Jerry

RIP Walter Koenig, who passed away at age 90, forever Chekhov from the original Star Trek. I will always remember the tragedy of his son’s suicide in Stanley Park and the Koenigs’ journey to Vancouver to find him and bring him home.

It’s great that this work is being reissued, but does anyone have thoughts about Art’s use of AI for a portion of the book’s cover image? Is that tech part of the ironic commentary I’m missing…? www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/...

It’s great to see building proposals like this come forward!

John and I voted in the provincial election today. Our polling station is located directly across the street! I was given a nifty “I Voted” sticker upon exiting.

I’m reading John Geiger’s Quest, the story of Sir Ernest Shackleton’s last ship. It eventually sank off the coast of Labrador; Geiger and a team located the wreck.

Looking towards Coquitlam

I’ve previously visited Coasters in New Westminster and it’s great to see that they opened a new location not too far from me (it’s at 29th/Rupert) in east Vancouver! The space is lovely and they serve the excellent coffee roasted by Agro Roasters.

I took John to the ER at Mt Saint Joseph Hospital; he had a cyst removed and feels much better. Bonus: lunch at Omnitsky’s Kosher Deli just around the corner on Fraser St! Montreal smoked meat is sold out today so I’m having pastrami on rye.

I’m reading the very good new nonfiction book by James Marriott : The New Dark Ages. As a person who loves books I hope that the decline in reading will be reversed. As I’ve pointed out elsewhere: reading rates are higher here in Canada than in the States.

Kaboodles Toy Store on Cambie St is advertising the “poop song” on their sandwich board. But the drawing- to me- looks like whipped cream (atop a beverage). Lesson: careful choice of colour will eliminate ambiguity! 🤪

I’m about to finish The Vanishing Family by Robert Kolker. This excellent book follows a large family impacted by FTD (frontotemporal dementia), a condition that robs the afflicted of their emotions and personalities when they are in their 40s.

Happy Thanksgiving! (Comic by Liz Climo)

The Victoria Times-Colonist has interviewed an adult female black bear. Here’s the interview: www.timescolonist.com/opinion/char...

Maybe it’s time to retire the word “woke” from political discourse. The dictionary definition would apply to historical ppl widely NOT considered “woke” (MLK Jr, Nelson Mandela etc). And it’s usually deployed as a pejorative against ppl who don’t use the term for themselves.

Does anyone ever feel like they stick out in group settings?

I bought Rufus Wainwright’s 1998 debut CD after its release. It sounded like nothing on the radio at the time and it has aged better than most or its contemporaries. “Imaginary Love” is an excellent composition with great lyrics, melody, & harmonics. m.youtube.com/watch?v=hI1A...

Congrats to Anne Carson for becoming the second Canadian (after Alice Munro) to win the Nobel Prize in Literature! globalnews.ca/news/1209246...

My current read: Bill McKibben’s look at the phenomenal growth of solar energy as a percentage of new power capacity and how this transition might help us avoid some of the worst effects of climate change in the coming years.

Tomorrow is 10/7, a solemn day as it is the anniversary of 1200 innocent ppl in 🇮🇱 being killed by Hamas terrorists. Most were Jews; some were Muslim or members of other faiths. Women were brutally raped and hostages were taken, tortured, and killed. 😔

RIP Eva Marie Saint; she has died of Natural Causes at age 102. www.theguardian.com/film/2026/oc...

Tucker Carlson suggests Hitler’s 1939 invasion was somehow justified. Tucker Carlson is vile.

My weekend read is Anna Seghers’ Blood Money, her 1933 novel translated from German to the English for the first time (this year) by Lucy Jones. Like her novel The Seventh Cross, this is a panoramic look at a Rhineland village and a man on the run from fascism.

Arthur Roberts has been sentenced to 8 months of Jail for defacing a synagogue in Victoria with hateful messaging. www.ctvnews.ca/vancouver/ar...

Sometimes I feel my phone is listening to me by tailoring ads that dovetail with recent in-person conversation. Then, at other times, I’m served ads for new apartment buildings in cities like Toronto and Halifax…

Fall is a lovely time of year.

