A Coincidence

     Ever so often something appears from different and totally unrelated sources at about the same time.  When a coincidence like that happens, I am often left both astonished and amazed.  A surprising coincidence like that happened to me yesterday.

    Yesterday, I blogged about cattails.  I hadn’t really planned to have cattails as the subject, but didn’t have anything else to blog about, and noticed how the heads of the cattails on my pond where turning into balls of fluff.  They created some interesting images which I photographed, so they became the subject of my blog.

    In the blog I told about how I introduced cattails in my pond by collecting cattail heads at some local lake, breaking them apart, and then spreading their seed fluff on the rising water of my pond.  While I remember doing that, I didn’t really remember where I got the heads, or what time of year it was.  Anyway, that is what I blogged about yesterday.

    Then yesterday afternoon, I went to the Writer’s Group at our library, like I do every Friday,  There we  do a small bit of socializing, then spend the rest of the afternoon, writing whatever it is that we want to work on.  I have kept diaries since 1973, and I have been spending my time in the group, going through my diaries, picking out the things I find interesting and re-writing them.  Yesterday, I just began reading in my 1994 diary.

    The diary of course started in January of that year and to my amazement, when I got to January 22, I came across the following sentence:   

    “We went to Horseshoe Lake and I got seeds from the reeds for my pond.”

    Reading that in my 1994 diary, after just blogging about doing it that morning, totally astonished me.  What an unlikely coincidence it was.  What are the chances of that insignificant action showing up twice on the same day?  When something like that happens, although in the scheme of things it is very unimportant, it still seems very Cosmic to me.

View my paintings at:  davidmarchant2.ca

    

Cattails

     Cattails are very common plants that grow in water along the edges of ditches, ponds, and lakes.  In 1994, I decided to have a pond built in my pasture to create habitat for wildlife.  As that big hole in my pasture began to fill with water, I was anxious see some aquatic plants begin to grow, so I gathered some of the brown, hot dog shaped heads from the local lakes, brought them home to my pond, and broke the heads open to scatter the fluffy cattail seeds on the water of my pond.  I figured that would start some cattail plants, and it certainly did.

    Now three-quarters of the side of my pond are lined with cattails, and they have created some of the habitat for wildlife that I was hoping for.  There are birds that live among the thick tangle of cattails, and I am pretty sure that is where the female mallard nests every year.  The muskrat that lives in my pond digs up and eats the roots of the cattail plant.

    This time of year the iconic hot dog shaped head of the plant deteriorates and the tightly packed seeds that make up the head, expand into fluff which is dispersed by the wind, some of what lands on the pond surface and floats to a new place to root.

    Yes, cattails are common plants, but I am happy that they have established themselves along on the shoreline of my pond.

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The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry by Gabrielle Zevin

    This novel is immersed in an underlying theme of literature and the importance of books.  It begins with Amelia, thirty year old, unmarried sales representative, ferrying across the water to small Alice Island on the east coast off of Hyannis. Amelia visits bookstores, flogging books for a publishing company.  Amelia quickly discovers AJ Fikry, the bookstore owner to be an overbearing, opinionated man, who is very dismissive and rude to her.  She tries her best to interest him in some of the books her company publishes, but she is pretty much blown off, so returns to the mainland.

    After her departure, AJ feels sorry that he had treated her that way,  but he is a man whose life is on a downhill trajectory .  Although he loves literature, his bookstore is not thriving, because it was his wife that kept things going, and she had recently been killed in an automobile accident.  

          AJ lives alone in the apartment above the store, where he spends his nights drinking himself into oblivion.  Beside his failing bookstore, AJ has one other financial asset; a rare copy of Tamberlane, Edgar Allen Poe’s first book, which is worth hundreds of thousands of dollars.  AJ figures when the book store fails, he can sell that rare book to keep himself going. 

    One morning after one of his drunks, AJ awakens to discover that his treasured copy of Tamberlane has been stolen.  He reports it to the small island’s police chief.  There are no clues to follow, and during the police chief’s many interviews with AJ, they and the chief end up talking about literature.  The chief doesn’t read much, but the talk gets him reading more and more novels, thanks to AJ’s recommendations.   However, the Tamberlane case goes cold.  The theft does make AJ realize that he has to start taking control of his life again.

