Unwinding After a Bad Transit Day

I have to say I've had a lot of truly terrible transit days in the past year.  I missed a reading that Shakespeare Bash'd was doing.  I missed the first half of a double feature at the Paradise.  The University side of Line 1 shut down unexpectedly, so I had to cab it up to Tarragon during the Fringe and was a few minutes late to a show (though they did let me in).  I am still riled up over the bomb threat that forced me to miss a second opportunity to see the Chagall and the Bible show at UT.  While today I just made it to the start of a concert, it was exceptionally frustrating.  I left at 1:15, planning on going in to the office for a bit, then dropping something off at Robarts, then going to Trinity-St. Paul's (where they had pushed the concert back to 3:30 account for the Santa Claus parade).  The buses seemed somewhat messed up, but I finally got to Pape station.  They were not announcing anything, and instead everyone piled onto the subway, only to be told there was a fire investigation at Bloor & Yonge, so they were turning back trains at Broadview, i.e. not even letting people get across the Don!  What makes this especially frustrating is that because Broadview is still torn up, you can't get a bus or a streetcar south to then cut across.  You literally have to go back to Pape to go south!  When I got back to Pape, I was somewhat unwillingly coerced into helping a blind man get down the stairs, before passing him onto someone going on a train further east, which at least was still in service.  I mean that does help put things into perspective to some degree.

Anyway, it was clear that the 72B was seriously messed up, but I got on a 72A and got to Gerrard and Carlaw to wait for the 506, only 45 minutes after I set out!  It was only a few minutes until the streetcar, but then 50 minutes until the one after that.  How truly terrible the service has been lately.

Then a 505 Dundas showed up, and if I had perfect knowledge, I would have jumped on that.  However, by this point, I was thinking that probably the Yonge side of Line 1 was messed up due to the fire, so I might as well take the Gerrard streetcar past university and then just walk up to Robarts (skipping going to work).  More fool I.  The Gerrard streetcar was slow but steady until we got to Bay, and then it diverted down to Dundas (because of the Santa Claus parade!).  It then was caught in all kinds of traffic, whereas the Dundas streetcar currently goes down to Dundas on Parliament where the traffic is much lighter.  We finally made the turn, and I debated staying on, since it was going to turn north at Spadina, but traffic still looked pretty terrible, so I jumped off and took the university branch of Line 1, which was running ok, but was completely crammed with families with small children leaving the parade!  (I think I only had 10 more minutes before my free transfer would have expired, which would have been the icing on the cake.)  I finally got to Spadina and ran over to the concert with just over 15 minutes to curtain.  It was such an infuriating, exasperating day on transit, made so much worse because the TTC doesn't communicate anything to its customers.  I certainly would have been infinitely better off riding my bike, though I am still several days away from being healthy enough to do that.

The concert was Amici's The Winds of Time, and they mostly featured different wind ensembles.  They started off with a trio by Poulenc, which was ok, but I was still perhaps too riled up to appreciate it.  I did like Mozart's Wind Quintet, though I wouldn't agree it's his finest piece.  David Hetherington came out after the intermission and did a strange droning piece on the cello, and they ended with Poulenc's Sextet for Piano and Winds, which was probably the stand-out piece from this concert for me.  I don't think that I am going to either of their remaining concerts this season, but I am probably going to the ARC Ensemble this Wed. and maybe again in April, and Joaquin Valdepeñas should be performing.

It was raining pretty heavily by the time the concert ended, but I assume most of the young children got home after the parade ended and before the rain started, so at least their day wasn't ruined.  I decided to bail on Robarts and just went in to the office for a couple of hours.  While the concert was good, I am not entirely sure it was worth it, after my transit travails.  I really do need to get back on the bike as soon as possible to avoid these unbearably frustrating transit breakdowns.

Sick at Thanksgiving

We've more or less stopped celebrating U.S. Thanksgiving, and I haven't eaten turkey in 25+ years.  But I still wasn't very happy that the mild illness that I have been struggling through all week blew up into a full-fledged cold on Thurs.  I still have a pretty bad cough I am trying to get under control for tomorrow, when I am supposed to catch Petzold's Cuba Libre at TIFF and then meet a friend at Tarragon for Withrow Park.  I think I'll probably be ok in time.  I am going to try to take it easy today.

