There is a phenomenon in publishing that I have never, and will never, understand.
This page intentionally left blank.
This has always struck me as quite silly. It’s not blank, obviously, is it? I know that this is because, in the far distant past, someone came across a page that did not warrant any content, thought they were missing something (that they weren’t), and complained. And/or sued, of course. And the world responded with this: a non-empty empty page. A full blank. A non-trivial trivial thing.
This morning I saw this in the weirdest place I intentionally never thought I might unintentionally see it: the back of a sewing pattern.
Now, no seamstress, I, it’s true. But even still I would have a hard time imagining what might be missing, in the event of a printing mishap, on the back of a piece of paper who’s only reason for being is to be cut to little pieces while being pinned to fabric. What could one possibly be missing, on the invisible side of the paper, that it might actually be necessary to write, in bold sans-serif type 15p high, that it’s blank on purpose. When it so obviously isn’t.
This leads me to wonder if the Powers That Be ever deemed it necessary to write “This side of the moon intentionally left dark”? I guess we’ll never know, without enough light to read it.
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According to dictionary.com, there are something like 17,981 definitions of the word spring. I’m only currently concerned with two.
After a seemingly endless northern Saskatchewan winter I find myself longing greatly for this one, no. 37:
the season between winter and summer: in the Northern Hemisphere from the vernal equinox to the summer solstice; in the Southern Hemisphere from the autumnal equinox to the winter solstice.
Unfortunately, what appears to have happened to my happy no. 37 is this, no. 8:
To move out of place; come loose, as parts of a mechanism.
Does northern Saskatchewan not know that it’s mid-April? That the rest of the civilized world has no snow left? That other parts of our beloved country, Territories that include the word Northern in their name, have no snow forecast for the foreseeable future, but that we do? Just three days ago we hit a daytime high of -5°, and we had snow: big, fluffy, floaty flakes falling from above. Mid-April.
Is northern Saskatchewan somehow unaware that the rest of the hemisphere has moved on?
Now it is true that I’m not the biggest fan of snow that ever there was. But even people that are usually happy to have a white Christmas aren’t usually happy to see a white Easter.
So if it snows on Thursday — as it’s supposed to — northern Saskatchewan and I are going to have a pretty serious discussion. And it’s going to need some Kleenex™, because I’m losing my patience.
(Of course, my information that it’s going to snow on Thursday comes from the weather network, an institution that has proven itself, ehm, less than wholly trustworthy. So, perhaps northern Saskatchewan will be off the hook. We’ll see.)
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