Canon PowerShot SX50 HS Camera – Zoom

I got a new camera a few days ago.  It is the Canon PowerShot SX50 HS. I’ll skip right to the photos I took this morning so that you can see why I am very happy with this camera.

This was the view from my back door this morning. The neighbour’s farm buildings are near the centre of the photo (you can barely see the red barn), and the moon was in the sky above them. The sun was just coming up.

The PowerShot has a 50X optical zoom lens with Image Stabilizer. In layman terms, a zoom lens makes far away things look closer.

This is the red barn when I zoomed in on it.

This is the moon when I zoomed in on it.

The camera was set to AUTO mode, and I did not use a tripod. I think that bears repeating – I hand held the camera, and used the full AUTO mode. Point – shoot!

This camera does not come with a memory card, so we bought a SanDisk Extreme SDHC UHS-I Card. It is a ‘fast write’ card that allows the camera to record photos almost instantly. Extreme lens – extreme memory card.

The SX50 HS belongs to a group of cameras called ‘Bridge Cameras‘. They are larger and more feature rich than most ‘point and shoot’ cameras, but are not as advanced as an SLR camera. Bridge Cameras have a single fixed lens that is often, as in the case of this camera, a superzoom lens.

As you can see from these photos, I am back in Canada. Brown grass, no green things in the flower beds yet. The last of the snow melted yesterday. Temperatures still below freezing most nights. The robins arrived a few days ago. The tulips have just poked out of the ground. I think it must be spring time!

Spring means yard work, and that means there are never enough hours in a day… unless you can clone yourself.  I tried that once:  Weekly Photo Challenge: Unfocused.

The Siksika First Nation – Idle No More

Between March 23rd and 27th,  vandals caused extensive damage to 25 Summer Cabins in a quiet little Golf Resort called Hidden Valley.

Normal operating procedure for this community of 300 cabins, situated on a 324 acre parcel of land leased from the Siksika First Nation, would be to repair or rebuild what the vandals destroyed. After all, the cabin owners have rebuilt twice in the past when the community was extensively flooded by the Bow River.

But this isn’t a normal year. It is the last year of the Resort’s lease. A small but vocal group of Siksika Nation Members have decided not to Redesignate these lands for use by non-nation members. By extension, they do not wish to renew the lease proposal that the Siksika Nation Chief and Council negotiated with the Cabin Owner’s Association.

In a Referendum this past December where 4167 Siksika Members were given the opportunity to vote on redesignation, 641 voted NO, while 269 voted Yes. The remaining 78% of the population chose not to vote.

The Cabin Owners (some of them members of the Siksika Nation) were surprised and devastated by the ‘No’ vote. They have been paying the maintenance and improvement costs for the amenities – a 9 hole semi-private Golf Course, pro shop, restaurant, and man made lake – for the past 38 years. With green fees of just $20 a round, the golf course has attracted a loyal following of the Nation’s members and provides employment in a corner of the reserve where there are few jobs. In addition, the Resort pays an annual rights fee to the Nation in order to use the land for six months of the year.

They were equally surprised, but optimistic when Chief and Council passed a resolution that said they intended on holding another Referendum that would extend the existing lease for another 2-3 years so that the will of the entire Nation could be determined.

This action didn’t sit well with those who had voted NO. They had been celebrating the fact that the ‘colonists and their 300 years of lies’ would be forced off of their land. They couldn’t understand how the cabin owners were suddenly back in the running. They did not seem to realize or accept that their Chief and Council had initiated the offer of a second Resolution.

It was at this point that a group of vandals decided to take matters into their own hands. It is hard to say what they expected to accomplish, or where their loyalties lie, but the damage was another blow to the Cabin Owners. They were also disheartened when they found out that Chief and Council were in no hurry to hold the next referendum – the proposed date would not give the cabin owners time to remove their cabins if the vote was NO again. (I expect there isn’t enough time to remove the cabins anyhow as a result of the timing of the first vote.)

The whole thing is of interest to me because this Resort is where our extended family have cabins. It is a place where we have been gathering for over twenty years. We care about this land, and we care about what happens to the people – the ones who own the land, the ones who look after it, and the ones who use it.

