Thursday, September 22, 2016 — 19˚C / 66˚F with bright sunshine @ 12:42 pm in Atlantic Canada —
A friend wanted an image of Ganesh – Apparently September 5th was a special day dedicated to Ganesh in India, There were many images that could have fit the bill. I liked quite a few, including this one.
I am hesitant to call Ganesh a ‘god’. Cultural differences are too easy to misunderstand. My take on a ‘Western view’ of Ganesh would be that He is regarded the way Roman Catholics regard Saints. They ask Ganesh for help overcoming obstacles, removing obstacles from their lives, blessing them with ‘good luck’.
I should have looked this up, but it looks like ‘Ganesh Chaturthi’ is a Holiday / Celebration Day dedicated to Ganesh.
My friend, Jim W., told me a story related to Ganesh. While he was working part time as a cleaner when he first became a permanent resident in Canada and could legally find work- one of the places he worked was an old textile mill that was in the process of being converted into a ‘Corporate Centre’ / Office Building. The building had some creepy areas, other people who were there at night reported seeing ghosts, experienced being touched and/or pinched when nobody else was in the building.
Jim began chanting “Shri Ram” – a chant he picked up from a recording of music popular with Sufis – which was attributed to Mahatma Gandhi- He said he could feel his own voice vibrating in his chest and then all around him (after several minutes) in an unusually relaxing manner and then received a ‘spontaeneous visualization’ in which Ganesh was dancing, walking along beside him as he dusted, mopped and wet-mopped the floors. A few minutes later his visualization had expanded to include a whole traveling group of Hindu Indian musicians, playing drums and other instruments as they walked along with Ganesh and Jim, clearing the creepy vibrations away with happy smiling feelings and light.
He said he’d never thought of Ganesh as a Dancer- but apparently most Hindu Indians know Ganesh as quite the accomplished dancer.
Monday, September 19th, 2016 — 18°C / 64°F and foggy in my little corner of Atlantic Canada @ 9:14 am—
This is from Austria – Yum?“If you don’t like the way I drive stay the hell off the sidewalk!”
— I am not the world’s biggest fan of tweeted and effbooked pets, but I couldn’t resist this guy —
Don’t tell Sophie Turner – while looking for Emmy stuff to tweet and retweet last night I saw this and had to steal it. — Thank You – 🙂
— I don’t know, maybe I’ve eaten too much genetically modified high fructose corn syrup and it’s completely freakin destroyed my brain – but today I actually wanted to do up a blog post of this stuff –
My friend the novelist asked me to proof-read his latest effort – He inserted a Maine Coon Cat into one nearly surreal landscape – I put that down and checked the internet and – I’m being haunted. 🙂
— ¿¿¿ Help – The Tweet-Us-Sphere is reading my mind and manifesting schnarr from my imagination — ???
& If today’s theme here is remarkable photographs – we’ll have to add ‘Remarkably beautiful Expressions’ to that title.
— Imay have stolen this from another tweeter — but I’m giving her credit by leaving her “@info+etc.” intact – so maybe she won’t want to crucify me?
“Once upon a time I picked up an Astrology book and read some of my closest friends’ descriptions.— The section on Gemini Women said, “Want a harem? – Marry a Gemini – you will get more than that one person for a mate.” That writer had never heard of [ Libra? ] Tatiana Maslany – { Wow! }— I hope I spelled her name right, I need to go get my eyes checked. & ‘sans-serif’ fonts are the worst —
Friday, August 19th, 2016 — 12°C / 53°F With the sun shining golden light on nearby neighbour’s houses in Atlantic Canada @ 7:18 am — Today is Bill Clinton’s Birthday —
I really was inspired to smile and think there just might be hope for the human race when Usain Bolt and Andre DeGrasse smiled and hugged after coming in first and second in their semi final 200 meter sprint.
— I am no fan of testosterone-poisoned athletes staring and glaring at each other, hoping to ‘psyche-out’ their opponents before games or ‘contests’ in which they try to prove themselves egotistically superior to everybody else in their sport.
— It was good to see the first and second place sprinters in the semi-finals looking like brothers who get along well enjoying themselves –
— Usain Bolt, a Jamaican, has now made history, winning gold medals in 100 meter and 200 meter sprints three times in a row. Tonight, if the Jamaicans win a relay race Usain Bolt will make further history turning his “Triple Double” Gold into a “Triple Triple”.
