#IfYouReadOneThingToday - On Craniotomies

I'll admit today's #IfYouReadOneThingToday, Frequently asked questions about your craniotomy, is a weird one. The theme is, frankly, beyond bizarre. But the writing, by Mary South, is, simply put, sublime.

Hit up the link and enjoy the read. And if you're reading something neat, feel free to share it in a comment.

Looking through Columbia's windows

Shattered
Merritt Island, FL
December 2019
This photo originally shared on Instagram

I still remember it like it was yesterday. 17 years ago, a quiet Saturday morning just like this one.

I had woken up before the rest of my fam to catch the shuttle's return from space. The avgeek in me follows launches and landings like some folks might stalk sports teams, musicians, or film fests. Astronauts and engineers are my rock stars.

Columbia was coming home after a rare and groundbreaking 2-week science mission. Like launch, re-entry has always been one of the highest risk moments of any mission. But this was Columbia, the matriarch of the shuttle orbiter fleet. Everything was supposed to be routine.

We soon learned, again, that nothing is ever routine. She shattered high in the atmosphere, her wreckage raining over Texas, her rock star crew gone. Just like that.

Seeing the windshield frame here in Florida, not far from where she left Earth for the final time, was, Iike viewing the Challenger wreckage nearby, a haunting experience. This was once a crucial part of a billion-dollar national asset. And all it took was one small hole to render it absolutely vulnerable to the relentless forces of physics and nature.

Once again I stood transfixed not so much by the artifact, but by what it represented. Seven now-lost souls had once peered back at the planet through these openings. Their commander, Rick Husband, and pilot Willie McCool sat just inside them, fully expecting to bring their crew home safely.

We know what happened, but it'll never seem normal or fair. Heroes deserve better rates. The rest of us deserve to have our rock stars around just a little longer, because they're never quite finished exploring, or inspiring others to kickstart their own journeys.

#kennedy #space #center #ksc #kennedyspacecenter #florida #fla #spaceshuttle #shuttle #columbia #ov102 #accident #spaceflight #monochrome #photography #photooftheday #instagood #nofilter #nofilterneeded #google #pixel2 #teampixel #lifeinthemargins #family #everything

Of dads and daughters

A grand day at the office
London, ON
January 2020
This photo originally shared on Instagram

Look, it's spontaneous take-your-kid-to-work day!

Seriously, I haven't kidnapped her, or forced her into doing my work for me. She's spending the afternoon with me here, churning through her uni coursework while I type away next to her.

I have no words to describe what it's like to have a kid like Dahlia (immensely proud comes to mind), and to be able to spend time working alongside her here. I also have no words to describe what it's like to work for an organization that's so family-centric, and so supportive of moments like this.

In other words, this is a good day, and I'm thankful.

#ldnont #london #ontario #canada #345ridout #infotechrg #InfoTech #itrg #workhardplayhard #bestjobever #parenthood #dahlia #peanut #girl #google #pixel2 #teampixel #photooftheday #instagood #nofilter #nofilterneeded #lifeinthemargins #family #everything

Jack of hearts, dirty and forgotten

Bad hand
London, ON
January 2020
This photo originally shared on Instagram

Noticed this forlorn scene on the sidewalk as I was walking the dog early Wednesday morning, and all I could think of was how we're all dealt a hand of cards, and it's entirely our call how we choose to play them.

A dirty card on a dirty, frozen sidewalk probably shouldn't be much of a theme for an Instagram post, but I can't see in advance what will trigger me as I move through the day. On this morning it was a discarded playing card. Some other day it might be a giant root. Or a butterfly, or some cracked pavement. I'm weird that way.

It's been two days since I took this, yet I'm only sharing it now. Some things take time to settle. Your brain needs to percolate them first, figure out what they mean, if they mean anything at all. Even if they're seemingly trivial things like dirty cards on dirty, frozen sidewalks.

There's beauty in the trivial. I have to remind myself to keep looking for it. Or, as increasingly seems to be the case, to allow it to keep finding me.

#ldnont #london #ontario #canada #random #urban #street #stilllife #photography #card #cards #jack #hearts #google #pixel2 #teampixel #photooftheday #instagood #nofilter #nofilterneeded #lifeinthemargins #family #everything

Old bridge over a swollen river

Engineering that (still) works
London, ON
January 2020
This photo originally shared on Instagram

I finally figured out what the bridge over troubled water looks like.

