Written Inc.

Temporary tracks in the snow

2013-05-18T12:27:00.001-04:00

Someone was here
Laval, QC
February 2013
Thematic. Frozen. Here.

If every picture supposedly tells a story, this one speaks of a bleary-eyed start to a grey workday, a bleak walk across a cold, snow-covered parking lot, to a cold, snow-covered car, and a cold, snow-covered drive in bumper-to-bumper traffic.

It's hard to tell who left these footsteps and tire tracks, or what they might have been thinking at the time. But as I stared down from my lofty perch and wondered about the greyness that had brought us here in the first place, I couldn't help but think that today wasn't a day for optimism, and it would be a while before we stopped seeing the world in cold, snow-covered, bleary-eyed tones.

Your turn: Who left these tracks?

On dancing by the light of the moon

2013-05-17T20:35:00.001-04:00

"Don't tell me the moon is shining; show me the glint of light on broken glass."
Anton Chekov

Bonus points if anyone can figure out the song reference. Enjoy!

Blink and you'll miss it

2013-05-16T22:05:00.000-04:00

Frozen in time
Delray Beach, FL
December 2009
Thematic. Frozen. Here.

Whether or not this scene qualifies as frozen is a matter of interpretation. Technically, the water here isn't frozen. At the moment this shot was taken, the water was in decidedly liquid form. Yet the combination of fast-moving surf, adequate light and a fast enough shutter speed combined to freeze the moment, even as it ceased to exist barely a millisecond later.

This is why I've always loved shooting surf (see here, here and here for past examples.) Because everything is transient - it's over before you even realize it's happened. And if you hang around long enough, you'll be blessed enough to see another transient moment. Before it, too, disappears forever.

So we keep our eyes open, ready to absorb the wonder of it all.

Your turn: Things that disappear in a blink. Please discuss.

On those who dance, and those who don't

2013-05-15T08:21:00.001-04:00

"Those who danced were thought to be insane by those who could not hear the music."
Nietzsche

So we dance, and ignore what anyone else might think. Sound good?

Thematic Photographic 244 - Frozen

2013-05-14T07:00:00.000-04:00

Anything but plain vanilla
Deerfield Beach, FL
December 2009

It may seem anathema to choose frozen as a theme when the planet - okay, the northern hemisphere - is busy warming up and breaking free from a seemingly never-ending winter. But humor me for a moment.

Frozen doesn't necessarily need to be a winter thing. Even if you don't live in the Great White North, there's plenty of thematic potential closer to home. I found this one on a trip to the ice cream store with the munchkins - in Florida, of all places - and I'm betting you'll all find a way to interpret the theme in all sorts of creative ways.

Your turn: Thematic is our weekly photo sharing/exploration/learning thing. It's certainly not competitive, and is designed to get us to look through our lenses just a little differently. To participate, grab a photo that evokes or reflects the weekly theme and share it on your blog or website (or Pinterest or Instagram or Twitter or wherever else you hang out online.) Leave a comment here letting folks know where to find it. Visit other participants to share the joy and pop back in through the week to share additional pics. For more background, click here. And have fun - because that's why we do this in the first place!

On Aesop's most profound lesson

2013-05-12T20:30:00.000-04:00

"No act of kindness, however small, is ever wasted."
Aesop

Pondering the flip side of Mother's Day

2013-05-12T10:54:00.000-04:00

I've never been a fan of the manufactured holiday. Valentine's Day, Mother's Day, Father's Day, whatever so-called Day it may be, I can't get past visions of the mad rush to buy stuff, any stuff, to raid the card section, bring home something, anything, to avoid the stigma of non-recognition, the shame of empty-handedness.

The avalanche of printed, broadcast and electronic flyers and ads would have us believe that these Days are all about stuff. That we're in the good books if we obtain stuff. And to a certain extent, the unseen faces behind the avalanche are right. Try not bringing something home on a day like today and see what happens. With few exceptions, it likely wouldn't be pretty.

But here's the thing: this year's Mother's Day, at least in our house, isn't remotely about stuff. It's about the things we can no longer have. Like time. Or each other.

It's my wife's first Mother's Day without her mom. And as I wrote on the first Father's Day without my dad (here), it's a day that has undertones never anticipated long ago by the denizens of Hallmark whose only interest was - and clearly still is - selling more cards and related uselessness. They, and if we're being honest, we, forget the dark side of a day like today. They ignore the impact of limitless commercialism on folks who may no longer have their parents around. It's like rubbing salt into a wound, and it makes the process harder than it needs to be.

