Water View

Took a trip on the Wolfe Island Ferry (which is a very fine ferry) and got this view of the face of Royal Military College, Fort Henry and the Cedar Island Martello. Here are a couple of other posts on the martellos and the harbour defences.


The vista – too tiny to really see anything


Detail of the Cedar Island martello, unspruced, south of Fort Henry (green above)


Detail of Fort Henry (blue above)


Detail of Royal Military College behind Point Frederick martello, north of Fort Henry (red above)

Egg Hunt

Right in the middle of a four day weekend, the inhabitants of one street in Kingston gather to let over 100 kids run over their lawns for 23 minutes every Easter Saturday.

The crowd gathers: mass quantities of caffine consumed in preparation for the sugar rush

This took an amazing amount of time, 1500 eggs being filled Friday and spread out over 40 front lawns at 6:45 am. Some sort movies here:

80 pounds of candy for about 80 households worth of kids.

Good Friday

Woke at the crack of noon. Amazing to get that opportunity with little kids around.

When I woke, CBC was playing Bach’s “Passion of St. Matthew” and making great efforts to explain why this day, in multi-faith times, is a day off – it is, apparently, an example of faith to all the faithful. I don’t know if I buy this. Christmas has been commercialized beyond recognition and Easter is not far behind but Good Friday, the central day of the Christian faith, cannot be drawn in by marketers, the toy makers. You will, of course, note that I was not at morning service nor do I mark the hours of the passion throughout this day matching Christ’s steps to mine. But some do. Just as others mark their holy days untouched by the mall and a dinner. Should this be a day off or is it just a reminder of the past dominance of Christianity in Canadian society? We need to have another day off, for some other faith’s great moment – preferrable on the Friday before Easter.

Easter Monday I have no problem with. At university, lobbying to be excused due to religious observance was joined in by some claiming Easter Monday as a holy day but when asked what occured on the day, there was no answer. It is just Boxing Day in springtime.

Real

I don’t really know how (let alone why) I and others write this stuff – in that I wake up, have no clue, read some places I read every day and soon find myself a bit amazed how even a small review of the day in the life of a handful of people is so startling.  Compared to the seriousness of the news, the weight of things in life, and even the passage of a marker like Kurt’s suicide (not a biggie for me except as a parallel to Lennon’s murder the morning of my grade 11 Christmas English exam), this stuff should be fluff.   While it is not journalism despite how much some pretend, it still, however, has heft or connection.  

Take Ian, who I have praised here from time to time. I have followed him daily (then six times a week) through the writer’s life of thick and thin and now he’s apparently going through the junior apprentice TV writer program at Fox – the kind of thing we BA in English Lit. grads dreamed of (…err…I mean…”of which we dreamed.”) Craig’s in Australia…again…yawn. Rob1 posts an odd graphical representation of what the workplace appears to be like and then edits it but it still looks a lot like Alanis at the Junos. Shelly’s getting published and Mike is on the mend. Ben is looking for work in Georgia and Michael might be able to assist. Like Rob2, I am also following the playoffs and American Idol. I guess my gut feeling when I sit down to do this each morning before rushing out the door is that following the thoughts and experiences of ordinary folk like me must be dull. Then it isn’t.

What is the lesson?   The real news leaves you dislocated.    Heck, they even spend millions to put together Average Joe 2, hooks you in and then he goes and picks the wrong girl, the ditz. That was dull. Pretty much sent my week off on the wrong direction. Watching fake professional reality is nowhere near as satisfying as watching amateur reality. I hope Ian is paying attention.