May Image of the Month

There's going to be a bit of a dither here. Most of the images under consideration come from the noir detective photo session with Michelle and Antje. If you somehow missed them along the way, you can see the noir detectives here, and the Antje portrait photos here.

There's a bit of a fork in the road for me making this choice. It boils down to, which photos is the best photo of a person, and subtly different, which photo best captures the image and mood that was in my head as we worked through the session?

Plus I'm sort of breaking one of my rules. I try to not have variations of the same photo, which is why you don't see the other version of what ended up as IotM.

This was one of the most fun times I've had with a camera. They were totally into the story and we all worked together to get these fabulous images. Even after seeing the almost abstract images that started the whole thing, they were surprised at how different the images looked compared to what their eyes saw. These images will certainly be in the running for Image of the Year.

Honourable mention. 

I don't often do this. But this one is such a striking image, although it didn't match what was in my head for the photo session. We were playing with light, getting warmed up. Sometimes serendipity happens. 

2nd Runner Up

This was while we were getting warmed up and playing with light, getting a sense of who these characters are.

1st Runner Up

By now Antje had relaxed and was having fun with it. There's a colour version that brings up the red in her hair, but that distracts from the twinkle in her eye, and the 'I know something you don't' smile.

Image of the Month

In the end, I went with the one that matched the image in my head. There's one very similar to this one (#5 in the link above) that Michelle likes. Let's just say there was a lot of dithering. In the end, the image is about her, and not the textures of the hat or coat.

That was reassuring

I was one of the 404,293 verified signatures on the Forever Canadian petition a few months ago. Smith is so deluded, or so in thrall to the separatist idiots in her party that she seems to think these people want a referendum on leaving Canada. 

The 300,000 or so unverified signatures in a petition tainted by the organizers breaching the law in sharing the electors database, yeah, you could fairly say the actual people signing want a referendum on leaving Canada. Whether they actually want to leave is another question. I think of it as a child threatening to hold their breath until they turn blue. Personally, I think the data breach invalidates the entire petition.

There are about 4 million adults in Alberta. Ten percent of them went out of their way to sign a petition saying they want to continue to be Canadians. The other 3.3 million Albertans  didn't sign either poll, and anybody can make up whatever story they like about what that means. I suspect it means those people are mostly ok with the way things are now. They might be cranky about both of the Trudeau's, or the perceived inequities that Alberta struggles under, but recognize Alberta is better within Canada, even as you agitate for changes. 

Just in case you are wondering, the idea of Alberta becoming an independent country is one of the stupidest ideas the provincial Conservative government has supported. Make no mistake, despite Smith's protestations that she wants Alberta to stay in Canada, I don't believe her. She and her party have bent over backwards to accommodate the separatists. They could, and should have squished the concept right from the start. Instead, we get a stupid petition question, see below the photos.

I don't think any of the separatists have actually read the Clarity act, or thought about what it means. And then there are Treaties 4, 6, 7, 8, and 10, which cover all of Alberta. Those treaties (which to be fair have been honoured more in the breach than the observance) are signed between the Crown and the many indigenous people before Alberta became a province. They cannot be waved aside like an inconvenient nuisance. There is much more that can be said on this topic.

When I saw you can get a lawn sign I signed up. Pickup was today at the Renfrew Community Centre. I hoped lots of people would show up, and the knot of traffic looking for a parking spot said it was happening. I ended up parking 2 blocks away. 

There was probably 100 people in line in front of me, and one of the volunteers said the line had been that long right from opening time. It went quick though. Once inside, you show them the code you got for registering, and back out again with your sign. I didn't time it, but the photo meta data says it took about 10 minutes from joining the line, to walking out with my sign. Into the cold windy rain. The line was just as long as it had been. 

Some people hung around to get their photo in front of the van, but most people hustled back to their cars. Some people were milling around inside the hall, mainly because it was warm.

You can register for your lawn sign here. Do it.

I loved seeing it. People coming out in the rain, socializing, chatting, in good spirits, showing how they feel about their country. We have our flaws, and there's things we could do better, but Canada is a country to be proud of. My Canada includes Quebec, and Alberta, and all the other provinces and territories.

