Well, summer appears to be here in full effect — at least summer weather. Get on out and check out some amazing live talent in June. Reggae, Celtic, folk, blues, and much more.
Art in the Street – June 2014
Peterborough and the Kawarthas are awash with the signs of summer. The warm weather has returned, the leaves are out, flowers are in bloom, and people are out everywhere.
All the vibrancy of the season is bursting forth in the art world too, as June offers up enough creative nectar to keep you happily buzzing from place to place like a giant hummingbird punch drunk with so much variety and abundance.
Building a network of hope under the cloud of neuroblastoma
Peterborough’s Millicent MacDonald was just five weeks old when doctors found a large tumor inside her little chest.
Odd symptoms had been present since the day of her birth, which doctors and parents with more experience than hers suggested were normal challenges in a newborn, but her mother knew something wasn’t right.
“I was lucky,” recalls Milli’s mother, Janine. “I was a first-time mom so I could have been dismissed very easily.”
But her doctor trusted a young mother’s intuition and chose to order chest X-rays, and that was when Janine and Milli’s father Brian first learned the word “neuroblastoma”.
Janine says it’s odd to speak about it nine years later using the word “lucky”, but they were indeed fortunate to have caught the deadly disease so early. Doctors at SickKids Hospital in Toronto began treatment right away. Surgery and chemotherapy sessions followed along with endless follow-ups and MRIs — all inside a world of fear combatting desperate hope.
Second-Class Citizens
It’s almost quaint now to envision a time when superhero films weren’t financially viable. Throughout the 1970s to the 1990s, the major comic houses (Marvel and DC) kept afloat primarily through the strength of their print serials and limited commercial tie-ins. Adapting these stories to celluloid had only yielded eye-gougingly awful results. Google the Fantastic Four film from 1994 to meet the true face of direct-to-video.
This dearth of credibility finally ended when the acclaimed Bryan Singer (Usual Suspects, Apt Pupil) picked up the reigns to helm a mysterious adaptation of Marvel’s most recognizable entity other than Spider-Man — X-Men.
Beginning its run as X-Men #1 in 1963, the monthly publication chronicled a team of allied mutants, called “X-Men” due to their possession of the extra X-gene which grants them extraordinary and varied powers.
Peterborough commuters shifting gears in May
I moved to Cobourg early last year and one of the biggest changes for me was the longer commute to work.
In the past, my drive to the office was no more than 10 minutes, from the north end of Peterborough to downtown. That went up to about 45 minutes.
I’m far from the only Northumberland resident who commutes to Peterborough each day. There are several cars (and their drivers) that I see on the road several times a week, all headed to or from Peterborough.
kawarthaCHOW – Ceviche de Camaron with Plantain Chips
People often ask me what I’m doing since I sold my half of Be Catering, and I reply that I’m running the PC Cooking School (located upstairs at the Loblaw Superstore at Lansdowne Place in Peterborough).
Atlas Collapsed
Andrei Tarkovsky’s transcendent Stalker anticipated Chernobyl. James Bridges’ The China Syndrome preceded the Three Mile Island accident by a mere 12 days.
Gareth Edwards’ ambitious re-imagining (I hate the term reboot) of Godzilla feels no less uncomfortably prescient.
One’s mind cannot help but wander to the apocalyptic predictions aimed at the spent fuel rods housed within the unstable reactor #4 of the tsunami-damaged Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant.
It may sound far-fetched, but this massive undertaking breathes the same toxic air as the populist American filmmaking of the 1970s — a time when mainstream cinema had a social agenda and sought to educate as well as horrify.
Godzilla began its genesis in 1954 as a harbinger of nuclear holocaust; the United States personified in a post-Hiroshima and Nagasaki environment that became one of the most enduring icons of Japanese pop culture.
Show us the jobs
On the heels of the official introduction of the Wynne government’s budget, another early election has been called after the opposition vowed they would vow against the budget. Not surprisingly, it only took hours for the three major political leaders of Ontario to start posturing.
This is a very important election for Ontario, but more so for the City of Peterborough. April’s unemployment numbers were released recently and once again they’re on the rise, topping out at 11.7%. This means that more than ever, people need to put some serious thought into who they will vote for in next month’s provincial election — and in the upcoming municipal election this fall.
Each provincial party is promising “boosts to the economy”. Most notable and laughable is the “Million Jobs Act” from Ontario PC Leader Tim Hudak.
You may call me a cynic, but the only politicians capable of creating one million jobs in Ontario would have to be wizards with control over global economies.
Create a bee-friendly garden to help pollinators
After spending the past two weeks in Florida, returning to spring in Ontario was quite a shock to the system.
The daytime highs in the sunshine state never dropped below 28° and an umbrella was only required on one of the 14 days I was in the state. Our wet and cool spring pales in comparison.
This was my first time in Florida and there was a lot to see and do.
Public Energy’s Erring on the Mount
An unprecedented event with a precedent … such are the paradoxical wonders and mysterious happenings soon to unfold as Public Energy wraps up its 20th anniversary season with a new site-specific arts festival: Erring on the Mount.
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