While this is annoying, the timing in some ways worked out.  I wasn't sick (just stressed) on my trip to Montreal, and I should be fine next week when I am due to travel to NYC.  Fingers crossed.

Library Problems Continue

I think I have missed the window to get over to the gym, so I will try to catch up a bit on the blog instead.  It is just too cold outside to get motivated to go back out.  I may regret this later in the week, but I will certainly try to make it to the gym and to swimming.  Last week didn't go over that well either, at least on the exercise front.  At one point, I only had two things on the calendar, but by the end I was out and about doing something every evening, and then heading to Montreal over the weekend.

In fact, Thurs. I found out more or less at the last minute that Roz Chast (the New Yorker cartoonist) was doing a talk at the Toronto Reference Library.  I have to say that if people hadn't been so disgusted with the lack of progress on getting the website up and running, far more people would have signed up for the tickets to the event, which were free!  And it was also the first day of the big book sale.  I wasn't sure I could make that, but I brought some cash anyway.

In the end, the TTC let me down yet again.  I had planned to leave early to pick up my bike from the bike shop (having really struggled to get back from the Toronto Botanical Gardens the previous Sunday where I was seeing Tafelmusik*).  But someone was on the tracks, and they had shut down Line 2 from Spadina to Broadview, so there was no way I could get to the East End in time.  I ended up sticking around (and having a mediocre meal downtown) and then going to the book sale (where I picked up a small number of books and the Mingus (Candid) CD.  Chast's talk was great.  She was promoting a recent graphic novel on dreams.  I got a copy and then waited in the very long line to get it signed.  (It turns out she is left-handed.  I decided not to tell her that once upon a time I learned touch-typing in my dreams -- true story!) 

I was too annoyed with how the evening had went and my arms were sore from carrying around a bike panier, so I didn't go to the gym that evening either.

I suppose things could be worse.  I could have been a current or former TPL employee.  They finally have been more open about the nature of the attack.  TPL decided not to pay any ransom, which is probably the correct call, but apparently a server with a lot of HR info was breached, so any former employee (as far back as 1989!) may have their SIN and personal info sent over to the darkweb.  What a disaster.  They are still worried about turning on the computers at all, so books that have been returned are just sitting in bins.  The library is really close to unusable, as it is entirely hit or miss what is on the shelves at any particular branch, and you can't use the catalogue to locate books.  I'm certainly in no rush to bring anything back.

Just recently, they announced this state of affairs would last through mid-Jan., though realistically it may not be Feb. before service is really restored.  Oh vey.  I'm certainly going to lean a lot more heavily on Robarts.

In terms of what I am actually doing, I had two books out from the Kelly Library at St. Mike's -- yet another Chagall book and McInerney's Bright Lights, Big City.**  Oddly, the person checking the books out messed up and they weren't charged to my account, so I could have kept the books indefinitely.  However, I got both back within the 2 week period.  Then I checked out Kurkov's Grey Bees and the movie Transit by Christian Petzold based on the Seghers's novel.  These ones I will have to get back in time, so Grey Bees is going straight to the top of the reading list, though I only have 90 pages left to go in Perec's Life, A User's Manual, so that will also be top of mind.

Anyway, I have 3 novels from TPL out at the moment: William Brewer's The Red Arrow, How Not to Drown in a Glass of Water by Angie Cruz and The Association of Small Bombs by Karan Mahajan.  I would probably only have picked up the Brewer, but with the library all messed-up and books effectively not truly due until January, I figured why not.  (At least these books are fairly short.)  If it is still on display at the Pape/Danforth Library on my next visit, I'll probably check out Shannon Chakraborty's The Adventures of Amina Al-Sirafi (which doesn't appear to be in the UT system), even though it will make major distortions in my reading list.

So things are far from great on the library front, but I certainly have more than enough to keep me occupied until things get back to normal.

* This was an unpleasant, nearly epic struggle where the lack of maps in Sunnybrook Park took me in the complete wrong direction and I ended up behind the Ontario Science Centre!  In the end I was 15 minutes late for the concert and frustrated as hell.  The shifter on the bike had been giving me trouble for a week, and it finally gave up the ghost on the ride back, where I also got turned around a couple of times.  I probably won't go to anymore of these Tafelmusik in the Garden concerts, but if I do I will never attempt to bike it again!)

