Hands and Feet

Death Portraits

If you play the Coin Killer Game on the Canadian No Country for Old Men website, odds are you will be treated to a special view of your own dead head.

The Interactive Advertising Bureau of Canada (IAB) announced last March that 2006 Canadian Online Advertising Revenues have surged to an unprecedented $1.01 billion dollars for the year. The 2006 actuals represent a 26% increase over the $801 million originally estimated by the IAB for 2006; and an 80% increase over the 2005 actuals of $562 million. 

 
Advertisers who ignore the power of the internet are being left behind as more consumers shop online for ‘better value’ goods and services. Look at the film business and let me ask you a simple question, ‘do movies with attractive websites do bigger box office?’ The answer is yes.

 

 
Web sites help movies attract new viewers. The rise of group discussion forums like Rotten Tomatoes, Movie Spot, and Metacritic now allow people unprecedented access to movie reviews and film trailers. Statistics show that over 60% of theater patrons know the major plot details before they venture out to the cinema to watch the movie. Websites that proffer show times and movie schedules are invariably connected to each film’s official website. A rising percentage of cinema goers watch trailers online for clues to the film’s quality. The host site should be as informative as possible and contain links to cast and crew bios, and ‘behind the scenes’ media.

Marketing movies is a strange business all over the planet. It's no secret that advertising executives are just as creative as filmmakers, and probably more down to earth about the reality of their industry – they know it’s all just an illusion; the difference between a Blockbuster and a Bomb is as intangible as the stories themselves.

What happens if movies don’t advertise online? Just last week Lions Gate Entertainment Corp reported a deep second quarter loss due to higher (print and TV) advertising costs in the spring and summer of 2007. And really it’s no wonder – the studio spent upwards of $122.5 million dollars promoting their cinematic products ‘Saw IV’, and ‘Good Luck Chuck’.

Saw IV’s opening weekend brought in a whooping $31,756,764, and has achieved $84,123,903 in worldwide box office sales. Good Luck Chuck did $13,652,001 on its opening weekend and $39,671,008 in worldwide box office sales after that. But their old school television and print media campaign ate up all the profits! Could they have done a better job more economically online – again, the answer is yes.   

 
Social marketing is about to revolutionize online advertising. Right now most people over the age of forty don’t know the meaning of the words ‘Social Media Optimization’ and they don’t understand how inexpensive, and yet how effective such promotion can be inside a dynamic online advertising campaign. Young executives have a hard time explaining to their superiors exactly how they will succeed in the shadowy world of online chat rooms, blogs and discussion forums.

      

The ‘Coin Killer Game’ is an interactive solution to a viral marketing challenge posed by most anticipated release of 2007, the new Coen brothers movie, No Country for Old Men.

This attraction is being hailed as the best piece of filmmaking ever evidenced by the cinematic siblings - its certain to be a ‘must-see’ movie for millions of devoted fans. In this film, a compressed air tank welding villain played by Javier Bardem asks a gas station attendant ‘How much have you ever wagered in a coin toss?’. The same dialogue has been preserved online in the opening frames of the Coin Killer Game.   

 After uploading a personal photo, each visitor must click the ‘flip this coin’ prompt and watch as an American quarter rotates up above the banner, where it disappears… The user is asked to chose ‘Heads or Tails?’

This exciting challenge ends with each visitor ultimately losing the match, and then watching in horror as his or her personal photo becomes a ‘death portrait’.

The game imagines the player's death portrait and simulates what each face would look like after being struck by the villain’s signature weapon. Check out the author’s own face after the gruesome attack.

     

The Coin Killer Game is the next evolution of online marketing; already a facebook widget, this application is almost certain to convey tens of thousands of unique viewers to the No Country for Old Men site before the campaign ends in late November. 

Joy Division movie Control will affect fashion, again.

The new movie Control chronicles the rise of Joy Division and the demise of Ian Curtis the lead singer of the band. This film features full frontal epilepsy. Its black and white photography and stark but beautiful images match the raw music in the soundtrack.

