Along Wacker Drive Overlooking the Chicago River

I have my screen saver set up to display a slide show of my Street Photography. Lately, it seems everytime I look at it, I see an image from my 2010 trip to Chicago. The grown-up escape and catching up with a dear friend was the icing on the cake as we burrowed into the charisma and history of this approachable and architecturally stunning metropolis.

This was a very amateur attempt at night photography, sans tripod, that I took the night before we took flight and rails back to our respective realities. This image illustrates much of what I loved about Chicago: the buildings and the river in which we flowed as we learned about their origins... the spectacular meals we enjoyed at The Gage and Quartino and my first real sushi experience earlier on this particular day... the ease at which we walked along its streets at any hour of the day or night as we explored and lingered and gazed and engaged...

I shot this while breathing those deep breaths that only flow while removed from schedules and responsibilities, a condition that is very easy to adopt while on vacation!

The Right Shoulder of Niagara Falls

The only way you ever want to see the Horseshoe Falls from this vantage point is from the deck of a sightseeing boat!

Many locals I know will avoid the tourist area of Niagara Falls at all costs, only venturing into the camera-toting and fanny-pack-attired clutter when they are hosting visiting family members. Then it's okay because your clan is so enamoured of your touring abilities and enthralled at the idea of you actually getting to LIVE here and see such beauty every single day that you forget you're doing "tourist stuff".

Then there are those who embrace this effervescent industry and revel in that which draws people from all over the world - the endless array of activities as well as the vistas. Those are the people to whom I raise my glass. If you live here you may as well enjoy the benefits.

I joined a group who were visiting but who had been on the Maid of the Mist sometime during their lives. Aside from our various children, I was the only person in our party who had never been on it!

It was a wonderful day, mercifully less humid than in previous weeks. I shudder to imagine the feeling of those plastic blue ponchos fusing to the skin as would likely occur in the intense heat we had been having most of the summer!!! 

I loved the view as our boat nuzzled the crook of these Falls, showering us with mist. I delighted in the mild turbulence as the downward force of the water churned in the lower river, urging me to reach out and balance myself with a secure stance. I truly realised the sheer expanse of falling water as I literally panned my head from my right shoulder all the way to my left to see it all.

Why would people forego this cool experience just because they happen to share an address? It reminds you why travellers venture here just to see this natural wonder. Living close by and not having to expend huge amounts of money or vacation time to see it is a bonus!

Near Union Square in New York City

So I decided to think about food.

Only the freshest produce will cause explosions of flavour to ricochet around in your mouth. But this freshness standard should extend to anything you allocate to your eating pleasure. If you are going to press anything between your teeth and consume calories and other non-mentionables in the process, it had better be worth it!

Eating food is about so much more than just taste. The colours and smells and character of a farmer's market or even a roadside stand are intoxicating. There is an entire discipline to deciding what goes with what and how to respect complementary flavours and textures. Expert food presentation can increase the enjoyment and subsequent value of any meal, whether or not it's gourmet.

In addition to insisting on absolute freshness and a relatively short distance from farm to table - a luxury I enjoy and appreciate here in Niagara - here is how to garner the most intense taste sensations from a few of life's most delectable offerings:

Wine: There are entire volumes and credit courses covering this one. But at the very least, enjoying a glass of wine should be an event in itself. I learned from a local winemaker that you don't just sip your wine, you have to unlock those flavours as well. Swirling wine around in your glass and breathing in the aroma before consuming it will create a more enveloping savoury experience. If you don't believe me, smell your wine after you pour it, then swirl it around and smell it again.

Sushi: Here's where freshness makes or breaks it. I've recently become enamoured with those charismatic little rolls - a satisfying balance of crunchy and velvety, the most exciting part is the wasabi burn! My sushi crew showed me that you dip the roll or sushi into soya sauce laced with as much wasabi as you dare. But the trick is to place the wasabi first and slowly incorporate a little soya sauce at a time so it properly and smoothly integrates creating that electrifying heat that spears up into your nose like a flash fire. 

Dark Chocolate: A milk chocolate lover all my life, I have gleefully become a die-hard cocoa fan. 70% is the lowest percentage I'll go now, and I usually stick with 85% because I find it is rich enough that just a small dose will satisfy my chocolate lust. But in order to benefit from the complex and intense flavours, they must be unlocked by being left to melt on the tongue one small piece at a time. Just letting it sit there long enough to become soft around the edges will cause your tongue to quiver with delight.

Okay I don't know how people can write about food all day! Anyone doing this regularly must love and revel in the diversity of flavours and textures and all of the above. But just writing about three of my taste treats makes me wish I could go indulge so describing entire meals and other expressions of culinary creativity must elicit quite the cravings on a regular basis!

Okay maybe I'll break off a few shards of Lindt...

Prescription for a Livelier Downtown

Welland's Amphitheatre in Merritt Park with IlluminAqua fire pods visible in the canal

  

It’s time for us to stop thinking of Welland as a hard-done-by industrial city.
We need to start moving forward as a picturesque canal city,
 putting our best recreational foot forward.

Click here to read my ideas in today's edition of The Tribune!

Blue Rodeo at Safari Niagara July 20, 2012

My favourite Blue Rodeo album is Casino. I had bought the cassette tape back in 1991 after falling in love with the black and white video of the guys playing Trust Yourself  in the snow. I still think that song is fabulous, and so different from anything else the band has created. As I played that tape endlessly, side after side, I would find myself singing What Am I Doing Here throughout my work day, and I lingered over the emotions of Montreal and After the Rain, the latter probably getting the most airplay in my little cassette player!

