Weekend Pleasures

A beautiful weekend it has been. Friday night we had a violent thunderstorm again with high winds and many trees felled, strangely enough the very old and very large tree, it is at least 90 meters high, at the front of our building on Cartier Street which is full of holes where the squirrels have established homes, stands impervious. I always expect it to come crashing down one fine day and given the size of it, I do not want to be around to see it.

Our summer balcony on the Rideau Canal were we have our meals.

So I walked to Lansdowne Park named after Lord Lansdowne who was Governor General of Canada at the time. I wanted to see this great piece of land return to its park like state. It was originally some 120 years ago well outside the City of Ottawa, a racetrack for thoroughbred horses and a great park for agricultural fairs held every year. Major cities in Canada had them, to help farmers with new implements and show off the best in animal husbandry and farm produce, this included a big flower show. Toronto had the Canadian National Exhibition and Ottawa had the Central Canadian Exhibition. In the last 50 years Landsdowne had become a tawdry place where a carny show was held, the main buildings had become ruined shells even the football stadium was in a ruinous state, no one cared it was mediocre and every year it was a grotesque show to all that a National Capital should not be. A few years ago the City Council finally closed the park down cancelling the Ex which was no longer attracting anyone. It promoted the revival of the whole area, which was now well in the centre of he City a terrible eyesore on the Rideau Canal. This new redevelopment was not achieved without major opposition by the navel gazing gang in the Glebe, privileged upper middle class entitled yuppies who opposed the re-development for the simple reason that it might bring people from other parts of the city to their neighbourhood. The judicial wrangling was carried out to extraordinary length, at one point the media and the police were called out to protect bird nests and squirrels. Committees set up to adopt a squirrel and the CBC even had a campaign on it. For anyone who lives in Ottawa it is well known that squirrels are so numerous that they are a pest we tolerate.

After a multi-year fight the re-development went ahead and the final result is pretty impressive. A new stadium for the new football team called the Red Black, the old Horticultural building has been moved on rails from one end of the park to the other and completely renovated, it is built in the Prairie style school of architecture. A new apple orchard has been planted, there is a new underground garage, the Aberdeen Pavilion known as the Cow Palace has been restored to its former glory, to think that 25 years ago when the current Mayor Jim Watson was just a young councillor, he spear headed the fight to avoid its demolition, good thing he did. Where use to be the old asphalt parking lot is now an immense field of green the size of the one on Parliament Hill, hundreds of trees planted everywhere. There is a large play structure for kids, an artificial skating ring and a new Water Park Sculpture which will be ready in the fall.
It is truly beautiful, it is a real urban park, there are also new shops and 2 condo towers facing Bank street.

New Lansdowne Park 

 The green which use to be a massive parking lot

Modern light sculpture still under construction with the new Stadium behind it

Renovated and re-positioned Horticultural building at Lansdowne Park

The partial view of the apple orchard with the Aberdeen Pavilion in the background, the Farmer's market will be permanently relocated inside the Pavilion in a few weeks.

We also did a bit of cooking this weekend with squash, peaches and tomatoes, apparently Dr. Spo tells me that tomatoes do not grow in Arizona where he lives, poor things, living under the dictatorship of the Tea Party and bourgeois reactionaries. We went to Brewer Park which is located on the Rideau River next to Carleton University Campus, a very nice area of the city that I do not know well. There are lots of nice neighbourhoods in Ottawa, quiet and leafy and this is one of them.

 What would a Farmer's Market be without the bake goods including doughnuts freshly made

I thought of Dr. Spo who is a famous doughnut connaisseur from AZ. That picture is for him.
http://sporeflections.wordpress.com

The Farmer's Martket at Brewer Park is moving, it was only temporarily at this location while the whole of Landsdowne Park was being re-built and re-made into a green area.  In the coming weeks the Farmer's Market will return to Lansdowne Park and will be housed in the Aberdeen Pavilion, a giant place and much more convenient since it will be protected from the elements.

Will's creation an Ontario Peach Schnitz pie 

Some of the variety of tomatoes we bought at Brewer Park to be used in various recipes in the next few days, I think we have about 8 lbs or 4 Kilo in total. 

Aubergines and Patty Pan Squash which will be used in recipes also in the coming days.

A whole pot of fresh garlic about 2 lbs or 1 Kilo of it in total, very fragrant 

Will's famous roasted tomatoes a recipe by Marcella Hazan, wonderful with any meal.

 portion of BC Red Snapper and Rosemary accompanied by Yellow Spaghetti Squash dressed with tomatoes, parsley, Basil, yellow pepper and walnuts

More tomatoes for the spicy tomato soup

Dinner of Shrimp Tempura with roasted tomatoes

We also attended the last lecture of the Gustave Doré Exhibit at the National Gallery of Canada. The lecturer was Dr. Eric M. Zafran the Curator of the Susan Morse Hilles European Art collection at the Wadsworth Atheneum in Hartford Connecticut,  a well known authority on art from Doré to Calder. His lecture was on Doré and the Bible, the artist Gustave Doré illustrated the stories of the Bible and it became a worldwide best-seller in the 19th century. The Bible Society of New York has a large library with many wonderful examples of those bibles which were translated in many languages.
The lecture was as well attended as my own Mercredis Culturels program at the NGC.

I also purchased a few other books on Doré and his illustrations, I also got a book of posters of the First World War 1914-1918, entitled the Art of selling War and a book of Charles Perrault (1628-1703) with comments and notes on his fairy tales with illustrations by Doré. The NGC shop also has a wonderful collection of calendars for 2015 and thinking of how Van Gogh was influenced by Japanese wood block paintings got a calendar on that topic.

War is heck, Prosit!