    In his attempt to restart his life, AJ begins jogging, and one day after a jog he returns to his unlocked bookstore and discovers a two year old girl sitting on the floor, just inside the door.  He also finds a note from her mother which says:  “This is Maya, who is very smart.  I can no longer take care of her.  Her father isn’t interested in her.  I am leaving her in the bookstore, because I want her to read and be around people that read.”  It was signed, “Maya’s mother”.  

          AJ has no experience with children, but he does comfort her, then calls the police chief.  The chief comes over and is confronted with this new mystery;  Where is the mother?  Because it is the weekend, no social services aren’t available, and AJ says he will take care of Maya until Monday.  He then calls his sister for help in taking care of Maya for a couple of days.  

    As you might suspect, by the time Monday rolls around, AJ and Maya become very attached to each other.  Because Maya’s mother can’t be found, and the inexperienced social worker recognizes the attachment between AJ and Maya, she bends to AJ’s urgings and allows Maya to stay with AJ.  Days later, the body of Maya’s mother washes up on shore, an apparent suicide.           

          Eventually AJ is allowed to legally adopt Maya, and the job of caring for Maya, gives AJ responsibility, totally changing the direction of the rest of his life. As you also might expect, Amelia, the publisher’s sales woman, who AJ had treated so badly on her first sales trip, returns yearly to sell books, and eventually becomes a part of AJ’s and Maya’s life.

    The plot throws out a lot of questions that need resolution:   Who stole AJ’s Tamberlane manuscript?  Why did Maya’s mother kill herself?  Who was Maya’s father?  Those and other questions resolve themselves nicely by the end of the novel.

            The novel is full of literary references and by the end, even the police chief becomes an avid reader, who starts his own book club.  

View my paintings at:  davidmarchant2.ca

A Cartoon

     Not much of interest has been happening in my life lately that I can blog about, but since you went to the trouble to get to my blog, here is a cartoon.

You can view my paintings at:  davidmarchant2.ca

Earth Day: Old Buttons and Patches

     On that first Earth Day back on April 22, 1970, I was so full of hope that people would sincerely start doing things that would save nature and the planet we all depend on.  That black button on the left is from that first Earth Day, that was held at the university I attended.  It was not a well attended event, because it was in Southern Indiana, and most of the students didn’t really care.

    Nationwide, things did improve somewhat, Tricky Dick Nixon even established the EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) in December of that year.  Corporations were all eager to jump on the bandwagon with their advertising, but unseen were the millions of dollars of “dark money” that they spent to destroy any kind of regulations that might actually help the environment.  Big Oil and coal played  “greenwashing” ads while secretly financing a massive campaign to destroy any legislation that might prevent global warming.

    Their money was well spent, because more and more carbon is pumped into the atmosphere every year, and most people still don’t care enough to do anything.  Now with Trump, their efforts are out in the open.  Trump told big oil if they gave him a billion dollars, he would do away with all of the restrictive legislation.  They only came up with about $900 million, but that was good enough, and Trump as now gotten rid of all those laws that hampered big oil.  He has banned the word “Climate Change” in his government, gotten rid of the collection of any data that might show the amount of carbon in the air, and even told his minions to never just say “coal”, but always say “Clean coal”.  

    Of course the deterioration of our climate will not stop just because the government won’t mention it, and things will become much worse, very quickly.

    Sorry for all of the negativity, but it is what it is.

    Today in McBride, we are having an Earth Day celebration at the local museum, with art work, music, and a film.  I guess we will just have to keep hoping for a miracle to happen.

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A Girl I Hardly Knew Changed My Life

     I grew up in a family that really didn’t eat spicy food, what we ate was farm country fare.  During my university years, I discovered the stromboli, a hot spicy long sausage and cheese submarine-style sandwich that was sold at Pizza King, a local pizza joint.  I loved the fire in the mouth, that it provided.  About that same time, suddenly Mexican cuisine started to make an appearance in Southern Indiana, and once I tasted that, I fell in love with it.

