went indoors, the intentions of the denizen not something I needed to figure out at that moment. I told Kim I’d bring Kevan’s phone to Union Station. On my way out a few seconds later, the denizen was still there. He said "I was going to turn it in, eh." I thanked him for keeping his eye on it.

No doubt he was thinking about something to do with that phone. Getting up the nerve to steal it; imagining how he could cash in, or he could have been sitting guard. One thing for sure, Kevan is a lucky man. Anyone else who drops their phone in this neighbourhood loses it seven seconds later.

I hopped on the subway and got to Union Station half an hour before their train left. I gave Kevan his phone, said goodbye again, then walked back home. On the way I stopped by a Christmas tree place I'd had my eye on for a while and bought a wreath for the front door. Because that’s what the fates had intended all along – to find a way to get me out on a Sunday on Front Street across from the St Lawrence Market to buy a Christmas wreath. It's odd that they had to involve Kevan and that random neighbourhood guy … 

If I’d been thinking properly, I'd have offered him some money. Of course he wanted a reward and, in the code of the 'hood, probably deserved one. But, as I told the man selling Christmas wreaths who didn't like the looks of my plastic, I don’t carry cash.

I may have to start again.

Well, That Didn't Last Long

After about six weeks My Facebook boycott has ended. I feel I've made my point. And I miss seeing pictures of my cousins' dogs.

After barely one week, my cheerful aspect in the face of the ambitious new variant has dimmed. According to the Toronto Star, Omicron sends even more people to the ICU than Delta, and snaps its fingers at vaccines. 

Better get that booster shot and brush up on those social distancing skills.

Thanks for reading!

Karen

Be of Good Cheer

Back by popular demand: Captain Oreo, still hoppin' strong.

Before

After

The Saint Lawrence Market: Deck the Halls

I can't help but feel cheerful this Christmas, COVID omicron notwithstanding. 

Maybe it's because we have the last of 2021's big projects completed - all of the furniture slated for recovering has been recovered - and all that messy money has been tidily swept out of our bank accounts. 

Maybe it's because we can visit friends in their homes - and pay our respects to any venerable bunnies that may be on the premises - without breaking the law. 

And maybe it's because stores are open and full of masked people and the city's not an abandoned post-apocalyptic landscape of fear and desolation.

Whatever the reason, I am markedly more light-hearted this year than last.

I hope it lasts.

Thanks for reading!

Have a great week!

Karen

When We Are The Ancients

Twenty thousand years from now, weary and starved for home, our descendants will arrive back on Earth, which they'd let lie fallow for nineteen thousand years. 

They will dig into the accretions of dust and dirt layered over everything we built. They will discover tantalizing signs of the lives of long-forgotten ancestors, such as strange markings on ancient pathways.

Scholars will conclude 21st century humans were surely bipedal, but travelled in great long hops. And their clothes shed pigment as part of some devotional ritual.  

Others will argue that the enigmatic markings are the remnants of a game. They will use the hopscotch hypothesis as analogous proof.

These two schools of thought will battle vigorously with one another for years as if the answer to the puzzle mattered at all.

One upstart, a specialist in ante-departural epidemiology, will recover records once thought destroyed, and propose that these are markings on a sidewalk in the aid of an obscure ritual called special resistancing (the translation is in some doubt).  

That researcher will die unrecognized, then be remembered reverentially when everyone finally sees that she was right.

Ah ... who am I kidding? Twenty thousand years from now, we'll still be in this goddam pandemic. 

Thanks for reading.

Happy American Thanksgiving!

Karen

Oh, look: another Picasso exhibit.

Death of a Panhandler

A news notice flitted across my screen the other day. Woman killed by cement truck. Not again, I thought. The cement truck body count in Toronto is high and getting higher.

Bad as it is to read of more pedestrian carnage, this time is worse because I know the victim. She was the woman with the loud, high-pitched voice who for years had panhandled at the corner of Dundas and Sherbourne half a block south of here. 

We spoke often, though the conversation was always the same. She'd say “Do you have any change?” I'd say “Sorry, no.”  

People claim to have warned her that it was dangerous darting out into the road to ask drivers for money.

Her danger increased at some point in the pandemic, when she had a foot amputated and took to getting around in a wheelchair. 

People in every state of mental and chemical disarray wander onto Sherbourne street all the time. And use the stopped traffic at intersections at Gerrard and Dundas as their chance to introduce themselves to potential patrons. 