Sorry.

#ldnont #london #ontario #canada #bridge #bridgesofinstagram #weather #thames #river #flood #composition #lines #zoom #random #urban #street #photography #canon #canon_photography #canonphotography #photooftheday #instagood #nofilter #nofilterneeded #lifeinthemargins #family #everything

Not quite Homer's monorail

Surprise!
Orlando, FL
January 2020
This photo originally shared on Instagram

When a passing monorail photobombs your picture of the giant golf ball in the sky, your only choice is to shoot first and figure it out later.

I know it's a theme park, where everything is programmed and calculated to deliver a specific experience in a specific manner. I know this isn't reality, that the Utopian vision baked into every facet of this overwhelming place is barely sustainable outside the main gates. I get that all of Walt Disney's outsized optimism was ultimately designed to do one thing: Sell us more stuff we likely don't need.

But still, this place makes you think about what could be if we manage get our collective act together, if we decide global interests matter more than regional, national, and individual ones. If we decide to finally look at our differences as reasons to connect instead of separate.

Overly optimistic? Of course. But optimism never hurt anyone.

The monorail, in particular, still feels like a future transportation vision come to life, a nod toward sustainable placemaking where communities are designed around collective transportation networks that don't start and end with the car. Again, this is uber-commercial Disney, but the fact that something conceived in the 1950s still looks and feels current in 2020 is remarkable.

Wouldn't it be nice if more city planners came to this place, then returned home with heads full of ideas for a better future? Don't we all need some kind of spark? And shouldn't those sparks be as diverse and wild as can be?

Maybe there's more to a place like this than Fast Passes, Mickey and Minnie Mouse ears, and overpriced junk food.

#orlando #florida #fla #road #trip #disney #disneyworld #waltdisneyworld #epcot #monorail #travel #travelphotography #travelgram #vacation #explore #photography #canon #canon_photography #canonphotography #photooftheday #instagood #nofilter #nofilterneeded #lifeinthemargins #family #everything

Saying thanks to the Challenger crew

Shattered
Merritt Island, FL
December 2019
This photo originally shared on Instagram

34 years ago yesterday, a shining example of the best technology humans could create blew itself to pieces in the cold, blue skies above the Florida coast.

The Space Shuttle Challenger accident was a turning point, the end of an era when we believed technology was largely invincible. It opened our eyes to human factors, and taught us they mattered as much as - or perhaps more than - the greasy bits.

I was privileged to visit the Kennedy Space Center last month, and was moved by the memorials to the Apollo 1, Challenger, and Columbia crews. Seeing the wreckage was hard, and more than anything drove home just how thankful we should be to those who choose to explore on our behalf.

I've never believed in simply lamenting what's been lost. There has to be a takeaway, some good from the bad. 17 astronauts died for a reason. Progress always demands sacrifice, and we can't use risk as an excuse to stop pushing for more.

We've come so far since each of these tragedies. We've (largely) learned from each of them and fed that knowledge into future space systems. We just marked 20 years of continuous human presence in orbit, in a vehicle larger than a football field, built and maintained by experts from many nations. SpaceX and Boeing will soon launch American astronauts on American rockets from American soil. Mega Moon and Mars ships are already being built. The very seeds of humanity's eventual expansion beyond Earth are starting to bear early fruit. And they were planted by the crews of these three ill-starred craft.

So as I stood on the other side of the glass and lingered over the shattered remnant of a ship that once carried our hopes into the heavens, I found myself wishing her crew could somehow know that their journey didn't end on that awful day over the Atlantic. Thanks to them, we've gone further than we ever could have dreamed.

It seemed appropriate to whisper a quiet thank you before I headed for the exit.

#kennedy #space #center #ksc #kennedyspacecenter #florida #fla #spaceshuttle #shuttle #challenger #ov099 #accident #spaceflight #iss #photooftheday #instagood #nofilter #nofilterneeded #google #pixel2 #teampixel #lifeinthemargins #family #everything

Let's talk, for real, about #BellLetsTalk

Sick, not weak
London, ON
January 2020
This photo originally shared on Instagram

It’s a big day for #mentalhealth here in the Great White North, as our nation’s largest telecom company, Bell Canada, blankets the airwaves as part of #BellLetsTalk Day.

