The sign of the four

In 1908, Matthew Burke was the head of one of twenty-two families living on the Conne River Mi'kmaq reservation in Newfoundland. Matthew's granddaughter, Margaret Burke Stewart, became the mother of sixteen children — the oldest (Catherine) ended up marrying my wife's now-deceased oldest brother (Larry). Catherine brought into that union two boys from her first marriage, Shawn and Jamie Beaupre.

Shawn (using his middle name) has been promoting himself as an aboriginal medium — Shawn Leonard. On Tuesday, Shawn teamed up with psychic/medium John Holland for a show in Moncton, New Brunswick, and they will do another tonight in Halifax, Nova Scotia. Yesterday, Holland did a Facebook interview with Shawn and it shows just how comfortable they are with each other in their overlapping, supportive roles.

Engineering coincidences into something that may be perceived to be meaningful is not of course everyone's cup of tea, least of all mine. This morning, Johnny Wills' Google+ photo-of-the-day theme was "four" and I quickly came up with an entry that I knew would be significantly different from the contributions of most other participants. Our brains exhibit a more-than-willing bent on assigning structure to the random bits and pieces in our lives!

Less than three hours after I posted the photo it was time for Bodie's morning walk. I have a habit of picking up any garbage that I encounter on the street so as to deposit it in a trash bin further along my route. A few houses away from my home I spotted (in light blue) just such a distraction lying in the middle of the road. Imagine my surprise as I approached to pick it up: