
North of ACC.
I can’t decide which I like better. Do you have a preference?


Part-time prevaricator
Like Vonnegut said, “So it goes.” Poo-too-weet!
We’ve been watching episodes of a PBS show called My Grandparents’ War, where celebs like Helena Bonham Carter and Kristin Scott Thomas trace the histories of their grandparents’ experience in WWII. Tonight we saw one featuring Mark Rylance, and there were a couple quotes that stuck out to me. I wanted to record them before I forget them.
Mark Rylance, walking in a cemetery for war dead in Hong Kong (where, but for the grace of God / random chance, his grandfather might well have ended up), mused that he keeps hearing people talking dispassionately about war, as though it’s some kind of natural event. But, he pointed out, war is fought by people. Just people, like you and me.
Later, he met with a Japanese historian who has studied the POW camps that the Japanese ran in Hong Kong. He asked her why she chose to study the camps—a heavy question, considering some of the atrocities that had been explored earlier in the episode. She responded, “History doesn’t repeat itself. People repeat it.”
Just people, like you and me. Let’s be careful, OK?
I know, I know, I live in Canada. But every spring I get fooled into thinking that maybe the snow’s done now till next winter.
Still. At least it’s an opportunity to showcase one of my favourite graphs.
(The header image is actually about 40 images, stacked using the same method I use for my star trails.)
I received this in the ol’ email inbox this afternoon.
Thank you very much for your story, and for letting us hang on to it for as long as we did. The piece has received more than one read, as our first reader enjoyed it a great deal. Due to our current (thematic) publication needs, however, we are unable to place this story.
[…]
Although we can’t use your work at this time, we thank you for thinking of us and encourage you to submit again in the future.
The funny thing is, they didn’t tell me which story they were rejecting, and I couldn’t remember what I’d submitted to their market. (I also couldn’t find my initial submission in my outbox, but that was less surprising; a lot of markets these days are using Submittable or Moksha or some other online submission gateway.)
Thank heavens for The Submissions Grinder. I did a quick search on the market name, and found that, yes, I had submitted a piece to them, wa-a-a-ay back in June 2020. Their submissions page said that they don’t generally send out rejections, so if you didn’t hear in about three months, assume you were not one of the lucky ones. I had assumed that, since September came and went with no word, that I was not one of the lucky ones.
Turns out I was right, but it seems I came closer than I thought.
Oh well. Once more unto the breach and all that. At least they liked the story; with form rejections it can be very hard to tell.
PS: If you’re a writer and you’re not using The Submissions Grinder, I strongly recommend you at least look into it.
Saturn met up with Jupiter tonight, in case you hadn’t heard about it on the news.
It was cloudy here, but only partly cloudy, so I decided I’d take a quick run out of town with my camera equipment, to see if I could get any photos.
I stepped outside and discovered I didn’t need to go anywhere—it was visible from my driveway. So I set up there, and snapped some photos of Jupiter + Saturn in between the clouds.
In the boxes, top-left to bottom-right, are Callisto, Io, and Europa. Ganymede is too close to Jupiter for my lens to separate it.
The half-moon looked lovely, too, so I got some of the sunshine reflected off it, too.
All the photos were taken with my 55–250mm lens, at 250mm, f/5.6, varying times and ISOs.
Last week I bought flowers. They brightened my day, they brightened Kathleen’s day, and now I hope they can brighten yours too.
I’ve only just today heard about the superstition that saying “Rabbit rabbit” on the first day of the month brings luck. How long were you planning to keep this from me?
Does it count if there’s a chubby bunny chillin’ in your yard for a few hours on the 1st?
On this windy Halloween evening in this pandemic year, I handed out candy using tongs and wearing a mask. Our Halloweeners:
…for a total of 13.
Weirdly, that’s four more than we had last year. I don’t know what that might mean.
And if not, why not?