Description 75 - Be...In This Place

And that place would be New Brunswick, an underrated province where I spent a beautiful, breezy and fire-y Canadian Thanksgiving. Includes music by The Monoxides, a mangling of history and stringy red seaweed you eat.

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Associated links
beinthisplace.ca
VIA Rail Ocean train from Montreal to Halifax
City of Moncton: Our Tide Is Rising
Woodstock: New Brunswick's First Town
(You're starting to get the idea that people in New Brunswick are good at slogans.)
Woodstock Sanctuary House
George's books @Google Books and his books @Amazon.ca
History of New Brunswick @Wikipedia
The Acadians @CBC.ca
Meduxnekeag River Association
The Best Dulse!
Paris 1919
The Monoxides: @myspace, @Facebook and @ReverbNation
The Monoxides Annual Holiday Show @Facebook
Iron Giant @myspace
Thanksgiving (Canada) @Wikipedia
Tourism Saint John
Irving Nature Park

The person on the phone ended up being my birth grandmother: one of the people who would call and know who I was.

The photo for this episode was taken at a convenience store on the way down to Saint John. I had seen those flags on houses as the train was heading along the east side of the province, only I hadn't seen the stars on them, so I thought they were French flags, which my hosts thought was strange in that the Acadians are not so crazy about the French French that they'd go around flying their flag. After some discussion and Wikipedia, we determined they were Acadian flags. On the whole trip, I had kept my eye out for an image of New Brunswick I couldn't get anywhere else, and it turned out to be the display in this convenience store.

I have two major regrets about screwing up the sound for the soundseeing tour of Woodstock. One is that my birth mother's arms almost falling off from the cold came to no purpose. Another is that I didn't get to mention Fusion Coffee Company, which we went into briefly. It's a really wonderful licensed café with coffee and food and drinks and music (sometimes live) and a very nice atmosphere. It serves as a creative hub for the small town, and my birth mother goes there often. When we went in there, I met the owner, who knew who I was and could not have been more welcoming. It's the sort of place that a lot of people in small towns wish they had, but usually don't, so I wanted to give this one all the support I could. Hopefully, I'll have other chances to do that audio-wise. But, hey, at least it can get more Google juice in text form.

Lost November, Lost Episodes

Ooookay, so I guess I couldn't do a weekly podcast and a daily podcast without the monthly podcast falling by the wayside. Sorry about that. That daily podcast for National Podcast Post Month, No Mood Swing, is finished (though still available at that link - and hint: there's a tiny Walking the Walk update in the last episode), and hopefully that means I can get back to business on this thing. I think I can post Description 75, about my Canadian Thanksgiving trip to New Brunswick, either this week or next.

Something else I've been working on is re-archiving the episodes after learning a while after the fact that my .mp3 host had stopped hosting. Episodes after Description 49 were moved to a couple different spaces of mine. As for episodes before 49, they're going to the beautiful and venerable (and very deserving of your donations!) Internet Archive, home of No Mood Swing, most of Movies For the Blind (that weekly podcast) and thousands and thousands of other things way more important than anything I've cranked out. So far, I've uploaded three batches, which are now arranged on three convenient pages:

Description 40-49 - (July 2007 - January 2008) Featuring Sam the Record Man, the Toronto Fringe, the Jays game, the Dalai Lama, my day doing location support and my trip to the Christmas Story House.

Description 30-39 - (January-June 2007) Including the trips to London, Paris and Hull :-) along with me making Kraft Dinner, driving home and going to Tim Horton's.

Description 19-29 - (June-December 2006) With the two-parter on NXNE, the Montreal Christmas parade, The Doodlebops, the Cleveland visit and the first episodes about Nuit Blanche and the U.S. absentee ballot process.

I want to wait a short while to put up the first 18 because I'm still missing a few, and maybe you might be able to help if you have a troubling habit of archiving podcast episodes you've listened to over the years. (Heck, I did it with Dubber and Spoons to an extent.) If you go into those archives already up, you'll see I'm already missing Description 23 (Honest Ed's) and the enhanced version of Description 37 (The Drive Home). At the moment, I'm still working on finding Description 18 (Valerie Takes the Streetcar), Description 14 (Michael Ignatieff's First Date), Description 05 (Monte-freakin'-forte!) and the first two Descriptions. I must have them somewhere, but let's just say that while I've been pretty good at backing things up, I suck at keeping them together and organised. So as I keep searching - and create that new episode for you, don't forget - if you happen to run across any of those missing episodes somewhere, please let me know and you will get props to no end. Thanks!