But who am I to stand in the way of profit?

This morning, the kids woke up early and fetched me as quietly as they could. We fed the dog, gave him his insulin and brought him outside. We made my wife breakfast, loaded it onto a tray and and tiptoed upstairs. We sat on the bed with her and tried to keep the dog from shnarfing her bagel. The phone rang, and when she got off the phone with her dad, the room was suddenly very quiet.

Every day is a special Day to my wife, and every day is an opportunity to both honor and connect with the important folks who helped shape her. She doesn't need a holiday or an avalanche of flyers to remind her what she has, or what she's lost. We don't need a holiday to gather around her and remind her that she's the center of our universe. And she doesn't need a day like today to remind her of the calls she can no longer make. It'll be just as stark and raw tomorrow as it is today.

Maybe we'll do breakfast in bed for her next weekend, too. Just because.

Darkness descends from above

2013-05-11T09:35:00.001-04:00

Meteorological
London, ON
July 2012
Click here for more chaotic Thematic

Weatherpeople get no respect. When their weather predictions are correct, we forget their role in ensuring we had enough shorts and sandals on hand to enjoy that gloriously warm and sunny day. And when they're wrong, they become our chosen objects of disconnected scorn. They made us get wet in the rain, we reason, so they must be roundly criticized.

We assume their work is little more than guesswork. We figure they're throwing highs, lows and troughs at a virtual dartboard in the hope that some of them will stick. We're wrong, of course, but that doesn't make the armchair quarterbacking any less fun. This is interactive television at its finest, and we relish the process because we never have to actually say any of this directly to them.

Which brings me to this scene of weird looking clouds. I could almost feel the storm moving in as the winds picked up and the temperature dropped. I suddenly felt a bit smaller as I realized just how powerful the forces around us were, and how powerless we were to do anything about them.

The mathematics of what was going on in the atmosphere at that moment were well beyond anything I could fathom, but I knew that somewhere, an unseen supercomputer was crunching the data and trying to figure out what might happen next. And somewhere, a meteorologist was turning that impossibly complex mountain of ever changing numbers into a forecast for all of us armchair quarterbacks. Just wanted to say thanks.

Your turn: why do we spend so much time and energy talking and worrying about the weather?

On why we exist

2013-05-10T19:40:00.001-04:00

"We are not on this earth to accumulate victories, things, and experiences, but to be whittled and sandpapered until what’s left is who we truly are."Arianna Huffington

Yes. What she said.

Oy, my aching back

2013-05-10T07:22:00.000-04:00

Out for a walk

Deerfield Beach, FL,

December 2008

Time moves slowly in this retirement community, filled with folks who, free from the constraints of the 9-to-5 world, seem to follow a different timeline than the rest of us.

Breakfast is lingered over, conversations by the community pool can drag on well past lunch, dinner is often done before the outside world's equivalent of rush hour, and bedtime may or may not compete with an early sundown. That last one depends on whether the guy who played the bartender on the Love Boat is scheduled to play the community auditorium tonight.

I'm not sure if this woman was a fan of Isaac "Boom Boom" Washington, so I never found out if she had tickets for that night's show. I am, however, certain she didn't know I was there as she shuffled along the sun-baked asphalt after dropping off her day's recycling. So I felt a little voyeuristic in taking this picture. But just a little. Because life here is different than it is elsewhere. Sometimes poignantly so.

Part of me felt that whoever this woman was and whatever stories her life may or may not have held, a photo might make us wonder a little more about the strangers among us.

Yes, I'm an odd one.

Your turn: Taking photos of strangers. Please discuss.

One more thing: What does this have to do with chaos? On the surface, not a whole lot. But dig a little deeper, and I suspect this is my way of calming things down after a week that offered more than its fair share of unscheduled chaos - from brutal kidnappings in Cleveland to a spiralling death toll from a garment factory collapse in Bangladesh and a young father's sudden disappearance not far from here. A quiet view of a place where the outside world seems so very far away seemed like a great way to lower the volume and restore a sense of balance. Head here for more Thematic chaotic.

Ring around the sun

2013-05-08T18:03:00.001-04:00

Thanks to my parents' long-ago (and getting longer) decision to have me, the fact that they did so on the planet Earth, and that folks way smarter than I'll ever be decided eons ago to use orbital mechanics to measure time, today is apparently my birthday.

