Lilacs? Capital!

Posted on 04 July 2025 by Isabel Gibson

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.

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Posted in Appreciating Deeply, Laughing Frequently, Through Canada | Tagged , | 9 Comments

Making Haste Slowly

Posted on 28 June 2025 by Isabel Gibson

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?

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Posted in Feeling Clearly, Language and Communication | Tagged | 10 Comments

Study in Yellow

Posted on 28 June 2025 by Isabel Gibson

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.

Posted in Appreciating Deeply, Photos of Built Stuff, Photos of Flora | Tagged , | 4 Comments

Redux: Ready for. Ready to.

Posted on 21 June 2025 by Isabel Gibson

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.

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Posted in Another Thing | Tagged , , | 13 Comments

IYKYK

Posted on 13 June 2025 by Isabel Gibson

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?

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Posted in Language and Communication, Laughing Frequently, Thinking Broadly | Tagged , | 8 Comments

Rye Face

Posted on 07 June 2025 by Isabel Gibson

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 in Laughing Frequently, Photos of Faces | Tagged | 12 Comments

Tooth of Lion, Bane of Flea

Posted on 07 June 2025 by Isabel Gibson

Lacking the physical and mental oomph these days to organize photo shoots of better subjects, I just go places and photograph whatever is in my path.

In theory this could have gone a few directions–from boardwalks to bridges–but where it went  this week was to dandelions and friends.

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Posted in Appreciating Deeply, Laughing Frequently, Photos of Flora | Tagged | 10 Comments

Right? Nay, Perfect

Posted on 31 May 2025 by Isabel Gibson

I remember when I learned that red wine doesn’t go with Thai food. I remember when I learned that a homemade dressing that was spectacular on a spinach salad did not even rise to insipid on any other kind of greens. But that was then; this is now. I was this many years old when I learned that light rye bread (sans caraway seeds) makes the right toast for marmalade, by 1.6094 country kilometres. Nay, the perfect toast.

You doubt me? Try your own taste test. Take a piece of any soft white bread, or a challah knot, or an English muffin. Toasted, they’re all perfect foils for honey. Pair any of them instead with a big dollop of marmalade and what do you get? A sad little overly sweet piece of nothing, that’s what.

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Posted in Appreciating Deeply, Laughing Frequently | Tagged | 14 Comments

Ready for. Ready to.

Posted on 30 May 2025 by Isabel Gibson

When in trouble,
when in doubt,
run in circles,
scream and shout.

We were discussing this little ditty just a few months ago in the context of the President’s on/off again tariffs on Canada.

Is it good advice? Not really, but then it’s not really advice, is it?
It’s a comment on what happens, not on what should happen.

Five weeks ago, I found my husband slumped over in his office chair gasping for breath. I thought that was bad until he stopped even gasping. On my part, what followed was not a textbook example of an effective emergency response, although I did manage to call 911 and today he is back in that office chair.

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Posted in New Perspectives, Thinking Broadly | Tagged , | 14 Comments