Random things I saw in Toronto

More random than usual -- just some streetscapes from a chilly city.

Saturday reflections

It's been a long time since I posted a Geometries shot, but I think these stairs reflected in the square windows on Dundas Street in Toronto would qualify.

Urban poetry

The Hockey Hall of Fame (or, in French, Le Temple de la renommée du hockey) in downtown Toronto. This building doesn't exactly scream “hockey” to me -- the building used to be the Bank of Montreal -- but it definitely looks like a temple.

Astronomy Tuesday

This is NGC 6995, the Bat Nebula. I think I see a bat, though it looks more like Batman to me.

Image Credit and Copyright: Josep Drudis

Life drawing

This was possibly my favorite thing at the AGO -- they had easels and a model available for sketching. I am not sure who, or what, that model is supposed to be, but anyone willing to go shirtless in Toronto in November certainly has enough courage to pose for strangers.

AGO arches

I loved the architecture in the AGO as much as the art. Here are some of the arches, in black and white.

Your looks are laughable, unphotographable

Bonus reflections.

Let's Survive Forever is an infinity mirrored room  by Yayoi Kusama at the AGO.

You have to make a reservation, and when I showed up at my reserved time, I got bumped to the front of the line because I was solo, paired up with another woman. There's a maximum of four people allowed inside at any time, but our group was just the two of us. First we had to divest, like supplicants at the altar of art, leaving purses and coats in a box. Then the young man with a stopwatch knocked on the door to notify the previous group that their time was up, and we were shut inside for our sixty second visit.

I did take pictures, and they were mostly useless -- it's really just a mirrored room, with mirrored balls on the floor and ceiling, but I laughed out loud when I walked in because it was just so fun.

This was the one thing worth photographing -- a column in the middle of the room that created an apex of all the reflections. Still makes me smile.

Saturday reflections

Another look at that Toronto sunrise, reflected on the buildings downtown.

More urban poetry

I did actually have one day of sun in Toronto, but this picture of the CN Tower is more typical of what I saw there.

Urban poetry

A pay phone in downtown Toronto. There was a Santa Claus parade on a nearby street, which may be why this graffiti looked rather jolly to me.

Astronomy Tuesday

The tiny black speck is Mercury, making its transit across the Sun last week.

I transited my way back to New York this afternoon. Toronto was fun, but I didn't take that many pictures. I'll post some more this week.

Image Credit and Copyright: John Chumack

Sunrise

This sunrise from my hotel room this morning has a whiff of Mordor about it -- those smokestacks in the distance! But we're going to have some distinctly un-Mordor snow this afternoon.

That's Lake Ontario behind the buildings.

Angels

Another unexpected treat at the AGO: I didn't make it to Ethiopia a few years ago, so I'd never seen any of their religious art. The exhibit had both Christian art and magic scrolls and they were fascinating. This diptych, from around 1700, shows a collection of archangels who could pass for modern supermodels on their way to a benefit at the Met.

Some of the AGO treasures

Here's something I'd never seen before -- a series of German chalices from around 1600. The ornate metal filigree is typical; what's unusual are the materials used for the cups themselves. The chalices on the left are made from carved coconut shells. The ones on the right are ostrich eggs.

I'm sure that coconuts and ostrich eggs were rare enough in 16th century Europe to be considered precious materials, but it's still jarring to see them mounted like jewels.

Saturday reflections

The very modern facade of the Art Gallery of Ontario (part of a Frank Gehry redesign 10 years ago), reflecting the much less modern facades across Dundas Street.

It was gray and gloomy today and I didn't spend much time outside, just the walk from my hotel to the AGO and back again. But there are worse ways to spend an afternoon than looking at art, and the AGO collection is wonderful.

Toronto

I took this picture as the plane came in for a landing this afternoon.

Friends warned me to expect snow, but I was expecting a little dusting, some slushy gutters, not a Norman Rockwell Christmas card. And downtown, where I'm staying, it is mostly slush. Still, I feel as though the calendar suddenly fast forwarded a couple of months. 

Astronomy Tuesday

“It doesn’t seem to me that this fantastically marvelous universe, this tremendous range of time and space and different kinds of animals, and all the different planets, and all these atoms with all their motions, and so on, all this complicated thing can merely be a stage so that God can watch human beings struggle for good and evil — which is the view that religion has. The stage is too big for the drama.” – Richard Feynman

A beautiful look at the Pleiades, the Seven Sisters (though through the magic of modern astronomy we can see that it's actually a much larger family than the ancient observers suspected.) Fall's careening into winter here which always makes one philosophical, and appreciative of the cycles of life. The universe does something similar, but on a much grander scale. Matter comes together, it glows, it burns, it dances, it dies. Darkness, light, then back to darkness, over and over again.

Image Credit and Copyright: Adam Block, Steward Observatory, University of Arizona

Something there is that doesn't love a wall

In honor of the 30th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, here's a picture of my own small piece of it.

It's small -- only a couple of inches across and maybe an inch thick. I think I paid around $5 for it. It was several years after the wall had come down, but there were still a few sections of it left standing, and young entrepreneurs were breaking off chunks of it and selling pieces, spread out on blankets on the ground.

I picked this piece because I liked the colors -- the paint shows that this was from the western side of the wall, which was covered with art and graffiti. It may have been more expensive than the plain concrete of the eastern side, but that didn't matter; I wanted a painted piece.

I'm glad I did, because the paint still astonishes me all these years later -- those dayglow colors on a relic of such a harsh history.

Sunday bird blogging

This past week was emotionally and physically draining, and I'm happy to spend a gray Sunday afternoon eating chocolate and doing puzzles.

Here's the avian equivalent of chocolate: a tufted titmouse in Central Park. 

Saturday reflections

It was a few degrees below freezing when I woke up this morning and it's only slightly warmer now, so here's a welcome flashback to July, and the Japanese garden in Butchart Gardens in Victoria.

In Memoriam

Appropriately gray skies on a sad and solemn day. This giant flag suspended from fire ladders across Yonkers Avenue yesterday was in honor of John Peteani, a firefighter who worked at Ground Zero and lost his long battle with the cancer he got as a result last Sunday.

The funeral was yesterday, and the police and fire departments of Yonkers and the surrounding communities did a wonderful job honoring his service. I'm tearing up remembering the funeral procession from the church to the cemetery, and how on every overpass on the highway fire trucks were parked with the crew standing at attention, saluting as we passed beneath.

Rest in Peace, John.

Astronomy Tuesday

So much universe, and so little time -- Terry Pratchett

The universe, of course, has all the time it needs. It's we poor mortals, gazing on its glories from the comfort of our little rock in the balcony, who never seem to have enough. But do spare a minute or two to admire this lovely image of the Lagoon Nebula, in Sagittarius. I just want to swim in those blues.

Image Credit and Copyright: Zhuoqun Wu, Chilescope

Sunday bird blogging

Here's another flashback, from the dolphin cruise in Hilton Head: a mama osprey tending her nest.

Sails

This is what those windows at Burrard Landing are reflecting -- the wonderful sails at Canada Place on the waterfront in Vancouver.

Saturday reflections

Burrard Landing in Vancouver, this past July.