The Audience
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Extinct vs. Extant
Last week in Toronto, we visited the Royal Ontario Museum (ROM). Where we toured its paleontology exhibit that focuses on the very most ancient forms of life that once lived in what is now Canada. Imagine, it is about 565 million years ago. The ocean is dark and quiet, but there is life. There mysterious creatures huddle along the muddy seafloor. But then something happened—volcanic ash rained down, suffocating the organisms under a soft, grey cloud making fossils.
Today, this land is known as Mistaken Point, a jagged cliff overlooking the Atlantic Ocean. It’s also the oldest site in the world to show fossil communities of large and complex multicellular life. These fossils mark a shift in Earth’s history—when life went from microscopic and got big.
This post deals with in particular two forms of early terrestrial plant life, cooksonia and clubmoss. Both of which lived around the same time during the early colonization of land. While cooksonia is now extinct, it represents the foundational baseline of early vascular plants. Clubmosses represent a more advanced, and more importantly surviving extant branch of these ancient vascular plants. Above are two photos from ROM, one showing a cooksonia fossil and the other showing a model representation of this plant. Below is some living clubmoss from down the beach. Still going strong after 400M years on this planet.
Meanwhile, in the here-and-now, Jay, Anne and Bill left this morning, heading south towards the warmth. Leaving two old souls to shiver here alone. Jay lit a nice fire before she left, but since we want to do some things today, we have let it go out. While the fire is extinct, we are extant.
Lucy Quinnuayuak
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The spirits, have done it all in one night
Yesterday, the three sisters spent the day cleaning out the shed. After a day of hard work, we were all feted over at Anne and Bill’s with a steak dinner. Today Jane left to go back down south. Before she left though, she drained the water heater in preparation for its replacement. The plumber arrived shortly afterwards. He quickly replaced the water heater, then fell apart along with the sink when we asked him to also fix a slow drain. Too many long-haired women, plus forty-year-old pipes. Oh, the horror! Imagine the movie The Ring.
Yes, that is human hair hanging down. Spirit one! Next up was the bug guy. The cabin has a powder post beetle infestation, and we mean to get them. The exterminator was somewhat touch-and-go on communicating, but he showed up. I was at the store, so, I missed him, but this is the plan. He will return three times this summer. Just like the spirits. Each time he will spray (Bora-Care), and we will leave the cabin for the day. June 1st is the first scheduled treatment. We are also looking at July 1st as the next one and I am thinking of the last one sometime in August, after the grandchildren leave. Hopefully that will rid us of these forever pests. Spirit two!
Our final spirit to visited us was Steve the wood guy. I had given up on him and laid down for a nap, when much to my amazement he appeared, along with his not so tiny eight-cylinder red truck. He was already tossing wood off the back of his truck, when I stumbled out to greet him. No worries though the women folk had him well in hand.
After he dumped his wood and left, the stacking began. We had ordered a face-cord and with the half that we still had, the wood nearly filled both racks. We had it all stacked and covered, but then I had to cut one restraining bit of twine. All the stacked wood came crashing down. We were lucky that no one was hurt. Starting again from square one, with more care this time, we restacked everything. I fixed dinner for my hardworking crew and then Anne and Bill showed up later. Jay, Anne and Bill head south tomorrow and since a bear raided all of the bird feeders around, I might lock the doors at night.
Chainmail
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Beach Day!
Beach day! Our first real beach day of the season. On our first day up here on the shores of Gitche Gumee it was warm enough to sit out on the beach, but since then it has been too cold. Not today. After days of cleaning and organizing the cabin’s kitchen, the three sisters have moved outside. They are now tackling the shed. I have taken advantage of their industry to sneak away. If summoned, this will be a short post. If not noticed, it will be longer. You be the judge of my work avoidance efforts. Tomorrow, the wood guy comes and the plumber and the exterminator. Once this circus has commenced then Jane will feel free to leave and go back south and to her job-job. Last year, we ran the woodpile down to dangerously low levels, but it looks like we will get by, by the skin of our teeth.