Forests: home and away...

Last week the forecast led me to believe that the weather on Saturday would be warm and damp, very much like the first time I visited Kirby Road around Labour Day a year and a half ago. I had a really nice hike there that first time. I like overcast weather, the drizzle made the desurfaced road and forest a pleasure to walk on, and the place wasn't crawling with other hikers. For a while it was as though I was the only person in the world, free to "discover" the abandoned bridge there over the Humber.

P-Doug has been there with me before, but never from the heights on the east side, which was the way I approached when Bassmentbeats sent me there that first time. I suggested the trip and, uncharacteristically, he rather willingly agreed to make the hike in what promised to be rainy weather. As it turned out, it made for some extremely moody skies that he hoped would yield good HDR results (stay posted). Personally, I think some of our best hikes have been taken on days with dramatic weather, particularly in terms of photography; and now that he's carrying the S80 around lumographically he might be becoming more amenable to more extreme conditions, at least in the temperate months.

We got a late start, heading out around 10:30 or so, but we made really good time getting there and were climbing out of the car a bit after 11, which was a faster journey than my first trip (I must have taken the back roads that time; this time it was 401-427-Hwy 27). I brought my sandals with me in my backpack but managed not to need them at all the three or so hours we wandered around, which was my intention. I was only disappointed that the weather wasn't as advertised and the ground wasn't as giving and luxurious in textures as I had hoped. But there was still grasses, sand, mud, wildflowers, tilled soil, gravel, pine needles, boulders, cement, steel plates, concrete, water... Plenty to experience while moving along.

One of the first places we came to that really caught his attention, something I had utterly forgotten despite having been there twice before, was the first big curve in Kirby Road where it has to divert north to avoid the relentless plunge to the river. From there, we could see a huge mansion perched high over Huntingdon Road on the far side of the valley. It has had, and will continue to enjoy, an enviable view of the flood plain for the foreseeable future.

Not long after that we started encountering the hillside wrecks I'd noticed in previous trips. I don't know if people were actually in these cars when they went over the side, or if people were just using the cliff to dispose of old junkers, but they certainly make for some interesting kinetic free verse poetry; a kind of three dimensional graffiti sprawled and scrawled across the face of a cliff, where they will likely reside for generations. From the look, they've all been there at least since the 1980s. At one point, P-Doug spotted a cluster that looks like three cars that have been down there probably since the moon landings. Tall trees have since grown up in the path that they would have had to have tumbled through on their way down.

Soon we came to the place I'd been interested in showing him: the landslide that had torn about thirty yards out of the road some years back and caused it to be closed to traffic, if it wasn't already (I have no idea when this stretch of Kirby was actually "stopped up", as it's termed on municipal documents). He hadn't seen it when we'd been there before; we'd never really gotten beyond the wrecked truck at the other end. This time, we were high above the river, leaving the path along the lip and slipping down into the sloping roadway that once brought cars and trucks up and down the valley, like a ramp along a steep shelf. It's been totally torn out, leaving a spectacular view but not much of a drive to speak of anymore. While we were there, we saw a man and two boys approach from the other end of the washout. They lingered for a while and even discussed trying to cross along the ragged edge of the washout, but eventually (and wisely) thought better of it and made the same steep climb up the forested face of the hillside I did the first time I was there. We heard them travel along the crest for a few moments, and then were lost in the fields above us. We doubled back and returned to the path.

P-Doug had the inspiration to leave the path again after a few moments and seek the open space created by the landslide. Doing so had never occurred to me. I followed him and we got some really nice shots of the valley.

It didn't rain that day; not to speak of, anyway; so the path down the trail through the woods, while steep, was nothing like the adventure it was for me that first time I was there. It didn't have the character of making my way down hot fudge topping; it was still fairly dry and not slippery. On the whole, I suppose that's good because it's never fun to slip and fall, or feel constantly in danger of doing so, but at the same time, I missed the sensual experience of it that I was hoping to recapture.

For me, the low point of the journey is always the flood plain at the bottom. There's nothing much to see, and the road gets gravelly. I can handle gravel now, but it's still not my favourite thing to walk on. It's at best a transition from one pleasant surface to another. P-Doug, though, was rather taken by the field at the bottom. It had been freshly turned, and he had noticed tractor tracks along the trail down the hillside (which he had initially mistaken for ATV tracks), and marveled at the effort it must have taken to get the equipment either into or out of the valley up the trail, given that it's barely six feet wide. His assumption was that it was a farmer's field, likely to be sewn with corn or perhaps wheat. He headed out into the field but I didn't follow him for a couple of reasons. One is that I just couldn't muster the interest. More importantly, it was strewn with last year's chunks of cellulose-rich stalk remnants. I've learned to walk on a lot of things but I know that this stuff has edges like razor blades if you step on it the wrong way, and you can carry chunks of it around in your sole for a season if it gets into the skin. So, I left him to the field and undertook exploring the river side of the road.

