We’re back, somewhat diminished by time and circumstance.
Spread a bit thin, we are. Flattened, you might say: pancaked by the forces of gravity acting upon our viscous selves.
In part, it was the chasm of a full-time job that yawned before us at the end of June. Eyes wide open, in we walked. Now one aspect of us is suddenly coordinating a program teaching sustainable architectural technology here in Toronto. Meanwhile, another aspect has become fatherish for the second time in 14 years, with a projected birth in February. The wife? Nervous. The house? Small. Renovate? Move? The blob meets a dilemma. 
Chez(d) Allderblob starts to look attractive: just needs a little insulation, and someone can live in the back yard. But did we say flattened? “There’s more!” (as the TV shills put it): still another aspect is struggling with a project bringing principles of “walkability” to the fore in small towns outside Toronto, working with the organization “WalkON” and (luckily) the deep thinker Paul Young. Also, some part of the blob is stuck to a page in the upcoming “greenTOpia” book, to be published by Coach House Books (a follow-up to two previous “TOpia” books, “u-“ and “ar-“) in November. Can a blob say no? Perhaps not: a slim blobbish slime is also attached to the upcoming “Walk 21” conference, where it is to lead a “Walkshop” introducing an international audience to notion of invisible cars on the Danforth Peninsula, and a “Bit ‘o blob” ™ is to be found in the October Canadian Architect magazine, appended to a critical review of architects Jack Diamond and Donald Schmidt‘s University of Ontario Institute of Technology campus design.
So for all of us here at the ALLDERBLOB, including that part known as [–ed.], it seems the ground has risen rather suddenly this past summer [I suffer in silence, as usual–ed.].
Many of our older readers will recall the question once poised by Canadian singer-songwriter Bruce Cockburn: in short, “If a tree falls in the forest, does anybody hear?”
What happens if a blob falls? What if it falls in a forest?
Silence.
We found ourselves thinking about trees falling a week or so ago, at the edge of the Atlantic on the coast of Maine, where the effects of a forceful windstorm a year ago decimated the centuries-old spruce forests of our family compound on Little Deer Island.
click for larger image
We found ourselves confronting the same old questions, discovering the same old answers. We drove there, scraping the belly of our rental car along the backwoods Maine roads at ferocious rates of speed, in order to creep along with the other cars, and pass them or be passed in turn. We found ourselves thinking the same old thoughts about the nature of speed, and the reality of driving. We made up this pong to pass the time:
GET IN LINE
Plod your foot upon the pedal
Blob your pedal to the metal
Place your hands upon the wheel
Push a thousand pounds of steel!
Push it push it down the road
Leave a trail of burning rubber
Don’t be slow and don’t be cold
Don’t be smart and don’t be clever
Cause you’re driving,
Driving a car
You can drive it very fast
Or you can be the very last
But in your car you are in line
You’re in line all the time!
Push it push it down the road
Leave a trail of burning rubber
Don’t be slow and don’t be cold
Don’t be smart and don’t be clever
Cause you’re driving
Driving a car
When it’s time to fill the tank
Pay the man and tell him thanks!
Then get in line out on the road
In your car you’re getting old.
Push it push it down the road
Leave a trail of burning rubber
Don’t be slow and don’t be cold
Don’t be smart and don’t be clever
Cause you’re driving
Driving a car
Fill up the space upon this earth
Fill up the time for what it’s worth
No one asks you what you think
Just drive the car don’t make a stink
Push it push it down the road
Leave a trail of burning rubber
Don’t be slow and don’t be cold
Don’t be smart and don’t be clever
Cause you’re driving
Driving a car
Get in line!
Get in line!
Get in line!
(FADE)
