So many interesting things I should be commenting on, if only to have some trace for my own overburdened memory… Things I’ve been reading, in books and online; events I’ve been able to attend, spoken words, conversations: all ephemera. And yet themes emerge. If there’s a metaphor, maybe it’s that I’m skating not on thin […]
In my last Focus magazine article (just published in the April issue), which was all about downtown Victoria and its development issues, I argued that experts need to make room for engaged and informed non-experts. My argument was informed by Paul Graham‘s essay, The Power of the Marginal. This afternoon, walking the dog, it occured […]
I was going to write “that was easy,” but realised that while it was “easy,” it wasn’t easy. “Clean” more appropriately describes the procedure: surgical, “that’s it, then,” as they put it. I just deleted my flickr account. Now I’m off to the theatre. Am going to see something called [storm], by battery opera of […]
Mobile Gossip Annotated Once again I’m using diigo.com to blog an about an article I read — it’s a nifty feature (and if a reader wants a diigo invite, let me know and I’ll send you one).So, just quickly: I might have an article coming out in the March issue of Focus Magazine (a local […]
The Art Gallery of Greater Victoria has an exhibition centered on “the Baroque” currently on view. There are a few “old master” paintings (nothing first-rate), some prints & etchings, and then there’s the “Contemporary Baroque” piece of it, featuring the work of a single local artist (not well-known) as well as the (infamously known — […]
On Jan.8, J.C. Scott, a local designer who has “an upcoming role promoting arts and culture through Tourism Victoria,” mused in the local paper about how Victoria might go about being “in search of our cultural mark” (that was the title of the article). He used the article to think out loud about how we […]
The 13th annual Victoria Independent Film & Video Festival (VIFVF) runs this year from Feb.2-11. The organisers put the “My Victoria” short entries on YouTube. Of the 3 or 4 I’ve watched, I really liked Rachel Smyth’s ironically titled “My Victoria?” (Click the title to go straight to the video on YouTube.) This little movie […]
I subscribe to OpenDemocracy, but lately I often find myself clicking through the articles without paying too much attention. Too much party line, too familiar a frame, nothing to see: move along. I guess I’m getting crotchety about politics as my age settles increasingly into that middle part. But today I clicked through to Mark […]
Unexpectedly, an Amazon shipment of books arrived today, in time for birthday stuff, including the very weighty New York 2000: Architecture and Urbanism from the Bicentennial to the Millennium, by Robert A.M. Stern, David Fishman, and Jacob Tilove. It’s a tremendous resource and will go some way toward making up for not travelling to NYC […]