| View previous topic :: View next topic |
| Author |
Message |
editor
Site Admin
Joined: 01 Dec 2003
Posts: 878
|
 Posted: Sun Aug 17, 2008 2:00 pm Post subject: |
 |
|
Full Moon
Hardcover
By P.G. Wodehouse
| Quote: | 'Not Peterson's Pup Food?'
'That's the name.'
'My God!' cried Freddie, dropping his monocle in his emotion. 'Is everybody over here nuts?' This is the fifth case of Peterson's Pup Food I've come across in the last two weeks. And they call England a dog-loving nation. Do you want those hounds of yours to get rickets, rheumatism, sciatica, anaemia, and stomach trouble? Well, they jolly well will if you continue to poison them with a product lacking, I happen to know, in several of the most important vitamins. Peterson's Pup Food, forsooth! What they need, to make them the well-muscled, vital, one-hundred-per-cent-he-dogs they ought to be, is Donaldson's Dog-Joy. Donaldson's Dog-Joy is God's gift to the kennel, whether it be in the gilded palace of the rich or the humble hovel of the poor. Dogs raised on Donaldson's Dog-Joy become fine, strong, upstanding dogs who go about with their chins up and both feet on the ground and look the world in the eye. Get your dog thinking the Donaldson way! Let Donaldson make your spaniel a super-spaniel! Place your Irish setter's paws on the broad Donaldson highroad and watch him scamper away to health, happiness, the clear eye, the cold nose, and the ever-wagging tail! Donaldson's Dog-Joy, which may be had in the five-shilling packet, the half-crown packet, and the ----'
'Freddie!'
'Hullo?'
'Stop!'
'Stop?' said Freddie who had only just begun.
Prudence Garland was exhibiting symptoms of being overcome.
'Yes, stop. Desist. Put a sock in it. Gosh, it's like a tidal wave. I'm beginning to believe you about those conferences. You must be the life and soul of them.'
Freddie straightened his tie.
'The boys generally seem to wish to hear my views,' he admitted modestly.
'And I'll bet they get their wish if you're within a mile of them.' (-- pgs 26-27) |
Link to this entry
http://bccondos.ca/forums/viewtopic.php?p=1376#1376 |
|
| Back to top |
|
 |
editor
Site Admin
Joined: 01 Dec 2003
Posts: 878
|
| Posted: Sun Aug 17, 2008 4:09 pm Post subject: |
|
|
Vancouver Magazine
Real Estate Ad Flier, Really
Strata Hell
Condo owners who threaten murder.
Treasurers who steal cash. Welcome to
the weird world of strata councils
By Steve Burgess
September, 2006
| Quote: | Life as a condo owner clearly requires both limitless patience and A Gambler's Prayer.
|
| Quote: | *Dog mapping is just the beginning. In 2002, Drew and June paid $239,000 for a condo in a small building in Kits near West Eighth and Stevens, with only three neighbours. All three were single, fifty-ish women. First skirmish: the couple's decision to install laminate flooring. "The woman downstairs was weeping on the phone," Drew says. "She said they had a bylaw against hardwood floors because of the noise. Well, they didn't yet - but they were thinking about one."
Meanwhile Drew and June's bedroom wall was ballooning out due to water leakage -- "but only on dry days," Drew says. Turns out the upstairs neighbour was watering her plants and storing the hoses on the balcony, where they drained into the couple's bedroom. No action deemed necessary, the council decided. By a vote of 3-1, Drew and June now have a heritage house in New West.
The troubles flow both ways. Good strata councils must also deal with bad owners. Veda lives in Fairview Slopes near Oak and West Eighth. When the building was assessed for envelope repairs of about $700,000, the lone commercial occupant refused to pay. "She thought she bore no responsibility for the residential part of the building," says Veda. It took two years and lots more money just to get the case to court, incurring more debt to the residents.
Renting adds another level of complexity, with both sides unsure of their obligations...