I learned this via a number of other channels:

Our youngest son burst into the room at first light and gave me a birthday hug
My wife and kids decorated the house, and most of the decorations had my name on them
Oodles of folks on Facebook have been saying so on my wall
My phone's been chirping all day

I'm long past the point at which birthdays were excuses for a big, boisterous party in Mom and Dad's basement, complete with too-loud music and overflowing bowls of cheesies. I no longer relish the prospect of adding another year to a number that's already getting, ahem, up there.

But I've got to admit I rather enjoy the hullabaloo that surrounds this one day of the year, when everything is tinged with just a hint of special, and everyone you encounter smiles just a little more. I've never been entirely comfortable when folks turn the spotlight on me, but it's nice to be surrounded by so much warmth. Days like today remind me how blessed I am with family, friends, health and opportunity - more, frankly, than I ever thought I'd deserve.

Now, to find a way to capture some of the loveliness of today and spread it out over the 364 days that, if I'm lucky, lie ahead of me before the next one. If you have any secrets to share with me, I'm all ears.

On being moved

2013-05-07T19:18:00.000-04:00

“The main thing is to be moved, to love, to hope, to tremble, to live.”
Auguste Rodin

Yeah. What he said. Word for word.

Thematic Photographic 243 - Chaotic

2013-05-06T19:00:00.000-04:00

Is this even edible?
London, ON
December 2010

Not every scene has to adhere to pre-ordained patterns of neatness. Not everything has to follow some kind of order or established rule.

Sometimes chaos needs to rule, and that isn't necessarily a negative thing. So for the next week, let's celebrate chaotic scenes, things that break the norm and look a little less than perfectly aligned. Because perfection can be boring.

Your turn: The Thematic drill is a simple one. Post a pic that evokes the theme to your blog or website. Leave a comment here letting folks know where to find it. Visit other participants to share the fun. Repeat as often as you wish, as the theme will be live for a full week. For more on how Thematic works, click here. Otherwise, have fun!

All that remains

2013-05-06T07:27:00.000-04:00

Traces
London, ON
December 2006
Thematic. Vegetative. Here.

I wanted to end off this week's vegetative theme with something a little different: Not the thing itself, but an echo of the thing.

Images like this haunt me, and I'm not entirely sure why. Perhaps it's because they're fading echoes of what once was. Maybe it's because you can see the history, but you can't really touch it because the original is now gone. It's like a photo - sure, you can see the faces in front of you - but you can't speak with, or otherwise interact with them, because none of it is real or otherwise tangible.

It didn't take long for the acidic imprints of these long-gone leaves to themselves disappear. Before long, the rains came and washed the sidewalks clean until these dark images were barely wisps. Then came a winter-long blanket of snow. By the time spring melted it all away, even the trace memories of these leaves had disappeared.

Well, except for this photo.

Your turn: Holding onto the past. Please discuss.

One more thing: Thematic's new theme, chaotic, launches tonight at 7:00 p.m. Eastern. Hope to see y'all then!

Waiting for the snow to melt

2013-05-05T18:16:00.000-04:00

Where's my blanket?
London, ON
February 2013
Click here for more vegetative Thematic

It's sunny and gorgeous outside. No one's complaining about the cold or the snow, and the Environment Canada website could be offline for all we know and no one would care.

Pretty soon, I'll take my shorts-and-t-shirt wearing self outside, and I won't have to put on a parka or hunt down mittens. The dog won't bury himself in a snowdrift, and the winds won't howl around the edges of the windows.

Yet it wasn't that long ago that I was freezing my hands blue to get this shot. Funny what time can do to the landscape. And to us.

Your turn: For some strange reason, I'm having flashbacks to Les Nessman's Eyewitness Weather. what's the weather like where you are?

On conformity

2013-05-04T14:55:00.001-04:00

"I think the reward for conformity is that everyone likes you except yourself."
Rita Mae Brown

Drummer. March. Beat. Your own.

We stand on guard for thee

2013-05-03T07:03:00.000-04:00

Posted
St. Thomas, ON
June 2009
Click here for more Thematic vegetative

Get off the superhighway for a bit and you'll come face to face with life as it was lived decades ago. Sleepy two-lane, unpaved roads bisect massive farmers' fields, with the occasional pickup or tractor breaking the silence. Time seems to either move more slowly here, or it's simply ignored in favor of a cycle driven by when the animals get up, when the sun rises, and when it sets.

