Weird Trees

My server provider for the Glob and Wail goofed up somewhere so I have not been accessible for the last couple of days. The problem seems to be rectified now but they didn't give me an explanation. I'm not at all happy about how hard it was to reach them either however there service is dirt cheap so I guess it's a case of getting what you paid for.

Meanwhile it snowed the other day; real snow. I went walking in it and saw these weird trees down along the Rideau River.

Let it Snow

Childhood was an intense time full of what now seem extreme emotions and sensations. Fear, horror, anxiety, astonishment, delight, amazement, wonder and magic. Over the years these things for better or worse recede but when the first snowfall comes it still revives that old feeling of something exciting about to happen. Rather than try to put into words, I direct you to this, the last Calvin and Hobbes comic strip published on my 30th birthday in 1995. I know that it's easy to idealize childhood but for me this strip could be biographical.

Things That go Chomp in the Night

It's been a good month for paleontologists. Last week an intact skull of a newly discovered species of giant sea crocodile, Dakosaurus andiniensis, was located in Argentina. This week a relative of the mosasaur was found near Dallas and thus named Dallasaurus. Dakosaurus is dated at 135 million years ago, while Dallasaurus is dated at 92 million years ago.

Shards

A few weeks ago Dave and I rented David Cronenberg's Spider. I think that it would make an interesting double feature with Mulholland Drive. The thing both films have in common is that the fractured narrative reflects the subjective experience of the main character. Some films will use this technique for dream sequences or other altered states of mind but these usually are at odds with the omniscient observational point of view of the rest of the film. In the case of Spider we are completely dependent on the point of view of Spider himself as to events. Spider however is mentally ill. What this means for the viewer is that fact and fancy are indistinguishable. As a viewer we cannot trust what we see anymore than Spider can trust his own memories. Spider spends much of his time in a halfway home trying to remember events of his past. In another way he is trying to reinvent his past. Like Betty/Dianne in Mulholland drive he seems to be shaping events to remember things as he wants them to have been rather than as they were.

As a viewer we are at a loss to know where the truth ends and the fabrication begins. Just as SPider cannot trust his own memory, the viewer cannot trust what is on the screen. Ultimately Spider struggles to maintain his illusions and as with Betty/Dianne reality bursts into fantasy uninvited. Sir Walter Scott's words "Oh what a tangled web we weave, When first we practise to deceive!" seems to apply to self-deception as much as lies intended for others.

Neither movie attempts to resolve the narrative. Endings are as open-ended as dreams both Spider and Betty/Dianne remain lost in their own worlds built out of guilt, disappointment and obsession.

The Fisher King might also serve as an interesting companion piece as a very different way of telling the story of a mentally ill individual. Whereas that movie romaticizes the illness, Spider is bleak and unsentimental and therefore the more disturbing of the two by far.

Gal Pal Val

Valerie came to visit last Tuesday evening, getting a ride up from New York with her friend also named Val. We hadn't seen each other for over two years but we picked up right away as if it had been two weeks. It was a lot colder here than she had expected so I had to lend her a heavy sweater and hat for trucking around outdoors.It was really nice having company, working and eating together. And great conversation! I'm really glad she was able to make it here and to boot we made a lot of progress on developing her new web site. I hope that it's not another two years before we meet in person once more.

Glob & Wail Celebrates the 1000th Post

When Valerie heard that the Glob and Wail was celebrating it's 1000th posting she roared up on her private jet from NYC. Here she is in front of the Parliament building explaining what the Glob means to the future of mankind. I won't share the specific words since it wasn't very flattering.



I was going to right a big reflective essay on what the blog has meant to me to commemorate this occassion but that would require more effort than I'm willing to put in. However I will say that the Glob has been a means to rekindle old friendships, a way to make new friends. It opened the door to this wonderful friendship with Val. It was the the blog that brought Leslie, the love of my life, and I together. I can honestly say without a word of exaggeration that this blog was the conduit by which dreams have come true.