Toronto Tourism Done Right

BlogTO pointed out today that the Canadian Tourism Commission has an amazing series of videos about Toronto on YouTube. In fact, they have a YouTube channel of amazing videos about places all over the country, but me being me, I'll focus on the Toronto stuff for now.

Clocking in at no more than about two minutes, these videos look fantastic, but aren't cheesy. They just naturally let the awesomeness shine through about everything from West Queen West to the Distillery, Casa Loma to the Islands, from the AGO to the Brickworks to Woody's in Boystown...and even more. If you don't live here, you really need to check them out. If you do live here, check them out anyway and I'll bet they might get you to feel maybe a teensy bit proud of this place.

Here's an example below, featuring an area I walk through very often: Yorkville, but you'd do best to go through the comprehensive playlist (and don't forget it's two pages).

For NaPodPoMo: No Mood Swing

Evidently, it's not enough I have this monthly podcast and another weekly podcast - I have to come up with a daily one. But it's just for National Podcast Post Month (NaPodPoMo), which I dodged last year, but this year won't. A podcast episode every day in November, and in my case, each will be under 10 minutes. Yikes.

But don't worry - I'm not foisting it on you, unsuspecting Description listener. The podcast, No Mood Swing, will be on another feed...with this one exception: my mission statement for the project, where I give an idea of what I'm going to do on this thing. If you want to subscribe, awesome! If not, no problem, and thanks for putting up with this one thing in your feed. That's the one thing about being less than 10 minutes: compared to what I usually do here, it goes by like (snapping fingers) THAT!

Download the mission statement
Subscribe to No Mood Swing

Description 74 - GOing

I venture into suburbia in a big green and white clanging flattened metal hexagon, and live to tell the tale. Featuring music from The Most Serene Republic, a surprise cameo by a constable, looking up a word I didn't know and a bird in a nice suit.

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(Yes, you can download it. I'm migrating all episodes to other hosts, working backward. Thanks for your patience on that.)

Associated links
Go Transit Official Site
GO Transit @Wikipedia (and follow the link in the article for "conurbation".)
The GO Concourse @ Union Station
That Paul Janz song (Again, because much of the video was shot in Union Station. Sorry.)
Mississauga.com
The Most Serene Republic
And here comes the IODA Promonet stuff...
The Most Serene Republic
"Heavens To Purgatory" (mp3)
from "...And The Ever Expanding Universe"
(Arts & Crafts)

Buy at Napster Buy at Rhapsody
More On This Album

Canoeing the Credit River
Lakeshore Lions Arena

The Most Serene Republic are forging on with their tour (at the Mod Club here tonight as I write this) although recently they had a lot of their gear stolen in Vancouver. That's a hard blow for any Canadian band, so check out their official site in the links for details on what was stolen, so you can watch for it if you're in that area.

A GO Train was the location for the tv series Train 48, which aired on Global from 2003 to 2005. A version of an Australian soap, it centred around a group of commuters heading home each night from Toronto to Burlington (technically, that would have to be Aldershot, right?). The train was the only location for the show, and the episodes were taped the same day they aired (having great improv actors helped), so things could be topical and cheap - and the cheap part was how Global was able to do an original drama series at all back then. That's grist for another episode, I guess, if I could find a way to keep it from being depressing. :-)

I cut quite a lot of the soundseeing tour of the concourse hall. Sure, I could go on about the Second Cup and the juice place and the Cinnabon and the Dairy Queen, but...meh. As you might have noticed by my boundless energy in this episode, the place is nothing more than functional.

When I first lived in Toronto way back when, there was a bar where the newer food court is now - called Choo-Choo's, I think (whatever it's called, it has moved nearer to the stairs to the Great Hall of Union Station). It was actually where I made my first mixed drink order. Due to my fairly uneventful teenage years, I had very little context for concocting a beverage in my head. I knew I loved Coke, and thought I'd like Kahlua because it wasn't fruity, so I walked up to the barkeep at the age of 19 and asked for a Kahlua and Coke. He asked me to repeat that, and I did. He stood there perplexed for a moment, then went to fill my order. He poured a shot of Kahlua and a highball glass of Coke, then gave me the glasses.

"Um, no, I'd like them together," I said.

He raised his eyebrows. "Together?"

I nodded, he shrugged, then poured the shot into the Coke. He watched as I drank this mix perfectly content, because it was exactly what I wanted. I would go on to perplex less seasoned bartenders than him for the following two years, before university life would mature me to the level of gin and tonics.

Hang in while our host is down

You might have noticed this in the last little while, but our lovely hosts at publicbroadcasting.ca have been down and are not connecting. Really sorry about this, and we'll get things together as soon as possible.

