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I go to nature to be soothed, and to have my senses put in order.

John Burroughs, American Naturalist, 1837 – 1921

Hmmm, in the midst of so much discontent and chaos, where can I seek refuge?

Donald Trump making outrageous demands and threats before he even takes office. Canada Post workers on strike and bickering with management. Doug Ford’s I make or break the rules as I see fit leadership style. War in the Middle East. War between Russia and Ukraine. Monster snowstorms in cottage country. The ever widening gap between the have’s and the have not’s.

Deep sigh. I need to escape from reality for a while for the sake of my sanity. My main avenue of escape is always nature. At this time of year, when I am hibernating indoors, reliving my best insect sightings from the warmer months is the next best thing to being among them.

Pipevine Swallowtail: Usually stays south of the Great Lakes

Pipevine Swallowtail butterflies, lookalike cousins to the more common Black Swallowtail and Spicebush Swallowtail, do not often wander north into Ontario. But last summer they defied the norm. I had to shoot through foliage to capture this beauty in July at the Urquhart Butterfly Garden in Hamilton. It perched perfectly to show off its orange eyespots and white checkered wing border.

Tapered Mason Wasp: Conservation Status – Vulnerable in Canada

I ticked this lifer off my list in July also at the Urquhart Butterfly Garden. It had the good fashion sense to perch on a pinkish flower for effect showing off its yellow stripes, oversized wings and the tapered shape that gives it its’ name. This wasp is quite small (about a ½ inch) and easy to overlook if you are not attuned to miniature creatures like it.

Furrowed Horse Fly: Conservation Status – Imperiled in Canada

As flies go, horseflies are quite large and chunky but also very photogenic. I came across this Furrowed Horse Fly at Dundas Valley Conservation Area in late July. The bluish stripes across the large brown eyes look as though they were painted on by a make-up artist. The intricate veins in the wings also have an artist’s touch.

Arrow Clubtail: Conservation Status – Imperiled in Canada

My late season highlight was this impressive Arrow Clubtail dragonfly found in September on the Rotary Riverside Trail outside of Caledonia. The Grand River is known to be a hotspot for this species in Ontario. At an impressive 2-1/2” with emerald green eyes and arrow shaped markings, it is hard to miss. This one was unusually cooperative and posed for several minutes.

I share John Burroughs’ sentiment. Nature is my enduring metaphor for peace, beauty and all things being in their proper order. At tumultuous times like these, it is my much-needed escape from reality, my refuge and my source of hope for better days ahead.

~ Now Available Online from Amazon, Chapters Indigo or Barnes & Noble: Hunting Muskie, Rites of Passage – Stories by Michael Robert Dyet

~ Michael Robert Dyet is also the author of Until the Deep Water Stills – An Internet-enhanced Novel (now out of print) which was a double winner in the Reader Views Literary Awards 2009. Visit Michael’s website at www.mdyetmetaphor.com .

~ Subscribe to Michael’s Metaphors of Life Journal aka That Make Me Go Hmmm at its’ internet home www.mdyetmetaphor.com/blog2. Instructions for subscribing are provided in the Subscribe to this Blog: How To instructions page in the right sidebar. If you’re reading this post on another social networking site, come back regularly to my page for postings once a week.

Tags:   Arrow Clubtail · Furrowed Horse Fly · metaphor · Michael Robert Dyet · Pipevine Swallwtail · Tapered Mason WaspNo Comments.

Hmmm, is that thorn really a thorn or is it something much more interesting?

That rather odd looking thorn you notice might actually be a Treehopper – very tiny critters in an insect group related to Cicadas. It is estimated that there are about 3,200 species worldwide with the lion’s share residing in the tropics. However, approximately 260 species can be found in North America. The ones I most often see are Buffalo Treehoppers (the green ones in this post) for which there are 16 species.

What is so special about Treehoppers?

