Hector Guimard and the Place Victoria Metro

The Polaroid has, for many, allowed an image to be viewed a minute after it was captured. Polaroids are the basis of the work of photographer, Alex Park, whose altered Polaroid of the Paris metro is the subject here. His technique aims to rearrange and reveal what the original images.

To modify his Polaroid photos, he uses a sharp object to impress and accentuate different aspects of the image. The result is like an image submerged in water or viewed through a kaleidoscope.

In Paris, Park has found an ideal playground to express his vision.

One of the finest pieces of the metro’s art collection, this graceful Art Nouveau portico was donated by the Parisian transit authority, to the Montreal metro in 1967 to commemorate their collaboration in designing the metro. Its instantly recognizable green cast iron form, with its shield-shaped medallions, delicately curved sign holders, and lily-of-the-valley light standards with orange tear drop-shaped lamps are a centrepiece of Place Victoria and the Quartier International.

Montreal’s Guimard is the only authentic example of these world-famous works in use on a metro station outside Paris. Since the entrances are modular, it was composed of pieces of demolished Guimards from Paris metro stations. However, the holders for the Métropolitain sign, the neighbourhood map on the entrance’s rear, and the light globes are reproductions added during the entrance’s complete restoration in 2001-2003.

The Place Victoria metro is the inspiration for my realization of an art nouveau necklace designed by Kathy Domokos.

More about the Montreal Metro

Puppy Mill Hell

When an animal rescuer attended a dog auction in Missouri, she found the dogs selling for almost nothing.  The Missouri Department of Agriculture had ordered the sale because conditions in the puppy mill had deteriorated from whatever their miserable standards were.

Before the dogs could even be offered for sale, they had to be shaved and dipped in a poisonous chemical to kill all the vermin on their bodies.

The rescuer bid on dogs selling for five dollars, one dollar, even a quarter.  She did not know where she could take all the dogs that she brought back with her that day, but she also knew that the dogs that did not sell might be killed.

Two SUV’s full of dogs. Six schnauzers, a maltese and a pregnant poodle. We line the cages up in our studio. This moment is their first taste of freedom. All were left at the end of an auction, facing death. HUA paid .25 for each, saving them from being put to sleep, saying they deserve a chance to live.

There is no better place than a dog auction to observe the total lack of compassion and respect for life that is the hallmark of the pet industry.  Terrified dogs are pulled from their cages and muddy pens and paraded on the auction table while the auctioneer bawls out their breeding ability.  “No bottom jaw, but that’s not whar she breeds.”

On a freezing cold day, dogs are set out in open wire crates to spend the day until they are hauled off in the back of open trucks to freeze on their way to another hellhole.  In the humid heat of early fall in the southern states, dogs are taken from their sweat boxes and crammed into small travel kennels at the close of the auction.  The treatment of dogs at dog auctions has always been incredibly horrible even when they brought good prices.  Now they are worth almost no money, which is the only value known to the breeders.  The dogs can suffer to death during the sale or while being transported, and it is of no consequence.

Julie Lavin, director of Hearts United for Animals (HUA) and the founder of Almost Home Canine Rescue, drove through the entire night to meet the transport on the interstate and bring dogs to her rescue or transfer to other rescues.  The following day Janeal Dominico, founder of Little White Dog Rescue, drove to Iowa to take dogs for her rescue and bring the rest to HUA.  She met HUA volunteers in Omaha with the dogs who had nowhere else to go.

The HUA volunteers drove directly to a television station where the dogs were welcomed and taken into the newsroom.  There the doors of their travel kennels were opened.  When the Schnauzers realized it was a safe place, they bounded happily around the studio enjoying their newfound freedom.

Their old lives so fresh, auction tags are still wrapped around their necks. Some dogs are too scared to completely step out of their cages. The pregnant poodle doesn’t hesitate. She has infected ears, rotted teeth, and a lot of love to give.

The lady poodle stepped gracefully out of her kennel, walked around to every person in the room with a loving greeting as if to say thank you, and laid her head in the news reporter’s lap.  This pathetic looking dog, only three years old, was a skeleton shaved to the skin with cuts and abrasions everywhere, and she was soon to give birth to puppies.  She has been named Angel.