Tony Gioventu is executive director of the Condominium Home Owners Association (scroll down for a heads-up on this outfit). He's heard some horror stories that could be served up with popcorn. A condo development in Maple Ridge, for example, where "the treasurer had a gambling addiction and drained the operating and reserve funds." Or a downtown development where "the treasurer and secretary had credit cards and ATM cards in the name of the strata council, which they used for personal stuff." There have been cases of boozy parties and even donations to political campaigns, all made with strata council funds. "If the strata council won't provide you with financial records and bank statements," Gioventu says, "you can almost guarantee there's trouble." (-- pgs. 73-74) |
Link to this entry
http://bccondos.ca/forums/viewtopic.php?p=1377#1377
Last edited by editor on Wed Oct 22, 2008 10:40 am; edited 1 time in total |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
editor
Site Admin
Joined: 01 Dec 2003
Posts: 878
|
| Posted: Wed Oct 22, 2008 10:38 am Post subject: |
|
|
Everything Arrives at the Light
Paperback
By Frostback Lorna Crozier
| Quote: | I've been crying a week
over the cat. There are some
I can say this to and others
I cannot. He's only a cat,
many reply. I now divide
people into these two camps.
It's one way of knowing the world.
...
When I start crying on the phone my mother tries to comfort me
in that strange way she has.
Animals have it lucky,
you can always put them under,
stop the suffering. I know
she's thinking of my father,
those last months in the hospital.
Never one for understatement
he begged the doctor -
Why don't you just cut my throat?
At seventy-five
she's also trying to tell me
something about herself,
but what can I do?
Right now it's the cat
I'm sad about. He's not
my mother or father,
he's not my husband,
brother, mother-in-law,
or the child I never had.
He's only a cat,
and so I write
this poem for him
with my whole family in it
to bring him home.
(-- pgs. 10-11) |
Link to this entry
http://bccondos.ca/forums/viewtopic.php?p=1397#1397 |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
editor
Site Admin
Joined: 01 Dec 2003
Posts: 878
|
| Posted: Tue Nov 25, 2008 10:37 am Post subject: |
|
|
The New Yorker
Magazine Subscription
Taboos
Dog
By Dana Goodyear
Sept. 5/05
| Quote: | A popular way of preparing dog in Vietnam is to roast it whole until the skin is crispy and golden, like a Peking duck. Thit cho, or dog meat, is an expensive delicacy, available mainly in the markets of the North, where the Chinese influence is most pronounced. ...
... We resolved to try Dog Seven Ways. The first course was skewers. The meat was grayish and mild, slightly stringy. A dipping sauce was brought to the table - a variation on the standard fermented-fish sauce that is served with almost everything in Vietnam. It lent a sour-sweet flavor to the meat, and was a welcome distraction. Of course, there was the question of what kind of dog this was. Dogs are pets in Vietnam, too: we assured ourselves that these were farm-raised, probably in the surrounding countryside. (A Vietnamese chef recently told me that the dogs that are consumed are bred for slaughter, and that the choicest dog meat is from “black dogs.”) Did he mean a recognizable breed? "No, just any dog that is black." In China, a breed was developed specifically for food: the chow.) Another course came; we picked at it solemnly. But the time the third course arrived - tiny sausages - most of my enormous 333 beer was gone, and with it my restraint. I tried a sausage, pungent and gamy and flecked with bits of cilantro and lemongrass. Not bad.
Many cultures shun dog food: dogs are scavengers and carrion-feeders, and - more to the point - dogs don't mind eating human flesh. Yet people at home recoiled when they learned what I had eaten - not because they thought dogs were disgusting but because they thought dogs were wonderful. ... (-- p. 131) |
Link to this entry
http://bccondos.ca/forums/viewtopic.php?p=1408#1408 |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
editor
Site Admin
Joined: 01 Dec 2003
Posts: 878
|
| Posted: Sun Nov 30, 2008 2:47 pm Post subject: |
|
|
Sonnets to Orpheus
Hardcover
By Rainer Maria Rilke
Translated by Edward Snow
Bilingual Edition
| Quote: | 16
You, my friend, are alone, because ...
We, with words and pointing fingers,
gradually make the world our own --
perhaps its weakest, most hazardous part.
Who points fingers at a smell?
Yet you feel so many of those forces
that threaten us ... You recognize the dead,
and you cower before the magic spell.
Look, now we together must manage
with piecework and parts, as if they were the Whole.
Helping you will be hard. Above all:
don't plant me in yhour heart. I'd grow too fast.
But I will guide my master's hand and say:
Here. Here is * Esau in his pelt.
