Wetlands Challenge

shutter speed 1/200; aperture f16;
ISO 800; focal length 300;
exposure bias -1.33Our three-week old bicycles have not been going to waste. Thank goodness, as they have been a major expense. It's not just the initial cost, but also the various accoutrements: lock, air pump, mirrors, carriers, bags, helmets, padded shorts and what have you.

Several of our excursions have taken us through a local wetland conservation area where we have noticed a number of herons (I guess they're blue herons?) along with the typical fowl: mostly mallards and Canada geese. We usually spot three or four per trip, and although Sue always carries her little camera wherever we go, it doesn't come close to having enough zoom power to photograph these birds.

So, last night, I lugged my SLR with its various lenses plus my tripod out there. I did this by car, of course, but once on site, I had to shuffle around by foot in fading light with all of this useless, burdensome equipment. All I really needed was my camera with my telephoto lens. Yes, a tripod is a good idea, especially when you are using a telephoto, but no self-respecting bird that I have yet met will sit still and pretty while I fumble around with my tripod. I suppose that, unlike Mr Amateur Shutterbug here, real photographers scout out the area, set up the tripod in a likely spot and wait for however long it takes. Personally, I felt like a clueless, primetime nitwit lugging all of this equipment around for no apparent reason.

Well, I finally saw one (a heron) in the distance, zoomed in and snapped. The above picture is the result — sort of. You see, Mr Amateur Shutterbug here had left the exposure compensation at -1.33 stops from a previous experiment. For those who have no idea what that means, it means that I was underexposing the photo dreadfully, not letting enough light in. What came out was a rather dark photo. I have done what I can with it in Photoshop to make it tolerable, but it's pretty grainy.

What I need is practice — lots of practice — and any advice that will assist this poor bumbling, neophyte.

Biking and Photos

I'm way down the pathWe went for another long (for us) bicycle ride today, probably about 50km/30mi, give or take. We went along the local walking/cycling trails (see photo to left) and out to The Grove. We had taken a little lunch and got some coffee from Tim's before heading down to the lake.










Waves BreakingThe weather was good for riding — about 22C/72F. But it was windy, especially down by the lake. So, we donned our squall jackets to block the wind and enjoyed a fine lunch. It was simple fare, but after the exertion, and with the view, it tasted great. After lunch on the wooden platform lookout, I sent Betty down the stairs onto the rock groyne (wave breaker) and snapped these two photos.
More BreakersActually, I snapped many photos. I put the camera in continuous shooting mode where it takes three or four photos in one burst. In these two photos, I was able to catch the waves breaking.



We are very fortunate to be surrounded by simple abundance: to have such destinations and views so close by. Fortunate to have nice bike trails too.

Humane Critters

A heart-warming picture
This photo and several companion photos arrived by email yesterday. So, it has probably been widely circulated on the Internet and may not be news to you. I am a softie; these kinds of images and stories touch me.

The story is simple. A family found a fawn, apparently abandoned, underneath their steps. They took it in and have been attempting to nurture and nourish it back to health. As you can plainly see, the dog is doing its part, and progress is being made

When I juxtapose this against an account I just read on Grumpy Old Man today, I shake my head. Don’t worry, it turns out well for the dog, so don’t be hesitant to read it. Very briefly, what happened was that the dog’s family moved and left him (or her) behind. One of the owners would come by every so often and leave it some food, but it was clearly malnourished, wallowing in filth, and starved for attention when it was rescued. That’s the short version; read the whole story here and the follow-up here.

How those of us, supposedly made in God’s image, can be less humane, less caring, less nurturing than a mutt is beyond my ken. I know that nature can also be raw of tooth and claw: that has to do with survival and the necessity of filling the belly — kill or die. Meanwhile, stories of animal acts of kindness abound. In fact, just as I was writing this, Sue called me in to watch a snippet on TV: about a spaniel who was helping to take care of an abandoned family of baby rabbits. Heart-warming stuff.

Barbara Kingsolver opens Small Wonders with an account of young child who wandered away from home in the mountains of Iran. Days later, they found the child in a cave, snuggled up to a mother bear who was sharing its milk with this young, needy, human creature. We don’t know if this is a parable or a true story, but I guess you know what I choose to believe.

