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Ste. Rose and environs

Riding Mountain panorama

Since I was in Dauphin today to super­vise a judo grad­ing, I took the long way home, swing­ing by my old home town, Ste. Rose du Lac.

https://twitter.com/pjohanneson/status/1389046152058884106
The house where I grew up
The house where I grew up

It’s been a few years since I was in town. I did­n’t know what I should expect: would I feel all the feel­ings? Have I been away long enough that I would be dispassionate?

Turned out to be door num­ber 2, most­ly. I snapped a pho­to of our old house—I haven’t lived in it for, what, 30 years?—and most­ly I was a) sur­prised by the addi­tion of a chim­ney to the side of the house and b) impressed at how many vehi­cles fit in the ol’ driveway.

The town’s famous grot­to, which I had intend­ed to pho­to­graph, looks like it’s under construction—scaffolding everywhere—so I did­n’t both­er with pictures.

I stopped in briefly at École Lau­ri­er, where I learned français, and got a weird hit of nos­tal­gia look­ing at the play­ground. I’m like 75% sure that the mon­key bars there are the same ones a friend fell from in grade 2, break­ing his arm.

I stopped just out­side Lau­ri­er and snapped the 19 images that make up the head­er image, a panoram­ic view of Rid­ing Mountain.

Yet Another Aurora Post

Aurora borealis panorama, April 19th, 2021

I had dozed off on the couch, and woke up about 12:45am or so. I thought, I should go to bed.

Then, brush­ing my teeth, I noticed there was quite a moon. So I check the auro­ra data and decid­ed, what the hey, I’ve got the week off, I can stay up late on a school night.

So I packed my gear and head­ed out for about half an hour, and these pho­tos are the result.

Aurora, April 16, 2021

Aurora borealis

Last night I took a dri­ve, and got some shots of a dif­fuse auro­ra bore­alis on a back road a few miles out­side of town.

I shot for about ½ hour between 11 and 11:30 pm, and made a short time­lapse video, too. Each sec­ond of video is about a minute in real-time.

I like how the clouds oblig­ing­ly fol­low the line of the pow­er lines

And then, when I came back to town, I decid­ed to get a few shots of the old Kull­bergs ware­house demo­li­tion going on at 18th Street and Pacif­ic Avenue. The pho­to below is an HDR merge of two pho­tos, to try to bal­ance the bright­ness of the exte­ri­or with the dark­ness of the interior.

Kullbergs Warehouse demolition
Things fall apart / the cen­tre can­not hold

Bike ride, April 10, 2021

Map of my ride

The weath­er’s sup­posed to turn win­try again for a few days, so I took advan­tage of today’s nice weath­er for a good long bike ride—27.8km, which took about 1¾ hour or so of cycling (I stopped to take pho­tos and to chat with a friend, so I was gone from the house for 2½ hours).

I took my cam­era along, too, and snapped some photos.

The con­trail pho­to above is actu­al­ly a panora­ma of about six pho­tos. Com­pare and con­trast below with a sin­gle-frame ver­sion of the same image.

[twenty20 img1=“4758” img2=“4757” before=“Single” after=“Panorama”]

Series: Bike Ride Photos

The entire series: Down by the riv­er; Bike ride birds; The ex-gar­den and the weir; Snap­shots of a ride; Across Town; Black­bird; North Hill cam­pus; Lilacs and coun­try roads; A pop of colour; Back lane flow­ers; More Breniz­ers; The riv­er is high; A bird and a reflec­tion; Rideau Park; Writ­ing Retreat 2020, Day 7; Writ­ing Retreat 2020: The Num­bers; Storm dam­age, sun­flow­ers; Eleanor Kidd gar­dens; Scenes from today’s ride; All right, autumn can be pret­ty; Bike ride, April 10, 2021; Bike ride wildlife; Bike ride, May 16, 2021; Some flow­ers for you; Lilacs; Under the bridge; A fence, a tree, and the sky; Tur­tle Cross­ing; Ceme­tery crit­ters; On Reflec­tion; Week­end rides; Upon Reflec­tion; Deer and paparazzi; Sep­tem­ber Bike Ride; Corn & Sun­set; On Reflec­tion: Oct. 1st; Autumn Trees; A bit of graf­fi­ti; Novem­ber bike ride; Geese; Day 30; Quack quack; Skin­ny deer; Mon­day bike ride; Sat­ur­day snaps; Deer + Flow­ers; Bike Ride — July 17, 2022; The mead­ow; It seems to be autumn; Por­tal fan­ta­sy; Sla­va Ukrai­ni; Writ­ing Retreat 2023: Thurs­day bike ride; Bike Ride, May 20, 2024; Shy; Cana­da Day ride; A long ride; Cook­ie Ride redux; Writ­ing Retreat 2024: 6; Writ­ing Retreat 2024: The End; Bike Ride, Sep. 22, 2024; Today’s Ride — Oct. 6, 2024; Souris Val­ley; Bike Ride Pho­tos — May 19, 2025; Bike ride, May 24; Art in the trees.

Publications in 2021

Image: scattered maps and old atlases

Out now on the fin­er Inter­nets every­where: my (very) short sto­ry “The Atlas”, which fea­tures an atlas, a bot­tle of absinthe, and a hunt­ing knife, pub­lished in Vol­ume 2 of Cloud Lake Lit­er­ary.

Forth­com­ing in Octo­ber 2021: Alter­nate Plains (avail­able for pre-order now!), fea­tur­ing my sto­ry “Sum­mer­time in the Void”, which is one answer to the ques­tion “What if the Sin­gu­lar­i­ty did­n’t want you?” (Can­ny Can­Con types might won­der if I lift­ed the title from an I Moth­er Earth song. The answer is “Absolute­ly.”)

(It’s been a long time since I had two pub­li­ca­tions in the same cal­en­dar year. I think the last time was ’04, when On Spec pub­lished “Res­ur­rec­tion Radio” and I won the Man­i­to­ba Short Fic­tion con­test with “A Map to the End of the World”.)