The distance between the Cabin Owners and the Vote NO! dissenters cannot be measured. It is more than a failure in communication between partners; more than the mistrust the dissenters have of their Chief and Council. It is more than a dispute over who pays how much for what – and when. It is, in so many ways, the re-enactment of the settling of Canada, only this time some part of the First Nation feels like they have won.

It is sad to think what the rest of this First Nation will lose in the process.

I’m Tired Of It – A Protest Movement

I was too old for a paper route, too young for Social Security and too tired for an affair.
- Erma Bombeck -

I recently discovered a blog called A Bear’s Rant. Written by a Canadian, the site is “committed to being an island of common sense in a world with too little of it.”

I stumbled onto this blog when I was looking for information that substantiated and refuted the claims being made by the ‘Idle No More’ Protest. (I like to look at both sides of things before I jump off the fence. Who knows what kind of crap you might land in…) I was particularly curious as to why this grassroots movement did not support eight Canadian Federal Bills that provide a practical approach to making it easier for First Nations to develop an economy.

At ‘A Bear’s Rant’ I found a post called The Misconceptions In Bill C45 That Sparked ‘Idle No More’ – Part One: Reserve Lands. Part Two discusses Bill C45 further, and Part Three concerns Attawapiskat Band Chief Theresa Spence’s hunger strike.

I’ll leave my conclusions about ‘Idle No More’ to another day. I would, however like to join ‘A Bear’s Rant’ in the call for a new Protest Movement called I’m Tired Of It. I’d be hard pressed to add anything to this rant, it is that complete. But – from all the research I’ve been doing lately, I would add – I’m tired of the exact same unresearched news story being repeated over and over again. Really, does it get any truer with each telling?

You may not agree with everything The Bear is tired of, but if you agree that there is a lot of stuff you are fed up with, then join this protest. You can write a blog post and Link to Bear’s I’m Tired Of It post, or go to the post and add a comment. If you have a Twitter account -  tweet about what you are tired of and use the hashtag #Iamtiredof

Man was made at the end of the week’s work when God was tired.
- Mark Twain -

Closing Doors

Close some doors today, not because of pride, incapacity or arrogance, but simply because they lead you nowhere.
- Paulo Coelho -

December is a wicked month – at least it is in our family. Nearly all our great tragedies, the ones that will dwell in our memories for the rest of our days, have happened in December. Illness and death are the standard fare, but now and then December shoves us through another door and we mutter, “I sure didn’t see that one coming.”

This December has been no different – two family health issues have arrived. I can’t begin to predict the outcome of either of these – there are too many possible scenarios when the human mind and body are concerned. I have no doubt though that some doors will close and some doors will open and we will all move on some how.

December also brought the opening and closing of two very literal doors. One door is to the house we now own in the desert country of Arizona. We opened the door to this ‘new to us’ abode about a month ago. Setting up shop in a new country with a husband who is still recovering from a brain injury – it has been challenging. But every time I check the weather report and see what the temperature is back in Canada – well, I feel a bit better about walking through this new door.

One door will probably be closing, however. Our Cabin Community is on land that is leased from a Canadian First Nation. The lease will expire at the end of the 2013 season. We had thought the new lease was a done deal, but it turns out it wasn’t. The Nation’s Economic Development Committee and the Chief and Council had all signed an agreement, but they did not foresee the power of a group of malcontents who (depending on which one of them you listen to): hate the Canadian Federal Government and all white people; want all the cabin owners gone but would welcome ‘rich Arabians’  who might want to lease the land; don’t trust the government of their own Nation;  think the land is worth much more than the lease was giving them … the list goes on and on. Through the power of Facebook, they were able to defeat the lease referendum. So, at the end of next cabin season the First Nation staff will be out of jobs and the Cabin owners will kiss their leisure investment goodbye. Within a few years a vibrant 39 year old community, where ‘Two Nations’ worked and played together, will disappear under the foliage of Mother Nature.

How naive and trusting I have been.

I went down the street to the 24-hour grocery. When I got there, the guy was locking the front door. I said, ‘Hey, the sign says you’re open 24 hours.’ He said, ‘Yes, but not in a row.’
- Steven Wright -