A special thank you to Bob for encouraging me to start this Blog in the summer of 2002.

Miscalculation

Ooops I noticed that I was mislabelling the posts. This is actually number 999 and tomorrow is the big number 1000th post. And boy do I have a surprise.

Rememberance Day

Post 997

I have my plan for the 1000th posting! Oh boy I can't believe it!

Post 996

France imposed a curfew the other night because 12 nights of anarchy are just one night too many >>>

Perhaps the French governments hesitation to impose the curfew has something to with the fact that the law in place was originally designed as part of France's colonial rule of Algeria.

Luna with Leslie's T-shirt

Imagine if the Internet were a Newspaper

I'm sure you are familiar with the World Weekly News. It was the template for about 75% of the internet with it's stories on conspiracies, aliens, girly pin-ups, freaks, bizarre sex, right wing inflammatory politics (ed anger), miracles and all sorts of pseudo-science and new agey hokum. It also seems to have served as inspiration for the X-files and our contemporary version of Pravada. Whether the WWN was serious or not is an open question, but my dear Grandmother (still reading newspapers at 91) believed. Especially in the religious miracles articles. She was never a believer in evolution and would probably be quite pleased with the path education in Kansas is taking these days. Bat boy is real dammit!!!

By the way only 6 more posts before the big 1,000. I still am not sure how to celebrate except maybe to climb to the top of the peace tower, guzzle down a bottle of Green Chartreuse and unfurl a Glob and Wail banner while I puke all over it. Does anyone NOT have any better ideas?

Top Ten Useless Limbs and Other Vestigial Organs

As compiled from Livescience.com

10. Wings on Flightless Birds

09. Hind Leg Bones in Whales

08. Erector Pili and Body Hair on Humans

07.The Human Tailbone (Coccyx)

06. The Blind Fish Astyanax Mexicanus

05. Wisdom Teeth in Humans

04. The Sexual Organs of Dandelions

03. Fake Sex in Virgin Whiptail Lizards (Vestigial Behavior)

02. Male Breast Tissue and Nipples

01. The Human Appendix

My biggest question is why are there so many examples from humans? It seems to me that male breast tissue and nipples in the great apes is equally vestigial. Is the appendix truly vestigial just because the body can function when it's removed? The pinkie can be removed, even a whole hand and a person can still live. Perhaps the function of the appendix is subtle. Not knowing somethings function is simply not knowing the function. In 1893, Robert Wiedersheim identified 86 human organs that had no known function as being vestigial. As for human hair pubic hair and armpit hair probably does have functionality. The idea that something can be designated useful/useless like an on /off switch is questionable to me. I think it's probably more useful to speak in terms of degree of importance. Just as one can live without a legs it does make life more difficult. A person can't live without a heart. A person can live quite easily without eyebrows, but they are convenient. Being non-essential is not quite the same thing as being useless and therefore vestigial. While many creationists like to take apart the concept of vestigial organs for obvious reasons my beef is not with evolutionary theory, rather it is with the taxonomy of things.

Vote Wal -Mart

When a corporation models its relationship to the public along the lines of a political campaign it's long past time to pull on the reigns. Coming after the popuar success of "Super-Size Me" comes the activist documentary, "Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price". In response Wal-Mart has commissioned its own film, "Why Wal-Mart Works & Why That Makes Some People Crazy." They even have there own blog just to show you how grass-rootsy they are. Although at the time of this writing they don't have a very good Google presence (I almost wrote web-presence and the fact that it may amount to the same thing is another story). Most of the references after a quick google are in reference to the movie "Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price." If my own home town is any indication, people in small towns do love Wal-mart. This of course is a distinct issue from whether they run an ethical business. How different is it from anyother large North American corporation in its practices? Is it a paragon or a parasite or none of the above.

In a sense this is typical marketing in that Wal-Mart is getting it's message out. However the interesting thing to me here is that they are responding to a perceived threat and then incorporating the threats method as it's own. Another way to look at it might be that they are being forced to play on the battlefield as defined by their foe. That is what I think is different. Fighting the battle "over there" so it doesn't have to be fought "over here" doesn't seem like it always works however.

