Adam and I went for a stroll through the neighbourhood last night (perambulated as he would say) on our way for gelato. My apartment is surrounded on all sides by gelato and taking a loop a few blocks out of the way seemed like a good plan and preventative measure.

My neighbourhood is mixed - it was Toronto's first Little Italy (Corso Italia) and it fell on some hard times - years of streetcar track construction didn't help local businesses. Now with real estate prices being what they are it is on it's way back up. So there are first time buyers, renters (of variable reputation) and some original home owners. (They are the ones with the amazing rose gardens.)

I'm used to strange things that people do in their garages. Barbeques, sitting on lawn chairs until the wee hours, beer pong. But I think this was a first for me. In a garage - thankfully detached from the house but attached to another garage - was a very large green oil drum sitting on top of a propane burner. On high. We could smell the propane from the middle of the street (where we moved). I can't think of what the old Italian man whose garage it was (he was standing in front of it with his dog) was making. I mean you don't heat up wine or beer like that. Moonshine?

10 years on

I feel today very similarly to how I feel every year during the Toronto Air Show. When the fighter jets practicing for people's entertainment buzz low over my midtown neighbourhood, I'm always reminded to be thankful that we live, in general, in a peaceful country, because in many places around the world that one plane and the body shaking sound that comes with it would be hundreds of planes, and they wouldn't be there so a crowd could oooh and aaaaah at their power.

9/11 changed the way we live. But as much as the security and travel challenges are now commonplace, I am just grateful events like those don't happen more often and how lucky we are for that. How in general, in the West, in the "first world", we are removed from mass violence, war and terrorism. The horror of 10 years ago cannot be changed and we all have been changed and scarred by those events, but while we remember and reflect we should also find some room to be thankful. May we never see the likes of them again in our lifetime.

A couple more pics...

Frank Lloyd Wright's Fallingwater

This place makes everyone look like an expert photographer...

and yes, that is a staircase that goes from the river directly in to the living room...

Covered bridge in Woodstock, VT.  I believe this one weathered Hurricane Irene.  A couple of the others in the area weren't so lucky.  All the news coverage was on New York and New Jersey and what didn't end up happening, while huge devastation was felt in Vermont.   I believe Woodstock and the surrounding area were hit particularly badly.  My friend lives in nearby White River but fortunately is up a hill and so was spared.  I believe she didn't even lose power.