Ian Curtis suffered and if you look at the claustrophobic tiny apartment in which he
grew up with his family it isn't hard to see how and why he felt like he did. And lets also remember he had epilepsy and was forced to take all kinds of crazy medication.

 

The film is by Anton Corbijn, who was the band's photographer and has lensed some of the most iconic images in rock. He shot the Joshua Tree album cover for a little band out of Ireland called U2 in the 1980's and has directed many videos and such... The movie Control is based on a book by Deborah Curtis. (The woman in the photo left) Touching from a Distance describes Curtis's life from his early teenage years to his premature death on the eve of Joy Division's first American tour. It tells how, with a wife, child and impending international fame, he was seduced by the glory of an early grave. What were the reasons for his fascination with death? Were his dark, brooding lyrics an artistic exorcism? In Touching from a Distance Curtis's widow, Deborah, explains the drama of his life and the tragedy of his death.

Roberrific was moved by a beautiful scene in which John Cooper Clarke performs his own poems on stage to an approving post punk audience in dirty Manchester performance hall as Joy Division waits nervously backstage - and the crowd was roaring when he finished. Wow, it was poetry in action. Spoken word! Here's the portion of John Cooper Clarke's Evidently Chickentown that was heard in 'Control'.

Evidently Chickentown

 

the bloody pies are bloody old
the bloody chips are bloody cold
the bloody beer is bloody flat
the bloody flats have bloody rats
the bloody clocks are bloody wrong
the bloody days are bloody long
it bloody gets you bloody down
evidently chicken town

the bloody train is bloody late
you bloody wait you bloody wait
you're bloody lost and bloody found
stuck in fucking chicken town

Other bloggers with better blogs on Control can be found on Taylor's Entertainment blog, Swanktrendz, SEO is for Girls, FunisDead, and musicvlog.

Beware the Milk Swamp in Muskoka

 

Canadian cottagers dread the arrival of the Labour Day Long Weekend - the first weekend in September marks the end of summer. There's a great conversation on Wondercafe.ca about how religious service providers change the tone of their messages this weekend. Everyone with a cottage in Canada feels the sadness autumn brings, and my friends are no exception. On Sunday Sept 2nd 2007six companions hiked the trails at Hardy Lake, in the heart of the Muskokas, on a desperate attempt to capture the last warm days of summer. Little did we know how easily summer could capture us...

Hardy Lake is a provincial park with no facilities. Mountain bikes are not allowed, and there's no camping permitted on the 81 hectare park. Canoing is tolerated, but we didn't have enough watercraft at our cottage to accommodate all of the participants, so we decided on a short hike with our dogs instead.

The Hardy Lake trails begin at the parking lot on Highway 169 about 12 kilometers west of Gravenhurst. Each relaxing route is well shaded and full of beautiful scenery. Most footpaths circumnavigate the lake, although two trails lead almost directly toward Lake Muskoka. There are three trail heads in the parking lot, but only one, at the west end, is obvious. This is the main loop, which has an awful start down an old stretch of blacktop that I understand to be the 'old road to Torrance'. Our crew happily paraded down this broken asphalt concourse which eventually fed into a dirt path and then gave us a beautiful view of the lake through many different varieties of trees and vegetation. Early in the hike we had a taste of the misadventure when our dogs leaped into a muddy drainage ditch for a quick drink of water. They emerged black with an unhealthy, oil grim dripping from their faces, legs and bellies...

Fortunately Hardy Lake is excellent for swimming and there's a fine peninsula further down the trail with flat rocks under a brown carpet of pine needles. The scene is compelling it often persuades hikers to become swimmers and then sun bathers for a spell... Some of the more prominent slabs of black granite are splashed with pink and yellow quartz veins and ribbons of bright red potash that would delight any geologist. Our posse encountered two other couples relaxing on the rocks here and I marveled at a Labrador retriever swimming alone, twenty feet from shore.

This provincial park boasts a rich community of Atlantic coastal plain species. A unique mixture of trees and grasses and forest creatures exists here today, because when the ancient Lake Algonquin receded, it left behind a large variety Atlantic Ocean shoreline plants. The park also contains an inland section of displaced Georgian Bay shoreline.

