Snow in Calgary and a Note from Victoria

Photo Credit: Mati Poon

I can see where the snow has been shovelled at the lower right

Snow came to Calgary last week.

So much snow that wherever people looked, there was a blanket of whiteness, some said.

When I looked at pictures of my back yard from my safe place here in Victoria, I could only see sidewalks, connecting sidewalks.

Everything else was snow.

I love that first snowfall if the temperature is about zero and the flakes float down for hours.

So sorry to have missed it.

And now to change the subject to pain medication.

Totally disconnected but here it is.

Photo Credit: Matiram Poon

... snow on the limbs of the tree the children used to climb ...

I forgot taking my pain medication tonight until I just read a note from Eric Jarvis who in an aside had said something about his pain meds.

So I ran upstairs to get some in me.

I can't figure out when to take mine,

What I do is I don't feel well.  I kind of don't feel like moving any more and I am not enjoying my evening.

When all of those factors add up, what has really happened is I have forgotten to take that last dose of my 2 Super Strength Tylenol.

But I don't seem to have the capacity to figure out that is what I need when I get to that point.  I just sit there in soporific stupidity.

I should probably just set an alarm on my phone that would go off every night to remind me of that last dose of medication.

I wonder if I will do that since timing is all, and I can't really tell ahead when the next four hours of waiting for meds will end. 

Maybe I will practise today and see if that will work for me.  I would certainly suggest that for a solution to someone else.

On the subject of health, I am getting so off balance from the peripheral neuropathy in my feet that Rebecca asked me to take my walking sticks with me on my morning walk.

She said it will make the passers by more comfortable, not seeing me weave around on the sidewalk.

So I tried them this morning.

 They work at keeping me walking on my own side of the sidewalk.

I even had a better walk once I got over the humiliation of knowing I should be walking with them all of the time and don't.

Might be some pride there.

Photo Credit: Matiram Poon

... snow on the patio chairs, and a slim path
to the fence and then the alley in the back yard ....

On this same topic, on a cruise, an older couple asked Wyona how she had moved over to using her walker on her day trips from the cruise, since she dances with Greg at night and everyone see the two of them having fun together, neither seeming to need a walker.

Here is Wyona's answer to them.

She said she had a friend who didn't take his walker to a mall, fell and hit his head, got a concussion and was released from the hospital, only to die a few days later from that fall.

Remembering that makes it easy for her to take her a walker with her.

i know that man as well, so I should take a cue from both Wyona and him.

Arta

Raising the Flag on Okanogan College Campus

Post by Bonnie Johnson
September 22, 2019

It was an historic day today.

The Shuswap Campus of the Okanogan College raised the Secwepemc flag to permanently fly along side the Canadian flag, the British Columbia flag and the Okanogan College flag.

 Louis Thomas, knowledge keeper, opened the ceremony with a prayer.

There was a representative from all five of the campfires in the area: Neskonlith, Splatsin, Sqylax (also known as Little Shuswap Band), and Sexqeltquin (Adams Lake).

Secwepemc Territory.
Map: Secwepemc Cultural Education Society

Judy Wilson said that there are efforts for UNDRIP to become a part of provincial law. I want to ask, are you serious? Judy Wilson told us that a group put the declaration together, the UN watered it down and then passed it. But at least we have something.

The key sticking point that made the progress of UNDRIP slow was nations not being ready to declare that Indigenous people have the right to self-determination and the right to control natural resources on their traditional lands. The four countries voting against UNDRIP were the United States, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, all colonies of Britain.

Unlike me, Chief Wilson did not get caught up in shock and outrage. Her focus was to the future, reminding each of us to think of what actions we can take. Her mother, Elder Minnie Kenoras was one of the people who held onto the chain to help raise the flag. Shirley Byrd and Deloris Perdaby also helped pull on the chain. Three of the Elders danced while a song was drummed and sung in Secwepmachine. It was seeing them dance that felt like the action of gratitude.

Ukpi7 (Chief) Cliff Arnouse  ... (to be finished by Bonnie or not to be finished by her.  I say that sometimes half a post is better than no post.)