Here's the 10 questions on the ballot this fall. My responses are in () brackets so as to not mess up the formatting more than it already is. 

O.C. 110/2026 sets out the following questions and orders the results of the referendum on these questions are not to be binding. Electors will mark either “yes” or “no” for each question on their ballots.

1. Do you support the Government of Alberta taking increased control over immigration for the purposes of decreasing immigration to more sustainable levels, prioritizing economic migration and giving Albertans first priority on new employment opportunities?
   (No. This is a shared jurisdiction. Alberta law needs to function within Canadian law. Alberta government was the one that asked for more immigration.)
   
   
2. Do you support the Government of Alberta introducing a law mandating that only Canadian citizens, permanent residents and individuals with an Alberta­ approved immigration status will be eligible for provincially-funded programs, such as health care, education and other social services?
   (No. They want to discriminate against immigrants, and sidestep Canadian law.)
   
   
3. Assuming that all Canadian citizens and permanent residents continue to qualify for social support programs as they do now, do you support the Government of Alberta introducing a law requiring all individuals with a non-permanent legal immigration status to reside in Alberta for at least 12 months before qualifying for any provincially-funded social support programs?
   (No. Who keeps track? What is the cost of doing so? Who defines residency?)
   
   
4. Assuming that all Canadian citizens and permanent residents continue to qualify for public health care and education as they do now, do you support the Government of Alberta charging a reasonable fee or premium to individuals with a non-permanent immigration status living in Alberta for their and their family’s use of the healthcare and education systems?
   (No. See previous responses. )
   
   
5. Do you support the Government of Alberta introducing a law requiring individuals to provide proof of citizenship, such as a passport, birth certificate or citizenship card, to vote in an Alberta provincial election?
   (No. There are already adequate identification requirements for voting. There are essentially no cases of fraudulent voting in Canada. )

O.C. 109/2026 sets out the following constitutional questions. Electors will mark either “yes” or “no” for each question on their ballots:

6. Do you support the Government of Alberta working with the governments of other willing provinces to amend the Canadian Constitution to have provincial governments, and not the federal government, select the justices appointed to provincial King’s Bench and Appeal courts?
(No. Amending the Canadian Constitution is essentially impossible, much as some people might desire it. The government of the day would appoint judges that favour their policies.)

7. Do you support the Government of Alberta working with the governments of other willing provinces to amend the Canadian Constitution to abolish the unelected federal Senate?
(No. See above. Open to discussing changes to how they are selected, within the current Constitution. )

8. Do you support the Government of Alberta working with the governments of other willing provinces to amend the Canadian Constitution to allow provinces to opt out of federal programs that intrude on provincial jurisdiction such as health care, education, and social services, without a province losing any of the associated federal funding for use in its social programs?
(No. See above. The province wants to get federal funding without the feds having any say over it.)

9. Do you support the Government of Alberta working with the governments of other willing provinces to amend the Canadian Constitution to better protect provincial rights from federal interference by giving a province’s laws dealing with provincial or shared areas of constitutional jurisdiction priority over federal laws when the province’s laws and federal laws conflict?
(No. See above. Having provincial laws take precedence over federal laws is a stupid concept.)

O.C. 160/2026 sets out the following question and orders the results of the referendum on this question are not to be binding. Electors will mark an “x” next to the options of their choice on their ballots.

10. Should Alberta remain a province in Canada, or should the Government of Alberta commence the legal process required under the Canadian Constitution to hold a binding provincial referendum on whether or not Alberta should separate from Canada?

Option 1: Alberta should remain a province in Canada.

Option 2: The Government of Alberta should commence the legal process required under the Canadian Constitution to hold a binding provincial referendum on whether or not Alberta should separate from Canada.

(That's really bad phrasing, but at least it's not a yes or no question like I feared. Is there anyone in any doubt I'll be voting for option 1?)

