![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
The past couple of months have felt kind of crazy. We had a major windstorm that took out some of our backyard fence. Then the provincial election in June. Then our relatively new stove started acting up yet again - the oven this time - and we had to get it fixed all the while Music & Beyond was going on. Once again M&B was quite the bonanza for fans of early music (renaissance and baroque-era), the performers were superb and the festival was excellent value for the money. This year, the opening gala featured a performance of Purcell's Dido and Aeneas in the first half, followed by the Kruger Brothers in the second, performing their Appalachian Trio. The closing gala was Chanticleer, a very versatile American male a cappella group. And speaking of a cappella, a new discovery for me this year was the Gesualdo Six, a six-member male a cappella group from the U.K. The downside to the festival was that much of it was on during a brutal heat wave and while some of the venues were air-conditioned, not all were - and even for the ones that were, we often had to line up outside beforehand, in the heat. We missed some of the concerts I would have liked to see - in some cases because of scheduling conflicts (the Fools were performing Twelfth Night in the park around the corner and while it was a great production and perfect weather for it that evening, it did mean missing a theremin concert and one of the London Handel Players that I think I would also have enjoyed. Another limiting factor is my overall energy levels and stamina these days (of course, the heat didn't help) - I decided that two concerts per day was my absolute limit and even then, I sometimes ended up feeling exhausted! Next year will be Year 10 for the festival and I'm hoping they come up with something quite special for that - maybe with a little more attention to the "Beyond" aspect that made the festival so unique in the first place!
So that festival ended last Wednesday evening, July 18. That other major festival, Chamberfest, will be starting in the next day or so but so far we don't have tickets or passes for any of it and I suspect we probably won't be going at all, as nothing really jumps out at us as a "must see" (or perhaps "must hear" in this case). The other Shakespeare group that performs in neighbourhood parks, Bear & Company, was supposed to do Cymbeline in our local park yesterday but sadly it was rained out. We were a little disappointed, especially since a year or two ago, the Fools managed to get their production rained in... to the community centre there. Apparently Bear & Co. were unable to make a similar arrangement in this instance.
Well, back to politics and the Ontario election. I didn't consider it a total disaster, as our NDP candidate very nearly managed to take this riding of Ottawa West Nepean - she was still in the lead when I went to bed on election night but ultimately lost by a narrow margin to the PC candidate, Jeremy Roberts, while the candidate with by far the greatest name recognition (Liberal Bob Chiarelli) came in a fairly distant third. And it was quite an achievement too for a Green to actually win a seat in the legislature!
So the NDP are now the official opposition. I'm not really ready for Ford Nation or Ford Province, although I'm wondering if Randall Denley (a failed PC candidate from one or two previous elections, regular Citizen columnist and moderately good novelist) may have had a point in his recent opinion piece in the paper, suggesting the time might be right to introduce political parties at the municipal level to enable individual councillors to deal more effectively with practical city-wide issues (rather than being quite so focused just on their own wards). But that's a topic I may consider more carefully over the next few months as we move closer to the municipal elections in October.
I've been quite dismayed at how quickly Doug Ford has been pressing on with things, before the legislature has had a proper session where they can be freely debated. He never made any secret of his dislike of the Cap-and-Trade system but cancelling the Ontario Green Energy program and then only giving people until October to get everything done and dusted sounds to me like a logistical nightmare. I'm thinking that getting new windows at our place will likely now have to wait till next year... not that I had my heart set on getting any sort of government rebates but it's going to mean that all the decent window places in town are going to be just so busy with already-signed contracts that they probably wouldn't even be willing to come and give us an estimate!
Another issue that's caused a tremendous amount of uproar has been the sex education curriculum. Apparently it's been decreed that Ontario schools will go back to the 1998 curriculum, on the grounds that the new one was introduced with insufficient consultation with parents and perhaps other stakeholders, something that opposition parties and many concerned parents and teachers deny. As an NDP supporter, I was urged to sign a petition, write letters and attend a downtown demonstration (on a day of record-breaking heat during Music & Beyond). None of which I have done. But you know what? I'm not even sure where I stand on the whole business.
