Month: June 2014

It’s true that I haven’t been watching the World Cup games much this year, although I have given a few minutes to a match or two.
It’s not true that I’d take my friends to a bar, even to watch them try to score. A friend sent me the card. He wouldn’t take you to a bar, either.
I played soccer in high school … even got mentioned in a news clipping as a “marksman”. I was standing in front of the enemy goal when one of my teammates bounced a shot off my leg. I was more surprised than the goalie when it went in.

I just came across this on BoingBoing. As a promotion for his song, a musician gives away money, asking people to do someone a kindness with their 10 dollar bill.

The unadorned and somewhat unimaginative focus on money strikes me as quite Torontonian. So does the good-natured response of participants.

In a conversation with Peter Sever recently, he reminded me that those of us who live in North America and Western Europe, even the poor, have much higher standards of living than most of the world’s population.
This map attempts to draw the world, proportioning country size according to population rather than geography. Look at Canada! Australia is small, too.

It’s probably not all that “realistic” or Antarctica would hardly be visible, but the general idea is right. The unacceptable gap between highest and lowest income levels in Canada is mirrored on a global scale. It doesn’t hurt to remember that.

Gone are the screws that used to make electronic products fixable and upgradeable. Now everything is held together with strong glue. Prying open is not an option. Something breaks, throw the whole thing away.
You know we are going backward when people are paying a premium for older, fixable products.
Apple was shamed into improving its use of materials, greening its laptops by making them of recyclable aluminum and glass. The shame wore of pretty quickly, didn’t it? Today’s offerings are worse than ever.
Stop grinning, Samsung and the rest. You think you’re any better?

Danica and I rode the bicycles onto Leslie Spit for about 3 hours today. We had plenty of company out there. I took this shot to use as a screensaver.

Today’s surprise was the presence of shore-hugging carp, easily seen in the shallow water. There were many, many of them … about 50 cm (20 in) in length. Not small.

Here’s a closer look at one of them.

People fish them, but I don’t think I’d eat one.

Happy to report that the hatchlings are all out and swimming. The male swan was patrolling nearby, so the whole family is doing well. Unfortunately, people are feeding them, but whatcha gonna do.

I was born in the geographical middle of Turtle Island, so I guess I’m native to this land. I might not be alive at all if an aboriginal couple had not shown my Icelandic ancestors how to survive a prairie winter.
Relations between cultures in proudly diverse Canada have been good sometimes, and friendly. Mostly not so good, though, let’s be honest. There’s still plenty of fear, dislike and ignorance abounding.
I don’t want to play the blame game, because my non-aboriginal side would lose. If we started over today, erasing all past mistakes, we’d still lose. It wouldn’t even be close. I wonder if we’ll ever get better?

The whole town is torn to pieces, orange traffic cones, cranes and dump trucks everywhere. The messy, dusty chaos precedes an attempt to get the city spruced up for the Pan Am Games next year.
This week, we host World Pride. First time ever in North America. A huge population of decorators and stylists will be among the visitors. For them, an unfinished mess is OK, but we’d better be neat when the jocks arrive.

Here’s an article that appeals to me. its conclusion: “Let’s shut down the Chicago love-in and be proud of who we are.”
Exactly, but not so proud that we ignore our need to keep improving our waterfront, our transit system, our public spaces and our architecture. We are just beginning to express our potential.