Scotch Pines popping

I recorded this in the late 90s in the Arboretum at the University of Guelph, Ontario, Canada - The Scotch Pines were opening their cones in the spring sunshine around the end of March, and making a very loud popping noise that could be heard from 30 feet away. Unfortunately it's right next to an airport.

Scotch Pine popping

The Golden Buddha, Wat Traimint, Bangkok

The Golden Buddha, Wat Traimint, Bangkok, Thailand. This is said to be the largest gold statue in the world, about 3 m tall. It was covered in cement many centuries ago when Burmese invaded and the monks wanted to hide its great value - it may have been no one was left alive after the war who knew the secret, as it stayed covered in cement and it was thought to be just a solid cement statue and just sat in a small temple until 1935, when they tried to move it and some of the cement fell off, revealing the gold underneath!
Yes, that is an elephant tusk in front of it! (Maybe an African one) One would hope it died of natural causes.

Diary 1998

Before this, bikers murdered in London, went to the abode of the fled suspects, very old woman next door who had lived in house since when it was a good neighbourhood .... ancient hands pulling aside triple bolts to answer my questions... later I came back for the funeral, rows on row of screaming gleaming hogs going down main street, following hearse. Biker chicks wearing "Property of Outlaws" on backs..........
July 5, 1998 - Okay typing furiously on Internet. ICQ fun! Boy world is large.........
July 10 - Cop being sentenced for sex assaulting nine year old girl...... although he had obvious warning signs - adopted children, one of whom accused him of doing similar thing, coaching little league, none of the guys that were called as character witnesses could believe it, although they investigate sexual assaults...... all white males from police force although metro Toronto's population mostly non-white now....! Also girls from b-ball league cute blondes who didn't have a clue why he was being so nice to them while their parents were so busy......... assault victim's impact statement where she said she had nightmares, had to move bedroom, and parents had to put up fence and not have her have male teachers.....
July 12, - 18 year old died during car chase by OPP, in small town --- cops did know who was driving the unregistered vehicle....... townsfolk said it was unnecessary...... went to scene, woman in make up all ready for the TV cams - sorry none were there!
Wife of murderer-embezzler-and-possible-father-to-his-own-daughter's-kids Al Walker on Radio whining about media attention....... Although she won't admit it Star did cover the story when she was asking for media attention when her daughter went missing.
July 16 - drove to see man who had all indigenous plant nursury. First saw a fox running along the main street in Cambridge, with a squirrel in its mouth, then by a trailer park I saw a very fat man with long white hair and beard with little wire rim glasses........ and just wearing black pants and suspenders........he had pendulous tits covered in white hair......... aieeee!!!!! Now I know why Christmas is in December!
The gardener, Ken Parker, has a nursery on the Six Nation Reserve near Brantford, Sweet Grass Gardens, with all sorts of native plants trying to recreate original settings in North America.
July 18 - Went to turtle races - on way up saw turkey buzzard! On way back saw little kit, half grown fox! Next to the pond where I went one bright February morning for a 37 year old who had thrown himself in. The pond looked even gloomier now that it was shrouded in algae and the trees were in full foliage - the bench that he had left his things on before jumping in was dedicated to the memory of someone.... by the way that it was written I wonder if it was a suicide too.
July 26 - Saw my old pal Gwen Jacob, (pregnant too!) at Hillside festival..... she walked bare breasted home one July day in 1991..... touching off a major legal battle, which allowed Canadian women their long-dreamed of right to walk downtown without a shirt on. Pregnant again. By herself as far as I could see, except for her little boy......
July 28 - Bat! Flying around downtown Strathroy - two boys chasing it. Fat old man in white shirt, suspenders, white hat who is occupied in sitting in different places around town helps them to knock it down with a big candle on a stick.....
Allegedly two 14 year olds had been hung upside down as part of a joke.. hmmm.... by men in their 20s. One boy was spanked with a rope on his bare bottom then his pants were burned by a welding torch .... first police officer wanted to consider it as a frat boy joke.... owner complained and another detective charged them with sexual assault among other things.....
July 30 - Went shopping for camera with bitter, depressed 15 year old on Paxil happy pills which did nothing to abate her impressively relentless cynicism.