All you need to do is tweet, retweet, watch the video, use the Facebook frame or Snapchat filter, or if you’re a Bell customer, send a text or make a mobile or long distance call. For each one, Bell will donate 5 cents to Canadian mental health initiatives.

Awesome stuff all. But let’s not fool ourselves into thinking we can sling around a hashtag for a few hours and call the problem solved. Slacktivism hasn’t cured war, eliminated terrorism, ended racism, or rebalanced historic gender imbalance. And it won’t “fix” this, either.

Let’s also not subscribe to the notion that Bell, which regularly sends HR teams to offices across the country to fire people simply because the accountants need better margins this quarter, is somehow not qualified to do this because it’s a lousy place to work.

Disclosure: I worked for Bell Media for a few years before resigning. I remember well when the HR folks showed up and called folks, one-by-one, into the conference room. I remember what it felt like to work for a company where individual performance had zero correlation to your career path. The depressive shockwaves buffeted us year-round, as otherwise loyal employees wondered when their time would be up.

It feels disingenuous for a company that summarily abuses employees’ mental health to wrap itself in the kumbaya flag of mental health awareness. But life isn’t black-and-white. And if Bell doesn’t underpin this campaign, who will? Who else, at this scale, is out there pushing toward a better future where mental health is finally, justifiably viewed on the same plane as every other kind of health?

I grew up in a house where those who suffered were “cuckoo”, where mental health professionals were derisively called “shrinks”, and those who suffered were shunned. Bell may indeed suck as an employer, but it deserves our support in ensuring all of us can seek mental health care just as easily as we get treated for cancer or heart disease.

Until that happens, #BellLetsTalk is our best hope to #endthestigma.

Shattered illusion on a downtown street

No, not really
London, ON
January 2020
This photo originally shared on Instagram

Cities often struggle to put their best foot forward when the rest of the world comes to town.

To wit, #LdnONT’s attempts to make the downtown core look festive and vital in advance of Country Music Week in 2017 and the Juno Awards last year. With thousands of industry heavyweights descending on the city to celebrate the best of the best, a fresh coat of something was needed to hide the usual warts that normally cover this neighborhood.

On a streetscape pockmarked by empty storefronts often populated by members of the city’s burgeoning homeless population, it’s a tough illusion to pull off. And now that the events are long over and the glittering crowds have returned to wherever they came from, the remnants of these times look even sadder than they did then.

The only thing worse than a sad scene is a sad scene punctuated by half-baked attempts to make it look less sad. Which, as we know, only amplifies the sadness.

Such is the case here. No one, especially the individual looking for warmth in the barely sheltered doorway, would realistically read the slogan and buy what its creators are trying to sell, especially in light of the overwhelming evidence to the contrary that crowds into - and beyond - this frame.

You can load up a pig with a decade’s worth of lipstick, and no one will be fooled into believing there’s anything but a pig underneath it all.

The completion of the slick-looking flex street only adds insult to injury. Tens of millions of dollars worth of fancy grey-and-black-shaded pavement stones, but still countless souls live outside, on those very stones, in torment and addiction.

If only a liberal dose of makeup could fix what ails this place.

#london #ontario #canada #random #urban #downtown #dundas #street #photography #building #community #crisis #hope #photooftheday #instagood #nofilter #nofilterneeded #google #pixel2 #teampixel #lifeinthemargins #family #everything

Rocket science, up close

Five bells
Merritt Island, FL
December 2019
This photo originally shared on Instagram

Nothing much to see here. Just the business end of 3 Aerojet Rocketdyne RS-25D (Block II) engines - aka Space Shuttle Main Engines, or SSMEs.

These reusable closed-cycle, cryogenic liquid hydrogen/liquid oxygen-powered monsters were known as the Ferraris of rocket engines, and they set all sorts of records for their class when they were first designed in the late 1970s. In fact, they’re still flying, sort of, almost 9 years after they were last fired in anger, on the last shuttle mission ever, Atlantis's STS-135.

