I like sleeping with my windows open! Every spring I'm pleased when the weather gets warm enough for that.... But when I woke up Wednesday morning there was a funny smell in the air, like someone was boiling tar or barbecuing nearby. It was the smoke from the wildfires in northern Ontario, which the wind has brought here to Toronto. (Now my windows are closed, alas.)
The smoke has also reached American cities like New York. I wonder if this is another "Where were you when.." moment for the future, like 9/11 and the onset of covid? It's amusing to see the American tabloid press blaming the smoke on us and ignoring that it's clearly a result of the climate change that the USA has promoted disproportionately, which some Americans are still in denial about. Of course, someone online mentioned the South Park song "Blame Canada." I thought the South Park movie was thin and overrated, but I did like a line in that song, "They're not even a real country anyway." (Touche! Canada's a "nation" for the post-nation era...)
A while ago I saw an article (in USA Today, not the highest intellectual forum) about school avoidance and people who want to class it as a mental health problem. But there wasn't one word in it about why these kids can't cope with school, let alone how to make school more bearable for them. This issue means something to me because back in the 1970s I was often a school avoider. (Someone said that one of the purposes of school is to "socialize" children, but I flunked socialization!)
Last night I had to leave opera rehearsal early because I had a big headache. The Die Fledermaus show's just a couple of weeks away, but Moira's helping me with learning the German lyrics. (She's the German expert.)
