what next?

We'll see...

I took the day off to read.  Where's Bob? is a new novel by Ann Ireland.  I enjoyed it thoroughly. More anon.

today is the first day of the rest of my life

-and uppermost on my agenda for the day is THE BLANKETY BLANK BLOG THAT WAS.: random thoughts of a roaming mind, not in any particular order. I's going to take a while because I have to look things up to satisfy my curiosity - well, never satisfy, but to allay it a little.

WINDMILLS   Not Don Quixote's but these wonderful natural power behemoths, dotting the land like extraterrestrial sentinels, saving us from ourselves - I hope.  They are magnificent. I love them. I saw them twice last week  in the course of my travels, from two different highways - up towards the Bruce Peninsula.  They reminded me of the aliens in the movie Arrival, perhaps not benign but indifferent. (Mustn't get anthropomorphic about this.)  So now I have to do a little research. Thank heaven for Google.  Anon....

"Ontario remains Canada's leader in clean wind energy with 4,900 MW of installed capacity, supplying approximately 7.5 per cent of the province's electricity demand. In 2017, Ontario added four installations to the province's current wind fleet—an additional 119 MW to current generation capacity."

"Wind fleet"  I love it.  But a lot of people don't. There are lawsuits pending and government tests are late or inadequate. Apparently there is a lot of noise and if the windmill is too close to human habitation it's annoying and disturbing. 

Not like the song - remember? 

THE WINDMILLS OF YOUR MIND

Round like a circle in a spiral, like a wheel within a wheel

Never ending or beginning on an ever spinning reel

Like a snowball down a mountain, or a carnival balloon

Like a carousel that's turning running rings around the moon

Like a clock whose hands are sweeping past the minutes of its face

And the world is like an apple whirling silently in space

Like the circles that you find in the windmills of your mind

Like a tunnel that you follow to a tunnel of its own

Down a hollow to a cavern where the sun has never shone

Like a door that keeps revolving in a half forgotten dream

Or the ripples from a pebble someone tosses in a stream

Like a clock whose hands are sweeping past the minutes of its face

And the world is like an apple whirling silently in space

Like the circles that you find in the windmills of your mind

Keys that jingle in your pocket, words that jangle in your head

Why did summer go so quickly, was it something that you said?

Lovers walking along a shore and leave their footprints in the sand

Is the sound of distant drumming just the fingers of your hand?

Pictures hanging in a hallway and the fragment of a song

Half remembered names and faces, but to whom do they belong?

When you knew that it was over you were suddenly aware

That the autumn leaves were turning to the color of her hair!

Like a circle in a spiral, like a wheel within a wheel

Never ending or beginning on an ever spinning reel

As the images unwind, like the circles that you find

In the windmills of your mind

Songwriters: Alan Bergman / Marylin Bergman / Michel Legrand

The Windmills of Your Mind lyrics © Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC

Artist:  Dusty Springfield

MORE....

SAUNTER     Wherever I go I find new words and beloved old words and words I never paid much attention  to.  It's  about all I do now, is saunter.  I can't march, or hike, or even walk briskly.  I found a note by John Muir (1838-1914, Scottish-born, American naturalist, explorer, writer) about the origin of the word 'saunter'.  He says that back in the Middle Ages when people went on pilgrimages to the Holy Land, people they passed on the way asked them where they were going. "À la sainte terre," was the reply, "To the Holy Land."

So they were called sainte-terre-ers or saunterers.  The nicest thing about sauntering is that you notice things as you go by. Muir said that we ought to saunter reverently, not hike. I'm for that.

EXISTENCE    I've been thinking a lot about existence lately, with two brand new great grandchildren.  I've already discussed The Long Now, the span of about 200 years encompassed by the lives of one's ancestors and progeny within living memory, providing they all have good memories and functioning marbles.  And I have often referred to my father and the heavy burden he laid on me, that is, to justify my existence every day.  What did I achieve today?  What did I learn today?   Was I worth my keep today?   I came across an article in The Stone, a philosophy series that ran in the NYT for a while - not sure if it's still going.  The writer Peter Atterton asks "Do I have the right to be?"  Such a sequence of seemingly inconsequential events, or sometimes, of shattering disasters, culminated in our existence.  We are all accidents of birth.  Our lives are contingent on someone else having lived or died.  It's a wonder any of us are here.  So why are we? Do we have any right to be here at all?

It's too bad I can't read in a moving car. I might be less portentous in my thinking if I were distracted.  As it was, I spent a lot of time in the last week or so, getting vey stiff and very- oops!

-my battery just ran out.  I i plugged in to power to sign off.  À bientôt...