I wanted to see how close the river was to the road on the north side. There's a little band of trees on that side and a bit of a drop, and at the bottom it was a little marshy. I skirted the outside of the pool and made my way into the field, but it was hard for me to tell just how far the river was from me, and I didn't want to get separated from P-Doug for too long, so I meandered a bit, never made it to the river, and started back. I ended up face to face with a much wider stretch of the pool at the base of a steeper climb. But, I was dressed for it, so I decided to take it on. The water was cool, its floor was firm, and while it was nearly knee-deep by the time I crossed it, it was never really treacherous. I stopped to take an AEB spread of it on the other side to generate an HDR shot of the striking reflections later.
I climbed up the slope and got back to the road, didn't see P-Doug right handy, so I started heading for the bridge. He met me coming back from it, having already been there and to the river. We went to the bridge, passing the spot where the wrecked truck used to be, and I noticed that from there, I could see the bridge this time. When I was there the first time, the overgrowth was such that the bridge was still obscured from my view. Early in spring, you see more.

The bridge seems to have deteriorated, especially in the guard rails on the west side. I might be wrong, but it seems more broken down than I remember. I still haven't looked through my old shots to see if I'm right. I went under the bridge, stepped into the Humber, which was abruptly deep and quite cold, and noticed that the graffiti this year is quite a bit less interesting than last year. We didn't stay too long at the bridge before heading back. Around the time we reached the old truck spot, I heard voices, and behind us, the man and the two boys emerged from the woods, crossed the bridge, and headed up to Huntingdon Road. They'd done the trip in reverse to us.

When we got to the base of Kirby's course up the hillside, P-Doug was interested in taking it, but I remembered it being a walk of several minutes that takes you only about 2/3 of the way up. He wanted to see the washout from the west side, and while I was okay with doing that, I had to let him know that at that point, you have two choices: climbing all the way back down to where we were standing already, or else climbing into the woods, something that literally requires going on all fours... it's that steep. I wasn't keen on either, having already done that twice, and since he'd already seen the washout from the other side, he decided to forgo the view. We headed up the trail the way we'd come down.

At the top, we veered left and followed another trail along the lip of the valley. It carried us past stands of pines planted in rows long ago... P-Doug reckoned about 35 years ago. He pointed out a massive lone pine, and I might have overlooked it on my own, but having it pointed out to me made it somehow worth shooting. I think it was probably one of my best shots of the day.

We followed the path along through a muddy spot where the road turned to the east along the top of the grove. I love walking on fallen pine needles... you'd think they'd be sharp, but lying flat, they're as soft as a carpet. We made our way in to where some of the pines had failed and left a glade. I noticed the ground was furrowed, just like in the field in the flood plain, and I remembered I'd noticed new pines planted across the river in the hellish field I'd spent a couple of joyless hours in during my second visit. I put it all together and decided that that's probably what they intended for the flood plain. Thirty-five years from now, that open field will probably be a thick, linear grove of pines, holding the line on the river. I sat down on one of the raised sections and relaxed, lying back on a bedding of soft pine needles. The air was perfect. The temperature was ideal: it wasn't cool or warm; it neither chilled me nor made me sweat. The sky was moody and the air was stirring, but it was in the tree tops. It barely seemed to brush over my skin. We were there for about half an hour and I was so plugged into it, I think I may have dozed off at one point. It was really special. That kind of communing is the reason I love to get out in the bush, and I'm so grateful there's still so much of it around here, even these days.

Time was wasting and I didn't want to leaving P-Doug sitting around too long, since we both wanted to get back to The Crow's Nest. About twenty after two we got moving again, and made our way back to the car fairly directly. At The Crow's Nest, a guy pulled up in a strange three-wheeled motorcycle. From the front, it made me think, "ah, so this is what Crow T. Robot's been up to since MST3K wrapped up..." We had a couple of pints and P-Doug paid for lunch (shaved beef on bread stick and a side salad for me; perogies for him) since I was to do his bidding on the morrow...

Tomorrow Never Mows

So that was Saturday. Sunday was about yard work at his place. As agreed, he called me about quarter after ten on his way out to Home Depot, and I arrived at his place about an hour later, at which point we started bagging the leaves from his front yard and the side of the house. It was the back yard that was going to be the big task. G, P-Doug's missus, had lunch on her mind so we all headed off around one or so to Boston Pizza. G had some sort of meat sandwich, and P-Doug and I ended up having the same thing, chicken cannelloni, and they were pretty good. Again, he paid.

Then came the hard part. All the saplings in the back yard! P-Doug came out with two saws, and also what looked like a huge pair of hand trimmers that you'd use to trim bushes. This thing turned out to be our salvation. In about four hours, we cut down fifty or sixty saplings, cut them up, and filled up between fifteen and twenty bags with the refuse. And never once did we resort to the saws. It was cutting through 2" green wood with almost no effort at all; I wouldn't have believed it if I hadn't seen it, even done it. I'd say it was about the best thirty bucks he's spent all year, and he'd probably agree. I didn't bring my camera; I didn't think there'd be much reason to; but I wish I had and could show you a before and after view. This tool quickly rendered that back yard very different.

Sunday was capped with Satay On the Road, where we had golden baskets (a first for me), curried chicken with potatoes, and a spicy beef dish, all over rice. After that, a quick zip to Dairy Queen for cones. I dropped off a movie for them on my way home, and that was the weekend. Felt like three or four days, but in a good way. Very full. I didn't sit around wasting my time. I like weekends like that.