Everyone in the ‘hood knew her, but no one’s quite sure of her name. She “succumbed to her injuries” at the scene and was pronounced dead in the street. 

That loud, reckless panhandler was someone’s child. And one of God’s children. There’s a piece missing now in the sound scape at the intersection. Someone who was a daily reminder of life’s uneven favour is gone. 

I’m sorry she’s dead. 

Thanks for reading.

Karen

 

Isn't It Iconic

There's a Picasso show on at the AGO right now, with paintings from his blue period, plus a few from before and after. 

The show was well put together and helped me understand the early years in Picasso's long and storied career as an artist. 

I learned art is autobiography. When Picasso was young, poor, struggling … when he was blue, as it were, so were his paintings. When he was better established, had some money and a girlfriend … his outlook was rosy, and so were his paintings. 

Sometimes you need a good art show to help you see something that was there all along.

One sour note: the word "iconic" draped like a plastic table cloth over the exhibit commentary.

Let me give you a hypothetical example to show what I'm complaining about.

Imagine a short piece on Picasso written, let's say, in the early 1970s:

As the most recognized, famous and influential artist of the 20th century, Picasso stands like a colossus. Bridging the seminal works of the Impressionists and the experiments of the Cubists, Expressionists and Surrealists, Picasso led the look, impact, and substance of modern art, at the same time standing on his own, magnificent and inimitable.

These days, the same passage would go something like this:

As the most iconic, iconic and iconic artist of the 20th Century, Picasso stands like a colossus. Bridging the iconic work of the Impressionists and the iconic Cubists, Expressionists and Surrealists, Picasso was an icon, at the same time standing on his own, iconic and iconic. 

See what I mean? 

Thanks for reading!

Have an iconic week!

Karen

Masquerade

Belleville: the birthplace of Gerald Cotten and Avril Lavigne ...
and where Hallowe'en gets taken to a whole new level.

These days social pressure, ambition and that ineluctable human quality called identity, make some people want to change who they appear to be.

Leaving aside furries and drag queens, two available methods to change how one appears are 1) to undergo plastic surgery and 2) to appropriate a racialized identity.

Oddly, irrespective of which of these two you choose, your next step will be to deny the change even happened. Rather, you will claim that you have not changed at all, especially if you have changed a lot.

For example, Rachel Dolezal and Carrie Bourassa have vociferously defended their genetically spurious claims of Black and Indigenous ancestry. Because these are women descended from Europeans, they have performed the remarkable trick of improving their status in society by claiming kinship with an historically downtrodden population. 

In her own defence, Rachel Dolezal says race is a social construct; she self-identifies as Black. This is more-or-less how Carrie Bourassa, who claims to be Métis, Anishinaabe and Tlingit, is responding to recent investigations by CBC and others that show she is 100% European by birth and ancestry. Her story is inconsistent so far, both relying on made-up details about her grandmother marrying an Indigenous man and the assertion that she was adopted into a Metis family, so claiming that DNA both does and does not matter. It’s hard to see how this will end well for her. 

Society reserves a lot of umbrage for people who want to change how they are seen. This applies especially to transgender women. Gender, like race, can be called a social construct (or not, tellingly). If you’re born with male genitals but grow up certain that you are female, you can have the surgery and pass as well as you can, but an army of outraged parents – and Germaine Greer – will never let you forget who you really are.

So you can understand why people will take deliberate, and at times painful and costly action, and then immediately deny it. People can be so mean.  

Thanks for reading!

Have a great week!

Karen

Reupholstery Update: 

Before

After

It's Not Easy - Part II

The crowd attending the launch of the Ontario Green Party Climate Plan at the Chelsea Hotel, Thursday, October 28, 2021

Now that the embargo's lifted, and my masked face has been shown on LinkedIn as being a part of it, I can talk about the Green Party of Ontario Climate Plan.

The plan is a rare example of public policy unencumbered by politics, so the plan is clear on what it will cost. $65 billion.

Talking with Steve Paiken from TV Ontario - the only media outlet to cover the release of the plan - Mike Schriener and Dianne Saxe admitted it would be hard to get elected on such a platform. They're hoping that the party that does come into power might steal their ideas. 

I helped with the plan. I did research to ground truth some of the policy proposals. I suggested that the plan not only needed to talk about its cost, but had to have some idea about where the money would come from. I edited an early draft. 

