Nuhan Seto - 1917 to 2011

My grandmother passed away on November 3rd. She had been in Toronto with us for as long as I have been here, which is 39 years. By the time she was found in her bed by my aunt, she had been gone for a few hours, having slipped away peacefully and painlessly.

There was a funeral visitation on Sunday, and the funeral itself was held earlier today.

Being known as the family photographer (which is to say, the annoying guy in everybody's face with a camera at every family event), I was tapped to provide photos. And I discovered that this is hard. I have photos taken at many family events. The digital archive goes back to 2000. But none of the photos I took at each family event were taken with the thought that the person I was photographing might not be alive later.

Especially so with grandma -- for 39 years, I have thought of her as akin to a force of nature.

Between me and my cousins, we came up with more than a 120 images, some of which were scans of very old photographs -- a family treasure trove which was passed to me for further scans.

Two of us spoke at the funeral earlier today: my cousin Wayne and myself. Wayne read a presentation from his sister, my cousin Anne, who lives in Mauritius. This is what Wayne read:

“le fabuleux destin de (the fabulous destiny of) Grandmere Seto”
(by anne sujo - copyright 2011)

Family and friends, we are gathered here today to pay our last respects and commemorate the passing of a very important person in our lives.

It is with immense sadness and pride that I share with you some of my thoughts and memories of our great Grandma Seto. For, there is no other word that comes to mind, other than “greatness” that can describe her person.

Had Grandma Seto lived to her next birthday in January 2012, she would have reached her full
95 years. She was indeed someone, who lived her life to the fullest and enjoyed the company and love of her late husband, our Grandpa Seto (who passed away just over 10 years ago), her 3 children, Bik Sim, Wai Yu and Wai Man - and not to mention, 11 grandchildren, the spouses of her children and grandchildren, as well as 11 great-grandchildren. What can be more “great” than that? We can therefore, say that Grandma Seto was truly blessed to be so well surrounded by such a close-knit family as ours - Family, the “glue” that holds everything together.

Not only was Grandma Seto strong physically, but also mentally and spiritually. Nothing seemed to bring her down or get in her way. Not even the fact that she was hard of hearing or probably considered “too old” - When Grandma Seto had a yearning for a bit of harmless gambling and her sons were too busy to take her to the horseraces, well, her little legs would literally speedwalk her to the bus stop, and she would actually hitch a ride all the way to the Niagara Casino! Talk about fiesty and fast! I’ve never seen anyone her age who could walk so fast! So, my dear cousins, I guess we can say we certainly inherited some mighty genes!

Hardworking and loyal – she was a devoted mother, wife, grandmother and great-grandmother in many ways. Alongside her late husband, Grandma Seto was one of the pillars in the restaurant business that the two of them led for many years until their retirement. We will never forget the traditional Christmas dinner gatherings that were always held there – the late night majong, the food, the warmth, the joy and laughter. The restaurant has long closed down, but the spirit of family gathering and warmth still remains.

Generosity - another one of Grandma Seto’s many traits - whether towards her family or close friends, she would always put others before her first.

My visual memory of Grandma Seto will always be one that is positive and happy. Her physical and mental strength was evident in the way she spoke and moved about. She had a smile so bright that would stretch from ear to ear. And the twinkle in her eye showed that she was not only very alert and independent, but also very strong-willed.

The sudden passing of Grandma Seto has left a void in many of our lives and we will surely miss her. However, I believe that she has passed to us many of her qualities, and through us, her “greatness” will continue to live on.

Let us be comforted by the image of both Grandma and Grandpa Seto, now reunited in love, happiness, peace and harmony. May she forever rest in peace – God bless us all.

I spoke last. My presentation had been in the back of my mind, percolating, since Thursday night, and finally written down in first draft format by 3:30am on Monday morning. This is the edited, final version of the eulogy that I read:

I met my grandmother, Nuhan Seto, for the first time here in Toronto in 1972. I was a couple of months from turning 14 – she had already marked a half century in Canada’s Centenniel year and had added five more birthdays since.

We didn’t have a lot in common – I was her eldest grandchild, the son of her daughter Bik Sim, the boy whose only life experience to that point was northern British Columbia; she the woman whose life had begun in post Manchu China, changed through marriage, motherhood, the rise of the People’s Republic, changed again through immigration to Central America, changed yet again through immigration to Canada. But over the next 39 years, I grew to love and respect my grandmother for who she was and what she represented. She was a simple, straightforward person who wanted the best for her family. And for me, she was a link to our family’s past.