Trans-Canada from Calgary to Sicamous

September 20, 2019 Wyona, Greg, Tonia and I drove the Trans-Canada highway again, from Calgary to Sicamous. I began the trip, thinking again about how many times I might have made that trip: at the very least a round trip once a year for 60 years, but there are many years when gone back and forth four or five times in a year. It is always with great pleasure that I get in the car for that 6 hour drive, wondering what it is I will see that I have never seen before.

We didn’t leave until about 5 pm, which is an unusual time to make a start on the highway. Tonia had to finish teaching school on Friday and then we headed west, always into the sun but as soon as we got to Canmore the mountains hide the horizon of the setting sun and so we get the beauty of the light behind the mountains as the sun goes down. I love that time of the evening when colour goes away and it seems as though I have moved into a black and white film, everything now in silhouette – sometimes gray, sometimes even grainy.

When we stopped at Field, Tonia got out and looked toward the mountain where the Burgess Shale lies, talking about going on one of the summer expeditions that takes people up there. I was thinking about it in terms of a sign at the visitors centre that told people to leave their campers in the campgrounds and take a bus tour around that area. I have never seen that sign before and thought to myself that it might be a really wonderful trip.

We didn’t have to stop the car for road repairs until we were just on the east side of Sicamous, a strange place to stop because at that point everyone in our car felt as though we were already home. The person controlling the traffic was dressed in a large yellow outfit to keep out the rain. The legs and the arms of the body of her work clothes were ballooning around her. She had large choppy arm movements with that stop sign – pointing out to cars and trucks that they should stay on the paved outside lane. The stop sign started far about her head, chopped down to her ear level, then to her shoulder level, scooting cars out of lanes that aren’t ready to carry heavy traffic yet, one woman controlling so many 18-wheelers. A modern day miracle.

The best part about the trip is that winding country road that leads to home.

“Country road, take me home, to that place, I belong ….”

Arta

Feast at Thursday SAIT Lunch

... the other magpies flew away ..
... only this one stayed to be photographed ...

I waiting in my back alley, for Wyona and Greg to pick me up for a feast at SAIT. 

So feasting was on my mind as I was watching this magpie get into the neighbour's garbage can.  There were scraps of food everywhere because there had been many birds there when I went to reach for my camera.

I was glad that my back bin was closed.

And I was thinking about feasting and how over the years, the idea of feasting has changed.  I am sure that now I would call Sunday dinner at my mother's house as I was growing up, feasting.  There was always a pot roast and on festive occasions, a turkey.

Even though hunting season began and my dad would be away, my mom would make the feast that surrounds the roasting of a turkey and invite in guests.

Feasting.

Now it happens just about every day.

At the store, yesterday, the fig yogurt was half price and then the person giving out samples was adding another coupon worth $.75 off the product -- so I bought the 335 mils of yogurt, a feast for me to be enjoyed while I watched one of the film that is on Duncan's "History through Film" course.  The film was Lee Daniels' The Butler (2013) starring Forest Whitaker, Oprah Winfrey, John Cusack, Jane Fonda, for those who are curious.

As an addendum, watching these films from Duncan's  class with him is going to be a good two months for me. 

Yes to feasting.

Arta

Guitar Lessons, Part II

LtoR: Bonnie, Arta, Rebercca

I have just given Bonnie another guitar lesson.

There are not many chances for the three of us to be together and all alone at the same time.

Rebecca is doing validation work with ideas that have been collected in stories from Secwepemc people.  So she is away during the day.

Bonnie is at the house in the evening, just hanging out with us before she returns to her own place and to work in t he morning

And I am here at the lake ... sometimes alone during the days, letting myself move from one task to another.  On some days I pick out the most important job to do. 

But I find more pleasure in the days when I wander outside and do jobs that will have no direct impact.  Afterall, fall is coming so why did I think it was important to weed the brown-eyed Susans, and clean out the chick-weed that was covering the ground around the bluebelles. 