** I had been looking for my copy in deep storage downstairs and finally gave up.  I read this for the first time quite late (45!) and don't have a lot of time for the drug-fueled escapades but overall it's a solid book.  I reread it in order to watch the movie based on the book, which I hope to do fairly soon.

Library Website Down

It's been over a week since the Toronto Public Library website went down.  I knew it was pretty bad, and I suspect it involved a ransomware attack, but it seems even worse than I expected.  I had thought that at the branches themselves, the librarians would be able to access the system, but it was not the case at all.  They are processing all check-outs and returns on paper, hoping to enter them into the system at some point.  But I was looking for a specific book (The Sun Also Rises), and it is a total crap shoot to find it in person at a branch in order to check it out.  That was a major disappointment.  Also, they recently moved away from the old museum pass system to something that was completely centralized on the website, so that was also completely down (and very clearly a poor decision in hindsight).  I am a little disappointed at how hard they are finding it to restore the system from backups, as it is unlikely that paying the ransomware will actually work.  The library really is close to unusable at the moment.  (If I ever get around to it, I think I will have my engineer character call for capital punishment for the ransomware creeps, as well as military strikes against all the server farms supporting cryptocurrency.)  Anyway, had I known how bad it was, I would not have bothered going to a branch to return my overdue DVD and would have just hung onto it until later.

As it happens, I had just checked out three art books from TPL and didn't have anything on hold, so I'm ok for the moment.  However, I was considering putting Chagall and Music on hold, but there was a copy at Robarts, so I got that one instead.  Likewise, I didn't get in line for a hold on the Tom Thomson book (from the McMichael exhibit) but got out a copy from the Pratt Library at UVic.  I would like to know if the TPL is going to order a copy of the Jean Paul Riopelle catalogue for the exhibit that just opened at the National Gallery.  (I'll have to find the time to get up there to see this before it closes next April!)  They had absolutely no way to tell me when I was at the branch.  Sigh...

Since I was returning the Thomson book to Pratt last night, I grabbed a copy of The Sun Also Rises while I was there.  Most of the books on my current reading list are ones I own, though Kurkov's Grey Bees is coming up fast.  That one I can borrow from either Robarts or St. Mike's.  After that, I would hope the TPL is back in business, but, if not, I will see how many of the missing books are in the UT system.  I would suspect most of them.  There are two downsides to moving so completely over to the UT library system, however.  First, it is less convenient, geographically-speaking (particularly as it starts to get harder for me to bike and it is already dark when I leave work!).  Second, they still charge late fees, so I really have to get through the books I do borrow from them, particularly as an alumni borrower I only get 2 weeks and no renewals!  But it beats the alternative...

Oct. Round-Up Continued

Originally, I had planned the Detroit trip around the Pacifica Quartet playing in Detroit.  As it turned out, they were playing in the far suburbs, so I gave up on that idea and actually switched the trip to Friday, which made it possible to stay much longer at the the DIA.  If I had gone on Sat., I would probably had 1-2 hours maximum at the DIA, which wouldn't really have justified the trip.  If everything had gone right, which it certainly didn't, then I should also have made it to the Detroit Museum of Contemporary Art.  However, the gypsy cab I took from the bus station dropped me at the wrong museum!  I didn't think it mattered that much, but it turned out the contemporary art museum had some unannounced gala that made the museum off-limits in the evening, which pissed me off beyond belief.  The rest of the evening didn't get much better.  One thing that did work out ok was that I stopped in at John King Books, which was just a block from the bus station.  I spent close to an hour in there, mostly picking up cheap John O'Hara books and Janet Hobhouse's November, which apparently I read before, though I don't recall this at all!  I also got a William Burroughs omnibus and a signed edition of Robert Bly's The Light Around the Body.

I probably didn't bother looking up things to do on that Sat., since I had assumed I would be in Detroit (and indeed it was a reasonably close call that I did make it back to Toronto on the morning bus).  At any rate, I probably could have seen the TSO doing Elgar's Enigma Variations and Vaughan Williams's Dives and Lazarus.  It might have just been too much to try to squeeze that in.  As it happens, on Sunday I saw Tafelmusik in the afternoon and then Esprit Orchestra with a very contemporary program in the evening.  It was definitely a packed weekend!  (This upcoming weekend is even more busy, but I'll go into details later...)