If any of the major news outlets take a look at the plan, I predict that they will denounce the plan as unrealistic and pathetic in its political naiveté, but they will also grudgingly acknowledge that, but for the political impracticality, the plan is necessary.

Think about that for a second.

We're over disputing that climate change exists, we're even more or less in agreement on what needs to be done. We just can't do it because the way we govern ourselves disallows taking the action we need.

Sheesh.

Thanks for reading!

Happy Hallowe'en!

Karen

Braced for the future:
In between shoulder surgeries
Dianne Saxe campaigns 
for a seat in University/Rosedale.

Scarcity

  

I went shopping this morning at the Maple Leaf Gardens Loblaws store. I still wore a mask, but for the first time since March 2020, the ends of the baguette bags were not taped shut and the olive bar was actually an olive bar, and not a stack of plastic containers with olives in them.

Something's going on. 

Yesterday, Doug Ford announced that by March 28, 2022, after a staged ratcheting down of restrictions, and so long as COVID trends are good, any remaining public health and workplace COVID safety measures in Ontario will be gone. 

It was March 17, 2020, when Ford declared the first COVID state of emergency in Ontario. So, it will be two full years of on-again-off-again lockdowns, massive unemployment and more government debt expenditure outside of wartime than the nation has ever seen, plus a lot of sickness and death -- but the privations of the former will have lessened the magnitude of the latter. 

I've got mixed feelings about lockdowns, but they have a better body count than the available alternatives. See Brazil ... or Florida ... or Alberta.

At the beginning of the pandemic, toilet paper was scarce. At pandemic's end, everything is scarce. There's a lot of pent up demand out there, while goods are in short supply or expensive or both. Just check out the price of propane. 

At the end of the third wave lockdown in May, we put together our own list of pent up demands. Creeping up on the end of October, most of the items on our list - a new HVAC system, new computers - have been taken care of, though most took longer to get and cost more than we thought. 

All we've got left is getting our furniture reupholstered which will cost about what we thought, but is taking longer than we expected.

David, a charming frenchman (from France) who apparently doesn't have a last name, is making his way through recovering our dining room chairs, two occasional chairs, and our couch and armchair. He brought back the dining room chairs this week, a few days later than he said he would.

Acclimatized as we are to delays, and also very happy with his work, we didn't ask why delivery was late. David volunteered the explanation that, while riding his spiffy BMW motorcycle last week, he'd been sideswiped by some guy in a car. He was OK, but his bike was a mess and his insurance company was being a complete jerk about honouring his claim.

Looks like things really are getting back to normal.

Thanks for reading!

Have a great week!

Karen

Circa 1910 

Eatons Catalogue 

oak chair with 

old upholstery

Shame, Humiliation and Death on Everest

Portrait of Mary Ann Shadd, McKenzie House, Bond Street, Toronto

You know who Monica Lewinski is. You've never met her, but you could pick her face out in a crowd. You likely have an opinion of her, too, and a strong one at that, even though you have never met her nor perhaps heard her side of the story of how she became so famous.

Lewinski's the producer of an HBO Max documentary called 15 Minutes of Shame, the true topic of which seems to be how a mix of the Internet and ancient human behaviours can as randomly as lightning bolts blow people's lives to smithereens.  

People have for ages used shame to expel others. Long ago, in Indian villages, women beat rapists with shoes and forced them out of town. The preferred expulsion in the Internet age is for someone to lose their job. The dog-walking Karen who called the cops in Central Park lost her job; Emmanuel Cafferty, who the Internet claimed to have made the wrong hand gesture as he drove by a BLM protest, lost his job. Lindsay Stone, who joked while posing in front of a sign at Arlington Cemetery, lost her job. Justine Sacco tweeted to 150 friends a poorly-written wisecrack about her own privilege, and lost her job. And so on. None of these people was entirely blameless; neither were their actions in any way proportionate to the price they paid.  

Oddly enough, humans also use shame to welcome others into their group. Ritual humiliation as a rite of passage is as old as public shaming. An increasingly unpopular example is hazing in university. Perhaps the greatest exemplum of this is initiation into the military. Grunts tell how boot camp breaks them them down and builds them into a soldier. 

Initiation comes at a price. Once you are part of a group, there are rules to follow on pain of expulsion. If you leave the group, you risk not having any status anywhere, which may explain why some army veterans have it so tough.

Shaming and humiliation are both about power. People don't hate the person they shame on Facebook as much as they love how shaming makes them feel. It's righteous, that indignation. Shaming is a point on the bullying spectrum; the power people feel when they pick on someone else.