As I think about my grandma’s life, I see three important lessons.

The most important lesson is that change is not only inevitable, but it is accelerating. In China in 1917 after the fall of the Manchu dynasty, the term “women’s rights” would have been met with blank stares. In Canada, there might have been outright scorn, since the right to vote for women was only a year old, and there was active resistance to this new fangled notion. Today, it would be foolhardy to suggest to any women in this room, Chinese Canadian or otherwise, that they cannot have full participation in our increasingly globalized society.

Since 1917, change has been the most important aspect of life. Think about race relations, gender roles, technology, medicine and any number of other things that matter. Now compare them between 1917 and today, 95 years later. The changes in knowledge, beliefs, attitudes, and capabilities are a part of our world and touch the lives of all of those that my grandma cared about..

But Grandma was a conservative –she may have disapproved of many or most of these changes – especially anything that she might have considered non-traditional. But I have first hand evidence that Grandma was able to accept new things that affected the lives and happiness of members of her family, in her acceptance of my own non-traditional choice in the creation of my own family.

My son Corwin is 12, a bit younger than me when I first met grandma. But like all of his cousins, great grandmother has been part of his life since he was born. And when I asked him yesterday how he would remember her, he said “Great grandma always had a smile for me. She has never frowned at me.”

While that may be true for her great grandchildren, there are others who have felt grandma’s displeasure in a more direct way. The episode of the thief on the street has become a family legend. In the early 1990s, my grandma, who was then in her 70s was walking home one day through Kensington market. As she walked, someone snatched her necklace, breaking the chain, and ran away. Grandma immediately took off after the thief, shouting imprecations, with cane upraised, intending mayhem and retribution. The thief escaped, which on the whole was fortunate, both for the thief and for the rest of us – it would have been difficult explaining to the relevant judicial authorities why he had been beaten to a pulp.

That winter, or perhaps during a winter soon after, my very non-traditional wife Jill recalls walking with grandma after a family gathering, and having her come up to a snow bank. Jill was concerned about getting grandma safely over the snow bank, but grandma solved the problem by hopping over it like a young girl.

So the second lesson of my grandma’s life is that obstacles can be surmounted with grace and style. The third important lesson is that courage is important, but dignity is not necessarily so, particularly if you are chasing down injustice.

Our fleeting lives are like flames in a brief interval wedged between the eternity of the past and the abyss of the future. If we are lucky, our way through the darkness is lit by the lives of those close to us, as we in turn light the way for those to come. In this room, in this city, on this planet, there are 25 direct descendants of my grandmother – children, grandchildren, great grandchildren – all of whose lives were directly affected by the actions and choices made by my grandmother, the light of her life spilling across generations to help show us the road leading forward.

Her light is gone now, but while it was here, it shone on many people. Because of my grandmother, all of our lives shine a little brighter.

by Do-Ming Lum
copyright 2011

TED: A Realistic Vision For World Peace

The speaker is Nobel Peace prize winner Jody Williams, and I can't imagine a better way to start off 2011:

Happy Winter Solstice 2010

Tuesday, 2010 December 21 is the winter solstice in the Northern Hemisphere. After Tuesday, the days start getting slowly longer again.

This year, the solstice is marked by a total lunar eclipse which will occur on Tuesday morning. The last time a lunar eclipse and the winter solstice were on the same day was the year 1638. The next occurrence won't be until 2094 -- I have ambitions to watch it, but that is predicated on either the technological singularity occurring, or on sufficient medical advances to keep me from total decrepitude.

Imagine

It was thirty years ago yesterday -- 1980 December 8.

Knocking on doors

Like the man in this video, I too am a tolerant guy. But let's be clear -- in any conflict between missionaries and natives, my sympathies are always with the natives. So when I get missionaries of whatever stripe at my door, I always feel compelled to strike a figurative blow for all those who encountered missionaries and were less fortunate than me. This may be why we have experienced such a steep fall-off of strangers come to share their faiths...


Door To Door Atheists Bother Mormons - Watch more Funny Videos

Peter Watts Sentencing - No Jail Time

Good news -- we heard a few minutes ago from Dave Nickle at Peter's sentencing hearing in Port Huron, MI that Peter won't be sent to jail. My understanding from Dave's partner Karen who relayed the news is that Peter was lectured extensively by the judge about how it is important to be nice to the police, and Peter will have to pay a fine. But no jail time, which is substantially better than the gloomy predictions we were making last week!

