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The first snowfall of the season. Taken at Toronto’s Don Valley Brickworks during a morning walk.
November 27, 2013 – Photos by John Zeus

Heritage Turkeys “gobble gobble” #birds #farm #sustainable #heritage #poultry #turkeys

Thanksgiving

For each new morning with its light,
For rest and shelter of the night,
For health and food,
For love and friends,
For everything Thy goodness sends.

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882)

Wishing all who are celebrating a Happy Thanksgiving! May it be filled with Peace, Love, and Harmony!

Amongst the tribes of human kind, myths speak of supernatural creatures inhabiting the deep woods of the earth. Myths come from the same place that dreams and art come from, they bubble up from the depths of our soul as we seek to interpret the world around us. They can’t be forced or contrived, but can be reinvented and reconstructed to satisfy the human need to explain the world we live in and our place in it. By reinventing our myths, the stories we tell ourselves determine who we become and who we are.Click on image to enlarge.

Image: Deer Man by ASHe Levesque
More artwork from this artist on Society6
Story by John Zeus

The Deer Man (cont’d)

At first glance at “Deer Man” by ASHe Levesque, I was instantly wowed. To think that someone could express such mythos, power and gentleness into a beautiful and vivid image was impressive. The expression on the subject’s face allowed me to feel engaged as if I were a part of the art piece. It brought me back to my ancestral home in the woods, back to a connection forged long ago.

Deer Man is a combination of human, animal and nature. He teaches us that we can never be separated from the natural world, that we are part of the earth. He represents our longing for nature, our need to feel an emotional bond with the ecosystems and other creatures with whom we share the planet.

Something in us dies every time we destroy an ecosystem. We feel a loss of connection. From the depths of our soul, Deer Man speaks to us about what we have lost and gives us hope for what we can save. He connects us by restoring our consciousness of the natural world. To preserve the earth we must love and respect the earth as much as we do our own lives.

John Zeus

About Deer Man – Statement By ASHe Levesque, Artist

When asked about my inspiration to create Deer Man, a tale of my youth unfolds. All through my childhood my parents would take my siblings and I camping for summer vacations. Nature is the most powerful form of hallucinates. It awakens a child’s mind and senses that no other place could. Our nightly ritual around the fire would involve singing, laugher, and of course a spooky story or two. We would be then sent off to our tents leaving the adults to their world. Inside we would whisper and watch distorted images being illuminated across the canvas like a movie screen, cast from the night sky and fire in the distance.

Our stories would unfold of the creatures and animals that lived on the other side of the thin canvas that were either here to protect us or drag us into the abyss of the night.

Deer Man is the protector of all that is pure and innocent. His powerful body protects us, while his angelic eyes search for purity and kindness in all.

ASHe Levesque

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Story by John Zeus
Artist’s statement and bio by: / “Deer Man” created by: ASHe Levesque
Browse more artwork from this artist on Society6

Airport passenger ferry “Marilyn Bell I” crosses one of the world’s shortest regularly scheduled ferry routes.

Sunrise over Billy Bishop Toronto City Airport – a small airport located on the Toronto Islands.

Island Airport Sunrise
A ferry crosses the channel from Billy Bishop Airport on the Toronto Islands to the mainland at sunrise.
Photos by John Zeus

Mennonite And Amish Buggy Parking At The Farmers’ Auction
Shot in Wallenstein, Ontario
Photo by John Zeus

Toronto’s Mayor, now stripped of his non-statuatory powers by city council continues to grab international headlines and provide free fodder for late-night comedians.

Why is Rob Ford still the Mayor of my city? When will this circus at city hall end? When will Mayor Ford finally get help for his problem? I keep asking myself the same questions, every time I go online, turn on the TV, listen to the radio, pick up a newspaper, talk to my colleagues.

It must be extra tough being Mayor in a city the size of Toronto, which really should be its own province. And, when you add on vast quantities of booze, a crack pipe, coaching football, maybe a little sex and a lot of public drunkenness, a video rant and god knows what else onto the mayoralty agenda it makes it even tougher. Eventually the addiction, the destructiveness and the lies catch up to you and everything in your private and public life unravels.

In a few months alone, Mayor Rob Ford brought dishonour to public office and our city. His actions continue to embarrass Torontonians and provide still more joke fodder for late night TV comedy. On The Tonight Show, host Jay Leno called the mayor ”God’s gift to comedy” and mocked Ford’s statement to Fox News last week that he one day wanted to become prime minister.

Jay Leno, Jimmy Kimmel, Stephen Colbert, Jon Stewart, Jimmy Fallon, Conan O’Brian and David Letterman continued to mock Ford on their shows this week as they have done since Ford admitted to smoking crack cocaine earlier in November. ^

“I love him, I really do. Every time he’s in public he does something great.” – Jimmy Kimmel

Video clips sourced from YouTube

Chris Daughtry Sings “The Ballad of Rob Ford” – Jimmy Kimmel Live

Whoopi Goldberg On Mayor Rob Ford – The Tonight Show with Jay Leno

Ron Burgundy Sings Mayor Rob Ford’s Campaign Song – Conan O’Brian

by John Zeus
Video Source: YouTube

Leaf On The Windshield On A Sunday Morning
Shot in Riverdale, a Toronto neighbourhood
Photo By John Zeus

Toronto’s Mayor Rob Ford has made global headlines since the police announced they have a video of him smoking  “what appears to be a crack pipe”,  and the Mayor himself later admitting to smoking crack cocaine.

There’s a few lessons we can take away from the Mayor’s public struggles. Although his actions are the main problem, his struggles are made worse by how he handles situations when confronted with the issues.

How you phrase things matters

When asked if he smoked crack, Rob Ford replied, that yes he had, “probably in one of my drunken stupors.” #inoneofmydrunkenstupors was trending on Twitter for days. The line was repeated on every news broadcast and comedy show. His choice of words compounded the issue. Now he was saying that not only does he smoke crack, but that he also has ‘drunken stupors’.

In a workplace, be careful how you say things. Taking greater care of how a message is delivered can have a huge effect on how others react to it.

Taking responsibility for mistakes is good

It would have been better if Mayor Ford said, “Yes, I have tried crack cocaine. It was on a night when I had too much to drink, and that led to my making a very poor choice that I deeply regret. I apologize to anyone who is let down by this, and I have entered into an alcohol addiction program to ensure that nothing like this ever happens again.”

With that choice of words he would not only owned up to his mistakes, but he would also have apologized, and detailed an action plan for ensuring that it would not be repeated. That is what people want to hear.

Learn from the mistake, and fix the problem

Sometimes we all make mistakes at work and they don’t have to be career-ending – I’m not talking about mistakes as severe as Mayor Ford’s or mistakes that break the law. The key is to learn from mistakes, be up front in taking responsibility for the things we get wrong, and implementing changes to ensure that the same mistakes aren’t made twice.

That kind of honesty actually builds trust in the workplace. Denials and half-truths just tend to spiral out of control and end up making things worse. ^

Canada’s largest online job site, Workopolis polled users after the mayor’s admittance asking them if the news stories were having an impact on workplace productivity, 64% of people said yes, because “nobody is talking about anything else.”