The Ant
The ant has made himself illustrious
Through constant industry industrious.
So what?
Would you be calm and placid
If you were full of formic acid?
OGDEN NASH
Ants and Stories
booklink
Yo Ho Ho Etc
A reader asked about a photo in my recent article about a shrew I met while walking in London. The photo was originally posted to WhatsApp, a great tool that I use to broadcast photos and the odd note to attest to my continuing safe progress, remaining both vertical and mentate. Cold Blooded is another photo from the same wet walk.
Gravitational Waves And More
There are a few stories in these journals about how technology changes with time (and space). Today, our TV breakfast news was headlined by the story of a collision of two black holes several billion years ago. A redefinition of the concept of a ‘late breaking’ story that we know about because of the sciences. The collision that was detected chirped for less than a tenth of a second on May 21st, 2019. It’s worth noting that mankind only invented the mechanism to record such news recently.
Banquet Gānbēi
I’m on the mailing list for the The London Review of Books and every now and then their Diverted Traffic anti-news newsletter catches me with an appetite for a morsel from their archives.
While I enjoy these essays, reviews and stories, I savour the memories that they invoke. I’m living a lot of my life in my head at the moment and remembering unusual experiences gives me food for thought and a recipe for journaling.
Saturn V, NASA Clear Lake, 1985
To 180 and Beyond
I don’t know that I’ve ever had a truly original thought. That said, this is consecutive journal post number 180. That’s six months of nothing new every day. If journaling was darts …
Caveat emptor: my daily musings may be incomplete and incorrect.
Canon 1D-X (2011) with MTO-11CA 1000mm (1957) f/10.5 1/5000s ISO 4000
© Simon Robinson 20170827
Today’s photo was taken across Dublin Bay through haze this day three years ago. The digital haze clearance and clarity adjustment has introduced an unnatural light effect that is curiously attractive. I had been introduced to the MTO lens the year before and I finally made my way back to the owner with a Canon adaptor. I liked the idea of a 1000mm lens so much that I bought a second hand copy I saw sitting cheaply in Mr CAD Photographic in Pimlico. My MTO-11CA was built in November 1993 from the 1950s design and I’ve already journaled some results from when we lived in London.
[Read more…] about To 180 and BeyondPatagonian and Fuegian Tales
‘I passed through three boring towns’ was the start of a chapter that changed the way I thought about travel writers yet again. It helped that I would visit them after I read the chapter. Both visits were stopovers of a kind. One by commercial jet, the other by ship seeking shelter from two cyclones that seemed to merge just to scare us off.
I had found In Patagonia in a shop in Buenos Aires in late 1995. I was living in a hotel on Avenida de Mayo just a stone’s throw from the Casa Rosada, the Presidential Palace. Carlos Menem had just been re-elected and there were almost weekly protest marches on Thursdays. Once, a firework cannister was directed at me for watching the passing flag, banner and placard waving throngs from my third floor hotel balcony window.
