How many trees do you have in your neighbourhood, and how does it compare to the rest of the city? Now it’s easy to find out by using the Tree Equity Score Analyser for your area. This free mapping tool was developed to identify and prioritise neighbourhoods that lack trees.

In Toronto, like other Canadian, USA and British cities, it’s Black and brown areas that have the least trees. White areas have the most. The tree equity score is an easy way to see and confirm this. The lower the score means the higher the need for tree-planting in an area.

The score is based on multiple factors. It includes canopy cover of existing trees, race, building density, health, income and employment, language, age, and surface temperature. In other words, it uses census information and maps these on the distribution of trees in the city.

In the spirit of full disclosure, I was invited to participate on the committee that tested the Tree Equity Score Analyser for the City of Toronto. I know little about the ecology of trees and can identify only about twenty. But I do now something about social nature scholarship, and how race shapes access to nature including access to trees. The tree equity score does not shy away from these discussions – unlike so much of the environmental and conservation sectors.

The tree equity score is easy to use. It is interactive and can be used to map the current tree cover, and to play around with different scenarios for increasing tree equity in a neighbourhood. The maps can be made detailed enough to identify the best places to plant trees on a city street or block.

I used the tree equity score to compare three areas in the same census tract. My Regent Park neighbourhood scored low. It has the highest level of racialised and poor people. The other two neighbourhoods of Cabbagetown and Rosedale are White and whiter. They are some of the richest hoods in the city and they had among the highest tree equity scores. No surprises here.

The tree equity scores confirm the links between race and who has access to nature and trees in the city. Now that the tree inequity is visible, I am curious to see how it will be used. Having the information is one thing. Using it to make change is an entirely different challenge.  

My hunch is that White neighbourhoods will use the tree equity score to ensure that they get more trees, in the few areas where they are below parity. They will be able to do so as they have the resources and connections to advocate for or to buy trees. Black, brown and Indigenous neighbourhoods don’t have the same level of economic or social power. Unless they receive targeted outreach and help with tree planting and maintenance, knowing the tree equity score will be of little use to them.

© Jacqueline L. Scott.  You can support the blog here.

Two steps forward, one step back. That’s how I’d describe the process of getting the Northlander once more on track. For nearly six years, the Ford government repeatedly stated they’re bringing back passenger rail to north-eastern Ontario. Political promises aplenty, the Tories haven’t exactly gotten the job done during their first term. Metrolinx and Ontario … Continue reading Functional rail service requires more than clever catch phrases and good intentions

Harold Ramis's GROUNDHOG DAY

Every book is an entire world, waiting to be explored.

My father had a large library. Many of the books were inherited from a friend. That friend had told him that when he was younger, he would worry:

“I rarely have the time to read these. When I find the time, will I be too old to see the words?”

The answer became “yes”. He did grow too old to read them and so gifted them to my father.

Funny enough, my father said the same thing. And once again, it came true.

But for him, it wasn’t for the lack of reading. He’d always had a book in hand and a pen to mark it up with and act as a bookmark. He lamented reading slowly, but I knew he read thoroughly, deeply exercising his mind as he would his body when jogging.

Books Unread

Now, I have many books.

But I’m not reading them at the pace that I’d like. Well, to be honest, they’ve mainly been sitting there.

I brought a book on vacation and began to get into it. I came back from vacation without having finished it, thinking, “Surely, I’ll continue”.

So, I sat it next to my bed, where “Of course, it will remind me.”

And, of course, it sat next to my bed, barely touched.

Two months later, I took another trip, being sure to bring the book along. I got back into it, right where I left off. And once again, I have returned.

This time, though, I’m making a change. Rather than hope the book itself would act as a reminder, I’m adding it to what I’ve come to call my “Honor Guide”.

An Honor Guide

An Honor Guide is much like many other lists, but the structure is unique. It holds 1-3 spaces for the things that I am currently active with, engaging in daily visits at my pace. There is another small area for things that await activation. There is a third area for things I have already well incorporated into my days, no longer taking deep thought to continue, but can still do with a reminder.

It’s a simple structure, but one that has carried me forward for many years now.