16 leftover RS-25s from the shuttle era are, 4 at a time, being built into the core stage of NASA’s Space Launch System (SLS) megarocket, and as we speak the first flightworthy core stage sits in the B Test Stand at NASA's Stennis Space Center. The Green Run campaign will see all four engines light off and run the full 8-minute launch-to-orbit flight profile while bolted solidly to the ground.

I'll bring the popcorn.

Unfortunately, reusability isn’t part of the deal with SLS, with the engines and rockets burning up on re-entry after their job is done. After the 4th mission, new-build RS-25Es will slot into place.

But all that was theoretical. On this December day with my family, it was enough for me to stand beneath the bell nozzles at the back of Atlantis and stare for a bit. As a child, I used to watch these same nozzles come to life on TV and online, so it was rather unreal to be This Close.

What does any of this have to do with the price of eggs? Aerospace, space, science, rockets and such may not have much of a direct connection to my day job, but when the world gets choppy, these become refuges of sorts, virtual places where I can immerse myself in engineering that opens up opportunity for us all, in ways we can't even begin to imagine.

We all need a bit more wonder in our lives. This is some of what I consider wonder. What’s yours?

#kennedy #space #center #ksc #kennedyspacecenter #florida #fla #spaceshuttle #shuttle #atlantis #ov104 #rocket #science #rs25 #aviation #avgeek #spaceflight #photooftheday #instagood #nofilter #nofilterneeded #google #pixel2 #teampixel #lifeinthemargins #family #everything

The dangers of forgetting about Auschwitz

Always follow the light
London, ON
November 2018
This photo originally shared on Instagram

As the world marks 75 years since the liberation of the #Auschwitz death camp, the largest killing grounds in history, I can't let the day go without saying something. A few thoughts:

The #Holocaust can happen again.

In fact, the conditions for the rise of Nazism - or something terrifyingly like it - are ripe.

The signs are all around us. Ignore them at our peril.

Those who survived the Holocaust are reaching the end of their natural lives, and the number of living witnesses to this unfathomable atrocity is moving inevitably toward zero.

Their story must continue to be told even after they are gone.

The storytelling is our responsibility. Every single one of us.

Anti-Israel, BDS, and anti-Zionism are all anti-Semitism. Full stop.

Those who practice it, and deny it is anti-Semitism, are anti-Semitic.

The Token Jew excuse doesn't hide that fact.

Jew-hatred was around long before Hitler.

He and his henchmen raised it to industrially, massively scaled levels.

Jew-hatred isn't going anywhere.

It is the canary in the coal mine of hatred.

It touches us all.

We are all barely removed from someone deciding we are worthy of being singled out. Of extermination.

Jewish. Or not.

We are more alike than not.

Hitler was elected to office.

Those who follow his ideologies are being elected to office as we speak. Check the European map. The American one, too.

It's not much of a jump between random spewing of racist thought to participation in national policy implementation.

And it's happening now.

We say "never again".

The world seems to be ignoring this.

Silence is not an option. For any of us. Jew or not.

Tell their story. Stop history from repeating itself. Be the light.

Walking on air

Where to next?
London, ON
January 2020
This photo originally shared on Instagram

Two dogs on a green bridge on a grey day.

Because moments take place all around us, all the time. All we have to do is look up. Or look far. Or just look at all.

#ldnont #london #ontario #canada #dog #dogs #dogsofinstagram #instapuppy #actofdog #pets #weather #green #bridge #composition #lines #zoom #random #urban #street #photography #canon #canon_photography #canonphotography #photooftheday #instagood #nofilter #nofilterneeded #lifeinthemargins #family #everything

Blue neon at night

That nostalgic glow
Orlando, FL
January 2020
This photo originally shared on Instgram

As neon slowly, almost imperceptibly disappears from the landscape, I feel even more compelled to grab a photo when given the chance.

Whatever replaces it is doubtless higher-tech, more efficient, more marketable. High-res screens can scatter endless kinds of content across the nighttime sky. And then the daytime sky for good measure. They can plaster our eyeballs with gigapixels of ads we never knew we needed.

But they'll never look, or feel, quite like this, where the soft light almost seems to brush the darkness aside, each one seemingly unable to coexist without the other.

Pity that.

Who ever said progress was always a good thing?