(From First Part, p. 37) |
| Quote: | | * Note: Herein lies the crux. Do we "guess" at some point during these lines that a dog is being addressed? We know this to be true from Rilke's letters ... In the Old Testament story Rebecca disguises her younger son Jacob in a goat's skin so that he can gain the inheritance due his older brother Esau, the "rough" or "hairy" one. In Rilke's appropriation, substitution multiplies. The Greek Orpheus replaces the blind patriarch Isaac, the first-person speaker performs Rebecca's function, and "you" takes the place of the already disguised Jacob. ... (From the Introduction, p. xiv) |
Link to this entry
http://bccondos.ca/forums/viewtopic.php?p=1417#1417 |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
editor
Site Admin
Joined: 01 Dec 2003
Posts: 878
|
| Posted: Sun Nov 30, 2008 3:15 pm Post subject: |
|
|
COUNTRY LIFE
Magazine Subscription
Town & Country
Dog-walking is better than the gym
March 6/08
| Quote: | It's official - walking the dog is better for you than going to the gym, accordint to a new study commissioned bh Butcher's dog food. It revealed that the average owner will walk the equivalent distance of from London to Bangkok during their dog's lifetime. And they will clock up 676 miles a year - the same as 26 marathons - 208 more than the average member of a gym. Walking a dog lowers blood pressure, slows heart rates and enables quicker recovery after strenuous exercise. Psychologist Dr David Lewis, who studied the exercise habits of two groups of middle-aged people, says: 'Given the cost of gym membership, Fido wins hands down as your personal trainer. Walking a dog means that you have to go out at least once a day, and you become less stressed.'
If you want to 'power walk', the study recommends you get a border collie, dalmation, springer spaniel, setter or weimaraner, or if you merely want to walk briskly, take out a boxer, doberman, German shepherd, Jack Russell or retriever. The best dogs for strollers are bassets, whippets, shih-tzus, dachshunds and corgis. (-- p. 72) |
Link to this entry
http://bccondos.ca/forums/viewtopic.php?p=1418#1418 |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
editor
Site Admin
Joined: 01 Dec 2003
Posts: 878
|
| Posted: Sun Dec 21, 2008 5:32 pm Post subject: |
|
|
Chuck Amuck
The Life and Times of an Animated Cartoonist
Paperback
By Chuck Jones
| Quote: | With my fascinated nose waffled against the rust-brown screen of our second-floor sleeping porch, I watched him tiptoe through the dune grass and yellow oyster daisies to the foot of our back porch, then look appraisingly up at me and utter a single laconic "Mckgnaow."* (From James Joyce's Ulysses, but Johnson said it first).
He moved into our house that morning, bag and baggage. The bag was that cat bag all cats live in, one of the few characteristics he shared with other cats. He sat fat and walked thin like other cats, but the resemblance to other cats stopped there.
His baggage was what appeared to be a very old, very used tongue depressor, fastened securely about his neck with a bit of tarry string, bearing in violet indelible ink the crude inscription: JOHNSON. Whether this was his name, that of his former proprietors, or his blood type we unable to determine, since he discussed his past not at all and responded to the name Johnson as well as any other, which was not at all...
... Mark Twain said that if you carried a cat home by the tail you would get information that would be valuable to you all your life. Such information could more conveniently be obtained by meddling with Johnson's tongue depressor.
Whatever else it represented, that bit of tongue depressor was Johnson's sole possession: his entire estate, his chattel, his treasure. It was all he had to leave to his eldest son, and he treated it as a sacred object. Any attempt to remove it resulted in what can only be described as a physical threat of the most nerve-racking implications. Touch his treasure and Johnson simply went into a lightning somersault, coupled with a full-bodied, four-footed karate chop, in which the meddler suddenly found his hand caught in an inverted cat vise of sixteen needle-pointed claws, the offending hand flat against Johnson's stomach, his eyes cobra-like, scythe-like slits of pure malevolence - one of Johnson's feline canines caught on his lower lip, its amethyst point devoid of dentine, sharp as a scalpel, blue as a diamond. At this point the disturber of the sacred tongue depressors was unharmed, but the slightest move elicited a corresponding slight extension of those sixteen curved stilettos. It was not unlike having one's hand in a boxing glove full of fishhooks. If one wanted to get out - and one did - it would require the minimal help of four fearless human assistants of fantastic manual desterity. It was possible to escape only if these assistants moved with split-second, simultaneous accuracy to pull Johnson's paws apart. This method allowed one to escape with only minor wounds, but the safest yet most unnerving way was to wait it out until Johnson had made up his mind that you were only kidding. This might take from five minutes to a half hour and few people had that kind of courage or were that free of panic or hysteria. So most unfortunates tried to snatch the hand free immediately upon being trapped, with results too bloodily ineffectual to be described. Only a half grapefruit gently dropped over his face like an ether cone would relax Johnson enough so his claws, like spines of a cactus, could be individually picked from the threatened extremity.