Here’s how Kingsolver concludes the chapter.

Bears and wolves are our fairy-tale arch-enemies, and in these tales we teach our children only, and always, to kill them, rather than to tiptoe past and let them sleep. Maybe that’s why I’m comforted by the image of a small child curled in the embrace of a mother bear. We need new bear and wolf tales for our times, since so many of our old ones seem to be doing us no good. Now we’re finding that it takes our every effort of will and imagination to pull back, to stop in our tracks as hunter and hunted, to halt our habit of killing, before every kind of life we know arrives at the brink of extinction.

Some days you have to work hard to save the bear. Some days the bear will save you.

Bad Hair Life

My heart grieves (he said ironically) for poor Butterfly who had a bad hair day yesterday. The girl writes a good blog, but I have no follicular sympathy that I can afford to send her way. Yes, her hair has vexed her for most of her life. Yes, it will not usually conform to the current fads. That can be tough on a kid: tough, but hardly traumatizing. Truth of the matter is that she has gorgeous hair: hair that is uniquely hers and also uniquely her — no cheap imitation of somebody else’s fashion statement.

Me? I am not having a bad hair day. I’m just having a bad hair life.

With a bald father and bald paternal grandfather, I knew from early on that I was in trouble. In my adult years, I was not mollified to be told by the medical poohbahs that baldness in genetically inherited from the mother: not mollified because I was already well on my way to Chrome City. On my way to Chrome City with not one bald person on the matriarchal branch of the tree but with baldness nesting all over the patriarchal branch — if it’s possible for baldness and nests to go together, that is. Baldness inherited from the mother, you say? Balderdash (so to speak), say I.

You know, I don’t really mind the baldness too much. I have lots of company, after all. If I had my druthers, of course I’d choose hair, or would have when the choice may have mattered to me. Not sure if I would choose it now though. Truth be told, at the very least, I’m getting used to the guy who I have been beholding in the mirror for more than two decades. At most, maybe I’m even getting attached to him.

What tends to irk me though is the back of my head. I actually have some reverse-baldness. I am losing hair from my neck. What I mean is this. If you look at where most guys’ hairlines end, mine is inches higher. Even worse, the hairline is even higher on both sides of centre than in the centre itself. This bothers me more than the usual male pattern baldness — because it’s rarer and odder, I suppose.

My dad, bless his shiny dome, had this problem too. His saving grace, however, was that his hair was straight. He could grow it a little longer at the back and, at least partially, cover up that bare patch. However, like Butterfly, I have curly hair: unruly, curly hair. If I try to let it grow back there … well … it becomes rather ridiculous follicular quagmire in short order. I become Pumpkinhead-ish.

Back in the hippy days, everybody had long hair, and, being both young and silly, I wanted to fit in. I started to grow my hair. Unfortunately, it would just turn up into the cutest little flip at the back and sides — cute perhaps if I had been born female and was seeking that particular look — but definitely not even remotely hippy-like. Oh, how I tried! I would try to straighten it with hair driers and curling irons; I even went under an old-fashioned hair-drier — with a net on for goodness sakes — once or twice. Gave it up after a burly workman meandered into my boudoir whilst I was sitting under there: yup, my head under a ladies’ salon-style, hair drier with my wife’s hair net on — a pink hairnet if you please!

I made a simple decision. Get a haircut and be myself.

Much later in life, I made a similar decision to go with the flow by shaving off some silly wisps that lingered on my, otherwise, bald dome.

Very recently, I again embraced reality. Since I can’t really hide the neck baldness thing, I have surrendered to reality by shaving my whole head short — of course, I mean hair, not head — that’s just how we say it.

We’re rather silly about appearances, aren’t we? We try hard to follow the popular trends and to hide our supposed flaws. But that’s not who we are. We’re not curly people, or bald people, or short people, or tall people. We’re people. We’re human from the inside out, not from the outside in.

We need to be like the ducks and the geese. If you haven’t read that blog, click here to unearth another Anvilcloudian treasure trove.