Dave and Madeline are going out for a beer with Doug Mulkoff, Peter's lawyer, and a group of other supporters. They'll be home in 5-6 hours, so expect first hand updates later this evening.

UPDATE - Dave has posted an initial report from the Quay Street Brewing Company.

The Port Huron Times-Herald had this on their website today:

Author Watts to be sentenced today

A Toronto author convicted March 19 of assaulting, resisting and obstructing a border officer at the Blue Water Bridge is expected to be sentenced today. Peter Watts is scheduled to be in St. Clair County Circuit Judge James Adair's courtroom at 2 p.m. Information his online court record shows the recommended sentence is 180 days in jail with credit for one day served and 60 days suspended upon payment of $1,600 in fines and costs. A jury found Watts guilty of refusing to comply with orders during a random inspection at the bridge. An officer testified at trial that Watts tried to choke him.

Although the Times-Herald, in keeping with their past performance, tries to cast Peter in the most negative possible light, I want to make it clear that Peter was cleared of the assault charge. The officer who "testified at trial that Watts tried to choke him" had his testimony discredited during the trial by an independent witness. No assault by Peter ever took place, although Peter himself was assaulted by being punched, pepper sprayed, and knocked to the ground.

Peter was convicted of non-compliance with the orders of the border officer. The jury evidently believed that being punched and pepper sprayed should not have affected Peter's ability to follow those orders. Peter talks about that on his blog.

Both NewsFix and Quill & Quire have news coverage that more accurately reflects actual events than the Port Huron Times-Herald. However, it is the Simple Justice blog of Scott H. Greenfield which provides the most succinct analysis of Peter's travails:

Like Cory Doctorow, I agree completely that Peter Watts' conviction is absurd and horrible. He was convicted for acting like a normal person under abnormal circumstances. He was convicted for lacking the understanding that when interacting with officials with guns and shields, one bows deeply like a supplicant, just to avoid irritating small minds.

There is no justice. It is all about maintaining order and conformity, because the system needs order and conformity. The Japanese aphorism about the nail that sticks out being hammered down is entirely apropos. What, you thought living in a democracy entitled you to more or less equal power relationships with officials? The people wearing the jackboots want you to remember that.

Hardware

Around here, we think of hardware as equipment, often useful, which is electronic and which often contains internal microprocessors, or is designed to be connected to other devices which contain microprocessors. In short, computer equipment. Geek stuff.

But there is an older definition of hardware -- nuts, bolts, nails, screws, mysterious stuff made of wood and metal and plastic, an enormous assortment of utilitarian goods, tools to manipulate these things in the physical world. Hardware is sold in hardware stores, places sacred to those who would build or make or fix or otherwise affect the sharp corners and shredded splinters of reality.

Which brings me to the point of this post: a big recommendation for the blog of Howard, a hardware store worker who has a penchant for hardware haiku. Howard's view of people and the world, filtered through the lens of the hardware store, provides some interesting, indeed fascinating, reading. His recent post about the musician is a flash of insight into how need and misconception juxtapose and result in incomprehension and anger:

A musician accosts me by the glue
at least I think she's a musician
judging by the two guitars she has on her back.
"I just need a small piece of wood cut for me."
I explain that we're a hardware store and not a lumber yard.
"Lumber yard?" she's distressed.
I do my best to explain that we can't just carry one type of wood,
if we have the piece she needs then we need to carry the piece
everyone needs
and we're a small hardware store.
She doesn't understand the concept
so I put it in its simplest terms:
In for a penny, in for a pound.
She doesn't seem to like my answer and leaves in a huff.
I hope she writes a song about how hardware stores break hearts.

Full disclosure -- I know Howard and see him a number of times a year. Therefore, I am not unbiased. But I ask you this -- how can you not respond to something like this?

A guy walks into a hardware store
with an incredible black eye.
"I need a pair of safety goggles."
Er, isn't it a little too late?

Bad News

I have been depressed for the last couple of days by the news that our friend Peter Watts was convicted when his case went to trial this past week. David Nickle has an excellent article as well as a follow-up piece on his blog. BoingBoing also had coverage, including some cogent cultural commentary. And Peter himself proves what a totally classy guy he is with his own blog post.

Some problems can't be solved. At least by me or anyone I know.

