…which for some reason makes it even lousier being stuck in the city. In the meantime, I’ll have to content myself with stories of others’ tapping exploits.
Anyways, you know the old expression: “when you can’t tap, think.” And in Sharkwater’s wake, I’ve been thinking of pretty much everything as fodder for a documentary. When I pick up the six-string and pluck away, I find myself thinking of each riff in terms of score and visualizing scenes that might accompany it. Strange, I know. But I can only think of one way to address the issue, and it involves cameras…
Well, in a couple weeks I’ll be doing some documenting of my own; today I signed up for the Blogger BioBlitz that’s running from April 21-29 (in recognition of National Wildlife Week). I’m not sure where exactly I’ll be poking around, but I figure it’s about time to start haunting the local waterways. The ice has pretty much cleared up, which should make things a little easier, as far as paddling around goes. Of course, I was thinking that some attempts at icebreaking would be fun… Either way, stay tuned — I’ll be posting my B3 results here at a later date. 
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Some tallies of unusual things I saw today:
Wild Turkeys: 20+
Oh boy, we were cruising down Bolton road (narrow, gravel, treed, etc.), came round a bend, and then what was there up ahead but a massive army of wild turkeys! Although they beat a hasty retreat, I can’t help but wonder that if I wasn’t driving a rental car, I might have tried to bump one off (literally speaking). A roast turkey dinner would be nice right about now.
Cars in the Ditch: 3
While enjoying the delightful springtime weather the other day, I asked myself if Winter had finally given up for another year. Well, the answer appears to be “no, it hasn’t” judging by the sudden dumping of the chilly white stuff. As a result, the roads were slick on the way back from Ottawa, and not everybody was able to stay on the pavement. I can’t help but wonder if I wasn’t driving a rental car that happened to have AWD, I would’ve ended up there myself!
Documentary Films: 1
Well, the purpose of our turkey-ridden and treacherous trip was to go and see Sharkwater, which was more than worth the time, carbon emissions, admission fees, and other assorted costs. The film is full of truly wonderful images of sea life, and does a marvellous job of capturing the interplay between sharks and enormous schools of fish, sharks and divers, and sharks and other sharks. Filmmaker Rob Stewart makes some interesting suggestions — namely that sharks are our friends (and not the killers that they’ve been made out to be), and indirectly make sure that there’s enough of that oxygen stuff to go around.
The environmentalist/conservationist agenda comes across loud and clear, although without being too preachy — Stewart’s tone is much to personal for that. Yet the footage of the eco-revolutionaries and guerrilla activists is just as interesting as the deep-sea shots, presenting some real-life, high seas adventure; the Sea Shepherds that Stewart tools around with have no problem taking time out of their busy days to ram illegal fishing boats and string up barbed-wire to prevent the Costa-Rican Coast Guard from boarding their ship.
One thing — while the film is only rated PG, I wonder if it should’ve been higher… but perhaps images of mating sea-turtles don’t bother the censors that much. I don’t know, it seems a little risqué to me!
Last week (March 15, 2007, to be more specific) CP recognized Canadian realist painter Mary Pratt with the latest issue of its continuing Art Canada series. Here’s a taste:
“Realist” indeed! It’s only after taking a close look at paintings such as “Jelly Shelf” (pictured on the left) that you’re able to tell that it isn’t a photograph. Pratt goes as far as erasing all traces of her brushstrokes to accomplish the photorealistic effect. An interesting aside: Pratt painted much of “Iceberg in the North Atlantic” using a Windex bottle filled with blue paint.
Her artistic philosophy is simple — as she puts it, “my role seems to have been to make people see things that are around them all the time that they never noticed before…”
While the paintings chosen for the issue are clearly wonderful, I’m a little leery of the design of the sheet itself; the “horizontal-bar” motif, which seems at odds with Pratt’s style, just doesn’t do if for me.
On a different note, last year Canada Post introduced “Permanent domestic stamps,” which have no specific postage value printed on them. Basically, they are good for life — there’s no need to supplement them with additional postage when the rates increase.
Will this have an effect on the number of new issues released in the future? I’m not sure, but what I do know is that it presents an interesting opportunity to “stock up” — while these permanent issues are immune to changes in postal rates, they will no doubt be affected by increases in price; for the opportunistic philatelic investor, the thing to do would be purchase a load of these sheets at the current price, and then re-sell when the price inevitably goes up — “buy low, sell high,” right?
