Did you know that when dogs squat to do their business, they align themselves in a north-south (or, south-north) direction? (Don’t believe me? Read this…)
I wish now I’d paid more attention each time we took Sparty ashore to take care of business…
May this inspire you to pull out the compass on your phone and line yourself up accordingly before you stop to scoop… I need to know how many of your dogs follow this rule of earthly magnetism…
Tagged animals, dogs, magnetic field, natural history, weird science, who knew
Aaaaaand… it’s full-on summer! (the view from the bridge on my way to rehearsal the other morning).
Apparently, there is a threshold of busy-ness which, once crossed, makes it tough to meet the blog-a-day challenge. I hit that a few days ago after… let’s see, 30 (for my April challenge) plus 44 (in my blogging every day for a year project) days. Not a bad streak, really, but long enough to hurt when I managed to get home and to bed late enough one night only to realize that it was after midnight and I had totally forgotten to blog. I threw up my hands, heaved a deep sigh and said, ‘Never mind.’
One of my favourite parts in our production of Romeo and Juliet is when the ethereal maids are humming, in harmony, The Sound of Silence. Bring tissues!! (A Woman Weeping by Rembrandt, 1644)
I was up early the next morning to continue on a writing project and considered posting a photo and back-dating the entry (cheater!!) and couldn’t quite bring myself to be so deceitful. Then, I was going to just post and stats be damned, but I couldn’t decide how to number the next post…
Anyway, enough time has passed that I now feel I can clear the slate and just suck it up and start again.
With plants like this around (and they are all over the place, apparently…) there’s no need to slow down to smell the flowers. These puppies exude an exquisite scent so intense I smell it as I whiz by on my bike. With the hot weather here now, the wee flowers are fading (along with their perfume). Can anyone tell me what this bush is called?
Not that life has slowed down, mind you (that was another consideration – wait until I actually have time to embark upon such a project). Much as I live in a fantasy world that has me sitting with my feet up somewhere balmy, but breezy, preferably with a sailboat under my backside, the reality is I always have lots of balls in the air. I’m picking this blog ball up and tossing it back in the mix.
(Fight choreography – we have a gorgeous brawl in Romeo and Juliet, but wow – it’s complicated to get all the moving parts right without hurting anyone. Anastasia, our fight choreographer is amazing!!)
I warn you. though, that there may not be too much meaty content for another 3 weeks or so until our Canmore Summer Theatre Festival performances are done and the edits to the current draft of the medical assistance in dying book are back off my plate. Sorry, you might be looking at more photos than usual…
Posted in Acting, Art, Blog, Theater
Tagged #CSTF2018, Acting, Art, brawl, canmore, fight, fight choreography, mountain life, pine tree players, rembrandt, rocky mountains, romeo and juliet, shakespeare
He’s still there at the Banff Indian Trading Post!!!!! Just got home after leading a Ghost Walk in Banff, which followed a full day of writing and editing. Half fish, half human, this little dude haunts my childhood memories and today when I popped in to say hello he transported me back across the decades to the first time I saw him so long ago…
No doubt he will now follow me into the world of dreams…
Tagged banff, childhood memories, ghost walks, ghosts, mermaid, merman, Trading Post
A LOT going on here at the moment – so much, in fact, I forgot an important birthday today!!!! SORRY!!!!!!!!!
Raindrops on roses…
For the next week or so, I will likely be reduced to posting a photo and perhaps a piece of somehow related artwork but without much writing to go along with it. Sorry about that, but you know – life can get in the way of blogging sometimes. (Two apologies in as many paragraphs – how very Canadian!)
… whiskers on kittens… (Girl with a Kitten, by Lucian Freud, 1947)
The last time I forgot a birthday, btw, was the terrible year I forgot my only child’s birthday. That was bad. She reminded me in the horse paddock while I was making her help muck out. She was not amused. Horse manure removal and sacred birthdays do not, apparently, mix. A couple of decades (almost) later, she is still not amused and reminds me of this black incident when I dare to say anything along the lines of, ‘hey, I wasn’t the worst mother in the world…’ And then she counters with, ‘what kind of mother forgets her only kid’s birthday?’ Not that it would be any less awful if I had forgotten one of six children’s birthday – then, I can just imagine, there would have been accusations of favoritism. “I knew you never loved me as much as the others.”
Posted in Art, Blog, Photography
Tagged apologies, Art, birthday, cardinal sin, forgetting a birthday, kitten, lucian freud, raindrops, rose, sorry, whiskers on kittens
A very long, very busy day again – so today I’ve gone into the archives for a couple of quick photos in the ‘hm, good thing we don’t do this any more’ department.
Back in the day, feeding wildlife was a thing… I think I even read recently (can’t think now where) that long ago people came to Banff to feed the bears! That seems like an eminently stupid thing to do, but then, when I look at us (that’s me and my brother, Peter) feeding the bighorn sheep, that wasn’t too smart either.
There’s a dramatic painting by Charles M. Russell, c. 1904 called Big Horn Sheep… It’s the males that have the full-on horn curl going on.
This Big Horn buck is mounted and hung at Craigdarroch Castle in Victoria. I’m not sure of the stats regarding trophy hunting and how popular it is then versus now, but I can’t say I understand why anyone would hunt just for sport. I’m not opposed for hunting for meat as long as one does so in season and following proper game management protocols but as a source of decorations? Um. No.
And, yes, probably somewhat less dangerous but also not a good idea is the chipmunk-feeding craze we enjoyed as kids. I loved the feel of their tiny, delicate claws every so gently scratching the palm of my hand as they would take an offered peanut. They were pretty brazen (I think this one was on the top of Sulphur Mountain) and would sit back on their haunches, cheeks bulging and enjoy their feast.
These days I have quite a different relationship with the little monsters. They know when climbers are busy belaying and can’t chase them off, so they blithely crawl all over our packs, chew holes in food bags, and generally make a menace of themselves while we are distracted.
They are still cute, yes, but I have a lot less patience with them now and have no patience whatsoever with people who feed them and make the problem worse.
There’s a dramatic painting by Charles M. Russell, c. 1904 called Big Horn Sheep… It’s the males that have the full-on horn curl going on.
And that, as they say, is all she wrote…
Anybody else want to confess they used to feed the animals? As in, a long time ago before we knew better? I think there’s a statute of limitations on such misdemeanors (though today, there’s also a hefty fine). If you are a current offender, perhaps best you keep your head down and stay quiet.
Posted in Blog
Tagged b&w, banff, banff national park, big horn sheep, black and white, childhood memories, chipmunk, feeding animals, mountains, nostalgia, postaday, wildlife
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