The structure affords a direct meeting place for Past, Present, and Future. There, I practice acknowledging what I wish to add into my life and what I would need to set aside to do so. Things that can wait, can wait. Things that cannot, come forward.

Decisions, big or small, can be difficult. But having a structure to support your decisions, so that it is no longer forced, strained, so that you don’t have to hold onto them in some chronic tension, can make all the difference.

– Kourosh

PS If you are interested in learning more about the Honor Guide, you can read its beginnings in the Navigation section (p565) of Creating Flow with OmniFocus and its latest version in Module 7 of the Waves of Focus.

The post When There’s No Time to Read Books appeared first on Kourosh Dini.

I have a white noise app on my Mac laptop that helps me focus. I noticed it doesn’t have “on” and “off” modes. It has “play” and “pause” modes. Apparently it’s never “off.” You will always listen again. If you’re not listening, you are simply preparing to listen.

As of this writing, these are the available sounds:

Airplane
Beach
City
Crickets
Fan
Fan 2
Fan 3
Fire
Ocean
Pier
Rain – Light
Rain – Heavy
Rainforest
River
Shower
Thunderstorm
Wind
Wind Chimes

Blue Noise
Brown Noise
Pink Noise
Violet Noise
White Noise

I use the “airplane” noise mode, myself. I’ve become so accustomed to its tonality that I’ve been known to use it while on airplanes, which is ironic given that I usually use noise cancelling headphones on planes to block out the actual airplane noise. This is to say, I both eliminate the sound of the plane and then pipe in the artificial sound of the plane. The action is, from one perspective, the sonic equivalent of tearing out your backyard and laying down astroturf. Though of course, it’s nothing like that.

As for the other options, I appreciate the cicadas, but it mostly makes me think of camping, which is not on my personal list of ideal situations. I’ll take a non-reclining coach seat on an airplane over camping.

Of the “color” noises, I occasionally opt for brown, which is essentially airplane noise reduced to a mathematical formula. Brown noise is the airplane noise of a low-polygon simulation of flight.

One thing the app lacks is café chatter — better yet, café chatter in a language I don’t understand (which would be any language other than English, though I’m coming up on a year-long streak in Duolingo German, so who knows). Perhaps chatter will come with a future upgrade.

This first appeared in the March 21, 2024, issue of the This Week in Sound email newsletter, also the newsletter’s 22nd Listening Post.

Just over a year into the pandemic, Kelly Moran marked most electronic music fans’ favorite annual holiday, April 14, in honor of the Aphex Twin song “Avril 14th,” with the requisite solo piano cover. She recorded her video with a camera that she set to look directly down on her keyboard, and at first all we see is the piano — even after the music starts playing. Magically, the keys move without anyone touching them, and then her hands — slender, sensual, nails gleaming colorfully — appear alongside the ghost accompaniment and flesh out her own version of the song. 

It turns out that she was performing on a Disklavier, on loan from Yamaha, the same instrument on which Aphex Twin reportedly recorded the original version. “Avril 14th” appeared on his 2001 album, Drukqs; Moran’s cover marked the 20th anniversary. 

More time has passed. In the years since that simple (if deceptively so) Aphex Twin experiment of hers, Moran has come to wield the Disklavier not just expertly but ferociously. She has pushed its feature set further. The instrument allows her to record parts and play along with them, and record that and play along with that. Her deep pandemic studies have yielded impossible, post-human music that is truly hyperactive, with chords that no human could accomplish on their lonesome in cadences no human could play for a prolonged period. The works are crystalline paradoxes at warp speed. It’s absolutely perfect that “Butterfly Phase,” the lead video for her forthcoming record, Moves in the Field (due out March 29), involves figure skating, because aesthetically that’s what Moran’s current music is: calisthenic, showy, muscular, and deeply competitive. (Regarding that last point, the title comes from the term in skating for the tests of a competitor’s abilities.) 

Both “Butterfly Phase” and another track, “Sodalis (II),” are available as previews in advance of the full album’s release:

https://kellymoran.bandcamp.com/album/moves-in-the-field