   Before that time, I had never heard of tacos, burritos, or salsa, but it quickly became a favorite treat whenever I had a chance to eat them.  Soon, the grocery stores began to sell taco shells, and soft burrito tortillas.  They also sold envelopes of “Taco Seasoning” that you could add to ground beef so you could make your own tacos.

    When I was serving my time as a conscientious objector living up in Indianapolis, I didn’t have much money, and cooked my own meals.  I did often buy some ground beef, taco shells, and the taco seasoning to make myself some tacos for supper.  

    One time when I was at the grocery store with those ingredients, heading for the checkout counter, I happened to run into a girl I had met, who lived in our neighborhood.  I vaguely knew her, and she noticed the envelope of taco seasoning that I was going to buy.

    “Oh, don’t buy that” she said, “just buy yourself some chili powder and cumin to season your tacos” 

    I had never heard of cumin before, it was something alien to my upbringing, but I returned the taco seasoning to the shelf, and followed the girl’s advice and bought myself some chili powder and cumin.

    Her advice changed my diet for the rest of my life.  Using and experimenting with those two spices together, provided me with countless Tex-Mex style meals: tacos, burritos, and the soups I make almost every week.  

    I don’t remember that girl’s name, but I sure wish I could thank her for her advice.

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Robson Valley Cartoonish Map

    The other day while going through some maps looking for something else, I came across this poster that I created in 1993 for the Robson Valley Tourist Association.  I know I mention a lot of these places in my blogs, so I thought it might be helpful to see where they all are in relation to each other. 

    I drew out the map in ink, then colored it with colored pencil.  After I exaggerated the topography, I added a lot of cartoonish local wildlife.  On the photo it is a bit difficult to read some of the smaller text that are printed in black.

    Anyway, here is an old cartoonish look at the neighborhood where I live.

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My Anti-Vietnam War Buttons

     There was no foreign affair that had a more profound effect on my life than the Vietnam War.  I began to question the US involvement in that war in 1965, just as I was about to enter my university years.  Living in the very conservative, Bible-belted, Southern Indiana, it was a very unpopular position to take, but I was so convinced of the stupidity of the war, and horrific humanitarian suffering it was causing to both Americans and Vietnamese, that I couldn’t keep my opinions to myself, so I sported a lot of buttons to show how I felt.

    Lyndon Johnson was the main instigator of the war and I hated what he was doing and had many buttons about him.  I supported Eugene McCarthy, and later George McGovern, presidential candidates, who ran against him.  Their disastrous election losses were instrumental in my immigrating to Canada.  I felt I could no longer trust my future to the American people.

    Now after all these decades, it is obvious that the Vietnam War was a terrible disaster.  Hundreds of thousands of people were killed and maimed, for nothing.  Citizens in the US, blindly followed President Johnson, and then Nixon, even though it was pretty evident that the US involvement in the war was built on lies.  Back in those days there were some actual Republicans who bravely stood for truth and against the Republican president and the disastrous War.

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Faithful Kona

     I walk around the pond numerous times each day.  Kona doesn’t always come with me.  Sometimes she becomes intrigued by some scent in the pasture, so goes sniffing around there while I continue around the pond.  That is what happened this morning.

    When I got to the far end of the pond, I looked back toward there house and there was Kona, sitting in the sunshine, watching me, and waiting for me to complete my loop around the pond.

    I liked the way the sunshine was beaming down on the pasture, and the way it was backlighting Kona  I didn’t have my camcorder which I usually use for such photos, so I took the picture with my iPhone.  The sunshine was so bright on me, I couldn’t really see what was on the screen, so I just aimed it and took the photo without really knowing if I had the scene right or not.  Luckily, I did.

You can view my paintings at:  david Marchant2.ca

A Good Day For Seeing Wildlife

     Sometimes I go through weeks without seeing any interesting wildlife, then suddenly I hit a day when I see a couple of critters.  That happened last Saturday.  Above you can see the pair of Hooded Mergansers that arrived at my pond.  The two come every Spring and the female nests in the tree boxes I have at the edge of the pond.