#orlando #florida #fla #road #trip #disney #disneyworld #waltdisneyworld #hollywood #studios #night #neon #light #travel #travelphotography #travelgram #vacation #explore #zoom #photography #canon #canon_photography #canonphotography #photooftheday #instagood #nofilter #nofilterneeded #lifeinthemargins #family #everything

#IfYouReadOneThingToday - Negative Space

My latest #IfYouReadOneThingToday isn’t a read at all.‬

‪Negative Space is an Oscar-nominated, stop-motion animated short, and beyond the breathtaking production, it is an achingly beautiful story of family.‬

‪Please watch, the YouTube vid (link here), and share:

Foggy doggy morning

I don't think so, Dad
London, ON
January 2020
This photo originally shared on Instagram

Someone wasn't happy with this morning's fog.

I tried to explain the wonder of it all to her. But she whimpered the entire time we were out, and kept trying to turn around and pull back toward the house.

We may not speak each other's language, but goodness does she ever do a great job making herself understood.

I reverted to the old standby trick of picking her wiggly form up and carrying her partway down the block for just long enough that she'd forget her original angst and be distracted by some other bright shiny object along our path.

This one, of course, forgets nothing, so that plan didn't quite work out. But she did pose for me just before we got back to the house. So I won't call the morning a total washout.

And yet, we love her limitlessly. Funny how that works, no?

#ldnont #london #ontario #canada #calli #callitheachnauzer #dog #dogs #schnauzerpuppy #schnauzersofinstagram #schnauzergram #schnauzers #dogsofinstagram #instapuppy #actofdog #pets #winter #snow #weather #fog #google #pixel2 #teampixel #photooftheday #instagood #nofilter #nofilterneeded #lifeinthemargins #family #everything

Don't look down

Frozen in the middle of the river
London, ON
January 2020
This photo originally shared on Instagram

Yesterday's lunchtime adventure:

1 - Take a walk.
2 - Find a bridge over potentially troubled, partially frozen waters.
3 - Shoot downwards. Carefully.
4 - Return to the office, refreshed.

Okay. Your turn now. Go...

#ldnont #london #ontario #canada #random #urban #street #photography #ridout #bridge #thames #river #frozen #winter #monochrome #google #pixel2 #teampixel #photooftheday #instagood #nofilter #nofilterneeded #lifeinthemargins #family #everything

Someone's selling seashells by the seashore

Transience in the sand
Cocoa Beach, FL
December 2020
This photo originally shared on Instagram

Every visit I make to an ocean beach ends with a pocket full of seashells. Or more than one pocket.

It's not like I actually need more dirty ex-crustacean exoskeletons in my life. But somehow it makes me feel better knowing I've held onto a piece of the sea, that I did something tangible to remember having been at this particular spot on this particular day. That feeling of random, wet, sand-covered shells clicking and clacking as I wander off the beach and head back to the real world? Priceless.

The scene you see here, captured in the intertidal zone where waves wash the sand flat as they remove any evidence that anyone was there, has stuck in my brain since I took it on the morning of the last day of the last year of the last decade. At first glance, it looks like randomly scattered shells. But it's the tracks in the sand that stick with me.

Because they'll be here only until the next wave rolls in and redraws the landscape. And shifts the shells a tiny bit. Soon enough, another wave rolls in and does the same thing - new tracks, slightly moved locations. Then another wave, and another, all part of an endless back-and-forth of energy, matter, and what once sheltered life. Stick around long enough to see the longer-lead erosion of the shells themselves. Or even the sand. Because these cycles are timeless. And relentless.

This dance in the shallows takes place largely unnoticed by the few humans who have come to this beach to take in the sunrise. Even when the beach is packed later on in the day, I doubt anyone will take notice of the subtle show playing out at their feet.

Far be it for me to dictate the behaviors of others, but I wish they would. Because they're missing quite the show. And all they have to do is look down.

What does this have to do with the rest of our lives? Still figuring that out.

#cocoa #beach #cocoabeach #florida #fla #road #trip #travel #travelphotography #travelgram #vacation #explore #sunrise #waves #shells #stilllife #photography #google #pixel2 #teampixel #photooftheday #instagood #nofilter #nofilterneeded #lifeinthemargins #family #everything

Staring down at the pounding surf

Temporary texture
Delray Beach, FL
December 2019
This photo originally shared on Instagram

Every once in a while, I like to wade into the surf, point my camera down, and see what I can come up with.

