
This gorgeous wooden schooner is a feast for the eye no matter what flavour of boat suits you. She has reappeared since her visit of last summer and was certainly eye-candy to me. (I had a nooner on a schooner with no name!)
A deadline not to be confused with a dead line. That bit of dark humour ran through my brain as I typed the title. I was going to call this “I’ve done it again!” as reference to my second video, just posted in time for Remembrance Day or Memorial Day if you prefer. After completing my first video I decided to see if I could meet the deadline of November eleventh and compose something in respect of that date. Mission accomplished! Here’s the link:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DYLEx5fzbLg&t=8s
Or, go to You Tube and type in: Swoop Fred Bailey. As it turns out, there are a lot of Fred Bailey dudes on YouTube, all shapes, sizes, ages and colours. Take your pick! My video, I hope, is visibly improved from my first. Please, please, if you see any hope in my effort, look for the thumbs up icon below the YouTube screen and give it a click. I need all the help you can give. I have tons of clips in my archives so there will be more to come. It is a fascinating art form, especially if you go at it self-taught. GAWD! But this cyber-neanderthal is determined to master videography. What I need now is a proper video camera. So far I’ve been using DSLRs, my mobile phone, and cheap action cams. I regret not diving into this discipline before computers came along and wonder at some of the brilliant work done on celluloid. Older short films and full length movies are especially amazing when you consider the considerable skill that went into making them.
My video muse is a good friend named Pär Domeij. His videos are what I aspire to and are of superb quality, flawless and award-worthy in every way. Coddiwomple is his latest masterpiece. Here’s that link:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EmM2a1CPjd0
If you don’t want to come sailing on the West Coast after seeing this….well real estate is still cheap in Donkey Shin Kansas or wherever it is you choose to live as far from the ocean as possible. And, I suppose, someone has to grow the wheat to make sea biscuits!
On a final note about film-making I’ve discovered a beauty this week called Fauve. You can find it on Twisted Sifter or Vimeo or simply by googling up the name. It is filmed in Quebec in real time, in real places with real people and is one of the most brilliantly made short films I’ve ever seen. This award winner is poignant, it does not have a happy ending but it is beautifully acted by two young boys and is perhaps an oblique consideration, in regard to today’s date, of how we seduce young men into going to war to die for someone else’s ambition. They have a sense of being invincible. By the way, if you are a short film junkie like me, one more film to google up is called Room 8.
Here are some still photos taken locally in the past few days. We have had spectacular weather this autumn and still, nearing the middle of November, we enjoy intermittent hours of soft, golden sunlight. I’m trying to enjoy it while it lasts because, as we all know, good weather is never, never paid for in advance. See you in the movies.






This monstrous padlock appears to be the real thing. It secures the gate to a lovely outdoor dining area beside Roberts Street Pizza in Ladysmith






Actually, it’s a massive culvert beneath our main island highway, it has resting blocks for spawning salmon to rest behind. They also raise the water level for fish and provide handy stepping stones should you want to go tunnel-trekking.


“ The reward of a thing well done is to have done it.” … Ralph Waldo Emerson