My current read is The Unfinished Metropolis, Benjamin Schneider’s passionate plea for more/affordable housing, better transit/bike/pedestrian infrastructure, and “jobs of the future” in American cities.

I heard Harry Chapin’s 1974 hit “The Cats in the Cradle” for the first time in years today at a cafe. Though I dislike the music, the lyrics really grabbed me and I cried a little when I left… 😔

It’s a good day to have lunch in the food hall at Lonsdale Quay Market.

Years ago I purchased numbered serigraph 4/12 of Canadian abstract artist Helen Piddington’s “Away and Beyond.” It was an unexpected purchase at a charity sale: I paid just $20 without knowing the artist and it turns out that her work is in the National Gallery of Canada.

I’m reading Lady L, a 1958 novel by French writer Romain Gary that he originally wrote in English (and translated back to French). These Penguin Archive editions are beautiful…

Well today I found out I don’t have prostate cancer; two weeks ago I found out I didn’t have colon cancer. So September is a good month.

Though I’m not Jewish, my maternal grandmother was partially descended from Spanish Sephardic Jews who were forced to convert to Catholicism by Spain’s government (my other 3 grandparents were of English and Irish descent). #antisemitism was real back then and it’s real today.

I accompanied a friend who wanted to look at a few properties today in the West End of downtown Vancouver today. I took some pictures from the viewing deck at one of the buildings we visited; despite some haze it was a beautiful afternoon.

Today my partner has an appointment at the Eye Care Centre, an unapologetically Brutalist building near Vancouver General Hospital.

I like Leonard Bernstein, but I’m puzzled by his 1982 recording of Elgar’s Enigma Variations. The tempo is very slow: “Nimrod” exceeds 6 minutes whilst most other recordings/conductors finish it in 4 to 4 1/2 minutes…

$4 million in humanitarian aid - half of it coming from Robert Kraft, the stadium owner - will actually help people in Gaza more than Macklemore’s stage speeches.

RIP Annie Dillard

Today I’ll finish reading The Typewriter and the Guillotine. Written by Vancouver-based Mark Braude, it’s the story of Janet Flanner- a 🏳️‍🌈 New Yorker magazine correspondent living in Paris in the 1930s- and a German serial killer she eventually wrote about.

The new-ish EY Tower reminds me of a slightly askew Rubik’s Cube…

Fast Iron Cleaners, located inside the Royal Centre in downtown Vancouver, wants its customers to be dirty!

My grandmother was born on this day in 1927 and she died on this day (hear birthday) in 2015. She is not forgotten.

Bears are my favourite animals, so I love the theme of this new cafe in Vancouver. Alas, I wish they had not used GenAI to advertise their food; the images look very unappetizing (note the Persian Herb Frittata at lower right).

The Finnish artist Tove Jansson was most famous for the Moomins but she did so much other art & wrote some great fiction too. She was also a 🏳️‍🌈 person who lived life on her own terms; the world is still catching up to her…

To anyone who says that GHP-1 drugs (Ozempic, Wegovy, etc) are “genociding fat people”: 1) You disrespect victims & survivors of real genocides in Rwanda, Europe (Shoah), etc. 2) You disrespect science just like RFK Jr & his ilk. 3) You don’t really care about bodily autonomy.

I’m reading Serena Kutchinsky’s *Kutchinsky’s Egg*, the story of how family built a successful London jewellery business only to lose it when her father built the world’s largest jewelled egg in 1990z. Serena is a journalist and this book is a great read so far…

Mahler never crossed into atonality, but there is enough dissonance in his Symphony #9 that it feels eerily prophetic in hindsight.

The onset of a cold and accompanying runny nose has interrupted my long weekend plans (I surrendered my ticket to see Odyssey in 70mm IMAX tonight, and my Saturday activities are scuttled too). Hopefully rest & medicine will quickly restore me to a normal state.

Here’s the 1965 Grade 12 reading list for Mater Christi HS (now St John’s Prep) in Astoria, Queens. It’s fascinating to think of the literary “canon” and its mutations/permutations over time…