Barkerburgh

Leslie and Peter (and Simon)  invited me to join them for a Sunday afternoon on the Oak Ridges Moraine at the former Koffler estate known as Jokers Hill, now a U of T biological reserve.  It was a horse farm once and the outbuildings still stand.  There’s an overgrown race-track overlooking the Holland Marsh on one side of Dufferin and hectares and hectares of beautiful forest on the other

As you all probably know, Peter is an Indiana Jones biologist, (the Tibetan Plateau, the California coast, Western Australia…but just let him loose in Pellucidar or on Skull Island) and he’s worked a lot at Jokers Hill so he knows the ecology and biodiversity of the area.  And where to find newts, one of which Simon found fascinating.

(I have a picture of the newt he found that Wordpress won’t let me upload…)

What I got was an amazing natural history tour of the area, from the bedrock up, the moraine being about 100 metres of glacial sediment topped with that beautiful forest.

The day was warm but neither hot nor humid.  There was a light breeze even in the forest and, lots of sand.

We saw many patches of white trilliums ranging from one or two in number to a dozen or fifteen or more.  There were several lone red trilliums, patches of different kinds of violets, of little blue wildflowers, of yellow ones, a patch of dog-tooth violets (leaves only, no flowers) in a shaft of sunlight, small streams, swampy seeps, a lovely stand of quaking aspens demonstrating the reason for their name in a mild breeze, the scent of sun-warmed hay off a small feral meadow, a low stone wall made from glacial erratic boulders (probably from back in the olden days when settlers tried to farm the moraine), an old-fashioned stubby beer bottle which I snagged, many cool rocks which Simon found and carried around until we found a pond or a stream, and only one (that I noticed) patch of good old jack-in-the-pulpits, one of my favourites when I was a kid in Georgetown nearly forty years ago.

We must have walked about fifty kilometers - or like three or four

We had a nice French farmyard lunch of baguettes, cheeses, sausage, pate, oranges, and water - not local, from a water-cooler

When I got home, I napped like crazy.
 

Late the other night/early the other morning on TVO, I saw this National Geographic produced show about Greece’s Rion-Antirion bridge, the longest cable-stayed bridge in the world. And it crosses a fault line beneath the sea.

It links the two towns across the Gulf of Corinth, replacing an old ferry.

The construction techniques to earthquake-proof the bridge (as far as that’s ever possible) are fascinating and the progress of the construction is amazing to watch.

One of the coolest aspects of the whole plan is that the foundations of the piers on the bottom of the Gulf are not secured in bedrock (or even to bedrock) at all. They sit on many meters of sediment stabilized with huge steel posts driven deep into the muck, and then topped with several meters of gravel.

It’s a beautiful structure, too and looks very good and fitting in this, the Future.

Another truth about that photo of Riverdale Park.

And you!  And you!  And you!  And who’s that behind you?  Well, Merry Christmas to him or her or them too!

And if you know anybody else, why then Merry Christmas to them too!

And your mum and your dog and your dog’s mum and your mum’s dog!

In response to popular demand, here is the Word document version of my 2002 novel, The Word in the Box.

From the Barker Reviews, May 2003:” It is about a boy named Martin who is given a quest; to find a magical word in a box, and that word, when spoken, will make everything perfect and everyone perfectly happy. He’s never been on a quest before, and never met any magical creatures, that he is aware of, and so this quest promises to be both interesting and educational. For him and the reader.”

Couldn’t have said it better myself.

I’m not entering NaNoWriMo this year, but instead will work on finishing my last year’s project which so many of you contributed ideas to.

I have transferred the research and background notes to MediaWiki - a freakin’ godsend for this sort of thing, as you well know I know well - and will use that to carry on.

I won’t say I’ll hit 50,000 words, but I may very well go over…

There will be much and sincere wishing of luck starting…Now.

1> Last night I finally saw ‘A Mighty Wind’ and thought it was great. What was even greater was that in the closing credits was this: “Video Assist - David Barker”. I can’t believe I don’t remember doing that. I guess I was really busy at the time. Now I only have to see ‘Best in Show’ and ‘For Your Consideration’.

2> I haven’t looked at CSS for a while so I thought I’d catch up. So I was reading quite a bit about CSS yesterday afternoon and wondering a lot about how to apply both PHP and CSS to the construction of my Jeopardy scoring project, instead of just using plain vanilla HTML and just a little CSS and PHP, which is what I’ve been doing. One of the books suggested that HTML tables be avoided in favour of CSS positioning, which kind of made more sense the more I read about it. So last night I actually dreamed about creating the Jeopardy screen without tables. When I remembered that this morning, most of it actually made sense. Cool.

3> This weather is wonderful. Lovely and springy in the daytime and cool and comfortable for sleeping at night.

4> Look at Chez PL&J to catch up on Jon’s recovery and Photon’s life in general.

As some of you may know, I will be turning 50 on June 26, 2007, three months from now. Which is to say I will have completed my 50th year of life.

With greatest respect to my dear friends, I don’t want a surprise party, or presents, or anything like that.

Please make a donation of any size to a children’s charity of your choice or a literacy charity of your choice. I’ve included the Google strings below for your perusal.

My preferences would be The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children who do great work (here’s their donations page), and ProLiteracy Worldwide who I discovered at the first Gathering of the Fellowship back in 2003 (here’s their donations page).

Once you’ve made the donation, have them send me a note that says something like ‘ A Donation Has Been Made In Your Name To…” just so’s I know. And can feel validated.

Of course, feel free to send me a card too. But no Star Wars pyjamas for grown-ups.

Children’s Charities Google String

Literacy Charities Google String

It appears that for all of you who like to leave comments on my blog all the time, there is a system problem. It will allow you to Submit the comment but then it vanishes into the aether; it does not appear on my admin page to be moderated.

I know this is a hardship for dozens of you and I apologize.

The UberSysAdmin is looking into it.

If all of you will email me your many comments, I will post them myself.

Thanks to every one of you for many great comments over the years and your boundless patience over the next short while. Please don’t let this little blip discourage you from continuing this wonderful tradition once the bugs have been exterminated.

Thank you, and carry on.

Expression of Appropriate Seasonal And/Or Regional And/Or Cultural Sentiments. Please Interpret Reasonably.

Some day, some early evening, go down to the Bay store at Queen and Yonge. Walk west on Queen on the south side, along the row of themed windows that the Bay (and Simpson’s long before the Bay came along) do every year for Christmas. This year the theme is Narnia and ‘The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.’ Go to the westernmost window. You’ll be looking at a tableau of Peter, Edmund, Lucy and Susan enthroned as the Kings and Queens of Narnia. Take a look at the young King on the far left. He’s a doppelganger for Jonathan Suzuki-Cook, swear to Aslan. Cool.

While you’re down there, since it’s early evening, go across to Nathan Philips Square and catch the Cavalcade of Lights. Designed by French artist Xavier de Richemont, the show uses light to visually remake the western facade of Old City Hall over and over again, in trippy and
hippy-dippy ways. Check out this shot. It’s quite stunning, even if the music is bit too New Agey. The 10-15 minute show runs every hour from 5:30pm to 10:30pm until the end of December.

If you’re shopping downtown, or just nearby, or just want a diversion that doesn’t cost anything this time of year, it’s worth the visit.

Hey, stay for an hour and watch it again!