The fascinating thing about Treehoppers is that they are barely recognizable as living creatures let alone as insects. Their body mimics thorns with spikes, horns, crests or other rather bizarre body modifications. These features are a form of camouflage that offers them protection from predators and often hide them from our perception.

What do Treehoppers look like?

As mentioned above, they do not look like insects at all. Their tiny size – from 2 mm to 2 cm – makes them difficult to find and recognize. Unless you are aware of their existence and attuned to their appearance, they look like thorns or parts of vegetation. They do have specialized muscles in their hind legs that unfurl to help them jump although this feature is hard to detect.

How long do they live and where?

Treehoppers only live a few months. Young Treehoppers are found on herbaceous shrubs and grasses. Adults frequent hardwood trees. They have pointy, tube-shaped mouthparts that they use to pierce plant stems and feed on sap.

Where do they fit in the quilt of nature?

Treehoppers engage in the practice of mutualism – two species working together in a manner that benefits both species. Excess sap released from plants when they pierce them attracts ants which come to feed on the sap. The ants in turn provide protection from predators for Treehoppers. Some species have also formed mutualistic relationships with wasps and even geckos.

Tiny Treehoppers: One more fascinating patch in the quilt of nature stitched together by threads of interdependence and natural balance.

~ Now Available Online from Amazon, Chapters Indigo or Barnes & Noble: Hunting Muskie, Rites of Passage – Stories by Michael Robert Dyet

~ Michael Robert Dyet is also the author of Until the Deep Water Stills – An Internet-enhanced Novel (now out of print) which was a double winner in the Reader Views Literary Awards 2009. Visit Michael’s website at www.mdyetmetaphor.com .

~ Subscribe to Michael’s Metaphors of Life Journal aka That Make Me Go Hmmm at its’ internet home www.mdyetmetaphor.com/blog2. Instructions for subscribing are provided in the Subscribe to this Blog: How To instructions page in the right sidebar. If you’re reading this post on another social networking site, come back regularly to my page for postings once a week.

Tags:   metaphor · Michael Robert Dyet · quilt of nature · TreehoppersNo Comments.

Hmmm, can you put a price tag on your vote?

We have launched into a new era of government’s strategies for currying favour with voters. Greasing the voter’s palm is not new. But now all pretense has been stripped from the process.

Ontario Premier Doug Ford welcomed in this new era with the announcement that his government will be sending a $200 cheque to all Ontario residents early in 2025. No bothersome needs-based calculation involved. All palms are being greased regardless of income to the tune of $3 billion in total.

Ford insists this handout is not tied to an early provincial election. We all know better. He will without question call an election in the spring of 2025 because support for the Conservatives is strong. Ford has pegged the cost of buying a vote at $200 per head.

Now Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau is adopting a similar strategy. He announced on Thursday a new suite of measures, to alleviate affordability pressures, under the pseudonyms Working Canadians Rebate and GST Holiday.

Front and center in these measures is a $250 handout to working Canadian residents which, as I understand it, excludes seniors. The going rate for a federal vote is apparently $50 more than for a provincial vote. There is a lip service, needs-based element in this case – an income of less than $150,000 in 2023.

The GST Holiday will be in effect from December 14 through February 15 and will apply to all food as well as booze, children’s clothing and toys, books and newspapers and Christmas trees. But you will need to do your Xmas shopping in a 10 day, door-crasher blitz to reap the benefits.

These measures are also meant to extend an olive branch to the NDP whose support the Liberals need to stay in power. NDP leader Jagmeet Singh’s response: “The NDP will vote for this measure because working people are desperate for relief and we’re proud we delivered for them again.” Translation: We made them bribe you so vote for us.

No one is likely to turn down these handouts and rebates. We all want more money in our pockets and more spending power. But do not be hoodwinked by the rhetoric. The Liberals are lagging 17 percentage points back of the first-place Conservatives and are stinging after two byelection defeats. The handouts are seed money for the next federal election.

