Showing 4 posts tagged with "canada"
• Surprise: the Japanese eat a lot of seafood but "are not aware of any problems with the sea. They don’t see it. They don’t hear it. They don’t think it is their problem."
• The solution to Australia's cane toad problem might be as simple as cans of cat food. (The Cane Toads documentary is still a classic.)
• Monitoring moose populations the Cree Indian way works better than the "scientific" way. (Hat tip: Chad Love @ Field Notes.)
• The solution to Australia's cane toad problem might be as simple as cans of cat food. (The Cane Toads documentary is still a classic.)
• Monitoring moose populations the Cree Indian way works better than the "scientific" way. (Hat tip: Chad Love @ Field Notes.)
It has been speculated that the Arctic expedition of Sir John Franklin in 1845 came to grief partly through heavy reliance on lead-contaminated canned food, canning being a fairly new technology of food preservation at the time.
New tests of soup cans probably identical to those on Franklin's ships showed lead levels "off the scale."
My study is cold this morning, and it feels colder when I think of the song "Lord Franklin."
New tests of soup cans probably identical to those on Franklin's ships showed lead levels "off the scale."
My study is cold this morning, and it feels colder when I think of the song "Lord Franklin."
They sailed West and they sailed EastMichaél O'Domhnaill and Kevin Burke have the definitive version (YouTube). (Hat tip to Mirabilis.)
Their ship on oceans of ice did freeze
Only the Eskimo in his skin canoe
Was the only one that ever came through.
A culinary adventures backfires on French sailors in the Arctic. (Doesn't that sound like an early 19th-century sentence?)
If you go into Le Club Chasse et Pêche and they are serving urs, order it well-done.
(Tip of the toque to Cat Urbigkit.)
If you go into Le Club Chasse et Pêche and they are serving urs, order it well-done.
(Tip of the toque to Cat Urbigkit.)
Downtown Montreal from Mount Royal's belvedere.
It's snowing here in the Wet Mountains, a wet, soaking snow that is melting in. This would be a good "desk day," especially as I am only partway through sorting out everything on my desk--the ten days' worth of mail, the receipts and notes, etc. from the conference, the new books for reading and/or review.
One review must be completed today, or I will hate myself.
But I am fidgety. M. and I spent parts of six days on trains, four days in Montreal, one day in Chicago, an afternoon in Albany, and an evening in Schenectady. It was wearing.
(Note: we rode six different Amtrak trains, and all were on time. Someone is doing something right. If you have a layover at Schenectady, refuel at Katie O'Byrne's, hang out on Jay Street.)
On the Adirondack, traveling through upstate New York along Lake Champlain, I would see some little dirt road winding off into the swampy woods, and I wanted to be off the train and walking along it with one of the dogs.
The birds are in hiding too. All that I have seen this morning are one robin and one Steller's jay--a pity, since it is Day 1 of one of our Project Feeder Watch counts. (We are not the only ones happy that PFW has started up again.) Yesterday we saw nine American goldfinches at once.
Other miscellaneous travel observations from the big world:
Traveling east from Colorado, I notice black.
A century ago, two factors favored black clothing in the city:
- Lots of coal soot in the air
- A lack of washing machines
Now it is just about attitude. I am refined and/or serious, don't mess with me. Not asceticism. Urban grime might be an issue, but it cannot be the issue.
In Montreal, where sports team-themed clothing was not as common downtown as in Chicago (although it exists), black seemed almost mandatory.
I probably stood out for wearing one of about four khaki trench coats that I spotted.
Downtown Chicago is noisier than Montreal. For one thing, it has the elevated trains. For another, there always seems to be large construction projects underway, whereas I saw none in Montreal, just street repairs.
People walk faster in Chicago too. But my candidate for a fast-walking city, believe it or not, is Dublin, based on earlier visits there.
