My exploratory trip to the Tdot (a.k.a. Toronto)

A taste of Toronto, soon-to-be my new home.  So as not to be utterly overwhelmed by the novelty, I kept a mission list to a minimum in this, my first exploratory trip.  Leaving my adopted city of Boston is going to be tough – roots have grown deep over these past 11 years.  I came very close (within inches, really) to moving to the ‘Tdot’ 4 years ago but it didn’t pan out because I was not ready to separate myself from the likes of ‘Beantown’.  Over the course of my life, I have resided in and made a couple dozen trips to Europe and yet, scandalously, I have rarely visited Toronto, a major pulsing city a measly 4 hours away from where I grew up:  Ottawa.  I cannot complain, though….hello, Europe?! But unbeknownst to me, a megapolis was growing, evolving, and drawing people from all corners of the world.

Whilst hitting the streets during my 5-day stay and polling friends and strangers that live there, I discovered that Toronto is indeed a wonderful and liveable city.  Naïvely, I thought it was solely a field of skyscrapers.  Of those glass high-rises there are aplenty, many having sprouted in the past few years to meet the burgeoning condo demand of downtowners.  But there are so many plays of scale there.  I was pleasantly surprised to find numerous neighbourhoods or, dare I say, arrondissements, with different qualities, some with a small village feel:  you’ve got your industrial-turned-art district, hipster, bohemian, trendy, and posh areas, the financial and entertainment zones, the beaches and so on.

As the world’s most ethnically diverse city, Toronto also has distinctive shopping districts and markets that offer a wide range of unique experiences: vibrant retail areas that’ll disorient you and make you think you’re elsewhere.  Ok, perhaps that’s a bit of a stretch to say but the Greek, Portuguese, Italian, Indian, Chinese communities, to name but a few, are each a ‘country’ in itself.  I came across scores of teenagers seamlessly flipping back and forth between English and foreign languages, presumably their family’s native tongue – something I can relate to.  And it is no surprise to see many business owners from Europe setting up shop there, benefitting from opportunities that they cannot get on the other side of the pond.  Toronto is home to heaps of independent shops, galleries and restaurants, suave Internet cafés sandwiched between tattoo parlours and Shawarma eateries.  Personally, I was all over the mid-century modern venues stocked with Scandinavian furniture and décor.  Put me in front of anything with the ‘Design within Reach’ label (a knockoff of a classic, rather) and look out!  I’ll covet it like a treasure trove.  The highly acclaimed Toronto International Film Festival may have helped put this city on the cultural map but it goes far beyond that – it has become one of North America’s most dynamic arts and design communities.

People in Toronto have a sense of humour. You can do what you want here (generally speaking) and be whomever you want.  (And frankly, coming from Boston, it’s refreshing). You can find everything and anything here.  And in my walks I encountered distressingly attractive and stylish people… another bonus to relocating.   Like anything, there will be pluses and minuses, I’ll give up some things and gain others.  But I’m ready for the new adventures a metropolis affords.  Word on the street is that initiatives are in place to make Toronto into a New York.  I can believe that.  With neighbourhoods on the upswing, a booming real estate market (almost as if there was no recession), and an established major banking center:  these all bring serious cashola to the once ‘Big Smoke’.  It may not have a reputation of being the prettiest of cities (note aforementioned nickname ‘Big Smoke’) but it’s getting better at creatively filling in the blanks.  Concrete Toronto is in a form of continuous development.

I woke up with the sun rising over Lake Ontario, a body of water so enormous it might as well be a sea.  And as if there wasn’t already enough happening, there is also a massive ongoing revitalization of Toronto’s harbour front.  Development plans to strengthen the ‘blue edge’ are still much in the works but I saw various projects already constructed:  flexible public spaces and facilities, wave decks, bridges, parks, and beaches, all contributing to create a destination that connects people to the water.  The open/green space encourages year-round use so I strolled the waterfront, sans dog, liking the wind-catching willows that create a soft buffer and scoping out informal beach furniture scattered across the south end of the site that transforms it from an urban park to an urban beach.  Naturally, being mid-winter, it wasn’t particularly animated (i.e. dogs few and far between) so I’m psyched to see it come spring.  While we’re on the topic, let me take this opportunity to clear up the common misconception of foreigners that Torontonians are trudging through snowdrifts in a barren northern climate.  They aren’t.  If the cityslickers are wearing fur-lined parkas, it’s for stylin’ reasons because those jackets are all the rage!