Hall of Ween in Sandy Hill 2005

The Financial Times gets the scoop two years too late. "US 'had no policy' in place to rebuild Iraq".

Tales to Shiver By

I won't say that this is a list of my favourite eerie stories, rather I'll frame this more accurately as stories that had an impact on me. Many of these were read as a child so the potential to fright was at its height. Pidgeons From Hell and Haunted however I read as an adult in just the right setting and they burned into me the way a good tale of terror should.

Robert E. Howard - Pidgeons From Hell

Joyce Carol Oates - Haunted

Ray Bradbury - There Was an Old Woman, The October Game

Edgar Allan Poe - Bernice, Morella, The Black Cat, Fall of the House of Usher

H P Lovecraft - At the Mountains of Madness, the Colour Out of Space, Whisperer in the Dark, The Haunter of the Dark

Algernon Blackwood - The willows

H G Wells - The Red Room

Rosemary Timperley - Something in the Cellar

Angus Campbell - the Sad Vampire

English Folktale - Teeny Tiny

Joseph Jacobs - Where is My Golden arm?

W.W. Jacobs - The Monkey's Paw

Charlotte Perkins Gilman - The Yellow Wall Paper

Joseph Conrad - Heart of Darkness

Charles Dickens - A Christmas Carol

Washington Irving - The Legend of Sleepy Hollow

Graham Ingles - Horror We? How's Bayou

Bram Stoker - Dracula

Charles Manson - Manson in His Own Words

Charles Burns - Blood Club

Leslie adds:

Alvin Schwartz - Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark

Julio Cortazar - House Taken Over

Paul Spencer - You Must Flee Again

Ray Bradbury - Jack in the Box

Poe Boy

One of my favourite stories for its macabre atmosphere is Edgar Allen Poe's Fall of the House of Usher. Which begins with this sentence:

DURING the whole of a dull, dark, and soundless day in the autumn of the year, when the clouds hung oppressively low in the heavens, I had been passing alone, on horseback, through a singularly dreary tract of country; and at length found myself, as the shades of the evening drew on, within view of the melancholy House of Usher.

It's a story which sets out the classic themes of horror: madness, decay, mortality, isolation and violation. Clearly this story had an enormous impact on H.P. Lovecraft whose own tales are rife with the horrors of madness, cross breeding, inbreeding and fear of age. Baudelaire the author of the Fleurs du Mal and an early translator of Poe's works into French, was enamoured with Poe for his descriptions of the dark beauty and he found in delirium and obsession.

Poe as a man and writer explored the brink. He drank copiously throughout his life and indulged in whatever opiates and narcotics came across his path. He was known for his salaciousness before and after he married his fourteen year old cousin. While marriage for a women of that age was not so unusual at the time the close blood relationship between them seems to have preturbed Poe, who had lived with her since she was 9 years old.



It is in the Fall of the House of Usher that we see what happens, through Poe's imagination when people tumble over that edge that Poe so willingly seemed to spend his days gazing over. The narrator of the story seems to be encountering his dark doppleganger in the form of Roderick Usher, as he crosses the threshold into a gothic nightmare of disintegration, taboo and hallucination ending in an apocalyptic collapse that is as purely psychological (psychotic?) as it is material.

If you haven't read this tale there is no better time than the end of October to step inside the vaulted doors of the House of Usher.

Praxis

I started a new blog as part of Rocket-booster Digital Media Design. It's called Praxis:
"Praxis is term that comes from my days as an anthopology student. In brief praxis refers to the "acts that carry their own rules, limitations and structures within themselves" in other words a fancy word for practice. Within anthropology and the social sciences however it takes on a more specific technical sense that relates practice/social action and culture, to the body itself. The body as the nexus of the social and the individual. While there are hundreds of tech related blogs and web sites out there. Praxis is a discussion of design and technology as filtered through my interests, perspectives, experience and concerns."

