Month: June 2011

my attitude to Toronto Police and their G20 actions


From 1958 (age 5) until 2000 I lived in Toronto.  I have never been arrested.  One of my few interactions with the police took place around 1990 in The Beaches.  I left my basement apartment and found just outside my door in the alleyway a police warrant card on the ground.  Turns out it belonged to a young constable who was visiting his grandmother and dropped it in his haste to get on his way to work.  I turned it in at a Division in the East End.  Another interaction took place one Saturday afternoon on Jarvis just below Bloor.  A man in a car was trying to force a woman into his car.  I got out of my car and two other men got out of their car and we moved to stop the takin of the woman.  When he saw us move at him, he drove off and a few moments later about ten cruisers caught him further north on Jarvis which turns into Mount Pleasant Road.  I was lucky that day, the man might have had a handgun, but I was determined not to just standby.  It turns out the woman  was a prostitute and the man was her pimp.

I live 100 miles north now.  For many years I wanted to visit New Orleans, a perfect city for a photographer to point his camera at, but never went because its police force had a dreadful reputation. I have to got to Toronto for medical appointments and if I get a kidney transplant it will be done there and the many followup appointments will be there as well.  My thoughts now are that I will never travel to Toronto again unless I must for medical reasons.  I do not want to run afoul of the police, who seem to have the potential to do whatever they want to without regard to the law.

my Friday overfloweth


Lots on my plate today.

 

  1. visited the Ellery Site, sw of Waverley, Ontario, on provincially owned land where Laurentian University Department of Anthropology held an archaeology field school.  Two Huron villages, one dated to the 1400s based on distinctive pottery style, and one to the contact (French trade and occupation in Huronia) roughly 1600 (trade goods coming up from Quebec and eastern shore of Canada) and 1650 (the year after the catstrophic war with the Iroquois when the Hurons abandoned the area).  Thanks to Robert Brown who guided me around.
  2. Dialysis, almost late. Went smooth enough until the very end when my blood pressure dropped. I felt lightheaded  when I stood up at the end of the run. They had to hand me several cups of cranberry juice.  Took almost 20 minutes to get it back up to 124 over 70. It had dipped to 88 over something or other when I stood up.  We conclude that we got too aggressive and took off too much fluid. Not a big concern.  I felt bad for taking so long on a Friday to get out after the run.  But not my fault.
  3. Attended an art show opening at the Huronia Museum, Alethia  photographs by Nick Anest, amateur photographer – Nick Anest was born in Midland in 1929 to Greek immigrant parents who ran The Midland Candy Works.  The people of Midland knew Nick Anest as the proprietor of “Uptown Billiards”.  Parking lot was packed, huge turnout.  Show celebrates community, family, multiculturalism.

I like Marlo Thomas post at HuffPost on recent spate of men behaving badly.


http://www.huffingtonpost.com/marlo-thomas/famous-men-sex-scandals_b_875587.html

The French lout, Arnold , Weiner, and the replay of Edwards (indicted – did you see his smiling mugshot?) have made it a cads’ month of months.  As MT points out, the courage of the NYC hotel chambermaid in coming forward to get Frenchie  rightly charged is enormous.  Maybe Thomas is correct and there is a change for the better and this crap will not be silently slipped under the light of scrutiny and law and consequences of all kinds.

VANCOUVER RIOTS


It is sad and disappointing and a black eye on a good city.  I read one report online about rioting in Van. after the loss to Boston in the seventh game of the Stanley Cup. Some time ago I decided that the huge mountains of money in the sports business and inflated importance of Sports in our culutre was a serious mistake. Something we should turn our backs on.  I throw in the antics of the IOC, indifference to concussions in pro sports, hockey fights, professional millionaire athletes who keep ending up in court and jail, and college sports business violations.

By all means go outside and play catch with your kid.  You both could use the exercise.

facing facts


I cancelled my three and a half hour one way drive to North Bay for a poetry reading tonight.  I was to be one of two readers.  I had to face the reality of my level of available stamina and the fact that I have written almost no new poetry since I began dialysis two and a half years ago.  My muse has gone away.  My attempts to lure her back have not been successful. I am considering my literary options.  One is to put down my pen and finish out my string simply as a careful reader.

One thing I did find out in preparing for the reading is the chaos of my digital documents.  I had been carrying my poems forward from computer to new computer in folders called Poems YYYY.  Now I am building a single folder called Poems MASTER FILE.    When I looked through there for some old poems to print out for the reading they were not there.  I did some hard drive searching without finding everything.  So I turned to my website and blog and found them there.  Once found, I copied the text and put them into Word documents saved in the Master File.

In the past I have read perhaps ten times.   Quite a few years ago I spent a week in a Catholic high school in Toronto reading and talking about writing poetry in a whole bunch of classes.  It had beena long time since I had run my day based on the ringing of bells.  A great week for me.