Silver dawn

Silver dawn, originally uploaded by Lone Primate.

A view of the sunrise on the way to work a few days ago. Shot RAW, I converted it on the fly to a faux silver print.

Spring furnace

Spring furnace, originally uploaded by Lone Primate.

A look at the sunrise on my way to work a few days ago. It was really glorious.

Chapters: a RAW deal

Yesterday I went to Chapters to look for a book on processing RAW images. This is one of the reasons I wanted the G9, so it's probably time I started learning how to manage the images to their potential, I figured. Turns out they had a very nice one that I'd quite like to get when the money's at hand. But I couldn't help noticing — who could? — that the US price was $36 and the Canadian price was $48, a third again as much.

Currently, the Canadian dollar is just shy of par with the US dollar.

I went to the counter and brought this up with the young woman there, asking if they honoured the US price. Nope. She gave me a little smile like she deals with cheapskates like me all the time and the corporate line about how they haven't stocked the new prints of the books with the prices in line. Which has nothing to do with what they charge, of course. And is this my fault?

I recall, when our dollar really started to dip against the US dollar in the early part of the decade, how fast the stickers appeared on books, covering up the "old" Canadian prices with the "new" (read: "higher") ones. So where are those stickers now, now that our dollar goes further and is worth more? Why I am paying for a book they bought with an 85¢ dollar with the same number of dollars that are now worth around 15% more? And why was the price 33% higher even last year in the first place? The book was printed in 2007, not 2002.

Well, I'll tell you who wants my business. It ain't Chapters. It's Amazon. They're selling the same book for about $30 Canadian, offering a discount on a related book by the same author, and shipping them free. With tax figured in, I'd essentially be getting the second for free.

I understand overhead. I'd be willing to pay the $6 difference between Amazon's price and the US price at Chapters. But not 12 bucks on top of that. That's simply gouging. That's a cynical, insulting "stupidity tax", and I'm not paying it.

It's too soon!! ...??

I love this quote. It's from an article in The International Herald-Tribune about the role of age in preference for Clinton or Obama. Check this out:

John Peterman, 85, a former navy engineer, said he supported Clinton because "the world is not ready for a black president." His wife, Mary, 81, agreed with him.

Holy crap, yeah! I mean, if John Peterman were only twice as old as he already is, why, he would be old enough to have owned Barack Obama! That's if Obama were also in the vicinity of 170 years old. Yes, that's right; it's been a mere 143 years since the end of slavery in the United States (a nation that was, you'll recall, only four score and seven years old in the middle of the struggle that ended it). Which means the last person who could ever have known anyone who was slave while that person was still a slave died around the time the Russians put Sputnik in orbit. Say, do you remember that? I don't. I wasn't there for it. But John Peterman, navy engineer, can still remember when the dark folks were down in the hold where they belonged, peelin' spuds. It seems to me it's not so much that the world's not ready for a black president, but that it's ready for guys like Peterman to get off already.

Here we go a-wandering

Spring's made it here at last, but I have to say it came on pretty quickly. Three weeks ago, P-Doug and I were walking along the Humber in temperatures just under freezing, videoing the fluid ballet of air bubbles shifting under the ice along the trail. Just three weeks later it was warm enough to lie back in the sun. "Footprint-making weather", I joked to P-Doug in email a few days ago, since if the weather permitted, I'd decided to make our planned wander my first barefoot hike of 2008. And so it was.

I'd suggested some abandoned roads I'd noticed on GoogleMaps, but he wrote back saying he was intrigued by a trail I'd explored alone last year: a closed stretch of Kennedy Road not quite a mile long. I hadn't gotten too far myself that year, really not going much beyond the bottom of the first hill, concentrating on exploring the forest. He was keen to see if we could make it to the far end, where Kennedy resumes north of another side road.

The big piss-off of the day came right out of the gate as P-Doug arrived to pick me up. I went to turn on my PhotoTrackr, only to realize the battery was dead. It had just enough juice left to tell me so in its toffee-nosed I-couldn't-give-a-shit English accent (which I find really annoying... does it show?). When I bought the thing last fall, the main purpose I had in mind was eventually being able to look on a map after I'd gone off-trail into the woods and put the shots I took in geographical perspective. Given that so far, the winter has seen us stick pretty closely to beaten paths, there's been no real chance to try this out. Now I was finally about to get the opportunity to really put it through its paces, and the bloody thing bails. I have no idea how the battery ran down. It hasn't been used in weeks. I hope to God it was just incidental and not systemic.

When we got where we were going, there were cars all over the place at the end of Kennedy. Half a dozen of them, at least. I never like to see that because it tends to mean people are swarming the place with their dogs and their kids. You might as well go to a waterfront park! The idea of getting out of town is to get away from all the noise and contemplate the differences of nature. That's how it is for me, anyway.

And, in fact, just as we set out, a family and their couple of dogs preceded us. One dog, looked like a big Afghan mix, was kind of stupid, hung back, got in our way, wouldn't come when they called... Okay, yeah, it's their place too, but still. Another family and their dogs came back the other way, and I thought for a minute some of the dogs were going to fight. It was all a little discouraging. I resigned myself to the prospect we'd likely see people all up and down the trail. Then, thankfully, the family we were behind broke off near the edge of the heights onto the trail that leads into the forest. We kept following the old road course.

