Happy Birthday, crime division

Just ran into my neighbour Rob, who was invited to my birthday party but couldn't come.

"Did you get the wine I left?" he asked. "What wine?" I asked. He left four bottles of wine and a birthday card on the front porch early that birthday morning, because he had to leave town. Someone, somewhere, enjoyed some mighty fine wine. Phooey on a person who'd steal a birthday present! But then, in this neighbourhood, leaving four bottles of wine on the front porch is definitely not a good idea.

Wow - heat wave here, over 30 degrees, up to 40 with the humidity. I am abstemious with my air conditioner, but not today or yesterday - it's a lifesaver. Especially as I had a tough day, cleaning the basement apartment in preparation for the new tenant, who arrives tomorrow. I imagined myself like the Monty Python characters in cleaning lady garb, with hair encased in scarf, shapeless print dress, Cockney accent, cigarette and mop. I cleaned not only the toilet but AROUND the toilet and scrubbed the floor on my hands and knees. The joy of being a landlady. But it's nice and clean.

Trying not to pay much attention to the newspapers, as summer winds down. Too depressing. Though it seems Bush's Iraq war is over. I'm thrilled to note that once again, the "New Yorker" is at the forefront of political discussion, with its current article about the ultra-right wing Koch brothers who are funding the Tea Party, the "grass roots" movement paid for by Fox News and assorted billionaires. The face of evil, there in my favourite magazine, people who want to dismantle every social program and let anyone who's not a billionaire fend for themselves. Incomprehensible. Badly treated as children, perhaps - starved of affection and so incapable of empathy? Or just soulless and, yes, evil? What I've read of the article implies that their father, who made a lot of money through Stalin, felt guilty about it and grew to hate the Communists and anything that smacked of the left. So the brothers are just parroting Dad. He'd be proud, boys. Good job, getting poor people to believe in your agenda. Amazing, how you managed that.

The political discussion is so far to the right down there that I don't know how left-wing people can stand it. Thank the blessed lord for Jon Stewart, who shows us that they still exist, people of the left with minds and hearts and, for him at least, a voice. Shout it out, Brother Jon!

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My mother called a few minutes ago, to remind me that it's her wedding anniversary. My parents were married on August 31st, 1949, while visiting friends in Chicago, and I was born nearly a year later, in Manhattan. It would have been their 61st wedding anniversary, had my father lived. How I wish he had lived.

And yet I know that had he lived, that extremely powerful, difficult, marvellous man, my life would have been very different. In some ways, his death was a liberating gift to his children. I think perhaps it's always like that, whether we acknowledge it or not.

Rob just came by with a birthday gift, delivered into my waiting hands - a bottle of good pinot noir.

Ryerson advanced class cancelled

Important if sad news: MY ADVANCED CLASS AT RYERSON HAS JUST BEEN CANCELLED. It's more than two weeks before class, but no one had registered yet. I apologize to those of you who told me you wanted to come back. The lesson is: you have to register early, my bosses at Ryerson can't wait till even the week before. They need to be sure a course is going to run because space is at a premium.

The advanced course "True to Life 2" will be offered at Ryerson again in January. A course for those who've taken my class twice is offered at U of T; "Life Stories, Advanced" starts the first week of October.

True to Life 1 at Ryerson on Monday nights is definitely a go, as registration is already healthy. In fact, it sometimes happens that that one has the reverse problem - it becomes over-full and students are turned away. So if you're keen, register now.

Monday's bliss

Another stunning hot day dawns - summer redux. Yesterday I went to pick a dead leaf from the black-eyed Susans, and discovered a praying mantis, long and crumpled green in perfect camouflage. Later, Shari and I found him - her? - upside down, munching on an ant. The spider on the front door has spent three days hanging motionless, but this morning the web is vacant. But then, she vacated once before and reappeared. I figure she went out for take-out. These days are a butterflyfest - giant Monarchs sipping from the buddleia, flapping their geometric wings, what pleasure they give.

Okay okay, make me shut up about the garden.

I had a wonderful time on Saturday night at Shari and Julia's concert at C'est What? Unfortunately, the house was very small, not surprising considering all that was going on in Toronto that night, including the Buskerfest, thousands of people watching shows on the street right outside door. My, that woman sings and composes beautifully. And her daughter, at 20, is an accomplished musician already; she provides not only harmonies but plays violin, harmonica, squeezebox, piano, flute and guitar. And probably more. They both do, so they switched back and forth through the show. Virtuosos!

