Photo of the Month – July

Hi Folks:

July holds the birthdays for both of Marcia’s parents, and while her Dad turned 93 this year, her Mom passed away several years ago. To honour her Mother’s memory, every year Marcia buys a rose and gives it away to a passing stranger – usually an older woman with whom she feels an affinity. Below is an image of this year’s gift:

Mom's Birthday Rose

Mom’s Birthday Rose

One day while Marcia was away celebrating her Dad’s birthday, Mike went for a walk in John Dean Provincial Park, just north of Victoria. There are many levels of beauty in this park, from the old Douglas fir trees to the salal berries, to an insect superhighway cut through a leaf. One only needs eyes to see.

Insect Highway

Insect Highway

Okay, that’s it for now. Go out and make some photographs!

Hugs,
M&M

P.S. For Marcia’s Dad’s birthday we put together a 40-page book containing 68 of Marcia’s photographs. If you’re interested you can see a preview of the first 15 pages (and purchase the book) here: My Photographs

Echoes, Reflections and Speaking Into the Void

Hi Folks:

I don’t remember the last time we had a post that attempts to string together several semi-coherent thoughts, so it must be time for another one. This one is different from but connected to a few other posts we’ve done, including:

Continue Reading →

Love is Universal

Love is the one thing that connects us all.

Hi Folks:

The video below from Atlanta Buzz, streamed live on Facebook, has been seen more than 27 million times (so far). If you haven’t seen it, it’s worth watching. If you have, it’s worth tucking away in a quiet corner for the next time you need a little uplifting. Last Friday hundreds of people came to Thanks-Giving Square to honour the five Dallas police officers who were killed in the line of duty on July 7, and several officers were on the scene to direct traffic. Very shortly a huge line-up of people stopped to offer appreciation to the officers present and share condolences, handshakes and hugs.

Dallas

You can read more here: This video of people hugging Dallas cops has been viewed 25 million times

Wherever you are today, we send you love.

Hugs,
M&M

P.S. In seven years of hugging locals and visitors to our fair city, so far we’ve share Free Hugs with people from 53 countries (that we know about). All it takes is a piece of cardboard, a marker, a little courage and an open heart.

Photo of the Month – June

Hi Folks:

Choosing our photos of the month for June was, well, a Mammoth undertaking!! This was mostly because the mammoth exhibit from the Field Museum in Chicago is currently on loan to the Royal BC Museum here in Victoria. As museum members, we were among the first to get to see the exhibit when it opened. Continue Reading →

International Free Hugs Day, 2016

Hi Folks:

As last Saturday (the first Saturday in July) was International Free Hugs Day, we were out at our usual location (Victoria’s Homecoming Memorial, by Ship Point) offering hugs to locals and visitors alike. This was our 9th hugging session this year, but because it was International Free Hugs Day we extended an invitation to friends and members of our local photography group to come and join us… and join us they did! Continue Reading →

“You’ll be my arms, and I’ll be your eyes”

Hi Folks:

If you haven’t seen this yet, it’s well worth watching. We first read about it in an article in the Huffington Post. In China two specially-enabled men, lifelong friends, are changing their world – one tree at a time. When he was three Jia Wenqi lost his arms from a burn resulting from touching a power line. Jia Haixia was born with sight in only one eye, but he was blinded in an industrial accident in 2000. After losing his sight he became despondent. Both men were concerned by the environmental degradation in their area and so they teamed up to start planting trees. With no budget they used only hand tools and planted branches cut from existing trees. In their first year they planted 800 trees; 2 survived. They’ve now planted more than 10,000 trees and hope to cover a mountain.

They deserve our applause, and our support. How can you make your world a little better?

Hugs,
M&M

P.S. A classic tale, also well worth reading, is ‘The Man Who Planted Trees’ by Jean Giono. Originally written in French, it’s also available in English.

P.S. II, the sequel. A story we first heard about in 2012 is a man in India who has planted a forest by himself: The Man Who Made a Forest

The Why of Hugging

Hi Folks:

In our last ‘Free Hugs’ post we detailed the process of making our new ‘Free Hugs’ posters. Below we have the lovely Marcia modeling one of them for us.

New Posters in Action!

New Posters in Action!

We’ve been offering free hugs to locals and visitors (and other species) for seven years now, and (without question 🙂 ) the one question we get asked more than any other is, “Why are you doing this?Continue Reading →

Eating Our Way Through Victoria – Breakfast Out

Hi Folks:

In Marcia’s family the favourite meal to eat-out has always been breakfast. On the road? Get up early, take on a few miles (or kilometres), then pull over and have a hearty meal.

Victoria is blessed with many fine restaurants that are open for breakfast, and today we thought we’d profile two of them. We only write about restaurants we like because if we’d had a bad experience somewhere it may have been the chef’s day off, the server was having a bad day or something else, but a good meal, shared, is something to treasure.

Without further ado… 🙂

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New Posters: For the Love of Hugs

Hi Folks:

Well, this being our 7th year of hugging Victorians (and anyone else who’s interested), we decided to update our FREE HUGS posters. The old ones have served us well, but they’re definitely showing their age. At the risk of overstating the obvious, all you need to make a poster is a pen or a marker and something flat enough to write on… but as the saying goes, “The Walk is Part of the Gift“. To that end, we wanted to put some effort into our new posters.

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Photo of the Month – May

Hi Folks:

One of the (many) wonderful things about living here on the ‘wet’ coast is that we have flowers every month of the year. Victoria is know as the ‘city of flowers’ after all. To that end, both of us selected flower images from the ones we made in May. Both images were made with our cell phones, and both were pushed around a bit in Lr. Continue Reading →