What is wrong with this picture

by John Cole, Scranton Times Tribune.


Today in Washington DC, on the Mall in front of the Lincoln Memorial, where 47 years ago the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his famous speech, I have a dream, what is being described in European news broadcast as extreme right wing activist who wish for a White Christian America and a whiter White House gathered to protest and listen to speeches.

Fascist leaders 70 years ago made similar speeches in Europe, offering simple solutions to anyone and everyone's problems or perceived problems, always invoking tyranny of Government, freedom and liberty under siege, endangered birth rights. In the USA the Religious Right wing which forms a good 40% of the Republican Party, if not more and the new extremists the Tea Party are the same people who in the past have been against desegregation of schools in the USA, voter registration for blacks, against the abolition of the death penalty, abortions, women's rights, sex education in schools, against all who are not white nor Christians, against other religions, Gay rights, in other words against the advancement of society in general because it attacks, according to them, their rights as White Christians to dominate the political agenda in the USA and control all leavers of society.

It is strange to see a country which loves to tell everyone that it is the land of the Free and the home of the Brave holding such a rally. The message here being delivered by persons like Beck and Palin is simple, we want to deny basic citizens rights to other American citizens we do not like and who in our minds offend us. Beck and Palin and others are not Civil Rights activists and did nothing now or back then, if they were alive in the 1950's and 1960's to support such rights. The extremist Republicans, Abraham Lincoln aside, are not in favor of Civil Rights. Unfortunately the level headed and moderate Republicans are swept aside here as the latest primary results showed.

How can this be in a democracy that one part of the citizens can deny other citizens their rights as citizens. It is not about controlling government excess or stopping tyranny. You have a freely elected Congress and Senate representing the people, that's their job. The extremists would like to deny basic health care to other citizens because they are unable to afford decent care, or deny some citizens the right to marry because the extremists have a fantasy view of marriage inherited from the Victorian era, or deny due process to people who entered the USA without legal means and the list goes on.

To me this is nothing more than the Klu Klux Klan modern version minus the bed sheets. All this opposition to President Obama is simply because he is not white, racism is well and alive in the USA and embraced by scores of White Christian Americans as a virtue.

The debate about the Islamic cultural centre in Manhattan near ground zero is based on ignorance, racism and hate. What if a Mosque is built on ground zero incorporated into the design of the new Freedom tower, it is a place of worship, of prayer to God, the same God of the Old Testament. You do have freedom of religion in the USA, not just freedom to worship Christian values, which by the way are the same as Jewish and Muslim values, as anyone who studied these 3 religions know. No it seems that the White Christians, politicians and commentators on FOX and in other media outlet feel it is OK to vent their ignorance in public if it brings in notoriety, votes, etc...

In the end it is very dangerous for the USA as a democracy and a society, a country deeply in debt to the People's Republic of China, a country which has lost much of its prestige by loosing both in Iraq and now in Afghanistan, a great power on the decline with many of its citizens unable to face reality and what is happening within their own borders.

It is all very sad to see, I only wish that reason prevail in the end, but that is probably wishing for too much.

Conservative

I sort of followed from a distance the whole debate on Health Care in the USA, I am impressed with your President, he is one hell of a good President, I know many people do not like him but I like him a lot. I was impressed with him from the start and with his wife too. Just the way he handles himself and the way he approaches people, you know he is the Head of State but you also sense you can speak with him like a normal person, he will understand what you are saying. From a Foreign Affairs point of view, he is really saving your bacon USA. His demeanour and the way he approaches other Heads of State, small gestures like per example how he greeted Arab Princes with a few words in Arabic pronounced correctly, that goes a very long way. I say wow!
This is why when I hear all the so called conservatives in the Republican camp and the Tea party people with their rantings about socialism and communism and Nazism, etc... They sound so ignorant, they are also what ugly Americans look like, intolerant, arrogant and pushy.
Obama is the personification at least for me of the old fashion American, I use to know, soft spoken, friendly, kind, welcoming and not over-bearing. The passage of this bill on Health Care will no doubt do a lot of good to a lot of people in the USA. The common good that is what democracy is all about, always searching for something that brings the Nation and its people together. To think that some Americans because they have money would deny other less fortunate Americans access to health care, is the opposite of what American values, the ones of the founding fathers stood for, is all about. In any country social cohesion is based on sharing the wealth with all citizens, its equality for all, money should never be the defining element, such a society based on wealth and property and rank is not democratic. The Founding Fathers and the Americans who followed them said a loud NO to this type of Society. It would appear a lot of people have forgotten that today.

This brings me to ask what a real Conservative is, it is a word you hear a lot these days, it seems that conservative stands for me first and the hell with the rest, or only white Christians here and the rest of you are not included. The word has been bastardized by the Republicans and a few loud mouths who blab and blab without thinking.

To me a conservative is a person who adheres to moderate views and prefers tradition and stability in society, preserving established institutions, prefers gradual change. It is not what you see nowadays in the Republican party or in the right or far right. They may say they are conservative but I see more a form of extremism, which could very well lead to social upheaval instead of stability. Advocating violence per example in a protest against Health Care reform is NOT a conservative point of view.

In a civil society, discussion and listening to the other point of view is important for the advancement of ideas and of social change. Refusing to listen or coming to a debate with the idea that I am against it and will not consider any other point of view is not being conservative, it is being close minded. How did so many Americans arrive at this point?

I also think as an observer outside of America, that the fact that Obama is black, has a lot to do with the opposition we see today. It seems to me that a lot of people cannot accept that a black man is the President or that he can lead the Nation to important changes. He will pass into history now as not only the first black President but also as one of the very few President who made an important contribution during his mandate. That rankles a lot of people in America today and it is profoundly sad for such a great Nation.