As effortless as it is to turn on your favorite music and tune out the world around you, and go anywhere, it’s hard to imagine life without the convenience of portable audio.
  But 40 years ago, stereo-to-go was cumbersome, if not impossible. Until Sony introduced this nifty little device called the Walkman.
  Life changed, music changed; certainly how we listened to it did. It became personal and portable; this cassette tape-propelled little brick that delivered quality sound through lightweight headphones at a volume you, only, could fully experience.
  Yeah, just like we do now, with our mobile devices, but this was different. This personal listening experience was never before available until the Walkman.
  Thinking of it now, I still find it amazing.
  In the ‘60s, if you wanted music at the beach, you had to rely on the transistor radio. You accepted the music broadcast through a small monophonic speaker on whatever AM station you could tune into through a small monophonic speaker. Yes, you would sometimes get your favorite song. It was better than nothing, but it wasn’t anything like it could be.
  Technology was primitive. It was limited.
  The ‘70s brought the boom box, but let’s talk about cumbersome. Hauling around a suitcase-sized stereo proved, mostly, to be less fun that it was intended. And it became costly; all those big D cell batteries could eat up your allowance pretty quick.
  So the Walkman – itself not cheap at $150 – gave you freedom. Four double AA batteries could get you anywhere, or take you anywhere. Cassette tapes (now a thing of the past) allowed you to record music from vinyl (one album per side on a 90-minute tape), and away you went; running, cycling, walking, or studying. It was like adding a soundtrack to your life.
  Before that, it’s hard to imagine what commuters did on the bus or subway. Did they just talk?
  While Sony streamlined the original Walkman (later adding the Discman when compact discs became available), the technology was quickly knocked off and became the thing to have. Prices dropped to the point where personal cassette players were almost free with gas, and everybody seemed to have one.
  Headphones heighten the experience.
  The Walkman changed how we consume music. The Walkman inspired how we now listen, either through headphones or with the ear buds popularized with the iPod.
  In 40 years we’ve lived through a range of personal audio products to the point where we don’t think of it any longer as unique. It’s just something we do.
  We listen. It probably even sounds better now than it did then.

My team won last Sunday.

The Winnipeg Blue Bombers handily defeated the Hamilton Tiger Cats 33 – 12 in the Canadian Football League’s Grey Cup final. I was proud. It has been 29 years since the team could call themselves champions.

I haven’t really followed the Bombers much since I moved from Winnipeg five years ago. In fact, this was the first game I had watched on television all year. When I lived in the city I used to catch all, or most, of the team’s games on CJOB radio. I used to know the names of the offensive and defensive line. I knew the coaches, and became familiar with the team’s strengths and weakness. Occasionally I saw a glimmer of hope, but each season I would be ultimately become disappointed with the performance.

Still, I remained a fan. Blue Bombers fans are nothing, if not loyal. We call it prairie pride.

Football is an easy game to follow on the radio. I grew up listening to the games with my father. I presume the Bombers were his team as well; he grew up in that city. I was raised two hours down the highway. The Bombers were the pride of the province and, for the longest time, the only professional team.

Winnipeg is a city near and dear to my heart. I lived there almost half of my adult life. I went to university in the city of about 700,000. My daughter was born there, and I moved back and forth between Brandon and Winnipeg a couple of times. Then I moved to Toronto.

I’m still a Bombers fan, however. I still have an affinity for the province, and Sunday’s big win was good for the city of Winnipeg. They were celebrating with a parade through downtown yesterday.

But, there hasn’t been a lot of good news coming out of the Manitoba capital lately. The murder rate is sky high, just shy of the record 41 murders in 2011. There is still more than a month left in the year. A rash of violent liquor store robberies has put the city into the national news, and a mix of heroin, meth and opioids like fentanyl and carfentanil are taking a toll on the hearty prairie city. Public safety is not what I remember it to be.

I visited the city in June, and was warned by a few people not to venture out at night, as I planned. Often, in whichever city or town I happen to visit, I will head out with my camera to photograph the local landscape. This past Winnipeg visit, I was especially interested in capturing changes to a city I had not been to for a couple of years.

“The streets are not safe, especially at night,” I’d written in my journal.

It was sad, really, to see or feel the disintegration of a place I had thought of as home. Violence and drugs are now common elements in any urban environment, but I used to think it was more obvious in larger centres like Toronto. It is a reality everywhere.

I’m hopeful the football victory will help heal the damaged psyche of the city. The record of a professional sports franchise is not something you can (or should) count on, but maybe the Bomber win will give citizens something positive to talk about.

Maybe, like the Bombers, the fortunes of the city can be turned around. Let’s hope it doesn’t take as long.

Unrelenting in its determination,
unceasing. Our resiliency stronger
than even we know, a capacity for
understanding more than what shows.
How then to deal with, or accommodate,
even lessen the impact. Cause and effect.
A conundrum. An intrusion. Never ending.
Daunted by circumstance, inundated with
ignorance, we struggle with our self.
Breathe. Let it out.