Just after our crew crossed the three quarters mark, disaster struck. Both of our beloved pets, which were continually been running ahead and scouting the trail, stumbled into a treacherous swampy 'barrens' that contains very hazardous sink holes. These bogs are quite dangerous - the holes in the rock are deep enough to drown a dog, or a man; the mud is a thick black stew that defeats all attempts to float or tread water, or even claw yourself free... such was the plight of both dogs. One pet was quite close to the rocks and easily rescued, but the other dog was six feet away and sinking fast.

A dog stuck in the mud is a dismal sight, a heart break, and a sinking dog that will soon drown is a tragedy. But alas the sight of a sinking human in the same situation would be a far greater calamity. With fear and apprehension many heated warnings were shouted toward my brave companions who dared rescue their reckless dog. But what to do? Their dilemma was obvious - one couldn't simply throw the animal a line, or extend a tree branch. There was in fact no way one could help the creature except to risk oneself in the same hazards. Upon forming this realization my friends formed a human chain - by grasping each other's wrists we extended our bodies out into the swamp to save our beloved pet.

Thirty seconds later the deed was done. A very muddy dog was beached on solid ground. The poor pet was so heavy with mud it could barely walk; although the animal tried to shake the sludge from its body, the mud was too heavy and it collapsed in exhaustion. So now myself and my companions had to hike back to the open shore on Lake Hardy again to wash our canine and our shoes and, I suppose, the whole experience from our consciousness.

Eventually our hike continued past the milk swamp and on around the lake for another thirty minutes. We marched silently through a large grove of hemlock and cedar and white pine growing from the decomposed stumps of an earlier forest - this natural reforestation was complete with such typical bog vegetation as Virginia chainfern.

At the top of a granite hill there was a large grove of red blossom sumac trees growing in thin soil beside the bone white skeletons of their ancestors. It was a very pretty sight. Ten minutes later we emerged back at the same gravel parking lot from which we had earlier departed. It had been a good robust walk with more than a little excitement on a beautiful lake in the middle of The Muskokas - not one man or beast had been lost to the treacherous milk swamp on Hardy Lake, this time.

Roberrific

The Haunted Gold Mine on Lake of the Woods

The smell of fresh cooked pork sausages filled the air as we loaded our provisions into two canoes alongside the long wooden pier at Bare Point Marina. The four of us had already drove half an hour west from Kenora, through an unkempt Indian reservation named Rat Portage, to the north east corner of the Lake of the Woods - it would be another hour or more before we stopped for anything to eat.

 

On this particular Saturday afternoon the world was bright and alive with the sound of children’s voices, dogs barking, and the ubiquitous hum of motor boat engines. None of us could fathom that our adventure would leave the land of living and descend into the darkness of the dead. This is a true story of how a few good Christians paddled out to Sultana Island to hear the ghostly voices of four dead miners at the bottom of the Number Two shaft.

 

My name is Russell Gainer, and I led the August 4^th 2007 expedition to uncover the history, and search for valuable relics. This is the story of a forgotten gold mine - one that’s not completely abandoned. Accompanied by Trixie Blasé, Jasmine Edu and Chester Huff (and two four legged friends, Theo and Poncho) my intrepid crew or fortune hunters set out with the best intentions.

 

The plan was simple – by canoes it would take us forty minutes to cross the bay. We planned to explore Sultana Island all afternoon and then return before sunset. It was our objective to find the lost gold mine and rummage around through the remains of some of the original buildings. Trixie and I have been trained by the very best dumpdiggers on how to dig century old foundations to find important relics… It’s important to remember, this mission started as a treasure hunt, not a séance.

 

Sultana is one of the most famous gold mines on the Lake of the Woods. The original claim was staked in November 1888 by Henry Bulmer, who sold the 27 acre property to a group of fifteen men who called themselves the Ontario Mining Company. This group, who did not even bother to register the claim, hired a prospector and a mining engineer from New York to assay their purchase. Unfortunately this ‘expert’ wrote an adverse report in the summer of 1889 and because of this naysayer’s document a third party named John F. Caldwell of Winnipeg managed to pick up the claim for a very reasonable price. He ignored the expert. He had visited the site himself and truly believed there was gold in the greenbelt quartz - he was right.