    The other big wildlife sighting I had on Saturday was a moose standing in the middle of the road.  It just stood there for a long time watching us as we slowly approached with our car.  Eventually we got too close so it turned and trotted off into the bush.  We don’t see many moose anymore, so it was a treat to come upon this tall awkward-looking guy,

You can view my paintings at:  davidmarchant2.ca

Cloud Show

     I am constantly looking up in the sky, because the Robson Valley has some really beautiful clouds that interact with the mountains.  Here are two examples of interesting clouds I have seen over the last couple of weeks.

You can take a look at my paintings at:  davidmarchant2.ca

What Happens To All of the Waste?

    Above you see what is left of a tanker truck that was parked in the industrial area of Jasper, when the forest fire swept through last summer.  I have always been surprised to see such things, which one would assume, wouldn’t have caught fire and burned.  I understand a fire sweeping through a dry forest, with pine needles on small branches, with the ground covered with tinder of needles and twigs, but it is hard to imagine what it would take to start a big metal truck ablaze.  The fire certainly did a number on this truck.

    Almost daily, the news features some devastating natural disaster or war, and shows the ruins of hundreds of destroyed vehicles, and destroyed houses and buildings.  I always find myself wondering  what happens to those tons and tons of things no longer useable or wanted.  If it is in the way, I guess it is just hauled away somewhere to get rid of it. 

    On the subject of waste, I recently saw a news report about all of the fast-fashion clothing, much of it brand new, that never sold.  It is shipped to Chile’s Atacama desert, where it is just dumped.  The clothing dump is now so huge, it can be seen on satellite photos.  There clothing just sits, piling up as more and more unwanted clothing is added to it daily.  

    The news story told of a small local organization, that is starting to pick through all of the new clothing there and will send it to people who might want it, for just the price of the shipping:  New, Brand-Name jeans, just for the shipping cost.   It is good that at least a minuscule amount of waste is being recycled, but it is just a tiny drop in the bucket compared to the truckload after truckload that is dumped there every day.

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Visually Interesting Charred Trees

    Here are a few charred trees I found visually interesting that were created by the conflagration that tore through the forests of Jasper National Park last summer.  These spotted trees were the result of the charred bark breaking away from the trunk, leaving the tree with a rather polka dotted pattern.

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The Charred Forests of Jasper National Park

     Jasper National Park is known for its beautiful natural scenery, but that scenery certainly took a hit last summer when a furious forest fire swept through the park.  Yesterday I showed some photos of the Jasper townsite.  Today I have some pictures I took of what used to be the surrounding forest.  In the photo above, you can see the town in the distance; it is that light colored flat area in the upper left.  You can also see  trees, all blown down in the same direction by the tornado-like winds produced by the fire, in the lower part of the photo,.

    Here are some other pictures of the charred forests.  The trees that are brown had needles that were not burned by the fire, but the fire killed the tree nevertheless.  You can still spot a few trees that got through the conflagration alive.

    

You can view my paintings at:  davidmarchant2.ca

Disoriented In The Jasper Townsite

     We drove to Jasper yesterday to take Kona to the vet for her yearly check-up.  Last summer, one third of the Jasper townsite was destroyed by a very destructive forest fire that swept through it.  We had been to Jasper many times, so kind of knew our way around, but this was the first time I had been there since the fire.  It was very disorienting with all of the now vacant “holes” where building and houses used to be, and we got lost several times in the small town because so many things had changed.

    As we were diving to visit our friends whose townhouse had survived the fire, we came upon a street closure, so I just turned to the right to try a parallel street.  When I got to that street and turned left, I started to get the idea that it was a one way street, and I was going the wrong way.  Fortunately, there wasn’t any traffic, so I just continued. 

    Then I got to a spot where that road ended, but could see through an empty space, the street where John and Di lived, and there was a narrow paved path that seemed to connect to it.  I turned onto the path, which quickly turned into a narrow bike lane through some trees, but it was too late.  I just continued down the bike lane, and did then get to John and Di’s street.

    Our vet’s clinic was completely destroyed by the fire.  A temporary “clinic” had been set up in a small trailer inside a warehouse in an industrial area that had survived the fire.  We kind of knew where to look, but the clinic’s entrance was unmarked in the rear side of the building, and we drove right past the front of the building, unknowing. Totally lost, we flagged down some Jasper town workers in a truck and asked them where the vet clinic was, and they were nice enough to lead us back around our previous route, and point out the warehouse we had driven past.

