June 29, 2010
comments 5

Miller wants the feds to pay up

I think Toronto Mayor David Miller is right. The Canadian government should assume full responsibility for damage done during the G20, including compensation for lost revenue to local businesses. Some will say, well who is going to pay, and unfortunately the answer is that we all will. It isn’t as if Prime Minister Harper didn’t expect trouble. He clearly did, spending a $billion on security. It is my view that the federal government is responsible for making things right. We can show our displeasure with Harper’s poor judgement in arranging a G20 Summit in downtown Toronto when we vote him out of office next election.

June 28, 2010
comments 4

LBMs

All these little mushrooms popped up in one of our gardens after the rain. There are perhaps 20 of them. They fall in that broad classification known as LBMs. LBM is a technical mycological term that stands for little brown mushroom, or, in some circles, little boring mushrooms. If you look at the third picture down, you can see a veil or lace-like residue around the edges of the underside of the cap. That suggests to me that these are in the genus Cortinarius, the largest genus of mushrooms. These mushrooms, when young, have a cortina or veil between the stalk and cap. There are a huge number of species in this genus. Many of them are poisonous, and they are hard to identify to species (at least by me). I recall from last year that they have rusty-brown spore prints.

June 27, 2010
comments 2

About the Chemnitzer Concertina

I love the sound of the chemnitzer concertina. One day when I have some extra scratch (think small lotto win), I’d like to find me one of these babies and learn it. I think that since I have some experience on the triple row accordion, which is also a bi-sonoric diatonic instrument I’d be able to pick up the fingering and learn to play it with some effort. There are usually some beauties offered for sale at concertinamusic.com.

June 27, 2010
comment 1

Will they ever learn?

As anyone who has followed the news over the past couple days knows, it has been a violent weekend in Toronto. Although I’m sad that this happened here, I can’t say I’m surprised. The “G” meetings are magnets not just for protesters, but for people hell bent on causing a pile of destruction, hiding among peaceful protesters, baiting police and then blaming them when they do engage. It keeps happening. Spending a billion Canadianos on security didn’t do a thing to stop it

Choosing to hold the G20 in downtown Toronto was poor judgment on the part of Prime Minister Harper. It’s about time our political leaders rethink how to go about getting together without turning our cities into riot grounds.

June 26, 2010
comment 0

Indian Pipe

I’ve started to see Indian Pipe in the forest. This strange plant, also known as the Ghost Plant of the Corpse Plant, has no chlorophyll, the special sauce that makes plants green. These plants have a specific relationship with trees and fungus. Unlike plants with chlorophyll, Indian Pipe can’t make it’s own food. Instead it robs nutrients from mycelia, the thread-like body of a fungus. The fungus in turn has a special relationship with a tree. The fungus and the tree have a mycorrhizal relationship, which means that they help one another achieve nutrients. On the other hand, the Indian Pipe takes but does not give back. The Indian Pipe likes Russula and Lactarium mushrooms, both of which happen to be hosts for the lobster mushroom parasite, hypomyces lactoflorum. That tells me that when I see Indian Pipe, maybe I should be looking carefully for lobsters.