katrina

We've all seen the images of the destruction in the American gulf caused by Hurricane Katrina. And I do not desire to make light of the magnitude of nature's relentless pounding on the citizens and countryside.

But last night, Katrina brushed our city with her soft edges, hundreds and hundreds of miles from the centre of her story. I was awake most of the night, watching the bedroom curtains flap and flip, hearing their sliding and dancing, feeling the night-air cool as it carried a gentle spirit from Lake Ontario into my room and across this tired city.

My grandmother (the good one, as opposed to my father's mother, the evil one), used to call me Katrina -- and Katrinka, and Katykins. She was the only one who ever called me by these endearments, but when she did, the names always seemed more my true self than my simple, given moniker. They were full of possibilities and richness.

Last night, the gentle breezes were an embrace. They enveloped me in my grandmother's hug and hello.

I really enjoyed this ...

Danny Deckchair, a 2004 Australian film with Rhys Ifans (this guy cleans up really good!)

A rather preposterous, fairy-tale of a guy caught in a stale life who lifts off from his Sydney backyard in his helium-assisted deckchair, and of course, lands in the right place. I like Ifans more and more every time I see him: a scene-stealer in Notting Hill, making me forget Robert Carlyle in Once Upon a Time in the Midlands, and now this. He's quirky, he's nerdy, he's tender, he's good.

At first I couldn't figure out why England looked so new and spacious, until I realized after a "G'day" and a palm tree, that the film was set in Australia. Lush and fresh.

cor! corrie street's on

Photo: rougerouge

This is not a picture from Coronation Street, but I've spent two hours looking for a pic I can legitimately use. I'm trying to be a good blogger and not use unauthorized, copyrighted stuff -- but it can be hard! Anyway, this is from Flickr, and it captures the feel of the Rovers Return, the pub where everybody hangs out on the eternal British soap. Can't you smell the beer?

I love the smell of beer and old bars, where the beer and ale have soaked into every wooden splinter. This may seem an anomaly as I don't like to drink beer, but there it is.

I've quite surprised myself by becoming, quite unintentionally, a dedicated Coronation Street viewer this summer. My sister-in-law says watching the show is like having a boring neighbour become an unwanted houseguest. But no! Maybe it's an acquired taste with age, like country music. It kind of sneaks up on you, and you think, yeah, I know these people; their incredibly prosaic lives are so fraught with nuance.

Everyone on the show drinks too much, smokes, eats ghastly English, deep-fried stuff, never exercises, has never-ending sex and/or street brawls right up until their 80's. Move me in!

the mighty argonauts

the Nobel Peace prize to the mighty Toronto Argonauts football organization!!!

I saw much of the eloquent, moving speech by Toronto Argonauts head coach Michael (Pinball) Clemons on television yesterday. Their "Stop the Violence - We are Toronto" campaign is giving at its best. They are reaching out to help Toronto's disaffected youth to quell the violence that has threatened to swallow them and the Toronto community.

Individual team members are speaking out against the violence many of them lived with first-hand back in the U.S. The team is moving their practices to affected neighbourhoods. There is a town hall meeting scheduled for September.

God bless these guys!

simply leonard

Canada's poet and songwriter par excellence has apparently had his life savings more than decimated and is now sueing, and being sued by, his former financial managers. I hate stories like this, where hardworking people find they've been taken to the cleaners by the very people they've hired to protect themselves. Willie Nelson had his Grammys, and everything else, taken by the IRS because his financial managers forgot to pay his taxes. Even though Cohen appears to be pretty stoic and zen-like, it would be nice if he can retire as he deserves.

I was first introduced to Cohen in Grade 7 or 8, by a zealous, eager student teacher. You know, one of the kind who would come in for their week or two and try, and sometimes succeed, in overturning the whole curriculum and educational process with their revolutionary fervour. We were handed mimeographed copies (it was 1967) of these wicked verses of poetry that were as good as Dylan, were Canadian, and belonged to our time instead of to Dickens. And I love Dickens. But, oh, how I loved this Leonard Cohen.

I can't remember this young male student's name or what he looked like, only that he seemed to bound through the class with his enthusiasm. We began with "like a bird on the wire, like a drunk in an old midnight choir, I have tried in my way to be free." And then "Suzanne".

Years later, Nancy White, in coffeehouses, hilariously sang how "Leonard Cohen's never gonna bring my groceries in!", a housewife's lament of being cut off from the mysterious bohemian lifestyle Cohen seemed to represent.

Songwriter, singer, ladies' man, Jewish Buddhist monk and poet.