This is certainly not the first time a government has dangled incentives to the public in advance of an election or to shore up tumbling support. But the sheer transparency of the efforts now are disconcerting:

Here is a fistful of money and some financial benefits. No strings attached, you understand. We are just trying to do right by you. If it happens to influence you to vote for us – well, that’s just a happy coincidence.

Welcome to the era of transparent, unapologetic vote buying. We finally know what the price tag per head is calculated to be. The question remaining is: Will it actually work for Ford or Trudeau? My vote is not for sale? Is yours?

~ Now Available Online from Amazon, Chapters Indigo or Barnes & Noble: Hunting Muskie, Rites of Passage – Stories by Michael Robert Dyet

~ Michael Robert Dyet is also the author of Until the Deep Water Stills – An Internet-enhanced Novel (now out of print) which was a double winner in the Reader Views Literary Awards 2009. Visit Michael’s website at www.mdyetmetaphor.com .

~ Subscribe to Michael’s Metaphors of Life Journal aka That Make Me Go Hmmm at its’ internet home www.mdyetmetaphor.com/blog2. Instructions for subscribing are provided in the Subscribe to this Blog: How To instructions page in the right sidebar. If you’re reading this post on another social networking site, come back regularly to my page for postings once a week

Tags:   Doug Ford · metaphor · Michae Robert Dyet · Pierre Trudeau · Working Canadians RebateNo Comments.

Hmmm, like him or hate him, Trump’s path to victory was well mapped out.

In January 2025, Donald Trump will officially become president of the U.S. again. It is a development many of us north of the border hoped would not happen. It looked to be a close race once Joe Biden stepped aside in favour of Kamala Harris. But in the end it was a decisive victory for Trump and the Republican Party.

Trump is now very publicly handpicking members for the key roles in his administration. These selections, to no one’s surprise, are individuals whose political stripes align with his own often radical views and who tied their wagons to his campaign. A few examples:

• Robert F. Kennedy Jr. – Health & Human Resources Secretary
• Elon Musk (who donated a whopping $188 million to the Trump campaign) – Department of Government Efficiency
• GOP Rep Matt Goetz – Attorney General

It is safe to say that the next four years will be rocky ones for the U.S. as well as for Canada whose fate and fortune is closely tied to the U.S. Whatever happens south of the border, has an immediate and significant ripple effect up here.

I have been puzzling over Trump’s decisive victory and the factors that came into play in the election. Certainly dissatisfaction with the Biden-led Democrats was one of those factors. The Republicans may have taken over the White House regardless of who their candidate was.

It is tempting to suggest that the Republican’s victory may have been by an even wider margin with a different candidate – someone less divisive than Trump. But this may be too simplistic an interpretation.

Donald Trump’s primary base of support has always been working class whites – a group that has been steadily losing wealth and income in the U.S. Trump’s Make America Great Again platform and the policies that go with it are a rallying cry for this increasingly discontented segment of the population.

Cards on the table: I do not like Donald Trump. The way he conducts himself, the things he says and some of the actions he takes are offensive to me. At times I wonder how those who voted for him can excuse these behaviours. But that is an outsider’s point of view.

Discontent is a powerful force – a grey cloud that hangs over the heads of those who feel pushed aside. Their collective desire to be out from under that cloud is, I believe, what got Trump elected. Trump promised, albeit often in unsavoury terms and with radical actions, to blast that cloud away and bring back sunny conditions for his base of support.

Like him or hate him, Trump’s path to victory was well mapped out from day one. We can argue with his politics but not with his strategy.

~ Now Available Online from Amazon, Chapters Indigo or Barnes & Noble: Hunting Muskie, Rites of Passage – Stories by Michael Robert Dyet

~ Michael Robert Dyet is also the author of Until the Deep Water Stills – An Internet-enhanced Novel (now out of print) which was a double winner in the Reader Views Literary Awards 2009. Visit Michael’s website at www.mdyetmetaphor.com .