The Day Before Halloween

Late Night Meanderings

It's 2:40 am as I start this post, at leat that what the clocks say now. We had to set the clocks back an hour so that those of us who suffer from SAD can real feel the boots. So to the body it's actually 3:40 am. Vive la late night.

It was a gorgeous autumn day when the sky looks so much bluer as it hangs behing the jagged orange leaves that still fill out the skyline. I've been sick for three weeks now and am getting a battery of blood tests on Monday. I'm not too worried. If anything I'm convinced I could have been a GP. I know the routine. Check the throat with the little pointy light, check the ears, check the eyes, thump the chest and ask the patient to breath deeply while listening with the stethescope. Tell patient to lie down poke around the abdomen ask if anything hurts. Say it's probably a virus and check of some boxes on the lab form and say "I'll send you for some blood tests. In the meantime get some rest." So easy.

Last night I ventured out into the world for the first time since thanksgiving. Yes the world was strange. So cold I could see my breath. I could also see Mars which is the second closest it's been to earth in 60,000 years (2003 was the closest). Dave and I rented some bizarro Japanese films. On the way home my breath was visible so I know winter is on it's way back.

Dave and Sayuri came over tonight for dinner. I made some pasta from scratch with an excellent spinach and ricotta filling and delicious tomato garlic sauce mmmmm. I know I made but it was damn good. It was a fine evening all around and I must say the old Burning Ring disks came in very handy as dinner music.

I watched Young Frankenstein after they went home. That must be one of my favourite movies even though it's super cornball. Terri Garr, Madeline Khan, Gene wilder, Cloris Leachman, Peter Boyle and Marti Feldman. Marti Feldman was so funny and not only because of his googly eyes.

I first saw this film when we lived in Saudi Arabia on the compound cable. There were no theatres and little television broadcasting beyond cartoons and Saudi news. Seeing it again tonight made me larf. Which is the same thing as laughing but better. Terri Garr was also very hot as Inga the German sexpot. Anyway it was a lot stupider than I remembered and even more fun to watch because of it.

And now I collapse.

Making Science More 'Interesting'

Phillip Johnson who is sometimes referred to as the 'father' of the intellignent design movement said recently, "We're not out to damage science. We're out to make science more interesting." Teaching that the pyramids must have been built by alien visitors to earth in ancient times might be considered 'interesting'also. Maybe they can teach that in Kansas schools as well. Or how about scientists engage in knife fights to decide whose research should be recognized. Science cheerleaders might be interesting. How about celebrity science orgies?

Coming Soon the 1000th Posting

Soon I will be approaching the 1000th posting of this version of the Glob and Wail. To celebrate I will, ah forget it.

Taliban Revival in the Mid-West?

It's both dismal and amusing how the state of Kansas takes aim at evolutionary theory while evolutionary scientists help it on its move back to the stone age. This article from the New York Times reports:

Two leading science organizations have denied the Kansas board of education permission to use their copyrighted materials in the state's proposed new science standards because of the standards' critical approach to evolution.

The scientists are concerned as the Kansas Education Board is "singling out evolution as a controversial theory, and also for changing the definition of science itself so that it is not restricted to natural phenomena".

Gloomy Tuesday

The rain began sometime last night and continues on it's drizzly way to this moment. It's also very cold out and not having worn gloves my fingers turned to icicles. I had horrible deep lengthy dreams all through the night that seemed to drag me through all the low points of my existence. Thus it was I woke up feeling drained and demoralized and this flu or whatever unamed virus that torments me won't go away. The worst of it is the almost constant state of mental fog that washes over me every other day.

Now especially for Leslie, bring on the jokes:

The Alsatian Dog
An Alsatian went to a telegram office, took out a blank form and wrote: "Woof. Woof. Woof. Woof. Woof. Woof. Woof. Woof. Woof." The clerk examined the paper and politely told the dog: "There are only nine words here. You could send another Woof for the same price." "But," the dog replied, "that would make no sense at all."

