Night shots

Statue in front of Vancouver's Waterfront Station.

Night riders on the No. 8 bus.

Two photos, shot on the way home from an evening at Steamworks, on the edge of Gastown in Vancouver. (Thank goodness for auto-focus.)

Boots in the snow

Vancouver's suddenly favourite footwear.

As it turned out, I have no boots capable of keeping water out, so I have become fascinated by the feet of Vancouverites as they cope with the snow.

Sunshine on snow

Late afternoon, two days before Christmas, just south of Fourth Avenue.

The story so far

The reason Notes from a Teacher is down is that it has been taken offline by my host because of it was generating so many requests for pages that they shut down their server.

So far, the tech folk at my host haven’t been that helpful. Making it worse: it’s a long weekend here in Canada and it doesn’t look like I’ll even get any answers until Tuesday. But, poking around in the various log files for my site, it seems that Notes is under some sort of attack.

Even with the site offline (it’s in a separate directory at the site), I’m still getting more than 1,000 requests for pages from Notes from a Teacher every hour. Some are legitimate —Google bots and the such. Others are coming from servers in the U.S., Venezeula, Japan, Russia and other countries. Each one hits the site and generates requests for dozens of pages from the blog in the space of a few minutes. This has been going on constantly since I started checking the “error” and “latest visitor” logs yesterday afternoon.

I haven’t been able to confirm with my host that this is a denial-of-service type of attack but, from everything I’ve read and seen, it sure looks like one. I don’t know if I’ve been randomly targeted or caught up in an attack against others being hosted at the site. (The thought that I might have been deliberately targeted is a chilling one.)

I don’t know what the long-term implications are. I’ve read a couple of pieces that I suggest I may have to change domain names, and possibly even hosts, to get out from underneath this.

So, the blog is down and I have no idea when it will be coming back, or where it will be coming back.

Going

This view is gone. The stick on sign that read Nemoto Cafe is gone. There’s a big blue, red and white sign tacked to the facade of the building that reads: “For Sale.”You could have called it a greasy spoon. The Nemoto, operated by an aging Asian couple, cooked up sausage-and-egg breakfasts, hamburgers, white bread sandwiches and the like on a kitchen-grade stove. The tables were formica topped; the decor, diner.It was the type of place that’s getting harder to find in my neighbourhood. Houses around here sell for over $1 million each; the commercial real estate must be as expensive and there is less and less room for small places in aging stuccoed buildings.Nemoto goes and with it a place for a cheap breakfast. It’s getting to harder to find a grilled ham and cheese sandwich in the neighbourhood, or at least one that isn’t designer farmer goat cheese on 17-ancient-grain bread with designer mustard.Note: Link goes to my Flickr photo stream.

The beauty & the power

There isn’t much doubt that Crater Lake in Oregon is beautiful: set high in the mountains, it is a deep-blue jewel surrounded by striking cliffs. But standing on the rim above the lake, what moved me to silence was the attempt to imagine the power that created this.

First there is a mountain….

Mount Mazama it has been called and, on the placards that dot the viewpoints around Crater Lake, it is shown in outline, towering above what is now the lake. More than 7,000 years ago, a volcanic eruption blew the mountain apart and sent what was left of the peak tumbling into the caldera that has slowly filled with Crater Lake.

According to the website Crater Lake National Park.com: “That eruption was 42 times as powerful as the 1980 eruption of Mt. St. Helens. The basin or caldera was formed after the top 5,000 feet of the volcano collapsed. Subsequent lava flows sealed the bottom, allowing the caldera to fill with approximately 4.6 trillion gallons of water from rainfall and snow melt, to create the seventh deepest lake in the world at 1,932 feet.”

There are unimaginable numbers in there: 42 times more powerful than the blast that tore the side out of Mt. St. Helens; 5,000 feet of mountain collapsing. Given that the lake is said to measure six miles by five miles — 30 square miles between 23 and 28 square miles — that is an inconceivable amount of mountain (solid rock and earth) to be either vapourized, spewed over the surrounding country or to collapse in on itself.

So I find great beauty here, but more than that I stand in awe of those destructive, creative forces. I can’t conceive of the terrible power that created this beauty. It is beyond understanding.

Photo link goes to my Flickr page.

NOTE: This post was corrected after I realized I used the wrong formula for calculating the area of a circular space.

Soulless

Years ago, I bought music here, driving in from the suburbs of Vancouver to search the bins of Black Swan for the jazz and folk cassettes I couldn’t find closer to home.

When I moved to the neighbourhood, Black Swan was long gone. For a while, the building housed the rarely open Bayswater Station cafe. Then it became Chez Moi, a French-style bistro where the food was cooked on a standard, home-model stove. The owner, whose name I never got, baked the best croissants I’ve tasted this side of the continent. Occasionally, as I waited just outside the shop for the bus, he would dash out and trade me a warm croissant for a cigarette. Chez Moi never caught on and the building, at the corner of Fourth and Bayswater in Vancouver’s Kitsilano, has been empty for months.

And soon it will be gone. It and three neighbours, also empty now, will be demolished and replaced by “soulless boxes,” the streetfront combination of ground-floor retail and a couple of stories of apartments or condos that has become the dull standard for Vancouver redevelopment.

The dash of colour — the bright reds and dark blues, and the mural that has adorned the structure for as long as I can remember — will be gone and the neighbourhood changed forever.

Damn.

(Link goes to my Flickr photostream.)

Nyala: RIP

The lights are off and the doors locked at Nyala, a little slice of Vancouver history that’s been done in by redevelopment.

Nyala, a block and a half walk from my place, served Ethopian food. There isn’t any meal much better than a pint of Hurricane IPA and scooping up some spicy goat or chicken or fish watt with injera. (Any food you have to eat with your fingers is automatically fun.)

It wasn’t just the food. The staff were invariably friendly and eager to recommend dishes. The owner, whose name I never did get, would always drop by the table to chat, to make sure the evening was going well, the food was being enjoyed.

The notes that went up on the door and window yesterday thanked patrons for 20 years of support and pointed to the restaurant’s new location, which won’t be the same. The funky, Fourth Avenue location will be hard to replicate, for one thing.

And, for another, it will no longer be just around the corner, an easy amble away.

Link goes to my Flickr photostream.

Samba time

I love the multicultural nature of Vancouver. The blend of peoples and cultures has resulted in a rich and fascinating city, reflected in our food, our entertainment and cultural choices, our lively streetscapes. On some streets, in the space of a few blocks, you can hear three, four, five different languages being spoken.

So this may be a perfect photo from Vancouver: an Asian samba dancer, dancing in a St. Patrick’s Day parade.

Link goes to my Flickr photo stream.

Gitans de Sarajevo

These folks cook.

Les Gitans de Sarajevo, a Montreal-based band that brings fiery playing to Balkan sounds, played near here this weekend and it was worth the hour or so in transit to hear them play a 45-minute set.

Interesting back story: two of the members who had known each other in Saravejo, discovered they had both moved to Montreal. A band was born. (Details, videos, photos and more at their website.)

These are stellar musicians, with a great feel for the music. Even without understanding the language, this is universal, good-time, make-you-want-to-dance stuff. Driving rhythms, bright brass, pumping bass, the wail of a violin. And on the slower songs, they can break your heart.

Note: Link goes to my Flickr photo stream.