Getting out and about is a good thing, often because of the view when I get back to the car. In accordance with my blog categories, are these Photos of Built Stuff, or Photos of Landscapes? Yes.
These scenes don’t have any big significance but they make me happy. Maybe that’s significance enough.
Using your words, not your hands, describe this structure to someone who can’t see it. I’ll wait.
That’s it. That’s the post.
Well, not quite.
Arriving home in the early evening, I saw a bunny hop into our front yard. By the time I parked the car and closed the garage door, I figured it would be gone–under cover or gone gone. But no, it was sitting on a rock in the middle of the other rocks in our front yard. I got a phone-camera photo at max phone-camera zoom (see left below; the version on the right is after cropping and brightening).
I got my big camera and went back out, but I figured it would be gone–under cover or gone-gone. But no, it was still sitting on a rock in the middle of the other rocks, washing its face with its paws or drying its paws on its face. And then it was just sitting, looking alert (note the ears) and yet, somehow, relaxed.
Did it know I was there, as something distinct, say, from the shrub I was lurking behind or the porch pillar I was trying to blend into? I think so, although bunny cognition is not a subject I’ve studied. But even though we are unlikely to have a meeting of the minds, there is something immensely satisfying about a peaceful encounter with wildlife. Is there any chance the bunny feels the same? I don’t suppose so, but I kinda hope so.
Lilac Capital of Ontario
I snap to attention in the back seat. Driving–well, being driven–to Kingston last week for a family gathering, I see this sign as we enter an otherwise unremarkable town(let). For easier driving, we’ve taken one of the innumerable roads less travelled than the 401, whose sign, if there were any emotional truth in promotional signage, would say this:
Welcome to Hwy 401:
One of the Busiest Highways
in North America.
Don’t say we didn’t warn you.
As quickly as we enter the Lilac Capital of Ontario, so do we depart it; it’s fast enough that I don’t capture the name of this metropolis. Dagnab it. A modest capital, I guess, and a town(let) indeed.
Hi. Can I get the number
for the poison control centre, please?
Silence. Then more silence. I wait, pen poised, wondering what the delay is. I’d already called the telephone company’s directory-assistance service for other numbers in Saskatoon, our new home in this January of 1980, and usually they’d rattled them off pretty quickly. Finally, a voice speaks, hesitantly, as if afraid of the answer.
Is this an emergency?
Given that Canada Day is just around the corner, this really ought to be a study in scarlet, but here we are. And there we were a few days ago, stumbling across yellow at two locations in the Ottawa Valley: Ashton and Pakenham.
In Ghostbusters, our hapless heros are instructed to choose the form of their intended Destructor, Gozer the Gozerian.
Choose and perish.
(timestamp – 2:56)
In mindfulness training, participants are instructed to notice a given colour for a whole day. On this day, of course, the yellow itself didn’t mean anything; noticing it meant everything. If the “nimble little minx” from Ghostbusters had been along for the drive, she might have growled this instead.
Choose to notice,
and live.
Yes, ma’am.
As I was saying a few weeks ago . . .
I could be ready to undertake CPR or, in a public building, ready to deploy an AED properly. That means learning how to do both . . .
. . . and, for buildings that I frequent, that also means learning where the AED is.
Smoke is in the air as Los Angeles streets offer up video that could be a Rorschach test for the different ways the same footage can be understood–Riots? Peaceful protests? Opportunistic looting? All of the above?
Smoke is in the air as Air India drops a Boeing 787 into a crowded residential neighbourhood and even before the horror can be fully described, much less grasped, the informed and uninformed speculation begins–Pilot error? Mechanical failure? Bird strike?
Smoke is in the air as the Middle East teeters on the edge of something–Peace for a generation? Regional war that draws in Russia, China, and the USA? Regime change in Iran?
Before slapping marmalade on my rye-bread toast, I caught it trying to alert me to some dismaying prospect.
Although, come to think of it, maybe that expression is for its own circumstances.
Posted: 2025 Jun 28