I look for the fox-gloves that I planted down by the volunteer squash and pumpkin.  Ostensibly there were 1,000 seeds in my hand and only fox glove came up.  Perhaps I only had 100 seeds.  At any rate, I will have one foxglove next year and I will call it foxglove heaven.

Arta

My Internet is Down

September 25, 2019

I am at the Shuswap. There is no sense in maintaining an internet service here since I won’t be back until the early spring, though in the past, that has not been true, so I have no idea why I am believing that now. Still, I am putting the lawn chairs under the deck and manually running the hose up the hill so that gravity will drain all of the water out of it. I move that hill up the hose every day in the summer – getting water to the raspberries and to the lake garden I planted. A few tomatoes have ripened on the tomato plants. The raspberries gave fruit all summer. The beans are never going to produce more than 10 or 12 pods, just to demonstrate how late in the spring I did the planting.

Bonnie and I planted about the same time. I call my garden just a test garden to see if I can actually plant and have anything sprout through the soil. To my test was a resounding success as was hers. And if she waits for another three weeks, she is even going to get beets and carrots.

... the stink bugs have arrived now that it is fall ...

I checked the apple tree at Richard and Miranda’s house. 

There are apples on the branches.

Mid-summer I went to that tree and took out all of the apples that were within six inches of the next apple.

I can say I was loath to do that, even though the internet told me that was the proper wait to prune an apple tree.

I looked under the apple tree and saw three big patches of bear scat so some of the apples must already be gone.

Still, many are left.

I ask Greg if it is he who cleaned all of the bear scat off of the road, because I am curious how that kind of work is done.  He said no it must have been Glen who did it.

The best apple tree on the property, the one to the west of the Bates’ house has been a target of the bears. The lower limbs have been broken off and are lying on the ground. The same thing has happened to the Bates’ pear tree at the front of their house, their twisted pear tree. They didn’t get one perfectly formed fruit. The pears are delicious but they are one, two, three or four bite pears, depending on how twisted the fruit is.

... one, two and three bite pears ...
... delicious if you are willing to eat around the blemishes...

Glen gave me a better description of the bear being in his fruit tree on the road side of the house.

He and I had just walked out of their front door and he told me that the bear was in the tree, and the 2 racoons were hanging on one of the outside limbs of the same tree.

Photo Credit: Glen Pilling

... 2 racoons and a gun ...

He said that the branch was waving up and down and he had no idea how it was holding the weight of the two racoons.

The bear was after them and they were hanging on for dear life. Glen yelled at the bear, “Go, bear, go.”

Do not just read those words, but lower your voice, puff out your body and throw your voice as far and as loud as it will go.

Glen said that the bear jumped out of the tree and looked directly at Glen.

Glen could read the bear’s face.

“Those are my racoons, they are my dinner and you aren’t getting in the way of my meal.”

Glen drew even more air into his lungs, took a larger stance, raised his arms and yelled again, “Get out of here.”

The bear turned, jumped on top of the lower retaining wall and galloped off through the Pilling’s garden.

And that is how we try to take care of our fruit trees: some of us scare animals away and the rest of us just pick up broken limbs or try to walk around fresh bear scat.

Arta

Church Ideas

On the way home from church and in the car, Greg was funny. The speaker was Jim Taylor. His career was in banking. He was setting up a story, saying that he was attending meetings where everything should have been done 10 minutes ago. Then he did an aside. He said no, everything didn't have to be done 10 minutes ago. The people he was working with just ran on that theory that inflated their own self-importance with this rule.

Greg though that Jim Taylor had hit it on the nail, especially with all of the business pressure that he often felt in government. Greg said that was in that category as well. I wouldn't have put lingered on that idea but I can see how people who work in high pressure business and government jobs might say that was food for though.

I thought what was the most interesting part of the meeting was the way the talk had been set up, talking about the importance of general health and mentioning how advertising is not trying to sell good health, but is trying to make money from certain products. Taylor’s examples from his life were interesting and he ended with the health rules that Daniel and his four friends of Biblical fame carried out.