— And if you understand the above blurb about triple doubles and triple triples, you’re either a dedicated follower of Olympic athletics or someone who has a quick and nimble mind who enjoys learning anything and everything you can. 🙂
*** & When my friend, Doug, invited me to help him and his friends at “Aerendel” Communications with web problems he was having ( he’s dating one of my favourite cousins ) I hadn’t realized that there was another Jim who actually originated the web site(s) and ‘owns’ the name ‘Aerendel’ – which he says came into his mind as a mind-worm { something like an ‘ear worm’ } the first time he read “The Hobbit” by JRR Tolkein – and stayed with him until he thought “a small secluded valley in the sky” was a decent description for a web site, and later, a multi-player game. [ Castles in the Air? / A naive vision of “Heaven”? ] So I’m trying to relieve a bit of confusion by admitting that my birth certificate says, “Hermann James Van Arden” and too many people made fun of “Her-Mann!” and “H. James Van Arden” sounded too much like one of the Watergate crooks. So I asked Doug if “Jim d’Aerendel at Aerendel dot ca” sounded like a decent email name and he smiled. And apparently, the other “Jim at aerendel dot c.a.” didn’t mind – but a couple of my friends wondered why there were two different Jims here – So, now I’ll declare myself as, “h.j.d’a” and hope that doesn’t fry too many brains.
Friday, August 5th, 2016 — 14°C / 56°F & Cool & Damp @7:00 am in Atlantic Canada —
I’m not sure whether this is a photo or a painting or a photo that’s been painted in photo shop – But I like it.
— It’s John Olerud’s Birthday – and it’s also Terry Seguin’s [ host of New Brunswick First / Information Morning out of Fredericton, NB “on CBC Radio One, local Cable TeeVee and live streaming on the web.” ] — Also a couple friends in Connecticut, Including Gail S. and a couple others who don’t want to be reminded that they’re getting older are either celebrating or trying to forget that today is their birthday. —
— We had a thunderstorm yesterday, and my malware program found a couple ‘potentially unwanted’ bits of schnarr in my files et cetera, which is odd, because that’s a computer I don’t connect to the internet much. But anyway, the “kabooms” were loud and I could feel them as well as hear them, so I shut everything down and then had a hard time getting everything back up and running. And when a browser that had been open to twitter came back up there was this photo – or whatever that is up there – that caught my eye, and I’m still checking in to see whose blogs need to have their plug ins and stuff updated, so I thought I’d change the sticky post on my eye candy blog.
— Habbin zee gooten Tahg – [he said in his fake German accent —]
Saturday, May 28, 2016 — 20˚C / 68˚F — Sunny and Springlike in Atlantic Canada @ 2:03 pm — Tweets below are copied & pasted – links won’t work.
I don’t usually like the colour pink, but if 528 Hz really is the Frequency at which Love vibrates, and pink is the colour in people’s auras when they’re trying to attract love – I can probably stand it for one day – Haven’t been to Paris in the Spring in this life time – but shots like this can still raise my spirit –Jesse Ventura quoting George Carlin – That probably couldn’t have happened while Jesse was a dedicated Navy Seal. But – you never know. Governor Ventura told us he poo-pooed conspiracy theories before he investigated what happened at the twin towers on September 11th, 2001. Maybe he always had a nearly conscious, but viable, B.S. meter and that one more thing woke him up?{David Coon Retweet} : The above Provincial Minister is not one of my favourite people. Green Party MLA David Coon IS one of my favourite people – and nothing like an average politician. The really good news is that the ‘Government’ of New Brunswick announced that the Moratorium on Hydraulic ‘Fracking’ will continue indefinitely. — I wanted to end this post on a positive note and this is it.
— Um. I thought I had something more to say, but I guess I’m not immune to ‘Senior Moments’ – ((( Help? )))
Photo of deer munching on oats in Atlantic Canada at 7:07 am this morning.