I would be all over this, but my “resources” are tied up in Elvis Presley collector’s plates at the moment. Any day now, these babies are gonna make me rich! Well now, speaking of the King, why not dredge a little something out of the archives… This US issue was released on January 8 (Elvis’ birthday), 1993, and was accompanied with a little controversy; for one thing, the American public had been asked to choose which representation to feature on the stamp, and apparently there was some debate among members of Congress as to whether or not Elvis should be on a stamp in the first place (details right here). Anyhow, here’s what we ended up with:
Handsome devil, ain’t he?
…with a sense of humour.
This one always gets me.
I’m kind of late on this one — the sheet shown below is part of a eight-country issue (February 12, 2007) coinciding with the fourth International Polar Year. Canada’s contribution is quite striking, and I couldn’t resist picking it up as I was passing by the post office this afternoon. Pictured are a male king eider (Somateria spectabtilus, native to Canada, circumpolar) and a recently discovered species of deep-sea jellyfish (Crossota millsaeare):
This is one of the more educational issues in recent memory; using some nifty information design, the souvenir sheet depicts the polar ice’s decrease in both thickness and area. Also neat is the maple-leaf perforation in the centre.
For more information about the International Polar Year, check out www.ipy-api.ca or www.ipy.org. Worth a look is the Canadian IPY Interactive Mapping Server (CANIPY IMS), which has the locations of different research stations and communities involved in IPY work.
(With information from Details Vol. XVI No. 1)
Well, the move is complete — NWP is now hosted independently (at BlueHost), and the Wordpress-hosted version has now been sidelined. Updates will continue, as usual (ie. sporadically).
How did the switch go? There were a few problems with getting the “.ca” domain to play nice with the WP-recommended host, but all in all the process has been fairly straightforward. Still a few things to work out though, as certain techie aspects of the new setup continue to elude me; independence is tough sometimes.
Come March, it’s easy to get caught up in lamenting the creek’s present impaddleability. However, as it stands (though, by definition, a creek isn’t standing water) the surface is perfect for snowshoeing (see “Focusing on the Positive”). Now, the key is to get out on the creek, but not in the creek (see “Focusing on the Negative”). But more on that later…
We decided to start out by the bridge in Bishops Mills and head upstream. One thing is that while snowshoeing, as opposed to canoeing, going upstream is just as easy as going downstream. Anyhow, Jen took one side of the creek and I took the other; I guess the theory is that if two folks are on the ice and close together the chances of it giving way increase. Sounds logical enough. At this point, the creek was completely frozen over and blanketed with a layer (about eight inches deep) of last night’s snow and freezing rain.
Moving along, our steps grew less tentative as we realized that the ice was not in any danger of giving out. But how thick was it, really? After we had gone a ways, we found that if we stood still and listened carefully, the sound of water flowing beneath the ice was audible. It was slightly strange to hear the soft bubbling emanating from somewhere beneath our feet — mesmerizing, almost. We soon came to patches of open ice and water.
To our delight, the surface ahead of us was no longer a flat expanse (as it was by the bridge), but had become topographically interesting. Of course, the topography of snow is not necessarily backed by more substantial topographies (such as ice or earth). Presented with prospect pictured below, I thought it would be worth testing the strength of the bridge-like formation in between the two crevices.
The test, as you might expect, came back negative. It was amazing how quick I went through the upper crust of snow and ice — there was no warning that it was going to give way. I suppose that actually going through the relatively thick surface-ice would be different, as there would be audible cracking noises when it breaks loose. In my case, the only noise was Jen’s “I told you so!” Granted, I had been told. But “discretion is the better part of valor,” as they say.
On the plus side, there was a mostly solid layer of ice in between my foot and the water after everything was said and done; extricating myself from the hole wasn’t much of a problem. Also, the “break-through” revealed some beautiful ice formations beneath the snow (see the video above). You can hear the delightful “babbling-brook” sound track as well.
On the way home, I got to thinking that this episode raises an important issue — to what length is a blogger willing to go for the sake of a good post? What’s the trade-off between personal risk and personal promotion (such as hits on your website)? I’m not sure where exactly I fit in here, but as Jen put it, “You didn’t do that for a blog, you did it because you’re curious. And stupid.” Well, guilty as charged, but danger, admittedly, is a big part of adventure, which is in turn a big part of a good blog.
So, my advice to someone who feels like they don’t “get out” enough? Get a blog. Before long, you’ll feel obligated to drum up a story or two, and start doing stuff that’s worth writing home about. Just don’t blame me if you fall into a hole or two while you’re at it.
Hello!
What you’ll find here are sundry thoughts about the quiet life, along with brief notes on whatever I’m dredging up from the Archive this week. While the updates here are sporadic, I assure you that they’re always kindly — and you can take solace in the archives or blogroll (below) on a rainy day.
Happy reading!