Important Event Coming Up
Oct 11 6 pm CWSC
...  party to Celebrate 40 years of being a stake ...

And then Jim Taylor read a letter which was to explain new information about how the Word of Wisdom should be lived: no vaping, no e-cigarettes, no tobacco-based products, and no green tea.

On the way home I couldn’t get anyone in the car to explain to me what vaping was, so I had to go to the internet to learn more about that.

I wondered about the tobacco-based products, since the only one that came to my mind was Coffee Crisp Chocolate bars and I thought maybe the sugar in that was worse than the coffee flavour.

Then I remembered they might be talking about the high end coffee drinks and not referring to a chocolate bar.

Of course green tea is a hard substance to eliminate if I think about China and its prevalence there.

Not being a tea drinker (even when I am in China) I just let all of that go though my mind but I can’t help but be curious about clarifying information about products I don’t know much about.

I take my service prrogramme from the Sunday Meeting home.   I have idly doodled on it during the meeting, trying to cement spellings of people’s names, making a to-do-list for travelling, making a note about the speaker’s words, highlighting important church events coming up in my personal calendar, drawing a picture of the bare back of the woman in front of me, her bra criss-crossing her skin as an accessory.

I seem to want to capture the full church experience.

Herbal Remedies

Rebecca was in the Nicoloa Valley with Elders, talking about water projects.

That is the reason she could come up here to Secwepmachine where she is spending a few days working on validation projects for the Indigenous Law Research Unit (ILRU).

... a remedy for arthritis ...

This is her top choice for ways to spend her Sabbatical Days. 

When she talks about the days, I can see her counting them down, looking at the days, even the hours, carefully calculated because of how precious they are to her.

The appointments she had for yesterday didn’t work out, but in that failure she ran into other groups of people who opened their arms to her and had her join with them.

And that is how I got this gift of Indigenous medicine: castor wax with devil’s club, lavender, and lemongrass.

I have a new philosophy with gifts. No more saving them for tomorrow. Just open them up and get using them. No one will enjoy putting this on more than I, as evidenced that the morning hasn’t passed and I have put it on twice.

Patchwork

Bonnie took care of her loved ones at home and then came out to the lake with 2 games in hand. I wondered if she was bringing them to play them with Rebecca, since I am well known to be a curmudgeon as far as games go.

When Rebecca phoned saying she was in Chase and it would be well over an hour before she got home, I told Bonnie to bring out the game, I would play. As my token went around the board, Bonnie was coaching me all of the way. “I was introduced to this game by Doral.” “This game would be a good fit with you and Betty. She has already tried it and is good at it with a little help.”

...  game for two players ...

“I love this game. David will play it with me under duress. When I play it with Joachim, I go all out, trying to win. And I am good at it.”

“I have loved this game so much that I know all of the algorithms that a person needs to use to win this game.”

And then Bonnie began to speak of formulas and math.

“If you would like to take it home, it will be a good game with your grandchildren.”

I think if Bonnie will play the game with me one more time, I will take her up on the offer. This must be true for I found myself choosing to read the rules while I was eating breakfast.

Rebecca came last night and I offered to play Patchwork with her.  She said a polite no and then pulled out the Lost Cities game.

In that game I end up double digits in the hole.  Nope.  Playing games is just not my thing.

Arta

Playing Marbles

... the shadow of the porch begins to fall on the children ...

I want to do everything in the world.

I want to do everything and at the same time.

I want to be at the homes of each of my children, many of whom are foolish enough to invite me there. I love the teen-agers. Bonnie told me that I have always said that, but she thought I was just trying to bolster people up for what would be a terrible time: raising teens. A few days ago she told me that now she believes me. Having a teen-ager is such a parenting thrill, but that was hard to believe before she had one.

