The leaves are beginning to turn colour here, and the sky is the brilliant blue that always makes me think of my mother quoting Helen Hunt Jackson's poem about "October's bright blue weather."
The poem is rather schmaltzy, but the line certainly describes what it's like outside. This photo also gives an idea of the uphill road we're all travelling in Canada this week, toward an election when we get rid of Stephen Harper and his Cons. There will be a lot of heated conversation this Canadian Thanksgiving weekend as tens of thousands of people debate what is the best way to do that.
If you feel the need to retreat from the fray, here's the poem which is both dated and too sentimental, but can get your mind off the dilemmas of democracy.
October's Bright Blue Weather
O SUNS and skies and clouds of June,
And flowers of June together,
Ye cannot rival for one hour
October's bright blue weather;
When loud the bumble-bee makes haste,
Belated, thriftless vagrant,
And Golden-Rod is dying fast,
And lanes with grapes are fragrant;
When Gentians roll their fringes tight
To save them for the morning,
And chestnuts fall from satin burrs
Without a sound of warning;
When on the ground red apples lie
In piles like jewels shining,
And redder still on old stone walls
Are leaves of woodbine twining;
When all the lovely wayside things
Their white-winged seeds are sowing,
And in the fields, still green and fair,
Late aftermaths are growing;
When springs run low, and on the brooks,
In idle golden freighting,
Bright leaves sink noiseless in the hush
Of woods, for winter waiting;
When comrades seek sweet country haunts,
By twos and twos together,
And count like misers, hour by hour,
October's bright blue weather.
O suns and skies and flowers of June,
Count all your boasts together,
Love loveth best of all the year
October's bright blue weather.
The Walkable City: From Haussmann's Boulevards to Jane Jacobs' Streets and Beyond
The election is on Monday, and it looks from here like a minority Liberal (red) government. The NDP (orange) stands to lose much of what it gained in the Orange Wave of 2011 for reasons that I might go into later (has to do with letting the Liberals out flank them on the left, I'm convinced). The Greens (green, of course) ran an honourable campaign, but if they get more than two or three seats they'll be lucky.
The leaves are beginning to turn colour here, and the sky is the brilliant blue that always makes me think of my mother quoting Helen Hunt Jackson's poem about "October's bright blue weather."
Pleased to say that I've just signed a contract with the University of Regina Press to publish my next non-fiction book Road through Time, probably in Spring 2017. It's about roads as vectors for change and exchange over time. The photo is of the Andes cordillera that I crossed on a bus just two years ago shortly after the new highway from Cuzco into Brazil was opened.
Fallis portrays the vagaries of public opinion as well as the inner workings of political campaign extremely, but entertainingly well. (Hint: there's quite a bit about lawn signs, telephone canvassing and door to door.) I know just how hard that is to do. In another life I spent far too much time organizing political campaigns and tried in one of my first novels (Endangered Species) to give a taste of the rush a political junkie gets from filling out phone canvass forms. My editor that time around made me cut a lot of the details. Fallis either was smarter than I or had a good editor too, because this novel is mostly fun. 
Last year a photo of African migrants holding cell phones up in Djibouti won the World Press Photo prize. The men were trying to pick up a good signal in order to communicate back home. Beautiful photo illustrating something that seemed exotic.
Didn't have my camera with me the other night, but Thom, his mother, Grandpa and I made an after-supper visit to a local artisanal ice cream place. It was a lovely summer evening and the lines of parents, kids and grandkids were long. Our choices were mostly chocolate: good thing Thom was wearing a brown tee shirt because it was covered in drips before the treat was eaten. Grandpa's white beard also was decorated with chocolate as he ate a cone with TWO scoops! 
Not to make too much about it, but when I woke up about 4 a.m. to open the windows after a thunderstorm I lay in bed listening to nighthawks flying in the night. Obviously they aren't nesting near us, and the scouts were probably checking out a wider range, following the rain, but I was so pleased to know that the birds still nest in the city.