I saw but a fraction of the city on this short trip, but enough to already come to some conclusions.  Toronto is ‘the new black’, at least for me.  So stay tuned.   In the meantime, be sure to check out what’s happening in Vancouver, a Canadian city with international attention because it is hosting the winter Olympics in just 2 short weeks…

[Via http://stephaniecalvet.wordpress.com]

Snowkite night session in Quebec Canada

Credit: Vincent Bergeron

Rider: Félix Gourdeau

Kite: 12 & 9 m Vegas (Vie Sportive, Québec)

Board: ABoards 158 (KiteForce, Montréal)

Source: www.aboards.eu

Credit: Vincent Bergeron

Rider: Félix Gourdeau

Kite: 12 & 9 m Vegas (Vie Sportive, Québec)

Board: ABoards 158 (KiteForce, Montréal)Credit: Vincent Bergeron

Rider: Félix Gourdeau

Kite: 12 & 9 m Vegas (Vie Sportive, Québec)

Board: ABoards 158 (KiteForce, Montréal)

[Via http://aboardskiteboarding.wordpress.com]

MUSHY MOO

I did not pick the title of this post. In fact, I did not write this post but will add to it at the end. This comes from Brandi, who is my nephew David’s beautiful bride. She has her own blog called Mommy Tales from the Beach. There is a link to it here so be sure to be a regular with Brandi.

She wrote this wonderful post yesterday and it moved me very much. I noticed a lot of what happened to me years ago with my ex-wife and the mother of our son. I will tell you about that later, but first, here is something special about family from Brandi.

David and I started dating in 1994 when we were 16. From the time we became adults (18-19-20ish), David had made it clear that he did not want to have kids. I, knowing that he was perfect in every other way, shrugged it off and told myself that it was okay, I can get through life without kids, living vicariously through family and friends. When we were going to get married, he brought it up to me again, the idea of never wanting kids and I went along with it. I even convinced myself that even though children were totally fun to play with, I didn’t really want to be burdened with the responsibility of having to raise any of them.

Back in 2007, David had changed his mind on his own free will. I have no idea what happened, what the change was, how long it took, but one day he told me that he was having a change of heart and wanted to have children. Shortly after I went off of birth control and six months later I was pregnant with Zack.

Today, I was watching my son do his toddler thing. He was telling me a story in his language (the one I can’t really understand but try to) and laughed, several times, in the middle of it. I’ve said it before plenty of times that I can’t believe he’s already 15 months old. While Zack was talking his head off, my baby girl growing inside of me was doing flips. There are some days, some moments, where I still can’t believe I’m a mom.

It’s hard to believe such a short time ago, David and I were going to be one of those couples that decided not to reproduce. Now, we have a toddler with a baby on the way. We have gone from staying up super late on the weekends only to wake up sometime a little before noon to going to bed by midnight (or earlier) knowing that we’ll be up sometime between 7:30 and 8:30. We traded in our leather home theater chairs for an Ikea chair that fits better in the living room to accommodate the toy corner.

We still have our fun. We see our friends every weekend and we still play our video games. We can even still watch movies, however, that doesn’t happen until after Zack goes to bed.

I’ve said it to David before, but I’ll say it again here. I am so incredibly happy that he changed his mind. I am truly blessed that we have this life now that feels so astonishingly complete.

Hard to follow that, but I will give it a go.

When I met and married Maureen, another wonderful woman, we settled in to our new togetherness. We had met running a 17 mile training run for a marathon. So running was a big part of our lives. We traveled a lot in California and some in other states. We visited Yosemite, Monterey, San Francisco, Orlando, New York City, Boston, Cape Cod, Hawaii a couple of times, Canada and other places I can’t recall now. We ran so many races and were just on the go, go, go. There was no talk of having children. It was something we had dismissed since we were having such an active and fun time without little ones.

Then one day, Maureen mentions to me she would like to be a mother. Whoa, where did that come from was my first thought. A definite upset of the apple cart. I was resistant for sure. Why mess with such a good thing? I was what you might call, a hold-out. And my hold-out lasted quite a while….months. I just couldn’t wrap my arms around this idea.

