Monte Sonnenberg

Thank God I'm a country boy. Oil painter based in Port Dover, Ont.

[Monte Sonnenberg @DustDeviltry]

"Dust Devil Confidential": This spicy novel by award-winning journalist Monte Sonnenberg is true to the facts of the Red Scare and how it roiled a nation in 1953, creating echoes that reverberate down to the present along with fault lines that continue to define our politics.

[Monte Sonnenberg @DustDeviltry]

The late Bob Ross of The Joy of Painting (PBS 1983-94) was fond of saying "There are no mistakes, only happy accidents."
A rather nice one occurred for me on my last painting, which featured a puffin with a beak full of caplin. The first rendition I posted later struck me as needing some polish, so I set to brushing down a coat of stand oil. The bluish surfaces had been scumbled flat and were dry so it surprised me when the stand oil -- double-rectified linseed oil -- beaded.
I looked at it for a moment before realizing that a puffin emerging from the Atlantic with a beak full of fish should look a little wet. So I applied the mistake to an even larger share of the composition. I think it represents a marginal improvement over the original and I'm glad I went with it. 🇨🇦🎨🐟🕊️

[Monte Sonnenberg @DustDeviltry]

I selected a couple Heinz variety tomato plants at the nursery this spring because I figured if anybody knew anything about tomatoes it would be Heinz. Back in the day, when my family grew tomatoes for Campbell's, we were already working with in-house corporate varieties. They've had a long time to get this right. The two Heinz plants in the cauldron on my back deck are ~40" tall and pretty robust in presentation for late spring. Looks like the initial dose of 10-52-10 was sufficient so I've hit them with a round of pulverized pink potash from Saskatchewan for luscious, cascading fruit formation. 🇨🇦🌞🍅

[Monte Sonnenberg @DustDeviltry]

Soccer comes by many of its PR problems honestly. Notice how you can never be certain a goal is a goal until the hair-splitters, nitpickers and party-poopers on the sidelines in their short pants & with their yellow flags decide to let it stand. Even when they erase a great goal -- like they just did with Sweden against the Netherlands -- you can't quite figure out what the violation is, why it was called & how the play might've turned out otherwise in the absence of it. This is tiresome, leaves us cheering in the wrong places, and leaves us feeling shortchanged even when the broadcasters explain it to us. You can imagine how frustration with this has skyrocketed now that everything is a sports-betting parlay. Netherlands 3 Sweden 0 early 2nd half. 🇺🇸⚽️🇳🇱 🇸🇪

[Time Capsule Tales @timecaptales]

In Italy in the 1980s, this blonde hair, blue eyed girl American named Heather Parisi took Italy by storm. Her success never made it back to the US but she had multiple albums, singles and years of TV show performances.

[Monte Sonnenberg @DustDeviltry]

Pitchers like Sonny Gray, 36, are easy to admire because you have to be doing something special if you can make it to a 13th straight season as a starter. Everybody talks about the 100 m.p.h. fastball, but you have to be capable of much more than that if you're to last. That's where smarts come in, and smarts can take a lot of weight off your arm. The toolbox includes junk, speed modulation, delivery and placement, as in hitting the corners and the margins like an archer.
Gray, a Nashville boy, has a win-loss record of 132-103 and -- at 1,969 career-to-date -- he will hit 2,000 K's sometime this season. Gray has guided himself through a good career. Toronto Blue Jays 1 Boston Red Sox 0, top of the 2nd. 🇺🇸🇨🇦⚾️

[Monte Sonnenberg @DustDeviltry]

