On this anniversary, please check out my tumblr: latest installment is a letter my uncle wrote after a brush with a buzz-bomb, shortly after D-Day.
Cherry Tree, Very Pretty…
We’ve entered our tree in the Great Toronto Tree Hunt, so if you are so inclined, please click here and vote! And please spread the love (i.e., pester your friends and family to vote for it).
On this Day, in 1940
“The Strong Guy, the Fat Guy, the Genius”
David Letterman said a farewell after over three decades on TV. I first started watching him when I was in high school and he had a morning show. For me, he was at his best in the mid-to-late-1990s: the following video is an example of the ridiculously hilarious humour of which he was capable. Just joyful and silly. (Unfortunately, he became truly bitter — and not in the good sense — over time, and I stopped watching him. Good analysis at the link.)
In God’s kingdom, all the Subjects are of Royal Blood
I was thinking about pigeons and it brought to mind this great quote from a book I read a few years back. The book is Masks in a Pageant — and I highly recommend it — by the great American journalist William Allen White. The quote follows:
The thrush, the oriole, the bird of paradise, are esteemed by society, while the unlovely hell-diver is despised. Nature has no favorites. All her creatures are equally beloved; in God’s kingdom all the subjects are of royal blood. The earthworm is as useful as the lion; the amoeba has full fellowship with man.
Another Pigeon Post
Synchronized Italian Pigeons/Piccioni Italiani Sincronizzati
For VE-Day, 70th Anniversary: Part Two
Please visit my tumblr — “My Uncle’s Letters from the War.”
For VE-Day, 70th Anniversary: You American-haters Bore me to Tears
Honourable Mention
One of my favourite places in Italy is Gubbio, a small city near Assisi and Perugia. (St. Francis tamed a wolf there and said wolf is buried in a church there. Seriously.) It has a rickety old funicular thingy that will take you right up to its very top, on the tippity-top of a mountain, but it is also fun to simply walk up (as far as you can) and back down the city. I did that one day in December with a Vietnamese friend/classmate and I shot this picture quite haphazardly. My friend had walked ahead of me as I tied my shoelace, and when I looked up I snapped the shot. My main goal was to get a picture of the architecture but it came out better like this. All of this is to say that this photo won honourable mention in Accenti Magazine’s 2015 photography awards (Accent is an arty magazine out of Montreal). I would have preferred winning but I think I’m kind of like one of those TV characters — on the Waltons or Eight is Enough — who never wins anything, always just comes second and yet learns valuable lessons along the way. Ahem.