While half a grapefruit would anethetize Johnson, the most interesting way of serving Johnson his passion fruit was to present it to him in its glorious entirety: a whole unsullied, uncut, large grapefruit. ... (-- pgs. 14-19) |
Link to this entry
http://bccondos.ca/forums/viewtopic.php?p=1422#1422 |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
editor
Site Admin
Joined: 01 Dec 2003
Posts: 878
|
| Posted: Tue Jan 20, 2009 11:15 am Post subject: |
|
|
Vanity Fair
Magazine Subscription
The Man in the Rockefeller Suit
By snatching his seven-year-old daughter from her mother’s custody, after a bitter divorce, the man calling himself Clark Rockefeller blew the lid off a lifelong con game which had culminated with his posing as a scion of the famous dynasty. The 47-year-old impostor charmed his way into exclusive communities, clubs, and financial institutions—marrying a Harvard M.B.A.; working at Kidder, Peabody; and showing off an extraordinary art collection—until his arrest brought him face-to-face with his past and with questions regarding skeletal remains dug up in a California backyard..
January, 2009
| Quote: | Their apartment, at 55th Street and Sixth Avenue, was a showcase for their art. Furnishings were minimal, and Clark’s dog was given free rein. “We celebrated our first art purchase, a large painting by Rothko, on a cold, wet New York afternoon,” Sandra wrote in Artnews. “Our dealer and a Rothko expert had just arrived at our apartment when Yates, our 85-pound Gordon setter, returned from his walk, jumped on his usual spot on the sofa, and shook his head. A four-inch-long swath of saliva emerged from his mouth.” Naturally, it landed on the Rothko, and the art expert carefully wiped it off with a paper towel. Sandra wrote that the incident was evidence of her husband’s insistence that fine art and purebred dogs could live together harmoniously, despite their “slight incompatibilities.” …
As her position with McKinsey grew, Sandra was away from her husband more and more, which left him with plenty of time to walk Yates in Central Park, where he would later say, “my dog was very much in love with Amelia, Henry Kissinger’s dog.” Broadway producer Jeffrey Richards crossed paths with Rockefeller while walking his dog through the park one day. …
Sharlene Spingler, a writer and P.R. executive, met Rockefeller while walking her Shar-Pei and English setter in Tudor City, and soon they began walking their dogs together. … She introduced him to her friends and took him to the private clubs to which she belonged, and to which he would soon belong as well. …
“You’re walking your dog with a Rockefeller? Wow!” the noted New York-based artist William Quigley, whose work is collected by politicians, entertainers …., asked a friend one day. Not only is he a Rockefeller, the friend replied, but he loves your work. …
… neither Rockefeller nor the Whitney Museum ever bought a Quigley painting from Gagosian. Rockefeller did acquire three Quigley works, though: he bought one from the artist, got one as a gift, and picked up a third at an estate sale for a nominal sum.
None of Rockefellers new friends, who included a respected Park Avenue physician and a top Japanese female executive at Moody’s Investors Service, probed too deeply into the stories he told them. They were all too content to bask in his glow. … (-- pgs. 129-130) |
Link to this entry
http://www.bccondos.ca/forums/viewtopic.php?p=1449#1449 |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
editor
Site Admin
Joined: 01 Dec 2003
Posts: 878
|
| Posted: Sat Feb 07, 2009 4:28 pm Post subject: |
|
|
The New York Times Magazine
Magazine Subscription
Creature Comforts
It's no longer just guide DOGS for blind people. Service animals now include MONKEYS for quadripligics, PARROTS for psychotics and at least one assistance DUCK. Should the law recognize all of them?
