A Short Word on the Tariff Fiasco

There is so much that could be said about the collapse of the tariff talks between Canada and the USA, and I cannot say it well. Looking for something fairly brief, this post by Annie Justice Primeau on Facebook seems to do the trick. https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1Ga1oPsxV9/

I know Grump hasn't been saying much about the abrupt ending of the trade negotiations with Canada last night so in case some of my American followers are curious as to why Canada is fuming over Grump and his ilk, let me catch you up to speed....

Grump didn’t just demand veto power over Canada’s trade partners, he practically tried to downgrade us from a sovereign nation to a franchise he could manage from his recliner.

 
He wanted to hand‑pick which countries we were allowed to trade with, then went a step further and suggested we toss out our bilingual identity like it was an optional accessory instead of a constitutional pillar. He even said that our immigration policies should “align” with his preferences.

 
He tried to turn the entire country into his personal doormat. He behaved as though Canada’s sovereignty was a negotiable coupon he could redeem whenever he felt cranky, pushing demands that ignored our Constitution, our institutions, and our identity.

Of course Canada takes a hit with these new 50% tariffs, but Americans get the bruise and the bill. Tariffs are a two‑way punch: Canada loses export revenue and faces supply‑chain headaches, while Americans get slapped with higher prices, pricier manufacturing inputs, and retaliation that hits their own industries. It’s mutual damage, but the U.S. ends up paying for the privilege of hurting itself.

Even when economists, manufacturers, and farmers warn him the policy is damaging, he ignores them. The crazy part is that the damage is very visible yet he keeps swinging the same hammer because it fits the political storyline he wants to sell.

 
Canada will adapt and come out on top when this is all over. Our country is resilient and united but I cannot say the same about the USA.

 

  A Sad Indictment of the USA

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The Reciprocal Door

One of Sue's recent photo prompts involved doors, and since she is always looking for something special, we thought of the reciprocal door at the Blakeney Conservation area, so we made the 16 minute drive.

I was to pose at the unique door that you shall soon see, below, but first let me tell you what the accompanying plaque says: "Relationships are built when doors are opened and people are allowed in!"

The plaque goes on to explain that the door is a metaphor for the past, present, and future relationship between Indigenous peoples and Canadians, serving as a reminder of mutual commitment in a reciprocal relationship.

I was a willing model but not for long, and ye shall anon come to understand why.

While I really prefer all of the above poses, this ↓ is a better photo of me because my eyes are less in shadow from my hat.

Had we not been absolutely swarmed by ferocious biters and been able to study the images, we might have noticed the shadow issue, but we were absolutely beside ourselves to beat a hasty retreat. We still rather desperately swatted at those that followed us inside the car.

That makes two savage attacks within a week. While I am not anxious for colder weather, at the same time, I am thinking that a killing frost would be a rather good thing.

Flown from the Nest

Today, Danica wakes up differently than ever before. Yesterday, she moved into what will be her residence for the school year: a room in a house in Ottawa, shared with three other girls women.

You may recall that she commuted to Carlton U for her freshman year. You may also recall that her car got totalled near the very end on last semester when exams were almost finished. Since there will be no possibility of commuting this year, she will be staying in the city, just a bus ride from campus. I think, however, that she would probably have made the move regardless of the car situation, for it seems to be a natural progression.

The semester won't begin for another two weeks, but she has landed a part-time job at the university store where students may purchase books and other paraphernalia. Today is a training day, but she doesn't yet know the rest of her schedule.

She'll be up early, going outside to the bus stop, and travelling to campus. I am not sure if she has been on city bus before, but she will manage because she is a grown woman.

On Sunday, we stopped by to give her this last-minute card because Sue thought of her own experience of standing at bus stops in the rain in Toronto at that age.

A last-minute creation with an AI-generated character.

I forget what else she was given, but I know that we gave her a whistle to blow if she ever felt threatened when walking to or waiting at the bus stop.

I took pictures of both Dani and the cat, but the cat photos can come later. I really like these two candid shots. She's a real gem.

