Beautiful #dream last night. I was lost, floating in a calm ocean, no land in sight. A dolphin - one of my spirit animals - came to save me.

It floated underneath, nudging me onto my stomach, pointing me to the right, hovering its fin beneath my hands. I wrapped my hands around the fin - slippery, hard to hold.

That is all. It felt like I was eventually rescued. I woke up, told myself: "Remember this, it's important." Interpretations welcome!

#Psychology
#Metaphor
#Allegory
#Symbols

Unusual Patriotism

I have lived in Canada since 1975 and in all that time I have not witnessed much overt patriotism. Canadians love to win international hockey games, of course, and they express a lot of emotions on those occasions, but otherwise they are usually understated in their love of their country, even though they feel it very strongly.

Once, decades ago when my parents were visiting, my father was dismayed to see a lot of Canadian national flags outside a Petro Canada gas station. He asked what all the flags were for and I had to confess my ignorance. After he harrumphed he said, “Flags cause wars,” and I have never forgotten it. In fact, it is a story I have told many times and my eldest son reminded me of it this week.

We were having a brief text exchange about events in the United States, the US president, and protests against Tesla cars. Neither of us was up for an argument but when I was getting agitated, my son reminded me of my father’s wisdom long ago and the futility of raging at symbols. He was right, of course.

Even so, symbols matter. They matter because they trigger our emotions, and when we have no other means to express ourselves, we respond with our feelings and our symbols.

Today, quite by chance, Canadian patriotism made itself known to me twice. First, at my weekly exercise class the instructor had set his musical accompaniment to play only Canadian music. When he told us this, we applauded. It was a spontaneous heart-felt moment. We were just a small group, grunting to the oldies, but we were very glad to do it with Canadian songs to inspire us, and the significance of the choice was recognized with cheers.

Then, this afternoon I made a decision I had been contemplating for a while. Several months ago I had booked to take an Alaska cruise in 2026 with some family members from the UK, but it bothered me because the trip was with a US cruise ship company. I wanted to take the trip and spend time with my family but I didn’t want to do it with an American business. So, I wrote to the people I was to travel with and explained why I was planning to withdraw from the trip. I hoped they would understand. Sure enough, they did, and I breathed a sigh of relief.

The economic turmoil that has been created in Canada by the actions of the American president is beginning to be felt in the UK, too, and so my family members appreciated my dilemma and supported my choice. It lifted a weight from my shoulders to know this, and made it easier for me to cancel my booking.

Canadians are not often loud in their patriotism, but we are united in our opposition to the recent threats from the United States. Even though those threats are not coming from all Americans, the response is coming from the vast majority of Canadians, and that response is evident in some big national policies as well as many small individual actions.

My exercise class leader choosing Canadian music and my decision to cancel a trip to Alaska may not be big events, but they contribute to a nation-wide response that is beginning to be felt. I only hope that the person who needs to feel it the most actually, eventually, does.

There has been much interest in ye ole Pauper's Coffin, currently on display in the Symbols of Mortality exhibition gallery, Orkney Museum. For context, here is a little background history, kindly provided by St Magnus Cathedral Curator, Fran Flett Hollinrake..

http://www.lorraineevans.com/index.asp?pageid=739793

The original, non-glitched version will be available this week as well if it's of interest . I'm also working on making my dataset available to the public (it's currently handwritten in my notebooks). #dataVisualization #archaeology #symbols #Pictish

RE: https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:rrmt7f5eexmmrz2yoepqxrl3/post/3lh2qfyglfc2l

#Design #Fun
EmojiStorm · Let it snow, or bring on the emoji party! https://ilo.im/161hqa

_____
#SnowFlakes #Emojis #Smileys #Flags #Symbols #WebComponent #WebDev #Frontend #HTML #JavaScript

Updated the #emoji #symbols on our display name, from two #Moons to three #Moons. Truth be told, two may be more visually elegant than three, but three more explicitly conveys the slow 'blink' of a #TotalLunarEclipse.

Bright-Dark-Bright =>

Also suggesting #signaling or sending an encoded msg to extra-dimensional #sentient #beings. Think of it like txting.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kOXR1ga1UlE

Southwest Buffalo, new to my Southwest Native collection - Available here: https://1-lisas-baker.pixels.com/featured/southwest-buffalo-lisa-s-baker.html

Ancient Origins of Writing Traced to Mysterious 6,000-Year-Old Symbols

https://www.sciencealert.com/ancient-origins-of-writing-traced-to-mysterious-6000-year-old-symbols

I haven't taken the time yet to talk about it, but I was in Japan last month and just came back few days ago!
It was not really planned, but following the Symbol Group Conference, where I presented my work on The Lovers Communication System's ongoing digitalization, the genius designer behind it Yukio Ota opened me his door and I couldn't miss the chance of meeting him.

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Ok, this is very useful. I need to save that locally. I know the ones I use, but there are a bunch more useful ones.

https://math.dartmouth.edu/~sarunas/Linux_Compose_Key_Sequences.html

Dept. of random jargon

The word for ÷ (division symbol) (and also † dagger)
is obelus

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Obelus

If I could have one extra key on my keyboard it would be for an em dash. #writing #symbols #emdash