~ Subscribe to Michael’s Metaphors of Life Journal aka That Make Me Go Hmmm at its’ internet home www.mdyetmetaphor.com/blog2. Instructions for subscribing are provided in the Subscribe to this Blog: How To instructions page in the right sidebar. If you’re reading this post on another social networking site, come back regularly to my page for postings once a week

Tags:   Democrat · Donald Trump · metaphor · Michael Robert Dyet · RepublicanNo Comments.

Hmmm, are you squeezing all the joy you can out of today?

I have been sidelined for the past two weeks after a severe episode with my chronic back condition. How did it happen? Sitting at the kitchen table to eat my breakfast and leaning forward for the first spoonful, a lightning bolt of stabbing pain shot across my lower back. I bellowed Oh! Oh! Oh! so loud I woke my father up.

In a panic, I grabbed a cold pack and staggered to my bedroom as my lower back muscles completely seized up. I put a call into my chiropractor who agreed to give me a treatment even though it was his consulting day. But that was not to be. The worst was yet to come.

I struggled into my clothes and tried to delicately roll into a position where I could put on my running shoes which are always pre-tied with elastic laces. The exercise proved ill-advised as I twisted in a manner that my back objected to and the pain doubled down. I bellowed again and told my father to call for an ambulance.

After a half-hour on the stretcher in the ER and a shot for the pain, I struggled into a recliner (no beds available) so the ambulance attendants could get back to work. Another half hour later I hobbled over to what passes for a bed in the ER. Three hours later, after an ultrasound and a quick exam by the ER doctor, I was sent home with no treatment. Such is the unfortunate state of affairs in our hospitals these days.

I am finally mobile again, albeit cautiously, after seven chiropractic treatments and two weeks of convalescence. It is my custom after experiences like this one to give acknowledgements where due and cast about for lessons learned. The acknowledgements first.

I gained a renewed appreciation for the heroic doctors and nurses who staff our hospital ERs. Despite chronic underfunding, a near constant state of gridlock and unrelenting stress, they manage to be as kind and attentive as they can be under the circumstances. I know they wish they could do more but underfunding and understaffing prevents it.

Thanks to my sister and her husband for driving my father to the hospital to be with me, sitting with me for hours as I awaited examination and driving my father and I back home.

Special thanks to Roni (one of the ministers at North Bramalea United Church in Brampton where I am still a member despite living in Hamiton) and her husband for doing grocery shopping for my father and I while I was out of commission.

And the lesson relearned: There is no guarantee what tomorrow will bring. I did not expect to have such a debilitating episode when I have been adhering to weekly chiropractic treatments for seven or eight years. But it happened and it was miserable.

My chronic back problem puts significant restrictions on what activities I can pursue in my retirement years. Nevertheless, as my passion is immersing myself in nature, I continue to do short hikes three times a week from spring through summer and autumn. Sometimes it is a struggle to get my target 2-1/2 hours in but I keep at it when the weather is reasonable.

Bolts of lightning affect all our lives. We cannot avoid or predict them. I do not know what tomorrow will bring me. And so, despite living in constant fear of that lightning bolt of pain, I try to squeeze as much joy as possible into my days.

I urge you to not put off what brings you fulfilment for an uncertain tomorrow. By all means, plan for tomorrow and secure your future. But do your best to squeeze as much joy out of today as you can while you can.

~ Now Available Online from Amazon, Chapters Indigo or Barnes & Noble: Hunting Muskie, Rites of Passage – Stories by Michael Robert Dyet

~ Michael Robert Dyet is also the author of Until the Deep Water Stills – An Internet-enhanced Novel (now out of print) which was a double winner in the Reader Views Literary Awards 2009. Visit Michael’s website at www.mdyetmetaphor.com .

