Photoshop...? Just Say No

This is one of my favourite photographs, by one of my favourite photographers.  To my untrained eye, everything about this picture is perfect.  There is a stillness to the picture, but at the same time, one's eye moves over it from left to right, and then back again.  The stately old barn is all that is left of the homestead, and it tells a story of days long gone.  I love the dead, windblown grass in the foreground.

When the photographer had the photo developed, he was told he could tweak the snow and make it whiter,  using Photoshop.  His reaction was ... "No."  Why would anyone want to do that to this wonderful picture?  If you look at the snow, it is actually filled with colours -- blues, browns, even some greens.  Tweaking the snow to make it whiter would turn the photograph into a ghastly Thomas Kincaid picture.  Sometimes less is more.

Photoshop is a wonderful program, I'm sure, but I think it has ruined more photographs than it has improved them.  Folks tweak perfectly wonderful photographs until they are shades of greens, yellow and pinks that do not exist in nature.  Sometimes more is just ... garish.

To me, this photograph is lovely, and what you see is what you get.  Photographers don't need Photoshop to make their photos better.

Spring Forward? Not If I Can Help It...

This weekend is the beginning of daylight saving time.  We will gain one hour of daylight in the evenings and lose one hour in the mornings.  I have never understood the reasoning behind this.  One of the first proponents of daylight saving time was an Englishman named William Willett.  He disliked having his evening round of golf cut short by the setting sun, so in 1905 he proposed advancing the clock during the summer months.  During the First World War, daylight saving time was adopted as a way to conserve coal and save electricity.  We live in a 24 hour schedule here in the 21st Century, and our schedules are no longer governed by the movements of the earth in relation to the sun.  We are surrounded by light, noise and electrical gadets.

"First electricity, now telephones.  Sometimes I feel as if I'm living in an H.G. Wells novel."  ~~ Countess Violet Grantham

I detest daylight saving time.

Most living things are biologically set to a circadian rhythm.  We need a certain amount of daylight and a certain amount of darkness, and our biological functions are tied to the light-dark cycle.  One of the most important of these biological functions is sleep.  Modern humans already live in a desperately sleep-deprived environment.  Indoor lighting and other stimuli already disrupt our circadian rhythm and our sleep-wake patterns.  This, in turn affects our health.  Why in the name of all that's wonderful do we need more light at ten o'clock at night?

Did I mention I detest daylight saving time?  The residents of the animal fraternity house next door will begin to stir, they will venture outdoors blinking at the bright blue sky, and they'll party down -- until the wee hours of the morning.  I'll be lucky to get four hours of sleep.  Folks will haul out their barbeques -- what is it about a summer evening that compels people to cook huge slabs of meat until they're charred to a crisp?

I'm thinking of buying a double-barrelled super soaker water blaster, but I would probably be arrested.  I hear jail is very noisy.

Faces, No Two Are Alike ... Or Are They?

Mona Lisa (La Gioconda)
Leonardo da Vinci
1503

The Mona Lisa is the most famous portrait, and arguably the most famous painting.  By today's standards, she would not be considered "cosmetically" beautiful, but her expression still speaks to us from 510 years ago.  Da Vinci captured her perfectly.  He was also not able to paint her hands correctly, and if you look closely, you can see where he has made a couple of attempts to correct the position of her fingers on her left hand.  To me, that gives the painting a human touch -- no pun intended.  But her face is what draws the eye.  The words most used to describe her are enigmatic and mysterious.  Our faces tell so much about us; a movement of a single muscle can change our expressions and convey a message to the people observing us.

Ever since I was a child, I have been fascinated by human faces.  Like snowflakes, no two faces are alike, but sometimes they can be very close.  Last weekend when I was watching all the celebrities prancing and preening walking the red carpet, all that was going through my mind was, "Hey!  She looks just like..." or "He looks just like..."  It was a hoot.  So, in no particular order, and for no reason whatsoever except it's fun, I put some faces together.  See what you think.

Bryce Dallas Howard and Jessica Chastain

Michelle Williams and Carey Mulligan

Julia Roberts and Steven Tyler

James Marsden and Rachel McAdams

If they ever married and had children, their kids would look just like both parents.

The next time you're standing in line at the supermarket, or in a crowd of people anywhere, check out people's faces.  They're fascinating and amazing, and you will always find someone who look just like someone else.

The Little Town Over the Hill...

An old farmer was working in his field one afternoon.  It was fairly hot, and the only sound was his older tractor.  He heard a car on the gravel road.  It was driving fast and kicking up a lot of dust, but it slowed down as it got closer to him.  The car came to a stop.  The old farmer saw a young man get out of the car and walk towards him.  “Hey!” the young man called out, “My family and I are moving to that town over the hill.  What’s it like?”

The old farmer looked at this rather sullen young man.  “What’s the town like you live in now?” he asked.