The story of the 25-cent schnauzers and the pregnant poodle made the ten o’clock news that evening. KMTV, Channel 3 in Omaha, has worked for months to bring the plight of the puppy mill dogs to the attention of the public.  Every dog loving person owes a big debt of gratitude to these kind people.

When you buy a puppy from a pet store, just who do you think is getting rich? Corporate puppy mills, back yard breeders and hell-holes like this one.

Support your local animal shelter.

More at Prisoners of Greed.

The Spell of the Sensuous

For those of us who care for an earth not encompassed by machines – a world of textures, tastes and sounds other than those that we have engineered – our task is that of taking up the written word, with all its potency, and patiently, carefully writing language back into the land. Our craft is that of releasing the budded, earthly intelligence of our words, freeing them to respond to the speech of the things themselves – to the green uttering-forth of leaves from the spring branches. It is the practice of spinning stories that have the rhythm and lilt of the local soundscape, tales for the tongue, tales that want to be told, again and again, sliding off the digital screen and slipping off the lettered page to inhabit these coastal forests, those desert canyons, those whispering grasslands and valleys and swamps. Finding phrases that place us in contact with the trembling neck-muscles of a deer holding its antlers high as it swims toward the mainland, or onto the ant dragging a scavenged rice-grain through the grasses. Planting words, like seeds, under rocks and fallen logs – letting language take root, once again, in the earthen silence of shadow and bone and leaf.

The rain surrounded the cabin…with a whole world of meaning, of secrecy, of rumor. Think of it: all that speech pouring down, selling nothing, judging nobody, drenching the thick mulch of dead leaves, soaking the trees, filling the gullies and crannies of the wood with water, washing out the places where men have stripped the hillside…Nobody started it, nobody is going to stop it. It will talk as long as it wants, the rain. As long as it talks, I am going to listen.
~~ Thomas Merton

Our strictly human heavens and hells have only recently been abstracted from the sensuous world that surrounds us, from this more-than-human realm that abounds in its own winged intelligences and cloven-hoofed powers. For almost all oral cultures, the enveloping and sensuous earth remains the dwelling place of both the living and the dead. The “body” – whether human or otherwise – is not yet a mechanical object in such cultures, but is a magical entity, the mind’s own sensuous aspect, and at death the body’s decomposition into soil, worms and dust can only signify the gradual reintegration of one’s ancestors and elders into the living landscape, from which all, too, are born.

This cycling of the human back into the larger world ensures that the other forms of experience that we encounter – whether ants, or willow trees, or clouds – are never absolutely alien to ourselves. It is, paradoxically, this perceived kinship that renders the difference, or otherness, so eerily potent.

Gradually, then, our senses awaken to the world. We become aware of the thoughts that are thinking all around us – in the bushes, under the tumbled stones. As we watch the crows, our own limbs begin to feel the intelligence of feathered muscles adjusting to the wind. Our toes listen to roots sending capillaries in search of water, and our skin replies to the lichens radiating in slow waves across the surface of the upthrust bones of the hill. Walking along the pebbled beach, we notice the ground itself responding to our footfalls – the hermit crabs all diving for cover – and sense the many-voiced forest listening to us as we speak. And so we adjust our own speaking, taking new care with our gestures and actions…

Ah, not to be cut off,
not through the slightest partition
shut out from the law of the stars.
The inner – what is it?
if not intensified sky,
hurled through with birds and deep
with the winds of homecoming
~~ Rainer Maria Rilke

Excerpted from The Spell of the Sensuous, by David Abram.

A brief summary of animism at Anthropik.