And what, you may be longing to know, does any of this have to do with death on Mount Everest?  

I read somewhere that some people who climb Everest want to feel as if they are not a part of society, that's it's just them and the mountain. Perhaps that's why there can be such shameful behaviour above 8000 metres. People get left for dead on Everest, and robbed by their sherpas and other climbers. People bent on summiting will walk right by others obviously in distress. 

The acknowledged expert on all things Everest is Alan Arnette. Arnette summited Everest on May 21, 2011, after attempts in 2002, 2003 and 2008 where he reached about 8400 meters before health, weather or his own judgment caused him to turn back. There's no shame in that.

One More Thing

Facebook the corporation and climbers on Everest both do shameful things on the way to what they perceive to be a more important goal. The latter want to summit, the former wants to keep on making money without taking any responsibility for the social damage Facebook and Instagram do.

All of which is to say I have deleted my Facebook account.To all of my Facebook friends who read this blog, rest assured I "like" you now more than ever, I just won't be using Facebook anymore to tell you so. 

Thanks for reading!

Have a great week!

Karen

All alone? On Everest? Please.

It's Not Easy ...

What's wrong with this picture? *Answer below.

None of my readers will be surprised that, given the chance and the other choices, I most commonly vote for the Green Party.

That choice was complicated by the recent epic collapse of the party's public image, its internecine squabbles, the painful transition of its new leader into and then out of the role. 

I've seen two insider reports on what happened, both in the Toronto Star, one written by Elizabeth May, the former leader of the Greens and one by Jeff Wheeldon, a former international affairs critic for the Greens. May's argument was that, given the party's "grassroots up" governance model, the I-resigned-on-television-not-in-real-life leader Annamie Paul's top-down approach didn't fit all that well. Wheeldon argued that Paul's leadership style was only part of the problem. According to him, the grassroots wasn't pulling its weight, so there was no counterbalance to Paul's mis-steps as a leader. 

Sure. Whatever. I wasn't there, so I don't know. 

As a voter, I think about my values and who, among the parties, most represents them. I usually vote Green because I believe in what they profess is their vision: an equitable, sustainable, low-carbon society. I never expect them to form a government, but I do expect them to be a loud and compelling voice in opposition.

Mike Schreiner, for example, is the sole Green member of the Ontario provincial legislature. He can be relied upon, much more than Andrea Horvath, the leader of the Ontario NDP, to hit the nail of everything that's wrong with the Ford government on the head, especially from the perspective of how it's not equitable, not sustainable and not low-carbon.

The Greens should fight the other parties, not each other. But, Wheeldon suggests infighting is just part of being Green. He says, "a grassroots party is vulnerable to being influenced by anyone seeking a platform. That explains why we seem to be the favoured party for both Zionists and anti-Zionists at the same time." 

I think he means "infiltrated" not "influenced."

In any event, I am grateful for the effective opposition of the Greens to date, so that no other national party, not even the Conservatives, dared run in the past election without a climate change proposal. 

If they can loose their grips on one another's throats and reclaim their defining issues, the Greens could again be relevant in Canadian national politics. I'll look forward to that day.

In the meantime, I live in Annamie Paul's former riding. I had the opportunity to vote for her three times ... and I did, twice.

Thanks for reading!

Happy Thanksgiving!

Karen

*All along Jarvis street, practically every water hydrant on the east side of the road has been set to release water into the storm sewers, so the water runs right into the lake. It has something to do with work the city's doing. All are set up as this one: a copper pipe sending water onto freshly applied asphalt. Here's the thing about fresh asphalt. Exposed to sun and running water, it leaches thousands of toxic compounds into the environment. Sheesh.

On the other hand ...

Mount Currie idyll: Annikka's garden from the screen porch.

 

 

Nuptials and the Unvaccinated

Twilight wedding feast: Pemberton Valley, 25 September 2021

So we're back from our back-to-back wedding weekends, one an hour north of the city, the other way over on the west coast in the beautiful Pemberton valley.

Both ceremonies were touching, featuring heartfelt I-wrote-this-myself vows, beautiful brides, handsome grooms, etc.

And both had unvaccinated people in attendance. 

Toronto has a vaccination rate among the highest in the country, but even 84% vaccinated means two people in ten are still a potential target for COVID Delta. Outside the city, the count gets higher with every excuse a person might offer. Excuses like, "I don't go out much, so I don't have the exposure risk," which position is rendered nugatory at a wedding with 70 people at it, fourteen of whom, if they're from Toronto, could be unvaccinated. 

