#3048 "Singleton Big Daddy Point"

#3048 "Singleton Big Daddy Point" 
8 X 10 oil on canvas.
Started September 17th, 2026.

John Verburg image

As I mentioned in #3031 "Great Blue Rookery", Great Blue Herons and their antics are the stars of the Singleton Sanctuary. A "Big Daddy" Great Blue Heron was on the prominent rocky point when we first visited the location of our future home in the autumn of 2006. Big Daddy lingered while I strolled down to Jim Day Rapids. It was love at first sight! That memory has been indelibly placed in our brains. 

The average lifespan of a great blue heron is about 15 years in the wild, with a maximum recorded age of roughly 25 years. The original Big Daddy, whom we witnessed, might still be with us!

To be honest, "Big Daddy" could have been a "Big Mama"! Male and female Great Blue Herons look almost identical, sharing the same blue-gray plumage, black head plumes, and yellow eyes. Males are slightly larger and heavier, weighing in at 5 to 8 pounds and reaching up to 54 inches long. Females are a bit more svelte, weighing 4.5 to 6 pounds and measuring about 34 to 40 inches. 

Without a weight scale and a measuring tape, it is challenging to distinguish between Big Daddy and Big Mama in the wild. It is virtually impossible to identify the sex of a solitary Great Blue Heron. 

It was my Dad's birthday. There were a lot of chores on my list, but the sky was full of weather. I decided the day was perfect for "time well wasted". A 2005 Brad Paisley song with that title 

rang true to me. I wish I could have wasted more time with many people, especially my Dad. 

My Dad's craftsmanship and creative problem-solving can be found in many prized pieces of furniture, including my studio easel and the office desk that I currently occupy. He would have loved the Singleton Sanctuary. 

Brad Paisley's timeless lyrics

"I could've been working' overtime

Or at home trying' to make that truck run right

Instead of wading' out in that stream

All day long barely catching' a thing

Just me and dad

I'm glad he talked me in to that

It was time well wasted

And there's no way I trade a few more things that I could've crossed off my list

For a day I'll never forget

No, I didn't get a thing done

But I sure soaked up every minute of the memory we were making'

And I count it all as time well wasted."

I worked a lot of overtime during my meteorological career, simply trying to make ends meet. Money was tight. Everything was quite expensive. I said "yes" to pretty much every overtime call. I also tried to make things last well beyond their DFMEA (Design Failure Mode and Effects Analysis). 

Enshittification is the modern term for designed failure, coined by Canadian writer Cory Doctorow in 2022. Cory described how online platforms and services slowly become worse over time to maximize profit for shareholders. The American Dialect Society selected enshittification as its 2023 Word of the Year, with Australia's Macquarie Dictionary following suit for 2024.

The enshittification of physical products is the gradual, deliberate decline in quality, durability, or user ownership. Cost-cutting and recurring fees are the corporate tools used to maximize profits while minimizing service. The motto of most corporations is now: 

"Service, it's the least that we can do..."

The meaning of the above phrase that I have used for decades is determined by where you place the emphasis.

Right-to-Repair Laws are being enacted to push back on enshittification.  I prefer "dumb" or analog legacy products without network connectivity or app dependencies to avoid subscription traps or remote feature-disabling. Books, CDs and DVDs are my preferred forms of entertainment when I am not in the forest. 

My Dad and I believed in durable quality and simply doing something right, to the best of our ability and materials, the first time. Make it right and make it last! The business strategy of "planned obsolescence" intentionally designing products to be difficult to fix with a short lifespan is simply criminal. Those "products" fill the garbage dumps. Lloyd Stouffer, the editor of the trade publication Modern Packaging, in the 1950s  spoke at a Society of the Plastics Industry conference in 1956:

"The future of plastics is in the trash can." 

Now plastics and forever chemicals are everywhere... Shame. 

The following collage summarizes wasting some time at the entrance to Jim Day Rapids. Sometimes it is good just to turn down the noise and surround yourself with nature. 

For this and much more art, click on Fine Art America or go straight to the Collections. Here is the new Wet Paint Collection. Thank you so very much for reading, and stay well!

Warmest regards, and keep your paddle in the water,

Phil Chadwick