By Rebecca Skoot
Jan. 4/09
| Quote: | What’s most striking about Edie and Panda is that after the initial shock of seeing a horse walk into a cafe, or ride in a car, watching them work together makes the idea of guide miniature horses seem utterly logical. Even normal. So normal, in fact, that people often find it hard to believe that the United States government is considering a proposal that would force Edie and many others like her to stop using their service animals. But that’s precisely what’s happening, because a growing number of people believe the world of service animals has gotten out of control: first it was guide dogs for the blind; now it’s monkeys for quadriplegia and agoraphobia, guide miniature horses, a goat for muscular dystrophy, a parrot for psychosis and any number of animals for anxiety, including cats, ferrets, pigs, at least one iguana and a duck. They’re all showing up in stores and in restaurants, which is perfectly legal because the Americans With Disabilities Act (A.D.A.) requires that service animals be allowed wherever their owners want to go.
Some people enjoy running into an occasional primate or farm animal while shopping. Many others don’t. This has resulted in a growing debate over how to handle these animals, as well as widespread suspicion that people are abusing the law to get special privileges for their pets. Increasingly, business owners, landlords and city officials are challenging the legitimacy of noncanine service animals and refusing to accommodate them. Animal owners are responding with lawsuits and complaints to the Department of Justice. This August, the Arizona Game and Fish Department ordered a woman to get rid of her chimpanzee, claiming that she brought it into the state illegally — she disputed this and sued for discrimination, arguing that it was a diabetes-assistance chimp trained to fetch sugar during hypoglycemic episodes.
Cases like this are raising questions about where to draw the lines when it comes to the needs and rights of people who rely on these animals, of businesses obligated by law to accommodate them and of everyday civilians who — because of health and safety concerns or just general discomfort — don’t want monkeys or ducks walking the aisles of their grocery stores. ...
... two questions that are often mistakenly treated as one. The first: What qualifies as a service animal? The second: Can any species be eligible?
There are two categories of animals that help people. “Therapy animals” (also known as “comfort animals”) have been used for decades in hospitals and homes for the elderly or disabled. Their job is essentially to be themselves — to let humans pet and play with them, which calms people, lowers their blood pressure and makes them feel better. There are also therapy horses, which people ride to help with balance and muscle building.
These animals are valuable, but they have no special legal rights because they aren’t considered service animals, the second category, which the A.D.A. defines as “any guide dog, signal dog or other animal individually trained to do work or perform tasks for the benefit of an individual with a disability, including, but not limited to, guiding individuals with impaired vision, alerting individuals with impaired hearing to intruders or sounds, providing minimal protection or rescue work, pulling a wheelchair or fetching dropped items.”
Since the 1920s, when guide dogs first started working with blind World War I veterans, service animals have been trained to do everything from helping people balance on stairs to opening doors to calling 911. In the early ’80s, small capuchin monkeys started helping quadriplegics with basic day-to-day functions like eating and drinking, and there was no question about whether they counted as service animals. Things got more complicated in the ’90s, when “psychiatric service animals” started fetching pills and water, alerting owners to panic attacks and helping autistic children socialize.
The line between therapy animals and psychiatric service animals has always been blurry, because it usually comes down to varying definitions of the words “task” and “work” and whether something like actively soothing a person qualifies. That line got blurrier in 2003, when the Department of Transportation revised its internal policies regarding service animals on airplanes. It issued a statement saying that in recent years, “a wider variety of animals (e.g., cats, monkeys, etc.) have been individually trained to assist people with disabilities. Service animals also perform a much wider variety of functions than ever before.”
To keep up with these changes, the D.O.T.’s new guidelines said, “Animals that assist persons with disabilities by providing emotional support qualify as service animals.” They also said that any species could qualify and that these animals didn’t need special training, aside from basic obedience. The only thing required for a pet to fly with its owner instead of riding as cargo was documentation (like a letter from a doctor) saying the person needed emotional support from an animal. Legally speaking, the D.O.T.’s new policy applied only to airplanes — the A.D.A.’s definition of service animal stayed the same. But for those looking online to find out whether they could take their animals into stores and restaurants, the D.O.T.’s definition looked like official law, and people started acting accordingly.