Depending on her work schedule, I think she'll be back and forth between here and there until the 9th when classes begin. At some point, we hope to visit her and see her domicile and also tour campus and her book and merch shop. We haven't seen the campus yet although we have driven by in the more distant past. We'll depend on Shauna to get us there and back when circumstances permit.

Jonathan got a picture of Danica saying goodbye last night from her new front door. But I'm okay. Really, I am. 

Friday

On Friday morning, I was abruptly and rather rudely awakened at 8 by someone poking at my body. It was Sue, who was doing me a favour since I had to take Jonathan to work. While I still had an hour before departing, she knew that I would like to have a coffee and do some of my morning things.

I don't usually sleep until 8, and you might think I had a wonderful sleep. I guess I did in the end, but for the first hours of the night I was absolutely exasperated. I was restless and uncomfortable and tried two beds as well as my usual chair before roaming the house and having cookies and milk. I sat in the porch for awhile and determined that when I went back up, I would play Sudoku to help unwind and tire me. It often works, and it did that night, for I closed down the second game halfway through and soon settled to sleep.

I got JJ in plenty of time, and on the way, he informed me that he was scheduled for a 6:30 start this coming Saturday. That is normally not a problem for me, but sleep has been erratic lately. Whatever the case, Siri or Sue should poked me awake.

Back to Friday: by noon, Sue and I were sitting in Generations on the Lake restaurant, where we shot each shooting each other. I wanted to get the restaurant window in the background while she focussed on the subject — wonderful me. We had a nice lunch/brunch.

As we were leaving, I decided to take a snap of the old stove in the foyer. It's a Findlay stove which was manufactured right hear in Carleton Place. Too bad the Findlay factory is totally gone.

We drove a little way along the lakeshore where I took these shots, the second resembling a Gandalfian carving in the house directly across from my lake photo.

We got back just in time to pick up Jonathan from work at 1:30. We then exchanged JJ for Danica who has been sorting her stuff as she prepares to move into her room in a townhouse in Ottawa for her sophomore year at Carlton U. She loaded the car, and we drove her to the thrift store where she was able to drop off her old stuff.

From there, we took her to Tims for old times sake, where she punched in our order at the kiosk. We didn't need to do it that way because there wasn't much of a line, but that is what she likes to do.

I took a photo of Sue and Dani. I am not biased when I say that there are two wonderful and compassionate women. I have been lucky that way. And I am also just realizing that I have called my grandchild a woman, and I don't think I've done that before, so permit me i little sniff. Just a little one.

Sue took a photo of me and the girl. Then Danica put on my hat, and Sue clicked once more.

I will be posting more about Danica tomorrow. 

AC Learns to Never Boast

I had 3 good nights of sleep, which I define as getting more than 6 hours. I have my goal set at 6.5 hours, and I attained it twice with a glorious 7 hours on one of those nights.

On a walk, I bragged to Sue. Of course, 2 rather fitful nights ensued.

Then, I got 4 good nights, reaching 7.5 hours on two occasions. That is actually sublime territory for me.

Being a slow learner, I bragged again. Never brag, folks.

What followed were two rather wretched nights in which I awoke at 3:30 after 4 hours.

I drives me crazy, I tell ya. Not that it's a long drive, eh?

But then I met my goal of 6.5 hours 2X with one night over 7. That was last night as I write this.

On one of the early mornings, I saw a glimmer of a decent sunrise from my chair, so I went to the window before 6, and snapped this photo.

While it would have been great to get out to a better location for the sunrise, the good light is brief, and it would have been long gone had I attempted to go out and chase the light.

That night, while watching tennis with Beloved, I could see a bright half-moon through the patio door. I stepped onto the deck and took a phone photo around 8:45. The clouds really helped to make a rather good photo.

I am so impressed with this quick, handheld phone shot. The exposure is very good, and the moon is quite in-focus. I had to remove some distractions, 4 wires for example, and do a little editing, but the point is that the phone gave me a great starting point.I cannot explain the light streaks that we see, but I don’t mind them at all. 

I did go up to the bedroom to try for another photo, but the moon was already obscured by the clouds. Sadly.