That more genteel pace probably explains the guardrail you see here. I doubt it would hold back an out-of-control 18-wheeler. But folks don't drive like that out here, anyway. At least that's what I like to think as I take in this scene and feel the summery breeze on my face.

Your turn: What's the appeal of farm country to you?

A rose is a rose is a rose

2013-05-02T18:16:00.000-04:00

Pretty in pink
London, ON
February 2013
Thematic. Vegetative. Here.

I don't take nearly enough pictures of flowers. That's largely because I don't bring them home nearly as often as I should. Bad Carmi!

This time, however, I managed to get the camera to the vase before time took its toll. Or before the dog managed to jump up onto the table and take care of it himself. He doesn't mean to be mischievous. He just is. And we love him for it.

Back to the flowers. On the surface, they're wholly impractical and sadly transient. Once upon a time the practical/cynical side of me failed to see their purpose. Sure, they looked lovely, but they didn't do anything. Well, beyond costing a lot of money. And once you bought them, you got to watch them slowly wither back to nothingness, crunchy remnants of now-lost beauty.

None of that matters when you're surrounded by family, though. Because a flower's worth has nothing to do with practicality and everything to do with the message it sends. And you can't put a price on that. Nor should you.

So as I stare at these long-since trashed roses, I think of the moment I decided to pick them up, the moment I brought them through the front door, and how lucky I felt - then as now - to have someone to bring them to.

Your turn: What do flowers mean to you?

May Day

2013-05-01T21:05:00.000-04:00

Spring has sprung
London, ON
May 2013
Click here for more vegetative Thematic

It seems we all blinked and April was over. All day I've been staring at my smartphone. It has a feature called "live tiles" where the app for the calendar icon shows the date as well as your next appointment. I kept staring at the disembodied "1" in disbelief, because the month of May wasn't supposed to get here so quickly, was it?

When I got home after work, the flowers poking out of the clearly untended garden made it abundantly clear: the season has changed. Now where did I leave my cargo shorts and Hawaiian shirts?

None of this upsets me in any way, though. I just...is. And for some reason, I feel an overwhelming need to take note of smallish milestones like this one. I guess that's because there are far more small moments in life than big ones, and you never want to miss an opportunity to appreciate the minor miracles of life on this planet. Because when things spring from the messy earth literally right under your nose, the only word that applies is "miracle".

Thematic Photographic 242 - Vegetative

2013-04-29T19:00:00.000-04:00

Consume mass quantities

Laval, QC
July 2011

About this photo: This marks the launch entry for our new Thematic theme, vegetative. Read on for more photographic fun. Because the world needs more fun.

The more I think about communal eating environments - aka buffets - the less I like them.

First, lining up, plates in hand, seems like such a silly way to gain sustenance. It makes me feel like I'm at the farm, patiently awaiting my turn at the trough.

Second, the whole everyone's-touching-the-food thing makes me want to seriously gack. I know the health department mandates sneeze shields as a form of CYA-like protection. But let's face it: no one's going to be eating anything if anyone actually uses the shields in the way they were intended. Protective overhead coverings aside, I don't even want to think where my fellow trough-dwellers' hands have been before they grab hold of the tongs. Or forget to grab hold of the tongs, as the case may be.

I'm not deluded, of course. I'm pretty sure servers in regular restaurants are just as capable of messing up the works as anyone else. Case in point: The Domino's Pizza debacle. But somehow, it seems even more icky when your potential dinner is surrounded by masses of fellow diners. A little privacy isn't necessarily a bad thing, especially when we're eating.

Your turn: Pick or take a photo that reflects this week's theme, vegetative, and post it to your blog (or website, or Facebook page or Twitter or wherever else you like to hang out.) Leave a comment here letting folks know where to find it, then pop over to other participants to share in the fun. Repeat as often as you wish, as this theme will be live for the next week. For more background on how Thematic works, please click here.

Sky on fire

2013-04-29T17:55:00.000-04:00

Twin towers
Laval, QC
July 2011
Click photo to embiggen

I wanted to end this week's Thematic exploration of the pairs theme (click here for a last-minute submission) with a bit of a twist.

Look closely at the bottom of the shot and you'll see two high-tension hydro towers. They're in every sunset shot that I take from my father-in-law's balcony, and normally I curse them for ruining the scene.

