I put artificial roses on my mother's grave today. I needed bolt cutters to cut the wire to fit the roses on the plaque but because I read Werner Herzog's dictum "Carry bolt cutters everywhere" I had them in the trunk. I told Krystal, who liked Herzog, about it the first time I used them to cut the wire. Now Krystal's another mother who's gone but I don't know exactly where, if anywhere, she's buried.
Hi all, journalist photographer, Blogging since 1996. Written for Toronto Star, Cité Libre, Toronto and Ottawa Sun and Ottawa Citizen. email markbellis@spamcop.net, enjoy! All content copyright Mark Bellis, and other copyright holders unless where noted.
Sunday, May 12, 2024
Saturday, May 11, 2024
Aurora
Not good results - It was overcast in the evening, but I went out at 4 am and saw them - very beautiful - I couldn't get a good focus though! It is the first time I've seen that purple colour. It was like being in a room hung with translucent silks that are slowly changing shape and lights were pulsing through them.
Monday, May 6, 2024
Sunday, May 5, 2024
Friday, April 26, 2024
Downfall
And if the cloud bursts thunder in your ear
You shout and no one seems to hear
And if the band you're in starts playing different tunes
I'll see you on the dark side of the moon - Pink Floyd
I was walking into the grocery store and there was a woman about 25 sitting down next to the door with a shopping bag. She put down her head and started crying. She said "The music inside my head is playing so loud it hurts!" I asked her if she could get home. She said she could if someone picked her up. I gave her some money for a taxi and she said they'd call her a taxi inside the store. She was in new clothes and well groomed and could get up by herself to go in the store. I thought she might have had a sudden onset of psychosis. I interviewed the father of a schizophrenic who had been a university student, doing well, had friends and a job and then one day they got a call from him from their cottage, which was closed after the summer. He was hiding there because he thought people were trying to hurt him.
Monday, April 22, 2024
Goose on a roof, fiddleheads
Saturday, April 20, 2024
Classic Cosplay
Thursday, April 18, 2024
Wednesday, April 17, 2024
Monday, April 15, 2024
Thursday, April 11, 2024
Forrest, but not Gump
I sent a package to a suburb of Atlanta, Georgia today - I notice the street name in the address was Forrest, very likely named after Nathan Bedford Forrest, Confederate General and first Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan.
Oh no, O.G.!
"O.G (sic) Simpson is dead." - CBC Radio One, Ottawa. I remember watching the O.J. chase on TV and chatting about it online on a BBS.
Monday, April 8, 2024
Total solar eclipse April 8, 2024
Thursday, April 4, 2024
Wednesday, April 3, 2024
Sunday, March 31, 2024
Easter Sunday Swimmers
I saw the woman in a cow outfit crossing the street and I figured they were just going to take pictures - they actually were going to swim - the man went in and said the water burned. Swimmers, Glen Walter,Ontario March 31, 2024.
Tuesday, March 26, 2024
First Turkey Vulture of Spring
Wednesday, March 20, 2024
Rabbi Reuven Bulka
Rabbi Reuven Bulka was a prominent figure in Ottawa, appearing on CFRA radio and in the Ottawa Sun where he promoted Kindness Week.
He died in 2021 and his granddaughter Rikki Ash has published a book this month about him called "Canada's Rabbi"
My friend went to his Modern Orthodox synagogue and she said he said it was OK to watch baseball on the Sabbath because - and I braced for an explanation citing Talmudic authorities - "Jews like baseball. But only during the playoffs!" or the World Series!
Thursday, March 14, 2024
Wednesday, March 13, 2024
Monday, March 11, 2024
Thursday, March 7, 2024
No, RCMP divers weren't attacked by giant eels in Newfoundland
Cressie is one of the many cryptids that appear in lakes in North America in popular legend. (Joe Nickell, Skeptical Inquirer, Volume 33, No. 4, July/August 2009. p.18) It's supposed to be an eel-like creature up to 25 feet long, although no photos have ever been seen of it.
RCMP Scuba divers were reported to have seen eels 'as thick as a man's thigh' when they attempted to recover the body of a pilot who had crashed his plane into Crescent Lake in Newfoundland sometime in the 1980s. Nickell says that the RCMP were unable to confirm this account and I wondered if there was any media accounts of a fatal plane crash. I contacted Memorial University archivist Nicole Penney, who had been quoted by the CBC in their 2019 story about the cryptid and she said the story came from an oral account in their files.
Penney contacted an aviation historian who knew someone who was a pilot who lived in the lake's neighbourhood. From their information, Penney sent me the story of a fatal plane crash near Crescent Lake, which happened in Robert's Arm in the early 70s, which seemed to be the one the informant who gave the oral account was referring to.
The aircraft was really a home made glider piloted by Maxwell Anthony, and it crashed suddenly in a downdraft while returning through the narrows of the harbour. The story mentions ice, and does not mention any dive crews being called, so the glider may have crashed and remained on the surface of the ice. The story was described in "Moments in time : a cultural portrait of Green Bay, Newfoundland." Green Bay Economic Development Association.Springdale, Nfld : Green Bay Economic Development Association; 1994"
Wednesday, March 6, 2024
What I learned today
Tuesday, March 5, 2024
Sunday, March 3, 2024
Saturday, March 2, 2024
Monday, February 19, 2024
Bangkok phallus lucky charm. Jokes make themselves.
Sunday, February 11, 2024
Muzzle brake, M109 Howitzer
Wednesday, February 7, 2024
Sunday, February 4, 2024
Thursday, February 1, 2024
Earthquake
Earthquake woke me at 7:37 a.m local time. 3.6 magnitude near Huntingdon, Quebec. It felt like a large truck was passing by. I didn't feel the aftershocks. (Image Earthquakes Canada)