 

Mining operations commenced in the summer of 1892 when three small veins were discovered in the rock. Caldwell must have found enormous profit in his first six months as he soon spent $30,000 erecting a five stamp mill on the island. This was a steam powered machine that crushed quartz to release gold nuggets from the ore. The machinery was imported from Chicago and its assembly was completed just before Christmas. The stamps weighed 850 lbs each and were dropped eight inches 92 times a minute in the standard order, namely 1,5,2,4,3.

 

When we arrived at Sultana we found the sandy beach deserted of all life and the shore absolutely full of driftwood. It was a Beachcomber’s paradise. Beyond the dunes there was long grass and a dense forest that obscured all signs of any previous development. Just beyond the trees we encountered a crumbling rock wall holding back a mass of rusty barrels that was bisected by a narrow trail that snaked its way up a steep incline. A set of stairs had been cut right into the rock.

 

Chester found a small chunk of dark red ore buried in the soil here – a crumb of some really heavy metallic mineral. When I dug down into the rocky soil I dredged up barrel hoops and bucket handles, thick square nails, and rusty hinges… There was corrugated steel roofing lying in the grass beside the trail - this was all that remained of some structure no doubt integral to the operation of the mine.

 

As we continued walking up the rise the rest of the island came into view. At the top of the hill we each stared open mouthed at a century old rock cut that was the throat of the number two shaft. In the jaws of this stone cavity we could see moss covered timbers set right into the rock. At one time these tree trunks had supported a sturdy platform on which miners might have worked the hoists. At one point I threw a stone down into the darkness and we listened as it ricocheted off the sides of the passage - we waited almost fifteen seconds to hear the splash.

 

Unaware of any danger I climbed down the rock wall to stand on the bed of timbers. Immediately I felt a blast of very cold air rising from the cave – although it was the heat of the summer there was still plenty of ice down there in the darkness. Trixie was the first to hear it – dripping water echoed up the shaft and between each drip there were other sounds, less natural.

 

In December 1899 Caldwell sold the mine – he’d made his fortune and was probably aware that further mining would not produce more bullion than he’d already liberated from the island. The new owners kept the staff; 12 miners, 1 blacksmith, 5 mill men, and 2 cooks were each employed at $3.00 day. The Sultana mine had been very profitable for many years and the new management was eager to maintain production – too eager.

 

When the gold seams faded away into the rock a few months later the organization hired explosive experts and ferried a mass of low grade dynamite to the site. As the TNT was lowered down into the pit there was an accident. History doesn’t record exactly what happened, but it does detail the deaths of four miners in 1901. Two men were buried in the rock at the bottom of the tunnel - it took a week’s digging to recover the bodies. Those are the two spirits who cries forever resonate in the darkness of the mine.

 

Trixie bade us all to shut up and listen. Just for a moment, as I peered into the darkness of the abyss I could hear the rope squeaking and then I too heard the faint echo of human voices… it sounded like two men whispering soft warnings to each other… The air grew even colder as their voices grew louder and every member of the expedition was paralyzed with fear – we slowly backed away from the rock cut and then quickly ran down the hill and back to the boats. It was seriously scary stuff – fear pervaded our very beings and it wasn’t until we were back in our canoes and well away from shore that we could discuss the experience. We laughed about it then, but I think it’s safe to say that each of us was overcome with fear.

 

When I researched the mine at the Lake of the Woods Museum in Kenora, I learned that although the Sultana property was worked off and on for another thirty six years it was never as productive as it was before the accident. And it was rife with very spooky incidents that speak of supernatural phenomenon; on two occasions dynamite boxes were mysteriously emptied of all explosives before they could be deployed. Equipment was found broken at the bottom of the pit and many new miners reported hearing voices calling out to them, begging for help. When I read those reports a cold shiver climbed up my spine for I had been there and had heard those voices myself.

 

My Mother's Garden

Last week I tasted delicious vegetables picked fresh from my mother’s garden, and as I watched my parents tend their tiny crop I was struck by the enduring beauty of the scene. Here before me were two healthy senior citizens, still madly in love, picking green beans together.

