Let's try this again. I just lost an entire post. Hit the wrong button, or something and poof it was gone. Now it will have to be a more modest posting--

Neil Diamond has invaded my head. He is not often there, but when he does come to visit he is often hard to shake. His music is infectious. I walk with Lindsay along the beach at the foot on the bluffs, trying to focus on the sounds of the waves, the rustle of the wind through the bushes and trees, the music of the bird calls; but all I hear is Neil's tribute to the sounds of the City.

It was my fault, of course. I had invited him in. Yesterday I had learned the City and I were made for each other and I sought out Neil Diamond's Beautiful Noise as a celebration of that.

I had taken the quiz over at MacKenzie's Inner Fire and had learned that I was made for big City living. Since I AM living in a big city, it seems I am perfectly at home, however much I might disagree. However much I might yearn for the peace of the country, I am a city boy, and the sounds of the City I love fit me as well as a hand in a glove....



Over at the Ottumwa Shaman blog, Hawk was describing the experience of stepping out his back door, "It's 11:30 at night here in the foothills of Mt.Rainier.. I just went out on the back porch to get another glass of wine. I keep it in the old fridge on the porch. I heard this hooty, hoot, hoot out in the woods.. what a pretty song the hooty owl is singing tonight. Hooty hoot hoot hoot."

Commenting on his post, I described stepping out my own patio doors, "I sometimes go out on the back deck with a beer and listen to the sounds of the night too: the distant whistle of the GO train, the hammering of the guy three houses over who's building a deck, the sirens from the fire station a kilometer away, the sirens from the EMV on Kingston Rd a kilometer in the other direction, the roar of the 747 passing over head. Ah, and breath in the taste of that air (cough, cough)!"

Alright, I love the city that I know, where I was raised and lived most of my life. But I love the country too, where I lived for more than a decade. Like Neil, but in a more modest way, I'm caught between two shores--



Or maybe I just need another beer.

On the way to meet Chuck Konkel to discuss his participation in cleaning up Deekshill Park, I stopped by the Park for one final look and was astonished.

The trash was gone. The discarded tires were gone. The mangeled shopping cart buggies were gone. The plastic pop and water bottles were gone. The trees were in fresh leaf. The grasses were green and delicate blue flowers thrived within the natural regeneration area.

Where the hell had all the crap gone?

I ran down the winding trails and did start to find some plastic bags and discarded newspaper, but these were obviously freshly littered garbage.

I walked along the banks of the small stream where even the green scum was missing. A small raccoon seemed as stunned to find himself in a pristine paradise as I was.

Eventually, as I followed the stream along, I did find a cluster of old tires and lawn chairs and shopping carts blocking a bend in the stream. Who ever had cleaned the Park hadn't been perfect.

On the way back out of the Park I discovered a park employee busy picking up the fresh litter and went over to talk to him. It seems our City Councilor, fresh from being embarrassed in front of the thirty neighbours who had come out to attend our Community Association meeting, had given the parks superintendent hell for only doing a half job.

Sting by the criticism, the Parks superintendent had assigned a full crew to the park clean up and they had spent three full days and had taken four truck loads of litter out of Deekshill.

The park employee wasn't optimistic about the parks future, though. He felt the residents of the subsidized apartments who surround the park would just return to their casual disregard of the environment and the litter would return.

"It's a shame," he said. "This is such a beautiful place."

I met Chuck Kunkel at Starbucks. He had already been for a return visit to Deekshill himself and was as impressed as I had been. He asked me to keep an eye out for any other similar project he could help with. We talked for about an hour.

He paid for the coffee.

Hacker and writer Joshua Klein is fascinated by crows. (Notice the gleam of intelligence in their little black eyes?) After a long amateur study of corvid behavior, he's come up with an elegant machine that may form a new bond between animal and human.

This is a hugely entertaining 10 minute video, filmed in March of this year, that explores the amazing intelligence of crows and demonstrates how this intelligence can be used for the benefit of both crows and humans.



Joshua Klein will hack anything that moves -- his list includes "social systems, computer networks, institutions, consumer hardware and animal behavior." His latest project, though charmingly low-tech, has amazing implications for the human-animal interface.

Right now, Klein is finishing up a graduate degree at NYU, while developing mobile/social apps, health care-related systems and other applications that improve people’s lives. He's the author of the novel Roo'd, which was the first modern book (after Frankenstein) to be ported to the iPhone.

