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How to Plan A Wedding

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How to Plan a Wedding.

First, decide you want to get married near the water.

Next, decide you don't want to get married on Pride weekend, for various reasons.

Book your venue - Atlantis - for Canada Day weekend. The weekend after Pride Weekend.

Decide you want lots of music at your wedding.

And get on with things.

Things that can go awry:

The G20 happens, and moves Pride Weekend to Canada Day weekend.

The CHIN picnic happens that weekend, too. Across the street.

Iron Maiden books the venue next to your outdoor rooftop wedding, for the same day as your wedding.

Iron Maiden decides to do sound check during your ceremony.

This is not the music you had intended for your wedding...


Things that can go right

You marry the person you know you're supposed to.

/<.

Economy of Speech & Mushrooms

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Bruno the Fun Guy. Mushroom Farmer.

I was fortunate to be able to tag along with a friend to do some photos for her interview of a mushroom farmer in Goodwood for Spezzatino this past weekend. (holy run-on sentence, batgirl)

Bruno, the Fun Guy. I shit you not.

I didn't have any expectations of Bruno - but still, he was not what I expected.

He's become more used to talking about what he does - but as with anyone who seems to have spent a lot of his lifetime listening and paying attention - he chooses his words very carefully. He does not waste words - and he assumes that people are paying attention when others talk, as he does.

I find that quality extremely rare these days - too many people tend to waste a lot of words when they talk. Perhaps they assume no one is listening, or they have never heard themselves talk.

But Bruno, eventhough he often stops to make sure you're catching his drift - he's still surprised when people pick up on the details of what he says and words he uses.

And as those who know me know - I'm all about the details.

Words like Bodhivista.

You don't often hear a Mushroom farmer from Northern Italy who was raised Catholic - using that word.

You also don't often find a mushroom farmer living in the house he does, on the property he owns. (no, he did not make all his money through mushroom farming)

You'd never know this beautiful house is a half kilometer off the dirt road, up a winding dirt driveway, through a forest with mushrooms growing out of freshly chopped hardwood tree limbs - next to a several interconnected buildings housing even more mushrooms.

It is an oasis complete with a ponds, a pool and wildflower gardens - and his mother living in her own house on the property. Good Italian Buddhist boy, he is.

Bruno sells his organic shitake and oyster mushrooms at the Wychwood and Brickworks farmers markets. Stop by and talk to him.

But don't bother standing in line behind someone who is already talking to him - it could be a while.

/<.

The Mushroom-related photos are for the magazine, sorry :)
I was more intrigued with Bruno than his mushrooms.

Don't Look Into The Light

But definitely attempt to photograph it.

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July11- Queens Park - AfrofestJuly11- Queen's park - Afrofest
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Photos from the sunset at Friday night's Metric concert at the Molson Amphitheatre - and Afrofest at Toronto's now infamous Queen's Park with the still-standing trees filtering the beautiful evening light.

All with my $130 point and shoot camera. Your camera can make photos like this, too.


/<.

Green is the Colour of ....

The roof on New City Hall.

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The building that has been used in many a sci-fi movie and has doubled for space ships over the years now boasts a beautiful green roof. For years this area was blocked off from public access - completely foolish considering it is City Hall - for the people of the city.

Supposedly.

I wandered up there Saturday afternoon to escape the madness that is the Toronto Outdoor Art exhibit. I found an oasis in the middle of the city. There were maybe 2 or 3 other people up there and it was quiet. There were plenty of seating areas and beautiful views of the city and Nathan Phillips Square from the promenade all the way around City Hall.

Of course there were no signs on the ground level to tell anyone that this oasis existed.

City Hall - Old and New.

I also noticed something that was done in Reykjavik - the old City Hall is reflected in the glass of the New City Hall... but unlike in Reykjavik - I don't think it was done as an artistic element.

Or even planned.

(Reykjavik below - Toronto above)


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/<.

The Head and the Heart

JesusMary, Mother of God

A lot of personality tests divide people between being more "emotional" or more "rational". Like those two qualities are mutually exclusive.

I did a Myers-Briggs workshop ten years ago and the MBTI test used to be given to Engineers Without Borders volunteers prior to their overseas deployment. The recent grads, like most young people believed most people thought the same way they did and had the same life priorities and goals. All these young peeps thought they had to do was go "over there" with their engineering mind and spread all that knowledge around like manure. Fix Africa.

The road to hell is paved with good intentions. That mentality would not serve them well anywhere outside of their own minds. The goal was to prove to their (mostly) rational minds that other people think and solve problems differently than they do - and those solutions are just as valid as theirs.

So we gave them tests and taught them about community building. We did a lot of role playing - send them into a made-up community to build a stove - and see if they can figure out that the people don't need a stove, they need water (most did not).

There's nothing like empirical test results to appeal to an engineering mind. Numbers. Letters. Bombard them with enough data to enable them to graph something - hopefully they will realize that the graph is about them. Hope for a moment where they see that most people *do* have rational and emotional reasons for doing things and living the way they do. That these people are not deficient in some way. That emotional reasons and decisions can co-exist with rational ones.

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Axe avec WoodIt's a Sign - Bloor Street West

I think that the older people get, the more we are (hopefully) influenced by other people and our environment - if we allow ourselves to be. The more a once rationally-minded younger person is exposed to and learns (passively or forcibly) and opens their mind to - the more they tend to shift toward the middle on the rational-emotional continuum.

The more we become aware of how much we don't know.

I've heard many people say that when they were younger they thought they knew everything - but the older they get, the more they realize how much they do not know.

We eventually learn that what we think is "the right thing" to do isn't always what should be done - and ethical or morally-based judgements are not always completely rational.

Of course this theory can go the other way, as well. A mostly emotional younger person can learn to see the "rational" side, too - but I have my doubts about that change in awareness happening at the same rate it has in the past - mostly due to the widespread lack of empathy amongst younger peeps these days.

But I have hope.

Being good requires both thinking and feeling. (link)
Me thinks.
And feels.

/<.

Our home and native land



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We stand on guard for thee.

Sometimes more than others.

I didn't "get" those lyrics until very recently.
The "native land" part.
I always thought "it's not MY native land"...

Then I got it.

Some pictures of this beautiful country.

Happy Canuck Day.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . click on any photo to view it on flickr

..all content and images copyright kanchan maharaj inHerEye photography. stealing is bad. very bad..