Tuesday, May 11th, 2016 — 6˚C / 42˚F & very bright and sunny @ 7:56 am in Atlantic Canada & Yesterday was Rasputin’s Birthday { & by the way, he was neither ‘mad’ nor a monk. } — {{ P.S. My friend Jim W. told me May 10th was also Swami Yukteswar’s Birthday and his (Jim’s) late Uncle Bruce’s – and three young women who were like 7 years old when Jim was helping his Cousin Glenn get Glenn’s daughter, Sarah, to school in the mornings – and meeting her at the bus when she came home after school, when Glenn’s job dictated that he had to be in work at 6 am and the school bus picked the grammar school kids up at something like 8:30 am – 3 young girls in Sarah’s circle of friends plus the mother of another one of Sarah’s friends — all celebrated the same birthday. May 10th. }}
=====
Must Read? :
Cover of the Novel “Heat & Light” by Jennifer Haigh
Heat & Light is a novel about the lives of Pennsylvanians – Farmers and Rural land owners – struggling to make ends meet and being seduced by oil and gas companies’ fast talking salesmen, convinced to opt-in to contracts with Frackers whose promises of lots of ‘free money’ for allowing the Gas Companies to Frack their property – poisons their water, ruins their property values, ruins the landscape around them and leaves them in much worse economic condition than they were when they were merely desperate.
===========
CBC News Links:
The top headline in each article is linked to the original article on the CBC.ca/news/ site.
Proposed motion suggests committee to report on alternatives to first-past-the-post system by Dec. 1
— While it looks to a lot of us that political slight-of-hand is alive and well in Canadian politics – Justin Trudeau – who’s been the Prime Minister up here for a little more than 6 months – appears to be keeping a campaign promise to come up with an alternative to the current ‘First Past The Post’ electorial system — by having a committee investigate the feasibility of weighted voting and other possibilities to make Canadian elections a bit more democratic and have the elected officials in the Federal Parliament reflect the over all vote and not just the winners from each ‘riding’.
— For instance: If – in a hypothetical Federal Election: the Liberal party received 35% of the vote, the New Democrats received 25%, the Conservatives received 22%, The Parti Quebecois received 10%, the Green party received 6%, and several smaller parties received the remaining 2% – Then – Sitting members of Parliament should more closely resemble those percentages. — Where the current ‘first past the post’ system might have populated the Parliament with something more like 52% Liberal, 20% Conservative, 18% NDP, 9% PQ, & 1% Green (depending on where the votes were cast and what the local races looked like). { I intentionally had one party get fewer votes than another while winning more seats than that party did in the above fictional results from a fictional election. }
Fear of a Trump presidency has spawned a dating site that hooks up Yankees and Canucks
ad for “Maple Match”
“Maple Match” is a dating service advertizing that they can find Canadian mates for people who might want to escape from a nightmarish Trump Presidency.
— Earlier news items up here – reports from a couple months back – indicated that officials ( or residents? or somebody — ) in several provinces announced that they would be happy to welcome refugees from the U.S. into their communittees if they wanted to escape from the USA if and when DJ Trump became their President.
New $25M package only half of what’s been cut from student programs
— New Brunswick’s (Liberal) Premier Brian Gallant announced a new programme to give low income New Brunswick students free tuition at New Brunswick Universities. It was later revealed that this program would benefit about 7,100 students while it took away current tax rebates from between 35,000 to 40,000 students. The new program would reportedly cost $25 Million while cutting the earlier program would save more than $50 Million. -I’m not sure those dollar figures would reflect yearly costs – but that’s my best guess here.
— Zondra ‘Pricelys’ Roy, who also goes by Zoey, is an activist, spoken word poet, hip hop artist and social entrepreneur. She will be presenting at The Walrus Talks The Indigenous City in Winnipeg, May 11, 2016.
FORT MCMURRAY, Alta. – RCMP have seized some guns following the fire in Fort McMurray, but won’t be a conducting a mass seizure of firearms like they did after the flood in southern Alberta.
Sgt. John Spaans said Tuesday that officers have taken one or two guns found in public places, but are not going into homes looking for more.
=====
& Internet outages have been reported in parts of Atlantic Canada. — Luckily, that hasn’t effected me (yet?)
Wednesday, May 04, 2016 – Kent State Massacre Anniversary Day — // +9˚C / +48˚F @ 7:47 pm on a cool and mostly clear Day / Evening in Atlantic Canada —
Somebody thought they saw the 4 Horsemen in this photo? All I see is a nice, inspiring sunrise or sunset.Friends of mine were hitch-hiking in the Boston area — I think that was in the 1970’s — They were picked up by a woman who turned out to be an editor ( I think she was an editor ) working with James A Michener. He was having some health problems back then, but I thought that was an interesting bit of extraordinarily good luck.This was a March retweet from a friend, but it still is cool / interesting —
— It’s been too long since I checked in on Twitter and with my blogging friends – & today there was a lot of stuff about Bernie Sanders.