Updates on Updates and Nuit Blanche Again

As usually happens when I do a post without a show, a new episode is coming next week. One of the things I've been doing instead of an episode lately has been FINALLY transitioning a part of my first website to blog form. Incompletely Conspicuous, my almost-10-year-old (holy crap!) website about the band The Pursuit of Happiness, has always had a news section called Updates, and I figured it was time to drag it kicking and screaming (if it felt like exerting effort) into the 21st century by turning it into a blog, so I could...er...update more easily and include more doodads and interactivity. So if you like TPOH and want to know about some of the interesting things its people do because the band isn't really around anymore, take a look and feel free to subscribe.

Now, it's also time for good ol' Nuit Blanche, what I've called "NXNE for modern art" during the now-four years I've been doing podcasts about it. The subject of Description 25, 45 and 61, the all-night city-wide art exhibition - starting tomorrow night - will most likely be the subject of Description 76 (yes, two podcasts away...not guaranteeing that). My focus this time is probably going to be the happenings around the Art Gallery of Ontario, because it will be open FOR FREE from 6:55pm to 3am for various snazzy things. Since the AGO re-opened with its full Frank Gehry makeover, I've wanted to do a soundseeing tour there, but hadn't yet made it there during the couple hours on Wednesday night when I could afford admission. So here's my chance. Yay!

But what I'm going to do is more about the AGO than Nuit Blanche (sort of like Description 61 was as much about the Crystal at the ROM than Nuit Blanche), so this does not in any way get you off the hook if you're anywhere near town to experience the event. There are at least 130 projects of all kinds to explore and sometimes participate in, reportedly closer together in the downtown core than last year (which was my beef then), helping out even more with car-free zones and open-all-night TTC with a $9 pass to take as many trips as you want. There's also the Nuit Blanche app for my iPod Touch and your various smartphones to help you out when you're pounding the pavement in the dark not knowing which way is up (correction: whoops, it's not for the Touch - I have to stick with the mobile version of the official site). For info on all that stuff I just mentioned, go to the official Nuit Blanche site, and also check out suggestions and tips from our friends at Torontoist.

Granted, some years are better than other years, but even at its worst, Nuit Blanche is as accessible as contemporary art gets, and frankly, it's as accessible and happy and warm-fuzzy as Toronto usually gets. So celebrate art, the city, and each other.

Description 73 - The Dual Citizens

In the temporary Canadian embassy of Ashtabula, Ohio, I talk with my birth mother about why she went to Canada, why she stays, and how it's even more our home than I'd ever known.

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Associated links
The beginning of the story is at the end of Description 68 and throughout Description 69
Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee @Amazon.ca
The Bank of America Center @Wikipedia
1972 U.S. Presidential Election @Wikipedia
The Port Angeles-Victoria Ferry
Oak Bay Tourism
Straight.com
"The Last Streetfighter: the History of the Georgia Straight"
Canada and the Vietnam War @Wikipedia
"What Is An Affinity Group?"
Tourism New Brunswick
CBC.ca article on election for AFN national chief
Walnut Beach Cafe Photo Gallery

By the end of the year, you will be hearing more about Aboriginal people in Canada (having already recorded some stuff) and more about New Brunswick (because I'm going there for Canadian Thanksgiving). Maybe I should say "perhaps on either side of the end of the year," just to keep it safe.

In case you were wondering, this experience has been a big one for my parents. They always said they would support me if I ever wanted to search out my birth mother or father, and when my birth mother's family found me, they were as happy as anyone. Knowing that they were familiar with some of them (there are even more odd connections than I've mentioned) and then learning with me how great these people are, it made what could've been a fairly daunting thing even happier for them, and therefore even happier for me. We had our own driving, eating and talking while I was there too. (Btw, it should come as no surprise I gained five pounds over that week.)

There's not much more to be said here, except that I had a much better time than I made it sound with my morning semi-cold voice. The week with my birth mother's family was remarkable, but exhausting. Strangely, one thing it wasn't was awkward (although I seem that way in our talk - it's no more awkward than I usually am). My birth mother and I had been communicating freely and deeply through phone and email almost every day since June, so a lot of ground had been covered. I hadn't communicated as much with the rest of the family, and even with my birth mother, there's nothing like being in the same physical space. But the whole thing, while a whirlwind, all felt perfectly natural - like we were all supposed to be there.

And we were.

Description 72 - Between Mud and Sky

Volunteering for a theatre company, I explore Dufferin Grove Park, where the play's the thing in more ways than one. Featuring a naked kid, a pongophone, ice cream truck music and Stephen Harper getting beaten with a stick.

