The Three Bears
Back from a Rockies roadtrip with the in-laws, the highlight of which was when a black bear family — a mother with two cubs — sauntered past our (parked) car on the road to Miette Hot Springs, near Jasper. Below was the best picture: with my photographic skills, I managed to override the autofocus feature on the camera on the others. 
We first noticed the stopped cars on the other side of the road, so we turned our hazards on and idled our way forward. When we saw the bears heading our way, we parked, not wanting to distract or otherwise irritate the ursine family. After picking at some roadside dandelions, the mother bear decided to cross the road — and the cubs followed, in tow. I didn’t appreciate how much they actually look like teddy bears. Now, the term “teddy bear” comes from an incident between a bear and US President Theodore (”Teddy”) Roosevelt. But unlike legendary Simpsons-hometown founder Jebediah Springfield, Roosevelt neither killed nor was killed by that bear.
As the mother bear passed by the driver’s side front-bumper, cubs in tow, it belatedly occurred to me to roll up my window. 
Still, it was very cool to come within about five feet of a sloth of bears in the wild — sloth being a term for a group of them, like a “murder” of crows, “crash” of rhinos, “clowder” of cats and personal favourite, “bloat” of hippos. It was cooler still, that we were safely ensconced in an automobile at the time.
The photo also got picked up by Yves Smith on her economics blog, one of the half-dozen or so on my daily reading list. It was Sunday’s “antidote-du-jour“. The backstory to her pseudonym is that it’s a play on the Biblical Adam and Eve, and Adam Smith being the codifier of capitalism.