FOOTNOTE (Oct., 2025 recap): A Theory of UFO Phenomenon: Now that we have drones, I feel badly for those deeply invested in the idea of extraterrestrials and how they have always been with us, observing us from afar and occasionally intervening in our affairs.
Today, chances are anyone who claims to have seen a UFO has had a close encounter with a drone. Got footage, great photos and multiple witnesses? Yeah, probably a drone. Once these units arrived, I knew footage of them would clutter up discussions of paranormal phenomenon and, sadly, that is what’s happened. It’s sad because it’s as obvious as AI slop and because – with CCTV and everybody having a camera in their phone -- humanity has never been better situated to document “alien visitation.”
That said, the idea of extraterrestrials has never appealed to me because of the vast distances they would have to travel. It’s more than 7 months to Mars and that’s in our backyard. Outside the solar system, travel distances are measured in light years. Believers in little green men are forced to fall back on wild theories of wormholes and time-space portals which allegedly compress travel time.
All of which makes me wonder if we’re making the UFO question more difficult than it has to be. Everyone has shuffled across a rug and given themselves a shock when they touch a doorknob. The principle is the same as when a negatively-charged thunderhead makes a positive connection to Earth, resulting in the powerful discharge of electricity we call lightning. Although much rarer, there is a variation of the same called “ball lightning” which moves in observable, unpredictable ways and can last up to a minute by some accounts.
According to my theory of UFO phenomenon, the notion of extraterrestrials has flourished because most pay little attention to what they can’t see. And that includes the Van Allen radiation belts of Earth-generated electromagnetism that protect us from cosmic rays and harmful radiation from the sun.
The Van Allen belt steers dangerous radiation around Earth, preventing it from reaching the ground and wiping out all life. This same radiation interacts with the Van Allen belts to produce aurorae following a solar storm or other violent event on the sun.
The Van Allen belt also captures highly-charged particles from cosmic rays and solar activity. Research has determined that highly-charged electrons can stay active in the lower reaches of the Van Allen belt for as long as 100 days. The interaction of the Van Allen belt with stellar forces has also been shown to create anti-matter anti-protons, albeit in small amounts.
The upshot is Earth is “wired” to attract and hold certain, high-energy subatomic particles which are seeking stable arrangements such as found in the elements on the periodic table. In pursuit of these stable arrangements, electrons and other subatomic particles have to go through a process of decompression taking them from a turbocharged particle state to a more relaxed wave state. In their agitated, concentrated state, could these particles occasionally coalesce into something akin to high-speed ball lighting, guided and sustained in their travels by invisible pathways and guardrails provided by the Earth’s pole-to-pole electromagnetic field?
Subatomic particles are confounding things. Early last century, physicists were stunned to discover that electrons orbiting a nucleus will disappear when in a heated, agitated state and materialize in new, more distant orbits around the nucleus. How this weird disappearing act works no one can say, but matter – at the subatomic level – behaves as a particle or wave energy depending on its circumstances.
Given the impossible distances involved, elemental energy in flux and manifesting as agitated subatomic “bundles” in the lower reaches of the Van Allen belt seems a more plausible explanation for UFOs than deep-space outreach. This theory explains credible, mass sightings of UFOs along with the ethereal, transitory nature of the phenomenon which, to this point, has yielded no evidence that “We are not alone.” Our fighter pilots can’t keep up with them or shoot them down because they are examples of transitory, unstable subatomic phenomenon manifesting briefly – like a spark of static electricity -- in the material dimension, of which – of course -- they are a part and which has a secular, scientific explanation for which we haven’t found the words.

[Monte Sonnenberg @DustDeviltry]

While sorting through the U.S. government’s latest document dump on UFOs, the Associated Press came across this nugget in May:
“A State Department cable from the U.S. embassy in Tajikistan in 1994 details how one Tajik pilot and three Americans saw a brightly-lit UAP (unidentified anomalous phenomenon) while flying a jet over Kazakhstan. The object, according to the cable, was `making 90-degree turns, doing corkscrews and maneuvering in circles at great speeds.’ That’s not the only instance of erratically-moving objects cited in the document release…”
The AP report reminded me of something about UFOs that I wrote in October. It is reproduced in its entirety as a footnote to this post for those who wish to review it.
I return to the subject because of something Carl Sagan wrote in 1962 when he produced a volume for Life books regarding the planets. The illustration from Sagan’s book, below left, shows how radiation from the sun and the cosmos in general is captured by Jupiter’s magnetosphere and then set to swirling in corkscrew fashion as it traverses the planet’s equivalent of Earth’s Van Allen belts, emitting powerful radio waves in the process.
Maybe – just maybe -- quantum physics & Newtonian physics merge in the tendency of wave energy to concentrate and transform into tangible, visible “bundles” of the same. Some of these arrangements are unstable and fleeting – think lightning in all its forms, sparks of static electricity, etc. – while others are more durable: Think the elements of the periodic table, the Earth itself, and everything we define as "matter."
As we see when we cover a magnet with paper and dump iron filings on top, strong magnetic fields describe an orderly, definite pattern. There are places the filings will rest and spaces in between where they cannot, like an invisible network of guardrails. When it comes to Jupiter’s magnetosphere processing and conducting cosmic radiation around itself, imagine an old pneumatic-tube messaging system with its bends, twists and turns – often at extreme angles – which may also serve as a theoretical model for why UFOs are often reported to make physically-impossible maneuvers at extreme angles at extreme speeds. Nothing living as we understand it could survive the G-forces involved, so too bad for the little green men at issue. E.T.’s are a cultural and teleological crutch for some but observed phenomena would appear to exclude the possibility.
Again, maybe we can’t catch up to or shoot down UFOs because they are transitory manifestations of energy in the same league as lightning, static electricity, lab-generated plasma, aurorae borealis & aurorae australis. They look like aircraft but maybe there is less there than meets the eye.
If what’s occurring with credible, mass sightings of UFOs is, in fact, unstable concentrations of cosmic radiation traversing Earth’s magnetosphere, we have as much hope of ever holding evidence of them in our hands as we do capturing and preserving a cloud of luminous swamp gas in a bell jar.
The illustration at right is another rendition of cosmic energy captured in Jupiter's magnetosphere spiraling around the huge planet in curlicue fashion. Notice how the phenomenon organizes in the face of direct sunlight then loses definition at dusk and pre-dawn. 🇺🇸 🛸👽⚡️🌞✨💫⚛️