I like those little children as well – the age that Richard has: a 4 year old, a 6 year old, and 8 year old. To go on with that idea, Bonnie is doing an online course that she let me listen to with her. There are videos. First a neurotypical child doing a task (the task was watching a new wind up toy on the table which was giving them a little bit of the fear of the unknown). Then there was a child with a possible autism label doing the same task. Then the commentator spoke about how each child was reacting to the toy. I am going to call the therapist in the video a scientist for they are taking data and measuring behaviour and collecting information. At any rate, I was so taken with the methodology, I was wanting to be young again and have a job where I could do that. More than that, I was longing for a little one to play with just that age – maybe not quite two or a little older. So much fun to play with babies. What they are doing is not really play, even if it is to me.

... the string around the marble game is hard to find ...

But back to my little 4, 6 and 8 year old in whose backyard I live?

It is very hard to leave them and go somewhere else. It is also very hard to be around them and get anything done.

One late afternoon, Michael was wanting to play marbles.

I just didn’t have time.

I had told him no so many times and he had kept asking. Finally, I said, “You can play marbles outside. I can let you have mine, but I can’t come and play with you.” He was asking me if the string was with the marbles which surprised me. Apparently he could remember that we needed string to make the circle in which marble play begins. He is always surprising me.

Michael didn’t want to play in the spot I designated – too shady he said and he was right. It was late afternoon and the only sunny place left in our collective backyard was his porch.

When the marble games were over he brought back the bottles of marbles and told me that Alice and Betty had not helped with the clean-up. I told him that this is often true with play – little ones do not do a good job of cleaning up. I thanked him for bringing the marbles back and told him, “Welcome to 8 year old adulthood. That is what adults do – clean up after children and you did a good job.”

Stained Glass at Utah Valley University

From Moiya and David Wood


This was one of the most wonderful permanent Exhibits I’ve ever seen.


I can’t wait to go online to the UVU’s website to take a closer look at “The Roots of Knowledge: A Story of Art, History, and Human Drama."


There are 80 Stained glass window panes spanning 10 ft high and 200 feet in length.


Incredible!!!


We had a wonderful day going to he exhibit with Caren and Mike.


Later on in the day we left Mike and Caren at home to entertain some friends from Kenora, Ontario.


We went out to eat and then went to visit Aunt Estelle for about 1/2 hour.

Photo: Moiya Wood

Lucy’s ( my cousin) son wife and baby came so we stayed just a while and then left .


We are going to Stacey’s house on Sunday to have supper with everyone so I’ll get to visit again.

Moiya

Moiya’s Garden

... a close up of beans hanging from the vine ...

Moiya has an abundance of produce in her garden.

I went to pick some of it last night.

Oh, not the beans up high though there was a ladder enticing me to try to get the very last bean.

But when a person is not that stable on land, it is not a good idea to climb a ladder, so I left those beans for someone who will come after me.

Dave has the tepee of sticks that the beans crawl up at least 7 feet high.

... Dave has 3 beanstalks this tall ...

I picked from each one.

And on another stick a vine winds up the stick and then crosses over and winds among that branches of a nearby apple tree, making a lovely architectural feature in their yard as well.

I could hear myself whispering fee, fi, foe fum as I picked the beans for the height of the vines would surely remind a person of the Jack and the Beanstalk folk tale.

I shared half my bucket of produce with Wyona.

... sage browned butter ...

Then at home I snapped the beans, steamed them and then covered them with sage brown butter, a small condiment left to me by Ria when she visited in the summer.

“How long do you keep something like that before you think is is past it `best before’ date,” Rebecca asked me.

A lot longer than this I said, smothering my beans in sweet, smooth browned sage butter.

Thank you for all of the work of the Little Red Hen, Moiya.

I feel a bit bad swooping in and taking the fruit of your labour.

But I would feel a lot worse to let those beans just dry up on the vine.

Obituary for Jack Preston Johnson

It is with heavy hearts that we bid farewell to Jack Preston Johnson, beloved husband, father, grandfather, great-grandfather, brother, uncle and friend, who passed from his mortal sojourn on Friday, September 13, 2019 at age 82.

Preston was born May 28, 1937 in Lethbridge, Alberta, Canada, the seventh of eight children of Miles (Jack) and Bessie Thomas Johnson.