The next night, I did get the moon in about the same spot from the bedroom, but it was about 45 minutes later in reaching the same point in the sky as it was on the previous night, so the blue was gone. There weren’t clouds either, but here it is for the record.

The bright building to the bottom left in both photos is a car wash.

The lighted building in the second photo of the post is a daycare centre.

The lesson to me is how great a lunar exposure the phone rendered. I wasn't expecting much but was pleasantly surprised. The other lesson, that I really knew already, is  that night photography is best while there is still some light before it gets very dark in what we call blue hour. 

Of course, if you are shooting the Milky Way, you may have to take what you can get when you can get it. Of course, this is true for much photography. 

The Other Trail

There are three trails in town, two of which go through the town on their ways to points beyond. When I write about the neighbourhood trail or the Mississippi Riverwalk Trail, it just a local trail. It begins (or ends) in the park near us and parallels the Mississippi for about 2 km, which is only a little longer than a mile. When I have shown wooden boardwalks, it has been of this trail. It is close and convenient and is only for pedestrians and cyclists.

The other trail that we even more frequently use is the OVRT: Ottawa Valley Recreational Trail. It is along the former CPR line, which was still in use when we arrived here in 2005. The economic crisis of 2008 put an end to the trains, so it was converted into an almost 300km trail. It can be used by snowmobiles and what I will call trail buggies in summer, which I guess are kind of golf carts. Maybe they are exactly golf carts; I don't really know.

Whenever I mention the bridge trail, we are on the OVRT. We saw the new sign on part of our coffee walk. 

We had another of those coffee walks recently, but I refrained from posting the same old thing. I think we've done two coffee walks without posting although when I recently posted the photo of Sue by the puddle with Tim Hortons in the background, that was part of that walk.

Carleton Place is the red dot in the middle of the 300k trail

I really write all of the above to post this recent photo of the third trail: the Trans Canada Trail.

The initial gif at the top and this photo were taken on our little section of the Trans Canada Trail.
We rode sans kidlets that day.

The Trans Canada Trail passes though Carleton place. Yes, it then goes across the country. You can see that it really is a trail here, but you would then have to pick your way through Carleton Place before finding an actual trail again. It does connect with the OVRT though.

Obviously, you can ride this trail a heckuva long way. When we were younger and even more foolish, still in our late 50s, we did ride it the 24k/14mi into Stittsville, but that was far enough for us. There are long railway grades along the loose trail, and we never had the desire to repeat such foolishness.

As a matter of fact, we had only ridden maybe 100 metres on this day when we stopped to take that photo. Ferocious insects, late season blackflies, we think, came out to feast on Sue without mercy. We quickly turned about and headed for home.

Of course, you will forget all of this about the trails, which is entirely appropriate, but at least I have given some context for the picture (and gif) in this post and about our walks or rides in general.

Evening in Mono

Sue's daily prompt required an evening photo in black & white. The lady doesn't like prompts that require late-in-the-day fiddling and faddling, but off we went to the neighbourhood park.

I decided to follow suit. When I do present a mono photo on this blog, it is a conversion of a colour photo. This time, however, I set the phone to b&w mode. That enabled me to see the composition in b&w before pressing the shutter button. I did not have to convert when editing; it was already b&w.

What I could see in mono on the screen was the sky looking pretty dramatic. The sky didn't look overly dramatic in colour with my naked eye but it did on the screen, so that is what I emphasized with my shot.

However, apart from the sky, other photo ops were lacking, so we drove to Riverside Park, where, upon entry, I immediately spotted this possibility.

As we entered the park along this path, I could see that people and dogs were coming, so I held the phone and waited for them to walk into the scene. The photo has a leading line with subjects well positioned in the frame.

I took one more photo at Riverside of the boys fishing at the dock, but of course it would have been preferrable for them to be actually casting their lines. I could have waited, but I might have waited in vain, and the mosquitoes were getting somewhat active.

I did fulfill the mission of actually shooting in b&w rather than converting from colour later. One does see the world a little differently in mono,  and it was the sky that really popped in some of the photos, more so than it would have on colour.