Moving over to Blue sky. I'll hang around here a bit longer, but I see many of the people I follow are over there already.

Los Angeles has some advice for the City of Victoria tonight: Trim the trees so power lines can't light them on fire. Stop hugging the trees and start managing your urban forests so your cities don't burn down in wildfires.

Not sure. In my experience, Italian emergency wards are much more efficient than Canadian ones. In and out in 4 hours (Rome), instead of 13 (Victoria).....

Italy understands the importance of the arts. President Mattarella is guest of honour at Tosca, 125 years after Puccini's great opera premiered. Puccini made so much money from Tosca he bought a car, had an accident, broke his leg and wrote Madama Butterfly while recuperating.

I hope we soon see Canada at that table, with a pledge of boots on the ground in Ukraine - or Moldova, or wherever is next.

Alex Esposito was a marvelous King Philip in Don Carlo at Teatro La Fenice in November 2019, and Lidia Fridman was an equally memorable Lady Macbeth in Parma last October. I'm now really happy I have a ticket for April 6th to see this:

A globe in the Museo Correr in Venice dates from 1685, and proves that it's been the Gulf of Mexico for at least 340 years. So there.

Or perhaps this is the State Department retaliating against the big drop in US tourists coming from Italy this year: thelocal.it/20250526/why-h…

I just all hope they all have their QR codes to show they're booked in a hotel and already paying the visitor tax.

I spent 4 years at McGill in the 1960s and have returned frequently. After 5 days there last November, I'm booked to return for a month this year. It's a fascinating city with great concerts and art!

It's about 14 C warmer in Venice than it is in Victoria these days, and I've sworn I will never go to Italy in July or August. And then I see a photo of the Redentore fireworks:

La Serenissima è molto serena stasera.

This is distinctly Canadian wisdom. I don't watch hockey but I do know Wayne Gretzky said don't skate to where the puck is, but where it's going to be.

Americans are starved for good speeches right now, but he's right. It was a great speech and I've never been prouder to be a Canadian.

If this is true, then tomorrow will be a test of global sycophancy.

So according to Ben Bergman of Business Insider, Trump spoke for over an hour, going off script quite a bit. The room was packed when he began, but people left throughout the speech. Of those who remained at the end, about a third sycophantically gave him a standing ovation.

Whereas in Italy, Salvini's deputy has just left the Lega party to form a new one, even further to the right.

In 2014 John Polanyi wrote that the US had spent more than $200B on a missile defence shield that "does not work and opposes armaments with still more armaments. Canadian national priorities lie elsewhere ..... If we don't remain true to our beliefs, why have a country?"