Image: Red Tulips #2

Grandview 31st October 1920

Vancouver Sun, 19201031, p.38

All previous Grandview 1920 clippings.

The Annoying Pause

I am becoming ever more irritated with newsreaders (especially) who add a pause before the final couple of words in each sentence. If the final phrase had some special meaning then perhaps it might be OK. But usually it is just the end of a sentence — nothing special — and it is used as some kind of effect.

I suppose they are taught this in broadcasting school, and I am noticing it more frequently these days with younger anchors. Scott Roberts on CTV News is a prime example of a pauser.

It really annoys me.

Night Music: Young, Dumb and Broke

GWAC Meeting

Next Monday evening is GWAC’s monthly meeting for November. It is a ZOOM meeting (so safe “to gather”) and I hope you will enjoy the topic and the discussion.

Grandview 30th October 1920

Vancouver World, 19201030, p.7

All previous Grandview 1920 clippings.

Image: Self Sequence

Grandview 29th October 1920

Province, 19201029, p.29

All previous Grandview 1920 clippings.

On Being Seventy-One

Today I am seventy-one years old.

Just saying that feels unreal.  When I was born in 1949, average life expectancy for a man in the UK was about 65 years; I have somehow managed to beat that.

I am part of the generation that didn’t trust anyone over thirty, and who made terribly dangerous choices on a regular basis throughout their thirties and forties. By the 1990s, what with all the drugs and the booze and the carousing, I was certain I couldn’t possibly reach fifty, and I wasn’t all that sure I wanted to.

Now, I have kids in their late forties, grand-children in their mid-twenties, and I am sure that great-grand-children can’t be far away.

The fact that I am still here, walking and talking and pretending (to myself at least) to be young, is astonishing, a wonder, a miracle of modern medicine, and a tribute to the Everloving who takes such good care of me.

My future keeps catching up to my present and I hope it keeps doing so for a long time.  After all, I have promised myself my first ever Big Mac on my one hundredth birthday!

Night Music: Taimane Gardner

Grandview 28th October 1920

Vancouver Sun, 19201028, p.8

All previous Grandview 1920 clippings.

Image: Lines & Shadows #3

Grandview 27th October 1920

Vancouver World, 19201027, p.16

All previous Grandview 1920 clippings.

Night Music: Papa Ddiaye

Grandview 26th October 1920

Vancouver World, 19201026, p.9

All previous Grandview 1920 clippings.

Poem: Five Definitive Movements

 

Childhood is

a flat green blade growing from the stem of a plant,

the absorbing and digesting of

a body of myths

 

Adolescence is

the property of becoming self-luminous

in the recognition of

fire and hunger and strong desire

 

Adulthood is

the acceptance of the heat and light caused by burning;

a steady flow that rises

as the tide, and ebbs

 

Wisdom is

known only to those of special comprehension,

something very white,

a leaf blown across the firmament

 

Death is

the beginning of all things, the nape

that links the body of one life to

the head of the next

 

Drone Awards 2020

The winners of the 2020 Drone Awards include some stunning images. The overall winner was this image of a school of salmon that had formed into the shape of a heart, with a prowling shark within:

Love Heart of Nature. Photographer: Jom Picot

My own favourite was this:

Picking red chillies. Photographer: Azim Khan Ronnie

Select images for a larger view.

There are plenty more to see in the Guardian and on Hyperallergic.

Image: Winter Scene

Grandview 25th October 1920

Province, 19201025, p.17

All previous Grandview 1920 clippings.

Night Music: Teach Your Children