Although these and many other Blue Rodeo melodies became part of my soundtrack of growing up, I had never experienced a live performance of theirs - I was starting to feel like the only Canadian ever to utter such words! It just never ended up working out for me.

Last year, while we were enjoying a Sarah McLachlan concert, Greg Keelor appeared before us on stage - a complete surprise to us - to perform the haunting Dark Angel. Then this past May, I was a member of the open air audience at The Jim Cuddy Band's performance as part of the revered Illuminaqua Series in Welland. And at that time, I was already the proud owner of tickets to see Blue Rodeo perform at Safari Niagara.

It was a neat venue, spread out like a huge grassy bowl that offered a fine view from any angle. The calm air was warm and comfortable on that Friday night, mercifully less humid than on its surrounding days.

It was a fantastic show, as masterful and satisfying as I expected it would be. I enjoyed hearing Greg Keelor's unique raspy voice and harmonizing. And Jim Cuddy's still got it: that great head of hair and that unbelievable vocal range. He repeatedly rendered us spellbound not only by hitting those high notes we're used to hearing in songs like Try, but by surpassing them!

I think my favourite performance of the night was delivered when he snuck back to the piano and weaved his melodic mastery on After the Rain. He didn't just sing it, he used his voice as an instrument and delivered a solo performance that was no less mesmerizing than the guitar solo on Diamond Mine or the unexpected piano solo on Five Days in May. I don't know if it was this expression of talent, the syncopated lighting that accompanied it, or my sheer love of that song, but I was quite certain I never wanted it to end!

But eventually, of course, it did. The band finished the evening with the romantic Lost Together that lingered nicely in our minds as we lay back onto the grass relaxing contently as the herd of people filtered out into the parking lot.

Cape Spear, Newfoundland

I have navigated the barren mass of rock and grass that blankets Canada's most easterly point many times, but it's always been from the predictable and secure path of the boardwalk, Perched safely removed from the Atlantic Ocean's precarious activity, it is still an awesome view of an uninhibited natural setting . And with two small, fearless children to govern, predetermined safety is a desireable quality! I assumed this responsibility so obviously, as parents tend to do, that it didn't even occur to me to venture beyond the wooden railing.

But if you look across the middle of this photograph, you may discern a jaunty pathway that appears to be protected by a railing. During my visit this spring, I secured the opportunity to visit Cape Spear with my one son, who is now old enough to understand the capricious nature of the ocean and respect its potential force. It became less about keeping two curious little sets of feet away from danger, and more about exploring the craggy skirt of the cape. There was a trail where we hiked, but there were no barriers. It was safe, but you still had to step with so as to avoid being tripped by a delinquent branch  I was excited to be able to get a refreshing view of a familiar location, and he was thrilled to be given the trust and freedom to go somewhere a little more extreme. Plus he was getting to go somewhere that his little brother hadn't so I'm sure he thought that was cool!

On Jazz

There was a time when I liked the idea of jazz more than the music itself. To my untrained and mostly unexposed ear, it always sounded like a disorganised explosion of notes coming from a collaboration of spirited musicians all wanting to do their own thing in spite of one another. Everything I heard as a child, from my Mom's easy listening to my Dad's classical, made melodic sense to my ear. And I understood and appreciated music in general, even spending many years as a piano student with the Royal Conservatory of Music.

In my twenties, I made several concerted attempts to get excited about jazz because to me it was the soundtrack of the charismatic urban existence that decorated my dreams upon moving to Ontario from Labrador just after high school. But I was too much of an ingenue who fell into a state of awe at the turn of every new corner to take any of it seriously. And this was before I even made it outside of Welland's city limits! And just as I couldn't picture myself finding my way around any city with a population greater than the 12,000 back home, I also couldn't properly navigate this complex musical genre. I kept getting tripped up in the mosaic of seemingly unrelated sounds set to a seemingly arbitrary beat that my foot just couldn't seem to follow.

This curious mystification simmered inside of me and has only approached maturity recently. I found myself increasingly seeking out 91.1 Jazz FM, easily intrigued by Ella Fitzgerald and Emilie-Claire Barlow, Oscar Peterson and Frank Sinatra. But it wasn't until I joined the audience of a Ravi Coltrane concert at Brock University several months ago that I learned to really love the style of jazz I mentioned above.

I became drawn in by the passion of the performers, their obvious rapport, their confidence and masterful manipulation of the instruments, their ability to interpret the music as it was being woven. The musician who really made an impression on me was the young man who pivoted on his heels as he danced with his double bass, his raven dreadlocks falling parallel with the strings that were being devoured by his fingers like five-legged spiders. During the post concert interview and question period, his quiet manner free from arrogance was appealing and further revealed himself as a dedicated musician.

During this same interview, Ravi Coltrane talked about how "jazz is not about imitation". He acknowledged that borrowing the standards and learning them note for note, and striving to play in the exact same style as one's idol is an important step in learning the genre. But that eventually, a musician should be courageous enough to venture out on his own to craft something that nobody has ever heard before, trusting that his own voice and ingenuity will resonate with and captivate the audience.

These days, I listen to jazz because I love its intricacies and I believe it is some of the best music for dancing, etc. Even amidst the standards, I frequently pull something new out of it...  and I still become entranced by Coltrane's air of sophistication, even if my foot doesn't always find the beat.