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Associated links
(Update: November 21 - Jutta Mason opens the Dufferin Grove rink for the season with her own two hands)
Friends of Dufferin Grove Park
You may know Todd Tyrtle from such podcasts as The QN Podcast and Talking Stick
Blog post: The Tyrtles Have Landed
Clay and Paper Theatre
Trailer for Between Sea and Sky with ASL
Ryerson University Centre for Learning Technologies
Citizen Z @NFB.ca (not with description, which kind of sucks)
Dufferin Rink
The Brick Oven @Project for Public Spaces
Barbara Klunder
"Dufferin Grove Park" poem by RM Vaughan
Okay, technically, the wading pool is not a Splash pad...
For the Birds by Margaret Atwood
What is Cob?
The QN perspective on the Punch and Judy show with Stephen Harper

In case you think Dufferin Grove Park is some sort of hothouse of gentrification in some well-to-do, lily-white neighbourhood, you would be wrong. That area has had a history of poverty and crime and all kinds of people from everywhere doing their best to get by, so making the park what it's become was an uphill battle and continues to take strength. The fact you wouldn't immediately know that from being there speaks volumes.

If you could only click through one link in that list (and that's not true, so go to all of them), it would be the one for Friends of Dufferin Grove Park, because not only does it have all the information about everything going on in the park (rink! oven! cob! campfires! farmers' market! arts! history!), but it sort of evokes the vibe of the park - there are forums and public discussion sections everywhere. The transparency of process in how things work is really impressive.

It should not come as a surprise, then, that the editor of the site is Jutta Mason (from Germany - yet another immigrant), who was a major part of the "friends" creating what Dufferin Grove Park is now. She won the Jane Jacobs Prize in 2001, and continues to help hold together the spirit of freedom and community the park embodies every day, inspiring work beyond that block through the Centre For Local Research Into Public Space (CELOS). Mind you, she only helps to hold it together, because this sort of thing doesn't work the way they've done it through the control of a person or two - it has taken a deep but not-foolish trust in one's fellow neighbours.

I think many of the greatest thinkers concerning social media can relate to that. So if you have any interest in any kind of community, you'd do well to study that one site as deeply as you can, and take notes.

Coming Around Again

A new episode is coming next week, but a couple old episodes somehow seem to fit with some current events.

In Description 46, I talked about working "location support," and did a soundseeing tour of one of my long days guarding a location film set. The film in question was The Time Traveler's Wife, which is finally getting its release this weekend. In the previews, I've already spotted a scene (in front of a tv store in the '70's) in The Junction neighbourhood where I had a couple shifts, and even the gazebo/bandstand in Kew Gardens, where I started the tour of the last episode. Other settings where I stood/paced/sat for 12 hours at a time included a very wood-lined mansion (the Christie Mansion, where I finished Description 45) and an old hospital ward (actually an abandoned part of the Centre for Mountain Health Services, aka Hamilton Psychiatric Hospital). But if you check out the movie and notice scenes inside a house where you can see snow in a yard outside, that's where I was for Description 46, with leftover "snow" cushioning my butt on the concrete steps and keeping me warm in the autumn dusk. It's more than likely you won't notice a thing beyond the romance of the story, which is testament to the talent of the hard-working Art Department and those people whose job I would not wish on my worst enemy: the Location Managers. I don't know if I'm going, but if I do, I'm sticking around to see their names (especially A.J., Warner and Don) way down in the credits, and applaud.

And for something completely different...perhaps you've noticed the "debate" in the U.S. about proposals for reform of the healthcare system. I've been a bit more vocal about this on Twitter and Facebook, but suffice it to say it's been fantastically stupid and most of its stupidity has been fueled by very distinct economic interests. One element of the stupidity has been fearful and silly attacks of the healthcare systems in Great Britain and here in good ol' Canada (NDP leader Jack Layton said his piece about the matter in Huffington Post a couple weeks ago). I remember in the miniseries "Prairie Giant," the protests Tommy Douglas had to deal with a few decades ago from doctors spooked about his proposed introduction of healthcare reform in Saskatchewan (which eventually led to the systems we have today). Douglas must have thought the doctors' strike was pretty scary at the time - it's not quite like the more literal "strike threats" President Obama is dealing with now.

Anyway, a couple years ago, without such clouds of comparison over me, I did an episode illustrating a typical experience of mine with the healthcare system in Ontario (healthcare being under provincial jurisdiction) with a soundseeing tour of my trip to St. Michael's Hospital to get my first mammogram. So you can follow along in Description 52, but don't expect any death panels. ;-)