Just a little more horrible

I’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. […]

Tightrope

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 is tonight

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. […]

Is Canada going down the slopes?

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

Let Amer­ica be Amer­ica again.
Let it be the dream it used to be.
Let it be the pion­eer on the plain
Seek­ing a home where he him­self is free.

(Amer­ica never was Amer­ica to me.) […]

Great Grey Odyssey

Why is so much of my city built of nothingness? […]

Black History Month

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. […]

Invisible Cities

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? […]

Mobile homes, under the sea

“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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