Then one day, I can remember it like yesterday, I was walking in Parkway Plaza in El Cajon, Ca (near San Diego) when I noticed this incredibly cute little stuffed bear in the window of a toy store. I have no idea what it was that suddenly pulled me to that bear. But there I stood, in front of the window, looking at the little guy and thinking how neat it would be to have a child with whom to share this bear.

I walked in, bought the bear, got a card and presented it to Maureen with a “Mushy Moo” note saying, “I am ready now.” I had come around to be in the same place Maureen had been for months. This all took place in the summer of 1983 when I was 37 and Maureen was 32. The following April little John Bradley (Brad) was born. However, he was dealt a bad hand and did not live through the day.

We were not deterred and in July, 1985, Jeffrey Ryan was born in San Diego. What a day that was.

He became the light of our life and our traveling companion. When Jeff was 10 weeks old, we took him to Hawaii. Then he went again when he was 14 months. We took him to Yosemite and I carried that little squirt all over the Yosemite Valley. He went everywhere with us…Orlando, Washington DC, Williamsburg, Monterey, San Francisco, New York City and other parts near and far. We had decided to keep being active and include him in every part of our adventures. We have so many great memories from those days.

I know there are those of you who had children much earlier in the process. I was 39 when Jeff was born. My best friend’s, John and Kathy, were 21 when their son, Tony, was born. We enjoyed those early years in completely different ways but both were exciting and rewarding. Those of you reading this probably have stories just as rewarding about how and when you decided to bring some little rug rats into your worlds. Brandi and I would love to read about it, so don’t be shy.

[Via http://oldenoughtoremember.wordpress.com]

O Canada - Again

I’d like to announce that this will be the second Nanaimo Bar entry on this blog.  I don’t have many recipes since I don’t blog as often as I wish I could, but yet I have TWO Nanaimo Bar entries.  I’m not Canadian, and in fact,  had never even had a Nanaimo Bar prior to blogging.   Well, as many of you could guess, both entries were challenges..the first, a ‘Sweet Canada’ Sugar High Fridays, when I was just a blogging sprout, the second..this month’s Daring Bakers challenge.

The first time I made them, for the SHF challenge, I concocted this white maple mousse filling, which was pretty tasty, but damn, I went way overboard with the white and dark chocolate ‘polka dots’ inide and out, rendering them a bit too rich for an already too rich bar.  OH and the photos..AY YI YI!  I actually thought they were quite good when I took them.  Hey, I didn’t know squat about photography, what can I say?  Still sort of don’t – just got a better camera.

The January 2010 Daring Bakers’ challenge was hosted by Lauren of Celiac Teen. Lauren chose Gluten-Free Graham Wafers and Nanaimo Bars as the challenge for the month. The sources she based her recipe on are 101 Cookbooks and www.nanaimo.ca.

Initially, when I saw this month’s challenge, my first thought was; ‘Welllll..I already have a Nanaimo Bar post, and they are rather rich, so what to do, what to do….’   Remember, I don’t have a lot of people to feed, so lots of food gets thrown out quite often.  However, I adore Lauren, a total sweetheart of a girl, so there was no way I wasn’t going to take part in her challenge.  It was a matter of getting creative and taking these bars somewhere other than  Canada.

First let me start by saying that this challenge had a hook, and a great one I might add.  We got to make our own graham crackers.  We were also given the choice of going gluten-free..meaning there were some flours we would have to use that most of us do not have on hand.   Eyeing my barely used sack of spelt flour from the Daring Cooks  Indian Dosa challenge, it was a pretty easy decision..Umm…NO.  Granted, I would have loved to have done these gluten-free, but the flours we needed would eventually join the spelt in perpetual limbo..wallflowerdom forever.  It was going to be whole wheat flour or bust.  Well, in this case, KA white whole wheat flour, which was what I happened to have on hand.

That being said, I was not going to make these into big, honking bars.  I feel Nanaimo Bars need to whittled down a bit.  This way, you don’t waste a bar with one or two bites due to the richness.  Granted, many love a sinfully rich bar of heart attack, but I’m not one of them.