One thing that was a bit of a throwback was going to the UVic book sale, where I mostly picked up some poetry books.  I found out at more or less at the last minute about the Trinity book sale, and I went on the last day (after getting back from Kleinberg in fact).  In this case, going late had some advantages as you could fill up a box with books for $25.  I picked up a number of interesting things, including some duplicates for the Little Free Library.  I kept a copy of Russo's Nobody's Fool for myself, as well as Drabble's The Ice Age as well as several novels by Lawrence Durrell, which will all go outside after I have a chance to read them.

Early in the month, I was supposed to see the Cowboy Junkies, but someone in the band came down with Covid.  They've rescheduled to Nov. 22.  I can make the date, though this is the same time as a Hart House mixer.  (It would have been a much tougher decision, but this year I wasn't assigned a mentee, so I'll just skip the mixer.)  I did see The Lowest of the Low at Danforth Music Hall.  This was actually a CD release party, and I picked up Welcome to the Plunderdome, which is a pretty good CD, though not as good as Agitpop.  I find it really interesting that they have continued making new music, when by all rights they could have stuck to their music from the early 90s, as that is what are known for and their audiences generally expect.  I generally find the classics and the new songs to be equally strong.

On top of all this other music, I did see the TSO.  Most of the pieces were pretty challenging, but they ended with a solid performance of Beethoven's 7th Symphony.  Also, I saw Quatour Danel, both in a lecture over at UT where they were illustrating some aspects of Mieczyslaw Weinberg's string quartets.  (He was a contemporary though not precisely a disciple of Shostakovich, and I really should dive a bit deeper into his works.)  Then the next day they performed Weinberg's 16th String Quartet and Mendelssohn's Quartet in F minor.  It was quite an interesting program, and I'm glad I went to both events.*

Kat Sandler's Wildwoman at Soulpepper was the best play I saw.  (The Master Plan at Crow's Theatre was also amazing, but I saw that in Sept.)  I really did not like Heroes of the Fourth Turning for all kinds of reasons, not least of which it was two hours without an intermission, but really I disliked all the characters.  I don't need to spend that much time in the company of Catholic fanatics, particularly now that they have largely succeeded in bringing Atwood's Gilead to life.  Plus, there were some exceedingly stupid elements to the play I hated, including one of the characters channeling a Black woman seeking an abortion (and presumably denied one by the character who worked at one of the those fake pregnancy counseling centres) and then this horrible unexplained screeching that was perhaps supposed to be a demon trapped in the proverbial woodshed.  Anyway, I hated this play and don't think it was worth the effort of staging it.  I didn't have such a strong reaction to Cliff Cardinal's A Terrible Fate, which had some interesting moments, but it definitely ran a bit too long.  (Slotkin agrees.)  The last thing I saw in Oct. was at Red Sandcastle where Doc Wuthergloom of Eldritch Theatre was doing his thing, mixing magic and the occult.  That was pretty entertaining and was very much in the sprit of Halloween (just as Spirited Away will be, assuming I don't have any problems getting out there on Thurs.).  The show at Red Sandcastle runs through this weekend, so catch it if you like magic tricks or the occult.

I did get out to the galleries including MOCA and the Powerplant, which were both ok.  I swung by the KAWS exhibit at the AGO, which I found incredibly insipid and completely unworthy of the venue.  I will definitely avoid those rooms on any future visit to the AGO.

As if this weren't enough, I managed to see a couple of 80s films back to back: Real Genius over at Tiff and Back to the Future at Carlton Cinema.  And I finally signed up for a family doctor, which only took most of a day at the local walk-in clinic.  So aside from a few deeply frustrating days where I was really let down by the TTC, it was a productive, if overstuffed, October.  Let's see what November brings.

* I only went to the Rex once in Oct., whereas I was able to go a few more times in Sept.  I am a little sorry I missed Charlie Ballantine, but he had the late night slot for only two days (and that was Sunday and Monday, and I expect I was doing something else).  I think I'll get to the Rex a few times in Nov., though I am a bit bummed that Neil Swainson doesn't seem to be joining Pat LaBarbera in late Nov.