~ Subscribe to Michael’s Metaphors of Life Journal aka That Make Me Go Hmmm at its’ internet home www.mdyetmetaphor.com/blog2. Instructions for subscribing are provided in the Subscribe to this Blog: How To instructions page in the right sidebar. If you’re reading this post on another social networking site, come back regularly to my page for postings once a week

Tags:   back pain · live for today · metaphor · Michael DyetComments Off on Bolts of Lightning: Live for Today

Hmmm, does this new rendering of autumn have its own lesson to offer?

Autumn has lost some of its splendour and exuberance here in the last couple years now that sultry temperatures persist through September and even most October days are quite warm. The cooler temperatures that once were the impetus for the full kaleidoscope of fall colours do not arrive until November.

I have mixed feelings about this trend. I quite like the warm conditions that prevail longer into the reclining months of the year. But I do miss the unfurling cavalcade of colours in the leaves. However, there are some portraits of this new rendering of autumn that catch my fancy.

A carpet of golden and russet leaves crunching softly underfoot, as I trudge up the hill beneath the thinning canopy, marveling at the snaking, decades old roots that anchor the tree to the side of the slope.

The tint of harvest gold and candy apple red in the lush trees, undergoing the sea change of autumn and bending in supplication over the bay, reflected in dreamy Van Gogh post-impressionism in the silent water shimmering in the late season sun.

Subtle shades of green, veins of retiring yellow and the tattered edges of a solitary leaf that has by chance settled on a dirt path where it need not compete with others of its kind for attention from passersby.

Translucent drops and beads of life-sustaining water that cling in gravity-defying fashion to the backside of a host leaf in the layered blanket of many colours that carpets the ground.

A leisurely stroll with your soulmate along a sun-dappled woodland path encircled and embraced by the wind-rustled greenery and serenaded by the pensive whistles and quavering notes of a White-throated Sparrow.

I wrote in an earlier post that Autumn is a metaphor for the seasons our lives must roll through – joy and sorrow, abundance and scarcity, affluence and hardship. It is still so. However, the more sedate tones of this new rendering of autumn reminds us to pay more attention to something as simple as a single leaf and its qualities – and perhaps that is a blessing in itself.

~  Now Available Online from Amazon, Chapters Indigo or Barnes & Noble: Hunting Muskie, Rites of Passage – Stories by Michael Robert Dyet

~ Michael Robert Dyet is also the author of Until the Deep Water Stills – An Internet-enhanced Novel (now out of print) which was a double winner in the Reader Views Literary Awards 2009. Visit Michael’s website at www.mdyetmetaphor.com .

~ Subscribe to Michael’s Metaphors of Life Journal aka That Make Me Go Hmmm at its’ internet home www.mdyetmetaphor.com/blog2. Instructions for subscribing are provided in the Subscribe to this Blog: How To instructions page in the right sidebar. If you’re reading this post on another social networking site, come back regularly to my page for postings once a week

Tags:   autumn · fall colours · metaphor · Michael Robert DyetComments Off on Portraits of Autumn 2024

I grow old… I grow old…

I shall wear the bottom of my trousers rolled

~ T.S. Eliot, The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock

Hmmm, will I fare well in the judgment of that water drop moment?

When I grow old and wear the bottom of my trousers rolled and look back upon the landscape of my life, I will be obligated to examine how I acted in those unexpected, paradigm-changing periods that shifted the axis of life.

I would never have expected that the entire world would be taken hostage for two years, almost brought to a standstill, by a virus that had existed for 50 years and will continue to exist for 50 years or more into the future.

In the light of final reflection, I will ponder that conundrum and wonder how much the trajectory of mankind was diverted by the pandemic and whether it needed to be so.

I would never have expected that a man who inherited wealth and yet declared bankruptcy six times for his businesses, promised to build a wall across the U.S. / Mexico border and make Mexico pay for it, would become the 45^th President (and possibly the 47^th) of the United States.

