Category: Finance & Economics
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Capital Building: A View from Washington – Part 2
Click here for Capital Building: A View from Washington – Part 1 Having finally seen Washington, DC for myself this summer, it was great to connect with this presentation by Marcel Acosta, Executive Director of the National Capital Planning Commission (NCPC), the Federal Planning Agency for America’s Capital. In it he discusses how the city came to be shaped,… Read more
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A Luddite Wife, Her Techie Husband and the Nest
Being the loving, thoughtful, sensitive, unselfish, supportive – not to mention smart and beautiful – wife that I am, I bought Husband a Nest programmable thermostat last Father’s Day. High on his list of wants, but non-existent on mine, I caved to the (arguably gratuitous) technology purchase because gift-giving is about the other person and… Read more
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Welcome to Quintland
UPDATE: August 5, 2018: Annette visited her birth house in North Bay today. Cecile was supposed to join her but cancelled due to health reasons. The story is here. UPDATE: As of November 19th, 2017, the birth house and museum of the Dionne Quintuplets has been moved to the North Bay waterfront, installed on Oak… Read more
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Staring At Blank Walls
I spent the last two days hanging bits and bobs on my dining room walls. And taking most of them down. Seems the thrill of decorating – the implementation vs. the idea of it – is less a thrill and more a sucker-punch to the head. It appears to involve a disproportionate amount of mental… Read more
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Launch of My Online Photographic Portfolio
Here’s a little long weekend eye candy just for you. Aside from painting floors and wrestling cats, I’ve spent the past few days organizing my online photographic portfolio. It offers up a meaty overview of my work categorized by People, Place and Things and focusses on my more narrative pieces. There are hundreds of additional photographs… Read more
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The Best Place on Earth
The more I travel across this country – and abroad for that matter – the more I am dumbfounded by the human ability to choose just one place to call home. There are a hundred magical villages, towns, cities and regions that strike a frisson of excitement in my gut, triggering the feeling that “I… Read more
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I Say A Well, Septic and Smart Meter For All
As we’ve sweated through day after day of 30+ weather and the Rideau Canal slides into a Stage 2 drought, water is at the forefront of my mind. I’m writing a house manual for friends who are staying here over the summer and the lead paragraphs focus on water conservation and energy use. Until we… Read more
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Walking the Walk
Jane Jacobs (1916-2006) was an urbanist and activist whose writings championed a fresh, community-based approach to city building. She had no formal training as a planner, and yet her 1961 treatise, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, introduced ground-breaking ideas about how cities function, evolve and fail that now seem like common sense to… Read more
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Now I’m a Licensed Prospector, Too
Some things in life are surprisingly simple. For a fee of $25.50, presentation of photo i.d., and the completion of a form that required little more than my name, address, telephone number and birthdate, I became a licensed prospector in the province of Ontario. I am now permitted to stake mineral claims anywhere in the… Read more