I couldn’t miss this one, could I?
But apart from adding to my collection of unintentional faces, this sighting led to me discovering that there is no universally accepted name for these viewer thingies. What a delightful lack of standardization.
On 25 April, our north-facing Ottawa backyard finally rids itself of its last snow. As I head to the airport, I see that the irises and daffodils are just up. There is still nary a sign of any tulips the squirrels missed. As for flowering trees and bushes: Fuggedaboutit! Their leaves aren’t even started. Continue reading
Blogging? Taking photos? Making videos? Knitting? Always.
Answering email? Doing laundry? Emptying the dishwasher? Buying groceries? Getting a haircut? Usually.
Cleaning bathrooms? Weeding? Catching up on paper work? Organizing closets? Going to the dentist? Sometimes.
Such are the activities that always, usually, or sometimes pre-empt, delay, forestall, and otherwise interfere with my exercise routine: an impressive name for a small effort with modest goals. Just a little something to push back on the decline in my strength, flexibility, and balance. Just an attempt to reduce the acute events with back, knees, and shoulders that have led to physiotherapy interventions.
Although I want the benefits of regular exercise, I don’t really want the work of it: not even the small amount of work that I have set for myself. Just how little I really want it is evident from the range of things that bump exercising off my day’s agenda.
Creative pursuits taking precedence? Hardly surprising. Maintenance activities? Disappointing. Unpleasant tasks? Disconcerting.
But so it is. I can be philosophical or discouraged, or any place in-between, but what really matters is carrying on. If not always then at least usually sometimes.
Two years ago, when I was doing videos by developing them in PowerPoint, I featured roseate spoonbills in a pink-themed video. I didn’t understand how to override the PowerPoint defaults that kicked in during conversion, so the synchronization with the music isn’t what it could be.
This spring I went to St. Augustine twice: once en route to the Florida Keys to visit the Dry Tortugas, when I hit a grey day; and again on a trip whose primary purpose was to see and photograph these amazing birds. This time, I got the blue-sky day I wanted.
Just perched in a tree, wings folded, they look a tad ungainly, and nowhere near as pink as they do in flight.
But “in flight” is easier seen than captured, what with, you know, the movement associated with flight, and their unhelpful habit of flying behind intervening branches.
So I settled for the wings flared right after a landing, or as they balanced on rickety branches. This time . . .
Huntington Beach State Park near Myrtle Beach rewards the frequent visitor with new stuff every time.
My primary interest in the brown pelican is to catch them in motion, with wings spread wide, in a lovely setting. But sometimes there are interesting things to see even when they’re standing almost still in ankle-deep in mud.
Me, I have a hard time scratching that spot between my shoulder blades with my fingers. The pelican, apparently, can do it with the back of its head.
Clearly impossible . . .
But wait. Impossible as this was, there was more.
This makes *my* neck muscles hurt. What about his?
Not just more, but worse. Ouch.
Stop! Stop! I can’t stand it.
This definitely looks uncomfortable enough to be a new yoga backbend: the pelican pose.
The volunteer tree right beside the soaring concrete support for the highway overpass frustrated me on an earlier visit, interfering as it did with the flow of that row of graceful supports.
On the next visit, I decided to get in close for a different perspective.
I like this photo for what I can see: the mix of textures, and the mix of lines – the messy lines of the tree, the clean lines of the concrete support, and the straight lines of the milled wooden underpinnings of the roadbed.
And I like it for what I can see only in my mind’s eye: the juxtaposition of natural and artificial, each with its own claim to beauty.
The Friendly Giant was a staple of my childhood, arriving on Canadian TV in 1958, or about the same time we got our first TV.
Looking at the Wiki entry showed me there was a lot about the show I didn’t know. That it started in Wisconsin and was coaxed to relocate to Canada. That it was ad libbed. That it was on the air until 1985, producing 3,000+ episodes.
Watching a clip of the lead-in to a show showed me that it wasn’t only my knowledge that was lacking. I didn’t remember that episodes were only 15 minutes. That the effects were so cheesy. (Have you seen that paper mache castle? Oh my goodness.) That the pace was soooo slow.
What I remember most clearly – although I couldn’t have quoted it accurately – was the welcome to the castle:
One little chair for one of you,
and a bigger chair for two more to curl up in,
and for someone who likes to rock, a rocking chair in the middle.
Followed, of course, by this:
Look up.
Look waaaay up.
Now what made me think of The Friendly Giant? Just this, seen in Conway, near where we were staying this winter.
For someone who likes to rock, indeed. It might have been cheesy and slow, but it made a lasting yet gentle impression.
The Dad you can likely guess.
Betty is Betty Windsor. Call me a crazy traditionalist, but somehow Liz seems wrong as a short form of her kinda roundabout Canadian title:
Elizabeth the Second, by the Grace of God
of the United Kingdom, Canada and Her other Realms and Territories Queen,
Head of the Commonwealth,
Defender of the Faith
Me, I would have moved “Queen” ahead of the list of countries of which she is Queen, but no one asked.
Anyway, today is Betty’s 92nd birthday. My father would have been 96. As a 30-something smart aleck he convinced a Sunday-School-ful of little kids that the 21-gun salute on the grounds of the Alberta Legislature on this date was actually for him.
So here’s to both of them on this, their birth days. Blam blam.
Dad with Mom, not Betty, c. 1956
Betty and Phil, 1959
Out in The Wild, say, in the Sonoran Desert, a windy day often means fewer bird sightings, or so I have been reliably informed by qualified bird nerds. Me, I would have figured that creatures that lived outside were, you know, used to it, wind and all.
In a rookery, however, a windy day means more-artistic (artistickier?) bird sightings.
It’s almost enough to make me forgive the great egret for the exposure challenges it presents.
Posted: 2025 Jun 13
Thanks to John Whitman for this slightly dismayed face from downtown Ottawa.
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