[Monte Sonnenberg @DustDeviltry]

Just noticed that today is the 83rd birthday of actress Joan Van Ark.
Many will remember Van Ark as a staple guest character on many TV shows in the 1970s and later as a regular with the Dallas franchise.
Shows Van Ark appeared in during that cool decade present like an honour guard of Seventies entertainment: The FBI, Love American Style, The Odd Couple, Night Gallery, Mannix, M*A*S*H, Barnaby Jones, Cannon, Rhoda, Kojak, Quincey M.E., Wonder Woman, The Love Boat.
Van Ark was a go-to when producers needed a blonde, lispy, winsome damsel-in-distress. Just caught her Monday on an episode of The Rockford Files and -- despite her character being a pain in the ass -- Jimmy couldn't say no to her. Below is a photo of Van Ark during her "sallad" days in the 1980s. (That, by the way, is "Dallas" spelt backward.) 📺😄🥳⭐️

[Monte Sonnenberg @DustDeviltry]

Interesting. Just when Canada needs every voice possible in Alberta speaking up for Confederation, the Carney gov't prepares to anger everyone in the province 16 years of age and under. President Trump may be playing four-dimensional chess but the Liberals in Ottawa are playing five-dimensional chess, so take that. 🇨🇦 🤖📱💻⌨️

[Monte Sonnenberg @DustDeviltry]

@themaddierune Published it in May. "Passion, romance and intrigue at a time of McCarthyism" because the America of the present was born out of the tumult of the early-1950s. Maybe the literary world would never take me seriously but if they did some checking I'm afraid they'd have to. 🇺🇸

[Monte Sonnenberg @DustDeviltry]

So...what's she saying? That the social justice warriors in back of Bernie Sanders et. al. are a bunch of poo-heaving monkeys who'll beat you up if you have "too much"? Somebody remind her we have prisons for people with poor impulse control who beat other people & take their bananas.🤔🐵🍌

[Monte Sonnenberg @DustDeviltry]

How's that for a braising rib...😋⚽️🇧🇦 🇨🇦

[Monte Sonnenberg @DustDeviltry]

Got my World Cup snack preparation done just in time for kickoff. Must say grilling baskets are a Godsend when working on a cheap barbecue because the flimsy grille means briquets always want to flame up. It's like cooking lunch in Hell. These baskets act as a flame baffle despite working over hot coals and the medium ground beef involved. There you go, eh? Bosnia-Herzegovina 1 Canada nil. 🇧🇦 🇨🇦⚽️🥩🍗🍔

[Monte Sonnenberg @DustDeviltry]

Canada vs. Bosnia-Herzegovina kicks off in an hour. Hate to bet against the home team, but too many injuries to key players. Meanwhile, I look at the B-H lineup and see nothing but tough Balkan men, so Canada better be careful they don't push them around. I have 10 bucks on the visitors which pays $45 if I'm right. I'm guessing Bosnia-Herzegovina by a 3-1 final -- more if B-H keeps its A-team out there. 🇨🇦 🇧🇦⚽️

[Monte Sonnenberg @DustDeviltry]

Handsome actor Tom Drake (1918-1982) was a busy guy in 1944. He got the lovely and talented Gloria DeHaven in Two Girls and a Sailor then added Judy Garland to his dance card in Meet Me in St. Louis. Ironic because a bad heart prevented Drake from serving in WWII but he did lend himself to army training films during the conflict. 🇺🇸🇬🇧📽️🎞️💃

[Monte Sonnenberg @DustDeviltry]

No sooner do writers start wringing their hands over AI and we get reports that large language models have bent back on themselves and are now training on their own slop, so pervasive has AI text become so quickly.
Apparently, AI text of late is emerging with noticeable characteristics, namely bland, flat prose bordering on the catatonic. It's the same problem with making a photocopy of a photocopy of a photocopy or ditto with a recording: All the glitches and flaws are multiplied in the duplication to the point where you can't ignore them and the output is ruined. Sounds like the snake has taken hold of its tail and swallowed itself.
Over the course of recorded history, humans have cranked out a lot of writing. Unfortunately, only a small percentage of it is any good and so rare as to be useless in the grand AI scheme of things.🤖🖊️🐍📈📉

[Monte Sonnenberg @DustDeviltry]

@Mericamemed A sheephead wrasse would snap that thing up in one gulp.🦀🐟

[Monte Sonnenberg @DustDeviltry]

What a great night for snacking, what with the Blue Jays' brilliance against the Phillies and some fairly intense hockey. For me, it's butcher-baked chicken wings marinated in my homemade catchup, cooked on an enameled pan for minimal stickage. Dip sauce is Ingelhoffer honey mustard of Oregon. Veggie dip is Renee's Danish blue cheese salad dressing.🇺🇸🇨🇦⚾️🏒