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. }}
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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.
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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.
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& Internet outages have been reported in parts of Atlantic Canada. — Luckily, that hasn’t effected me (yet?)
Copied & Pasted from Jim W.’s “Latest News From Aerendel”
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— Monday, March 21, 2016 — // -4˚C / +24˚F & snowing ‘lightly’ @ 11:11 am in Atlantic Canada on the Second Day of Spring, 2016 🙂 —
I have become almost magically optimistic about the future lately — Hmmm? Have I clued into positive trends in the world of Spirit? Or is this not so early onset Alzheimer’s? 😉
Bare Ground beneath our local species of Cedar tree as the Nor’Easter begins – this was at about 8:37 am today, March 21st, 2016 -jrw-
— The Weather Network said we should expect between 15 and 25 centimeters of snow today ( um, six to ten inches? ) The local CBC channel told us this morning they expect we should get about 10 centimeters / 4 inches? – then later amended that to say we might get another 5 centimeters later tonight, after the evening commute home?
— This is a view of the ‘Deer Hill’ that I haven’t ‘published’ here yet – The hill is actually somebody else’s property. Cathi says she wishes we could own it- She’s got ideas concerning gardens and safe passage for deer forever and maybe even a swimming pool.
— My novel keeps growing in my mind faster than I can get it out and into word processors – In that manner I work out a lot of stupid dead ends before they waste time? At least I’m not wasting paper –
— At about 10:30 am. The spot beneath the cedar tree is now covered by ‘new’ snow. (I had to walk out to this area to bring back the garbage can the garbage guys usually leave upside down, but today they left it right side up, so it was filling with snow.) — shrug —
— I realized before I began to write this, that at about this time last year, I didn’t want to know anything about any more snow falling from the sky and building up on the ground- Today I pretty much knew it was coming – um, part of this is trusting teevee and radio weather people – and I still felt like the world was okay, that Spring is coming, that people are will be nicer to each other – That even nasty people will realize they don’t like being nasty? — I don’t know – Maybe something on a nearly sub-conscious level has become more optimistic since Canada elected a new ‘government’ that at least claims to value human beings over the principles of greed and divisiveness.
— And I think this is the photo that I took around 10:30 this morning that I thought best showed the developing snowstorm. -jrw-
— And I guess none of the photos I’ve put up here today do anything to explain the odd optimism I’ve been feeling. As a matter of fact, the day is kind of grey and brooding – and the snow that is falling doesn’t feel particularly friendly or compassionate – But the world still feels like it is becoming more friendly, more loving, more welcoming? So, of course there will be set-backs and dark moments – But I still feel like something deep down and subtle has changed for the better.
— Sunday, March 20th, 2016 — // -2˚C / +27˚F in brilliant sunlight reflected on very white snow at 12:06 pm in Atlantic Canada — // — I believe today is Dona ( née Flynn ) from my hippy days in Brattleboro’s birthday —
One of Jim W.’s photos that he couldn’t load yesterday, I reduced the size from 3,000 + by 2,000 odd pixels to 1024 b less than 768 and it looks like ‘No Problem at all” here – I also painted the license plate blank for ya, Jim – —jda—
— Yup, looks good to me –
— Jim & Cathi’s House, Jassper’s ‘dog run’ – Funny – Jim calls this the ‘Front Yard’ because it faces Canada Street and that’s the face most people see – Cathi calls it their ‘back yard’ because they come in the door on the other side of the house. I don’t know, If that’s really the biggest disagreement these two have, I’d say they have an amazingly good relationship. —jda—
— Jim & Cathi’s East Side Yard At Sun-Up.
— This is the second of two photos Jim took Friday Morning, of the Deer and the Hill they feed on, he had to take this from a distance, and if his cell’s phone has a telephoto function, somebody should tell him how to use it. 😉 – I would have cropped this photo closer in and used it instead of the one he started yesterday’s post off with. —jda—
— Today dawned almost as picturesquely as yesterday –
— To prove a point, silly me, I cropped the photo from directly above this cropped version – Jim’s 2nd “Deer on the hill with great backlighting” photo – and did not reduce the size / number of pixels – The deer are so far to the left you can almost miss them in their lower corner there – Reminds me of Taoist Chinese Art – where the scenery is huge and the people are tiny? – And loading this photo did take so long at 2308 x 1766 pixels that I thought it just might crash WordPress’ interior workings. But it didn’t and it’s here, and I’m glad. —jda—
— yup, magic happens, isn’t it great when things work out better than you expect them to?
— 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.
