Opinionated Bean

I’m not a great lover of dogs and wish that all dogs, when out and about, be on leashes. But I would never poison a dog, as has recently happened here in Toronto. Seems someone put anti-freeze into a doggie drinking trough in High Park. One dog, it seems, will not make it and the other dogs are very ill but stable.

There has been an ongoing issue between dog lovers and those who wish the dogs be on leashes. Most recently in the park across the street from my apartment a “dog park” was constructed so that all the nippy four-legged demons could have a place to scamper about and be dogs without impinging on other people’s ability to enjoy the rest of the park. It’s a fairly large dog park and the expectation is that the dogs play there. The park is relatively small so letting one’s dog off the leash means that any one of us could be pounced upon quite easily. The park, Allan Gardens, is not a leash-free zone, never has been. And yet the dog owners in my neighbourhood seem to view it as their right to let Rover, Tiger, Killer, Boxer etc loose.

Though it is horrific that someone would stoop to poisoning dogs (it’s not their fault they are off their leashes, it’s their owners’ fault) I can understand the sentiment behind it. Frustration that the rights of dogs and dog owners seem to be superceding that of others who just want to sit on a bench peacefully or have a picnic without a great big creature crashing into the food or biting a pedestrian.

What I would love to see is stiffer penalties laid against dog owners who let their dogs off the leash in areas where there are signs everywhere saying to keep the dogs on a leash. Make it $500 and hopefully the human caretakers of these beasts will pay closer attention to signs.

Pride week has started in Toronto, sort of. Next weekend is to be the culmination of a week’s worth of festivities celebrating and rejoicing in the many facets of being gay/lesbian/bi/tran/etc in today’s modern Canadian Society.

I was traipsing about the Village today, mostly to get a prescription filled (my pharmacy is in the Village) and everything was eerily quiet. Mayhaps with the threat of thunderstorms all weekend peeps were not in the mood to go galivanting about, and sit on patios. I saw one pair of tourists though, today.. I could tell because they were tentatively holding hands and looking at “straights” like myself to see our reactions.. I couldn’t care less, as long as there wasn’t any tonsil inspections by tongue going on.

Will there be more tourists showing up? I think so, mostly because gay marriage is still not legal in the USA and I believe many couples will come up here to get hitched. They may not be legal in the USA, but atleast somewhere in the world they will be married.

This past Saturday I had the good fortune and great pleasure of having a Kannel lesson. The kannel is a type of psaltry instrument from the Baltic area known by different names - kantele in Finland, kannel in Estonia, kokle in Latvia and kankles in Lithuania. I have an itty-bitty one, from the Aukstaitija region of Lithuania - a 5 string.

Saturday’s lesson was on hand positioning, moving from first position and fourth position while playing a very moving song from the Estonian Regilaulik, about the mythic origins of the kannel. As the song has 6 notes and my poor wee kankle has only 5 notes there were some areas in which I couldn’t strum/pluck. But we did get to sing the song, so that we could get a feel for it before attempting our pluckings.

The group I was with was primarily Estonian, all of us taking lessons via the Estonian Ethnographic Society here in Toronto Canada. The teachers were a friend of mine, Dace, who is Latvian. The other teacher is a master kannel maker, Tiit Kao. We played with Maja, Karin, Kristina and Anu (who’s livingroom we had invaded). At the end Tiit offered all of us a copy of “A Guid for Five & Ten String Kanteles” by Gerry Luoma Henkel from The Kantele Shop.

My only regret is that there isn’t anything like this amongst the Lithuanian community here in Toronto. I have searched, maybe not hard enough but I did search, for teachers but couldn’t find any. Dace graciously invited me to these lessons and I am enjoying them - not only because I get to learn a musical instrument but also because I am getting to know other Baltic people.

A certain City Councillor, Rob Ford, is in the middle of a brouhaha here in Toronto for saying that Asians are taking over and work like dogs - http://www.thestar.com/News/GTA/article/310319

Now our Mayor wants Mr Ford to apologise for such “racist comments”. If you go on to read the article the Councillor is not the best at choosing his words, thereby his sentiments not being put forward as intended. He was trying to praise the work ethic of asians, but it came off as being rednecked.

My issue - what about eastern europeans? Darn it! I work hard as well and I take umbrage for not being classed as a dog. I think I would make a fabulous pomeranian.

… the world is coming to a crashing halt, Toronto actually has snow.