Ah, this Ryan Gosling fellow… my younger sister, she works at a clothing shop near the high school, says the girls there all cut out his face from magazines to paste on their notebooks. I saw one of those pictures, that half-smile he does—reminds me of the time I tried to sketch our neighbour’s rooster after it had a good dust bath, all smug and ruffled. My son, he just shrugged and asked if Gosling knew how to fix a bluetooth speaker, because our old transistor radio is beyond help now, and that’s a real kind of star power.

Yesterday I was drawing the neighbor's rooster, and the way he strutted between our jeep and the old bicycle made me think. We debate big vehicles for the mountains, but I've seen that bicycle carry three sacks of rice where a car would only spin its wheels. Sometimes the right tool is the simple one that doesn't leave the most vulnerable stranded.