We’ve taken up kayaking. We bought a kayak on Bob’s birthday, and took it out that weekend.
Nature
The Tree
There’s a tree just up the road that I can see out of the study window, and I often take photos of it, so I now have a portrait of it all year round. My series of photos is not quite as in-depth as this one by eirikso, but it’s nice.
Our Garden
Since we haven’t been able to go anywhere at weekends during the lockdown, we’ve been very busy in the garden. We’ve also seen lots of birds (cardinals, robins, a woodpecker, chickadees, and mourning doves) and squirrels (both black and grey) in the garden.
Cabin Fever
It’s still pretty chilly here in Southern Ontario, and it has felt like a long winter. I’ve been working from home most of the winter (driving in snow is okay with snow tyres, but I’m trying to keep driving to a minimum so as to keep my carbon emissions low). I’m fortunate that my job was classified as essential, so I’m still working from home. No novel-writing for me.
The Tower and the Virus
My first guest column at The Wild Hunt.
I have been anxious for months, years even. I have watched with growing horror the rise of right-wing populism, the melting of the icecaps, the burning of Australia, the beginnings of wars over water and resources, the seemingly inexorable destruction wrought by climate change. The protests of Fridays for Future and Greta Thunberg and Extinction Rebellion gave me some cause for optimism, but it is also obvious that governments have not been doing enough to turn the economy around to stop the production of carbon emissions. So when everyone suddenly swung into action to deal with the coronavirus crisis, it gave me some hope that perhaps now the needful actions to deal with climate change (many of which, it turns out, are quite similar to the actions needed to flatten the curve of coronavirus transmission) would seem doable. It also feels like now everyone else is as anxious as me.
What we have in common
I dreamed that I was in an Anglican or Episcopalian Church in North America and had been invited by the vicar to introduce a hymn. She handed me the order of service which already had a hymn picked out, and it had been annotated to change “him” to “her”, so I introduced it and encouraged people to sing “her” where appropriate if they wanted to. One of the congregation said they didn’t really know the tune for that hymn. So then I suggested we sang Morning has broken and changed “him” to “her” in the second verse, and “God’s” to “Her” in the third verse. Then I woke up.
The festival of Borrowed
Some years ago, I started the festival of Borrowed. It’s on February 28th or 29th, and is a reminder that the Earth is precious and ecosystems are fragile. It seems even more relevant in the face of the climate emergency.
The festival of Borrowed highlights the idea that we do not own the Earth and its finite resources, we only borrow them, and share them with all other life.
Wassailing
On Monday, we went to the Orange Peel Morris annual Wassailing at Spirit Tree Cidery, Ontario.
Theriomorphic deities
The revelation of the restored version of the Mystic Lamb from the Ghent Altarpiece got me thinking about theriomorphic deities.
The scary goggly eyes of the restored version attracted quite a lot of comment and even a scary meme of the Lamb winking.
Before you go and have a look at the pictures, I have to warn you that what has been seen cannot be unseen.
How to call a quarter
There are many ways to call a quarter, but all of them have a common aim: to make a connection with the element.
