Month: September 2014

The New York Times has published an excellent encapsulation of our trials, written by a Canadian who nails it. Here’s a taste:

Ford was 300 pounds of redneck belligerence with the face of a malevolent baby, playing to his sour constituency of have-nots by sticking it to the Toronto establishment (just about anybody who could spell), without noticeably achieving anything else.

Read the rest here. Thanks for the heads-up, Peter Sever.

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 Summer warmth returned for a day, so we went to find the birding station on the Spit. Volunteers and professionals catch and release birds, weighing, identifying, banding and timetabling their subjects. The capturing is done with fine nets stretched in the trees. Nets are checked every half hour.
Highlights of the rest of our ride:

• Views of the city beyond the beaches and parks
• Ham sandwiches enroute
• Natural greenery and wildflowers along paths
• Lots of yachts and sailboats in the whitecaps
• Getting a close up of the cormorant nests

Flocks of cormorants are thriving all up and down the Toronto lakeshore. Their nesting trees are visible from many East End vantage points, conspicuously bone white and dead. Cormorant poop kills the trees and the sun bleaches the limbs. Until I could zoom in on the branches with my camera, I thought that the whiteness of the trees owed to a paint job done in guano. Nope. Just sun-bleaching.

Now he has sneaked us into stupid military involvement in Iraq, undoing the smartest move Jean Chretien ever made. Too dishonest to tell Canadians what he’s done and too weak to say NO to U.S. pressure, Harper is just being himself. We deserve better and we need smarter.

Before I was Bill Andersen I was Bill Ross with Scots on my father’s side and Icelanders on my mother’s. I think there were some English in there, too, so I’m kind of pleased that the U.K. is going to hang together.

I’m glad that the Scots raised the question of independence though, because it has resulted in more autonomy. From the little I know of the issues, I think the Scots are on a better socio-political trajectory than the Brits.

The annual picture of our wood supply, announces cooler days ahead. More reading, computing and web surfing, less time on the bicycles. Maybe some drawing for me (I’m getting the itch again) and some quilting for Danica. Every season has something to look forward to.

Ain’t it just fabulous? This is where Danica and I went recently to become certified 3D printer users. We also go to the Appel Salon fairly often, to listen to authors and others deliver live talks and interviews.
We are most fortunate to have a such a creative, innovative public service available to us. Price of admission? Just show your free library card.

A friend alerted me when he saw paving crews ripping out the raised-bed trees, wondering why the destruction? We wondered, too, so Danica and I went to see.

Obviously the removed trees were goners, never to be replanted as was done when Gerrard was paved. How come?

Something WILL be planted in the new beds (left), now at ground level. And look at the remaining trees, still in their boxes. The root base is a couple of inches narrower than the box. Why the gap?

http://youtu.be/cKdPU48jtQ8?t=10s
1970. London, England. Wow!

Danica and I explored a new (to us) path today and found a popular fishing spot.

Can you guess what these are?

Answer after the break …