I decided to go tropical.  What an oxymoron - tropical Nanaimo bars.  From the rugged chill of Canada to the soft breeze and sunburn of Key West and Hawaii.  My reasoning wasn’t out of any kind of rebellion, juxtaposition or fusion, but simply due to the fact that I felt the juice and zest of a lime or key lime would cut the sweet richness of these bars.  Since I was taking the key limey highway, what better than macadamia nuts in lieu of the almonds (Can you hear the surf and ukulele?) ?  The coconut was already at the party, so it all fit together like Heidi Montag and (insert any plastic surgery procedure).  I also felt a very thin layer of white chocolate ganache would be better suited to the tangy lime.  Finally, I nixed the dark cocoa in the graham cracker crust, and instead used sweet ground white chocolate powder, reducing the sugar in both the filling and crust. 

Having said all that, (I have a lot more to say this time, huh?) due to my prior Nanaimo sugar shock, gut bomb, ‘I feel the diabetes lurking’ experience, I didn’t think the bars needed to be as thick as they usually are, so I used a 10-inch square pan instead of an 8-inch, to insure slimmer layers, layers that don’t make your teeth want to sink back into your gums with each bite.  I also cut them into very small squares, bite-sized (the last photo is just for show, those were miniaturized after I snapped), unless your mouth is the size of a thimble.  This resulted in a much more pleasurable Nanaimo experience, minus leftover bars with one or two bites out of them.

If you’d like the recipe for Nanaimo Bars, click HERE.  To make myversion, simply add the juice and zest of one key lime or half a regular lime to the filling and use melted white chocolate plus a little heavy cream for the topping. Be sure to check out the Daring Bakers Blogroll for more Nanaimo Bars and takes on the Nanaimo Bar.  Well worth the click.

Finally, don’t forget that the victims of the earthquake in Haiti still need your help!  Click on the badge below to lend a hand.

[Via http://lisamichele.wordpress.com]

Book Review: The Last Days of the Lacuna Cabal

 

4 out of 5 stars

Other Press, 2009

304 pages, Fiction

The Last Days of the Lacuna Cabal by Canadian author Sean Dixon is often a fun, irreverent, quirky, and wonderful stream-of-consciousness novel that lends itself to readers who like to invest themselves deeply into a story full of amusing—and often annoying—characters and their unusual, high-concept exploits. Other times, it holds on and won’t let go—even if you’d like it to.

Dixon’s novel, in the simplest terms—if that is at all possible!—is the story of a group of women (and a few men) who belong to the Lacuna Cabal Montreal Women’s Book Club. Their book club is no ordinary book club in that they choose to re-enact the books they read. Narrated in third person by two former members of the book club, we join the club as they begin, somewhat reluctantly, to read and live out the Epic of Gilgamesh, one of the oldest known pieces of literature in history. Yet one of their members, Runner Coghill, convinces the club to work from ancient clay tablets rather than a modern translation. This creates interesting challenges for the group as they question the authenticity of Runner’s interpretation of the text and the ultimate purpose of the club’s existence. The club begins to fall apart for various reasons, including the death of a very influential member, but the Epic re-enactment continues with strange results.

Dixon does a nice job of creating and displaying his characters for the reader: all hopelessly flawed but not beyond repair—definitely human, quirky and, yet sadly, not very sympathetic or likeable most of the time. In some ways, it felt that a few of the characters seemed so similar they were difficult to keep straight at times. That could be the reason Dixon introduced his characters at the beginning of the book with their names in boldface type as a way to quickly reference each character later (“…the reader can flip back and refer to them from time to time”).

Often I find myself melancholy as books end because I’ve just begun to find the characters engrossing and engaging (i.e., I develop a love for them?), but I can’t say that about Dixon’s characters or story. That’s not necessarily wrong. Dixon may have desired to leave you feeling that way. If so, he succeeded.

While Dixon paints his characters with various colors, they all seemed to have oddly the same…sameness. Like picking out colors for your master bedroom from Disney paint samples: no matter how many colors there are to choose from, it all comes down to pink, and that’s just wrong, isn’t it? Unfortunately, my favorite character died halfway through the book and left me with sympathizing with the robot (Yes, a robot. Didn’t I mention the robot?).

Overall, the book is an expressive bit of narrative, but there were many times I couldn’t help but say, “Can this book please end now,” only to be confronted with a remaining 200, 100, or 50 pages left to read. At times, Dixon swept me along with his tale but other times it would drag along waiting for the action or even the dialog to get more interesting.

