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.

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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