The Voice Of Reason

What a gorgeous summer day! Finally!!!! I went over to Halifax, found somewhere to get my hair cut as my regular stylist was fully booked. This one did a great job, too. Wandered around and window shopped a bit, stopped to sit in the sun and had some chips from Bud the Spud's truck. Walked back downtown and then went to the gym so I feel semi-righteous about that (minus the chips, of course!) it was so nice to get out into the sun!

The new library is nearly finished, too. They've done most of the landscaping around it and I think all that's left is interior stuff. It is going to be open this summer. Can't wait to see it from the inside. I've been taking photos once or twice a year while it's been built so when it opens i'll get to take the last ones from inside. They have a rooftop cafe as well with a nice view over the city. The building looks like a stack of books with the top one at a sharp angle from the rest. Some people think it looks really odd but I love it.

I went to the Nova Scotia Museum of Natural History yesterday. It took three bus rides and none of them had air conditioning and it was a stinking hot and hazy day. The bus let me down in front of the museum at a stop normally reserved for the city tour hop on hop off bus. I didn't take that as a warning because there had been road works that would have prevented it from stopping at the curb before that for a bit. When i came back out, i stood where i had been let off. I saw the bus coming, and was going to wave it down to make sure he knew i wanted him not the tour bus and watched the bus turn at a stop sign and go up a side road!!!! Bastard! According to the route map, it should have continued on the road i was on so i don't know what happened.

I wasn't standing there for another half hour for the next bus to see if it would pick me up so i walked towards Spring Garden Road which isn't all that far, and decided to cut through the Public Gardens which covers the last long block on my route. The Gardens are so nice in summer, with all the flowers out. I do wonder what happened to the ducks though. There used to be hundreds of them with people feeding the ducks on the pathways though i do know the staff always discouraged it. The last couple of years i've noticed there are no ducks in the park anymore and i wonder what they did to discourage them. They still have a couple of swans and one or two geese I think. Mainly the big pond has a few seagull floating in it and that's about all. The swans are usually seen in a smaller pond over to one side.

I got an ice cream from the canteen and sat in the shade for a bit and then walked over to the main road to catch a bus home. I had been planning to go to the West End shopping area to Pennington's where i mainly shop for clothes to see what they had left on the end of season sale racks. Mom and I may go to one of the closer branches today or tomorrow.

So yes, the museum. The exhibit was called Out of this World and consisted of about 40 costumes featured in various sci fi tv series and movies over the years. They were grouped by villains, heroes, and by series. They had costumes from the original Star Trek and a few from scattered other of the series. There were some Star Wars things, and, movie wise, they had the Terminator's jacket, Indiana Jones' jacket, The T-1000 costume from Terminator 2 which was quite cool, they had George Clooney's Batman cossie, Jim Carrey's Riddler outfit. There were a few props too. They had a Storm Trooper helmet and gun, Luke Skywalker's light saber and amputated "hand", They also had the original witches hat from Wizard of Oz which was cool. There were some Blade Runner costumes and even a fan-made outfit based on an Edgar Rice Burroughs 1922 novel and it was really good. If you can see Facebook albums, you can look here. The light was low and they were all behind domed glass so a flash wouldn't have helped anyway and the photos aren't great but i didn't do too badly.

As crap as the weather has been this summer, we've lucked out on weekends that have been mostly quite nice. Yesterday I decided it was time for my annual visit to the Halifax Public Gardens, 16 acres of wonderful in the middle of the city. The flowers were glorious and they were setting up for a dahlia festival later in the month. Some of the dahlias were blooming and they were really beautiful. It seemed like there were quite a few varieties, i hadn't realized that. Just seeing what was in bloom already, I'm marking the dates on my calendar (Aug. 30 - Sept 1) so i can go back and see all of them in bloom. It will be an explosion of colour, i tell you. I have more pics on Facebook here.

After that i went to the nearby Park Lane shopping mall where there's a multiplex cinema and saw The Help. I really liked it. It's pretty much a women's movie since it's all about women. It takes place in Jackson Mississippi in the early 60s and tells the story of how the black maids were treated by their employers, usually not that well. There is still a lot of racism around but thank God/dess it's not as bad as that anymore. ie. one women had a little cubicle built in the back outside as a toilet stall so the maid wouldnt' use the family toilets for fear the family catch something. You could tell that a few of the women weren't as bad but still bent to peer pressure when it came down to it.