“Pretty bad,” the young man snapped.  “People are so backward.  They are so cliquish.  They don’t like me because I didn’t grow up there.  The police pick on people, the taxes are too high, the teachers are not very good, there’s too much gossip.  We can’t wait to leave that town.”

The old man said, “Well, son, I’m sorry, but that little town over the hill is just like it.”  The young man walked away, dejected.

A while later, another car pulled up.  This time a young woman got out and walked into the field.  “Hi!” she smiled, “Can I ask you something?”

The old farmer was impressed with this young woman.  She was pleasant and polite, and he liked her even though he did not know her.  Like the young man earlier, she said she and her family were moving to the little town over the hill.  She wanted to know what the new town was like.

As with the young man, the old farmer asked the young woman what the town was like she lived in now.

“Oh, it is such a great town!” she exclaimed.  “We love it and are so sad to be leaving.  The school is so good and they care so much for the children.  We will miss the teachers so much, and the kids just love their school.  And our neighbors are so nice.  People really care for each other – nice churches, progressive government, good stores.  It is a really nice town.”

The old farmer smiled and said to the young woman, 


“Well, I have good news for you.  That little town over the hill is just like it.”

Into the 21st Century...

It's not often we have the opportunity to observe history, but we will today when Pope Benedict XVI retires.  It will be the first time in 600 years that a Pope has stepped down from his position. He has pledged "unconditional reverence and obedience" to whomever succeeds him as head of the Roman Catholic church as he prepares to stand down. And when he retires, perhaps now would be a good time for the Catholic church to become part of the 21st century.

When I was getting married, my husband was Catholic and I was required to convert from Anglicanism to Catholicism in order to be baptized in the Catholic church.  Every week, I took instructions from a priest by the name of Father Belanger.  We would have long conversations, and one day Father Belanger said to me, "You'll never make a good Catholic, you ask too many questions."  I was baptized, however, and on the morning of my wedding, Father Belanger was in a car accident and, prophetically, his car struck a part of the Vancouver Island Mountain Range known as Angel Rock.  He survived and officiated at my wedding with a bruised face and a black eye.

The Catholic church has its problems, to be sure, but I prefer to believe that, for the most part, the priests and nuns are good people.  However, an institution as large as the Catholic church, with 1.8 billion followers, has to modernize.  It has to become part of the world in which its followers live.  Folks don't live in the 13th Century, they live in the 21st century, with all the ramifications of life in the 21st century.  Celibacy does not work.  My feeling is that Pope Benedict understood that, and had difficulty with it.  He is one of the more intellectual Popes to have governed the Catholic church.  Pope Benedict's legacy will be his resignation; that in itself is a "modern" act, if you will.  I don't believe Cardinal Joseph Aloisius Ratzinger ever wanted to be Pope, and his predecessor was certainly a hard act to follow.

The next Pope will be facing plenty of challenges.  Hopefully he will be a younger man who has experienced modern life, and has more understanding of the human condition.  And, I hope he asks a lot of questions.

Jennifer Lawrence

Jennifer Lawrence needs to fire her stylist.  As soon as I saw Jennifer on the red carpet, wearing that elaborate skirt, I knew what was going to happen.  This wonderful, talented young lady has won an Oscar at the age of 22, and all everyone tweeted about last night on the social media was her trip-and-fall.  She fell very badly, and took a long time to get back to her feet and regain her composure.  What should have been one of the most wonderful moments in her life instead became one of the most embarrassing.  Fire your stylist, Jennifer, but keep your agent.

The first time I saw Jennifer Lawrence, she played a poverty-stricken teenager in the Ozarks, in a movie called Winter's Bone.  If you haven't seen it, put it on your must-see list.  Jennifer Lawrence's performance is haunting and brilliant.  Jennifer Lawrence will win another Oscar one day, and I'm sure she won't let her stylist talk her into wearing a treacherous dress resembling a minefield -- an accident waiting to happen.

Congratulations on your success, Ms. Lawrence.  You have earned it.

Downton Abbey ... A Dream Sequence?

For the past three seasons, I have been hooked on Downton Abbey.  The characters have become as familiar to me as my own friends, and I find myself caring about what happens to them.  Upstairs and downstairs, they get themselves into such predicaments, week after week.  Will Anna uncover sufficient evidence to get Bates out of jail?  Will Mrs. O'Brien and Thomas sabotage each other?  Will Mr. Carson and Mrs. Hughes ever admit their fondness for each other?  And what biting bon mot will Lady Grantham come up with next?

Lady Grantham: "You are quite wonderful the way you see room for improvement wherever you look. I never knew such reforming zeal."
Mrs Crawley: "I take that as a compliment."
Lady Grantham: "I must have said it wrong."