My parents have a small plot in the backyard where they grow produce to reduce their grocery bills.The 15x15 patch (it shrinks every year) is guarded by a solar powered electric fence to keep the rabbits away.

They grow beets and radishes, carrots? peas and beans, green onions and lettuce. And Swiss chard. I actually didn't see any carrots.

It’s a very simple garden.

Roberrific

Wake Surfing on Lake Muskoka

Wake surfing is different than wake boarding.

Wake surfers take a free ride on top of three foot tall waves behind a heavily ballasted power boat that plows through the water at 10 to 16 kms per hour.

 
Wake boarding on the other hand is similar to water skiing except participants stand on one piece of wood instead of two as they are towed by a rope. Wake surfers don’t use a rope – they ride the forward surge of the wake behind a powerful wakeboat.

Sometimes a towline is used to get up out of the water, and get started on top of the steep wave just behind the boat. But once the surfer is at the crest, and is steadily pushed forward by the surge, the rope is tossed inboard.

 
Wake boats are specially designed for this new sport. The perfect watercraft has ample sized rear platforms to help surfers stay on top of their boards as they launch, and huge engines to deliver lots of power - submerged drives insure riders don’t get caught in the props when they fall. Special water filled chambers weight down the boat to better plow the lake and leave a big wake.

Mike Smith and Cory Pala wake surf at Mike’s cottage on beautiful Lake Muskoka. They can ride the waves behind Mike’s new wakeboat atop just about anything, including traditional surfboards, but smaller more durable wake surf boards produce the best results. The new boards range from really small 3'-5' trick boards (skim boards with small fins) to more traditional 5'-7' boards with classic pintail and squashtail lines.

 
Mike and Cory are both trying to perfect a 360 degree spin, and Mike has about 280 degrees of this complete rotation mastered. This is actually the second or third chapter in their wake surfing journey, which began earlier this spring when they became proficient enough to 'free ride' without the rope.

 
Wake surfing sometimes means crouching down on top of the board and dog paddling through the froth – surfers do this to get back into the trough and better capture the rolling wave’s forward momentum. It’s funny when a surfer goes too far out of the wake - he or she must surf swim back to the peak or lose the ride.

For some video I shot on Friday afternoon, check out Roberrific and watch Mike working his way up on top of the wave and trying to spin 360 degrees. This a lot of fun.

Tasseography in Toronto

Health conscious people drink green tea, and spiritually healthy people enjoy reading their own tea leaves.

This powerful combination has become a unique social ritual for the more enlightened business executives in downtown Toronto. Urban professionals sometimes meet for lunch in Chinatown where they dine and enjoy the health benefits of drinking exotic green teas. Each meal now includes a complimentary teacup reading by a professional Tasseographer – an expert trained in the divination of tea leaf patterns, coffee grounds, and wine sediments.

Tasseography goes high tech

The very best Chinese restaurants in Toronto now use digital projectors to display the bottom of each teacup on a projection screen for the whole dining room to enjoy. With everyone watching, specially trained tasseographers discuss the symbols present in the residue.

My friends don’t bother the professionals; we drink green tea and then read each others tea leaves in cozy tea rooms on Queen Street West. People I’ve connected with on WonderCafe.ca that happen to live in my area have now formed a club. We meet once a month to chat about ourselves, religion and politics. One by one we pass our teacups around the table and everyone speaks aloud what shapes and images they discern inside.

Tasseography works on two levels. Discussing stressful elements of your life is a very healthy activity for anyone's mind and body. It’s the reason we have friends. But what’s more, those crazy leaf patterns in the teacup provide an interesting perspective upon which to examine your life.

Symbols present in the residue might trigger a new thought or action that would have been inconceivable before experiencing the ritual. Your body is filled with spiritual energy; tea leaves are your soul’s fingerprints.

 

Roberrific

 

Surfer Dude's Weekend

‘Can a man change the color of his skin, or a leopard change his spots?’ Craig asked me one day. It really caught me off guard. I had to think for a minute….

