Photo Shoot from Lake Park Road

Good sunset views are tough to find around here. The roads point the wrong way or trees or hills obscure the view. However, we did find a spot on Mississippi Lake from Lake Park Road or actually from Birch Avenue after you turn off Lake Park and a few other roads. I'm not sure that most of these shots were taken on public land, but no one challenged us.

The first two photos are near the public dock.

Now for some more direct shots of the sunset across the lake. I don't suppose any other explanation is required.

My only slight regret is not doing any longer exposures just to smooth out the choppy water a little, but I am pretty pleased overall.

Le Vent du Nord at Celtfest

The weekend brought about the 20th annual Celtfest in Almonte and our 11th. We stumbled onto this festival in our first summer here and make it a point to return every summer. We are usually there for the whole weekend come rain or shine, and we had our share of rain this time.

However, that was on Saturday, and the Friday evening weather was fine. I like the challenge of shooting at night when the stage lights are on. It makes it interesting.

The headliners that night were a French Canadian band called Le Vent du Nord, which would be Northwind in our tongue. All four of these fellows are fine musicians and good vocalists as well, so they put on an excellent show with all of their enthusiasm. It doesn't seem to matter that they sing en français for the language of music translates itself.

I took a ton of photos; here is a smattering. I may post more later.

↑ The whole stage

↓ A little closer

↑ Closer Still ↓

↑ Love the smoke

↓ Low key

↑ The fiddler was excellent

↓ And he sang well too

 ↓ He also favoured the photgrapher with a smile, which is very good of him ↓

I think we'll leave it there for today, except for this YouTube clip.

Down by the Riverside at Eventide

Sometimes I need a photo fix. Not just go out and snap but go to a specific place in good light, preferably with a tripod. That was the case one night last week. Our holidays had begun, and I hadn't done much with the camera. So on a last minute whim, I headed over to Riverside Park with Sue. We went to the area where we often sit with coffee or even a lunch. When we do that, I often wish that I was there in better light.

The light wasn't otherworldly on that evening, but it was better than harsh midday, and here is how it looked to me. The first two look upriver; the third looks across and up; the fourth looks downriver towards the town.

Q & A!!!!

Anvilcloud: Danica, what the heck are you doing here today?

Danica: My other babysitter wasn't at home at the time, so we came here.

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Anvilcloud: Please tell us the favourite thing that you did last week on your vacation with Daddy and where you did it.

Danica: It's hard to pick a favourite, but I think I liked going to the train museum and to the ice cream place as big as an office building in Quebec.

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Anvilcloud: What are your favourite ice cream flavours, and when did you have them last?

Danica: Vanilla and Cookies and Cream are my favourite. Last time I had them were when I was at the HUUUUUUUUGGGGGGE Ice Cream place, and you had 4 different flavours to choose from, and you had 12 flavours to dip your Ice Cream in and they would harden. Vanilla was my Ice Cream, Cookies and Cream was my; dip? Fondue? (Whatever the heck fondue means...)

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Anvilcloud: Tell us two things that you will do in the rest of the summer.

Danica: I'm having a staycation with mom, and going to a cottage in Bancroft with my dad, my brother, and three others who feel like family.

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Thanks for reading my Q & A, ask me a Q & A question in the comment section down below for the next Q & A! 

(P.S. I recently turned 9, and feel much more mature and grown up lol.)

Chivalry is not Dead

I write this on Thursday to pre-post on the weekend. Hopefully, I have been enjoying Celtfest since Friday evening, but as I write hits, there is much rain in the forecast. So, depending on the weather, you may expect to see some concert photos next week.

Otherwise, this is a bit of a follow-up to my previous post about hats dating me. (Actually, hats are about the only things dating me at this stage of my life. Women are no longer interested. Such is life. Quelle dommage.)

I was provoked into a continuation of my old norms in new times thoughts when I spotted a youngish couple walking past our yard. If you can believe it, he was walking on the inside of the sidewalk. Oh, the horror of it all!

It is just plain wrong to my sensibilities. Men should walk on the curbside as I always do when I walk with Sue (could be a song: ♫ I Always Do When I Walk With Sue ♬ ). When we turn a corner, I do a little jig to get curbside once again.

I blame my mother for this old-fashioned proclivity. You see, we once encountered my beloved grade 5 teacher and her significant other out for a stroll. Mom was scandalized by the fact that she was curbside and he was inside. I fear that I was young and impressionable enough to be scarred me for life by her visceral reaction to that faux pas.

Mom was born in 1914, when I presume there still would have been some horses on the roads and perhaps not the drainage that we take for granted today. In those times, it was the norm for men to walk curbside to protect their ladies and their finery.  Kind of a Sir Walter Raleigh throwing his coat over a puddle sort of vibe, which, sadly, may have been a myth begun in a novel.

Way earlier than Mom's time, before the age of automobiles, when streets were really messy it would really have been socially de rigueur and chivalrous for men to show their consideration, which may have been one of the few perks to being female in those times. In Mom's day, it was still of some importance to show such consideration to the ladies, but what about now when there are no horses with their concomitant effluence and when streets are well drained?  It really shouldn't be a thing! (Please not that I can use current jargon. Or it that word, thing, passé by now?)

But it is a thing, my thing, and I shall be constrained and doomed to do that outdated, chivalrous, curbside dance until my expiration. It just seems right. Who knows? I might protect her from an errant splash someday although to my dim recollection that hasn't occurred yet.

Oh dear ... I just thought of yet another anachronistic habit — holding doors open for women ...

Head Matters

I like to think that I am young at heart. Unlike many oldsters, I am a little left of centre politically although I pretty much abhor the far, authoritarian left. I am also pro gay marriage, pro women's rights, and anti capital punishment.

But I do confess to having inculcated a number of old-fashioned norms.

Take hats for example.

Last week at Danica's assembly, one gentleman man sat wearing his summer hat: not just the ubiquitous baseball cap, but an actual hat. Well alright, it was a cap-ish sort of hat, but a hat it was.

And it bothered me. A little. I don't get steamed or lose my ahem over such things, but it just registers as being not quite right.

I don't wear hats indoors, except for in shops and stores, which I don't have an issue with for some obscure reason. While I don't mind wearing one in those situations, that's about it. I wouldn't wear a hat in a proper restaurant. I might wear a cap in some more publican-style establishments but not many or often, and I just wouldn't wear an actual hat.

I suppose it's a generational thing although the guy wearing a hat in the assembly wasn't exactly a teenager and hadn't been so for probably four or even five decades. Still, hats were a common form of male attire when I was young. If you suited up for church in the fifties, you wore a fedora, and you removed it when you entered a building. Immediately if not sooner. No question about that.

Now, I came of age in the later sixties, so I was never personally part of the fedora generation, but I am still obviously influenced by the norms of those times.

These days, being follically challenged, me 'ead requires protection from the sun in summer and the cold in winter and from sneers of the well-haired in all seasons. But I do feel obliged to remove it indoors.

And by the way, I don't wear the ubiquitous ball cap. The fact that I don't wear them and don't like them also marks my generational quirks. But I did wear one when I was coaching ball, and I would likely do so even today at the ballpark. Everything in its time and place. Eh what, old chap?!

School Pics Retrospective

Just having posted their last day of school photos, I thought I should go back and look at previous school years.

First Day: JK 2011

Danica 2012, SK (that's not JJ but another friend)

JJ's first day, 2013, JK

First Day 2013, Grade 1

2014, Grade 2

2014 SK

First Day this past year, 2015 (Grade 1 & Grade 3)

Last Day this year, 2016, (Grade 3 & Grade 1)