Comments on: Hat season

By: marlyat2

marlyat2 — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 02:15:00 +0000

With all the billions now on the planet, I doubt that it’s ever possible to be original anyway…

By: Dave

Dave — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 12:19:11 +0000

Or inky caps. I realize it’s not exactly an original observation… but that’s the great thing about writing humor – you don’t have to be original.

Glad you liked the photos. Thanks for stopping by.

By: marlyat2

marlyat2 — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 18:36:21 +0000

Chef’s caps… Don’t forget those mushrooms. And berets that look like bracket fungi.

Lovely photographs of the natural hat and the speckles of two kinds.

By: Dave

Dave — Sat, 19 Jul 2008 15:13:25 +0000

Thanks for all the comments (and sorry for my scarceness here and around the blogosphere lately).

Peter – a state of mind I prefer to summer itself
Amen to that!

leslee – I’m not familiar with greenheads. Horseflies I know and fear – but they’re a rarity up here on the dry mountaintop. I don’t think their behavior completely invalidates my mushroom-hat hypothesis; it’s just that they’re too goddamn mean to have to worry about most spiders. But if as you say they still avoid awnings, then maybe we do need a new hypothesis…

suzanne – Yep. And I have inherited from my mom a strong tendency to talk to myself, in the berry patch or elsewhere. (Hey, it’s one way to guarantee an appreciative audience.) She used to get funny looks in the supermarket, but now people probably just assume she has a Bluetooth earpiece hidden under her hair. And being able to hold such a one-sided conversation really does prepare one well for interviews. In her various appearances on local public televison and the Pennsylvania Cable Network over the years, she has practically interviewed herself – reporters can rarely be trusted to ask the right questions – which I why I titled the video as I did.

beth – And do you and J. wear such high-fashion helmets yet? Pictures! We want pictures!

marja-leena – We lived in the Maine woods until I was five, and I am still plagued by memories of summer as one long bug-infested, mesh-hat-wearing misery. I’m glad to be living in a place with wimpy mosquitoes!

pohanginapete – Thanks. I considered saving that photo for the photo blog, too, but I get tired of posting all my best photos over there. You’re absolutely right: both photos were shot on the same walk. We don’t often get light that clear in the summer (though this year has been better than most). High humidity is the price one pays for living in the most diverse temperate forest bioregion in the world.

Marvin – There is that. In my case, no bald spot, just a growing forehead as I come closer every year to attaining buddha-nature.

Dick – Maybe if you eat them, the little people will appear.

gerry rosser – Yup, those are dork hats all right! I have one, but rarely wear it because an embroidered logo for a “wise use” group compounds the dorkeyness with jerkeyness. So I’m sticking with my qarrtsiluni ballcap and putting up with the singing in the ears.

Thanks for stopping by.

By: gerry rosser

gerry rosser — Sat, 19 Jul 2008 13:18:22 +0000

I have become a hat-wearer in recent years. Plenty of hair on my head, but I appreciate the shade. I usually wear the type of hat I call “dork” hats. Canvas or something like it, brim all around. Nobody ever got laid wearing one of these!

The eggshell on leaf phots is a dandy! Good eye.

By: Dick

Dick — Sat, 19 Jul 2008 07:19:18 +0000

The Ma Nature hat theory is sound, Dave. A small, unprecedented crop of hat-shaped mushrooms has just popped up from between cracks on our patio. They are clearly the hats worn by Little Folk as illustrated by Heath Robinson. We have a webcam trained on them night and day.

By: Marvin

Marvin — Sat, 19 Jul 2008 05:14:37 +0000

Mostly I wear a hat to keep the large and growing bald spot on my head from sunburning.

Love the shot of the eggshell.

By: pohanginapete

pohanginapete — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 23:40:44 +0000

The eggshell-on-leaves photo is particularly beautiful. Something about the way the colours work, the way the speckles on the shell carry over onto the leaves, the way the curves of the shell contrast with the planes and lines of the leaves. And that beautiful light, of course.

Actually, the more I look at this photo, the more I see. I love it. At a guess I’d say you saw this on the same walk when you saw the Indian pipes (the latest on your photo blog)?

By: marja-leena

marja-leena — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 16:59:30 +0000

Enjoyed the video, and this! The mosquitoes of Manitoba (their provincial bird, they brag!) were not stopped by anything except maybe a beekeeper’s hat/mesh! I remember my father wearing it sometimes when out picking wild blueberries or fishing in the evening.

By: beth

beth — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 15:35:08 +0000

Great post – you may be right! – and I especially liked the last two pictures. The coolest bicycle helmet (migrating over to bikes from skateboards and rollerblades) in Montreal these days looks just about like that eggshell.