Sign of the times

I learned what Lime Bikes were when I started using YouTube to virtually ride on London buses last year. The streets were swarming with bikes, many of them with bright green carrier baskets. I quizzed elder daughter about them, and she explained that they were rented e-bikes. You pick them up at a designated spot, and drop them off at the racks closest to where you want to go.

A few weeks ago, it was announced that the City of Victoria had entered into a contract with Lime, and with dizzying speed, neon green racks have spread throughout the city, not without some controversy.  Lime operates out of San Francisco, and it's an impolitic time for an American company to set up in a Canadian city.

Increasingly, though, I've been noticing more these bicycles, moving with alarming speed through our neighbourhood. Some riders sport the trademark bright green bike helmets, which are required by law here. (Bike helmets, that is -- not necessarily green ones.)

The other evening, I spotted a new station on Linden Avenue on one of my regular strolls.  From a distance, I could see a fellow standing by the small cluster of racks and e-bikes, fiddling with his phone, because you need an app to access the service.  He hopped on, bare-headed, and had disappeared down the hill, as I approached the sign. 

I saw someone had left a sticker, and crossed the street to read it.

Well, as I said, there has been quite a bit of contention about this, particularly as some areas on the edges of Greater Victoria have Canadian bike rental companies, which means you have to switch your bike when you reach some municipal borders.

And the timing was indeed unfortunate.

I walked out this evening.  The sticker had been removed.

Update - September 14th, 2026:  The sticker is back.  This may turn out to be a microcosm of the trade war...

The road to nowhere

I remembered the anniversary on the day, but was a bit too dragged under to write about it.

Rather like 25 years ago, as it happens.  

I went to check my journals of the time, and I'd written nothing in September 2001.  I hadn't written much that year.  We had just finished our first year in Hades, had lived in our house for barely eleven months. Elder daughter had been designated as "gifted" during the previous school year, and younger daughter had been "identified" as being "at risk"; her developmental challenges hadn't been officially tied to autism -- likely because she was a girl, and girls on the spectrum present differently.

With the new school year just started, we were trying to adjust to our new realities.  Because I'd read Ira Progroff's book on journalling, I did managed a yearly rundown, which I'd write in patches in the opening months of the new year, so my record of September 2001 was set down some six or seven months after the facts.  Re-reading it this morning, I was struck by how many details I'd forgotten.  Memory is a nebulous thing:

"I walk to Rideau Street from the nursery school, where I have dropped off younger daughter on a sunny September morning, and remember the Rideau branch of the library won't open until 10.  It is 9:15.

"I decide to have breakfast at the Ale House* at the entrance to the Byward Market, arriving at William Street about 9:30.

"Whitney Houston is playing, and the recently-installed large TV screens are tuned to CNN.  The American news has been full of Condit and the missing intern**, so I ignore it.  The subtitles say something about a highjacking.

"Suddenly, the music is turned off, and the sound from the screen is on.  I think I'm witnessing the aftermath of a terrible accident, until the waitress tells me two planes have hit the towers of the World Trade Center in New York City.

"'Two??' I gasp, my mind reeling with the implications, as my eyes take in the images.  Before I can grasp anything, we're told that a plane has hit the Pentagon, then that another plane has crashed.  

"My food arrives; I wonder whether to eat.  People are coming in off the street, clutching cell phones.  One young idiot laughs abrasively:  'They're going to WAR!!'

"We watch, transfixed, as one tower melts away, then the other.

"I stagger to the library, and learn that there's been a bomb threat at the Parliament buildings.  

"The Resident Fan Boy is home when I get there; his office is right next to the American Embassy. I don't recall picking up younger daughter, but I must have. We spend the day tuned to the CBC.

"The events have hit Ottawa hard; lots of Americans live here, and with the high tech industries centred here, lots of links with New York.  In the evening, I climb the long hill to my elder daughter's school for a meeting, only to find the building locked and dark. Several pupils are the children of embassy employees.

"Flowers, stuffed animals, poems, pictures line the fence at the American Embassy that week, along with scores of candles."

The sidewalk and curb by the American Embassy were, within days, blocked by huge concrete blocks, later replaced by bollards. It took a little longer for passports to be required to travel into the States - before, we only had to present proof of Canadian citizenship - but airline trips anywhere, even within Canada, were soon transformed into slow-moving, drab queues, complicated by new rules administered by antsy airline security employees.