"Everybody knows that the dice are loaded. Everybody rolls with their fingers crossed. Everybody knows the war is over. Everybody knows the good guys lost. Everybody knows the fight was fixed: the poor stay poor, the rich get rich. That's how it goes. Everybody knows."

I can't let this pass

TIGERS 17, BLUE JAYS 6

... that's cruel and unusual punishment

I grew up a fan of the mighty Detroit Tigers (and Red Wings) and my allegiance holds true. My dad had a warehouse in downtown Detroit, a block from the old stadium on Turnbull. He and his wife used to park cars for the Tiger games. A few times I was out there myself, waving the flag.

I'm not going to rub this in too much. RRRRRROOOOOAAAAAAAARRRRRRR!!!

on the sunny side

Photo: Boudin

Okay, I go to psychics. I like to go once a year. If nothing else, I think it is cheap psychoanalysis for the common folk. I also believe we're all psychic to some extent, and that some are gifted. Whether or not you happen to meet a gifted psychic when you get a reading though, is always a gamble. Because I haven't been in a couple of years, I was long overdue for a reading and have compensated by having two short readings in the last week.

Hold on tight! Today I rode my bike to Sunnyside Pavilion to take in the Portuguese celebration. The soft sound of classical guitar floating on the lake breeze, and a fortune teller waving me over. Oh, what the hell. What better way to spend a sunny afternoon?

So, she read my palm. I want to write this down, so we may all cry about it some day, or say, 'remember when...' As a student of journalism, a wannabe writer, it doesn't get much better than this:

I should stay here in Toronto now. It's the right place. I'm going to write a book -- get this -- that will, naturally, be picked up for movie rights, and become a world-wide success. I will meet a tall European who will sweep me into his arms and I will live in France and Australia. She did say I was not a natural writer, which I can agree with. All those professors saying, "where's the story? where's the story?"

At any rate, I like her prediction and prognosis very much. Much better than the one earlier in the week, who also said I was doing the right thing by following my heart, but that finances would not be secure. I would have to find my security within. Okay.

My palm reader did forget to mention that I would get a flat tire on my ride home. Fortunately I was only a fifteen-minute walk from home. This home, my one in Toronto -- not the one in France or Australia.

manhattan, june 2002

toronto as paris

my summer reading -- chick lit at its best

C'est la Vie by Suzy Gershman
woman (shopping writer) of middle age, widowed, moves to Paris, France and begins again

The Olive Harvest: a Memoir of Love, Old Trees and Olive Oil by Carol Drinkwater
Irish actor and writer writes evocatively of her beloved olive farm in Provence, France

Almost French: Love and a New Life in Paris by Sarah Turnbull
Australian journalist follows her heart to Paris

and in progress, not to ignore nor diminish the male perspective:

Paris to the Moon by Adam Gopnik
The New Yorker journal writer moves to Paris with his wife and infant son

Chinatown -- Manhattan, June 2002

thoughts from saturday

I have always loved the night -- its stillness, its mystery, its black, encompassing comfort. Life asleep and gently stirring. When I moved here to Toronto from Windsor two years ago to attend the journalism program at Ryerson University, I told friends and family that I felt safe walking its downtown streets at night. Not unlike New York City, there were crowds on the streets, crowds of comfort, so that exiting a club at closing time and walking home alone, was not a questionable thing to do.

Saturday night I went to the Silver Dollar Room with my friend Andrew to hear one of our favourite groups, the Silver Hearts play with Andre Ethier. As I walked home in the early morning hours, I found myself aware of fear and uncertainty. As the saying goes, apparently it was Franklin D. Roosevelt: "the only thing we have to fear is fear itself." I have often believed that fear can be spotted and felt far off, and that a best defense is to walk carefree, or feign walking carefree. Feigning it, being on the alert and aware, is not the same though, and it is a sad reality right now.

Some more congenial thoughts.

Andrew ran into a friend of his at the Silver Dollar, with whom he worked at a summer camp more than ten years previously. These guys had not seen each other in ten years or so, yet they picked up as if they had talked yesterday. They bought each other drinks all night. I think this is something that is singularly part of the male psyche -- this ability to carry on and connect so easily and instantly. Women need to know all the intimate details, about where you've been, where are you now.

My brother, who has just turned 50, still plays sports with friends from high school. They just meet up. I am fascinated by this ability and admire it and am mystified as to how easily men do it.

toronto as detroit

Last night at 3 a.m. there was another shooting and death at the intersection near my apartment building. It was on the other side of my building this time, at Wellesley and Sherbourne. I was expecting something when the Phoenix concert club closed, as it was exactly one week since the deaths on Homewood. And this time it was a single shot, sounding like a shotgun, and I could see the police cars and ambulance coming up Sherbourne. There were witnesses this time, citing a black SUV as the drive-by vehicle.