In the light of final reflection, I will ponder that conundrum and wonder what it says about the restlessness and discontent of the nation in which it happened.

I would never have expected that we would arrive at a time when 10% of the world’s population controls 90% of wealth, when the net worth of the world’s richest person would be over $250 billion while growing numbers of people are destitute and homeless.

In the light of final reflection, I will ponder that conundrum and wonder how control of the purse strings fell into the hands of so few.

I would never have expected that the Internet of Things would create a parallel, alternative world in a virtual landscape and that an intelligence tug of war would evolve between the human mind and the artificial brain.

In the light of final reflection, I will ponder that conundrum and wonder if there was a threshold in that journey that should never have been crossed.

I would never have expected that mankind would turn a blind eye to the health of our planet for the sake of greedy consumption and keep moving steadily down that road even when the dire consequences were clear. 

In the light of final reflection, I will ponder that conundrum and wonder if my generation is the one that witnessed the beginning of the end.

When I grow old and wear my trousers rolled, I will have to ask if there were forks in the road where we as a species chose wrong. Equally important, I will have to gaze into my image in a waterdrop and ask if I did enough in my small sphere of influence to try and tip the scales for the better.

~  Now Available Online from Amazon, Chapters Indigo or Barnes & Noble: Hunting Muskie, Rites of Passage – Stories by Michael Robert Dyet

~ Michael Robert Dyet is also the author of Until the Deep Water Stills – An Internet-enhanced Novel (now out of print) which was a double winner in the Reader Views Literary Awards 2009. Visit Michael’s website at www.mdyetmetaphor.com .

~ Subscribe to Michael’s Metaphors of Life Journal aka That Make Me Go Hmmm at its’ internet home www.mdyetmetaphor.com/blog2. Instructions for subscribing are provided in the Subscribe to this Blog: How To instructions page in the right sidebar. If you’re reading this post on another social networking site, come back regularly to my page for postings once a week

Tags:   metaphor · Michael Robert Dyet · T.S. Eliot · The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock · water dropComments Off on When I Grow Old and Wear the Bottom of My Trousers Rolled: Water Drop Moment

Hmmm, do they pause to pray before they capture and consume their prey?

I recall vividly the first time I saw a Mantid (or Mantis, as they are now commonly called) when I was a child. I found one on our front porch and thought it was just about the most fascinating creature I had ever seen or could ever hope to see. Flash forward a half century later and I still find this startlingly large inset spellbinding.

What is so special about Mantids?

A Mantid can remain motionless for long periods of time or sway gently back and forth with its head raised and front legs stretched out in what looks to be a position of supplication – hence its nickname Praying Mantis. The ancient Greeks gave it the name Mantis because they believed it had supernatural powers. Its current scientific name Mantid, or soothsayer, also reflects this belief.

What do Mantids look like?

Mantids are spear-shaped with long, gangly jointed legs and an alien-looking, triangular face. They may be bright green or brown which forms an effective camouflage against vegetation. They can grow to fully four inches (10 cm) giving them a fearsome appearance.

How long do they live and where?

Mantids are always found in vegetation – long grass or weeds – where they lay in wait to ambush their prey. They live for six to twelve months. Female Mantids often kill and eat their partner after mating providing nutrition for their offspring! This is known as sexual cannibalism and still puzzles scientists.

Where do they fit in the quilt of nature?

Mantids serve as an effective natural form of insect control feeding on small insects like spiders, mosquitos, crickets and grasshoppers. Although I find it hard to fathom, they can on apparently subdue and consume larger prey such as frogs and hummingbirds.

In turn, they are a food source for larger creatures such as birds, bats and even fish if they happen to fall into the water. Mantids are distributed worldwide in both tropical and temperate climates. There are over 2,400 species of Mantids of which two are found in Ontario.

One more  fascinating patch in the quilt of nature stitched together by threads of interdependence and natural balance.