One young woman, a peer of the other  young wives, has returned to Jackson from university. Her friends have all married and started families. They have bridge club every week and they have Womens' league type groups. She doesn't really fit in anymore but still takes part. She wants to be a journalist or write a book and gets a job at the local newspaper writing a domestic cleaning column. She gets help from one of her friends' maids in answering the letters and decides she might write a book about the black maids from their point of view. This is basically illegal and at first none of the women are willing to be interviewed or if they do, they are very circumspect. One does agree to start with and little by little the rest do as well. The book, with names changed and written by "Anonymous" hits the bookstands and is a scandal.

I'm sure that life in the deep South under those circumstances was fairly accurately depicted and the characters are pretty well drawn out. Emma Stone is the new "flavour of the month" and she plays the writer, Eugenia aka Skeeter and she's really good. Her character is realizing that the way she was brought up is wrong. We're at the start of the civil rights movement and you know that Skeeter will be in the thick of it before long. I saw her recently in Easy A and she was really good in that too. I think she could go places. Viola Davis is the central maid character, Abilene, and the narrator. She's been in lots of things and I recognised her mainly from the Jesse Stone tv movies (Tom Selleck). Abilene is sympathetic, she loves the children she has to raise and tries to teach them to be strong and independent and give them a sense of self worth even when they have mothers that basically ignore them. She hopes to show the daughters that there is a different way but most of them still end up like their mothers, haughty and condescending and status conscious. She feels things deeply but seems resigned to her life though she dreams of more. Her best friend, Minnie, also a maid (Octavia Spencer) is more prickly and defensive, sassy and occaisionally prone to impulse. She's living with an abusive husband and a house full of children. 

Most of the men in the movie have very small parts and focus. It's about the women, women who are head of the houses and women who keep the houses and homes together from behind the scenes and one woman that wants to change things. It's not overly sentimental like some of these movies can be but you also know it's all going to work out in the end.

There are a lot of movies that come out that are about women. Every once in awhile there is one that really stands out with a great ensemble cast, great characters and this one is one of those, for me at least.

It's the Canada Day long weekend and there's loads going on around the city. I only managed to get to a fraction of it and less than i had planned as it happened. Friday, I went over to the Multicultural Festival, something i don't do every year but i hadn't been for a few years. Unfortunately it was a bit of a disappointment for me this year but I think it was more of a case of bad timing than anything.

Luckily it was a beautiful, hot day, something that's been rare these days. I finally got down there mid afternoonish and found the entrance. This festival used to be on the Dartmouth side of the harbour at the ferry terminal. This new area, by the cruise ship piers and the new Art College campus, and the Seafront Farmer's market, is a much larger area for it, i guess but it's more out of the way for me at least. That was annoying to start off with. One of the main attractions is the international food tent but I didn't find there was as much choice as there used to be. Still some variety but not as much as it used to be and mostly the vendors were selling "meals" rather than little samples. I didn't see the barbeques anywhere either and assumed they were not there so that was another strike against it. I had some authentic Mexican food (not spicy) and some Indian curry.

I stopped to watch some dancers on stage but unfortunately they were not that good. I didn't think so anyway. They were from South America in the Andes, or representing that area, I should say. Now I know most of these dance groups are not professionals but many of them do dance for lots of recitals and come across as very professional and very good. This first group was not in that class. It felt more like a group of women in a family or a group of friends all decided that's what they were going to do and did up costumes. The dancing wasn't really good and one of the dances, a "flirtation" type dance, had two women performing, one dressed as a man with a moustache pencilled on her face. The woman that they had introducing each dance did not speak Spanish so her pronounciation was all over the map. It annoyed me so i walked back to the tents where the exhibitions/vendors were to have a look. Very nice things, most of it for sale of course. At the back of the two long tents i saw...... the barbeques! Doh! After i'd already eaten! I walked around a bit more, went to see if there were any other dancers on stage, (there weren't, the Latin America ones were still faffing about) and decided i'd had enough. Shame really, because i've seen some wonderful performers in the past.