People continued to die in acts of genocide and terrorism around the world, but the States were now permanently scarred and suspicious, hugging their grief and rage like talismans.  

And here we are.

* Became the Highlander Pub a year later, now an eatery called "Pure Kitchen".

** Chandra Levy, a young intern working in Washington, DC, had disappeared the previous May.  Her remains were found in an urban park a year later.  There had been a media frenzy for much of the summer, mainly focussing on her alleged affair with California Congressman Gary Condit - who apparently had nothing to do with her murder, but the incident ended his political career. 

Standing in the shadow

 

Photo by Canadian photographer Andrew Yee in Toronto

I told the Resident Fan Boy I'd scout ahead for a view of the partial lunar eclipse, seeing as we'd gone up prematurely the night before. 

Out on the roof before 9 pm, unmistakeable, the shadowy red/black orb with a gleaming white-gold top.

I texted: "YES!", seconds before our hall neighbour suddenly appeared in the bright rectangle of the doorway.

"Can you see the eclipse?" she inquired.

I gestured excitedly to the south-east, just beyond her viewpoint.  "Are you kidding? Just come and see!"

(To be fair, it seems most people aren't sure about their compass directions.)

As she texted and phoned her parents, the Resident Fan Boy and younger daughter arrived, and I guided them a little further along the fenced walkway, where there was a gap between two trees.  Younger daughter gasped.

About half a dozen people turned up, with their phones alight, alas, but they soon turned them off.

As the western horizon darkened, the stars pierced the indigo sky overhead. Younger daughter murmured, "I'm looking for Orion."

"Oh, that's a winter constellation; you don't see him in the summer."  I pointed to the north-east.  "See that 'W'?  That's Cassiopeia."  I turned to the high west.  "And that's the Big Dipper.  Can you see the handle?"

We waited for the peak of the eclipse, the stars multiplying and burning brighter. Then the RFB and younger daughter, shivering a bit in their summer tops, withdrew. 

Wrapped in my fleece jacket, I leaned on the narrow walkway's rather rickety railing, gazing eastward at the shadow of our planet across the moon, and listening idly to the small mob of relatively youthful friends mis-identifying the constellations.

Jigsaw justification

I've been wasting time on an online jigsaw puzzle site, but I justify it with the education I'm getting.  I find myself drawn to the artwork ones, a lot of which are pretty damn twee, but there's also a plethora of Manet, Monet, Dürer, Botticelli, and Van Gogh.  

Especially Van Gogh. 

Tons of Van Gogh.

What fascinates me is how the bits of the puzzle - as I pull them together without referring to the organic original image, thank you very much - are just almost indistinguishable blobs and slashes of colour, or images that I fancy are there.  The closer I come to completing it, the colours become stronger and the elements clearer, and the lines more exact.  Are my eyes doing the work of bringing the art into focus? Or is it my brain filling in, much as it does when I'm listening to far-off familiar music, that I can't fully hear?

The finished picture is almost unrecognisable from what I have imagined at the beginning.

Is that how great artists work? Placing the lines, strokes, and colours just so, to let the viewer knit them together?

I came across a Van Gogh I didn't know.  It was brilliant - clusters of strong colours, looking like a bouquet of bright flowers.  As I worked, it became a scene of workers in a yellow field, with oranges and greens and a golden sky.

The painting turned out to be The Red Vineyards near Arle - and apparently, it's the one work for which there's a record of Van Gogh making a sale.  It's now in Russia.

I love it.  

Perhaps I'm not wasting my time.

(Yeah, I probably am.)

Drawn like a moth

Garrison Keillor, who has taken gentle, Minnesotan swipes at Unitarians for years, put this up on his blog/newsletter/column/whatever it is this morning:

How many Unitarians does it take to changed a lightbulb?  -- "Unitarians believe that incandescent and flourescent and neon are equally valid paths to light, and if, in your journey, you feel the need to change your lightbulb, we will come to your home and recite a poem about radiance and perform a dance about the rising of the sun."

I grew up Unitarian, and still consider myself one.  

He's not wrong.

However, I won't be coming to your house to dance around your lifebulb.

Although I do have one that needs changing...

Long distance call

I dreamt Demeter phoned me, something that she rarely did in the last four or five years of her life, because she had become so deaf and was bamboozled by the buttons.