 
‘That’s from the old testament isn’t it?’ I asked him, wondering if he had indeed just quoted Jeremiah chapter thirteen verse twenty three accurately  ( I looked it up later,  he didn’t. But it's close).

‘Oh no. Don’t tell me you’re religious?’ he asked.

‘No. I thought you were… Quoting the Bible…’

‘The Bible? Dude that’s a great idea. Today is Saturday. We’ve got to get a Saturday Star!’

Read more about Surfer Dude on Roberrific.

A Fashionable Market for Italy's Floral Flavours

The Sweet Taste of an Italian Honey.

On a recent trip to Italy, while exploring the small town of Abano Terme, I spotted a sign for local honey, handwritten in German, taped to a store window. Can you read it? I can’t either, but of course I had no trouble identifying the honey pot picture! I know what that's all about, and I had to get me some.

Inside the shop I found an amazing selection of honey for sale, according to the literature (which I had translated from Italian) each product was collected from a different floral source. And the prices was reasonable - four euro each.

Single varietal honey is creating quite a buzz in the gourmet food scene these days, but this trend is nothing new to beekeepers. Honey is a natural product that has always been highly dependent on the local environment in which the bees gather their nectar. Much like wine regions and coffee regions, different honey regions also exist.

For perhaps the first time in the history of commercial apiculture, beekeepers are now being encouraged by food connoisseurs to situate their hives in areas that will allow honey bees to frequent one particular plant. The hope is that these insects will then produce a unique flavor that cannot be replicated anywhere else in the world.

 
These three jars are apparently the most popular, or at least I think that's what the Italian shopkeeper was trying to tell me.  The first one I recognize as Almond flower honey. Miele di Mandorlo is the nectar collected from Almond tree blossoms by honeybees right after they have been transported to the orchard for the express purpose of pollinating the almond groves. The honey collected here is a bi-product of the crop pollination.

The second jar is a complete mystery to me - Miele di Achillea Montana is without reference. You see in Italy there are some mountainous plants called Achillea ageratifolia, and Achillea chrysocoma and I've  even come across Achillea umbellata. But I've never heard of Achillea Montana. I don't think such a plant exists - which makes me wonder just what the honey tastes like and where it came from?

Perhaps the local honey packer was referencing Amica montana which is a yellow flowering plant that grows wild in the Italian Alps. It's not known as a terrific honey plant though, which means it doesn't yield a lot of nectar.

The third bottle of honey is marked Miele di Rosamary and I'm sure you can guess the flowers from which it was collected. Rosemary honey is remarkable stuff - it tastes similar to the herb and immediately made want to eat a lamb chop!

Here in Southern Ontario, Canada, where I have a small apiary south of Peterborough, the first and most opular single varietal flavor to be recognized by the public was Buckwheat Honey, which is a really dark honey with a VERY distinctive taste and aroma. Harvested in mid august, the buckwheat plant blossoms for about ten days before going to seed in the fall. Unfortunately not many Canadian farmers grow buckwheat anymore, and so this highly coveted product is becoming very rare indeed. When my dad, brother and uncle spy a field of buckwheat that’s about to bloom they quickly move a dozen hives as close as possible. Unlike wild flowers that grow randomly in meadows and fence rows, farmer’s fields are the best places to harvest single varietal honey crops. Here’s a huge concentrated source, and to ensure purity my family will harvest it as soon as possible.

American Beekeepers are proud of their Pumpkin Blossom Honey which is a dark amber-colored liquid with a robust aroma and flavor. And

California’s Black Button Sage Honey is absolutely excellent when served with vanilla ice cream. And of course the savannah region’s Tupelo Honey is probably the most famous varietal honey of them all.

Harvested over two or three weeks in the early spring, tupelo nectar is one of the rarest and most valuable liquid resources in the world.

 Honey has been eulogized in the scriptures of every major religion since the dawn of time, but is the ‘food of the gods’ really that good for you? Yes – in moderation. Natural honey is valued for its sweetness, but is also chock full of unexpected goodness. Because it’s predigested by insects many people who can’t stomach cane sugar can more easily metabolize honey and enjoy its natural energy - so it’s almost the perfect food.