As i was handy and as it was free entry on Canada Day, i went to the Pier 21 immigration museum. Halifax was the arrival point for immigrants to Canada between 1928 and 1971. They arrived by ship and dispersed across the country by rail from there. The complex contained an arrivals hall, luggage hall, rail ticket and waiting area, and also things like interview rooms, a place to have someone's general health checked out, etc. During the war, the troop ships left from this pier and after the war, ships bringing the War Brides started arriving. Immigrants arrived from all over the world. The museum tells the stories of the immigrants and the people that worked there. There are artifacts, recorded stories, and lots of things. The museum is on the waterfront and you can look over the outer harbour from the tall windows. Earlier in the morning they'd had a ceremony to create some new Canadian Citizens. They do that every year.

I was hot and tired and footsore from there so i got the bus home. I had planned to go back out in the evening to listen to some of the free music and see the fireworks but once i got home i basically just wilted. I think i was dehydrated to some extent and did feel better after re-liquifying but i just didn't bother to go out again.

Today was another beautiful day. I had plans to meet with my friend T. and her family to go over to the Halifax Common to see the Mi'kmaq Powwow, called Mawio'mi which means The Gathering. They had a Grand Entrance with lots of different people, all ages, all dressed up in full costume and they danced around a circle for awhile to various songs. There were drummers/singers to the sides who were providing the music. The bands were all announced as their representatives entered. We got there fairly late so we didn't get a chance to get a seat on the bleachers but we squeezed in on one side. Thus, most of those photos tended to be of their backs going in the circle. The music is eerie but rhythmic, notes soaring high above the thrumming of the drums. We watched that for awhile and then I went for a walk with T's little boy who is a very active 7 or 8 i think. We went over by the big teepees set up as a village. They had some demonstrations in them for various crafts like beading and basket weaving. Most of the teepees were just canvas and plain but one was decorated with various paintings. T. caught up with us and we went back to find her fella. We left the boy with him and went for a browse along the vendor craft tents. There were lots of interesting items there, from hand made jewelry to the various implements that the performers and dancers would have for their costumes and performances. ... drums, bells, hoops, furs, headpieces. We saw some change purses and a bag the size of a small backpack made of turtle shells on the outside, with sueded leather behind it.

T. had told me about the Indian "tacos" that she had there last year, said they were really good but when we found the food vendors, the prices were stupidly high, 10 dollars for one! I wasn't paying that no matter how good they were! Back to the performance circle, it was nearly over but we managed to get seats this time. The drummers were right in front of us and performed a number for a "hoop" dance. There were young people dancing on the field with hoops but i never saw them, i was too interested in the drummers. They sit in a circle and pound on the drums and sing... well it's kind of howl really at the top of their voices, but it's amazing stuff. The drumming itself is more or less just a rhythm to keep time with just a few variations.

There are photos and a few videos on Flickr here.
( a few photos behind the cut )

Out and about today took Mom and I to the new Seafront Market, first. It's in an old warehouse on the south end of the waterfront. This area has been rejuvenated in recent years. The Pier 21 museum is here, telling the history of the immigration to Canada for much of the 20th century though Pier 21 in Halifax. There is now a venu that is often used for music and concerts. In another of the old "pier" warehouses, the Art College has moved in and built light, airy studios and classrooms and now the old Farmer's Market has mostly moved into a new building as well. I say "most" because not all of the vendors decided to make the move from the old Keith's Brewery where all the little rooms and spaces with the stone walls and low ceilings really made you think you were back a century. But the throngs of people just couldn't get through and the market was over crowded. I think there was some bad feeling or politics there, and not everyone agreed with the move. Most went, a few stayed but i think they're fighting a losing battle.

Anyway, the new market is still crowded but everything is on one main floor. The second floor has mostly crafts and artwork and there will be a third floor as well but it's not ready yet. This time of year, there's lots of produce. There is also cheese, meat, fish, sausages, sweets, homemade jams, wines and bakery goods. There's cooked foods, too, so you can grab some lunch and try something new.

We went to lunch at Smitty's after that and when we were done, we walked across the street to Victoria Park, a long, narrow greenspace near the Public Gardens. All this was part of the original Common land in Halifax but has got chipped away over the centuries. Today, there was a classic car show in the park and along part of one of the streets. And oh, i do love the old cars! It's a photographer's dream, as you would expect. It's not even the whole car i like to photograph, i like to get details, like wheels, ornamental decoration, reflections, all that sort of thing. There was also a large group of British Cars from the people that belong to a British Automobile Association. Jaguars, MGBs, Triumphs, and they had a Rolls Royce and a Daimler as well as a Sunbeam Tiger and a Mini, of course! Lots of other cars on display too including a 1927 Bugatti Roadster. Here's a taste and here's an album on Facebook. I think you can see that as i made it viewable to everyone.