I was in a corridor somewhere when her name flashed up on the screen.  Disbelieving, I fumbled to answer it.  She was asking if she could still come over on Thursday, the day she usually came to our place for dinner.  The last time she was at our place was the first Thursday of last January, before she fell for the final time.

I told her that, of course, she was welcome, as usual. Then I looked around desperately for the Resident Fan Boy, for somebody, anybody that I could tell.  To ask if I were crazy, if anyone else's dead mother had phoned them. I saw Stephen Fry, but decided not to bother him, although I was rather comforted by seeing him, because it was assurance that I was indeed dreaming.

I awoke to a dark bedroom, feeling a little spooked.

Thursday came.  

I was tempted to set another place at the table.

She didn't show up.

You can blow with that

 "Red-misting" a bit today, and trying not to give the stranger in question rent-free accommodation in my brain.

Here's a possible balm:

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A post shared by Richard E. Grant (@richard.e.grant)

I showed this to the Resident Fan Boy, who didn't get the cultural reference:

Music for possibly the weirdest wedding anniversary ever

This wedding anniversary did not turn out as planned. 

Maybe I'll tell you about it later.  

Nuthin' tragic.  

Certainly educational.

Meanwhile, Canada Day is bearing down upon us - it promises some weirdness as well - so I offer this dreamy ditty from Toronto-born Abigail Lapell. Everywhere we go, you know everyone, people say hello/ Every time you call our song starts playing, on the radio /

Has it been a year or two?  Will it be cotton or leather? 

Mercury and iron, carbon, silver, bind us together/ 

Diamonds are a dime a dozen, take my hand/ Take my hand and don’t stop running

Happy anniversary, one more year/ Frozen in amber, for eternity /Oh darling, oh my dear 

Has it been a year or two? Will it be cotton or leather? 

Mercury and iron, carbon, silver, bind us togethеr, together

Everywhеre we go, you know everyone (Happy anniversary)/ People say hello (One more year, frozen in amber) 

Every time you call our song starts playing (For eternity, oh darling oh my dear)/On the radio

Poetry in animation

About three years ago, our beloved Pic a Flic closed forever, and sold off a lot of its ecletic collection. We were able to secure a number of our favourites, about 30 DVDs. 

Younger daughter got to work in their animation section, and chose, among other things, a couple of National Film Board of Canada collections. I think she finds them soothing, like a cocktail before dinner.

It occurred to me, while she was re-watching them recently, that I pay precious little attention to the soundtrack of animated shorts, the images are too distracting, I guess. 

In the 1993 Academy-Award-winning Bob's Birthday, for example, there are several arresting images. And I should warn you, this cartoon got censored in the United States. (Nothing enough to get it censored in Canada, but you'll see what I mean.) It was only when younger daughter had this on a few weeks ago, that I realised that Bob recites excerpts of two poems.  You hear him murmur "There is a garden in her face" (written by Thomas Campion and published in 1617), as he gazes out at his dental assistant, who is losing the war against aphids. 

At the very end, blissfully unaware of the social havoc he has wrought, he recites the final three lines from Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's sonnet "The Poets", while waiting for his wife in their car.

All of which seems to indicate the importance of revisiting books, movies, poems, and animated shorts, if you want to catch the details you missed.  Or am I just as oblivious as Bob?

Collective bargaining

About five years ago, a book store fortuitously appeared next door to the coffeeshop, replacing a wine store.  I'm not a wine-drinker, so I was thrilled.  

It's a bit like a Tardis, looks quite tiny from the outside, as you climb the entrance steps, which are painted to look like book spines. (The titles change every few months.). Inside, is much what you'd expect: books on one side; small gift assortments, i.e. bookmarks, reading glasses, cookies, etc. on the other.  But beyond, are two large rooms:  one for used books, and a much larger day-lit room with new books, games, journals and other stationery.  (My particular weakness.) At the end of a corridor with cards for every occasion - some of them quite rude - is a closet stuffed with jigsaw puzzles. There's a puzzle exchange every few weeks; people line up for it.  It's that kind of neighbourhood.

In December, I buy stocking stuffers.  The rest of the year, I mostly buy cards, stocking up every month or so.  Recently, I lay my choices on the cash register counter, in order to rustle up my loyalty card.  The cashier totted up my selection and mulled over what collective noun would work best.

"A kindness of cards?" I suggested.  "No, wait!  A communication of cards!"  She was clearly taken with the former.  I prefer the latter.