Just over 10,000 people participated in Saturday’s Rankin Cancer Run, raising a record-breaking $725,000. My friend, Dave’s wife Mary Ann, is the amazing organizer behind this event. Shows you the power of community and people who pitch in to achieve great things!
Rankin Run raises $725,000 | Local | News | St. Catharines Standard.
Filed under Generosity
In this engaging talk, she speaks about the writing craft and fear (seaweed?) that’s peculiar to writing.
Elizabeth Gilbert muses on the impossible things we expect from artists and geniuses — and shares the radical idea that, instead of the rare person “being” a genius, all of us “have” a genius. It’s a funny, personal and surprisingly moving talk.
Portland has done a fantastic job of revitalizing what used to be an industrial area – The Pearl District. They’ve done a fair bit of infill – no towering high rises, though – and they’ve retained the architectural integrity of existing heritage structures. A lot of ground floor commercial with apartments above. Makes perfect sense.
And the street food trucks! Toronto is just cluing in to the fact that they need more street-level attractions downtown. We saw food trucks parked around the perimeters of several lots (they pay a fee annually, they get health inspections and have to be licenced). You name the country or style of food and you’d find it in Portland. Clever names, great food. We had a Belgian (Liege) waffle and yes, it reminded us of the street food we had in Brussels, too.
Of course we spent more time in Powell's Books. It was overwhelming to be in the presence of so many words! Of course, I assisted the local economy by purchasing as many knitting books as I thought I could carry. What was really nice – there were lots of seats and benches for folks to peruse books from the shelves. A great public washroom and a cafe on the ground floor. Best of all, there was no hassling of the many street people who, it seems, spend their days inside, reading and not bothering anyone. Progressive. Plus, they get to enjoy the magic of words and worlds they may not get to see.
The next best thing, though, is Portland's public transit. Light rail runs quietly on a system of one-way streets, with the tracks closer to the sidewalks. There's an extensive bus system, too. Toronto is so behind the times. Instead of fighting, just get on with it – what a big difference a high quality rapid transit system makes to the livability of an urban area. Have seen few traffic jams, no horn honking – for a city centre, it just feels so civilized. In fact, I'm reminded of Amsterdam, and the square at Rembrandtsplat, and the cafe where we had coffee and pastry.
I feel so discouraged that TO is dragging so far behind, and losing ground. Approaching 'world class' will take more creativity and willingness to trust that I think Council is capable of. Seems like every new initiative is fair game for partisanship without considering the greater good.
Filed under Modern life, Travel
NOTE: this post was written several weeks ago, but because the wi-fi at the hotel was so weak, it didn’t leave my tablet and appear here.
Portland, Oregon. 10.28 a.m. Toronto time. I haven’t changed the times on my tablet because there’s no point, and my watch still reads EST because the instructions for changing the digital buttons are at home. I’m going to go to the drug store and buy a cheap analog one, I think. Hub left early for a breakfast meeting and I have the day to myself.
We’re lodging at The Nines, a boutique hotel created from a retrofit project of the top nine floors of a Macys department store. There are still five floors of Macy’s underneath the hotel. The exterior has been maintained in the Art Deco style (I think). The retail levels remind me of the Bay store on Queen Street in downtown Toronto, but with more open display areas. The sales people are excruciatingly friendly – every single one greeted me as as I wandered through the five floors. It got to the point where I stopped making eye contact because talking to everyone as slowing me down. Browsing as a conversational sport – interesting. And they were genuine, too – not a fake ‘hihowareyew’. I think the shock came from the contrast between how service oriented they are here compared to the usual absence or general surliness at home. And the folks here get paid less, too. What I found really interesting here and in places like Nordstroms which I thought was a high-end store, was that so many of the goods come from Asia – primarily Vietnam. Having been to Thailand, where a lot of this stuff is also sold, I know what the markups are in the US – steep.
I love Portland. It is a gorgeous city.
Filed under Travel
I thought things would slow down in the spring. NOT. Now that the snow has disappeared and the warm weather is here, the siren song of the garden seduces me away from the keyboard, no matter how many assignments I have in the hopper. So here is some more fun stuff from one of my favourite websites.
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Have you played with Google Labs’ Ngram Viewer? It’s an addicting tool that lets you search for words and ideas in a database of 5 million books from across centuries. Erez Lieberman Aiden and Jean-Baptiste Michel show us how it works, and a few of the surprising things we can learn from 500 billion words.
Filed under Argument, Creativity, writing
As we all struggle with the impending end of another school year and wonder what can be done to bring the joy and accomplishment back to today’s classrooms, it’s comforting to know that we parents, grandparents and students aren’t alone. This short video clip gives nourishing food for thought.
Taylor Mali is a poet, teacher, and the curator of the Page Meets Stage series that takes place at the Bowery Poetry Club in New York City.
The release of this video comes at the tail end of Taylor Mali’s Quest for a Thousand Teachers, a goal set in 2000 to inspire 1,000 people to become teachers through “poetry, persuasion, and perseverance.” After more than 12 years, Taylor has reached this goal and is soon to release his book, “What Teachers Make,” described as “an impassioned defense of teachers and why our society needs them now more than ever.” #whatteachersmake
A product of Semicolon Productions: http://www.thesemicolonstays.com
Filed under Argument, Modern life
I am really excited about the Ontario Writers’ Conference this weekend (OWC, for those in the know).
The Honorary Chair of the Conference is Wayson Choy, author of award-winning novels and memoir (The Jade Peony — 1995, All That Matters — 2004, Paper Shadows: A Chinatown Childhood — 1999, and Not Yet: A Memoir of Living and Almost Dying — 2009 ). There’s a stellar lineup of workshops, facilitators and mentors.
I’ve signed up for a Blue Pencil session with Barbara Berson. I’m excited and apprehensive. Barbara gets to read three pages from my first novel – selecting those pages was like offering up a child for and experiment. Will it work? What if the outcome is awful? The thing is, I finished my first novel in December, in time to enter it into a contest (for which I was not selected).
As a participant in the bi-weekly submission of 3000 words to A Novel Approach, I’ve been cranking out my assignments for the second novel of the three-part series. But from time to time, as inspiration flags, that nasty grating voice in my head asks, ‘what if you’re wasting your time?” All writers must suffer from that kind of indecision and self-doubt from time to time, but at last I’ll have feedback from an expert.
Filed under writing