Soon, a trend emerged: people with no visible disabilities were bringing what a New York Times article called “a veritable Noah’s Ark of support animals” into businesses, claiming that they were service animals. Business owners and their employees often couldn’t distinguish the genuine from the bogus. To protect the disabled from intrusive questions about their medical histories, the A.D.A. makes it illegal to ask what disorder an animal helps with. You also can’t ask for proof that a person is disabled or a demonstration of an animal’s “tasks.” There is no certification process for service animals (though there are Web sites where anyone can buy an official-looking card that says they have a certified service animal, no documentation required). The only questions businesses can ask are “Is that a trained service animal?” and “What task is it trained to do?”
If the person answers yes to the first and claims that the animal is, say, trained to alert him or her to a specific condition (like a seizure), additional questioning could end in a lawsuit. And in many cases, according to Joan Esnayra, founder of the Psychiatric Service Dog Society, the outcome of those lawsuits depends largely on the words people use to describe their animals. “If you say ‘comfort,’ ‘need’ or ‘emotional support,’ you’re out the door,” she says. “If you talk about what your animal does in terms of ‘tasks’ and ‘work,’ then you stand a chance.” (-- pgs. 34-39) |
Link to this entry
http://www.bccondos.ca/forums/viewtopic.php?p=1467#1467
Last edited by editor on Mon Mar 23, 2009 9:25 am; edited 3 times in total |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
editor
Site Admin
Joined: 01 Dec 2003
Posts: 878
|
| Posted: Tue Feb 17, 2009 3:47 pm Post subject: |
|
|
COUNTRY LIFE
Magazine Subscription
Fire Dogs and Fine Art
The moving story of the London fireman's dog Chance is a delightful addition ot the London Original Print Fair, where a range of work is being launched
April 17/08
| Quote: | Chance, who was born in Shoreditch and the mid 1820s, was a remarkably lucky animal. He narrowly escaped bing drowned at birth along with his siblings, and then, in 1828, he survived a house fire in which his mother died, although he was removed from her side only with great difficulty. He then attached himself to the London Fire Brigade moving from one station to another and following the engines to every fire, even when he was almost blind with old age. He was skilled in crowd control, sniffing out survivors in the rubble and retrieving objects from burning buildings.
All the firemen of London contributed to the cost of his brass collar, on which was inscribed 'Stop me not, but onward let me jog, for I am Chance, the London Firemen's dog.' His portrait was painted several times, and he was the subject of newspaper obituaries. Even after his death in December 1835, his adventures were not over. The firemen sent him to be stuffed as a memorial, but the taxidermist sold him to a fairground showman, who exhibited him at a penny a peep. However, a firefighter happened to visit the fair, and brought the entire department to the rescue. Thereafter, Chance was displayed proudly in a case in the Central Fire Station. The tradition of station dogs that he inspired continues, as often as not with Dalmatians. ... (-- p. 120) |
More on Chance:
The Firefighter's Best Friend
Lives and Legends of Chicago
Hardcover
By Drew Orsinger
| Quote: | Chance made quite an impact on the London Fire Brigade firefighters. While his breed was undetermined, Chance was known for following the crew to every fire and rescuing several people. He rotated throughout the firehouses in London, spending a few days at each house. As a result, every firefighter in London knew him. A collection was taken by firefighters to purchase a brass collar with an inscription that read, "Stop me not, but onward let me jog, for I am Chance, the London Firemen's dog." Chance also had his portrait painted by several artists. William Heath completed one of these paintings in 1834, depicting Chance against the background of a burning House of Parliament, pawing at a flowing hydrant while a fireman watched over him.
Upon his death, many London newspapers ran obituaries of the dog. One paper reported that while on his deathbed, Chance tried unsuccessfully to rise up and follow the men one last time as they rushed to a fire. When Chance passed away, his favorite house at the Central Station of the London Fire Brigade paid a taxidermist to stuff him and place him in a glass case. After the taxidermist completed his work, he decided to instead sell the famous dog to a showman on the other side of town, who let visitors glimpse the dog for a penny. The showman unknowingly allowed a fireman in for a viewing. Several hours later, the entire squad returned to retrieve their dog. The firefighters mounted the case on a wall with a plaque behind the case that read: Chance, well known as the firemen's dog. Died October 10, 1835. This is humbly inscribed by the Committee of London Fire Establishment and their obedient servants.