We started down a very steep hill... we kept marveling what a bear it must have been to drivers in the wintertime back when it was still open to traffic (N.B.: we typically do this on such occasions; it's a guy thing, I think). Even on foot it was a little tricky. It's typically the demands of dealing with steep hills in sandals that instigates my taking them off and leaving them off; it always seems like a good excuse. In this case, flat-soled sandals on last autumn's slippery leaves definitely necessitated it. They went in the side pocket of my shorts and stayed there till we got back to the car about four hours later.

Part way down the hill, we could see a long tongue of ice, right in the middle of the road. The shade had preserved it, at least for another day or two. Since we were moving in the direction of gravity, we decided to avoid stepping on it.

Once we got to the bottom... the total drop must have been 80 or 90 feet, somewhere between 30 and 45 degrees (pretty steep by my book)... we started seeing things I hadn't gotten to in my previous solitary expedition. The one that especially charmed me was the tired, crumbling planking of a rough little footbridge that had been built across this tiny stream. It was very picturesque. The wood was dry and nicely sun-warmed, a pleasant counterpoint to the cool, wet, clammy sensation of the earth at the lowest points of the course... though even those sensations have their own recommendations. I was surprised, though, just how warm and dry most of the trail actually was; the elevation only had to rise a foot or two to make the difference. The area must have good drainage.

One of the things P-Doug remarked as surprising was just how empty the golf course adjacent to the trail was. We only glimpsed a couple of carts through the trees; really, on a day like that, and after the winter we just endured, both of us were just amazed the place wasn’t crawling with duffers. It's a mystery, Charlie Brown. In fact, the lack of people generally. In spite of my misgivings at the start of the trek, we didn't see anyone else the whole time we were on the lower trail. I suppose they'd confined themselves to the upper trails.

Something else surprising was the number of hills along the way. I'd only ever been down the first one, and so my uninformed mental map of the area was: big hill at the south end, flood plain, gentle slope up to side road in the north. Generally that's true, but the landscape is more textured than that. There are a couple of hills between both ends, and one nearly as challenging as the first. One rise immediately gives way to the next drop; it was just a narrow ridge in the valley. Good exercise, though, I suppose.

We did achieve our goal of reaching the next side road. There's virtually no hint that Kennedy had ever been a through street on the south side, other than the clearing itself. The thing that amazed us both was that the intersection, in defiance of all typical convention, had stop signs on the through course (the east-west side road), but no stop sign at all on the concession road that T-junctions with it! You just come down a big hill, decide if you want to go right or left, and keep going. Madness. While we were there, we did see a guy in a jeep who seemed to agree; stop sign or no, he stopped, made sure he wasn't going to smash into someone else, and then proceeded. We got a couple of nice shots there of the scenery, and then started back south.

On our way back, we came to the pond that marks the creek whose course I was interested in following into the forest. So we left the road and just wandered the leaf litter for a while. Inside was anything but a flood plain. It was all up and down, carved over thousands of years of floods and recession. Eventually I spotted a little hollow where I sat down to get some sun. P-Doug sat on a branch, which collapsed out from under him; suddenly we were in a Charlie Chaplin movie. No harm done, but it disenchanted him with the location, I think. He wandered a bit, found a better spot on top of a rise (out of the sun, flat, little bumps to sit on) and persuaded me to change locales.

I'd brought a 1L bottle of generic diet cola with six ounces of it replaced with navy rum and lime juice. As we sat there, we passed it back and forth, enjoying the Cuba Libre as we just took in nature. Of all the places we've taken the time to kick back, I think it was the closest to pristine. There was no garbage strewn around, no sign it was being constantly visited, and there was almost no hint of human activity to be heard. Traffic on the side road could be heard only once in a while; a few trains snaked through the valley a mile or two away, and a couple of small planes passed overhead in the time we were there. Every other sound was natural... the breeze, the birds, the creak of the swaying trees that were constantly raining some kind of finger-length, pussywillow-like things on us.

Eventually we had to push on because one of P-Doug's stated intentions for the day was to get to a used book store in the area before it closed. So we headed back to the road and resumed the trek south to the car. On the way, I tested the temperature of the water by the footbridge by stepping into it, ankle-deep. It was chilly, but not frigid; it could easily have been waded in to at least knee depth. But that was it. We're not, of course, in sit-back-and-soak country just yet and won't be for a couple of months, I expect. But it does raise the possibility of fording the Rouge soon to access an intriguing bridge I couldn't get to last March.

We also re-encountered that tongue of ice we'd seen on the way down the hill. This time, since we were going up, I decided to see what it would be like to walk on it. It had so much detritus frozen into it that it actually provided a pretty good surface; it wasn't slippery at all. And, also as a result of that, I was surprised how relatively comfortable it was to walk on in terms of temperature. It was cold, of course, but not so cold I had to step off of it. I climbed the ice rather ably, enjoying the experience of it. It was a good barefoot hike, full of tactile delights. A good start to the year.

