I walked by this piece that runs under the Dupont bridge east of Symington a while ago and didn't have a chance to snap pictures until recently. Artist Joel Richardson was up on a ladder in a paint-splattered blazer (a la Neil Young), completing his city-commissioned piece that includes quotes from the Bhagavad Gita, the Wealth of Nations and, one presumes, the Oxford English Dictionary.

There's something special about an audience that falls quiet before the show begins, and last night's premiere of Sasha Ivanochko's 3-nights-only solo piece, The future memory heartbreak junction, was like that. Even before the show properly began, Sasha, standing on stage as the doors opened, had brought us into her world of need and isolation.

I spent about two hours shouting with 2,000 other freezing Torontonians at Nathan Phillips Square this past Saturday afternoon. Four times larger than the anti-coalition rally at Queen's Park, the Toronto Rally for a Progressive Coalition featured speeches by Stephane Dion, Jack Layton, and performances by Broken Social Scene. Leslie Feist was there, so was Bob Wiseman. The best the no-co staffers could manage was John Tory. Dorks.

There's an old Taoist myth about a chef whose knife never became dull no matter how much meat he carved. His blade wasn't magic, not even a little bit - that was not his trick. Simply put, this old chef was so skillful that his knife effortlessly found the places between the bones, and so he never had to sharpen it at all.

Neil Young is like that. Dude just plain rocks out.

If you're about as angry as I am right now, you're wishing that Torontonians had voted in a single Tory so that you could go throw rocks at their office.

Fortunately, Torontonians are too sensible for that to happen. Double-fortunately, there is a place you can go Saturday to express your outrage towards Harper and, if you want, Governor General Jean (I for one would allow it). There were rallies yesterday for representative government nationwide: in Halifax, Calgary, Ottawa, Vancouver, and pretty much everywhere else. If you're part of the 62% majority, come down and leave your indoor voice behind.

Every now and then I'm given the opportunity to talk with some truly amazing Torontonians. It's not something that happens as often as I would obviously like, and I cherish these conversations for what they are: rare glimpses of world that is both kinder and more caring than the one-hour-news-cycle world I read of, so often overwhelmed by rush and distant squalor.

Today I spoke with Kim Beatty, mother to The Children's Book Bank, on the day that her foundation turns six months old. In honour of the occasion, Kim and her staff of sixty volunteers threw a half-birthday party this morning at the Bank's location in Regent Park, where a majority of incomes lie below the Toronto average. The event was attended by children, regulars and not-so-regulars, and adults, including a number of supporters from the Yonge Street Mission. Also among the supporters was Marguerite Campbell, principal of Rose Avenue Public School, a kindergarten and primary school in St. James Town.