My only consolation is that they didn't include questions on creating an Alberta Pension Plan to be funded by raiding the Canada Pension Plan, or creating a Provincial Police force. In case you were wondering, both of those are stupid ideas. AIMCo (the board for managing pension and the Heritage funds) has demonstrated little competence in managing funds, and the people appointed to that board are beholden to the provincial Cabinet. And having the police run by the province means the government can control what they investigate, and with the conservatives, there's lots to investigate. 

But really, I think all these questions are designed to distract the voters from the real issues of the day, and get them all worked up about something other than their incompetence. None the less, it will be easy to deal with. Vote no to all of it.

Flowery Friday 3 Into the sun

Morning is often a nice time for flower photos. There might be some dew. The sunlight is typically softer, and a bit more directional so there might be interesting shadows. One of the fun things is putting the flower between the camera and the sun. This gets a bit tricky at times, depending on where the flower is in relation to a wall, and how prone the lens might be to flare.

These are from Thursday morning. It was lovely and soft outside, but I'm pretty sure it'll be like yesterday, smoking hot in the afternoon, with some ominous clouds rolling in. Night before last was a huge thunder and lightning storm. That's kind of typical for Calgary for about this time of year. A nice morning, afternoon rain showers or storms, then a nice evening. It happens a lot during Stampede. We sometimes joke that the clouds just want to join the party.

1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

The Alberta separatism thing started off stupid and is getting stupider. I'm trying not to let it get to my blood pressure. 

In film news, Thursday morning I finished roll 10 in the film project, and developed it in the afternoon. That went pretty well, ending up editing 12 of the 16 frames.

The task today is to unearth some drawers that store old statements and bills. The community association got stiffed by the company that was supposed to send a shredding truck to our clean up event a couple weeks ago. We've got a different company coming on Saturday.

Of the Day

Driftwood (NZ)

Driftwood (NB)

Film, during a walk in the Inglewood Bird sanctuary.

Linda

Newfoundland

New Brunswick

Why ever didn't I publish this, and maybe I did

90 days, or so ago, from an early April walk in Fish Creek.

Flower, one of the few tulips that survived the voles.

Landscape

Pots and peonies

Once again, Linda has scored a deal. She found these greenish pots at Home Sense, for a fraction of the price elsewhere. They matched some yellowish ones she bought a few years ago. It's not like she's short of pots for plants, but they called to her. Insistently. Just so you know, they are extremely heavy. I can barely pick them up. Just saying.

1.

2.

3.

They replace some old wooden barrel sort of pots that are decades old, and barely holding together.

In other news, the peonies are doing great! I was wondering about the ones Linda planted in the front bed, since they seemed a bit slow to get started. The soil isn't quite so good, and there's a bit more shade, but they are on their way as well.

4.

5.

6.

7.

This is one of the pink peonies, leading the race so far. The white and red are coming on strong.

8.

Of the Day

Driftwood (NZ)

Driftwood (NB)

Film

Linda

Newfoundland

New Brunswick

Why ever didn't I publish this, and maybe I did

90 days, or so ago

The front on April 7. 

Landscape

A recent weird book thing

I've always like Malcolm Gladwell's essays. They're interesting and well written, often with a bit of a twist bringing a fresh point of view. You might remember his "Tipping Point" caught the attention of a lot of people.

We'll, he's revisited it. The Revenge of the Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell.

I saw it in the library and picked it up almost without thinking about it. Then when I was reading it, I had the oddest sensation that I'd read it before. That happens, of course. Publishers change covers, and sometimes different editions of a work will have different titles. Often there's a big time gap between the old and the news.

This was a bit different. I have no memory of ever seeing this cover before, and the book was published in 2024 so it wasn't even that long ago. There is no library stamp inside it indicating when they acquired it. I don't have a photo of it in Lightroom, or if I do I never edited it and it's buried. I don't have it on the shelf downstairs with the other Gladwell books, but maybe it was put somewhere else.

And yet, the book was entirely familiar, so I must have read it before, but have no memory of actually doing so. Anyways, it's a good read.

The other recent library book is a topic near and dear to my heart, enough is enuf by Gabe Henry.