The Devil and the Jackal

Trust Fred Clark at Slacktivist to properly dissect and shed light on the true evil of Pat Robertson's utterances. Mr. Clark's post contains some important thoughts which bear repeating:

I'm accustomed to Pat Robertson being an unholy fool, but his remarks following the Haitian earthquake were astonishing even for him. By attributing Haiti's suffering to a supposed "pact with the devil," he manages to break two commandments simultaneously -- both bearing false witness against his neighbor and taking the name of God in vain.

That sort of double word score is typical Robertson fare, until one appreciates how utterly and explicitly he takes sides here. By labeling the revolutionary enslaved people who founded the Haitian democracy as literally demonic, Robertson sides with slave owners and against democracy, liberty and human rights. He declares that he and his god are on the side of oppression and that liberation is the Devil's work.

Wow. That this is contrary to the Bible Robertson claims to read is obvious to every tourist who has ever filed past the Liberty Bell here in Philly ("Proclaim liberty throughout all the land unto all the inhabitants thereof").

But it's worse than that. He's not just contradicting some bit of scriptural arcana here, he's cutting to the core of Christianity and setting himself in direct opposition to it.

Video: On the following two videos, Rachel Maddow does an introduction to this topic, and in the second, Raymond Joseph, the Haitian Ambassador to the United States makes some remarks that provide a pointed reminder that one should never piss off someone who understands history.





If Robertson is the devil of the piece, then the jackal is surely Rush Limbaugh, the drug-addled radio personality who has come to represent the not-so-pent-up hatred of America's bigots. In the following video, Keith Olbermann comments on statements made by both Robertson and Limbaugh:



A day later, Olbermann responds again to a fresh outrage from Limbaugh, this one also drawing a sharp reprimand from Roger Ebert which begins "You should be horse-whipped for the insult you have paid to the highest office of our nation." The Olbermann video follows:



As noted, Haiti's need is great. Donations can be made through the Canadian Red Cross, International Red Cross, MedecinssSans Frontieres, or other charity of your choice4

Haiti, Hell, and Devils

A day before the January 13 Earth flyby of 2010 AL30, some tectonic rebalancing was happening beneath the Caribbean island of Hispaniola. The nation of Haiti occupies the western part of this island, and the quake occurred 25 km from the capital city, Port Au Prince at a depth of 13 kilometers. The consequence of that geological twitch was a Richter 7 earthquake, and the human devastation has been unimaginable -- current estimates place the death toll as high as 100,000 people. If that is indeed the case, that is nearly three times the total number of Canadians killed in World War Two. Or 40 times the number of people killed in New York City on 9/11.

Relief efforts began mobilizing as soon as the news got out. Both the Canadian Red Cross and the International Red Cross have been accepting donations, and three days later, there are groups on the ground delivering aid. Much more is needed.

Pat Robertson, an American televangelist, on the religious television program The 700 Club stated that Haiti and Haitians were "cursed by one thing after another" since they "swore a pact to the devil", a reference to the slave revolt which began in 1791. Robertson, as one of America's privileged elites, potentially descended from slaveholders, would of course have little sympathy for a populist uprising, particularly one where, in the words of former Haitian president Jean-Bertrand Aristide

To free themselves from the bonds of slavery,
our forefathers turned to the Ancestors in the
ceremony of Bois Caïman, in August 1791. In
other words, to become free, the slaves prayed
not to the God of his master but to the God
of Ancestors.

Any rejection of the god of Pat Robertson seems like a good idea to me, so it must have been a no-brainer for men and women desperate to throw off the shackles of real oppression and slavery for which someone like Robertson would have no understanding, and clearly even less sympathy.

Robertson's statement was described as "stupid" by the American government, and viewed with contempt and amusement in France.

In the blogosphere, P. Z. Meyers (who is much admired in these parts) said it best in his own post on the subject of Robertson's "pact with the devil" remarks: "If it makes you angry, turn your outrage into something constructive and use it to motivate you to donate to Haitian relief first. Deal with the evil scumbag Robertson later."

There is no need to believe in a devil, but there is ample reason to believe in Pat Robertson, and to take a stand against all that he represents. Haiti will be hell for months and years to come, but donations to the relief effort will be our way to help the Haitian people despite Robertson and those devils like him who seek to exploit this little bit of hell on Earth.

To Haitian friends and colleagues, we hope that your families and loved ones are safe. We wish we could do more.

