onehouse

Christmas Lights: Day 5

Our first heavy snow came a week ago. After hosting dinner for a friend's family, I took a midnight walk around the block to have a look at our newly painted neighborhood. The clouds were hanging low and the light from the streetlights bounced from snow covered ground to cloud and back again. I didn't have time to adjust the camera and everything from that one block walk came out eerily lit, orange and blurry. I kind of liked it though. This is how I saw it between the snowflakes on my glasses and the fog from my own breathing rising in front of my face.

Larger in all it's blurry glory here.


Christmas in Songs: Day 5
Christmas in Kids' Books 2006 Day 5
Christmas in Pictures 2005: Day 5

Prairie Drive

Prairie Drive from Hedge Society on Vimeo.

Out the window on the way back from the Route 40 Soup Company.

(Hedge Society is a new blog I'm developping. Stay tuned.)

Twinkle.

My mind has been on the stars lately. Calgary skies are currently covered in a low rolling dark gray cloud usually reserved for my friends on the west coast of Canada. Maybe I am missing the lengthening summer skies, where stars appear one by one against the deepening blue background. Or maybe finishing off Season 3 of Battlestar Galactica has my mind on space. Or reading The Little Prince again in French and English. Or playing this little meditative game which reminds me of stars from the surface of a plant.

So there will be some thoughts on stars and time and space here as the clouds cover the night sky. They are always there or were once upon a time leaving light for memory.

One of my favorite images - large but worth the download and subsequent staring.
And then the same image - smaller and with explanation.

Nebula - from Latin meaning cloud or mist. Exactly.

Rainy days

Been under the weather with yet more dental problems. The blur and darkness of the rain have matched the throbbing in my face and my wallet. Dental is not part of health coverage in Canada and what extra insurance you can procure can be burned through very quickly. It's been quite the year. So the eyes have it rather than the mouth these days.

City: downtown Calgary through the rain.It's all a blur on painkillers.

Temple:  "We got your energy right here!Tuppence a tank!"

Tree: our aging crabapplee tree settles in for the night. Split in two as it aged, the tree looks a little like a broken heart when it flowers. Makes me think of the  song, Garden in the Rain.

Avoiding Myopia

The sky over Nose Hill this weekend:

From Dark Skies:

Dr. Brian Greene, Columbia University physicist, author of the best selling book, "The Elegant Universe" and one of the most articulate spokespersons for the Superstring Theory of the Cosmos:

"I have long thought that anyone who does not regularly--or ever-- gaze up and see the wonder and glory of a dark night sky filled with countless stars loses a sense of their fundamental connectedness to the universe. And as the astounding vastness of the universe becomes obscured, there is a throwback to a vision of a universe that essentially amounts to earth, or one's country,or state or city. Perspective becomes myopic. But a clear night sky and a little instruction allows anyone to soar in mind and imagination to the farthest reaches of an enormous universe in which we are but a speck. And there is nothing more exhilarating and humbling than that."

   

Exclamation points

On Mother's Day six of us ages 30 to mid-sixties joined nearly 14,000 Calgarians for the Mother's Day Walk and Run raising money for neo-natal units in local hospitals. We stood in the middle of ninth avenue near the Calgary Tower and I was nearly mowed down by a few baby strollers trying to get this picture. Automobile traffic would normally be a dangerous impediment to taking a photo from this angle. The Calgary Tower is now dwarfed by the buildings around it, a useless exclamation mark blocking the end of a street. The whole tower thing is one of the silliest architectural additions to any city - a "mine is bigger than yours" approach to city planning. 

Picture Blogging: Day 23: Prairie Winter

Just outside of Three Hills, Alberta today. I love how the prairie looks nearly monochromatic under a winter sky. A lot of landscape photos have barns or animals in them. I am fond of trying to capture the bountiful emptiness that Norris talks about. (Trying to find a way to post this in a larger format. Maybe later.)

From Dakota by Kathleen Norris:

Or, Gambling, Garbage, and the New Ghost Dance

The Plains are not forgiving. Anything that is shallow – the easy optimism of a homesteader; the false hope that denies geography, climate, history; the tree whose roots don’t reach ground water – will dry up and blow away.

Picture Blogging: Day 4: Singer/Songwriters

My mother gave me a gift certificate to Uppercase Gallery for Christmas and yesterday I bought this print by a local artist.

After a few years of having future conversations with bunches of folks across the land, I realized that I didn't even know the birds in my own yard. How do you talk about place and neighborhood if you don't pay attention to what's in your own trees? So I bought a secondhand Alberta bird book and quit what I was doing. I still don't know too much but these singer-songwriters have helped me me along this new and different way.

Duelity: Thinketh on context and language-eth.

I thought I had posted this already. I'm quite fond of it. Creation in the language of science and evolution in the language of myth. Watch separately or together or both. Three and a half minutes well spent.

Monastery for Sale

Jordon just sent me this location as possible new headquarters for Onehouse. Let's see, I run a no-ads magazine so that means I have 12 cents. Now we just need a few zillion others with 12 cents...