Author: Roger

I'm a librarian. I hear music, even when it's not being played. I used to work at a comic book store, and it still informs my life. I won once on JEOPARDY! - ditto.

Toronto: The City Pass, Part 2

The highlight may have been a Rube Goldberg-type machine.

The third full day in Toronto we dedicated to going to the Toronto Zoo. It is on the eastern edge of the city and required both train and bus to get there. One could make the case for driving there, I suppose. One of the selling points of having the City Pass is that one could avoid lines. Never was this more true at the Zoo, where we avoided at least a 15-minute wait just to get inside.

The zoo is massive. We saw only about 40% of it. We went to the Malay and African sections but never even got to the Americas or Australia or Eurasia. We considered taking the train around, and we might do that on a future trip. We’re already thinking about that.

The only comparable facility I’ve been to is the San Diego Zoo in California, and that was over a decade ago, maybe two decades. The SD Zoo was $32 per person then, whereas the Toronto Zoo retailed for under $25 US.

There were some extra features, such as rides, which we did not use. But we were pleased that the splash park was part of the admission. It was a particularly warm day – I got a bit of sunburn – so it was a welcome relief. To give you what a full day it was, the Daughter fell asleep on my shoulder on the bus trip back to the train, and then fell asleep again on her mother’s shoulder on the subway ride back to our hotel.

The BONUS appeal of the Toronto Zoo, though, happened some days after we got back to Albany. The Daughter was watching her new favorite show, Dino Dan, which is a TV series about “paleontologist-in-training Dan Henderson (played by Jason Spevack) and his friends, who uncover clues about the past and secrets of the dinosaurs. The show combines live action with CGI dinosaurs.” On one episode last month, which I was only half watching, the Daughter correctly identified as having been filmed at the Toronto Zoo; I immediately recognized the elephant and lion areas myself. Someone put a bit of the episode on YouTube.

I will revisit the zoo later in the year.

 

We went to the Ontario Science Centre on our way out of town and may have given it short shrift. The quirky thing about this building is that the 6th floor is down, while the 1st floor is up. The Daughter enjoyed the reptiles, and especially the area where one plays with a hot air balloon, lights, bubbles, and a lot more. She particularly liked dancing to her image altered by some nifty effects. Most of our time was spent in the play area.

But the highlight may have been a Rube Goldberg-type machine similar to, but not exactly the same as this one. The one we saw had a bunch of billiard balls, and the patrons had to keep loading the balls into the machine, from a half dozen locales, to keep the effect going. The kids LOVED it; heck, I loved it.

There are City Passes for about a dozen other cities in North America. I’m not sure I’d use it for a city I’ve visited, such as New York or Boston; I’ve been to the Empire State Building. But for a city I’ve never been to, such as Seattle, I think it would be ideal.

Toronto: The City Pass

Casa Loma, built in the 1910s for some $3.5 million, back when that was real money, is a castle

When I was thinking about us taking our trip to Toronto, I asked you fine folks for some recommendations. Some of you, especially Jaquandor, suggested a number of venues. As it turns out, all of the suggested locations are available from some program called the City Pass. In this case, five attractions at about 45% off the regular price, with nine days to see them all.

On our first full day, we took the subway to the CN Tower. Well, close to the CN Tower. We walked to an adjacent plaza as the signs suggested, but were obstructed by new construction. We followed the detour signs and ended up exactly where we had started. We got to our destination eventually and purchased the one child and two adult City Passes.

The CN Tower, which is one of the tallest human-made buildings in the world, was the most touristy of the five locations, with long lines. Recommendation: get there early. Don’t stop to go to the bathroom; you’ll have plenty of time to do so while waiting in the queue. Still, the view of the city was magnificent, especially overlooking Lake Ontario. The glass floor was wonderfully scary. The IMAX movie was entertaining.

Next stop that day: the Royal Ontario Museum, which featured several things the Daughter particularly liked, such as dinosaurs and mummies. I liked the Chinese sculpture. “Biodiversity is a core theme” there.

The next day, we went to Casa Loma, the former home of once-rich industrialist, financier, and military man Sir Henry Mill Pellatt, who controlled about a quarter of Canada’s finances for time. He brought streetlights to Toronto, helped create hydroelectric power at Niagara Falls, as well as several other ventures. Casa Loma came into the hands of a not-for-profit shortly before his death, and around the same time as the death of his wife, Lady Mary Pellatt, the first Commissioner of the Girl Guides of Canada.

The building, built in the 1910s for some $3.5 million, back when that was real money, is a castle. We walked up the turret, some seven stories; the trick, actually, was climbing DOWN some of the spiral staircases as others traversed upward. The site also lovely gardens. Note that if one takes public transportation, it’s three blocks up, then about four flights of steps. It was a good thing we didn’t go to the CN Tower that day, for it was quite overcast.