I like the pixelated old school image of Bernie on the left. & Yes, an unexpected win is nice to read about.& It’s nice to see Charlie Brown is still handing out good advice.I suppose the closest to making you feel loved that any material object can get is if it is wrapped in warm memories of the person who gave it to you — Ya think?Hillary Clinton isn’t doing so well when it comes to winning the approval of independent, free thinking voters.The best teachers encourage you to think for yourself –
Hi – Jim W. Is having problems with his WordPress Theme or his connection and asked me to see if this works in my ‘blog’ – :
= = = = =
I went outside to photograph the sunrise after I brought a little bit of oats out to the Deer Hill, and was surprised to see a family of deer already there having breakfast – Then I tried to change the settings on the sizes of the photos & ‘Media’ for this WordPress Blog and it seems to want to over-ride my changes. Grrrrr- But anyway, This is a cropped photo with the deer and the wild backlighting in effect. I’ll try to load this at full size and see what it says. —jim w—
— Saturday, March 19th, 2016 — // -10˚C / +14˚F & Clear & quite bright out there at 9:00 am Atlantic Daylight Savings Time — I think today is my grammar school friend, Donald Hanichek’s Birthday. I could have the spelling wrong – and the last time I bumped into him we were in our twenties and both shopping at an art supply store where my friend, Kim, worked. I think Don was picking up art supplies for the place where he worked, and he pointed at me, smiled and said, “This is what I like about living here-” (bumping into childhood friends) —
— This week’s Media News included a bit on how consumers brought a complaint to the CRTC (Canadian Radio & Television Commission? — expanded to include cable and satellite etc. ? ) About the way Cable ‘Provider’s are handling things. The CRTC ordered cable companies to provide a cheap, stripped down ‘basic’ package that had to include the major Canadian Networks and possibly a couple US networks — I’m not 1,000 % ‘up’ on the details – But – They were also supposed to ‘provide’ single channel options, and not just offer channels inside ‘Bundles’ that a lot of people were complaining contain a bunch of channels they never watch and have no desire to pay for. & Now it seems that the cable ‘providers’ – “jacked” the price of all the single channels they offer – up as high as they could get away with – and people are complaining now that it would cost them more to get just the few channels they want than all the channels they didn’t want before.
— & Now, Yesterday, Our local CBC Morning News Program reported that a new complaint has come to the CRTC regarding one of the major Media Providers and the way they charge for Cell Phone ‘service’ – They made it very easy for anyone on a family’s plan, including the minor children, to go past the ‘Data Transfer’ limits on their family plan – As in Testing and connecting to radio and YouTube NetFlix and stuff like that. The woman who brought this one complaint in question to the CBC reporters discovered that her minor son was able to go to a ‘screen’ where the warning “You are about to exceed the monthly Data Transfer Limit associated with your family plan – If you wish to continue receiving the program you are attempting to connect to you must verify that you will pay for the additional Data transferred. Do you wish to continue? If So Type “Yes” – ” The woman got her bill for that month, opened it and nearly fell down. The additional data transfer the company said she owed amounted to over $1,700.00 Canadian. After she complained to the CRTC the Cell Phone ‘Service’ was ordered to pay most of that back to her. The reporter told us that some complaints reported much higher amounts the ‘provider’ claimed the consumer owed, whether a minor child or the actual bill payer ‘okayed’ the extra data transfer or whatever –
— The CBC reporter identified the company in this case as ‘Rogers’ who may now own the iconic tower in ‘Downtown Toronto’ and might even own the Toronto Blue Jays. I could be wrong on this point. But anyway. The love of my life had a family plan with Rogers and needed to watch her bills extremely closely because the company tried to bill her in accordance to one plan after numerous long phone calls complaining and explaining that she had the plan that allowed her teenaged daughter either unlimited or close to unlimited data transfer every month while holding the rest of us, who didn’t text much, or in my case, not at all – And every month they tried to tell her that that was not the plan she had and every month she fought and argued and said, “Yes it was the plan she agreed to-” And they would get those details correct and the company representative would say that ‘these are your contract’s terms’ – and read her what she wanted to hear, and then the very next month the bill would come in as if those conversations/complaints had never happened. She was close to tears every month over this nonsense. It seemed ver much like the company had a policy of: “Charge them whatever we freakin feel like charging them – and threaten them with legal action for breach of contract if they don’t pay our version of this- and to hell with what they think they want or what they think they agreed to-” And then they made their customers service complaints so contentious and maddening that they hoped their ‘treasured customers’ would just shut up and pay whatever was on their bills.
