Happy Canada Day!

Today is Canada Day, the celebration of our nationhood. I'll probably watch the Blue Jays game in the afternoon as they play in their Canada Day red and white uniforms. There will be fireworks, of course, and if it doesn't rain I'll be out in my front yard watching them.

I am proud of Canada. We're not perfect and there are many things I would change if I could (better treatment of our indigenous peoples, and an government that wasn't so in thrall to the fossil fuel industry, to name just two). But all I have to do is look south to know how lucky I am to have been born here. 

Coincidentally, I came across this article this evening and thought I should include it here. Anyone who grew up in Canada in the last half century will be familiar with most of the objects cited in the article. (It's an Apple News+ link and I can't find a more open link to it, sorry). 

Finally, here's a column from Dean Blundell, who expresses his love for Canada much better than I can. 

Thank you for being the country that runs toward the ambulance instead of billing it. Thank you for a Charter that treats my humanity as a starting assumption instead of a negotiation. Thank you for leaders who, whatever their flaws, at least know the job is about us and not about them. Thank you for two official languages, for a hundred unofficial ones, for a mosaic that never asked anyone to melt away who they are.

Thank you for being close to perfect in a world that’s forgotten what perfect was even supposed to look like.

I’ve never been more aware of what democracy actually costs, or how fast it can be stolen by a man who mistakes a nation for a mirror. And I’ve never been more grateful that I get to raise my glass tonight in a country that still knows the difference.

You’re 159 today, Canada. You don’t look a day over indispensable.

Happy birthday. I stand on guard for thee. I always will.

Gardening as a Metaphor for Politics

I've been reading Geddry's Newsletter for some time now. It's a mother-daughter news column written by Mary Geddry and Shanley Hurt.

Recently they've published a couple of articles on the theme of gardening and how it relates to politics that I found especially perceptive. 

• The Hidden Allies of the Underground Republic. What mycorrhizal networks, beneficial insects, and the underground republic can teach us about resisting collapse. 
• The False Flower in the Underground Republic. A dispatch from the garden bed, on what bindweed can teach us about Trumpism, entanglement, and the danger of mistaking strangulation for strength,

From the second column:

A living system is not healthy because nothing grows wildly, it’s healthy because the wildness doesn’t all belong to one thing, and a democracy is not healthy because nobody fights, it’s healthy because no one hungry vine is allowed to wrap itself around every structure and call the suffocation unity.

So yes, the false flower is pretty, yes, it’s persistent, yes, it will be back tomorrow. But so will we.

Photo of the Week - June 28, 2026

Today's photo is of a rose in our front yard. When we bought the house, there was a rose bush full of gorgeous pink/orange roses. A severe winter about 10 years ago killed the bush, but to our surprise and pleasure, it started coming back a couple of years ago. Taken with my Pixel 8 Pro.

A rose in our front yard

Saturday Sounds - Neil Young and the Chrome Hearts - Corduroy Plants

This week's musical treat features Neil Young and the Chrome Hearts. It's a concert film from last year's tour called Corduroy Plants. 

From Live for Live Music: 

Neil Young surprised fans this week with the release of Corduroy Plants, a free one-hour concert film documenting his 2025 tour with The Chrome Hearts. The film follows last month’s release of As Time Explodes, a live album culled from the same tour and featuring all the same songs except for “After the Gold Rush” and “Looking Forward.”

If you like Neil's electric playing, you're going to love "Cortez the Killer" and "Like a Hurricane". 

 

The Philip Glass Ensemble - 2026/06/20 - A review

Nancy and I headed into a very lively Toronto last night to see the Philip Glass Ensemble at Koerner Hall. I've been a fan of Glass's music since I first heard it in the late 1970s and I've seen him and/or the Ensemble at least nine times. 

The concert highlighted Glass's works from the late 1970s and early 1980s. The first set was the entire Glassworks album and was, for me, the highlight of the evening. I much prefer the Ensemble's arrangements to the more orchestral recording. The second set was music from Satyagraha, Koyaanisqatsi, Einstein on the Beach, and Akhnaten. 

I enjoyed it much more than Nancy, who is not a fan of Glass's music. That being said, "Dance 1" from Einstein on the Beach wasn't the best choice to highlight music from that opera; I told Nancy it should have been titled "Enough Already". They did do "Spaceship" as an encore which is somewhat more succinct. .

I'm glad I had a chance to see the Ensemble again. Now if only the COC would perform Satyagraha or Akhnaten. 

Setlist:

Glassworks (1981

1. Opening 2. Floe 3. Islands 4. Rubric

5. Facades

6. Closing 

Rescue from Satyagraha (1979)

Grid from Koyaanisqatsi (1982)

Dance 1 from Einstein on the Beach  (1976)

Funeral from Akhnaten (1983)

Spaceship (Encore) from Einstein on the Beach (19776)

 

 

 

 

 

 

Photo of the Week

This is the Philip Glass Ensemble at Koerner Hall in Toronto last night. It was an excellent concert and I especially enjoyed hearing the suite of pieces from Glassworks. My view was restricted by the heads of the people in front of me so I couldn't get the two musicians on the far right of the stage in the frame. 

The Philip Glass Ensemble at Koerner Hall

Saturday Sounds - Relisten and Ratdog

Today's musical treat isn't an album or a concert but instead an app: Relisten. 

I have been a fan and a user of the Internet Archive's Live Music Archive for many years. I have downloaded gigabytes of music from the Grateful Dead, Phish, and many other bands. But trying to find a specific show or band is painful. It's not quite like trying to find a needle in a haystack, but it comes close.

Relisten solves that problem. It's a front end to the live music archive and gives you easy browsable and searchable access live music recordings from more than 4,300 artists. You can easily filter by popularity (a list of a few hundred artists), date, or venue, keep a list of favourite songs or performance, and download to your device. There are three verions: a web interface and Android and IOS apps. And it's free and open source.

Note that Relisten doesn't share information between platforms so if you have favourites in your app list, they won't show up in the web version. 

Major failing: The web interface is pretty basic and doesn't seem to offer all the features of the apps. For example, I can't switch from the Featured to All Artists views and I can't find a way to save or view favourites, and there's no searching. 

I found about Relisten from The Intelligence's Cool Tools newsletter. There doesn't seem to be an archive of back issues so I can't share the original newsletter article. If anyone knows how, please leave the info in a comment and I'll update this. 

Relisten is a great way to follow current bands that allow taping and an even better way to delve into a lot of musical history.

Since my Saturday posts usually feature some music, here's a concert from Ratdog at the Capitol Theatre in Port Chester, New York on March 2, 2014. It's a soundboard recording and features the great Steve Kimock on lead guitar.