"Klein envisions a new symbiotic relationship between these intelligent birds and the humans that encroach on their habitat. ... Why not turn a longstanding rivalry between man and crow into something that profits both species?"

TED stands for Technology, Entertainment, Design. It started out (in 1984) as a conference bringing together people from those three worlds. Since then its scope has become ever broader.

The annual conference now brings together the world's most fascinating thinkers and doers, who are challenged to give the talk of their lives (in 18 minutes or less)

The view from the bluffs is of a beautiful world with the languid, blue waters of Lake Ontario stretching out to meet the horizon. Trees and bushes cling to the sides of the bluffs in lively shades of green and red and gold. A fresh breeze ruffles my hair and my shirt. Great white clouds billow high up into the sky.

Lindsay runs free and with a joy that is palpable. The trees are alive with the chatter of birds.

But my mind is on an uglier scene. Two weeks ago I had discovered a small 6 acre park in our community that had been neglected and abused and that had been treated as a casual dumping ground for all kinds of refuse. As the photo above suggests, it was a disgusting mess.

Deekshill is a six acre natural regeneration area, heavily forested and with a charming stream running along its western most side. At least it was charming until it was used as a place to disguard old tires, chairs and littered with plastic bags containing unimaginable refuse.

Now the stream reeks and is coated with a thick green scum.

I had shot a video of the site and had forwarded a copy to our City Councilor with a request that the City clean up the mess, test the water quality of the stream, broaden the pathways, install another set of garbage and recycling bins, and provide increased police patrolling.

Our Counsilor attended our last CCA Executive meeting to report that he had visited the park with the head of City Parks and had had a crew in the next day to clean in up.

Wonderful.

Except that when I visited again all that had been picked up were the tires. Contacting the Councilor I discovered there were no plans to clean up the refuse, no plans to test the water quality, no plans install new garbage bins. The councilor talked vaguely of getting nearby residents together to pick up the litter.

I was thinking we would have to go on to more forceful measures, until I met Chuck Konkel. Chuck is the literary critic for the Globe and Mail Newspaper, Canada's national paper. He is also the bestselling author of two novels and an expert on urban terrorism who has appeared on such shows as Larry King. He is a serving officer with the Toronto Police where he is the liaison between the Chief and the Mayor. He is also intending to run as the Conservative candidate in our riding in the next election.

Chuck was telling me his strategy for getting elected was not to go door to door handing out pamphlets. He would rather be involved in doing things that would make a change in the community and cleaning up Deekshill was one of those projects that appealed to him. He admitted it had a certain drama, was the center of community concern, was small enough to be accomplished within a reasonable time frame and would earn him the gratitude of the community. It would get him known.

So I have agreed to meet with him at Starbucks this evening to discuss how the cleanup would be arranged.

Call me cynical, but we will see. At least I can probably get him to pay for the coffee.

It was a beautiful day on Saturday and families came out in record numbers. By the end of the day over two thousand people had come to visit.

It was the third annual 43 Division Police Station Open House and Barbecue. This year it was my Community Association's turn to take the lead in setting it up on behalf of the Community Police Liaison Committee, where I'm a sitting member.

Each of the following video clips are less than a minute long.



Over 40 volunteers came out to erect the stage and set out the display tables in the Station's back parking lot. We had antique and state of the art police and EMS vehicles. The antique ambulance from the 1950's was from a time when ambulance service was provided as a side line by the local funeral homes and the ambulance was basically a converted hearse.

The Toronto Zoo brought over a display of animal pelts, skeletons and a live python. We had had a different band each hour on the stage. A clown troupe did face painting, there was an enormous jumping castle and a skate boarding display.



Ten community groups had display tables.

Ed, our membership coordinator, brought in his mobile home to provide electric power for the stage. The Black Dog Pub provided the food and the balloons and Enbridge did the BBQ. The Chief of Police for the City stopped by long enough to have several photo opportunities. As did our federal and provincial members of Parliament along with our two City Councilors for this area.

The Bare Naked Ladies band had donated money to underwrite our costs and we had a banner to thank them. Only, people were constantly misreading the banner and asking when the "Ladies" were going to perform. Sorry, only their money made it our way.



At times the line up for the station tour was over 50 people long.

By two o'clock the last band had played, the BBQ began shutting down, the crowds took the hint and drifted away. The various display vehicles fired up their engines and moved carefully past our volunteers who were breaking the tables down and stacking the chairs.

And it was over until next year.