    The “old” Jasper was certainly a lot more convenient, and easier to assess.  Below are some photos I took of Jasper yesterday.  The one below is an area that had been spared.  You can see how badly the mountain in the background was burned.

    At the very bottom of the page is a shot showing one of the many vacant spaces in town.  That is where a gas station and the really nice L & W Restaurant used to sit.  We would sometimes get pizza there.

take a look at my paintings:  davidmarchant2.ca

A Spring Welcome

     Every year the Strankmans, the old retired couple now dead, who previously owned our property, still welcome us to Spring with a cluster of flowers that come up in our yard.  It is a much appreciated legacy that they have left us.

    I imagine it was Mrs. Strankman who planted the bulbs, and created a small circular flower garden with a fake-looking wooden “wishing well” as the main feature.  We didn’t much care for the wishing well, so we made it disappear forty-five years ago, when we bought the place.  The flower bulbs however remained in the ground and come up every year to welcome us to Spring.  

    Those flowers bloom before the grass takes over.  Once the grass starts to overpower the flowers, I always avoid mowing over the area where the flowers grow, because those flower bulbs need their leaves to photosynthesize enough sunlight, to give energy back to the bulbs so they can bloom again next year.

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Old Man's Beard Lichen

     We are in that period of the year before the explosion of leaves begin to obscure the trees.  Many of the tree trunks and branches are showing off the growths of lichen that they sport.  We live in a temperate rainforest, and lichens thrive in the moisture that early Spring provides.  Lichen are a plant made up of a combination of both algae and fungus that work together to keep things going.  Here are two photos of some “Old Man’s Beard”  lichens that I spotted today during my first walk around the pond.

You can see my paintings at:  davidmarchant2.ca

Sounds Like High School Proms Have Changed

     I don’t spend a lot of time thinking about my high school prom.  After fifty or so years, I can’t even remember the actual prom, but I do have vague recollections of the event.  I remember the girls getting fancy dresses, and some of the boys renting tuxedos, (I just wore my sports coat and slacks.)  I did get buy an orchid corsage for my girlfriend. The big event of the evening was the prom itself.  All of my friends were dressed up and I got to go to the dance with my girl friend.

    In all of those nostalgic movies based in that era, the parents have their teenage child and their date, pose in their fancy clothes and take their picture.   I don’t recall that happening to me before our prom, and certainly haven’t ever seen a photo proving that it did.  The dance itself, and maybe a party put on by friends afterward, were what the night was all about.

    I was talking to my sister the other day and she was telling me about the prom her granddaughter recently went to.  From her description, it sounded like the dance itself, had become an after-thought.  The main thrust of the evening was taking a lot of photos of the couple all dressed up, that could be posted on the internet.  In this case, their prom evening was hampered by a downpour of rain, but that didn’t prevent the couple from going to various landmarks in the city to stand in front of them in the rain, so they could take a photo of themselves.  I just don’t understand this whole “selfie” thing that has taken over culture. 

    During the 1980’s we used to joke about Japanese tourists who would stand in front of beautiful scenery, famous buildings, or works of art and take a photo of themselves, partially obscuring the object they were happy to prove they had seen.  That whole selfie practice has now taken over the world.  That photo of themselves is more important that the event or the place.  Take a selfie, and put it on the internet.  

    Oh well, times change like they always have.  Like most old people, I don’t particularly think things have changed for the better.  

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I Never Noticed That Before

     For  forty-five years I have been looking at the mountains that enclose the Robson Valley, but this year I noticed something that I had never noticed before.  If you look at the side of the mountain in the photo above, you can see horizontal lines of snow crossing the mountain mid-slope.  Those seem to indicate sort of terraces on the side of the mountain.  

    I had never seen that before.  I think the reason it is so visible now is because of the forest fire we had a couple of years ago, and the amount of snow we had this winter.  The snow was just deep enough to melt on the angled slope, but still remaining on the flatter areas.

    I am not sure whether those “terraces” are the result of different layers of bedrock, or something caused by the glacier that once filled our valley.  Those terraces are also evident on the slope of the mountain just to the right of this one.

    We do learn something every day.

You can view my paintings at:  davidmarchant2.ca