Dixon is an incredibly talented writer whose imagination takes the reader to places few authors can or wish to travel. My mistake was to judge the book too early on and this only serves to hinder the reader of this “damaged masterpiece” to borrow the author’s own words.

Read it, but it may be an acquired taste.

Reviewed by David Stucki (Electric Eclectic)

The Last Days of the Lacuna Cabal is available on amazon . You can check out the author’s blog here.

You may also read this and other book reviews on Mark McGinty’s blog, The Boogle.

[Via http://eclecticpills.wordpress.com]

First Trauma

A million years ago in a hospital way up north.

A snowstorm. Evening, and two snowmobiles, racing across a frozen lake. One slams into an exposed rockface.

Our first warning is a call from the OPP, a heads up. Accident, paramedics on scene, severe trauma, unresponsive. No whys or wherefores.

So we wait. My first, Rosie jokes deadpan, but it’s mine. I’m nervous, but my exterior is insouciant. I pretend we won’t be holding this patient’s life in our hands. If I think about the reality, I’m afraid I will lose it. I pretend I’ve done this before. I pretend, no sweat, I can do this. This is how emergency nurses are supposed to be. I’ve been socialized well.

We prime lines, ready boluses of crystalloids, hang blood tubing, dust off the fluid warmer, look for the Pentaspan, alert xray: a trauma is coming. The chaplain wanders through. Charge asks him to hang out for a while, just in case.

The EMS patches. Twenty minutes out. Police escort down slippery back roads. Twenty-seven year-old male. No history. GCS of 3, intubated, boarded and collared, large bore IV started.

We wait.

Then EMS arrives and suddenly the entire department is in the Trauma Room. Chaos, yet not chaos, care orchestrated complexly like a ballet, every move an iteration of Airway, Breathing, Circulation Disability, every treatment and diagnostic a search for stability.

Cardiac monitor. Assisted respiration. Lung auscultation. Another large bore IV, foley catheter, logroll the patient, I support the head — “On my count”, I say, then after stat shoot-throughs, portable chest films, pupils fixed, dilated, chest tubes, blood running through the fluid warmer, nasogastric tubes, a tube in every hole, the saying goes, bloody dressings on the floor from a bleeding scalp wound, empty bags of saline count, one, two, three litres in. Hypotension. Heart rate at first rapid, compensating, now slowing.

Then the films. The doc looks at them and sighs. Shakes head. C1 fracture and dislocation. The spinal cord has been severed where it meets the brain, snapped clean like a dry stick by the force of the impact. There is nothing more. He’s dead. His body, his heart and lungs, strong and young and athletic, are receiving no signals from the brain. They just don’t know it yet.

He goes out to talk to the wife. Out of rote, we watch the cardiac monitor, sinus rhythm, watch his blood pressure begin to drop, his heart rate in slow decline.

His wife comes in. The charge holds her up. She says little. Her face is taut and pale, a declension of grief now and to come. No tears. Later, maybe, I think. She takes his hand and speaks softly to him. We can’t hear her words.

As she holds his hand, his heart slows more, the rhythm becomes idioventricular, irregular, then slows more and at last, stops. One agonal breath. It’s over.

(And later, I reflect, and still ask myself now, when did death take him? When he struck his head against the cold lakeside granite? Was there any remnant of consciousness, when we worked on him so frantically? Having watched scores of deaths, why do I still wonder?)

After, we hear the story. She told Charge, dry-eyed, while waiting to speak to the doc. A lesson: there always is a story. Married three months. Pregnant. A fight. He and the boys liked to snowmobile. A lot. She didn’t want him going out on the lake, in the dark, in a snowstorm. She thought his friends were assholes. She told him not to come back that night. I hate you, she said. His back disappearing into the dark, snow closing behind him.

After, we prepare the body for the morgue. I’m breathing again. Rosie closes the door and we crack wise darkly. Another ritual. We tie off IV tubes tied, leave the other tubes in place. Nothing can be removed until the coroner has examined the body. Plastic crinkles as we heave the bagged body on the morgue cart.

We collect up the torn and shredded clothing, meaning to return them to the family and then this happens: pieces of brown glass fall out of the left pocket of his heavy brown coat. We look in the other pocket, and find a bottle beer, whole and uncapped.