Yes, it's 2018 and before the next school year is out, it will be 2019. Absolutely, kids should be learning about consent, online bullying, sexting, gay and lesbian and transgender and gender-fluid people and families. But I have to wonder: How much is this a matter of what it says in the Good Book that is The Curriculum (whether the date on that curriculum happens to be 1998 or 2018)? Isn't it more a matter of whether we have teachers with the skills, intelligence, education, sensitivity and dedication to adapt some broad brush-strokes of the curriculum documents to the learning needs of the specific individuals they have in their class this year? They're well-educated professionals themselves and we do expect an awful lot of our teachers. Rightly so, I would add - education is recognized as a public good and we spend about half our property-tax dollars on it. And I'm talking here just about elementary and secondary education, of course - the figures would be much higher if we extended that downwards to the day-care set, upwards to colleges and universities and continuing education, or if we included a whole range of summer camp, extracurricular and community activities that could quite legitimately be called educational.
So that festival ended last Wednesday evening, July 18. That other major festival, Chamberfest, will be starting in the next day or so but so far we don't have tickets or passes for any of it and I suspect we probably won't be going at all, as nothing really jumps out at us as a "must see" (or perhaps "must hear" in this case). The other Shakespeare group that performs in neighbourhood parks, Bear & Company, was supposed to do Cymbeline in our local park yesterday but sadly it was rained out. We were a little disappointed, especially since a year or two ago, the Fools managed to get their production rained in... to the community centre there. Apparently Bear & Co. were unable to make a similar arrangement in this instance.
Well, back to politics and the Ontario election. I didn't consider it a total disaster, as our NDP candidate very nearly managed to take this riding of Ottawa West Nepean - she was still in the lead when I went to bed on election night but ultimately lost by a narrow margin to the PC candidate, Jeremy Roberts, while the candidate with by far the greatest name recognition (Liberal Bob Chiarelli) came in a fairly distant third. And it was quite an achievement too for a Green to actually win a seat in the legislature!
So the NDP are now the official opposition. I'm not really ready for Ford Nation or Ford Province, although I'm wondering if Randall Denley (a failed PC candidate from one or two previous elections, regular Citizen columnist and moderately good novelist) may have had a point in his recent opinion piece in the paper, suggesting the time might be right to introduce political parties at the municipal level to enable individual councillors to deal more effectively with practical city-wide issues (rather than being quite so focused just on their own wards). But that's a topic I may consider more carefully over the next few months as we move closer to the municipal elections in October.
I've been quite dismayed at how quickly Doug Ford has been pressing on with things, before the legislature has had a proper session where they can be freely debated. He never made any secret of his dislike of the Cap-and-Trade system but cancelling the Ontario Green Energy program and then only giving people until October to get everything done and dusted sounds to me like a logistical nightmare. I'm thinking that getting new windows at our place will likely now have to wait till next year... not that I had my heart set on getting any sort of government rebates but it's going to mean that all the decent window places in town are going to be just so busy with already-signed contracts that they probably wouldn't even be willing to come and give us an estimate!
Another issue that's caused a tremendous amount of uproar has been the sex education curriculum. Apparently it's been decreed that Ontario schools will go back to the 1998 curriculum, on the grounds that the new one was introduced with insufficient consultation with parents and perhaps other stakeholders, something that opposition parties and many concerned parents and teachers deny. As an NDP supporter, I was urged to sign a petition, write letters and attend a downtown demonstration (on a day of record-breaking heat during Music & Beyond). None of which I have done. But you know what? I'm not even sure where I stand on the whole business.
Yes, it's 2018 and before the next school year is out, it will be 2019. Absolutely, kids should be learning about consent, online bullying, sexting, gay and lesbian and transgender and gender-fluid people and families. But I have to wonder: How much is this a matter of what it says in the Good Book that is The Curriculum (whether the date on that curriculum happens to be 1998 or 2018)? Isn't it more a matter of whether we have teachers with the skills, intelligence, education, sensitivity and dedication to adapt some broad brush-strokes of the curriculum documents to the learning needs of the specific individuals they have in their class this year? They're well-educated professionals themselves and we do expect an awful lot of our teachers. Rightly so, I would add - education is recognized as a public good and we spend about half our property-tax dollars on it. And I'm talking here just about elementary and secondary education, of course - the figures would be much higher if we extended that downwards to the day-care set, upwards to colleges and universities and continuing education, or if we included a whole range of summer camp, extracurricular and community activities that could quite legitimately be called educational.
