A few weeks ago I got some unexpected results when I Googled the phrase, “Where are they now?”
Soon I’ll have to expect the unexpected. It happened again today when I Googled,
man walks Trans Canada Trail
Today, seriously senior veterans will sit for hours in front of our national cenotaph. Ottawa’s weather on Remembrance Day usually offers a nasty choice: wet and chilly, overcast and cold, or clear but even colder. Today we have the latter.
Today’s images were taken last year in a happier season altogether.
Today is the 100th anniversary of the armistice that ended WWI. As a fair-weather photographer, I have trouble even imagining the horrors of trench warfare. Even if I were inclined to glorify or sentimentalize that war or any other, this year it would seem especially inappropriate. The Silver Cross Mother is the parent of a soldier who killed himself three months after he got home from Afghanistan.
The members of the Canadian Armed Forces that I know, active and retired, don’t glorify or sentimentalize war. But they do institutionalize the act of remembrance. I think that’s the least I can do, too, honouring all those who fought and suffered, all those who died, and all their families.
There’s a new exhibit at the London Imperial War Museum that lets visitors both feel and hear a recreation or interpretation of what it was like when the guns finally fell silent.
Listen to the Armistice Interpretation here
After weeks of silence, they arrive in waves, albeit on unrelated topics.
Get better sleep!
Get in celebrity shape with this . . . !
They offer me good deals . . .
Save HUGE on the best medications!
Get extra savings if you order today! Free shipping available . . .
They offer me general financial well-being . . .
Money Making is Not Hard! See the Proofs.
Get the highest guaranteed return on your retirement
They offer me precise wealth . . .
Redeem your $850.000.00 US
They offer me health . . .
Permanently eliminate the herpes virus from your body.
Hurry up and improve your health with this Cannabis oil!
Watch this FREE presentation if you use blood pressure meds
Cannabidiol oil ““ relieve anxiety, reduce blood sugar levels . . .
Eat THESE Foods to Cure Joint Pain (Check the Bakery Aisle)
They play innocent . . .
Is this email still active?
They play to my curiosity . . .
Dead simple tricks bring any battery back to life
They play on my insecurities . . .
Odd morning elixir to lose 11 pounds
1 glass of this will burn 3 pounds of belly flab tomorrow
Why some people look FAT that aren’t
1 activity that makes you look fat
They play on my legitimate fears . . .
Sign-in attempt from new device was blocked
They offer me illegitimate documentation . . .
Your iCloud storage plan receipt
And they tease me with what I really need . . .
Boost your brain power in 14 days
Overall, I appreciate my internet service provider’s anti-spam filters, I really do. Indeed, sometimes I think the internet should come with a warning sign.
But sometimes those filters seem just a little over-eager. I mean, what was that about something in the bakery aisle to cure joint pain?
Looking back over 2017’s photos, I found these taken in the Grand Tetons, in a lake famous for its reflections. And rightly famous, I’d say.
The trick? After arranging for a blue-sky and windless day, get out before those pesky kayakers ruffle the water’s surface.
Smarten up.
Don’t piss here.
Yes, that’s what the sign said. Not in English, mind you: in Spanish. Maybe my translation presumes a slightly chippy tone that was not intended, but if I had a business with an outside wall against which men (I’m assuming, I admit it) regularly relieved themselves, I think that would get old pretty quickly. Continue reading
What’s this? A new trick to get me to click on a link embedded in an email? Hah! I won’t fall for that. As one family member says,
I was born at night,
but not last night.
I have to give the spammers/scammers credit, though: The emails look more professional every day. I mean, look at this one: both Official Languages and no spelling mistakes, although there are run-on sentences.
But although I appreciate the good feng shui of my alleged delivery number, I haven’t ordered anything to be delivered by Intelcom. Indeed, I’ve never even heard of them. So, no, I won’t be falling for this.
And there the matter sits for a little while: in my self-satisfied box. Then I remember a notification about a book ordered several months ago before its publication and just now being shipped from Amazon. Where the heck is that email? It came in a day ago.
Rustle, rustle. Ah.
Oh. There it is, in the (very!) fine print.
Of course it’s better to treat unexpected emails as guilty until proven innocent, but I’m still a wee bit embarrassed by my failure to actually read the first email.
But what sticks is not about me. It’s about what’s possible with an investment in new tracking and communications technologies coupled with a commitment to, you know, actual communication. Even for a $20 book.
Maybe they can’t trick me (although the jury is still out), but they can for sure still amaze me.
On these dreary fall days in Ottawa, when all the leaves are gone and the sky is grey, it’s good to get out the house, even just to the national-drugstore-chain local representative. It keeps my blood pressure from getting dangerously low.
On All Saints’ Day — aka the Day of the Dead — the pallets of leftover Hallowe’en treats were not yet on sale (not that I, you know, checked), but the Christmas decorations had already appeared. Continue reading
Last year at this time, Mom’s death in the preceding June was still raw.
The death of her only sister just two weeks ago has revived many of those feelings and memories. It also marked the end of an era: the passing of the last member of a whole generation of my family.
My travels this year took me to more cathedrals than I would normally see in a decade, and I lit a candle for Mom in every one. That ritual wasn’t part of her Lutheran upbringing, as far as I know, or of her 70 years in the United Church, but I felt she would have understood and appreciated the gesture.
As I update this collage for my aunt, I feel that I’m lighting a digital candle for all these folks. And I’m choosing to remember them all, not as they died, but as they lived.
As a flash of red catches my attention, I leap from the couch and move swiftly but sneakily, I hope, to the window overlooking our small backyard. Sneakily, because the cardinals responsible for the flash of red notice any sudden movement on my side of the glass. At least that’s my guess as to why they bolt so frustratingly, hightailing it back into the bush just as I get up to the window, camera in hand.
It’s one of the dreary days so common in Ottawa in October, and tending late in the afternoon to boot, so the light is crappy. A professional photographer will tell you there’s no such thing as bad light. I am not a professional. Continue reading
Posted: 2025 Jun 21
Thanks to John Whitman for this slightly dismayed face from downtown Ottawa.
This space is available for other submissions.