Rosie quickly scoops up the tinkling pieces of glass from the floor, and throws them with the beer bottle into the trash.

The porter comes for the body, to take it to the morgue.

I am callow and green.

We need to report this, I say.

Rosie smiles. No, she says. What’s the point? He’s dead. Knowing won’t help anyone, now. Not him. Not his wife either. Why add to her grief?

There is no answer, just the creak of the morgue cart as the porter pushes it out of the department.

[Via http://torontoemerg.wordpress.com]

Embrace the net, or how Michael Geist says the proposed new law is all copywrong

Finally, a reason to be glad for the prorogation of Parliament. At the January meeting of the Canadian Author’s Association, Dr. Michael Geist, law professor at the University of Ottawa, where he holds the Canada Research Chair in Internet and E-commerce Law, discussed C-61, the proposed copyright law. At first overview, it seems not to have protected copyright for authors at all, but rather restricted access to works everywhere. It died when Parliament did. Dr. Geist feels this was a very  good thing.

Geist argues that creators and users of information are the same people. All of us “google” information, many of us use Open Office and Wikipedia, and I know I am addicted to the new NFB library and Open Culture.

C-61 concerned itself with little things like: preventing you to move your cell phone service to another company; permitting software sampling your interests for research to be placed on movies and CDs; requiring professors to destroy on-line classes after one month; restricting access to other items to five days; and assigning blame to those who infringe the many complicated rules, banning them from the internet after three such crimes and no due process. It meant that reader software could not be used for the blind, requiring them to purchase the more expensive audio books. Mashups would be out of order, and archiving would be a nightmare of rules and exceptions.

None of this seems particularly helpful to us as writers. As Cory Doctorow pointed out, it isn’t piracy that is the enemy, it’s obscurity. All of us toiling in our various book and paper strewn offices want to be read, want to share our vision with someone, or else we would not seek to publish our writings. It seems counterproductive to want this on one hand, and deny all access on the other.

Geist went on to encourage us to “embrace the Net”. He talked about the various open access sites available now, and how they were helping collaboration and innovation. Open Medicine, for example, was started by doctors who felt that where the public funds research, the results should be open to the public. Now we all can wander through the various research studies, finding unusual disorders and novel ways to kill off our characters, without having to pay for this access.

There are different types of people who react to digital information given free.  There are the ones that use it free and wander about in glee. This does represent a decrease in sales of the item. Another group use the digital versions to determine if they want the hard copy. He described a university book publisher that put the entire text of a heavily academic book online. Initially they were afraid this would result in reduced sales – but they were pleasantly surprised when sales went up.  People who never would have bought the book or known of its existence were able to find it online and decided to buy all 700 pages of it to take home.

Geist feels that fair dealing, the sharing of information with users, should be expanded.  Currently, the law is a series of enumerated categories – if you are not in a given category, you’re not part of the deal.  Satire and parody are not protected under fair dealing – which places many at risk of being sued for copyright infringement.

Fair dealing does not mean free dealing, says Geist. There should not be a blanket exception for educators to pull materials off of the internet, for example.  Multiple copying or commercial uses should not be free. However, using a website in the classroom should be. He encouraged us to help define fair dealing in a way that was fair for both creators and users.

Of course, most of this is moot, with the prorogation of Parliament, but copyright law is eternally being revised. The pressures now are to match the US and Europe in their copyright arrangements, a delicate dance orchestrated by big players like big pharma up in the stratosphere. It’s doubtful we can have much of an effect on the opinions of such heavily pocketed groups.

Geist encouraged authors to focus on contracts, instead, especially those where publishers want authors to surrender all rights. Now, in this multiple-access world, this is even more unwise, and there is scope for authors to resist these contracts, and negotiate a better arrangement.

Geist also recommends that we encourage and prioritize digitalization.  Google is developing a monopoly on this, and it could result in a lack of multicultural input on what is digitalized. Canada should start its own digitalization project to ensure a diversity of voices in the new digital future.

Dr. Geist has an excellent (if a bit impenetrable for non-lawyers) website: www.michaelgeist.ca that includes a blog about the latest in copyright law.  It’s well worth a look.

[Via http://dorothyanneb.wordpress.com]