Together, We Can Move Mountains

Mulch Mountain
I am not a morning person: never was, never will be. Having revealed that, I hasten to add that some mornings are worse than others. There are mornings when I feel pretty good, am relatively alert — for me anyway, if not compared to regular people. Then, there are mornings like this one: mornings where I feel almost as though I am under a weight; mornings when lugging my bod from the chair to the couch seems like a slog.

If I can occupy myself at the keyboard for a few hours, I don’t mind feeling like that. I can even accomplish some semi-productive things when I’m in that state: printing another page for the family photo album, for example.

Today, however, several yards of mulch were dumped at our gate: too bright and too early. At the very least, I was expecting a phone call telling me that the load would arrive in an hour. “I’ll be okay by then,” I told myself.

Not to be: they arrived within minutes of that placating but fleeting thought.

So, it was time to slog. Sometimes, you don’t have a choice — ya gotta slog onward — ya gotta keep putting one foot in front of the other … until the job is done.

That’s what I did today, wheelbarrow-load after wheelbarrow-load: loading, moving, dumping, spreading. Until all of the mulch, over three cubic yards of it, was resting on its appointed ground.

Sue, of the fractured back, poor dear, helped as best she could. She pulled back plants so I could shovel mulch in. Then she would pat the shreds and chips into place. After she could do no more, she prepared lunch and then sat outside with me until the beast was tamed — okay, until the mulch had all been moved.

Sue is my partner. Has stayed with me through thick and thin. Stayed with me today, just being there, boosting my spirits when she could do no more. It was enough! She helped to pull me through, just by being there. Yes, it was enough: always has been; always will be.

It’s great to have a true-blue, life-partner. Together, we can move mountains. Or at least piles of mulch that seemed to loom higher than Everest on this particular day.

Good Blogs, Bad Blogs

Ever since I decided to start blogging, I have spent quite a lot of time looking at other people's efforts. I am having a tough time finding blogs that I want to stick with, but there are some from which I click-off very quickly.

If a person can't be bothered to capitalize the letter, "I," this reader will soon be gone. This is a lazy habit in my opinion, most likely born from chatroom reality where time is of the essence. From there, it makes its way into emails. I don't particularly appreciate its appearance in emails either, but I am grudgingly prepared to tolerate it.

A blog, however, lives in the public domain. It is a genuine form of publishing, and, the writer should demonstrate respect both for the language and for a potentially diverse audience — some of whom are bound to care about such matters. I have come across some blogs that showed potential — one by a doctor travelling and working abroad — but whenever I discover that an author can't be bothered to follow basic conventions and to capitalize the ninth letter of the alphabet, I soon click away. How hard is it to capitalize one letter after all?

Another click-off: if the blog is but three lines long, I conclude that it is nothing but a news-release for close friends who must also have a short attention span. Why wouldn't you just email three lines? If one goes to the trouble of publishing a blog, it would seem reasonable to assume that one would enjoy writing and would have something, however modest, to say. If you're going to go public, you need to demonstrate some pride in your product.

What about all those blogs that open with a reference to last night's party, or a hangover, or boyfriend/girlfriend angst? An occasional reference of this sort might be fine, but if it soon becomes apparent that it is the sum and substance of the blog, then off I go.

I believe in the value of personal blogs, and I understand that there must be a certain amount of the recounting of days and events. We all do that from time. I do it, and I contend that it is both necessary and okay to do so. But, to hold my interest, a blog must, eventually, contain more. It must contain some thoughts, lessons, applications, or description — something beyond straightforward chronicling.

I have stumbled across some fairly popular personal blogs that don't measure up in my opinion. Are they popular simply because the writer has a wide circle of friends? Perhaps these are veteran bloggers whose perspicacity attracted readers in the past, and, having developed a sense of community they now hang on?

Do I sound overbearingly elitist? If you've read my stuff, I trust that you realize that nothing could be further from the truth. I'm about as ordinary and unpretentious as one can be. I don't have any great delusions about my own writing prowess either, but at least I make an effort. Perhaps, that’s the key. If you’re going to go live, put just a little effort into it.

Saucy Squirrel

We were visited by a very impudent squirrel today. The cat made several half-hearted attempts to run him off, but the suirrel's impudence and tenacity were just too much for an old, lame, clawless, fat cat.