~  Now Available Online from Amazon, Chapters Indigo or Barnes & Noble: Hunting Muskie, Rites of Passage – Stories by Michael Robert Dyet

~ Michael Robert Dyet is also the author of Until the Deep Water Stills – An Internet-enhanced Novel (now out of print) which was a double winner in the Reader Views Literary Awards 2009. Visit Michael’s website at www.mdyetmetaphor.com .

~ Subscribe to Michael’s Metaphors of Life Journal aka That Make Me Go Hmmm at its’ internet home www.mdyetmetaphor.com/blog2. Instructions for subscribing are provided in the Subscribe to this Blog: How To instructions page in the right sidebar. If you’re reading this post on another social networking site, come back regularly to my page for postings once a week.

Tags:   Chinese Mantis · European Mantis · Mantid · Mantis · metaphor · Michae Robert Dyet · Nature · Praying MantisComments Off on Nature as a Quilt: The Mighty Mantid

Hmmm… Missing: One moral compass. If found, return to Queens Park, Office of the Premier.

Once again Ontario Premier Doug Ford is making headlines spewing controversial and insensitive remarks every time he steps in front of the camera. No one likes publicity more than Ford. Think he is just telling like it is for the general good of all? Think again.

Ford has taken aim at the homeless in Ontario with remarks so insensitive they are staggering. He told reporters that those who are homeless and are healthy, should “get off your ass and start working like everyone else is.” He has suggested that people living in encampments “just need to get a job to lift themselves out of poverty.”

Doug, listen and listen well. No one chooses to be out of work and broke. No one chooses to be homeless. No one chooses to live in an encampment. People find themselves in this predicament because society has left them behind. Some of them have disabilities or special needs that cripple them.

Shame on you for trying to get political mileage out of the disadvantaged.

Ford has also taken aim at immigrants. Recently, after a shooting at Toronto Jewish girls school, he accused people of bringing problems from everywhere else in the world to the province. Adding: “…don’t come to Canada if you’re going to start terrorizing neighbourhoods like this.”

If that remark sounds disturbingly familiar, it is because it echoes the orange-faced guy south of the border who is trying to get elected president a second time by promising mass deportation of immigrants some of whom he accuses of eating cats and dogs in Springfield.

Ford has also targeted environmentalists. He wants to fast-track the environmental impact assessment standing in the way of his promise to build Highway 413 across the top of the GTA connecting Halton, Peel and York regions. His remarks on this front:

“There’s hundreds of thousands of people stuck in their cars, backed up from here to Timbuktu, and you’re worried about a grasshopper jumping across the highway.” That is a gross oversimplification of the issue. The proposed highway could have devastating impacts on Ontario’s protected Greenbelt as well as on rivers, farms and many endangered species.

Doug, listen and listen well. Many of us care about grasshoppers and the habitats that support them. If you took the time to educate yourself, you would learn that there is a direct link between human health and wellbeing – and in fact the sustainability of humans as a species – and the health of natural ecosystems.

Why is Ford sounding off so indiscriminately now? It is all about prepping for an election. The next federal government election will happen no later than October 2025. The Trudeau Liberals are on their way out and the Poilievre Conservatives are poised to take over.

Ford knows that the province of Ontario does not like to have the same party in power provincially and federally. So he is seeding the ground for an early provincial election to get ahead of the political swing that will be happening at the federal level… not to mention getting ahead of the outcome of the RCMP criminal investigation into his Greenbelt scandal.

Politics is by nature a self-serving organism. The primary purpose of any government is to get itself re-elected. But there is a dividing line between political opportunism and plain old lust for power. A political leader must have a moral compass to prevent him or her from crossing that line. Ford lost his moral compass some time ago. Sadly, once it is lost, is rarely ever recovered.