But the best bit of concert was here at home, when I asked Shari to play "Fear of flying." It was the show-stopper when she toured with Pied Pumkin in the 70's. I stood in a crowd of hundreds of hippies in the Kootenays, weeping at her soaring voice and Joe Mock's gorgeous song."Everything we do/Is just another trying/ Some never lose/ the fear of flying..."

Yesterday, 35 years later, she sang it just for me.

They left this morning for Montreal, for one last gig and to set Julia up for her next year at McGill, and then Shari is off to the States to meet up with Mike and his mother. Mike is the son Shari gave up for adoption when she was barely 16 and whom she just refound a few years ago - a joyful and welcome reunion on both sides. Recently, Shari and Mike's adoptive mother searched for Mike's father and found him, so he is in close contact with both his birth parents. Shari has written several haunting songs about him, and he has played percussion with her and his new sister Julia in concert. And Shari has not only a new-found son, but a daughter-in-law and a grandchild. What a story!

And now - some quiet days to get a lot of work done, before teaching starts and fall displays her wares. I called my friend Patsy in despair about writing yesterday and got her usual invaluable advice. Once again, I was trying to do too much, cramming too much in. Divide the story in two, she said, and suddenly - it all made sense! There's that story and this story, they do not belong together, and separating them has made all the difference. Thank you, my dear friend.

Beautiful long end-of-summer days, work flowing and a garden full of happy bugs and birds - what more could a woman want?

my letter yesterday to the Editor of the Star

Re: Star article "Hundreds of cyclists, pedestrians caught in blitz"

So our trusty police force is busy protecting the city against its nefarious pedestrians. Recently, when the frightening increase in Toronto pedestrian fatalities was being discussed, the police solution was to tell pedestrians to use crosswalks and not to jaywalk. Nothing was said about another solution: making sure that cars in the city slow down.

As a pedestrian and cyclist, I would like to inform the powers-that-be, who seem not to have noticed, that the drivers of cars and trucks in this city are out of control. For years, at intersections I cross regularly such as Gerrard and Church or Jarvis and Carlton, I’ve watched cars, SUVs and trucks, already going too fast, speeding up to get through yellow lights and often zipping right through red lights. Streams of dump trucks have recently been hurtling over the speed limit along Gerrard. Over and over, I’ve asked myself, where are the police? Out ticketing jaywalkers.

People on bikes and foot can be careless and foolish, absolutely. But in an encounter between a careless 150-pound pedestrian or cyclist and a 3000-pound automobile or 6000 pound SUV that can’t stop, who is going to lose? Why aren’t police targeting speeding and aggressive driving?

Toronto shining and not so much

Why is summer more perfect as it ends? This weekend, I've heard, will be the loveliest of the year - and so far, that has been true. It's been a great pleasure to show the city to my friends from beautiful, tranquil Bowen Island, and the place has done me the favour of providing perfect weather and the choice of a hundred interesting things to do.

Today we went to St. Lawrence Market in the morning, loading up on the outpouring of produce - oh the berries, veggies, peaches, corn! Not to mention the Buskerfest just outside, the street closed down for street food and street performers of all kinds.

Later we headed to the water on bikes - neighbour friends were kind enough to lend theirs for the occasion - but the line-up for the ferry to the Islands was so long, we decided to meander along the water on this side instead. It's the tragedy of this city that access to the waterfront is so limited, but what bit of waterfront there is, today, was packed. Shari and I went as far as the Bach Garden, where I used to stroll with my beloved friend Sarah, and then rode home under the trees and by the river, along the Don Valley Trail. Now they've gone to their sound-check at C'est What, where I'll go in a few hours to hear them sing and play.

I had a Toronto-style shock yesterday - I saw the end of a real "take down" on Parliament Street. The police apparently had been chasing a car and actually shot out the windows - the car, with its smashed windows, careened to a halt on the sidewalk on a crowded corner, just outside one of the busiest restaurants on the street. I saw them handcuffing a young white male and stuffing him into a patrol car, and then the more than a dozen police officers, male and female, strutted about, opening the car and taking out golf bags. Perhaps it was a stolen car, or those were stolen bags, but I wonder if the loot was worth the risk to passersby; it's a miracle no one was killed by a stray bullet or by the out of control car.

I realized, watching the cops, that since the G20 debacle here, I have lost all respect for them. I now expect a Toronto police officer to be brutally authoritarian and stupid. That's a terrible thing to say, but it's true. Anyway, luckily my gentle Bowen friends did not see that scene.

And a final word - I've been having nightmares about those miners in Chile. May they emerge safely from the bowels of the earth, and never have to go underground again.