Plenty of Nothing

Looking More Carefully: Vernon Fisher

Vernon Fisher
Originally uploaded by heyther

One of the blogs I make sure I check every morning is Elizabeth's. I check because I want to read what she has to say and I check because I want to make sure she's still alive.

I started reading it because I liked her novel Zed. I've stuck around because her voice is compelling (though usually NSFW) and she makes me think about what it means for an athlete to move from figuring out how to make it onto the Olympic fencing team without a sponser to figuring out how to live, really live, in a wheelchair with a progressive, terminal, rare, and poorly understood medical condition. 

If you read Elizabeth's stuff you'll learn a lot about goth lolly culture and anime, wheelchair sports (sadly not as egalitarian as you'd expect), despair and cutting, the underbelly of the Canadian health care system, the limitations of home care agencies, disablism, memory loss, rage, and most important, determination.  (If you ask, she'll send you a labour of love and hope: a postcard that takes much effort to put together.)

What's that got to do with the photograph? The man in the wicker wheelchair: that's my great uncle Vernon.  He died the year before I was born. And since my family loves secrets, it was many many years before I learned that he had probably died of ALS and more years before this snapshot came my way. 

When I first got the photograph what I saw was the chair. Now what I see is Vernon: smiling, open, and as mischievous as he was in boyhood photographs. And in an odd, round about way, that is Elizabeth's gift to Vernon: I see him.

Heather

Wavy

Evangeline Brandt "Three Lost Years"

First Up, First Down

Evangeline Brandt "Second Year"

A Crater Named Heather

This is a radar image of the crater Heather, on Venus.  It's about eleven kilometres across, and actually may be a volcano instead of an impact crater, they're not sure.  It's a little below the equator near the south end of the low-lying Guinevere Planitia, not too far from where the Soviet probe Venera 8 hit the planet in 1972.  Small craters like Heather have common names, but the big ones commemorate famous women.  The largest three are named after Margaret Mead, Queen Isabella and nuclear physicist Lise Meitner.   From Venus Crater Database.  Douglas

Comet Hale-Bopp A Lulu

Not many comets are visible from the middle of today's light-polluted cites, but Comet Hale-Bopp, which flew by in spring 1997 was a stand-out.  This picture, taken by Jakob Kuiper on March 30, 1997, shows the apparition shaking out her tresses over downtown Utrecht.  Hale-Bopp finds the bright lights of the inner solar system addictive and is fated to return more and more frequently.  Her previous visit was about 4,200 years ago, but her next will be in about 2,370 years.  You can find over five thousand snaps of the comely Hale-Bopp at this NASA site. 

Wheels Within Wheels

Evangeline Brandt "Volvo"

[If you came here looking for Brandt Volvo in Bengtsfors, Sweden, this is the website.]

Car Ferry