We got back to the car and made it to the book store in good time. But the real mission was still ahead: trying out a pub P-Doug had found recommended online called The Crow's Nest. We found it fairly handily; I had assumed it was to be found on Davis Drive, but it's actually on Prospect Street, the name of Bayview Avenue where it becomes briefly discontinuous. The Crow's Nest sits literally astride Bogart Creek, a tributary of the Holland River, with the pub hugging one bank and its parking lot the other. Ducks and geese feed there courtesy of the kindly kitchen staff.

The place is a delight to look at inside; all wood with Old World knick-knacks placed around in a tasteful, uncluttered manner. As we stepped in the door, I noticed in passing a number of old-time articles about the community, including a flood that I think included a shot of the location. To me, this is a hallmark of a place with real soul. Someone cares about this place, the specifics of where it is in the world, and the zeitgeist in which it is embedded, partly in denial of the world around it. It's not a business out of a box. It's something that has grown nearly organically, and could only be in this place, just like a tree.

We sat in a window overlooking the creek, and a waitress arrived right away. The menu was simple but varied. There were something like a dozen different draughts on hand, at least one of which neither of us had heard of. As we debated giving it a try, the waitress offered to bring over samples of it. This is something new to me... it has never, ever happened before in any establishment I've been in. Small glasses holding a couple of ounces of Wellington Dark arrived, found favour with us, and quickly became a pitcher. We ordered the nachos. This is another test... if you order nachos and the toppings vanish with the first layer of corn chips, never go back. Save your money and buy yourself a bag of Tostitos. But The Crow's Nest's nachos were layered, and it was good. Diced raw onions, which was a nice touch P-Doug noticed. Even with the tip, between us, we got in and out of there well under $40.

Downstairs, in the facilities where all beer drinkers sooner or later have to go, the walls were decorated with postcards of ribald British cartoons. Outside the washroom, there were prints of Highland regiments and clan-based maps of Scotland showing tartans and crests. I was really impressed by the quality and placement, and had to smile at the vast resonant dissonance between the effects inside and outside the facilities: it instantly dispelled any notion of pretension about the place, leaving behind only the thought that went into the items on every wall.

We noticed that what looked like locals seemed to drift in, spend a little while, then wander off, which gave it a wonderful, honest-to-God neighbourhood gathering spot sensibility. Families and neighbours, not big noisy parties of drinking buddies shouting at one another to be heard over the latest game blaring on TV. The place was nicely busy, but not crowded. It was pretty much exactly the right balance, at least during the time we were there. No doubt it's far busier some evenings.

I think The Crow's Nest is a tiny, perfect gem, both for and in what it is, and I look forward to going back. Though I should be careful... as the song goes, "call someplace paradise, kiss it good-bye". So don't you all rush to the place. :)

Missing thirty

My friend Jody died of cancer just about four years ago, June 7, 2004, at the age of 26. Today is his birthday. Had he lived, he would have been 30 today. The real irony is that years ago, when he was in college, he was very depressed, and often talked about ending his own life before turning 30. Then he got a great job, great friends, and his life really hit its stride. That was when the cancer struck. Then, when it was real and staring him in the face, he fought hard. He spent most of a year battling it into remission, had the best summer of his life... but it came back that autumn and took him away at the end of the spring.

He would have been 30 today. What I wouldn't give to have him here for that.

What does it take you hours to do?

Have fun with this. I did. :)

Music by Joe Walsh from an episode of Duckman.

Life in a rainy sky

Dixon Road in Etobicoke. I'd been chased off the 401 by a traffic jam and was making my way across town on surface streets. I was stopped here at the light (obviously) and something about the scene just struck me as so evocative. Compelling. It was one of those singular moments that you know, for some reason obscure even to yourself, some part of you will dwell forever. I can't say why, but as I sat there, I was deeply envious of the people here. Come back tomorrow or on some sunny day and I probably wouldn't even notice the place. Weird, but it was like that.

Run over by a train

P-Doug and I were exploring a railroad bridge about to be replaced a little while back, and while we were up on the tracks, we noticed a freight approaching slowly. We determined to film it passing over our cameras... his S80, and my already battle-scarred G9. We set them on adjacent ties, back to back; the G9 facing the train and the S80 down the track away from it. Between the two cameras, this is the view we got.

Help me, I'm rich!

What amazes me right now is how the US government is showing itself eager to throw money at the big banks in trouble... the very guys who caused the housing credit bubble in the first place. You know, so they don't get poor and have to start bringing lunch to work with them or suffer some other fate worse than death like that. But will the government be so quick to extend a hand to the families losing their homes, to help them stay put, see the kids through school without being dislocated, spare the marriages broken by financial strain? This is far more fundamental, but still, I have my doubts.

Canadian banks are far less exposed, domestically... but like crack heads, they just couldn't resist taking a big, expensive snort out of the US bag, and so they're exposed to loads of bad US debt... and, of course, they're going to want to make their customers here, the taxpayers here, cushion the fall so they don't drop all the way from caviar lunches to baloney sandwiches... just prime rib, shudder. People are going to lose their jobs here as a result, sooner or later. People are going to start losing their homes, unless the government folds its arms and forces the banks and their greedy shareholders to take their rightful medicine instead of transfusing the poison to us while they take our lifeblood. But again, I doubt that's going to happen. Particularly under a Tory government. Maybe they'll surprise me, but I doubt it.

