Month: August 2014

We don’t see things as they are, we see them as we are.
— Anais Nin

As mentioned below, here is the poster for Melanie MacDonald‘s upcoming show at Andrew Horne‘s Flying Pony Café. I hope to make it to the opening. Some of MacDonald’s paintings are quite large and they appear to be skillfully executed.
Hey, Melanie, you might enjoy my old Valentine Cards slide show, if your browser can handle Flash. Give it a try …

Inset: artist’s conception
Old guys like to peer into construction sites. They put little windows into the hoardings, just for us. Nobody else uses them.
Today the whole gate was open, revealing the demolition that is finally underway, readying the site for Beach Hill Residences at the corner of Woodbine and Upper Gerrard. The Beach Hole on Beach Hill will soon be filled with 7 storeys of modern accommodation.
Enjoy the view while you can, I say. BTW, planning for this condo began more than 7 years ago. I attended a couple of early public meetings.

A Taste of the Danforth always struck me as a strange name for the annual street festival. Danforth is an avenue. How do you taste it?
The problem is being addressed. Bite-size Danforth can be had east of Woodbine.

There’s always something interesting on the walls of my favourite café, the Flying Pony, but next week a new exhibit will go up … figurative pieces, large and small, opening on Aug 23rd. It’s going to be crazy in there! The opening coincides with the annual Gerrard East street closure for the Gerrard India Bazaar, August 23-24 from 12:00 – 11:00 p.m

VIA and GO trains rocket by at regular intervals, so a lot of land near the tracks is deemed unsuitable for residential use. Public flower and vegetable gardens? That’s another matter.

The pedestrian/cycle tunnel leads to Monarch Park on the other side. It was refurbished last year and the raised beds were installed shortly after. Every bed was in use when I visited today.
A trackside path connects the Woodfield Rail Garden to Coxwell.

New bump-out curbs
Cars will park too close to corners, obstructing visibility at intersections. That’s bad news, since cars don’t really stop at stop signs. What to do? Fines and lectures don’t help, but bump-out curbs do. Many are being installed on residential streets.
Similar constructions slow speeders by installing asphalt bumps (sleeping policemen). Next will come separated bicycle lanes, flanked by curbs, not just painted lines. Bicycles behave badly, too. They need to be penned up, away from cars and sidewalks.
It is much more effective to control machines than to try to control drivers, cyclists and pedestrians.
(I refer to “cars” and “bicycles” as if they were in their own control, because much of the time, they are.)

Publishing ebooks has stoked interest in John Robert Colombo’s many books on the writings of Sax Rohmer. Click the image or this link to read William Patrick Maynard’s very good summary of JRC’s contributions to Rohmermania.
Let it be noted that the author of the praise is a significant Rohmer writer himself. This, from the bottom of the Black Gate web page:

William Patrick Maynard was authorized to continue Sax Rohmer’s Fu Manchu thrillers beginning with The Terror of Fu Manchu (2009; Black Coat Press) and The Destiny of Fu Manchu (2012; Black Coat Press). The Triumph of Fu Manchu is coming soon from Black Coat Press.

A rather maniacal-looking bronze Al Waxman borrowed my hat to pose with Anna and Thorne on the last day of their Toronto visit. We took advantage of a sunny day to poke around Kensington Market after lunch at the famous Free Times Café.

This lovely little pineapple, about 6 inches tall, was made of coloured paper by one of the nuns at the Jing Yin temple. Such things are sold there to raise funds and we were told that we would be making the nun happy by admiring her work.
Because pineapples are golden in colour, they symbolize wealth. This one belongs to Danica.