My late friend, Miyo Takeda. I just learned she died a month ago. I wanted to get in touch with her and looked her up. - February, 2026

Drove around, saw woman on pavement vomiting outside a bar. One of the employees came out and looked at her sadly. Miyo joked that he was the one that would have to hose down the pavement. Then went to beaches with infra-red film. Miyo counted the relatively few blacks in The Beaches district compared to the rest of Toronto - four, and there were lots of people. All in all a fun day.
July 30 - Ron Hawkins and Rusty Nails two other bands in Guelph for 3 bucks! In an old cinema that had been converted into a club, walking into it I remember the last movie I saw there in 1985, Amadeus - I remember tearing my gore-tex jacket on a seat....... before that I kissed Jill in 1981 watching the Time Bandits........... now there's a banner near it that says Lick, Shoot and Suck, I think for tequila.......
July 31 - Now having to endure the barbs of my intriguing friend from south of the Border who is reading this even as we speak -
Aug - John Southworth yelling "Shut the fuck up" to groupies, if you can call them, gossiping loudly in front of stage. They ignored him. Jaymz Bee at show. You can't go anywhere in Toronto without seeing Jaymz Bee.
Saw Ken Thompson, (not the press billionaire) who told me once he sold cheese to Ken Thompson (the press billionaire) who argued with him about the price. Ken was planning on taking off with his dog in a trailer or whatever you'd call it on the back of his truck. He was telling me he was going to do the exact same thing this time last year. Ken is still working on his degree in Psychology. He is 38. He reminds me of me.
Sept - visiting the trial of Helmut Oberlander, part of a Nazi unit that killed civilians during the war. He could be deported - one of his supporters handing out photocopies of a Sun article slugged 'Canada's Jews have declared war on the federal government.", about Jewish community demands that they prosecute war crimnals. He was saying "Hier ist was sagen die Juden, die Juden" (Here is what the Jews are saying). I have held the door for Oberlander........... reports from another man from his unit was that he was nice and helped save his life.......
Sept. 6 =`Went to visit Kase Klevering in jail today. It's the third time he's been busted on cultivation charges....90,000 dollars worth and he escaped custody twice, once in the field and once at the police station. Sad thing is he was preparing to emigrate permanently back to Holland but he went back for one more kick at the can.

---

Even more now than then

So I went to Japan, Thailand and Malaysia... now must get this up to date.....


Thai Imodium Packet with stylized tap in colon October 1998 - Chicago - in the airport - first thing I think of as I step on the JAL flight is that Japan invented the Kamikaze. Two JAL staff wave goodbye to the plane as it starts down the runway. It is standard practice. Choice of inflight movie? Deep Impact, about a meteor crashing into the earth....Lots of electronic toys in Narita airport. Can drink beer anywhere, can also smoke anywhere. Goaty looking men waiting to go to Bangkok, they have bought something like dried plums and have big cups of beer. They grin amongst themselves in anticipation - they look like working class guys off for a sex holiday - at the departure gate they are running surprisingly cheerful AIDS warnings.
Get to Bangkok, walk out into black sauna, cab costs more than I'll pay again.... looking for guesthouse in Chinatown, down many alleys...mangy cats dogs, stop one fellow who gets into cab with us, carrying take home.... after I'm there for a while, I pull up beside other van full of Europeans.... we do have funny noses.....
Dumpy hotel got out of guide book....did have a lovely view from rooftop cafe.
Later in Ontario
Rainbows over Teasels, Highway 7 near Brampton, 1998

Winter 1997

Dec 2 - Woooaaahhh!!!!! Big gap here - former prime minister's wife's p.o.ed at me and have started dating nice lady who probably will read down to the end of this. Hola! :)
Dec 3 - Flamenco. Whirling dresses. Sangria.....