The Burning of the Leaves

Now is the time for the burning of the leaves,
They go to the fire; the nostrils prick with smoke
Wandering slowly into the weeping mist.
Brittle and blotched, ragged and rotten sheaves!
A flame seizes the smouldering ruin, and bites
On stubborn stalks that crackle as they resist.
The last hollyhock’s fallen tower is dust:
All the spices of June are a bitter reek,
All the extravagant riches spent and mean.
All burns! the reddest rose is a ghost.
Spark whirl up, to expire in the mist: the wild
Fingers of fire are making corruption clean.
Now is the time for stripping the spirit bare,
Time for the burning of days ended and done,
Idle solace of things that have gone before,
Rootless hope and fruitless desire are there:
Let them go to the fire with never a look behind.
That world that was ours is a world that is ours no more.
They will come again, the leaf and the flower, to arise
From squalor of rottenness into the old splendour,
And magical scents to a wondering memory bring;
The same glory, to shine upon different eyes.
Earth cares for her own ruins, naught for ours.
Nothing is certain, only the certain spring.

~~ Laurence Binyon

Temple Grandin Goes to Hollywood

Asperger’s Syndrome, a disorder in the autism spectrum first identified in 1944 by an Austrian pediatrician, Hans Asperger, has become a popular dramatic plot device in television shows such as House, Bones, Law & Order and Degrassi: The Next Generation. It defined the fascinating profile of the literary protagonists in Mark Haddon’s 2003 award-winning novel, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time, and in Stieg Larsson’s 2008 posthumous work, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.

Now Claire Danes is pegged to play the role of Temple Grandin, in an HBO movie to be released in 2010.

Some people might think if I could snap my fingers I’d choose to be ‘normal. But, I wouldn’t want to give up my ability to see in beautiful, precise pictures.
~~ Temple Grandin

Grandin overcame the limitations imposed by the disorder to become a top scientist in the field of humane livestock handling.

High school was especially harsh for Grandin, who was called “tape recorder” by other kids because she repeated things over and over, and she was hypersensitive to many forms of sensory stimulation. She eventually graduated with degrees from several universities, going on to write influential essays on animal welfare and designing humane slaughterhouses. She appears regularly on the news talk show circuit and was the subject of a BBC documentary, The Woman Who Thinks Like a Cow, and Errol Morris’ First Person: Stairway to Heaven.

In part, the fascination with Asperger’s is due to the growing social acceptance of neuro-diversity – a buzzword that aims to promote an awareness that not all brains are similarly wired. Many of the books about the disorder have been written since the 1990s, and along with that interest has come a revisionist diagnosis of many creative and scientific geniuses.

The ascendancy of Asperger’s as a popular fictional device or “It Disability,” as some have called it, is partly due to the fact that patients often present as “normal,” except for their social awkwardness and obsessive interests.

Hollywood likes to portray them as tragically misunderstood and endearingly eccentric.

“Any kind of awareness in the mainstream culture is good, I suppose. But it’s a double-edged sword. You have to ensure that it doesn’t negate the severity of the problem,” says Margot Nelles, founder of the Aspergers Society of Ontario.

Aspergers: Separating Reality from Hollywood.

Exotic Fights

About three weeks ago, the Toronto office of the World Society for the Protection of Animals (WSPA) launched an education campaign to raise awareness of the cruelty to animals inherent in blood sports such as bullfighting, bear baiting and cockfighting. One of their eye-popping print ads showed up today in Metro news, the favourite free paper of transit riders.

The smart campaign materials are designed to mimic the old-style circus event posters. At first glance these posters and advertisements seemingly publicize bullfighting, bear baiting and cockfighting events; however on closer inspection they contain clever messaging that indicates these activities are cruel and barbaric.

Created largely pro-bono by award-winning Toronto advertising agency TBWA, the campaign is designed to pique the interest of those individuals who might be attracted to attend these kinds of events with an aim to show them what truthfully happens at these events – hundreds of thousands of animals suffer unnecessarily and die solely for human entertainment.

Exotic Fights dot com.

More about the campaign.

More about the blood sports .

There’s a Dog in my Church

Montreal is one step closer to being North America’s Paris: it’s gaining on the City of Lights — a famously pooch-friendly place — by offering a monthly communion church service for dogs.

Paws and Pray was recently inaugurated at Christ Church Beaurepaire, an Anglican church in Beaconsfield on Montreal’s west island, to coincide with the feast day of St. Francis of Assisi, the patron saint of animals. The communion service features bread and wine, as well as doggie treats and bowls of water for the four-legged parishioners.

