I went about 26km on my bike today. I suspect that’ll be the last ride of 2021.
The site of Brandon’s residential school 
Pareidolia makes me see a face in here 
The ol’ water tower
Patrick
Aurora, Nov. 3, 2021
I caught a bit of a show last night, from 10pm to about 11pm.
At the research station, in town
Edit: Hey look, I’m on the radio! (On the 95.1 CHVN website, at any rate.)
Hallowe’en Tally 2021
OK, it’s 10 pm and I’m turning off the light. I guess the rest of these chocolate bars are our delicious problem.
The List:
- 2 goth teens
- 2 witches
- 1 Wheat King
- 1 strawberry
- 1 jack-o-lantern, very excited that we were handing out full-size chocolate bars
- 1 skeleton
…for a total of 8, which I think is our lowest count in 22 years of living here.
Now if you’ll excuse me, I think there might be a Coffee Crisp with my name on it.
Hollow Bean ‘021
It appears Hollow Bean has arrived again.
“They have an important celebration,” said E.T., “called Hollow Bean. Everyone carves faces in fruit squashes and dresses up in sheets.” Read more…
William Kotzwinkle, E.T. The Book of the Green Planet
B. good, everyone.
Photo by Fredrik Solli Wandem on Unsplash
Alternate Plains reviewed
Alternate Plains has been reviewed by Joanne Kelly in the Winnipeg Free Press. She gave the anthology a thumbs-up:
The 12 stories will give you, in most cases, the creeps and a few good jump frights, while also offering some challenging and thought-provoking visions of life on the Prairies — now and in the future.
My story, “Summertime in the Void”, got a specific mention, which makes me happy.
Stories such as Summertime in the Void are great book-club fodder¹.
In it, Patrick Johanneson creates a post-apocalyptic vision where almost all of humanity transcends to the afterlife, but God has left a few people behind: 4,229,000 people, to be exact. When the main character demands to know why, God tells him: “Your mind, John. It’s misshapen. Its scent is wrong. It’s coloured outside the lines… your thoughts, your emotions, are too far divergent from the rest of the people. You live too far outside the norm.”
You can get Alternate Plains at finer bookstores everywhere, including McNally Robinson, and apparently there’s a copy in Coles in the Brandon Shopper’s Mall (at least there was last time I checked online).
¹ In that vein, for anyone who’s already read the story, I have a couple book-club questions to ponder:
- Is “Saul” spelled correctly? Why or why not?
- How long does the action in the story actually last?
A bit of graffiti
I went about 14 km on my bike today, since it might be the last good day for a while. Snapped some photos of the graffiti on the north wall of one of the downtown buildings.
Above: a panorama of the wall.
Below: a couple of details from the wall.
ahem Susie
Sunrise, Oct. 29, 2021
This morning. I managed to grab my camera before the colours faded away.
Aurora — Oct. 11th, 2021
It was quite a show last night. The aurora covered the northern sky, east to west, and reached up overhead. For about 15 minutes around 11:15pm, it looked like the videos you see that are shot up in the north: bright, sharp, and frenetic.
The image at the top is a panorama, 6 photos, stretching just about 180° from west to east.
Some of the photos in the gallery below were taken literally 2–5 seconds apart.
It was the best show I’ve seen in decades, and here’s to more active shows in the months and years to come.
Nerdy details: all images were 11mm, f/2.8. Exposure times varied between 1 and 5 seconds. ISO was either 1600 or 3200.
Autumn Trees
North of ACC.
I can’t decide which I like better. Do you have a preference?
On Reflection: Oct. 1st
I went for a bike ride yesterday, and there was no wind to speak of. The river was very calm.