Are you able to manage the pressure, as
it builds, as it corrupts, as it influences
each and every decision or outcome.
We all are feeling more than we deserve.
It is constant in its resolve. How will you
know when you are ready to blow?
Does it accumulate internally, littering
precious thought patterns, preventing
progress. Can it be prevented?
Breathe. Let it go.

©2019 j.g. lewis

Last Friday, caught up in afternoon foot traffic and not paying attention, I walked by.
  I had heard the banter on the morning show, earlier in the week, but, right then it did not register.
  It wasn’t until I went back for early morning coffee on Sunday that it hit me.
  There was a tent pitched next to the curb, nestled between the newspaper boxes and a trash bin, on one of the city’s busy downtown streets.
  Yes, I am aware of the plight of the homeless, and fully aware there are people living on the streets of this city beneath sleeping bags, blankets and cardboard, but this seemed so… so, permanent.
  This is what it has come to.
  This is how we live, at the close of a decade, in Toronto.
  Now I’ve seen, in the past, small tent cities under the Gardiner Expressway. I know people have chosen to camp out in out-of-the-way ravines, out of sight and out of mind of most city dwellers, but this is right out there, for everybody to see.
  I sat inside Starbucks, warm on the chilly morning, enjoying a cup of expensive coffee, and a slice of coffee cake. It was early; pigeons had only begun settling on the sidewalk and slowly people walked by the tent, not really paying attention to what is going on.
  Maybe we have become immune to the difficulties, and the pain, more and more people are experiencing each day in a city that has become increasingly less affordable?
  We all seem to have come to accept people living on the street as normal.
  We have become accustomed to homelessness.
  We walk by on the way to the office, or shopping, or on our way home to our cozy condos. We don’t acknowledge that this is all that some people have: a temporary slice of dirty cold concrete with little to protect them from the elements.
  Daily, as we walk the streets, we are approached by panhandlers, or some just sit and wait for coins to be dropped into their cups.
  Mostly we walk on by.
  I consider myself a charitable person; yet, rarely do I drop any change into the cups or open palms. I’m more inclined, now and then, to step into any of the three Salvation Army missions within the circumference of my common area and make a donation. Maybe this takes away some of my guilt, or maybe I just know the money will go towards a wholly meaningful charity and not end up wasted on the wasted. Drugs and addicts are a common sight in the city. There is a safe injection site I walk by more frequently than the missions. I, more often than a few times, have stepped by, or over, discarded needles on the street.
  I do see the homeless, but the tent on Queen Street hit me hard.
  Of all the streets of Toronto, Queen Street West is overly familiar to me. In 2015 – as I was getting to know my new home city – I spent much of a year photographing the sights, the people and places, at all times of the day, for a photo essay I was preparing.
  Yes, that year, I did come to know two regulars who slept, essentially, on the same corners (one of them is still there today), but I had never seen a tent on the street.
  The chatter on the radio last week, from both the morning show host — who rides his bike to work very early every morning — and some longtime Toronto residents also indicated they had never seem this before.
  I was stunned.
  The scene has affected me, and I don’t know what to do about it.
  We’ve just come out of a federal election where the word “affordable” was bandied about, but none of the parties offered any sort of platform to deal with social housing, even improvements or support to the shelter system. Hell, it’s hard to name an issue any of the parties actually introduced a platform on at all.
  And this is Ontario, where the ruthlessly ignorant Dog Ford government will surely continue to cut funding to social services and support to those who need it the most. The waiting list for affordable housing continues to grow, along with the demand.
  With about 7,000 shelter beds in Toronto, there is still not enough capacity to deal with this problem.
  Now, I don’t have the solution, not do I know what it’s like to camp out on a city street during the colder weather certain to come, but I know it’s not right.
  I know it’s not how I want to live. I don’t think anybody does.
  Still we walk on by.

“The measure of a society is found in how they
treat their weakest and most helpless citizens.”
                                                       -Jimmy Carter

Clocks set back, days ahead altered
as if time can be held, still
we cannot fool ourselves in believing.

The sun will still set.

We seldom lose hours as much as
we change our trajectory.
It will get darker, before you know.

The sun will still rise.

Between where and then, light will
strike any object in its path
as long as it is able. Faithfully, we watch.

The sun sets.

This autumn, this November,
carries a tone of melancholy.
Steadfast, I can only stare back.

The sun rises.

I know about fear, or fear what I know.
Remnants of the day,
routinely, have so much less to offer.

The sun will still set.

When all that you know becomes
all that you have, you are
unable to consider possibility.

The sun will still rise

We live and breathe, twenty-four hours
daily. Memory will serve us;
those uncertain, those unbroken.

© 2019   j.g. lewis