The church’s minister, Michael Johnson, said he has always enjoyed doing a pet blessing once a year.

Johanne Tassé, president of Companion Animal Adoption Centres of Quebec, who suggested the idea to Johnson, said she believes the idea can have a profound impact.

“Animals deserve our care and respect,” said Tassé. “If we can bring dogs to church, how can we turn around and abuse them?”

She believes that the “deplorable” state of animal welfare in Quebec requires people take a closer look at how animals impact our lives.

“There are search-and-rescue dogs, search-and-recovery dogs, dogs to help the disabled, dogs that go into hospitals,” said Tassé. “Dogs help us so much and we need to recognize them as being part of our lives.”

She believes that by welcoming dogs into a house of worship, people will be less likely to neglect their dogs and the service can help effect a change of attitude.

“We’ve lost a little bit of our humanity,” said Tassé. “The time is right to elevate (animals’) significance in our lives.”

Full story at The Province and The Chronicle Herald.

Le French Connection/Highway of Hope.

Voyage to the Spirit Mountains

Author and musician, Paul Quarrington, diagnosed with stage four lung cancer, eloquently describes his plans to live each day as though it is his last, connecting with singing and the Canadian landscape.

“As we journeyed through the Torngat Mountains, I finally realized what this trip was all about, for me. First of all, let me get a little scientific on you. The Torngats-comprised of Precambrian gneisses-are amongst the oldest mountains in the world, almost four billions years old. They rise out of the water with enchanted austerity. Sitting well above the tree line, the Torngats are stark naked and make no apology about it. Torngat is an Inuktitut word meaning Place of Spirits, and it very clearly is. The mountaintops are usually shrouded in cloud, and it’s easy enough to imagine the Spirits assembling there, going through the itinerary for another year.  In short, the Torngat Mountains took what little breath I have away from me. The thought occurred that I was on another planet, and that’s when I realized, no, I’m on this planet, I’m just none too clear on what it actually looks like. I realized that what I wanted to do was spend a little time getting to know the third stone from the sun; it has been my home for 56 years, but I have spent much of it confined in the settlements. I wanted to explore and examine, I wanted to interact – yes, in the broadest, most spiritual sense.”

“So there, basically, you have the two main components of my plan for (what remains of) my future: singing and (spiritual) mountain climbing. For example, I think I’ll go fishing this week, getting to know Mother Ship Earth a bit better. I think I’ll go stand in a river just a few degrees above freezing and toss a yarn-fly into the current, over and over again, in the hopes of convincing some chromium-silver steelhead that the thing is edible. Or, I may simply go walkabout, kicking stones and major rock formations. I will build inuksuit (did you know that was the plural? I learned a lot on my voyages…) and I will try to build them across as much of the landscape as I can. In the meantime, I will be singing, all manner of songs. I will sing in Porkbelly Futures, I will sing with fiddlers and button accordionists, I will sing in Gospel choirs and Glee Clubs.”

Inuit mythology tells of the Torngait, the spirits that a Shaman or spiritual leader looks to for wisdom and power. Torngat comes from this Inuit name and the legends which hold that in this region the spirit world overlaps our own. White people have called this area the Ghost Coast and have commented how the sounds of the winds whistling through the rugged mountains bring forth the feeling that one is in another realm. If the earth is home to ancient spirits they would seek out this land where the rocks are among the oldest on the planet and the landforms hold an otherworldly appearance. Perhaps this truly is a place of spirits.

The Torngat Mountains National Park Reserve is the new name for this ancient place. It is the northern portion of the Inuit homeland of Nunatsiavut, located in northern Labrador. (Nunatsiavut means “Our beautiful land” in Inuktitut, the language of the Inuit.) The park reserve encompasses roughly 10,000 km2 and extends from the deep waters of Saglek Fjord in the south, to the very northern tip of Labrador; and from the boundary with Quebec in the west, to the waters of the Labrador Sea in the east.

The human history of the park is rich and ancient. Within the park there are hundreds of archaeological sites including tent rings, stone caribou fences, caches, and ancient graves, all of which tell the story of the peoples and cultures, particularly the Inuit, who have made this special landscape their home.