I saw a reference to it on a youtube channel called RobWords, here. His voice gets a bit, I don't know, unctuous might be the right word, but it's sort of understandable given his profession and the topic at hand. Pronunciation would be important to him.

He brings up lots of interesting points about English words, and in one of them referenced this book. English is a brutally difficult language to spell, though that makes it one of the easiest languages to do puns in. I clearly remember a grade three class as we were taking turns reading out loud. I liked to read ahead and came across the word "island". All my readers know it's pronounced 'eye-land' and I knew it then because of the context, even though I'd never seen it in print. I also knew whoever was reading it would probably pronounce it as "is land" because the teacher was a stickler for saying "sound out the new word". And they did, and it was corrected. The teacher said it was an exception to the rules. 

Then later she got onto 'i before e except after c'. Given my name is spelled Keith, there's an exception right there. I later found out the rule is more complicated than that, depending on the sound the vowel pair makes, and there are still exceptions. So best not to think of it as a rule after all, and just memorize the spellings. And the pronunciations. There's a lot of that in English.

Consider:

The "ow" sound (when you cut your finger) and the "owe" sound (I need to pay off my bookie). Let's go through it.

Bow (and arrow) or Bow (to the king) but not spelled Bowe. What about Bough (of a tree)?

Cow 

There is no Dow, but there is Doe.

There is no Fow, or Fowe, but Foe.

There is no Gow, but there is Go.

How, but not Howe unless you're talking about Mr. Hockey, but Hoe.

Low, pronounced Lowe. But why not Lowd (loud).

Mow (part of a barn to store hay), and Mow (the lawn) but we pronounce it Mowe, but don't spell it Moe.

Now, but also No but not Noe or Nowe.

Pow, and Poe (the author).

Row (your boat) or Row (squabble), but we pronounce it Rowe, but don't spell it Roe because fish eggs, I guess.

Sow (a pig) or Sow (the seeds), but we pronounce it Sowe and don't spell it Soe, or Sew.

Tow (a trailer) or the Toe of your foot, but not Towe. And what about the whole To, Too, and Two thing?

Vow

Wow

That's just one example out of my head. Here's one from the book. "A rough cough and a hiccough plough me through." 

I can appreciate the desire for people to rationalize English, thinking a word ought to be spelled the way it sounds, or pronounced the way it's spelled. That a given sequence of letters should have a unique pronunciation and preferably, a unique meaning, but that ship has long sailed. 

But it's complicated. Oh boy, is it complicated. Words that have a similar appearance might come from different languages with different pronunciations. Then there was the Great Vowel Shift which influenced figuring out how to spell things when the printing press came along. It didn't help that the people running the printing press didn't speak English as their first language, and besides, it wasn't quite the English we know yet. Which sort of explains why food does not rhyme with good.

Part of the problem is that we have more word sounds than we have letters to express them. Yet creating new letters to express those sounds, or reassigning the sounds the existing letters make is enormously complicated. So many exceptions, and making changes makes the words look like the person using them is uneducated. We have letters from Latin, but English doesn't use Latin rules. We have words imported from other languages but we don't pronounce them the same way, and sometimes they overlap with existing words.

In the end, I admit to being a bit of a language snob. Just the other day I rejected a job application because the person was seeking a "carrer". It's good advice to not read the comments and certainly not take them seriously. But even the actual articles, I look at how it's written. Spelling mistakes and poor usage flag it as either AI, or someone that can't be troubled to express themselves clearly. Big red fail button, with some exceptions for people using English as a second language. 

Reforms are happening, though. Or is it tho? If I were texting someone I'd probably type that, unless the damnyouautocorrect fixed it correctly. Don't get me started on that. I'm sure that by the time I'm actually old, I'll be waving my cane at the text, shouting, "Hey you vandals, get off of my language!"

Of the Day

Driftwood (NZ)

Driftwood (NB)

Linda

Newfoundland

New Brunswick

Why ever didn't I publish this, and maybe I did

Film and 90 days, or so ago

Flower

Landscape