Doctor
Patient: "Doctor, I've got a strawberry stuck up my bum." Doctor: "I've got some cream for that!"

Sheep Jokes
I
Two sheep herders are flying the herd to a new farm. Suddenly, the engine fails and the plane begins to fall quickly to the ground. SH1: Quick! Grab a parachute and jump! SH2: What about the sheep?!? SH1: Fuck the sheep!!!! SH2: (pause) Do you think we have time?

II
An Aussie journalist was in New Zealand doing stories where he saw a Kiwi farmer doing unnatural things with a sheep. He approached the Kiwi and firstly asked, "What sort of sheep is that?" He scribbled down the farmer's reply - "a Merino". The next question was, "Do you shear them?" The farmer replied hastily, "No! Go and find yer own!"

III
What did the Cloned Sheep say to the other sheep?

"I am ewe".

The Shining Redux

Finally the Shining as Stanley Kubrick intended it to be >>>

From the White House

Does it make any sense that the US government legislates accessability regulations for American web sites and than proclaims on the White House's own web site that " The U.S. government does not support Netscape for Windows." In other words if you are legally blind we are concerned but if you don't use Explorer we can't accomodate you. In fairness the two things may be related in that Netscape may not be fully compliant with their accessability regulations however its always professional form as I understand it to design websites that perform within the scope of standard browsers.Then again until the latest release Netscape had for all intents fallen off of the map. (and what about the small fortune spent a few years ago fighting Microsofts unfair business practices that hurt Netscape).

What is really funny though is that this page contains Bushs radio address urging young people to be safe on Halloween but at the bottom of the page it reads "This web site is not intended for viewers under voting age."

The Frozen Dead Guy

To get to the old mining town of Nederland Colorado you travel up from Boulder along winding roads through ancient strata that stab and jut in violent angles all around you. If you look too long at those layers of displaced earth you realize the age and violent history of the land you are traveling through and your mind can readily be pulled back into an unfathomably distant time. If your imagination takes you there you can see the forms of frozen giants in the stone. The journey is both beautiful and alien to an easterner like me.

One of the first things you notice after you pass the reservoir is a white shed that says Cryogenic Mausoleum. What? Yes this little shed in this little town in the hills has a dead guy frozen inside of it right there in the open. In fact, as I found out there is an entire celebration that goes on around this memorial called "Frozen Dead Guy Days."

Until I now I didn't know anything beyond this but thanks to the internet I've been able to get the background story.

Old Hag Syndrome

An Out there post on sleep paralysis >>

Spooked

Oh what a weird night. I just woke up in the dark and the wind is howling and the leaves are rustling and church bells are ringing and the dog is having bad dreams.
If this were a movie you just no something terrible was going to happen soon.

Shetland Lamb of Christmas Future

This is what Leslie is getting for Christmas one year. Don't tell.

Smoke screen

Do you trust big business to do the right thing? Is this an exception to the rule? or is this representative of a certain mentality that puts profit before human rights?

Make what you will of it but according to the Guardian "British American Tobacco, the world's second largest cigarette company, has secretly been operating a factory in North Korea for the past four years"

Bio-Warfare in Washington?

On Sept. 24, 2005 the day of the peace march, 6 biological-weapons sensors in Washington detected the presence of f. tularensis, a deadly virus used in biological warfare. What on earth is going on? The associate director for special projects at the St. Louis University School of Public Health's Institute for Biosecurity, William Stanhope is quoted as saying "I am stunned that this has not been more of a story." Indeed. "I'm sorry, you don't have enough money to buy enough martinis to make me believe that it is naturally occurring at six different sites." You can read more about this troubling circumstance at Salon >>>

Report

Around 5 pm I took Luna down to the dog park. I had just passed Osgoode and was going down the hill on Sweetland when through the sound of Jonathan Richmond singing about replacing Hippy Johnny because he was straight, I heard a mans voice yelling and cursing behind me. I took the earphones out and turned around to see a caucasian man in a navy uniform about 6'2" with a grey military cut. He yelled "Just try me fucking Chinese!" and was walking in an aggressive stride. I think he had a cellphone in one hand. He turned west into the alley behind the apartment units on Osgoode and thats the last I saw or heard of him.

