Author: Bill

My brother Jack and his wife Penny are back home after a 10 day holiday on the Baja. Jack writes, “Penny jumped in and swam with a whale shark while we were out watching blue whales. Whale sharks aren’t biters. See the attachment with our friend Harvey patting the thing. I did too but, I didn’t jump in.”
Oh. Not biters. Well OK, then.
Below is a Wikipedia picture of one in an aquarium. They may be docile but they are also HUGE.

The inconvenient Indian : a curious account of Native People in North America
by Thomas King
Good book. Easy and entertaining to read, filled with fascinating facts. Best of all, it’s right up to date, covering issues as recent as the Keystone XL and Northern Gateway pipeline controversies.
If you’d like to get a good handle on where we are with relations between native and non-native people in Canada and the U.S. (Turtle Island), grab a copy.
In it you’ll find humour, irony, history and current affairs. You won’t find easy answers, but you’ll probably learn how complex cultural issues can be. Beware, though. It might change your point of view on a few things.

This morning’s shot from Sue in Regina. In response to her emailed photo, she got the one below.

It’s been a while since I received photos from Rebecca. She’s been working long hours at the office but it hasn’t affected her steady hand or her photographer’s eye.
Here are a couple more…

Indefatigable John Robert Colombo, “Canada’s Master Gatherer” has another important book to his credit. The Northrup Frye Quote Book will soon be available through publisher Dundurn Press and it’s already in the online catalogue.
Although many Canadians will be unaware of Northrup Frye‘s writings, he was a literary critic of the highest international status. Colombo has been working on this book of quotations for years and I will be very happy when I can get my hands on a copy. It will make the wit and wisdom of Mr Frye more accessible, although his entire oeuvre has been published in 30 volumes by the University of Toronto.
I enjoy a sneak peek, reading the quotation on the cover about advertising:

Advertising — A judicious mixture of flattery and threats.

The cover, by the way, is not one of my designs but I like it very much. I might have cropped around Northup’s mane more carefully, but that’s a quibble. It’s a well chosen photo of Frye. Great facial expression and I get a kick out of the devilish way the red quotation marks stick out of his head like horns.
Congratulations on your latest publication, JRC. You continue to live up to that Order of Canada citation you received years ago.

Until today, I was paying Teksavvy $29.99 a month for a DSL (phone line) internet connection that gave me a real life 4.2 Mbps download speed, The service allowed me 75GB of data downloading but I use about a third of that.
When I noticed a 10 Mbps package for $32.99, of course I went for it. The real life speed is 8.5 Mbps and I’m allowed 300GB of downloading. There was a one-time fee of $50 to have a guy come over and fix up a high speed connection. Well worth it, I think.
Teksavvy lets me use my own modem, so no rental fees for that. I bought my own a couple of years ago and it paid for itself in a few months. From here on, my speedy internet will cost me $32.99/month plus tax.
Canadians pay too much for communications services that are lame compared to those of more advanced countries, but until enough of us shout about it, the telco/cable oligopoly isn’t going to do any better by us. The best a single customer can do is to shop around and get the best possible deal. At present, Teksavvy looks good to me.

Cheryl and Lloyd Cooke chose to stay in Mexico long enough to enjoy the Easter celebrations and I can see why. The Mexicans make big, colourful, papier maché effigies of all kinds of devils, witches, capitalist pigs and other baddies, parade them around in the streets and then blow them to smithereens with firecrackers.
I think Lloyd said the effigies are about 9 feet tall. There are more short videos here.

Here’s Helen Andersen, my mother, painted by her mother before I was born. Helen died in 1995 and when her husband Raabye died 10 years later, most of her paintings were thought to be lost. Water damage had claimed them… or so we thought.
This week, out of the blue, a message arrived informing us that perhaps as many as 30 of Helen’s smaller works had survived. They were discovered in the apartment building where Raabye had lived. The building’s new owners were told that the neglected works were apparently not not wanted by anyone.

Isn’t this painting of Anado fresh, loose and full of personality? I love the colours, too. Anado wanted to buy it but Lloyd generously made a gift of it.
Anado is evidently an inspiring character. From his website:

“Anado has led an exciting, glorious, laborious, irreverent, spirited, delicious, ordinary yet eventful life. He was born in Oklahoma and spent his first 19 years there. At age 20 his soul was psychedelicized and the imprint of the late 60’s…”

You can see more of Lloyd’s work here. Read on to see some of Lloyd’s Anado shots:

“Critics of Rob Ford, Toronto’s laughable bumblefuck of a mayor…”

I had to LOL when I read this item about how His Worship is in hot water over remarks about his high school football coachin’. Geez, it’s tough enough mayorin’. Then they pick on you for being a child-saving hero. What a bunch of ingrates.