February 3, 2014
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Blogroll is back

Thanks to those of you who ventured an opinion on this. I’ve brought back my blogroll. I edited it back severely and I hope that’s OK. If your blog isn’t there, it’s likely because you’re not blogging with any regularity, and if I keep a list of links I want it to be current. If your blog was there before and isn’t now, and you’re regularly blogging, drop me a note and I’ll add you back. If I don’t visit your blog, I’m not about to add it, so please don’t ask. Now that the blogroll is back, I won’t be able to resist building it up some, so expect to see some new blogs there in the coming weeks.

While I was in there messing about with the blog, I also added a header image, just for fun.

February 3, 2014
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The Great Upheaval

Today we visited the Art Gallery of Ontario, along with some wonderful company, to see The Great Upheaval – Masterpieces from the Guggenheim Collection, 1910-1918.

There are plenty of really good paintings to see there – and today there were plenty of people too. I’m happy to see so many people out at the art gallery. Curiously, the exhibition, which features art that was a “great upheaval” in its time is today safe as a church.

I’ve been looking at art for most of my adult life and these artists are mostly familiar to me. I had not previously considered though, just how pervasive cubism was to the leading artists of the day – the phrase that escaped my mouth at the exhibition was “tyranny of cubism”. It doesn’t seem so revolutionary today.

In fact the works I liked best in the exhibition were paintings that were not related to cubism at all, such as Oskar Kokoshka’s The Knight Errant, and some excellent Kandinsky paintings.

I found myself interested in some of the early paintings by artists who later gained their stride with a mature style much different than the works in this exhibition, not so much because the early work was any great shakes as much as because those works reveal a little about how those artists got where there were going.

The Great Upheaval contains quite a few gems and is well worth seeing. Before leaving, we headed downstairs for a look at the Thomson collection of ship models. It’s the only collection of ship models I can recall ever seeing. I quite like them in the same way I like model railroads. I appreciate the obsessiveness of the modelling, and the splendid attention to detail.

When we left the AGO, we walked over to Sin & Redemption for beer and dinner. I totally enjoyed my Bavarian sausages and frites, and the beer was tasty too.

Filed under: Art
February 2, 2014
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Careful what you eat…

Somebody landed on this blog today after searching “can mushrooms give upset tummy.”

Yes, mushrooms can give upset tummy. Some wild mushrooms found in Ontario can make you very sick and some others can kill you dead dead dead dead dead.

During mushroom season, I post about picking wild mushrooms regularly and try to regularly add in a warning. Still I worry. I have seen people in the woods convince themselves that very difficult to identify mushrooms are safe to eat. They might get lucky, but then again they might not.

I’m very conservative when it comes to picking mushrooms for the table. “Pretty sure” just doesn’t cut it. I’ve been trying to identify mushrooms for a few years now. I know a bunch of them very well but there are many more that I really can’t identify accurately. I work at getting better at identification. I’ve read some books and I’ve even taken one course – but as I’ve said, I’m very conservative about what I eat. I suggest you should be too.

Please be very sure about your identification before you eat any wild mushrooms.

February 2, 2014
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Blogroll

As regular visitors know, I had a blogroll here for years until I switched to a “shelf” format for a while, a format that did not support one. I’ve had mixed feelings about the current value of blogrolls. I find that on most blogs they are hopelessly out of date and don’t really reflect the places the blogs’ owners visit. On my own blog, when I took mine off, I had a closer look and realized that many of the blogs I linked to were no longer active. I would say disappearing blogs has been a general trend, at least among bloggers I’ve followed over the years.

Along the way I packed in the shelf format. I liked it at first but there were problems with it that turned out to outweigh the advantages – so I’ve reverted to a more standard blogging format. When I adopted the latest format, I didn’t even think about establishing a new blogroll and nobody has mentioned it to me – that is until today.

Today I received an email from a fellow who had some kind words about my blog, but who lamented the fact that I had no blogroll. He suggested I start one. Well, OK, somebody out there cares and I’m paying attention. This is what I’ll do. If I receive 8 comments on this blog (no, comments on Facebook don’t count) from (8 different) bloggers who say yay to a blogroll here on 27th Street, I’ll start one up and do my best to maintain it better than I have in the past. If not, I’ll assume there is limited value to having one and I’ll carry on without.

February 2, 2014
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Book Box refreshed

One of our most excellent neighbours came by a few days ago and dropped off a bag of books for the book box. I replaced some of the books that have been in there for some time with new ones…..so if you haven’t been by the book box on 27th Street for a while, it’s open all winter and we have some new books available.

The rules are…wait, there aren’t any rules. Take books if you like. Add books if you like. You can borrow books and return them or keep them or give them away or do what you like. We have more books available now than the box will hold, so we’re planning a second box for spring.

If anyone has any good book box making materials such as a cabinet that closes that we can somehow make mostly waterproof, stop by and let’s talk. This is a community project and participation is welcome.