I take the same route on my walk every day, and the variations I make are now very limited, because time is a constraint (today KTB started yowling well before I got back, and ruined her parents’ sleep.) But I feel that every day’s walk is different..I see different things, or see the same things differently.

The

Pulaski Bank in De Baliviere

is a beautiful, heritage building…I once went to a talk on heritage buildings in the area, and this building and its features took quite five minutes in the talk! This time, I was walking on the other side of the road, and in the windows of the Da Vita Dialysis building, I found Pulaski Bank again:

Here

is a guide to the De Baliviere/Skinker/Lindell Blvd. areas. (I’ve walked past each and every one of the buildings….even that conservancy lane, in these photographs. Until I read this, I didn’t realize just how much walking I’ve done in these neighbourhoods! And the photo of the student housing, after the words, “Some of the nicest in apartment buildings in the city” is actually the building where DnA lived for a while!)

I mused on the people inside both buildings, as I walked. Two buildings with one major aim in common…to serve people, to ease their lives, and make money while doing it. One lets them manage their money, another lets them manage the very difficult (and without treatment, fatal) condition of kidney failure. That led me to the thought…what happens if, after your kidney fails, your bank also fails? Where will you get the money from, to pay for dialysis, once, twice, or thrice a week?

Buildings…are made to house people, but they often seem to take on personalities of their own, especially with age, and loom large over the people who are using them. Sometimes, of course, the lack of people to use them causes their decay…and they are rescued with efforts at rehab…

here is a report

about the Sun building, which I photographed on my walk in the downtown area, while DnA watched the Circus with KTB. The building is in bad shape, but still beautiful:

Here’a detail from the building:

However, a thought that strikes me is that a building, by definition, is a structure that excludes some people, while giving access to others. Staff at the Pulaski Bank would certainly not be happy with a tourist, interested in heritage buildings, taking up their time; people working at Da Vita Dialysis would prefer that I have business concerning them. Each building, then, has a purpose, and is meant to keep out those who do not have the same or allied purposes. I must muse more on this concept of the inclusivity and exclusivity of a building….right now, my thoughts are rather amorphous.