Musings and Nature Photos of 79 Fascinating Years

By Jon Van Loon

Have you struggled with life’s commonplace issues and had intriguing and complex feelings about incidents family and friends? Do you love nature and have concerns for its preservation in the long term then this offering of poetry supplemented by photos is for you.
The poems were written in large part in praise of family and often in the memory of other special people that enriched my life. Mo, the name most frequently encountered is my wife of 55 years. The fact that she endured and loved me despite unpleasant fallout from my bipolarity and learning disability defines her better than any tribute I might write.
Throughout my 79 years I struggled with God and religion. A few discoveries during my career as a Professor occasioned me to have lived and worked in a variety of jurisdictions on 6 Continents. This broad exposure to life as it really is in most of the world has left me in my waning years if not an outright atheist at least a ponderous agnostic. A few of the poems reflect this transition.
I certainly do not claim anything near excellence as a poet yet I present this collection with the view that the reader might enjoy and perhaps relate to my ramblings on life and the lives of a few good people.
Selections of my favourite Photos are interspersed with the poems to allow the reader to enjoy views of nature as a respite to deliberation of the written word. These offerings depict tableaus that caught my eye from locations in The Greater Toronto area and the Gulf coast of Florida.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Jon Van Loon
• Release date: Apr 13, 2016
• ISBN: 9781311673596

Jon Van Loon

My life has been complicated by 3 factors. A severe learning disability and a bipolar condition could have easily doomed me to a troubled, non productive existence. However a prodigious unrelenting manic drive was the burr under my saddle that propelled me to unexpected achievement in academia. Of interest here in this regard was that developments in my laboratory at the University of Toronto lead me to opportunities to work, teach and live for short periods in many locations on the 6 continents over a 25 year period. During these intervals, I chose to live in local category accommodation thus maximizing my exposure and participation in parochial experiences. In contrast to the calamitous relationships dogging present world interrelationships my experiences were entirely welcoming and solicitous.I was born in Hamilton Ontario Canada. My interests include jogging and other fitness programs having run in and completed 4 marathons together with numerous 5, 10 and 20 km events. My prowess in sport to say the least was very average. Non-the-less I participated in and then later coached ice hockey both in Canada and Australia. My reward for all this activity is that I have a healthy cardiovascular system and have endured 3 knee replacement operations. Most particularly I have a passion for work related to environmental concerns. In this regard I have 120 peer reviewed research papers in Environmental Chemistry, one of which nearly landing me in jail.

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Musings and Nature Photos of 79 Fascinating Years

By Jon Van Loon

Copyright 2016, Jon Van Loon

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The poems were written in large part in praise of family and often in the memory of other special people that enriched my life. Mo, the name most frequently encountered is my wife of 55 years. The fact that she endured and loved me despite unpleasant fallout from my bipolarity and learning disability defines her better than any tribute I might write.

Throughout my 79 years I struggled with God and religion. A few discoveries during my career as a Professor occasioned me to have lived and worked in a variety of jurisdictions on 6 Continents. This broad exposure to life as it really is in most of the world has left me in my waning years if not an outright atheist at least a ponderous agnostic. A few of the poems reflect this transition.

I certainly do not claim anything near excellence as a poet yet I present this collection with the view that the reader might enjoy and perhaps relate to my ramblings on life and the lives of a few good people.

Selections of my favourite Photos are interspersed with the poems to allow the reader to enjoy views of nature as a respite to deliberation of the written word. These offerings depict tableaus that caught my eye from locations in The Greater Toronto area and the Gulf coast of Florida.

Poems and Photos