You either love them or you hate them. High school reunion season is upon us. My high school years at Dartmouth High were three enjoyable years. I made lots of friends, was involved with the yearbook and generally just had fun. I got my first taste of the travel bug on a senior year tour to Rome, Paris and the French Riviera. I had some really good teachers and a couple of crap ones. No school bus for us, we were in inner city school and walked there mostly, though we could take a city bus. We never seemed to do that though. I worked part time at a department store in the local mall for my pin money. I even had a credit card for the store where i worked, though it had to be cosigned by my parents as i was under 18. I had a 300 dollar limit! I mainly used it for things like a new mattress and a new camera and school supplies and as i worked there, i could pay it off easily.

With the onset of Facebook, someone started a buzz about a reunion. It evolved into a reunion for anyone that went to DHS between 1970 and 1980 and we're now calling it That 70s Reunion (after the sitcom That 70s Show). All the organizing is done and it's all happening over the next few days. There's a golf tournament, a fun run/walk on Saturday morning, a harbour cruise tomorrow and tonight is a Monty Python night. There was a Monty club for a few years in the late 70s. Much mayhem ensued. The boys in our group started the club with a teacher sponsor who was not long out of university himself. He also coached the boys' (ice) hockey team and was nicknamed Mad Dog (Rick Swan). Perfect sort to be the staff sponsor for the Pythonites. The girls in our group joined the club to hang out with the boys of course! The boys put on skits in assemblies and were very good at it, too. I can remember stomachs aching and tears streaming, we laughed so hard. So tonight, a meet and greet, a few skits and then we'll watch Holy Grail and probably something else. I likely won't stay to the end as i do have to work tomorrow but it'll be good.

I'm also going on the harbour cruise tomorrow afternoon though the weather looks a bit iffy at the moment. The boat has an inside as well as an upper outside deck, though, so it won't matter if it rains a bit. I think we're getting the worst of the rain today. Saturday night is the finale, a big dance. I think they have over 400 going so far.

A lot of people don't like reunions, they feel self conscious about their appearance or their lives. Maybe they didn't have much fun in school and really hated it. Maybe they didn't get to know too many other people. There will be lots there i don't know but maybe i'll meet a few new people. Never a bad thing to make a new friend or two. And we all have at least one thing in common, we went to the same school and had a lot of the same teachers.

There's been a Facebook group set up for yonks and there have been a lot of diverse people posting there about their lives, their successes and their challenges. One man had a really rough time of it most of his life but seems to have come out the other side. Brave of him to talk about it and reach out, too. Most people have had similar experiences, one or more careers, one or more marraiges, one or more kids. Oh one recent claim to fame that i found out, the guy that produces the Twilight movies, Bill Bannerman is a DHS alumnus who has flown in for the reunion. He's also done a lot of directing as well. I think i went to school with his younger brother. Or at least he was at DHS when i was, though maybe he was a tad older.

I remember a lot more people than i actually knew. Being on the yearbook committee you see lots and lots of photos of people, classes, committees, clubs, sports teams. You feel almost like you knew these people when they weren't actually ever in your classes or clubs etc. There's always the people that everyone knew, of course, the school student council folk, the ones that organized and participated in all the social activities, the jocks, and the troublemakers too. Our school also put on a musical production every year and did it very well, too. Those artistic and musical folk would get well known also.

Anyway it all kicks off tonight.

Now where did i put my handkerchief? Just kidding. I only ever wore a knotted hankie once, to a hockey game and wouldn't you know it? That was the one time it was captured on film and put in the yearbook! Aggh!

It's been a full day. I did drag myself to the gym but the whole workout was a struggle this time around. I don't know why but i did finish.
Got my hair highlighted and coloured and cut and it feels so much nicer.
Went and picked up some groceries and i still need to put them away but i had to download the new Doctor Who first and watch it.

