snow...

yes, winter is around the corner...for an instant there were suspiciously white frozen flecks flying by on the wind outside my window. looks like the very beginning of snow; the dog & i had better prepare our winter wardrobes...

biblioburro

Luis Soriano runs a mobile lending library across miles of rural Columbia...transporting the books on the backs of his two faithful donkeys, Alfa & Beto. i noticed his wonderful story in the NYTimes today, because of their spiffy headline: "Acclaimed Colombian Institution Has 4,800 Books and 10 Legs".

the article includes some wonderful photographs by Scott Dalton. for more background, The Washington Post covered this story in 2005 (you can read it here). i'm glad to discover that Soriano is still at it, despite the hardships of covering very rocky terrain during Columbia's on-going strife.

with all the predictions of the book's demise, and alongside constant PEN reports of the banning of books & suppression of writers, it does the heart good to know that books continue to change people's lives, despite the odds.

the bazaar of the bizarre

...and no, i'm not referring to last week's election...this lovely sunny Sunday, i spent time wandering through a gothic fair (skeleton-patterned tophat, anyone?) organized by the Royal Sarcophagus Society. the fair included a great deal of goth clothing (skeleton-patterned tophat, anyone?) and all sorts of accoutrements...including some lovely hand-made ouija boards for sale, by the duo who organize ghost walks in Hamilton.

however i feel about actual hauntings, i do agree with Haunted Hamilton's mandate of promoting historic buildings in the Hamilton area--it's a town that has wonderful historic neighbourhoods, and if it takes ghosts to get people to notice the buildings, hey, bring on the ghosts...

the Bazaar of the Bizarre was perfect preparation for the next item on this afternoon's agenda: watching the ritualistic annual Toronto zombie walk at Trinity-Bellwoods Park...an inexplicable event where locals dress up as zombies

& dress their dogs & children up, too

then stagger from this park, parade along Queen and up Bathurst, before finishing at the Bloor Street Cinema to watch zombie movies. it makes for irresistible street theatre.

get out there & vote, people!

to any Canadians reading this...you all know that Tuesday is election day. so vote, already.

and if you're worried about splitting the Left vote, examine the polls for your particular riding here, find out which political turkey is running where, and vote strategically. consider how tasty next year's Thanksgiving meal might be if we get an (even if ever-so-slightly) pro-arts & pro-environment government...

1 million ordinary Canadians

that's the estimate for how many people were out for Nuit Blanche in Toronto. proof that despite what our Prime Minister thinks, "ordinary" people will stay up all night long to walk around in cold weather to admire art. to laugh & think & admire & discuss--all the things that art facilitates. and the result was a truly great cross-city street party (though TTC transit, as usual, fell down on the job). a few photos of my faves here:


...the fantastic Day of the Dead skulls by Roger Hupman, showing at the Gladstone (here he is--and a more charming maker of skulls you could not meet). to see these in details, visit his site.

and i also LOVED Knit Cafe's window of knitted architecture


how anyone ever managed to knit replicas of Honest Ed's & the Gladstone Hotel, I do not know...
and this chess-piece grey thing that is several feet high is actually a very fine version of the CN Tower, for those of you who have never been to Toronto!)

meanwhile

a month in France...where i've been slacking on the blog, largely because my main internet access has been the wireless in a horse racing bar in a tiny Burgundian town. i rather like the off-track betting bar--it's filled with every possible character in town, and serves a decent hot chocolate. but now it's time to return to the real world. i'm in Paris for the weekend, and heading back to Toronto soon.

and to welcome me back to Canada, i see that our fabulous Prime Minister--not content with simply cutting the entire international touring budget for Canadian performers--has now announced that ordinary people don't care about the arts. i would like to be surprised & appalled that he's said such a thing--because he is so wrong. but really, i'm disappointed that he thinks this is a politically savvy thing to say--because our Prime Minister does nothing, truly nothing, unless he thinks it is going to win him votes.

does Harper mean artists aren't ordinary? so does he think scientists are ordinary? are plumbers? are people who work at an off-track betting bar ordinary? because in Burgundy, the horse racing bar is named for a Jacque Brel movie, the bar is filled with posters for music and performances in this tiny town, and the place has always had a free Linux computer, for people to stay in touch with the bigger picture.

so i guess the real question might be: what the hell does our Prime Minister think is ordinary? does he think that Canadians are completely unlike other nationalities and that we are absolutely divorced from the arts?

fortunately, before i start gnashing my teeth about this, there's Margaret Atwood's excellent articulate defense of why the "ordinary" person IS interested in the arts, and why some politicians have a desire to suppress that interest, in yesterday's Globe & Mail. Here is the link, in case you missed it.

Northern Lighthouse Board

at night, i like to walk past this building on George Street in Edinburgh; its very own miniature lighthouse blinks through the midnight hours:the lighthouse & specially-designed flag mark the head office of the Northern Lighthouse Board, which operates 209 lighthouses & a slew of other Scottish navigational devices (beacons, buoys, and a nifty webcam that looks from Scotland towards Ireland...so if the Irish ever decide to invade by sea, they'll be spotted...)

i like the spiffy Daniel Buren stripes on this Orkney lighthouse. but for true lighthouse fans, a trip to Fraserburgh is essential--there's a new lighthouse museum up there which includes the oldest lighthouse built on mainland Scotland.

the ha-ha

a ha-ha is kind of landscaping fence, a combination of wall and ditch to keep animals from wandering onto the lawn. it's also the title of a very smart book of poetry by David Kirby--and it's through his poems that i first learned that the ha-ha wasn't a joke but a landscaping device. it's fun just to type the thing...ha-ha...apparently they became popular in the 1700s.

i'd never seen one until i walked by the Scottish palace of Holyrood the other day:

technically, this ha-ha is keeping the unsightly cars and parking strip out of sight from the palace, so that the view can roll towards Arthur's Seat without interruption. odd that this isn't used more often!