~  Now Available Online from Amazon, Chapters Indigo or Barnes & Noble: Hunting Muskie, Rites of Passage – Stories by Michael Robert Dyet

~ Michael Robert Dyet is also the author of Until the Deep Water Stills – An Internet-enhanced Novel (now out of print) which was a double winner in the Reader Views Literary Awards 2009. Visit Michael’s website at www.mdyetmetaphor.com .

~ Subscribe to Michael’s Metaphors of Life Journal aka That Make Me Go Hmmm at its’ internet home www.mdyetmetaphor.com/blog2. Instructions for subscribing are provided in the Subscribe to this Blog: How To instructions page in the right sidebar. If you’re reading this post on another social networking site, come back regularly to my page for postings once a week

Tags:   Doug Ford · metaphor · moral compassComments Off on Doug Ford: No Moral Compass

It is the glistening autumnal side of summer. I feel a cool vein in the breeze, which braces my thought, and I pass with pleasure over sheltered and sunny portions of the sand where the summer’s heat is undiminished, and I realize what a friend I am losing.

Henry David Thoreau – American Naturalist, Essayist, Poet and Philosopher

Hmmm, do we have to let go of summer all at once?

As I put up this post, we are about to turn the page from the lazy river of summer to the leaves-underfoot pathways of autumn. The official date for the turning of the seasons is of course rather arbitrary. I like to think that it is more of a slow, graceful retiring, than a date on a calendar, as Thoreau so elegantly states it at the head of this post.

The transition always inspires in me a reflective mindset and a desire to cast a look back at the faces the summer that is ending has taken. For me that means recalling the highlights – the lifers – naturalist terminology for a species sighted for the first time – from my summer excursions into the heart of nature.

Pipevine Swallowtails do not usually make it across the Great Lakes into Ontario. But this summer some made the crossing. This specimen did not make it easy on me. I had to shoot through a gap in the foliage to capture the bright orange splotches and white-fringed borders that stand out so boldly against the blue-black wings.

Fortune smiled upon me when I caught sight of this Emergent Mayfly. It posed perfectly as it clung to a palm-shaped leaf – arching its slender body, extending its front legs and flaring its black-checkered wings as though soaking up the heat of the July day.

Horse flies are among the world’s largest flies and impossible to overlook. This Furrowed Horse Fly greeted me on a woodland path on a steamy August day. Its large, glistening compound eyes seemed to me to be taking in the full spendour of the day and inviting me to do so as well.

 I had to wait until early September to set eyes upon this Arrrow Clubtail which is classified as “imperiled in Canada”. It is a startlingly large dragonfly with emerald green eyes, broad yellow thorax stripes and the clubbed tail that gives this family of dragonflies its name. Fortunately for me, it was very patient and gave me several minutes to admire it.

And so, with this retrospective, the lazy river of summer is drawing to a close. But the ending is not a firm date on a calendar. Thoreau says it best so I will give the final word to him.

Summer passes into autumn in some unimaginable point in time, like the turning of a leaf.

~  Now Available Online from Amazon, Chapters Indigo or Barnes & Noble: Hunting Muskie, Rites of Passage – Stories by Michael Robert Dyet

~ Michael Robert Dyet is also the author of Until the Deep Water Stills – An Internet-enhanced Novel (now out of print) which was a double winner in the Reader Views Literary Awards 2009. Visit Michael’s website at www.mdyetmetaphor.com .

~ Subscribe to Michael’s Metaphors of Life Journal aka That Make Me Go Hmmm at its’ internet home www.mdyetmetaphor.com/blog2. Instructions for subscribing are provided in the Subscribe to this Blog: How To instructions page in the right sidebar. If you’re reading this post on another social networking site, come back regularly to my page for postings once a week

Tags:   Arrow Clubtail · Emergent Mayfly · Furrowed Horse Fly · Henry David Thoreau · last day of summer · metaphor · Michael Robert Dyet · Pipevine SwallowtailComments Off on Bidding Farewell to the Lazy River of Summer