This carving was done in and around 2004. The cane is cherry wood with gold-plating on an electrically grown nickel top crown. The ‘crown’ grew on a steel nut when the insulating cap fell off during an electrolytic reaction, so a massive crystal of solid nickel grew on the nut. A friend named Al, gave it to me in hopes I could do something with it.

The horse head is on one side and on the other is a dragon face with the flames coming from the dragon’s mouth that intertwine with the horse’s mane hair.

The cane just sits in a corner as the top is just too heavy (again, solid nickel) and is tiresome to walk with. One of my first attempts at carving so it turned out a little rougher than I hoped. Cherry wood has a lovely fine and even grain. I hope to have another try at it some day to do that, one of a kind metal-crystal crown, proper justice.

I found myself an olde quote:

“May not the idea of the dragons, curious stories of which are chronicled in various parts of England, owe their origin, in some way or other, to the veritable existence of these large lizards in former ages?”

Frank Buckland – 1858

So, I reworked the image in the “Book of Old Souls” page slideshow, to let the quote and header stand out separately. The images were already assembled in Illustrator, so it was a quick adjustment that I’m much happier with.

It seemed stronger to have a quote from the near past than my own, which held the same concept. It gave it more validity in that since the discovery of the dinosaurs bones, the question has been around. How do people know of creatures that disappeared thousands of millennia ago? Were the bones dug up before as civilization began?

We have all become victims of the Dunning-Kruger effect thanks to politics below the belt, or at least below the 49th parallel.

The latitude with attitude.

President Trump is cancelling all funding for the World Health Organization. In honour of this moment, I have reworked the ‘Hindsight’ poster and present it here for your political pleasure.

You can get a large copy of the PDF version of it here.

There are a large number of countries that are helped by the WHO, countries that can’t afford to contribute financially.

I’m not saying the WHO is broken or evil, and I’m smart enough to admit I don’t know enough. However, wouldn’t it be better if it was ‘fixed’ by participation, rather than eliminating the organization altogether by financially starving it?

There’s money for walls that don’t work and a Space Force that can’t fly.