Happy Winter Solstice - 2009

Today was the Winter Solstice. The sun's path on the ecliptic returned to its ascending node for the Northern Hemisphere at 12:47 ET today. The days get longer from here -- but in the meantime, we have to get through Christmas in a few more days, and also incidentally the depths of winter. Happy Solstice - and may 2010 be a brighter New Year for all of us!

Just Call Me Joe-Bob

A few days ago, Ramey Ko of the Association of Chinese Americans was testifying before the State Elections Committee of the State of Texas in the US. In response to Ko's testimony regarding problems that Americans of Chinese, Japanese, and Korean descent have in voter identification in elections, State Representative Betty Brown, a Republican member of the Texas State Legislature representing District 4 (Athens/Terrell) said the following:

"Rather than everyone here having to learn Chinese — I understand it's a rather difficult language — do you think that it would behoove you and your citizens to adopt a name that we could deal with more readily here?"

Additional source for this story here.

I am not Texan, or even American, but I just have to comment on this.

Brown's remarks undoubtedly summarize the intellectual position of at least some portion of the American population. And there are bound to be people of similar minds on this side of the border. I am reminded of the difficulties that I had growing up with a Chinese name -- one that was very different from the Anglo-Saxon mainstream. At my first job when I was a teenager, the advice given to me (I worked in in a telephone sweatshop) was that I should identify myself using a name that was more consumer-friendly.

However, that was then and this is now. Brown's colleague, Representative Trey Martinez Fischer and the people who run the Rum and Monkeys website have made available the "Betty Brown Name Generator", a web application that will help anyone with a name that is non traditional (or at least non traditional in Betty Brown's judgement) replace their name with one that people like Ms. Brown would understand and would identify with.

I am very pleased to report the following result from the Betty Brown Name Generator for me:

My Betty Brown Approved Name is Joe-Bob "WalMart" Brown.
Try The Betty Brown Name Generator yourself!
Created with Rum and Monkey's Name Generator Generator.

Y'all should call me "Joe-Bob", although if we are in a business meeting together, you could call me "J.B." At parties and in public, I will continue to respond to "hey you". While I have issues with being called "WalMart", y'all could call me "Wally" if y'all needed a nickname.

I can't help thinking that Betty Brown's problem with some names might be due to their (relatively larger) number of syllables as well as cultural context with which Ms. Brown may lack familiarity, even though she is an elected government official in a state of the wealthiest (and theoretically best educated) nation on Earth.

The Betty Brown Name generator can be seen to therefore have some wider application. In addition to the modifications to biology and astronomy textbooks that will be required to implement the position taken by the Board of Education of the State of Texas on intelligent design versus conventional scientific theories of cosmic origin and biological evolution, there could be similar rewritings of history textbooks as follows:

- replace "George Washington" with Forrest "Pabst Blue Ribbon" Brown. Even though General Washington is a Founding Father of the great nation of America, his name does have too many syllables in it for easy comprehension. Also, if this change is made, George Washington Carver can be Forrest Blue Brown Carver. Texas history books could thus immediately identify Dr. Carver as a man of colour by his name alone.

- replace "Benjamin Netanyahu" with Billy-Ray "Chicken and Dumplings" Brown. Although a long-time ally of the United States, Mr. Netanyahu's Hebrew name also has way too many syllables and "Benjamin" just makes him sound stuck up. Discussing Middle East history of the last few decades and how they were driven by an American ally named Billy-Ray should make this subject both more comprehensible and sympathetic to students in Betty Brown's Texas. Also, the "Chicken and Dumplings" nickname can be a vehicle by which the Texas educational system introduces the richness of Jewish heritage and culture and in particular, matzoh ball soup to ordinary Americans. But instead of forcing those ordinary Americans to learn the Hebrew word "matzoh", they could move with immediate understanding to "Chicken and Dumplings".

- don't replace "J. Robert Oppenheimer" with Joe-Bob "Cracker Barrel" Brown. Even though this distinguished American physicist and I share the same Betty Brown approved name (except for the nickname), Oppenheimer was attacked by Senator Joseph McCarthy, and in a Betty Brown world, it would be inappropriate to give him a name that makes him more like a "real American". (In the Sarah Palin sense of the term "real American").

