Day: July 19, 2017

THE CHANGING SEASONS – JULY 2017

The Changing Seasons: July 2017

It stopped raining for a few days this month and we took advantage of the time, brief as it was, to go take some pictures. Last month, everything was still sparse due to the cold, rainy weather we’ve been having since March.

Shiny canal in summer
Photo: Garry Armstrong
Photo: Garry Armstrong
Photo: Garry Armstrong
Photo: Garry Armstrong
Photo: Garry Armstrong – Just follow the sign!
Photo: Garry Armstrong – July
Photo: Garry Armstrong
Photo: Garry Armstrong
Photo: Garry Armstrong
Photo: Garry Armstrong
Photo: Garry Armstrong
Photo: Garry Armstrong
Photo: Garry Armstrong
Photo: Garry Armstrong
Photo: Garry Armstrong
Photo: Garry Armstrong

As soon as it warmed up at the very end of June, everything that could grow went into hyper-overdrive, producing the must intense, lush flowers and leaves and ferns I’ve ever seen. To make up for the lost weeks of non-spring, we got spring and summer wrapped up on one crazy-ass ball!

The pictures were taken by both of us — Marilyn and Garry Armstrong. Except those taken around the house, they were taken in one of the Blackstone Valley Historic Corridor parks in Uxbridge.

Don’t miss Max “The Cardinal’s” wonderful pictures! Drop by his site and take a look.

The sun has been slipping in and out all morning … maybe there will be more pictures today.

 

DISASTROUS? OR JUST UNFORTUNATE?

SAVE ME, THE WOLF HAS ARRIVED!

One of the things about social media is that whereas in the past we complained to our friends on the phone or over the fence, these days we complain to the immediate world. What used to be unfortunate and inconvenient … and sometimes “Wow, what a bummer!” has become “OMG the sky is falling.” It’s not that personal disaster is gone from our lives, but everything is now a disaster. Nothing is merely annoying, inconvenient, or frustrating. Everything is terrible, catastrophic. Mind-blowing. Calamitous.

I know people who are online every single day telling the world which fresh disaster has afflicted them. It is “the boy who cried wolf” writ huge and sometimes with international implications.

The result is exactly the same. At some point, “the world” just stops paying attention to the latest calamity because you can’t tell the difference between this calamity and the previous calamity. When everything is a disaster, ultimately nothing is.

I think maybe we should all tone it down. Try to determine which of our messes is a genuine killer … and which ones are just unfortunate, inconvenient, annoying, aggravating, frustrating. Which ones need the SWAT, the police and fire department … and which need a good friend, some excellent coffee and maybe top-quality cookies.

If we could tone down the note of hysteria that seems to accompany so many posts on social media, I think it would help calm us down. It doesn’t mean we won’t have some serious problems. We have plenty of really serious problem — personally, nationally, internationally  — but wouldn’t it be easier to sort them out if we weren’t hysterical all the time? I think the U.S. has been in a state of national hysteria since last November. I get it — really, really get it — but I have come to recognize that the frenzy isn’t fixing anything.

Nobody is thinking anymore. It’s all railing at the heavens.

RETRO NEST COMIC – BY EVIL SQUIRREL – FOR MY BROTHER MATTHEW’S BIRTHDAY

Today would have been my brother Matthew’s 74th birthday. We understood each other because we shared that strange world in which we grew up. I will always remember and miss you, Matt.

RETRO NEST COMIC – BY EVIL SQUIRREL

Since today is my birthday (please, hold your applause!), I figured I’d share what I believe is the only comic I’ve done that is centered around that oh so egotistical of holidays that I think we sometimes take just a bit too seriously.  While this comic is only two years old, it is definitely one of mine and my readers’ favorites… and maybe one of my favorite Buster appearances where the poor guy doesn’t get mutilated in some way.  This was Comic #159

I am still tinkering off and on with the comic that was originally supposed to be posted two weeks ago, and that should be up later today or tomorrow.  I have four regularly scheduled days off next week, and I am gonna be extremely disappointed in myself if I don’t get the comic backlog caught up by next Friday.  In that regard, I really need to get me one of those thingies that lets you draw straight onto your computer…. it might change the look of my comics, but I think I’d cut the time it takes to make them in half!

Original source: Retro Nest Comic – May 14, 2015