The grandfather of the modern-day firedog, Chance proved to be the benchmark in a longstanding institution. (From Chapter 1, p. 4) |
Link to this entry
http://bccondos.ca/forums/viewtopic.php?p=1475#1475 |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
editor
Site Admin
Joined: 01 Dec 2003
Posts: 878
|
| Posted: Mon Mar 16, 2009 11:16 am Post subject: |
|
|
cbc.ca
Vancouver hatches plan for backyard chickens
March 6/09
| Quote: | The City of Vancouver has moved one step closer to allowing urban chicken coops in residential backyards. Councillors voted unanimously on Thursday night to direct staff to study the issue and draft a bylaw amendment. City staff will take a few months to look at issues such as the prospect of an avian influenza outbreak, noise complaints and a possible rise in predators before presenting the draft amendment to the council for a vote.
But animal activists, such as Leanne McConnachie, the director of farm animal programs with the Vancouver Humane Society, told the councillors backyard chickens are a bad idea. "My concern is that when the general public has the ability to bring them into their backyard and they think this is a great way for their children to have their own Easter eggs … that we will have the same situation that we now have with cats and dogs in terms of neglect, abandonment, lack of knowledge," said McConnachie. The BCSPCA voiced similar concerns at the council meeting, but several people spoke out to support the idea. ...
Currently, Vancouver residents can only raise chickens in their backyards if they own a minimum one-acre property. (emphasis added) ...
Dave Chauvel told the council he has kept chickens illegally at his Kitsilano home on and off for the last decade, and he believes it's about time the bylaw was amended. "As it now stands, the City of Vancouver allows the keeping of 12 exotic birds, and exotic birds is not well defined, and I think you could keep 12 ostriches in your backyard according to the bylaw," he said. |
How might a strata corporation overrule a municipal chicken bylaw?
How about a co-op?
| Quote: | Try making it a material condition of membership.
See Termination of membership in a housing cooperative:
35 (1) A housing cooperative may provide in its rules for the termination of the membership of a member.
(2) Rules referred to in subsection (1) and the rules that a housing cooperative may adopt under subsection (3) of this section are subject to this section and sections 36 to 39.
(3) A housing cooperative by its rules may adopt either of the following grounds as constituting grounds for termination of the membership of a member who has a right to possession or occupancy of residential premises that is dependent on the member's membership:
(a) the member has not paid rent, occupancy charges or other money due by the member to the housing cooperative in respect of the residential premises and has not rectified the nonpayment within a reasonable time after receiving written notice to do so from the housing cooperative;
(b) the member
(i) has not paid rent, occupancy charges or other money due by the member to the housing cooperative in respect of the residential premises, or
(ii) in the opinion of the directors, based on reasonable grounds, has breached a material condition of an agreement between the member and the housing cooperative relating to the member's
(A) possession or occupancy of the residential premises, or
(B) use of the property of which those premises form part,
and has not rectified the nonpayment or breach within a reasonable time after receiving written notice to do so from the housing cooperative.
(4) Subject to any rules of a housing cooperative for termination of membership, and to subsections (5) and (6), a housing cooperative may terminate the membership of a member if the member has engaged in conduct detrimental to the housing cooperative.