- replace "Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar" with Billy-Ray "Cracker Barrel" Brown. This American physicist of Indian origin for whom the Chandra Space Telescope is named clearly has way too many syllables in a name which would be incomprehensible to people living in the world of Betty Brown. Therefore, physics textbooks in Texas can make reference to the "Cracker-Barrel Limit" instead of the Chandrasekhar Limit for calculation of the upper bound of stars which can collapse to form a white dwarf star. Keep in mind though that all this long-hair stuff is only a theory -- you know, like evolution. Or the Germ Theory of Disease. Or gravitation.

- and for goodness sake, definitely replace the names of Samuel Chao Chung Ting, Yao Ming and Kalpana Chawla. Real Americans in Betty Brown's Texas can't believe that people with names like these could win a Nobel Prize and be on the staff of a major scientific facility intended to be in Texas, or play basketball in Texas, or die in a space shuttle accident over Texas.

Betty Brown's remarks have done a lot to demonstrate the care and commitment that she feels toward people of Chinese descent, as well as to show the seriousness and credibility of some members of the Texas State Legislature. I, Joe-Bob Brown, her spiritual brother, wish her the very best political future that her remarks have shown that she deserves.

Heinlein Centennial

Saturday July 7 marked the 100th anniversary of the birth of Robert Anson Heinlein, the science fiction author whose work I read (and was occasionally troubled by) through my childhood, adolescence, and adulthood.

I discovered Heinlein's Rocket Ship Galileo on the shelves of the school in Wonowon when I was in Grade 4, and by the time I finished Grade 8 in Fort St. John, I had read all of his juveniles -- the books that he had written for a teen audience. I was thirteen years old when I first read Stranger in A Strange Land -- a book that I would often return to in my teens and early adulthood.

The Heinlein Centennial convention over the weekend in Kansas City would have been a great event to have attended, but to my everlasting regret, it became clear by about May that I wouldn't be able to to go.

The Space Review website has a recent article about a memo which Heinlein wrote in his final days at the Naval Air Materials Center, where he worked during World War Two. This memo, much of which in hindsight is wrong, is still nonetheless inspiring. And it is interesting to consider that 60 years later, private enterprises like SpaceX or Bigelow Aerospace are starting to do some of the things that Heinlein thought should be starting immediately after World War Two.

Through the years, many authors have been hyped by their publishers as being the successor to Robert A. Heinlein. None of these assertions have been true -- even for authors whose talent I respect. More often than not, such a statement on a cover blurb or a review has just been hype, and the author in question has demonstrated very little substance in ideas or writing to justify such a comparison to the Master.

Heinlein remains one of a kind, the quirky, visionary genius and storyteller whose work defined the field of English language science fiction for much of the twentieth century.

Landmarks

When I dropped my mother off at her home after our dinner with my cousin Tak and his parents a month ago, I took a few minutes to drive along Bloor Street and to venture south along Yonge Street -- things which I almost never do because traffic along those streets is usually so dense.

Given the lateness of the hour, I had thought that perhaps Bloor would be little more passable. I was wrong -- the traffic inched along just before Avenue Road/Queen's Park, and the reason was because this was also the day that the Michael Lee-Chin Crystal at the Royal Ontario Museum (ROM) opened.

The Crystal is the latest addition to the ROM, a striking piece of architecture as the following image from Wikipedia shows:


On the evening of May 28, the traffic was slow in front of the Crystal, with construction barriers still up and workmen still doing things. This is very reminiscent of the end of a software project, where the users and managers are congratulating themselves on a job well done, oblivious to the developers who still labour behind the scenes to hold things together and make the launch a reality rather than wishful thinking.

I had lots of time to take some shots out my car window, after first shutting off the flash on my camera. Traffic was never stopped for more than a few seconds, although movement was only a bit more than walking speed. I juggled the camera and steering wheel, managed not to get in a car accident and shot a series of frames, one being of my knee as I was fumbling with the camera.


I haven't been to the ROM in years, but I will probably try to get there again. It would be interesting to be inside the Crystal.


The Crystal itself has been controversial, with both proponents and detractors. Sometime that week, I had been listening to Lynn Slotkin, a local theatre critic, on an afternoon CBC Radio broadcast. Slotkin made it clear that she was a detractor -- referring to the Crystal as a "Carbuncle" several times. Slotkin appears weekly on the CBC, and I remembered her for her dislike of the play "What Lies Before Us" that my cousin Wayne had appeared in back in February.

The Crystal was designed by Daniel Liebeskind, an American architect also noted for planning the reconstruction of the World Trade Center site in Manhattan.

