With my birthday money, I bought myself a new lens—a Tokina 11–16mm f/2.8.
It works pretty well. I can’t wait for a darker night; I’m looking forward to trying to get some galaxy photos.
Blog
Westering 2017
For Christmas, Kathleen and I bought my mother a trip out west, to Alberta, to visit relatives. We went along with her. You know, to make sure she behaved.
Some of the places we visited:
The Calgary Zoo.
Indescribable
A couple years ago, I had an epiphany while reading Gene Wolfe’s The Book of the New Sun, when the narrator Severian pointed out that
It is always a temptation to say that such feelings are indescribable, though they seldom are.
Today, though… Today I was finishing Wolfe’s superb 1988 novel There Are Doors, and I happened upon this on page 294:
Which is it, Mr. Wolfe? Which is it?
I must admit, though, it’s nice that, immediately after he calls the sound indescribable, he proceeds to describe it with delightful economy. Wolfe may be fond of unreliable narrators, but his prose is reliably amazing.
A Truism
When someone says (especially on a website) “More information to come”, it generally never comes.
Share-Alike
From the ever-fattening file folder titled “Places I Never Expected My Writing to Turn Up”:
- An English-language quiz on a Taiwanese website.
- A village (parish? church?) newsletter.
- (Unattributed) on a charter school website.
Most of this is kosher, per the Creative Commons license that the stories were published under.
Public Domain Pictures from the Met
A lot of art falls in the public domain. Now the Metropolitan Museum of Art has made it easier for you to use some of it. (And by “some” I mean “quite a lot”.)
For example, a high-resolution photo of Van Gogh’s painting Sunflowers is available for me to use free of charge. You too.
And if Munch’s The Scream is more your cup of tea, well, they’ve got you covered there too.
Have a look for yourself. If one of the 400,000+ pieces of art in their catalogue strikes your fancy, check for the Public Domain icon (a little 0 in a circle) and the download link. It appears that the public-domain content comprises 375,000 images, which, I think you’ll agree, is a lot.
Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to look at some J. M. W. Turner paintings.
The Lake of Zug, 1843
British,
Watercolor over graphite; 11 3/4 x 18 3/8 in. (29.8 x 46.6 cm)
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Marquand Fund, 1959 (59.120)
http://www.metmuseum.org/Collections/search-the-collections/337499
Thanks, The Met!
Thanks to my friend Kelly for pointing out this Engadget article on the topic.
And yet it moves
Or, as Galileo put it (albeit apocryphally), E pur si muove.
Let’s Talk
Hey. Just a warning: This isn’t an easy read. It wasn’t easy to write, either.
Today is January 25th, when Bell, inspired by a spirit of boundless compassion*, will give a pile of money to mental health initiatives, so long as you tag your discussion correctly. So… here’s my 5¢ worth, I guess.
As some of you know, my dad recently died. He was in a nursing home for years before he left us, a victim of pretty severe dementia. So in a way, he died twice: once in the mind, slowly falling away over years, and then in body, later, more quickly.
Even before the dementia became apparent, there were hints of depression. Maybe things could have been different if he’d spoken up, or if we’d asked the right questions. (Let’s talk, Dad.) Hindsight is, of course, always 20/20, but Dad just wasn’t the type to talk about these things. (Neither am I, really. Not usually.)
I’m like Dad in a lot of ways. I look like him, I sound like him, and many of his mannerisms and turns of phrase are deeply ingrained in me too. We both love science fiction. We both lack a spleen, thanks to a genetic condition whose name I never learned.
But I’m also unlike him in a lot of ways. I do my best to go to the gym, which I think he might find a foreign concept. I don’t like canned peas (grey salty sadness pellets), I enjoy kiwifruit and yogurt, I read the occasional fantasy novel.
Sometimes—not very often, but sometimes—I wonder if his fate is my fate. People tell me that it’s not, and I do my best to listen.
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* I imagine there are tax benefits, too.
Memories of JJ, 7 — Sartorial splendour
If you knew Dad, you knew he had his own sense of style. He wore moccasins as much as he possibly could*. In the summertime, if he wasn’t wearing moccasins, then he was barefoot. (Well, maybe sandals.)
At work and at play, he’d wear blue jeans and a button-up short-sleeve shirt. Later, after I’d left home, he discovered denim shirts. There was always a pen or a mechanical pencil in the shirt pocket, and usually a tube of Certs. (Remember Certs?)
The only time you’d see his legs was at the beach, in a bathing suit**. Otherwise, like I said: jeans.
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* I wore jeans and moccasins at his funeral. It just seemed right.
** Which reminds me of another fun time. We were camping up at Blue Lakes. My sisters and I were swimming, and the water was cold. Like, my thumbnails turned blue cold. Dad, from the shore, asked how the water was. “Fine,” we said, and he ran in. And then complained all the rest of the weekend—and for years later, let me tell you—about his damn kids lying to him.
My dad passed away recently. I hope you’ve enjoyed my little memorials to him. This is the last one in the series, but rest assured, I’ll probably mention him again. Thanks for reading.
Memories of JJ, 6 — Tar Fumes
(This one’s Susie’s, but I’m stealing it.)
Dad was, shall we say, not a fan of The Simpsons. (Neither is Mom, for that matter.)
Susie was home for the weekend, or maybe for the summer. She was downstairs watching The Simpsons. It was the episode where Ralph falls in love with Lisa, and makes the mistake of telling Homer that he’d do anything for Lisa.
“Anything?” says Homer. Aaaaand smash cut to the scene above.
Just at that moment, Dad walked into the room. He laughed. And as I’ve mentioned before, Dad didn’t generally laugh aloud unless something really tickled him.
Susie gave him a Busted! look.
He still refused to watch The Simpsons, though.
My dad passed away recently. I’m going to be posting little memories of him for the next little while. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.