I feel a rant coming. Some time ago I was educated to the fact that in setting up Apartheid South Africans came to Canada to study our reserve system as a blueprint for eliminating an unwanted ethnic minority. Sending body bags to Native Reserves as a method of treating H1N1 virus is so repellent and insensitive as to be beyond bad taste. Certainly the crowded ill-constructed housing conditions and limited life-expectancy on reserves makes them prime targets for such an epidemic but I agree with the elders who found the move insulting and refused delivery of this 'gift'.
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The most dangerous food in the world is wedding cake.
"Do you want to insure this?" asked the clerk at the post office when I handed her my package.
"Nope," I answered. "The contents aren't breakable."
The clerk wasn't so sure. "Ma'am, we are professionals. We can break anything."
Every time I tell Irving Layton what I plan to do next he says,
"Are you sure you're doing the wrong thing?"
--Leonard Cohen
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September 25
A couple days ago the Northern Hemisphere passed through the Autumnal Equinox. However iconic this spatial natural event may be the realities of the season were already with us. With the advent of September overnight frosts, cold blustery winds, and squalls of rain were already upon us. Almost overnight the leaves of hardwood trees lose their verdant green and turn almost fluorescently red, gold, orange and magenta. Fragile fern turn amber at the slightest hint of frost. Evergreens, though they remain green year-round slough off aging needles with yellowing boughs giving the trees an unhealthy look. In these and many other ways forest plants and animals prepare for the annual dormancy of winter.
Country Music Buffs might think of:
I played around, and stayed around
This old town to long
Summer's almost gone, yes
Winter's coming on...
And it looks like
I gotta travel on.
But hillsides turning brilliantly red and fog banks drifting over rocky outcrops ringing with the raucous calls of blue jays, crows and ravens remind me of the poet Bliss Carmen studied decades ago:
Along the line of smoky hills
The crimson forest stands
And all day long the Blue Jay's call
Sounds through the Autumn lands.
On Canada's East Coast with its Mixed Acadian Forests and remnant Appalachian Mountain Range even in the few urban areas wilderness is never more than a brief walk or drive away and these lines eminently capture the scene.
Today, Friday, September 25, 2009 is my Brother-in-Law Richard's sixtieth birthday and I, parked over one hundred miles distant in this campground, can be with him only in spirit. It's great when a sibling can give you a surrogate brother you didn't get through birth. I can only wish that he, as I have been able, were retired.
Today is one of those typical Fall days here in Nova Scotia. At dawn the rising tide brought with it an intense squall of rain and a cold gusting wind has driven scattered showers ever since. Surprising how accurate meteorologists can be about bad weather, now if they can be right about the next two days of sunshine? Well they weren't.
September 28, 2009
I left Nova Scotia yesterday amid some eagerness to escape the yoke of the Campground Host Experience. Made it to Sackville, New Brunswick where I stopped at the tourist bureau and the ESSO station across the road, a busy spot as the first opportunity to buy gas 6¢ a litre cheaper than NS. My tanks full I set off for Hopewell Rocks. Since there are no bridges or ferries cross the Petitcodiac River one is forced to drive to Moncton and then back down to a point just a few miles from Sackville and just across the Minas Basin from Joggins, NS. The Petitcodiac is famous for its Tidal Bore which, at Spring Tides enthusiasts attempt to surf and catch on river rafts as the powerful tides back up the river creating up to a 3 foot wave.
Ponderosa Pines Campground lives up to its name though the trees here are Red Pine and they are dropping an alarming number of needles many looking frighteningly yellow and their foliage remarkably thin. The park has two large onsite lakes but after a summer without adequate power and no Wi-Fi the opportunity to catch up on the outside world has occupied me the last 12 hours. I've missed being able to check things out online on a whim at any time of the day or night without leaving the comfort of my own RV. Just as well as toward dark it started raining and has done so heavily ever since. So much for light showers. I have managed to whittle my E-mail 'in-box down from over 1000 to 300. I also have 300 CBC News Updates to catch up on later today. That news goes back to late July. In that time I've missed many program updates which will need installing later along with September's Windows Updates. I've also taken advantage of the opportunity to explore the online information on the parks I'm headed to in the next month of so and confirm that I have a place to stay in Texas this winter. With rain in the forecast for today and tomorrow it would seem I'll have plenty of time to play catch-up.
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And They Call That Art?
Were not Ryan Adams a Rock Musician of some note would anyone be interested in seeing the childish collection of so-called art on display in the Bowery in NYC:
http://www.morrisonhotelgallery.com/
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