We saw Jerron Paxton, or “Blind Boy” Paxton as he is sometimes billed, at Merlefest. He sure knows his way around a song!
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Bear attack near Cochrane Ontario
The article says this is the first major bear attack reported in the area in 8 years. I wonder what exactly is a minor bear attack?
Magic moment
I use a Blackberry at my job and when I have it with me it means I also have a camera with me. But I don’t have a personal supercomputercamerasmartphonedevice and I’m not really Jonesing to get one. If I had one and I carried it with me, the magical sight I just experienced would never have occurred, of that I’m certain. Even if I had a camera and I attempted to photograph it, I don’t think I could capture the breadth of the experience.
I was out with the dogs by the lake, at the south end of the water filtration plant, shivering because of the cold wind down by the lake. Looking over toward Port Credit, streamers blew across the sky. It darkened above me quite suddenly and the sleet that came down cut into my face. There was a chop on the lake and there must have been an emergence of thousands of those midges that have been swarming around the shore in clouds the last couple weeks. I couldn’t actually see any of the bugs. Instead, I watched hundreds of swallows swooping about just above the surface of the water, gorging themselves on the tiny insects. Looking from the yacht club harbour west along the lake, the birds were feeding as far as I could see.
What a spectacular sight!
Jerry on a stump
Best cat you’ll ever meet
The Coo Coo
Time for a Daily Dose. Let’s start at the start – with Clarence Ashley. Nice interview segment with this one…
Here are Sutton, Holt and Coleman…this version starts with a great little story about Doc Watson.
The Coo Coo has a lot of legs and still gets played a lot today. Here are the Avett Brothers
I really like the way Townes Van Zandt used to play this song as well.
Teaching a kid to fly fish
Today, I spent some time showing the lad down the street how to cast a fly rod. I set up a 7.5 foot graphite rod for a 4/5 weight line with a reel that had a weight-forward 5 weight line on it. The first lesson was to always keep the rod in the tube when it isn’t being used – butt section goes in handle up and tip section goes in tip up. Most fly rod catastrophes occur when you make the ill-fated decision to not put away your rod. The usual culprit is the car door.
I demonstrated some casting on 27th Street, out in the middle of the road, away from any wires or trees. I’m not a great fly caster, but I get by OK. E progressed very fast. He’s only 10 but after a half an hour he was laying out 30 foot casts and was relaxing into it, learning to let the rod do most of the work. I think he’s doing it well enough that he’s ready to visit a trout stream where he can learn not just how to cast but how to present a fly.
I think I finally found a blog theme I really like
Regular visitors to this here joint know that I’m restless when it comes to the way my blog looks. I change it up regularly. When I’ve used banners, I’ve switched up the banner picture quite often to keep the place looking fresh and interesting. I started trying on a few different themes again the other day because the one I was using was slow to load for one reader who was on a dial-up connection. I hadn’t really thought about that, since almost everybody I know is on a high-speed connection these days, but I don’t want to exclude people who are using older technology just to decorate up my blog. Today I changed themes again after having a look at the one I have now. I love the way words and picture sit on the page, the way the posts are separated and I like how visually spare and elegant it is. I think maybe I can stick with this one for a while.
Cross-posting to Facebook?
I rarely post anything “just” on Facebook, but I do usually cross-post my blog posts there. I started doing that simply because I know quite a few people who are active on Facebook who rarely look at blogs. Technology increasingly enabled me to integrate posts so I thought, why not, I’ll take advantage of that. When I started doing that visits to my blog initially rose, but then settled down to about the same level. What I hadn’t expected was dwindling comments on my blog, replaced with increased comments in the Facebook space. The trouble is that the blog space is much more interesting to me than Facebook and I would much rather any conversations take place there than on Facebook. I like the blogosphere because it offers me my own little corner of cyberspace and I can muck around there all I want. As well, it isn’t all cluttered up the way Facebook is cluttered up.
When I make a blog post, I currently have it set up so that it appears as a Tweet automatically and then I make a decision with each post if I am going to cross-post it to Facebook. I don’t make very many Tweets on my personal Twitter account that are not links to my blog posts. I do go on there and read tweets made by a select group of people. I sometimes will retweet other tweets, but I don’t spend much time messing about on my personal Twitter account. Interestingly, I find Twitter to be much more useful to me, and interesting as well, in my job than in my personal life.
It seems pretty clear to me that the major corporations who operate the social networks are trying to drive people from the blogosphere to the Facebook swamp and that mysterious space called Google + (what do people do over there anyway?). The fact that Google is de-commissioning the popular Google Reader is a case in point. I’m sure the bottom line is the bottom line – it’s easier to generate revenue from Facebook, it has a greater mass appeal, and it is all set up to gather scads of personal information from users along the way.
I’m considering keeping my blog posts off Facebook, at least most of the time. If I do that, I suppose I will lose some occasional readers, but then my content is not the most mainstream fare and I think those people who are really interested (I’m not sure why people would be interested in these posts exactly in any case, except that I’ve made some friends out there along the way and we do keep tabs on one another) will keep coming. I’m not saying I don’t see any value in participating in Facebook. For sure it gives me an opportunity to stay in touch with people I otherwise might lose touch with. On the other hand, some people who have “friended” me on Facebook might even be annoyed that I clutter up their news feed with links to things like fiddle, banjo and accordion music videos they have no interest in at all. In fact, one person I know sent me a nice email explaining that it was nothing personal but he had to “de-friend” me.
If you’ve read this far into this post, I’m interested in your opinion. If you like to visit this place, does it matter to you if my posts appear on Facebook as well?
Roseland plant sale is next weekend
Each year the Roseland Horticultural Society has a plant sale at Eglinton Flats, in the north-west quadrant of the park – that’s Jane and Eglinton, (enter off Emmett Ave just west of Jane). This is a great place to purchase plants for your garden, with fabulous prices on perennials. This sale starts at 9:00 AM and the time to be there is right at the beginning. Either Tuffy P or I go every year and load up the car with great deals on an excellent selection of plants. This sale gets the 27th Street stamp of approval.
Pretty yellow flowers
Our robust Toronto winter did not deter the dandelions around here. They have come up with great vengeance. Last year I had them under control. That is, I couldn’t eliminate them, but I kept them down to a manageable plantation. Over the winter they seem to have multiplied by many times. I guess the consolation is that we are no longer pumping poisons into the ground to kill the weeds.
27th Street 