South of Nachvak Fjord is Ramah Bay, home to a unique translucent stone called Ramah chert. This mineral holds an edge that is sharper than surgical steel. It was so prized by the ancient peoples of Labrador that prior to contact with the Europeans, some used this mineral almost exclusively in their arrows and blades.

Paul Quarrington: Each Day Like It’s My Last at National Post.

More at Wanderbird Expedition Cruises.

Ramah Chert.

For Sydney, and for Linda Gordon who loves the landscape.

Baxter the World’s Best Therapy Dog

Baxter, the world’s best, most devoted, and oldest working therapy dog, 19 years and 6 months, eased peacefully from his life on Friday afternoon, October 16th. His angel wings were well deserved.

You’re in the arms of an angel. May you find some comfort there.

Baxter, a chow mix rescued at the age of two, began volunteering seven years ago at San Diego Hospice. In a place created for making goodbyes gentler, Baxter comforted everyone who crossed his path. He licked tears from grieving faces, gave hugs to those at a loss for words, and warmed the hearts and souls of those who were making their transition. He would take his body and curl himself next to a patient for hours, making this intense eye contact that penetrated the human spirit in everyone, proving his undeniable loyalty, love, and sensitivity. Everyone loved Baxter!

Baxter has his own blog, Facebook page and book, Moments With Baxter.

In the last few years the arthritic Baxter needed to be pushed into the hospital rooms on a little wagon and gently placed into the arms of the dying. It was his vulnerability in his old age that helped him bond even more to the patients he helped let go of life. Watch this beautiful tribute to this amazing dog.

Raven Steals the Sun

This is an ancient story told on the Queen Charlotte Islands about how Raven helped to bring the Sun, Moon, Stars, Fresh Water and Fire to the world.

Long ago, near the beginning of the world, Gray Eagle was the
guardian of the Sun, Moon and Stars, of fresh water, and of fire.
Gray Eagle hated people so much that he kept these things hidden.
People lived in darkness, without fire and without fresh water.

Gray Eagle had a beautiful daughter, and Raven fell in love with her.
In the beginning, Raven was a snow-white bird, and as a such, he
pleased Gray Eagle’s daughter. She invited him to her father’s
longhouse.

When Raven saw the Sun, Moon and stars, and fresh water hanging on the sides of Eagle’s lodge, he knew what he should do. He watched for his chance to seize them when no one was looking. He stole all of them, and a brand of fire also, and flew out of the longhouse through the smoke hole. As soon as Raven got outside he hung the Sun up in the sky. It made so much light that he was able to fly far out to an island in the middle of the ocean. When the Sun set, he fastened the Moon up in the sky and hung the stars around in different places. By this new light he kept on flying, carrying with him the fresh water and the brand of fire he had stolen.

He flew back over the land. When he had reached the right place, he
dropped all the water he had stolen. It fell to the ground and there
became the source of all the fresh-water streams and lakes in the
world. Then Raven flew on, holding the brand of fire in his bill. The
smoke from the fire blew back over his white feathers and made them
black. When his bill began to burn, he had to drop the firebrand. It
struck rocks and hid itself within them. That is why, if you strike
two stones together, sparks of fire will drop out.

Raven’s feathers never became white again after they were blackened
by the smoke from the firebrand. That is why Raven is now a black bird.

Ravens symbolize many things in different cultures. Native American tradition honors the raven as a symbol of courage and of magical guidance. The Arab culture calls the raven Abu Zajir which means “Father of Omens.” They are seen as oracular birds, used in divination. They are seen as symbols of death, life, the sun, magic, shapeshifting, and tricksters.

Legend from Ella E. Clark: Indian Legends of the Pacific Northwest, University
of California Press, 1953.

Image:  Raven Stealing Sun, by Ken Mowatt.

Andrew Thornton, jewellery artist, discusses inspiration at Flight of the Raven King. The necklace shown is The Raven Queen.

Raven Frees the Moon, an argillite pendant by Haida artist P.J. Ellis, from Spirits of the West Coast dot com, soon to be part of a Canuck version of The Raven Queen…