Portrait - Spanish flamenco dancer

By

MontrealDigital, via DeviantArt , Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0

James Brown, Lulu's, Kitchener, 14 November,1997

 Lulu's Roadhouse was a converted K-Mart in Kitchener that had a bar that ran the length of one wall, and they claimed it was the largest bar in the world. I saw James Brown with a huge band there, the Ramones and The Proclaimers (my pager went off and I went to Lulu's before it opened to use the payphones in the lobby, I heard "500 Miles" and thought it was a recording being played for the cleaning crew. Then the door rolled up and it was Craig and Charlie Reid live onstage doing a sound check for their show later that evening!! I'd seen them a few times so I just went to Toronto and dropped off film) . Brown was really disciplined and precise. Everyone was moving like clockwork.

CKCO reporter

WHAT THE DICKENS? Town Proposes dressing up welfare recipients as Dickens Characters

WHAT THE DICKENS?

copyright 1999, 2009 Mark Bellis

SIMCOE, ONTARIO, SEPT 26, 1997 - Welfare recipients could be saying "God bless us every one!" for their Christmas dinner if an idea presented to Simcoe town council goes ahead.
"It was just an idea" to have people on social assistance play Dickens characters like Tiny Tim, Scrooge and the Ghost of Christmas Past said Mary Alice Reid, co-ordinator of Ontario Works for the Haldimand-Norfolk region, which includes Simcoe, a town of 14,000 south of Brantford. Ontario Works, better known as "workfare" is a provincial project to provide employment for people on social assistance.
Reid is at pain to say that the idea, which she presented to town council earlier this month after a brainstorming session with Yvonne DiPietro, manager of the local chamber of commerce, was not to single out welfare recipients, but to have them participate along with other volunteers as characters in period costume from the Victorian novels, which ironically dealt with themes of social inequality and the wretched lives of the poor in 19th century England.
"Hey, why not?" said Randy Pond, co-ordinator of the committee that puts on Simcoe's annual Panorama Christmas festival. "We would kind of like to liven up the town."
Pond said the town puts up 60 displays and 100,000 lights in Wellington Park near downtown, but thinks the Dickens characters could help direct the 60 to 100,000 tourists Panorama attracts to the town, into the park, with features larger than life nursery story characters, like Humpty Dumpty, some of which are animated, as they strolled around downtown. Pond says that his understanding is that the workfare recipients could not fill existing positions with the festival, such as Santa Claus, who Pond says will throw the switch which turns on the displays in the park at the start of Panorama, after fireworks and a children's party, or the position of Pandy Rama, the festival's mascot, which Pond describes as an "overgrown, loveable, squishy - maybe that should be 'huggy' - Panda" since it was Pond's understanding that the workfare project could only create new jobs and not fill those that are already in place. Another drawback Pond noted was that "somebody has to pay 2,000 dollars" for costumes for the characters.
Charles Dickens' best-known story is "A Christmas Carol", which features Ebenezer Scrooge, a miser who despises charity, and Tiny Tim, a handicapped boy, whose father works for Scrooge. Scooge pays Tim's father too little to take the boy to a doctor, but nevertheless, Tim's catchphrase is "God bless us, every one!".
The festival runs from November 29 to January 1.

Charles Dickens, via Wikimedia Commons

Lynn Harichy, Medical Marijuana activist, charged in London, Ontario after trying to smoke a joint in front of London Ontario, Police HQ

London, ON, July 24, 1997 -  Lynn Harichy (d. 25/12/2003), MS sufferer, trying to smoking pot in front of London Ontario Police HQ, Sept 15, 1997, in protest, charged and receives notice to appear.

Harichy told me that marijuana provided relief from her MS like no other medication she had tried. 

Harichy remained a medical marijuana activist for the rest of her life.

Harichy speaks to media with a joint in her hand

London Police constable takes information before charging her with possession of marijuana and taking her inside for processing

Harichy is released with a notice to appear.