— Schnarr! —
And Now back to pretty pictures:
— “Wide Shot” of the deer that surprised me this morning – Here they began to run away as I was walking up close to where I had just stood and tossed cups full of oats up to ‘their spot’ on the hill. —jim w—
— Okay, this blog doesn’t like full sized photos, let me publish what I have here and see how it comes out and maybe edit some more later.
Cathi standing near bank of the wind-whipped St John River – gazing through the bitter cold toward the South Side of Fredericton.
— Thursday, 03 March, 2016 — // -10˚C / +14˚F With Bright Sunlight and Bitter Cold Wind in Atlantic Canada @ 4:59 pm // Ian Punnett’s Birthday 🙂 —
— We had a busy early afternoon here in Atlantic Canada — The sun looked warm and the air was clear. But the wind – coming from the South West ahead of a winter storm blowing this way from Ontario and Quebec – was very damp and cold – the kind of cold that cuts right through you –
— We took a break in the middle of our tasks and appointments to gaze at the beauty of the river with its very bright reflections – And stepped out of the vehicle to take a couple of photos – But — Brrrrrr! Cathi gave up trying to stand outside and take a video of the wave action causing the built up ice to undulate near the edge of the solidly frozen ice. I took a couple of my own photos and ran back to the warmth, grabbed my warm insulated gloves, wore one of them and pulled my right hand up inside the cuff of my jacket so I could push the camera’s shutter button and not watch my fingers freeze and drop off my hand –
This is looking almost due south from the north side here. I didn’t notice the sunbeam streaking in from above when I took the photo.
— Yeah, so we got all our stuff done and hurried back home to thaw out and catch up on the news that Mitt Romney is warning his fellow Republicans not to vote for Donald Trump – who he called a Con-Artist and a Fraud. A friend told us that photos of Mr Trump as well as transcripts and excerpts from some of his television spots were used by a Psychology professor to describe the look and characteristics of a “Narcissistic Sociopath”.
Friday, February 19th, 2016 §§ — -7˚C / +19˚F — Clear with a nice warm sun om Atlantic Canada @ 10:45 am §§ —
CBC Radio One News this morning aired a discussion between Those who believe that Apple would give away too much if they caved in to the F.B.I.’s demand that they hand over code to help the F.B.I. crack into the iPhone of accused Terrorists in the recent California mass killings & Those who claim that this would only be a ‘one-off’ event.
— The guy who was arguing that the F.B.I. should be able to protect civilians from terrorists scoffed at the ‘slippery slope’ argument that if Apple gave government agents any help in cracking into their iPhones Then nobody’s privacy would be protected. He called Apple’s argument ‘disingenuous’. — The other side in this discussion did not mention anything about the idea that Government should be the servants of the citizenry, not despotic dictators who believe they should control everything and everybody and should have the right to snoop on everybody’s private thoughts, words and deeds. — The weird thing was, as a kind of aside in this discussion, it was mentioned that young people don’t believe their potential lack of privacy is as big a deal as do older people.
And – “[Telling The-] Truth is Treason In An Empire Of Lies”— Whistle-Blowers are often stunned by the revelation that the people they believe they are protecting and defending by maintaining their high level of ethics don’t appreciate their efforts. — I remember hearing one US citizen announce that if he ever saw Ralph Nader crossing a road on a dark night he would not hesitate to attempt vehicular homicide. — This person bought the propaganda put out by the auto industry saying that automobile prices had to rise astronomically because of safety legislation brought on by Ralph Nader’s revealing that the industry knowingly sold vehicles that were “Unsafe At Any Speed”.
— Several Earthquakes in the past couple weeks have also caught my attention, and Earthquakes and Volcanic eruptions were accurately predicted by Astrologer Dr. Luis Turi.
— This will have to be all for now. I have some ‘Real World’ commitments to fulfill.
— New Brunswick’s (Liberal) Premier Brian Gallant announced a new programme to give low income New Brunswick students free tuition at New Brunswick Universities. It was later revealed that this program would benefit about 7,100 students while it took away current tax rebates from between 35,000 to 40,000 students. The new program would reportedly cost $25 Million while cutting the earlier program would save more than $50 Million. -I’m not sure those dollar figures would reflect yearly costs – but that’s my best guess here.
