It's been a busy few days. On Saturday, Z and I headed downtown for a couple of events. We saw the Vanity Fair Photographs at the ROM which were fantastic! We'd seen many of them in publication as we were long-time subscribers, but the early ones (1913-1936) were new to us. It was also great to see the more recent ones in larger format. The curatorial notes by each work are excellent. Another similar (Conde Nast) must-see are the Edward Steichen photos at the AGO....we'll probably try to get there this weekend.
We grabbed a quick dinner at a bar across the street and headed down (in the pouring rain) to the Bloor to catch the opening screening of the Toronto Palestine Film Festival. Amreeka (trailer) is the story of a mother and son from Gaza who unexpectedly obtain a Green Card and move to the United States, joining her sister and family. The contrast between the optimism of the new immigrants and the growing frustration of their family members in the US facing discrimination because of rising anti-Arab sentiments is very thought-provoking. The film is both funny and poignant, and the sold out house loved it. Unfortunately, the director had been called out of town on an emergency basis, but the producer, a young cast member and a couple of crew were on hand for a question and answer period after the film.
On Sunday, I had choir at 10 for the 11:30 mass. Afterwards, we left the car by the church, grabbed a quick lunch on Yonge Street and headed down to Queen's Park for Word on the Street. We visited lots of publishers and other exhibitors and I picked up a couple of well-priced books at the Novalis table. We listened to a couple of talks, one by Darrell Bricker from Ipsos-Reid on his book We Know What You're Thinking
. We also heard a panel of Toronto Star movie and theatre critics, and popped into the Victoria College used book sale.
While we were out on Sunday, Michael went to a karate grading and got his blue belt, so was feeling pretty good about that. I'm glad he's started back to karate as it's great exercise. Although he tried out for the volleyball team at school, it doesn't look like they got enough players to field a team, so he's down to PE and volleyball (plus the 20 minutes of walking to school and back every day.)
Yesterday, I headed downtown for my course at Regis, and then had lunch with my brother across the street in the (very nice) Government of Ontario cafeteria. We went out for sushi last night to celebrate the Feast of St. Michael (which is actually today, but yesterday worked better in our schedule).
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