Listen to the Wind

It's really chilly tonight. I went for a nice walk with Luna. The clouds were playing over the moon taking eerie forms and people have started putting pumpkins out. I'm still sick, so nothing looks or feels very real; everything seems a bit distant, a little out of reach. Sounds come from canyons or around corners. It's time for bed but I expect another restless night.

As a designer I'm usually thinking of the relationship of line form and colour in two dimensions and how these relationships can be used to communicate different ideas, messages and feelings. A classic symbol from ancient times is the yin yang which expresses in a beautifully minimalist way some very complex notions.



It really got me thinking then when I came across an update of this symbol that includes not only an emulation of three dimensions but also of time/motion. With only a very minor twist that takes nothing away from the traditional symbol it manages to express the harmonious interactions between the yin and yang in different manner while also hinting at how out of simplicity complexity can arrive. The yin and yang have a different relationship here than in the two dimensional depiction. In the three dimensional animated model there are now three spaces the yin the yang and the negative space in which they rotate. All three forms interact and expand on the notion that out of the interaction of two principles can come great intricacy.

When Prolactin Gets in My Eyes

Some interesting thoughts on tears from a physiological perspective. The tears we cry as an emotional repsonse actually have a different composition than basal tears (which lubricate our eyes) and reflex tears (which are produced in response to irritants) Emotional tears have a 25% higher protein content than other types. This protein content reflects the stress related horomones that are secreted in tears.

For those more inclined to social and culture understandings of phenomena there is A Natural and Cultural History of Tears by Tom Lutz, although the reviews of it are such that you may well gain first hand experience with the subjuct matter after you've parted with your hard earned wages in exchange for this volume.

Pravda = Truth or something like that

It's nice to see that since the fall of the Soviet state that Pravda has evolved into a newspaper that doesn't run away from difficult truths as exemplified in this story that reveals the truth about man-beasts through the ages. Read if you dare the cold hard facts: Centaurs appeared after copulation between humans and animals

And there's a lot more where that came from in the Science section.

GRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRowr

I am now sick of being sick. Since Thanksgiving I've had this raunchy cold/flu that will not leave. I can't draw, I can't write, I can't focus, I can't stand it. It's cold and I am super crabby. GRRRRRRRRRRRR SNARL,@*&*&%*#*&@*!*&*!^*.
There that feels better already.

Archimedes Death Ray

Legend has it that in 212 BC Archimedes designed and built a glass or mirror used to burn invading roman ships. Students at MIT experimented to see if such a thing is possible >>>

It's Time to Leave the Planet

Argh is about all I can say to the fact the Mattel is now producing a line of Barbie clothes for real women. >>>
"Little girls are growing up faster than ever and looking to adults and teens for inspiration, and Barbie is their aspiration."

Phone Imps

last year I bought a Panasonic cordless phone and while I liked the freedom of being able to roam my phone doodle production dropped significantly. The battery however started to weaken and even though its a rechargeable battery its practically dead. Leslie came to the rescue buying me a regular plug into the jack phone this summer. As a result the phone imps as I call them keep coming. Here's a couple (and yes I am fully engaged in the conversation while I draw these. I don't even see them until I hang up:

Tokyo Dave

Dave has been my friend since we moved to OS in the 80s. We lived on the same street, went to the same university and then he moved to Tokyo where he has lived for the past 14 years. Leaving his dream job working for the English edition of the largest circulation paper in Japan, the Daily Yomiuri, Dave is once more living among his fellow Canadians in Toronto. Welcome back old friend.

Bush Whacking

I haven't done any good Bush whacking lately. It's just too easy and his ways are just so predictable that the outrageous becomes routine.