I don't claim any great knowledge or appreciation of architecture, but I like the Crystal. My first sight of the Crystal made me think of an immense golden jewel looming over the street. I like the fact that it looks like the future resting on the shoulders of the past. I like the symbolism that this vision of the future was built from a donation by an immigrant -- someone who did not inherit his position in the financial and cultural elite, but who joined it.

Turning the corner onto Avenue Road and heading south, the Museum was much as I remembered it. The planetarium, once a favourite spot, hasn't been open for years -- one of many ill-considered moves by the Conservative government of Premier Mike Harris in the 1990s.

Away from the construction around the museum, traffic was much lighter and I was able to get downtown without much additional delay. I parked on Elm Street and walked over to Yonge to photograph the other landmark that I wanted to capture. Earlier that day, it had been announced that Sam the Record Man was to close at the end of June.


I discovered Sam's soon after I arrived in Toronto. There are a stack of three-decade old vinyl LPs gathering dust in my mother's basement that come from there, and a substantial fraction of my CD collection as well. My music interests are odd, eccentric, and narrow. Sam's was a place where I could find and fuel whatever new musical interest that came to me. I am sad to see it go.

I walked a block south on Yonge to Edward Street -- home of the World's Biggest Bookstore, a store now part of the Chapters/Indigo chain and closed by the time I got there. However, Funland, a video arcade remembered from my teens was still there and still open. The smoky haze of my teens was gone, removed by anti-smoking legislation from the 90s. In the back, ancient pinball machines were still available for a quarter a play, as well as video games from the 70s and 80s.


Looking south on Yonge Street from the corner of Edward, there were workmen at the corner of Dundas and Yonge, a corner brighter and taller than I would have imagined when I saw it for the first time in the early 70s. In front of me, on the south side of Edward was the mall and office tower where Lichee Garden had its last incarnation.

On this Wednesday night, Yonge Street was not very busy. I found myself wondering whether that had always been so? Had there only ever been crowds during daylight and on the weekends? Or had the crowds at night gone away as the street changed? I didn't remember -- and it was time to go home.

The Best Definition of Success...

...is how your child describes you to a friend.

An observation made on Thomas Barnett's blog that I agree with.

Gemini, Spitzer, Space Dust, a Flat Tire, and a Voice from the Past

On Saturday morning, I discovered that I had a flat tire, brought about by too agressively snugging the Volks against the stone wall beside our driveway. I've backed the car in successfully, hundreds of times, but this time, I misjudged and scraped the front passenger side tire, bashing the valve and causing the tire to go flat.

After a morning spent at the office (using the other car to get there) I went home and faced up to my problem. The valve was badly crunched, but there appeared to be no other damage. With Jill's air pump, we got the tire inflated again. It leaked, but looked like it might last until I got over to Canadian Tire (fortunately not a long drive).

However, it was clearly not my morning -- I shortly realized that I had forgotten my money and credit cards in my pouch, left hanging on the door. Fortunately, I had my cell phone, and a quick call later, Jill came to the rescue. In the meantime, I had pulled into the parking lot of my son's school. A few minutes to get the tire pressure back up, and shortly after that, Jill arrived. We even figured out that bending the valve stem and stuffing in a wad of plastic from a grocery bag beside it significantly reduced the leakage.

Once again, I set out. It was shortly before 1 o'clock as I pulled out of the parking lot. The radio was on, tuned as always to CBC. and Quirks and Quarks was on. Bob MacDonald was interviewing an astronomer, whose observations of interstellar dust grains using the Gemini Telescope, and the Spitzer Space Telescope, had demonstrated that some of these dust grains -- essential raw materials of planets -- would have formed in the supernovae of the earliest stars formed in the aftermath of the Big Bang.

Then I realized -- the astronomer being interviewed was Doug Welch, my classmate in university -- a very bright guy, who has obviously made it to the big leagues. It was one of the bright spots of a day which hadn't been all that great.

A PR fluff piece of Doug's research is available on the Gemini website.

I recall that it was Doug's custom to wear a cape on the day of the Spring and Fall equinoxes -- on that day, he was Captain Equinox. Somewhere in my collection of old paper photos, there is undoubtedly one of Captain Equinox, dating from the late 1970's, leaping down from the top of some campus structure.

The podcast of the June 17 Quirks and Quarks show is available from CBC radio.

I had another bit of good news a little later -- the tire was only $30 to repair, as opposed to a complete replacement.