Rhapsody in Blue

These things happen. Over the course of the summer, and especially into the fall, her marriage of fifteen years or so disintegrated. For me, it was like watching the footage of a speedboat nosing into the waves and tumbling, slowed down to give every forensic detail. It was horrible to witness; the kind of thing that reminds you of your own mortality, or in this case, the terrible realization that even your deepest, most cherished relationships can be lost. Have the lie put to them.

I’ve known her since high school and I’ve always been a confidant, and I’m proud of that fact. I don’t have many friends like her and I never will have another, I imagine. I was one of the people she turned to, a sympathetic ear when she needed to talk. At first, I never imagined they wouldn’t finally work it out; it was bad turbulence but they’d come through it. But their relationship simply nosedived over two or three months. Every phone call, email, and meeting apprised me of worse and worse news, deeper and deeper hurts. Finally she knew it was finished, and she hit the silk, and their marriage hit the ground.
So it was a cold, clear day in mid-November about a year and a half ago that I was with her when she turned the key on her own door for the first time. She had never, in all her life, lived alone before. It was a sobering moment for her, but she bore it with all the strength I knew she had. She’s like that. Having made up her mind and resolved herself, she’s capable of real determination. Men are supposed to be the strong ones, but if the truth be told, I think it’s the do-or-die grit of women down the millennia that’s the real reason we’re all here today.
And so down we went, into that emptiness, all that unknown. Not just the rooms, but the rest of her life. What would it be now? With what would she fill it? What things would she choose, what things would she leave behind?
We looked around. Talked about what she’d do, with the place, with her life. My feelings for her were such that I had decided to remove myself when it was clear what her path was, and I kept true to that. But just for then, when it was all still swirling, I was there. I could listen and hear. It was moving, deeply sad in a way that just doesn’t come to the surface. It wasn’t about tears or demonstrations. Resignation, a folding inward to let something else be the surface for a while. Anger, fear, and frustration had largely radiated off by then, leaving just the coldness of now, the plainness of must.
She seemed like a ghost wandering through the subdued lighting of the place. She indulged me with the camera; I think somehow she knew, deep down, one day she’d want to be able to look back, even if it was uncomfortable at the moment. And so I caught a shot of her, in stride, arm sweeping like a hurried clock, as she made her way towards a door. The bedroom. Empty, black, unknown. And yet she faces it bravely. She has to see what it holds, and she means to. I felt this one serendipitous shot summed up, so succinctly, that very moment in her life.
Here it is. This is life now. Starting over. And all those TV shows from my childhood, all the songs, the movies, about women disconnecting from what they’d been before, and getting on with their lives as full, mature, able individuals… here it was, absolutely real. But she did it. She made it work; she got things settled; she decided where her heart was and she moved it there. It worked out fine, and the healing is nicely under way. There will always be scars, but there will never be handicap.

Cat on a Soft Box Roof

I had the weirdest dream last night. I don't remember much of it, but I remember I was down in the finished basement of some suburban home. One room was kind of set aside for ping pong and that kind of stuff, and in there, one of cats, who had in the dream recently begun making herself almost passably understood in English, had begun unfolding the big boxes used for moving and was building a kind of fort with the unfolded boxes for walls. She wanted us (me, her, and my other cat) to play inside it; a big round area inside the ping-pong room. My mother was in the dream and she couldn't see how amazing it all was... she thought it was just messy nonsense. Well, that's my mom for you. :)

It was really strange. It was surprising how persuasive it was. I woke up feeling really disappointed when I realized it was, of course, absurd... and that I wouldn't be able to converse with my cat in reality. I hate when I get sucked in by dreams that deeply.

Lead a Horticulture: Attacking Iran

TELEVISION STUDIO: CHAT PROGRAM

Long shot by camera placed up in audience showing two men seated
on swivel chairs with a small table between them.

ANNOUNCER V.O.
Welcome to LEAD A HORTICULTURE.
Tonight's guest is U.S. State
Department representative Chuck
Galeforce. And now here's your host,
Fabian Fricative.

Cut to stage-level view of Fricative, who is playing with a pencil
à la David Letterman.

FRICATIVE
Good evening, and welcome to LEAD A
HORTICULTURE. Tonight's guest—

ANNOUNCER V.O.
I just said that.

FRICATIVE
Oh, sorry. So, Mr. Galeforce,
you're here tonight to tell us your
department's views on relations
with Iran.

Cut to wider view showing both men.

GALEFORCE
Yeah, we're probably going to bomb
them.

FRICATIVE
...That's it?

GALEFORCE
Pretty much, yeah.

FRICATIVE
Don't you think some attempt at
diplomacy ought to be tried first.

GALEFORCE
Tried it; didn't work.

FRICATIVE
When? When was it tried?

GALEFORCE
Mr. Fricative, you and every other
intelligent viewer knows that the
US has been trying for generations
to engage Iran in a dialog. And
we've been rebuffed every time.

FRICATIVE
Well, actually, we don't know
that. Iran has been diplomatically
isolated by the United States for
thirty years, and every indication
is the US refuses to sit down and
discuss matters with Iran unless Iran
agrees in advance to accede to the
US positions on those matters.

