I enjoy playing this tune on my piano accordion, even if it still gives me trouble.
Let’s start off with a uke version….
And how can I resist a tuba and matching outfits?
Blind Lemming Chiffon?
Un simpatico Medley guidato dal famoso Sailor’s Hornpipe
And of course, on squeezebox….
The other day Peter Kuitenbrouwer wrote an interesting article in the National Post about an idea to make a steel roof over the Gardiner Expressway here in Toronto, covered by cement and soil to form a 7 kilometer linear park. For those who have never been to Toronto, the Gardiner is a problematic chunk of roadway. It divides our downtown from the lake, but at the same time provides automobile access to the centre of the city.
There are those who think we ought to simply destroy the Gardiner and replace it with nothing. The piece at the east end of the roadway has in fact already been removed, and I don’t see a huge difference in terms of traffic issues. By that I mean traffic was bad at rush hour before it was removed and is still bad at rush hour. At other times, it seems just fine. Still, I suspect trashing the highway completely would cause chaos.
Kuitenbrouwer’s article speaks to a plan that keeps the Gardiner in place, but covers it over, making for a parkland roof. Why is it I suspect that the park would never happen if there were any development opportunities. Condos over the Gardiner? Given that our politicians have allowed developers to build condos along the prime stretch of our waterfront with abandon, I have have no faith in their ability to protect any parkland at all.
Building a roof over the Gardiner would be expensive:
$508M Estimate by Michael Barker of Altus Helyar, a quantity surveying company, of the cost of building a green roof over the Gardiner. He did not include HST, and said soft costs would add 20% to the price tag.
As we have seen time after time, nothing ever comes in at the estimated cost. Add in the HST and the so-called soft costs, and take into account materials shortages, labour disputes, weather, technical challenges and so on, and figure on double the price.
We had a little idea a while back, when Anchovy World Headquarters was located in its previous location on Blackthorn Ave., to do a renovation that included an extended basement. Our idea was to extend the basement out under the patio, and basically cover it over. This would have given us an additional basement room without eating up more garden space. When we priced it out though, this proved to be a prohibitively expensive part of the reno plan. All the contractors we talked to suggested that they could give us a much better price if we would drop this part of the plan. This was just a small area. Imagine covering over 7 kilometers of expressway. The technical and cost challenges must be astronomical. Imagine also what the construction will do to the city. Just building a few kilometers of Light Rail Transit lines has thrown the St. Clair area into chaos – for years now.
Still, I think this is healthy debate. I’m sure there will be some who will be quick to post a comment suggesting we simply all stop driving tomorrow, but it is going to be quite some time before that happens. (One look in the suburbs around Toronto bears this out. The burbs are designed to driving. Shopping is in malls and complexes of box stores. Restaurants are chains located among the box stores). Leaving the Gardiner as is may not be a good plan either. I wonder if the candidates for the mayor gig in 2010 will come up with some suggestions?
Har! Look at the cute little dog under the bench. Where did he come from?
Lately, I’ve had my Carolina Chocolate Drops CD playing in the car wherever I go. Since this excellent banjo/fiddle combo has been on my mind, I thought it must be time to post some samples here. I have posted their music before, back on the old blog, so some of you may have heard them there. They play traditional music of a style I guess you might call African-American stringband music. They’ve been playing together since 2005 and feature Rhiannon Giddens, Dom Flemons, and Justin Robinson.
Here’s an excellent piece about the group from Steve Kimbrell and Michigan Television • WFUM TV-28
Here they are playing with their mentor, Joe Thompson playing John Henry.
Here’s Sourwood Mountain.
And one more that everyone knows…Salty Dog
Early this morning, we watched Clerks on dvd. Clerks is the 1994 film by Kevin Smith. It was shot for $27,575 in black & white. The film is about Dante, a clerk in a convenience store and his buddy, video store clerk Randal. They’re really bad retail clerks stuck in jobs they don’t care about. The film is very funny, punctuated with plenty of bizarre and absurd bits, annoying customers and a certain slacker angst. A fun way to start the day.
…for guys named after forest products. First we hear about the mess Tiger Woods has found himself in, and then we hear of the arrest of 62 year old Rolling Stones guitarist, Ronnie Wood, for allegedly assaulting his 21 year old girlfriend. What’s next?
I’ve been playing the game of Go for quite a long time now, since sometime in the mid-80’s. Early on, I was playing chess with my friend Vox and we started adding Go to the mix, playing some chess followed by a game of Go. Eventually, the chess faded away in the face of the delicious, mind-bending complexity and poetry of Go. We’ve since played thousands of games against one another. I’ve had other opponents, and for a while played at a Go club too, but the ongoing Go battle Vox and I have enjoyed has been epic.
There have been various times when one or the other of us has taken strides forward in the game and started winning consistently. At one point, Vox pushed ahead and forced me to accept handicap stones – up to 4 of them. What an indignity! Handicap stones provide extra stones on the board to start the game, but at specific points, known as star points. They can be very powerful, I’ve learned, once you figure out how to use them to your advantage. It took me a dreadfully long time to figure this out, but once I did, the handicap dropped away, and it became clear that Vox could not give me stones and expect to win more than occasional games.
Over the summer, we reached a point where neither of us could afford even a little mistake. We’ve been remarkably evenly matched. Last night, we played four games. I won three of them, but one of those was by the barest of margins – half a point after komi. Last night’s games were lively, scrappy matches. We’re both struggling to get ahead, and that often leads to making over-plays, unreasonable, pushy moves that will win the game if you’re allowed to get away with it. We punished one another severely last night with this kind of play. In one game, I trapped a significant group of Vox’s stones, and was feeling very proud of myself, when Vox demonstrated to me that I had another, larger group that was weak and struggling for air. I could not save them, and to win, I had to de-stabilize and kill another group on the board. There was some potential, or aji, as we call it in more than one area, but careful play by Vox silenced my attacks and I lost the game as my large group perished.
In another of the games last night, Vox tried to limit my potential territory by playing stones near my strength. His idea was to try to play lightly and create living shape in an area I wanted as territory. We call this making sabaki. He played too near my strength though and I punished him by splitting his groups, isolating them and attacking in multiple areas. It seemed inevitable that his defences would give out somewhere and they did, as I made some good kills for an easy win.
I may have had a successful night last night, but Vox will be concocting his revenge for next time out.
AKA Ramblin Jack Elliott
This is a beautiful version of Woody Guthrie’s Pastures of Plenty.
I think I mentioned a while back that I’ve been shedding some of those pesky unwanted pounds. 33 pounds gone so far, and plenty more opportunity abounds. The Creole Shrimp and Fish stew didn’t seem to slow me down.
27th Street 