This time, however, they somehow fit the shot, giving the sky a sense of perspective and scale it otherwise wouldn't have. I guess I'll have to head back to his balcony soon for some more sunset photography - towers included.

Your turn: When a "ruined" moment ended up being anything but. Please discuss.

Fat Albert can dance

2013-04-29T07:39:00.000-04:00

Chasing the setting sun
London, ON
June 2011

About this photo: We're winding down our Thematic pairs week. This plane has a pair of engines (sorry, I know I'm stretching it.) Feel free to share your own pair-themed vision here. New theme, vegetative, launches tonight at 7:00 p.m. Eastern.

Say hello to the Boeing 737, specifically a 737-700 flown by WestJet. Although our city's sole airport is called London International Airport, most of the traffic in and out of here is pretty forgettable: turboprops, regional jets and private aircraft. Nothing remotely approaching long haul or intercontinental. This is about as big as it gets, and even then it's a fairly rare sight.

So when this one flew overhead as I was watching the munchkins play soccer, I was almost predestined to point my lens skyward and shoot it. Because taking pictures of planes never gets old for me, and the late evening light seemed to make an otherwise routine shot look a little less so.

Oh yes, the caption. When the 737 first took to the skies in 1967, it was affectionately dubbed "Fat Albert" because it had the same narrow-body cross section as a 707 and 727 in a much shorter design. The net effect made it look kinda stubby. Fat Albert it was, and in multiple generations it's since become the world's most produced jet transport.

It's nice to know ugly ducklings grow into lovely swans even in the commercial aviation industry.

Your turn: Why are we so obsessed with looks? (Nothing like a loaded question to start the week!)

Spanning the years

2013-04-28T18:55:00.000-04:00

Evolution of the species
Quebec City, QC
July 2011

Just over 50 years separates the Quebec Bridge (1919) on the left and the Pierre Laporte Bridge (1970) on the right. Cantilever vs. wire-cable suspension. Heavily over-engineered for the railroad age vs. elegantly balanced for the automotive one. Whatever their design philosophy and however old they are, they're both mind-blowing in their own right.

If a third bridge were to be built here today, it would be different still, likely a cable stayed box girder which further pushes the efficiency envelope and is far more representative of how stuff gets built now. I love how technology continues to rewrite the landscape as it allows us to do more with less. Or simply to lead better lives.

However you cut it, it's more than a little inspiring to stand near two diametrically different examples of the best their respective ages had to offer. You can almost feel the passage of engineering history here.

Your turn: What other things get better with time?

Two ships that pass in the...day?

2013-04-28T08:05:00.000-04:00

Crossings
Quebec City, QC
July 2011
Click here for more Thematic pairs

I love living in the city we now call home, but if I could change anything, it would be to live in a part of the world where the surrounding waterways are significant enough to justify having ferries like these. Call me odd, but the prospect of taking a ferry to get somewhere would be seriously cool.

As I stood on the bluffs overlooking the St. Lawrence River, I wondered about the folks who rely on these floating workhorses every day. I hoped being on the water never got old for them. Because even the drudge of the daily commute should be special in its own way.

Your turn: What's your favorite way of getting around town? Why?

The plane truth

2013-04-27T09:47:00.001-04:00

Where Diamonds are made
London, ON
June 2012

I often drive by the Diamond Aircraft facility in the east end of town, hard by London International Airport. I could just as easily take another route, but I somehow derive comfort from a quick glimpse of anything aviation-related.

This place has had a rough few years, with enough layoffs, cancelled programs and broken promises to fill the cargo hold of a large transport aircraft. After another round of job cuts a couple of months ago, the place is now barely functional, a ghost of what it once was. I feel a little twinge when I see the empty parking lot, and I wonder about the now-former employees and their families, and where they've gone and how they're doing.

The entire mess saddens me, because this is the kind of company that economies in mid-sized cities like London need. And if our civic leaders spent less time voting themselves pay raises, patting themselves on the back, fighting corruption charges or each other, maybe we'd be able to fill this assembly line again. Maybe we'd haul down our country-leading unemployment rate. Maybe we'd be able to compete against cities and regions that have already clued into the way things work in the 21st century.

One can always hope, right?

One more thing: what does this entry have to do with this week's Thematic theme, pairs? The DA20 and DA40 are a pair of aircraft. I know I'm stretching things a bit, but that's the whole point of exercise, after all. Click here to share yours.