 

Back at my hotel in Abano Terme Italy, I spread the contents of this package on my rye bread toast. It tasted strange and had a wierd caramel after taste. As you can see this is not single variety honey, but an economical blend the packers call 'wild flowers'. No, I dont know where it comes from, you don't know either, and heck, I'll bet the packers don't even know where it comes from. It was whatever was cheapest at the time.   

The golden age of honey has finally arrived, and North American consumers owe it to their own taste buds to be more like the Europeans and ignore the crap found in those square plastic tubs in the supermarket - try local honey and support a local beekeeper in your 'honey region'.

 

You break it you buy it, in Venice, Italy.

Be careful in the city that sells Murano glass earrings, necklaces and bracelets. If you drop anything on the floor, it will break, and you will have to buy it. Just ask Ruth Wilgress, my traveling companion, who let slip from her fingers a green and silver (real silver) glass necklace in a store called Ars Tendese Murano...

In May 2007 I had the great pleasure of escorting a sophisticated shopper through the crowded streets and beautiful glass shops of Venice. Armed with a cheap tourist map and a strong sense of adventure, Ruth and I wandered the labyrinth of streets and the canals toward Piazza San Marco - a huge open square with the brick tower and a thousand pigeons.

The Grand Canal, looking north on the Porto degli Scalzi bridge - the boats here contain merchant suppllies like soda pop and fresh fruit. There are no cars in Venice and workers have to move around oversized wheelbarrows full of tools and building material. Cement mixers and concrete blocks float about on the canal barges. There is actually a building boom in Venice this summer as landlords prepare for the Venice Biennial , which is an international art exhibition in the Giardini di Castello. This is where the world's best artists are invited to legitimate themselves and become financially viable investments for bankers and Industrialists buying status.  Venice exports culture at the very centre of Europe's fine art industry.

 

Venice is full of beautiful jewelry – necklaces and bracelets encrusted with precious stones and Murano glass. Artisans on the nearby island of Murano (a ten minute boat ride away) are hand blowing beautiful glass sculpture in well tooled factories. Murano is home to many of the world's best glassmakers - the island is famous for glass. Artisans have been making glass there since 1291 and for centuries they were the only people in Europe who knew how to make a decent bathroom mirror.  A scandal in 1384 and another in 1425 accused Murano glass makers of creating flawless rubies, emeralds, and sapphires.

As we entered a particularly fragile store with many hanging displays Ruth whispered ‘please be careful in here Rob.’ And I obeyed. Instead of fondling the sculptures I took pictures of the incredible Italian glass. In the very next store we entered, Ruth picked up a necklace and didn’t realize the center pendent wasn't fixed to the strap. I watched transfixed as an immaculate glass cube fell… SMASH. Ruth was shattered too - she just about cried.

 
I breathed deep and then did the Canadian dollar conversion on twenty seven euro. Ruth had no idea the centerpiece of the necklace wasn’t attached to the strap when she picked it up to show me. The glass and silver square was now resting in three pieces on the marble floor...

 

The shop owner looked up at us from behind the sales counter, and the store young female attendant approached with a smug expression on her face. There was no chance of running away. All that remained was the possibility of renegotiating the price, or trying to bargain for a better position. In my slowest and best pronounced English I pointed out that there was no sign to warn shoppers that the necklace would come apart so easily. The salesgirl understood the meaning of my speech and waved away my argument. They had experience with this kind-of thing (it probably happens twice a day).

 

The shop owner could see Ruth was emotional. She volunteered to reduce the price to fifteen euro. We both breathed easier. As I watched, Ruth regained her composure and then chuckled at the humour of the situation – meanwhile in my head I’m thinking that fifteen euro must be the true cost of the piece! Ruth came to the same conclusion and her face brightened. She pointed at another necklace in the same display that used the same strap. As a sophisticated shopper she skillfully negotiated its purchase by agreeing to buy just the centerpiece to use with the strap from the broken item. After a little more negotiating and playful banter with the shop owner, Ruth closed the deal at twenty five euros. Roberrific