Today's post brought to you by the artful lodger

Rainy day in a small town

Robotic

Sky

After being silent for a while, our artful lodger is back at it, and this time with a vengeance. Madeleine is taking the semester off school, ostensibly to recover from a health issue, but evidently to do art. She's the kind of kid who completely throws herself into whatever is the current passion, and for now it is visual art. More of her work can be seen at her art blog.

Maman

One of the benefits of living close to Ottawa is being able to visit the National Gallery of Canada. Madeleine and I went last week and had a fabulous day soaking up all kinds of art. Perhaps the largest piece in the gallery's collection is the giant bronze spider called "Maman" that inhabits the square in front of the gallery. Maman is huge: she's 9 metres tall (30 ft.) and weighs 6000 kg (13,000 lb). She has 26 marble eggs in her egg sac. 

I love that Maman looks like she is about to devour the city.

Occupation art

"Support Our Neighbors" by Madeleine P.

Madeleine and I went down to the Occupy Ottawa gathering on Saturday. There was a fabulous cross section of people there and quite a few dogs, too. One of the signs read: "The revolution will not be televised" - which may be true, but it will definitely be on facebook. It seemed that the main activity there was taking pictures and videos of everyone else. Madeleine posted this watercolour on the facebook event page, and within minutes the guy (Matt) and his dog (Bella) were identified and he even "liked" it himself.

It is a brave new world we live in, and I'm happy to see lots of people with their eyes open asking questions. I certainly admire the earnest facilitators using the people's mic, consensus decision-making, politically-correct speech and all that, but I wonder if all this good behaviour isn't precisely what the powers that be want to see. And if ever the young testosterone-laden lads get out of hand (and Bella, the golden doodle, too), well, the full force of the state will be brought down on the whole thing and everyone will be written off as hooligans and criminals. Interesting times, indeed.