Katie Leggitt

Today one of my students ate a habanero pepper.  Apparently he'd asked for a hot pepper and as if in slow motion, from the hand of the farmer, the kid grabbed it and popped it into his mouth.  Whole.  Fresh picked.  Hot shit.  I blinked "did that just happen?" and within moments he started reacting.  The farmer notice right away and quickly told him not to touch his eyes, but it was too late.  I walked over and started sneezing from the fumes.  My mouth and eyes burned, and all I did was walk close to the kid.  He spat it out and another farmer got some goat cheese that he cut up and I fed it to the kid as quickly as possible. WTF. This poor student would later tell me he didn't realize it was a habanero, he thought maybe jalapeno but STILL.  DUDE.  Another student chimed in with the old "don't you put it in your mouth" tune from those drug infomercials, on the drive back to the city.  Hilarious.  The whole thing was quite funny.  But quite serious.

So it's been a busy couple of months.  Sketchfest, Fringe, Under Pressure, Tattoo Convention, Pop Montreal plus my full-time day job.  I've willingly signed up for all those but holy blueberries do I need a break. Last night after spending 6 hours wandering around Pop Quarters, taking down posters and stacking chairs, I hit up a couple of shows.  Peter Hook (of Joy Division, playing Joy Division) at Club Soda, TSC post-Sunday Night Improv hangs, and finally The Raincoats up at Cabaret du Mile End to top it all off.  It was the last night of Pop Montreal and I wanted to take full advantage of my all-access pass.  That I did.  Friday I saw The Shaky Aches at L'Esco, Dark Dark Dark at Quai des Brumes then on my way home I stopped by and caught the tail end of Graven at Barfly.  Saturday night was equally fun, lots of bouncing: totally stoked to see The Static Jacks at Casa del Popolo, then caught By Divine Right at O Patro Vys, grabbed a slice of zza and popped on back to Ca

Cukes, zukes, dragon-tongue beans and carrots.  Oh and tamaters, lots and lots of tamaters. Today was the first trip of eight to La Ferme du Zéphyr, an organic vegetable farm in the west island of Montreal.  That's right, an ORGANIC farm right here on our island.  Pretty awesome. I have created an exchange program.  Or at least that's what I'm calling it, "the Eco-Karma Exchange" (kind of cheesy I know, but it came to me on a whim and just sort of stuck).  Once a week, I will be taking a group of 3 or 4 high school students (15+) to work on the farm.  Later on in the year, those same groups will work at Moisson Montreal, the hub of food banks in the city.  And then in April, they'll be volunteering at Santropol Roulant, where they will help make meals for their meals-on-wheels program.  I'm pretty stoked about the project.  Super stoked in fact.  They'll get more out of their volunteerism by being involved in and seeing the process through from the

There's something magical about the arrival of Fall.  I know it's only early September but you'd be lying if you told me you don't feel it too.  The cool breeze that chills you to the bone in the early morning, the smell of cooking in your apartment building or wafting down the street from a cozy restaurant... How everything feels fresh, how you tackle new projects, how you change your wardrobe, just like when you were little.  *sigh* So nice. Today a colleague came into my office as some students were painting a poster with some dollar-store paint.  He looked at the cup holding the bright blue gouache and held it to his nose.  He time traveled and told me about the time he was in preschool and had to paint portraits of friends.  His friend painted him with blue hair.  Blue like the royal blue paint in the Dixie cup.  He remembered the name of the kid, the plaid shirt he was wearing and the reaction to the painting.  Pretty wild.  Pretty awesome. Sense memory is s