photography

Holocaust Memorial Day 2017

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The Holocaust Memorial, Berlin.

Conventional wisdom would think that we might learn something from the past but today, Holocaust Memorial Day, the President of the United States signed an executive order that will stem the flow of refugees into his country, refugees fleeing a modern day holocaust.

“Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,” we read on the Statue of Liberty, “the wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”

Lets hope that the lamp will be lifted again very soon as we pause to remember the millions lost and “tempest-tossed” both yesterday and today.

The image of the Holocaust Memorial has been repurposed from my post Lost and Found in September 2014

“Ambience has the power to uplift your mood,” writes Jeff Golenski in his introduction to this week’s Weekly Photo Challenge.

 

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On a clear, crisp Saturday yesterday, this was a rare site in Vancouver’s Vanier Park, which definitely uplifted our mood as we walked by in the afternoon sunshine. But to fully appreciate the joy of the scene the sounds that accompany it and heard in the following brief video will complete the picture.

 

the second of the year

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Kitsilano in the snow #2

Inspired by a magical morning on Kitsilano Beach after the snowfall before Xmas, which I posted about in backdrop to a life: part 2 and which was also the inspiration for the first of the year.

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The Gift of the Four Treasures has once again weaved its magic spell with the superpower that resides in its brushes and ink.

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Looks like the beginning of a new series for a new year.

Starts with C

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Cookie Monster starts with C, being photobombed here by Grover, and not forgetting Bert and Ernie, all names that cannot help but make you smile. They certainly did for our beautiful granddaughter after Xmas.
 
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WPC: Resilient

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In this week’s final Weekly Photo Challenge of the year Ben asks us to “share a photo of something that says “resilient” to you. It could be a local landmark that has survived through the decades …. or of a ritual or tradition that you (or people in your community) have successfully preserved. Show us something that has endured.”

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What could be more fitting for this final day of the year than this photo from the Remembrance Day Ceremony around the “local landmark” of the Cenotaph in Victory Square here in Vancouver on November 11th this year.  It is an event that has been respectfully preserved and attended by many, many thousands each year and is certainly something that has “endured,” as it has all over the world.

If you would like to see more images from this year’s ceremony and read a special story that I wrote about it, open drawer 21 of my New Year’s Eve Retrospecteave that I posted today. No, that is not a misspelling and the reference to the drawer will become quickly evident.

On yet another day of terror our sympathy and thoughts are with those killed and injured in Istanbul today to whom I would like to dedicate today’s post. We will all need to remain resilient in the year ahead.

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