Having the City Pass, or at least some prepaid ticket, saved us some time getting inside.

More soon.

J for Jewish History Museum

 

I saw a segment on CBS Sunday Morning earlier this year about the National Museum of American Jewish History, which opened in November 2010. I was unfamiliar with the facility, but I assumed it was somewhere in New York; I assumed incorrectly.

It is in fact located in Philadelphia, not far from Independence Hall. This was deliberate, a reflection of, initially, a “tiny minority [who] sought, defended, and tested freedom—in political affairs, in relations with Christian neighbors, and in their own understanding of what it meant to be Jewish.” Then “the migration of millions of immigrants who came to the United States beginning in the late 19th century and who profoundly reshaped the American Jewish community and the nation as a whole.”
“On the Museum’s first floor, the Only in America® Gallery/Hall of Fame illustrates the choices, challenges, and opportunities eighteen Jewish Americans encountered on their path to remarkable achievement.”

The first eighteen individuals to be featured in the Only in America® Gallery/Hall of Fame are:
Irving Berlin
Leonard Bernstein
Louis Brandeis
Albert Einstein
Mordecai Kaplan
Sandy Koufax
Esteé Lauder
Emma Lazarus
Isaac Leeser
Golda Meir
Jonas Salk
Menachem Mendel Schneerson
Rose Schneiderman
Isaac Bashevis Singer
Steven Spielberg
Barbra Streisand
Henrietta Szold
Isaac Mayer Wise

How many of the 18 can you identify? I knew 12.

And for no particular reason, here are:
America from West Side Story
There’s No Business Like Show Business, sung by Ethel Merman
A pivotal scene from Close Encounters of the Third Kind
Give Me Your Tired, Your Poor


ABC Wednesday – Round 9

Damn those Pirates!

This will be this losing season #19; no comparable winning streak evolved.


The Pittsburgh Pirates baseball team was in first place in the National League Central division, with a 53-47 record, the morning of July 26. This was astonishing since the team had had a record-breaking 18 losing seasons in a row. That evening they played a game against the Atlanta Braves, which they lost in the 19th inning on an amazingly bad call by an umpire; you can read about it here. They then lost the next game, also by one run, won one, then lost 10 in a row, knocking them out of playoff contention, and eventually making this losing season #19.

I think that one bad call somehow messed with the young team’s mojo. They wuz robbed, I tell ya! Robbed!

Today is, of course, International Talk Like a Pirate Day. I’ve cheated, as I am wont to do, and talked about a bunch of Pirates.

 

Dollar Coin Gathers Dust

There is only one way to get Americans to use dollar coins, and that is to do away with the paper dollar.

A couple of months ago, ABC News, following up on an NPR story, did an “expose” involving the US unused, and purportedly unwanted, dollar coins.

“Passed by Congress in 2005, the Presidential $1 Coin Act ordered the mint to make millions of coins to honor every dead president, but not even Sen. Jack Reed, D-R.I., one of the co-sponsors of the original bill, uses the legal tender.” It goes on to explain that these coins are being stored, at no small expense, in warehouses, which does appear to be a waste of money.

Implicit in the ABC News story was that the obvious solution is to get Congress to get the Mint to stop making the coins.

Well, that’s one way to look at it, but I would suggest something else, which is in step with this coin expert:
“As for the U.S. circulating dollar coins, virtually everyone agrees that there is only one way to get Americans to use them, and that is to do away with the paper dollar. Doing so would also save a lot of money since dollar coins, like other circulating coinage, lasts for decades, while paper bills have a much shorter life span. Many people seem reluctant to give up their paper dollars because they do not want to carry around dollar coins, but unless you have a lot of them in your pocket they are really not that heavy. They weigh about the same amount as a quarter, and most of us have no problem carrying quarters in our pockets or purses. I am sure we could make the adjustment if we had to.”

Using the Presidential dollar coin would have some other benefits. Americans might actually learn who their Presidents were. Moreover, I think the notion that “nobody wants them” is self-fulfilling. Except for one branch of one bank, I cannot regularly FIND the new releases of the Presidential $1 coin around Albany. If more people actually saw them, they would use them, and might even collect them. They’ve worked in every vending machine I’ve tried.

As I understand it, when Canada got rid of its dollar bill in favor of a coin – the Loonie – back in the 1980s, there was some resistance. But, as I noticed during our family visit to Toronto and Peterborough, Ontario last month, it’s no longer a big deal.

WAIT…

I have late word that the United States cannot get rid of its dollar bill because it would be a threat to its freedom. Frankly, I’m not sure what that means. Maybe we’re all Stonecutters who are resistant to “foreign” things such as the metric system, even as we drink our two-liter bottles of Pepsi.

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