GALEFORCE
Well, yeah, of course. We're not
going to enter into discussions
with people who aren't going to
agree.

FRICATIVE
But don't discussions imply at
least the possibility of compromise
on both sides?

GALEFORCE
(chuckling)
Man, what planet are you living on?

FRICATIVE
One I hope not to see incinerated
out from under us all in the next
few years. But be that as it
may... what actually are the issues the
US has with Iran?

GALEFORCE
Weapons of mass destruction.

FRICATIVE
Specifically?

GALEFORCE
That we're the only ones allowed to
have them.

FRICATIVE
Allowed? By...?

GALEFORCE
Us! Who else?

FRICATIVE
So your position is to insist that
Iran is building nuclear weapons,
despite the fact that it has opened
its processes up to international inspection,
despite the fact that it has the
right under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation
Treaty to non-military use of
nuclear technology...?

GALEFORCE
That's all gobbledy-gook. Do you
want to see a mushroom cloud over
New York, or London?

FRICATIVE
Or Tehran?

GALEFORCE
That's different.

FRICATIVE
Mr. Galeforce, I think most people
remain unconvinced that Iran is out
to build nuclear weapons. But
given that its neighbour Israel is
permitted, if I may use the word,
to maintain something like 200 of
them itself, and given that the
United States has now repeatedly
suggested it may exercise
preemptive use of nuclear weapons
against Iran, could anyone blame them
if they did have such plans?

GALEFORCE
You're obsessing. I've responded
to this.

FRICATIVE
Fine. What other issues do you
have with Iran?

GALEFORCE
Democracy. There's a democratic
deficit in Iran. The place is run
by evil men who don't even let
women vote.

FRICATIVE
They do, in fact. Women do vote in
Iran.

GALEFORCE
No, they don't.

FRICATIVE
Yes, I'm afraid they do. On the
other hand, our erstwhile ally,
Saudi Arabia--

GALEFORCE
Leave Saudi Arabia out of this.
This isn't about Saudi Arabia.

FRICATIVE
But if we're claiming a "democratic
deficit" is an impetus to attack a
sovereign nation--

GALEFORCE
It always comes down to picking on
Saudi Arabia, doesn't it? Why are
you people so anti-Semitic?

FRICATIVE
Excuse me?

GALEFORCE
Look, does it really matter? We've
determined that Iran is evil, and
that's that.

FRICATIVE
It's just that I think most people
expect some sort of cogent,
compelling reason when they're
being asked to commit their
country, their economy, and the
lives of their young people to war.

GALEFORCE
A reason? Look, we're the United
States; we don't-- okay, fine.

GALEFORCE leans forward and looks directly into the camera.

Kids, Iran killed Santa. They shot
a missile at him and blew him right
out of the sky. And Rudolph, too.
Because Iran is bad, there'll never
be any Christmas ever again,
forever.

GALEFORCE sits back.

There, you happy now?

FRICATIVE
Ecstatic. I'd like to thank Chuck
Galeforce for coming on the show
tonight. Next week's guest will be
Iggy Jinglebells, the elf in charge
of maintaining Santa's "Naughty and
Nice List". Be here next week and
see who's really got the goods.
Good night, and good luck.

Subprime Response

Subprime Response
US Federal Reserve meets crisis by injecting eight trillion tons of bullshit into US economy

WASHED-UP-INGTON — The deepening subprime lending crisis, up till now characterized by US President George W. Bush as "a great opportunity to build hotels on Boardwalk and Park Place", has finally been recognized by saner members of his administration for the unfolding economic disaster that the rest of humanity knows it to be. As a result, the United States Federal Reserve Board has decided to take action in the form of issuing eight trillion tons of bullshit for domestic and foreign consumption.

Assistant Secretary to the Treasury Willy Schitcha held a press conference this morning, at which he spun the administration's latest presentations. "Okay, get a load of this one," he said. "Foreclosure: a wonderful chance for your children to get to know their grandparents! Hmm? Related to that, we have: Nostalgic? Move back into your parents' basement!"

Schitcha's presentation represents a sea-change in federal policy. Up until now, the policy has been to deny that the US, and potentially the rest of the world, is heading into a recession, or worse, as a result of American banks lending trillions of bucks to people without two cents to rub together, backed by lunatics in Europe and Asia who supposedly knew something about how money actually works, but turn out not to have. The inevitable defaults seem to have caught everyone by surprise (for "everyone" read: greedy, stupid financiers with more money than brains). Now that the trend has become undeniably clear to anyone who isn't brain-dead (and even to Republican voters as well), the administration is attempting to persuade the public that the downturn is a positive thing.

"Obviously we don't want to do anything about the economy itself," Schitcha said following his presentation. "I mean, nobody's actually done anything about the economy since, oh, the Eisenhower Administration. Attempting to remedy problems in the economy almost always ends up costing rich people some of their money; and let's be honest... in a plutocracy like ours, that just isn't going to happen. ...Except, you know, to the handful of banking VPs we'll ultimately hang this on who'll wind up spending a few months in Club Fed. We have to throw the public a bone so they don't draw real blood, after all."

