SubscribeI’m heading to New York (by way of Florida) tomorrow to search for an apartment. The thought of it fills me with fear, verging on terror. The vacancy rate is less that 1%, and competition is fierce. Finding the right housing with right mix of variables is pretty perplexing. There’s cost, of course, and then there’s proximity to work and amenities, safety, space, and character of the area. Throw in brokers, scams, slums, and sublets and you’ve got a real mess. […]
Somerset West, the only place in the world where China and Italy touch. Growing Up in Chinatown is an intimate tour through a unique urban environment that holds lessons for living in an increasingly multicultural Canada. I’m really excited to give this walk as part of the 3rd annual Jane’s Walk festival. […] Yesterday, Monday April 12th, was my birthday. It was also the day I quit my job, and the day I the International Centre of Photography accepted my application. […] Pecha Kucha Night, the 20 slides/20 seconds ideas extravaganza is tonight at the Arts Court in Ottawa. Pecha Kucha Ottawa was a big success. […] Why would anyone in their right mind choose a picture of tobogganing for the cover of a speech about economic recovery? By choosing a photograph of a sport where people willingly throw themselves down a hill athigh-speed, sometimes with bumps along the way, the designers of this cover inextricably linked the report with the idea of decline. […] Let America be America again. (America never was America to me.) […] Why is so much of my city built of nothingness? […] It took me a long time to learn how to read. By the start of grade two I still couldn’t really make head or tail of words. I got lucky; my poor reading was noticed. I was doubly lucky to go to a school where a specialist was available. I took rememdial reading throughout second grade. It wasn’t until grade three, Ms. Cromwell’s class, that reading took flight. Ms. Cromwell was a young black woman from Nova Scotia. She was, is, a fantastic teacher. With her, I learned to love reading. Emancipation from slavery and emancipation from illiteracy are fundamentally intertwined ideas. Ms. Cromwell had a remarkable way of explaining both to 8 year olds. I owe a remarkable debt to her talent and caring teaching. […] What was it that the Decentrists desired when they dreamed of the city as a garden? What did Le Corbusier see when he imagined the towers of the Radial City, gesticulating like giant fingers in some obscure salute? Did anyone think to ask people how they wanted to live? Did anyone look around, to see the value of the city as a social and economic environment? Now that the giant social housing projects are crumbling, are we poised to make the same mistake? […] “We were blown away,” said biologist Mark Norman of discovering the octopus behavior off Indonesia. “It was hard not to laugh underwater and flood your [scuba] mask.” […] | |
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