Recently Bush held a televised "conversation" with the troops in Iraq. Of course the entire production was scripted and directed as much as any motion picture (perhaps more so since I doubt the soldiers were encouraged to ad-lib). From his "town-hall" meetings to promote his overhaul of social security where the "audience" is hand-picked and given questions to ask, to his Potemkin village photo-ops, this is all just another sad trick pulled straight out of 101 Propaganda Techniques to Fool Your Friends and Family.

I guess I'm still sometimes astounded that an article like this in Yahoo News can put all of his crap out in the open but some people still seem to eat it up like it meant something. Here's a man who trumpets to the world how he is the leader of a country that cherishs democratic values and freedoms and he is afraid to face the public in case someone asks him an awkward question (see Ireland June 2004). He was to chicken to speak in front of the Canadian Parliament when he visited Ottawa last year. Blah blah blah it really is boring except it matters. Oh and let's not forget the use of puppet journalists in the White House Press Corps like Jeff Gannon. Last but certainly not least the lies and deceptions around Iraqi WMD's and terrorists that were originally used to justify going to war in Iraq. The staged events of the fall of Baghdad. The declaration of victory on the aircraft carrier, the prepackaged news, on and on and on I could be here for days cataloguing this crap.
And yet despite all of this .... sigh. I think they realize most people are too busy trying to pay the bills to notice or care.

How the Knight of Cups Came Calling

It's been 6 months now since Leslie and I met in person in Sophie's kitchen in Cambridge and over a year since we started the correspondence that led us to that time and place. Looking back it's hard to believe how everything has unfolded. From the vantage point of looking back it all has the perspective of being an inevitable course that brought us here, but really there were so many things that had to be in place for this to work the way it did. It all seems like a dream sometimes as we slip in and out of each others presence, but there is a connection that seems to have always been there, as if it was only needing to be recognized, something that came before us and now winds its way through us, and will go on after we are gone.

Last fall I would take walks at night through the neighbourhood, the dry leaves rustling at my feet, the stars glimmering through the sharp autumn air and there would be the sense that something connected her. To my sensible mind this was a fantasy among fantasies, another random thought and impossible connection that only made sense in dreams. And yet when the moon shone down it always drew my thoughts to her in far off Colorado. Somehow I felt she was looking up at that same moon in the same vast sky that stretched out between us and was thinking of me. This was long before any intimations of what was to come.

These thoughts that grew in dreams, between the notes in the music we shared and the lines of the letters we wrote were drawing out a path for us to follow, one that would bring us together on a warm and sunny day on Pearl street where the white and pink blossoms of springtime rested at our feet. Where she handed me a silver box containing one pressed violet crocus, the same as I had picked for her weeks earlier and never sent or said a word about to her. It still lay pressed between the pages of a heavy book back in Ottawa. When I saw that flower I froze; I melted. I can still feel the warm shiver that ran through me at that moment.

That's how it all started.

Rock Stars

My nephews have the poses down now all they have to do is learn three chords.

Ella

This time through I stopped in Toronto and visited with Kirk and Lisa, finally getting to meet the lovely Ella.

Dogs Parked

Gatineau Scenes

Happy Thanksgiving

It's been an amazing autumn so far. We went to my sister's for Thanksgiving dinner and I came home to see that Leslie had sent me this beautiful picture of her in the Aspens and since I shamelessly adore her I had to post it.

Great Visit

Sharon and John left for Alqonquin Park yesterday with the ultimate destination of Parry Sound to see John's brother. We had a great visit with excellent weather. They arrived Sunday afternoon and unwound at the Royal Oak before venturing out into the Gatineau Hills. In the evening we ate outdoors by a small lake in Wakefield. I have some more photos I'll post after Thanksgiving.

Also in the visiting vein, Leslie booked her ticket to come to visit at Christmas for almost a month! I can hardly wait. This is going to be such a great Christmas.

Gatineau