(5) A housing cooperative may exercise the powers under this section to terminate the membership of a member only by a resolution of the directors requiring a majority of at least 3/4 of all the directors and passed at a meeting of the directors called to consider the resolution. (From the Cooperative Association Act at BCICS) |
| Quote: | | The question in each case is whether a group of residents acting under provincial authority may enforce a rule of their own that conflicts with a municipal bylaw. Our guess: In 'BILLYville, probably not. |
On the intellectual prowess of chickens:
The Papers of Samuel Marchbanks
Hardcover
By Frostback Robertson Davies, alter ego of
humorist Samuel Marchbanks
| Quote: | HE ANIMADVERTS UPON DOGS
A dog attempted to end it all under the wheels of a car in which I was riding this afternoon. The suicidal instinct seems to be strong in all dogs, but amounts to an overmastering passion in collies and Airedales. My theory is that dogs go mad from the boredom of being dogs and seek to take their lives as a consequence. The much advertised intelligence of dogs is mythical. A recent article in Saturday Night, written by a scientist, asserts that dogs have even less intelligence than chickens (emphasis added), which is a strong statement. A dog can't begin to compete with a monkey, the writer says, and horses simply laugh at the pretensions of dogs to be sagacious. A pig can learn more tricks than a dog, but has too much sense to want to do it. All this supports my lifelong contention that Man's Dumb Chum is a fraud, and has only wormed his way into the hearts of dog-lovers by undignified self-abasement. The dog is a Yes-animal, very popular with people who can't afford to keep a Yes-man. (From The Table Talk of Samuel Marchbanks, p. 342) |
Link to this entry
http://bccondos.ca/forums/viewtopic.php?p=1487#1487
Last edited by editor on Mon Mar 23, 2009 10:04 am; edited 2 times in total |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
editor
Site Admin
Joined: 01 Dec 2003
Posts: 878
|
| Posted: Mon Mar 23, 2009 9:30 am Post subject: |
|
|
The New York Times Magazine
Magazine Subscription
Nature, Nuisance or Worse?
An urbanite reflects on the wild animals in her neighborhood.
By Peggy Orenstein
Dec. 7/08
| Quote: | There was a turkey on my neighbors’ roof. Not the kind wrapped in plastic found in your grocer’s freezer, but a live 20-pounder pecking at the grain my neighbors had scattered there. This wasn’t the first gobbler I had seen at the outer reaches of Berkeley, Calif., just blocks from where the city tumbles into a 2,000-acre regional park. And I have to admit, initially I was charmed. Turkeys! In Berkeley! How quaint! How colonial! Isn’t this communion with nature the very reason we moved to the hills? ...
It’s only a matter of time before the turkeys complete the circuit from novelty to nuisance. Until they become like the deer who ate $300 worth of landscaping. Or the geese who have turned jogging around a nearby lake into a trip through a sewer. Or worse: in October a raccoon slid open a screen door of a house across the street, jumped up on the bed where my neighbor was napping with her newborn son and bit her. Although we haven’t had the rabies outbreaks that are common in the East, the nursing mother had to endure a series of injections just in case.
Am I alarmist? Not according to Justin Brashares, an assistant professor of wildlife ecology and conservation at the University of California at Berkeley (who admitted to trying to kick a raccoon after it snatched a marshmallow from his 4-year-old son’s hand during a backyard barbecue). “What happens if these thousands of Canada geese become carriers of an avian flu that moves to people?” he asked. As for surburbanized turkeys, he said, during mating season, the testosterone-pumped males, with up to two-inch spurs on their legs, will “attack anything that moves.” Cats. Bicyclists. My kid. (-- p. 11) |
Link to this entry
http://bccondos.ca/forums/viewtopic.php?p=1489#1489 |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
editor
Site Admin
Joined: 01 Dec 2003
Posts: 878
|
| Posted: Sun May 31, 2009 10:57 am Post subject: |
|
|
The White Tiger
Paperback
By Aravind Adiga
| Quote: | The Nepali was hand in hand with Ram Persad. One day he burst into my room and put a big plastic bucket down on the floor with a thud.
"Do you like dogs, village boy?" he asked with a big smile.
There were two Pomeranians in the house - Cuddles and Puddles. The rich expect their dogs to be treated like humans, you see - they expect their dogs to be pampered, and walked, and petted, and even washed! And guess who had to do the washing? I got down on my knees and began scrubbing the dogs, and then lathering them, and foaming them, and then washing them down, and taking a blow dryer and drying their skin. Then I took them around the compound on a chain while the king of Nepal sat in a corner and shouted, "Don't pull the chain so hard! They're worth more than you are!"
By the time I was done with Puddles and Cuddles, I walked back, sniffing my hands - the only thing that can take the smell of dog skin off a servant's hands is the smell of his master's skin.
Mr. Ashok was standing outside my room. ... (From The Second Night, pgs. 66-67) |
Link to this entry
http://bccondos.ca/forums/viewtopic.php?p=1524#1524 |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
|
FAQ 
Search 
Memberlist 
Usergroups
Profile 
Log in to check your private messages 
Log in 