And speaking of which...
( New Who )

Apparently, the local mall is heaving with people and the traffic coming and going is beyond belief. No surprise there. One week before Christmas? I wouldn't go near there today for any amount of money. I bet the WalMart is equally bad. Sis's fella, Rick, came over and fixed my kitchen light so now i have brightness and can see! Yes, i could get the building people to do it but the thing is, the light fixture that was there before and that broke isn't theirs, it was one Dad put up for me. I kept the original one and that's the one Rick put back up. I'll have to patch a couple of holes where the old screws were and then maybe i'll repaint the ceiling. Mom has some leftover i think i could probably use. It's a very small kitchen.

Rick dropped me down to the local grocery story (not at the mall!) and the parking lot was quite full. There are other stores in that little shopping centre but i figured most of the traffic would be in the grocery store, A. because of impending Christmas and B. there's supposed to be a storm tomorrow and people go nuts stocking up even though it's only one day of bad weather. Anyway. All those people for all those cars? No idea where they were because they weren't in the grocery store. It was not busy at all! It was after 3 p.m . but that isnt' all that late. Had a nice chat with my friendly neighbourhood produce manager, an old school friend of mine and picked up what i needed. I'd forgotten my list but there were only two things i missed off it and neither are needed right now. I'll have to go back again this week as I'm expecting those new tops to arrive and the post office is also in the same place. I'll pick up what i need then. If i remember.

Still cold today but no wind so it feels warmer. Getting warmer is probably the indication that the snow is on its way. I can make candy tomorrow and get the laundry done. I also am going to try out a Jamie Oliver recipe for Pork Vindaloo (curry). Nom!

There's one very large oil rig moored in the harbour and i can see it from the window at work. There's another one just down a ways which i can't see from said window. I took a couple of sunrise shots of it this morning and planned to take the ferry home after work to take some pics of it in the daylight. Luck stayed with me and it was a really nice sunny day. The big-ass one is the Rowan Gorilla, one of the largest rigs in the world and is used for deep sea stuff. I think it's off to the Hibernia oil fields off Newfoundland from here. The other is Seajack Kraken, a lower platform rig. As you can see, it's pretty freakin' big too as judged by comparison with the little blue sailboat next to it, but the Gorilla is about three times that size. You can see a panorama of the harbour showing both rigs here to give you an idea and there's a full album of photos on Facebook here. There are more photos in that album than just the rig, i also took some photos of the pretty trees behind the parking lot at the bus terminal. Sadly they will mostly be mowed under since there is going to be a larger bus terminal built there soon. I thought it was supposed to be under way by now but obviously not.



( two more behind the cut )

After the hurricane breezed by  us the other day, the weather really has changed. It was a lovely day today but the temp didn't hit much above 20 and the breeze was chilly! It'll be cool for sleeping tonight at least. End of August, the nights do start getting cooler but it happened so quickly. We've really had a crap summer. August was an improvement over July and the last week or so was quite warm and humid but aside from the occasional hot, sunny day in July, that was about it. The last really good summer we had was 10 years ago, that was the summer we were on strike! 11 weeks! The whole summer was absolutely gorgeous, too! Too bad we weren't getting paid!

I actually took today off to go to an appointment that was in the middle of the day but as luck would have it, i didn't really sleep in that long this morning and i was awake and up by 7:30. Ah well. And it's always the way, when you have to be somewhere, that things out of your control mean you could be late. Traffic. Bus gets stuck in traffic due to construction. Grrnrnhhh... But i was only a few minutes late. It was the doctor's office and she's always running late so i figured i wouldn't miss my appointment. I only had to wait about 10 minutes which was exemplary for her.  Picked up a few groceries on the way home. Why do they always stuff the fabric shopping bags with so much! They are good for carrying heavy stuff but you can only carry so much! It's like they assume everyone has a car, rather than slogging the bags on the bus. Even if that's true, you still have to be able to get them out of the car and into the house.  Even though i took a taxi back, it was still awkward and difficult to get the stuff in because of the weight on my fingers. Mom has bought one of those little shopping trolley carts for getting her stuff from the car to the house. 

not sure what i'm doing this weekend. Maybe, if the weather looks ok, going to Truro for the last day of the Nova Scotia Exhibition. Never been before and it isn't that far away. They have farm stuff and crafts and activities and lots of things to do and see. If not, Sis and i planned to go to a movie, we can always do that Sunday if she's free. We'll see how the weather goes. We won't want to go to the Ex if it's going to be miserable. Some of it is indoors but you still need to get around from building to building.