Like so many of my little, um, peculiarities, there isn't a whole lot of rationale behind this one. If I were asked about it, I suppose I'd explain it as follows:

I like water. Ocean water tops the list, but fresh water from the Great Lakes fits the bill, too. Okay, any water, really.

I like what it does when it tumbles into, over, and across a sandy beach, powered by the energy of a manta ray deep underwater thousands of kilometres away. Or a puff of wind. Or some other force I can't identify, but trust that it exists.

I like the randomness of it all.

I like how it makes me feel, both from the powerful rush of the crashing wave, and the foamy massage I get when the water reverses direction and heads back to sea.

I like the feel of the wind in my ears, and the smell of the salt in my nose. It makes me feel alive in a way few other experiences do.

I like the way nothing else matters while I'm shooting here - as if the rest of the world gets put on hold while I play photographer in the surf.

I like knowing that somewhere else, also on another beach near another edge of the planet, some complete stranger is likely doing exactly the same thing. Because we're never truly alone.

I like it, period. And we should all be spending the limited time we've been given doing things that touch our respective souls.

If you end up with a decent picture at the end of it all, so much the better.

#delray #beach #delraybeach #florida #fla #road #trip #travel #travelphotography #travelgram #vacation #explore #waves #atlantic #ocean #water #texture #photography #google #pixel2 #teampixel #photooftheday #instagood #nofilter #nofilterneeded #lifeinthemargins #family #everything

The warmer side of (space capsule) cool

Gemini 9A, post-descent
Merritt Island, FL
December 2019
This photo originally shared on Instagram

A not-so-funny thing happens to things when they slam into the Earth's atmosphere at 25 times the speed of sound: They burn to a crisp. So spacecraft designers use every trick available to them to keep that from happening.

Ablative heat shields - like the ones found on the blunt ends of early U.S. capsules like the Gemini 9A you see here - are designed to literally disintegrate as the vehicle descends deeper into the ever-thicker air. That carries away excess heat and keeps the inside as cool as a cucumber.

The space shuttle orbiters used more sophisticated non-ablative materials - together they formed the thermal protection system, or TPS - that, along with a bunch of other technologies, allowed these winged wonders to be reused. Old-style or new, the Columbia accident proved just how critical these technologies are, and just how lethal the high-speed, high-altitude regime in which they operate can be when they fail.

So getting up close and personal with the business end of a capsule that NASA legends Gene Cernan (later Apollo 10 & 17) and Tom Stafford (later Apollo 10 & ASTP, and instrumental developer of the F-117 Nighthawk and B-2 Spirit) flew in before I was even born was quite the rush, and I lingered over the heat-scarred heat shield for a while. Plasma can do some incredible things to human-made objects, and it's not a bad thing for any of us to see it first-hand.

It's weird how that works. You can study the physics and the engineering, and understand at a detail level how the shape of a vehicle and the materials used to build it can keep its occupants safe amid the harshest environments ever encountered by humanity. But until you can stand Right There, you'll never appreciate just what an achievement - even 53-plus years later - it was, and is.

Perhaps that's a lesson for the Digital Age, when we seem to think experiencing something on-screen is sufficient. Not always.

#kennedy #space #center #ksc #kennedyspacecenter #florida #fla #gemini #gemini9a #spaceship #rocket #science #technology #aviation #avgeek #spaceflight #monochrome #photooftheday #instagood #nofilter #nofilterneeded #google #pixel2 #teampixel #lifeinthemargins #family #everything

QOTD: On deadlines

Found on a wall at Disney
Orlando, FL
January 2020
This photo originally shared on Instagram

Walt Disney was right: Everyone needs deadlines. But do they respect them? Perhaps that's a question for another day.

#orlando #florida #fla #road #trip #disney #disneyworld #waltdisneyworld #mickey #mickeymouse #hollywood #studios #travel #travelphotography #travelgram #vacation #explore #zoom #photography #canon #canon_photography #canonphotography #photooftheday #instagood #nofilter #nofilterneeded #lifeinthemargins #family #everything