One charming fellow I spent half an hour talking with about his art gallery casually let it slip that "he hadn't gotten around" to getting the shot. I imagine he prepared himself in other ways to travel six hours from Powell River to the wedding, so I wondered why not.

Another person, about whose unvaccinated status I had been already told, showed off her daily "vitamin-pill," a grotesque, weedy jarful of various dried fruits and plants in mud-coloured liquid, evidently conclusive proof that vaccines are for losers. 

Both weddings took many COVID precautions, being either entirely out of doors (see photo above) or generously socially distanced, masked, and so on.

There are articles written once every hour or so attempting to explain the mindset, motivations, and desperate rationalizations of the rabidly unvaccinated. I suppose for the lazily unvaccinated, their perception of the risk is too low to overcome their tendency not to act. Or, if they are convinced of the risk, then they still can't get over their deeply felt belief that they are personally harmless.

Whatever. I don't have any more weddings this year (that I know of) so I can put all this behind me, except for the fact that, now that I have travelled on airplanes and attended weddings, I would like to take a COVID test, just as a precaution against any risk I might pose to Bruce's dad.

Here's the prevailing irony right now in Toronto: vaccinations are free and readily available, but Bruce and I have already waited two days just to hear if we can even get a COVID test.

Thanks for reading!

Have a great week!

Karen

The B&G make their getaway.

 

Will You Still Feed Me

Always invited guest: Great Blue Heron at the Carrying Place Golf Course

Ensconced -- some would say trapped -- as I am in my urban environment, I lose sense of how much time most people spend in their cars.

I was reminded this past week.

For the first of the season's two weddings, we drove an hour and a half in each direction to partake of the happy couple's special day. For the second, we have travelled across the country, and been driven two hours up the fabled Sea to Sky highway.

In between these treks, we visited on Vancouver Island -- the best example in the world of aggressive urban sprawl -- and were on the Island Highway for most of the visit. We were travelling to vineyards and to visit my niece in hospital, so these were necessary trips. It was just hard not to notice how extremely far apart everything was. 

Speaking of lengthy journeys, I turned 64 this past week, something I've never done before. Once I hit 65, I'm going to start counting birthdays by fives, so I'll be 65 until I'm 70, 70 until I'm 75 and so on. I already forget how old I am, so this will make things easier.

We are in the Pemberton valley for wedding number two, where vast natural beauty bears mute witness to the clashing forces of the bride's plans, the groom's family and COVID restrictions. It'll be a hoot.

Vineyard roses: Averill Creek Winery

Autumn vines: Blue Grouse Winery

Thanks for reading!

Have great week!

Karen

Oh, right: the bride and groom

Busy Busy Busy - Pandemic Edition

Barosaurus, Royal Ontario Museum

After months uncluttered by things to do other than sleep, eat and consume streamed media, I'm now up to my neck in busy-ness.

I've got a client who specializes in engaging me at the last minute, multiple things happening on my condo board, birthdays to think about (almost everyone I know was born between July 1 and September 30), and, after multiple cancellations, young relations who are going to get married this time, dammit - one this weekend and another the next.

All of which is to say I've got lots on my mind, but none of it is fun to share. 

So here's a poem by Philip Larkin. Bruce recited most of it while we were out with a friend last week. He's full of surprises that one.

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This Be The Verse

BY PHILIP LARKIN

They fuck you up, your mum and dad.   

    They may not mean to, but they do.   

They fill you with the faults they had

    And add some extra, just for you.

But they were fucked up in their turn

    By fools in old-style hats and coats,   

Who half the time were soppy-stern

    And half at one another’s throats.

Man hands on misery to man.

    It deepens like a coastal shelf.

Get out as early as you can,

    And don’t have any kids yourself.

Philip Larkin, "This Be the Verse" from Collected Poems. Copyright © Estate of Philip Larkin.  Reprinted by permission of Faber and Faber, Ltd.

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Thanks for reading!

Have a great week!

Karen

Haven't seen one of these in a while:
sightseeing bus by Dundas Square.

After I took this photo one morning while I was waiting for 

the Eaton Centre to open, a young woman standing nearby asked me if I was a tourist. I said "no." She explained that she thought I was because of my camera and what I'd just taken a picture of. I had nothing to add to that. And, as soon as she learned I was a local, I ceased to interest her.