Frank MacDonald chats with friends among the capacity crowd that packed the Inverness County Centre for the Arts Wednesday night for a tribute to the Inverness County author and poet. The River Hill Players performed several of MacDonald's songs and plays, and read from his poems, newspaper columns, and the novel A Forest for Calum, widely touted as a Canadian classic....

22 July, 2010

As a child of eight in 1926, George Thomas Of Sheffield, England, thought nothing of walking six miles to his favorite fishing hole. Today, his eight-year-old great-grandson Edward is forbidden to wander more than 300 yards from home. The London Daily Mail mapped the diminishing scope of childhood roaming through four generations. Grandfather Jack, who turned eight in 1950, could roam through a one-mile radius. Mother Vicky, who turned eight in 1979, could walk unaccompanied half a mile to the local swimming pool. Jack's experience mirrors mine, as a 1953 eight-year-old in Chappaqua, NY, with a roaming scope of about one mile...

19 July, 2010

In his latest Ted talk, population guru Hans Rosling says improving child survival rates is the counterintuitive path to population control: Previous Rosling post here. View more of Rosling's Gapminder graphs here (click on "browse example graphs," at lower left)....

19 July, 2010

A burrow of puffins surveys Sydney Bight from Hertford Island off Cape Dauphin in Cape Breton Friday afternoon. From late May through early August, Hertford and nearby Ciboux — the Bird Islands — host vast flocks of razor-billed auks, black guillemots, Atlantic puffins, and black-legged kittiwakes, seabirds that spend the rest of their lives on the open ocean. The province designated the islands a protected wildlife management area last year. Regulations bar the the public from landing, but Bird Island Boat Tours offers close up views from twice-daily, two-and-a-half hour boat tours. (Joshua Barss Donham photo)...

17 July, 2010

Janet Evaline Moore, founder of L'Arche Cape Breton, died peacefully last night at her home in Orangedale, two days before her 63rd birthday. [caption id="attachment_5983" align="alignleft" width="250" caption="Tom and Ann Gunn and Janet Moore"][/caption] Tom and Ann Gunn invited Janet to live with their family in 1983, marking the start of an intentional community that is now home to some 25 Core Members and a varied group of assistants from Cape Breton and around the world. Janet Moore was a gentle, funny, loving woman, with an out-sized capacity to move and inspire people around her. She and her long-time...

16 July, 2010

Soldiers herd sheep off the apron of the air force base at El Alto, Bolivia, so the BAe 146 military transport jet in the background can take off....

15 July, 2010

The European Space Agency's Rosetta spacecraft flew within 3162 kilometers (1965 miles) of the asteroid Lutetia Saturday, snapping photos as it zipped by at 15 kilometers per second (33,500 miles per hour). Here's a video simulation compiled from the snapshots: Very cool. The ancient asteroid lies in the Asteroid Belt between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter. It's roughly 130 kilometers (81 miles) long in its longest dimension. More here, here, and here....

15 July, 2010

Nicole McNeil enjoys a watermelon wedge at Piper's Cove beach in Cape Breton last Friday while Lady looks on with interest. Photo by Vicky McNeil, edited by Nicole McNeil....

12 July, 2010

Cape Bretoners are accustomed to coincidental connections because their homeland offers such fertile ground for them. The combination of summer residents, occasional visitors, and the vast Caper diaspora has seeded the planet with people eager to rekindle their connection to the island. The late Whitney Pier ship chandler Newman Dubinsky made a point of wearing a Cape Breton tartan ball cap on his frequent travels overseas, because of the conversations it was sure to spark. For different reasons, blogging can have the same effect. My ex-sister-in-law, Myra Barss, is in New York, clearing out her parents' house. She emailed a dealer...

11 July, 2010
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