So, when one of the characters meets a final and unalterable end, I am inconsolable.  There will be no "dream sequences" such as there were in Dallas, in which the entirety of season eight was revealed to have been a dream.  Once the characters in Downton Abbey are gone, they're gone.

Can I stand to watch another season?  I can hardly wait.

Asteroids and Meteors and Comets, oh My...

The odds of two celestial events happening in one day over our earth are one hundred million to one.  And yet, yesterday they happened.  Scientists have known for several months that Asteroid 2012 DA14 was heading our way, and would pass very close to earth, missing us by 15 minutes.  But no one expected the meteor shower over Russia, just hours before DA14's arrival.  That meteor caught everyone off guard and injured over 1,000 people.  On the NASA website: "According to NASA scientists, the trajectory of the Russia meteor was significantly different than the trajectory of the asteroid 2012 DA14, making it a completely unrelated object. Information is still being collected about the Russia meteor and analysis is preliminary at this point. In videos of the meteor, it is seen to pass from left to right in front of the rising sun, which means it was traveling from north to south. Asteroid DA14's trajectory is in the opposite direction, from south to north."  Can you imagine if they had collided?  What would be the odds of that?

Every day the earth is hit by several thousand meteors, most only the size of a grain of sand. Occasionally they are larger, ranging in size from a baseball to a kitchen table. Approximately once a week we are hit by a meteor the size of a car, and a few times a year we are hit by one the size of a house. Most of this space debris burns up when entering the earth's atmosphere, but occasionally someone on earth will get hit.  In 2009, Gerritt Blank, a 14-year-old boy in Germany, was hit by a meteorite the size of a pea.  It knocked him flying and left a foot wide crater in the ground.

"Hey! What was that?"

Just over 100 years ago, a meteor exploded over Tunguska, Siberia, causing an explosion the size of a nuclear bomb. And, there is a theory that the legend of Noah's Ark was created from a tsunami caused by a meteor that struck the Indian Ocean.

We're sitting ducks here on our little blue planet.  The good news is that if anything of substantial size comes our way, we will be forewarned.  If we can do anything to detract it remains to be seen.  We'll just call Bruce Willis.

Phinnaeus at 17...

This week, Phinnaeus turns 17.  How did that happen?  It was just last week he was this little guy on his tricycle.  Wasn't it just last week?  All of a sudden he has gone from a riding a tricycle, to getting his driver's license.  Really, how did that happen?

Phinnaeus came into this world with a huge personality.  I remember at one family dinner, when he was three years-old, he grandly announced to everyone, "I love all the people I know, and I don't love all the people I don't know."  Well, yes, you can't argue with that.  It made perfect sense to me.  Phinnaeus also has a wonderful intellectual curiosity, and he once made the profound statement, "I can hardly wait to learn about all the things in the world there are to learn."  I remember when Phinnaeus was around the age of two, he was obsessed with garbage trucks.  But of course, to a small child, garbage trucks are huge, noisy, mysterious things.  His way of dealing with them was to learn everything there was to learn about them.  I used to laugh every time he saw one -- "G'bage truck!" He's probably forgotten about that now.

Phinnaeus is a good person, with a good integrity.  He was born with his moral compass set for due north.  I recognized that when he was a very little boy.  The first thing he wants to do when he turns 17 is to donate blood.  Can you imagine?  Something like that would never even have occurred to me at the age of 17.  Phinnaeus says it's his way of being able to donate something to the community.  He has also taken it upon himself to read the Bible -- cover to cover -- just out of curiosity.  My father did the same thing when he was that age.  I often see strong links between Phinnaeus and my father, and I think some of my father's DNA was passed down to Phinnaeus, along with the reddish hair.  Phinnaeus also has a wicked sense of humour, and sense of the ridiculous.  I think that will serve him well throughout his lifetime.  To be able to see the humour in any situation is truly a gift.  Phinnaeus will be finishing high school next year, and he's still grappling with the idea of what he wants to do.  He has considered studying law, and we all think he would be a natural lawyer.  No one can split a hair the way Phinnaeus can.  Whatever he does, he will do it well.

Phinnaeus is on the border of manhood, and his parents deserve to be very proud of him.  He's a lot of fun, and he's a good person.  And I think his moral compass will always be set for due north.

Happy Birthday, Phinnaeus!

Did You Get the License Numbers...?

Did anyone happen to get the license numbers of those trucks that hit me last week?  One by one, they ran over me -- headache, chest congestion, runny nose, aches, fevers, did I mention headache?  I haven't had a cold like that since -- I can't remember when.  I am slowly returning to the land of the well, however, and will be posting again soon.  This weekend is a three-day weekend here in B.C.  It's a new holiday called "family day".  I'm calling it "sleep in every morning, and then go for long walks and get some fresh air day".  Spring is just around the corner.  Yay!

Have a wonderful weekend, everyone.