This is a true story.
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Blog Memories of the Week
Photo Memory of the Week
Music of the Week
I found a Pinky-Winky video but could not inflict it on you. But the search turned up The Wonky Donkey, first in animated-video form . . .
. . . and then in Granny-reading form. Remember this?
So is this music? No.
Quote of the Week
We have to realize that the child’s world is without economic purpose. A child doesn’t understand – happy ignorance – that people are paid to do things. To a child the policeman rules the street for self-important majesty; the furnace man stokes the furnace because he loves the noise of falling coal and the fun of getting dirty; the grocer is held to his counter by the lure of aromatic spices and the joy of giving. And in this very ignorance there is a grain of truth. The child’s economic world may be the one that we are reaching out in vain to find. Here is a path in the wood of economics that some day might be followed to new discovery. Meantime, the children know it well and gather beside it their flowers of beautiful illusion.
Source: On the Front Line of Life by Stephen Leacock; in John Robson's Words Worth Noting
Posted: 2025 Nov 15Spam Comment of the Week
Comments blocked by my spam filter and the comment's (nominal) source:
This one is sort of inspiring, don't you think?
2025 Nov 15 - And I have faced it. We can communicate on this theme.
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Great photographs, Isabel — and another face motif at 1:58… And at 2:34, would that be a reflection in the water in the photo on the left? It all makes me want to go to Utah!
Marilyn – Good eye! Yes, a rock face in this case. (haha) As for the reflection – no, the blue is a tailings pond of some sort, a long way down into the canyon. And I’m sure they’d love to have you visit Utah. Super friendly folks.
Send this IMMEDIATELY to Utah’ Chamber of Commerce! (well, maybe not the last picture)
When my sister Betsy and I were kids, my California family camped in lots of National Parks. Zion and Bryce are great! We would pack the car, put my 3-year-old sister (still asleep) in the back “seat” — specially set up as bed for us both… then we’d completely shut the car doors (a block from home to avoid waking the neighbours)… and drive off at 4 AM to avoid the heat of the desert and drive east.
Betsy would wake up in a national park. She said until she was 5, she thought everywhere else in the world was a national park.
Barbara – That’s a great story about the strange gestalt kids have of the world. I thought the US and the Soviet Union were one country: they were so often referred to on the news as “the US and the Soviet Union.” I think Betsy’s misapprehension was nicer.
Yes, your childhood was as rife with pairing the two warring “super” powers as mine — although I doubt you had to practice getting under your desk during nuclear bomb drills. So you can imagine my astonishment at the GOP and their love of Russia/Putin these days.
…and I laughed when I read my line (a block from home to avoid waking the neighbours) — waking other people in other neighborhoods was just fine! Just thought of this today! six decades later.
And I was a teenager before I realized Dad’s oft-repeated “bloomin'” was not a swear word I was never to use. My mother, I don’t think, ever knew what her swear word — SHOOT! — was a derivation of. Innocent people, innocent times. And I was very old when John told me “bloomin'” was a nice way of saying “bleedin'” as in “bloody” — Catholics and their tabernacks, etc., eh?
Barbara – We did nothing so useless as hide under our desks. We went into the central hall and crouched beside the wall. No glass fragments from the windows, I guess. As for bloomin’ – I did not know its derivation, and am surprised to see a religious reference in English profanity. French profanity, yes, but ours tend to be related to bodily functions. Live and learn. Given how long England has been officially Protestant, that must be an old swear word indeed.
I like Barbara’s advice. This montage is astonishing, delightful, provocative, amusing, awe-inspiring, and trippy in the best possible sense of that last adjective. The music struck all the right notes to support the images. Very nicely done!
Laurna – Excellent! So glad you liked it.
I think you might also like Namibia, if you ever get a chance to go there.
Jim T
Jim T – Neighbours who are great photographers have been to Namaqualand, and it does look marvelous. I will take it under advisement. You and Joan have been, I take it?