Royson James, in Sunday's Toronto Star, wrote movingly about this 'other Toronto', which has existed a long time, and is now, in an escalating summer, becoming undeniable.

"How could a city that so carefully laid a foundation of social equity and safety nets appear to be losing so many on the edges of a massively diversified city? It's a wake-up call for a town whose motto is: Diversity Our Strength."

at command central

This is not how I intended to start my blog. I had planned to start with something innocuous. But three men were shot last night practically at the base of my apartment building, and two of them have died. And I have to write something because it has been very disturbing.

On the news they said there have been twenty shootings in two weeks. Last week it was a four-year-old boy, who thankfully will recover, physically anyway. News is never the same when it is around the corner in someone else's neighbourhood. When it happens on your doorstep it isn't news at all. It's reality. It's forensic crews and news crews and the garage to your building closed because the road is now 'command central'. It's white shirts piled on the curb where the blood has been darkening all day in the hot sun.

It was shortly before four a.m. when I was awakened by five gunshots. They were loud and thick and very near, and there was no mistaking them for anything else. I am on the fifteenth floor, facing south to Maitland, at the corner of Wellesley and Homewood. A man on the eleventh floor facing west said the shots were quiet, like children's firecrackers. It must have been the difference in direction and height, because the shots I heard were very loud.

When I looked out my bedroom window, I could see men on the sidewalk at the corner of Maitland. It is a well-lit corner and usually the transvestite sex-workers are walking it, but they are done work by that hour. A man was down on his back, his legs splayed and another man on his knees, holding the man's head. There were four, maybe five men. Gunsmoke was drifting up and thinning out. I didn't look long because I knew it was very bad. The man already looked dead and all you could hear was voices, asking or telling someone to call 911, to get an ambulance, men groaning in pain and disbelief.

I couldn't believe how quickly my heart went into high alert. I was not calm. I called 911 and it rang, and rang and rang. More than ten rings, maybe fifteen, because I was in disbelief that no-one was picking up. I actually wondered if I had dialed the wrong number, but couldn't imagine how. Finally, a man answered and asked if I needed police, ambulance or fire, and I just told him there had been a shooting and where it was. He said, oh, I need an ambulance then and said he'd connect me, and then the phone went dead. I thought, a man is dying and bleeding to death, and this is taking much too long. I dialed again, and the system was probably overloaded, because again I waited, but by that time I could hear sirens and I could see a police car driving straight through the centre of Allan Gardens a block away. I hung up and within minutes there were three to four police cars, but the ambulances were still not there. Though they appeared within another few minutes, they seemed to be moving too slowly, in another time warp. 911 called me back and asked if the ambulances had arrived yet.

At 6:30 a.m. there was a knock on my apartment door. The police were canvassing the building; there were at least four on my floor. But I saw no-one run off, heard no car. The officer said there was another shooting close by and they were trying to piece things together. At Bloor and Jarvis police were stopped by men in a car, trying to get a shooting victim to a hospital. The last I heard, they believe this man was also shot on Homewood. He died, as well as the man on the sidewalk. A third man, whom I did not realize was shot until ambulance attendants assisted him, appeared to be shot in the shoulder.

Life is just so fragile. Death as close as minutes and seconds.

On the news at noon, it was being reported that many of these shootings have been in public housing areas. The closest public housing around here that I'm aware of is a couple of blocks away. A couple of blocks can be a huge change in a city like Toronto. The Jamestown complex is nearby, but I shop there and walk by it often, and mostly it is immigrant families going about their business, raising their families. Police are suspecting a connection with the Phoenix, a concert hall over on Sherbourne. Last week the police cited 'gang wars'. The men I saw last night were strong young men, all seemingly dressed in white. They didn't appear to be juveniles and that kind of ranging is not a common sight, even in the early morning hours. It is believed the victims knew their assailants, and I believe it.

I am pretty sickened by this whole event. I have however, been impressed with the City-TV news crew I've watched from my balcony, and with the many, many patrol officers. I am intrigued and impressed by the detectives and the forensics teams. From my birdseye perch I can see their variously coloured plastic markers laid out carefully, watch them take their measurements. I think the man lying full-length on the sidewalk, a tall, strong man, was dead as he fell. But the seeming delay of the ambulances is difficult to appreciate.

Don't have any more to say on this right now.