When Schitcha's remarks were repeated to the president, he advised potential defendants who might be incarcerated to "not pay the $50 to get out of jail... just roll doubles, it's cheaper."

Feds reject handgun ban

Feds reject handgun ban
Tory insanity to continue to govern policy

Minister of Public Safety Stockwell Day has rejected a call from Toronto mayor David Miller for a total ban on handguns in Canada, as well as a similar request from Ontario Attorney General Chris Bentley.

When reached for comment in Ottawa, departmental spokesperson Beverley Pickles tied the minister’s stand to his previous calls for habeas corpus to be suspended in some circumstances, as it now frequently is in the United States. “Well, when some miscreant blows you and your whole family away with an illegal handgun, don’t you want us to be able to do something about it without all kinds of constitutional rights getting in the way? Honestly, there’s no pleasing you people.”

Old Finch Avenue Bailey Bridge

Last Friday was Good Friday. It was a holiday. I was kind of at loose ends so I decided to go on GoogleMaps and browse around and set myself an interesting photographic assignment for the day.

I settled on a place I hadn’t been before (at least, I don’t remember having been before): the Bailey bridge that carries Old Finch Avenue across the Rouge River. I actually had to cross it before I could shoot it. It’s a single-lane span and there was a light just before it that controlled access to it. I had to wait for a bit before I could cross.

There’s a lot for parking in just the other side of the river. I parked there; the lot was wet and muddy. It’s been a very snowy winter here and it still shows. I followed a short path down to the river to shoot the bridge from below. I was surprised just how busy the bridge is. I’d say cars went across it about once a minute on average.









When I’d been looking around on GoogleMaps, I’d also noticed another span further downstream. I wanted to see if I could get a look at it. Doing so involved easing down some rather treacherous stone stairs and following a snowy, shoe-filling trail as far down the river as I could get, which was, as it turned out, as far as I needed to go to glimpse the bridge. I was between the water and the cliffside; I couldn’t go any further. In warmer weather, it would have been no obstacle. I would have forded the river and made my way to the bridge. Not in weather like this, of course. But I really do intend to go back this spring or summer and do just that. Stay tuned. :)





Heading home, I had to cross the bridge again going the other way. I happened to glimpse a raccoon using the bridge to cross. He wandered to the side and tucked himself under the bridge as I approached. I really wish I'd been manning a camera... such a wonderful opportunity squandered.

Sadness from joy

I must have had bad dreams last night but I don't remember them. This morning I find myself in a strange state of pre-mourning, if you understand what a mean. A sense of impending loss that isn't even based on anything except the knowledge that, if I live long enough, people I care about will pass from my life. In particular, the feeling is focused around my Dad and one of my cats, Bonnie. My Dad's in his mid-60s and he's smoking again, though I don't think quite as much as he used to. Bonnie will be turning 10 this summer — at least according to the paperwork I have on her — and while she seems to be in really good health, I remember that my last cat passed away at only 13. That doesn't mean Bonnie will, but it's still a number that seems terribly, terribly near.

I wish it were possible for me to live in the moment and just enjoy what I have, but I can't. It's hard even to fully enjoy the time I spend with others because I know it's finite. You might say that would make it all the more special, and it does. But always, there's the knowledge it will be painfully taken from me one day, irrevocably. There is always the sense of mourning.

Good heart or stupid head?

I was thinking kind of crazy on the way home today. For the last couple of nights, I've had occasion to stop at a local supermarket, and both times a poster on the bulletin board by the exit caught my eye. It told the tale of a seven-year-old tortie cat -- I think her name was Becky but I'm not sure -- who had to be given up by her family because someone had developed an allergy. The poster made it sound very dire; she was in desperate need of a new home...

It's been kind of haunting me.

I have two cats. One is, in fact, a tortie, and she's the love of my life. Maybe that sounds kind of pathetic, but that's how it it. She, too, once had a home and lost it (as did my other cat). So the thought of this other cat losing her home... and who knows what else... it was heartbreaking. So on the way home, I decided to stop in and get the number. At least find out if "Becky" had a new home yet. Though I knew, deep down, if I called and no one had taken her yet, morally I was essentially committing myself. My big worry was how my own tortie, Bonnie, would react. I didn't want to hurt her. But she adapted well and quickly when Max joined us.

When I got there, the poster was taken down. I can only take this to mean that someone has spoken up for "Becky". Hardhships... the family losing her, her losing her family. But at least someone new to love and care for her. And I feel a little better knowing that I was ready to step up to the plate and do what had to be done.

Good luck, little one, in your new home.

Jack and the Witch -- Little Devil

Astonishing!

This came to me in email today from a friend utterly amazed that Alberta has, yet again, elected a Tory majority government...

Maybe local politics in Alberta go a long way to explaining the current crop of Conservatives in Ottawa. They can't help but govern as a majority, invincible and all powerful. I'm particularly seething that Harper has the nerve after running all those personel attack ads on Stephan Dion (for no reason, no election campaign), then threatens to sue the Liberal Party for catching them out on an old scandal. This is government by intimidation. We can crush you, but you daren't resist us. Only thirty or forty years of experience provincially can explain such arrogance.