He married Maurine Hull on July 21, 1962 in the Cardston, Alberta temple.

Growing up he was known as Jackie to distinguish him from his father who was called Jack. Their home was in Barnwell, a small rural farming community in Southern Alberta. At a young age he was doing all the farm work expected of youth in that era. Jack graduated from Taber High School in 1955, then moved to Calgary for an additional year of Grade 12. In 1956 he had one of the first open heart surgeries at the University Hospital in Edmonton to open a mitral valve scarred by rheumatic fever. He then attended a year at Brigham Young University and served a mission for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Texas from 1959 to 1961.

After marriage, he and Maurine attended Brigham Young University where he chose to be known as Preston. They have permanently resided in the USA, living in Provo, Salt Lake City, Fremont, California, then Pleasant Grove and Orem, Utah. His professional career was in accounting for over 30 years, then he shifted from desk work to construction, magnifying his hobby of doing home improvement and remodel work. He was meticulous and did great craftsmanship. He loved to be helpful and would readily show up with tools in hand to assist in any needed project from anchoring a shelf to building an addition on a house. Preston loved BYU sports, news, politics and road trips. He loved to drive and has covered many thousands of miles in the US and Canada.

Preston loved the gospel and faithfully served in the Church in many capacities: Missionary, Young Men’s President, Elder’s Quorum President, Ward Clerk, Counselor in several bishoprics, Cub Scout leader, High Councilman, many years of teaching Sunday School and Gospel Doctrine classes, and temple worker in Oakland, California, and Mt. Timpanogos in American Fork, Utah, and always a Home Teacher. He and Maurine served a full-time live-at-home MLS Mission in 2014-15. He loved his family and treasured each member, rejoicing in welcoming the newest generation of great-grandchildren. He loved to visit his extended family of siblings and their families as well.

He had great respect and appreciation for his heritage of pioneer ancestors and loved to recount their experiences. He served for years as the treasurer of the B. F. Johnson Family Organization and spear-headed a DNA project which identified the unknown father of his 2nd great-grandfather, Ezekiel Johnson. He was very involved in the Family Organization’s project of building a B. F. Johnson Saddlery at This Is the Place Heritage Park in Salt Lake City.

Preston is survived by his beloved wife of 57 years, Maurine, and his seven children: Pam Raleigh, Derek (Julie) Johnson, Tracy (Steve) Parkin, Jennifer (Jeff) Ward, Brian (Stephanie) Johnson, Jason (Lyn) Johnson, Jeffrey (Kerri) Johnson, thirty grandchildren and seven great-grandchildren.

Of his seven siblings, the oldest, Grant is the only survivor, as well as two sisters-in-law, Arta Johnson and Virginia Johnson, and one brother-in-law, Ralph Sabey. Predeceased are Grant’s wife Elmoyne, Nadiene (Lawrence) Nielsen, Molly (Keith) McBride, Kelvin Johnson, James Beverly Johnson, Sharon Jonsson, Betty Sabey, and nephews Dan Nielsen and Delyle Johnson.

Funeral services will be held Friday, September 20, 2019, at 11 a.m. in the Orem Suncrest Stake Center located at 90 North 600 West, Orem, Utah. A viewing for friends and family will be held Thursday evening from 6 to 8 p.m. at the Sundberg Olpin Mortuary located at 495 South State Street in Orem, and on Friday just prior to the service from 9:30 to 10:30 a.m. at the church. Burial will be in the Orem City Cemetery.

A Bad Doll

Yesterday Betty and Alice were sitting at the drawing table. Suddenly Alice was hunched over crying. When Miranda asked what had happened, Alice said that Betty had smacked her with a Barbie doll.

I was thinking about that Barbie doll hit on Alice since sometimes I hear Richard talk to Michael’s feet or Alice’s hands. For example, “Michael’s feet? Michael’s feet?”, I hear Richard call. And then Michael runs over to his dad to see what Richard wants. So I was quietly wondering about Betty’s hands that had let her anger at Alice run through them into a good smack with a doll.

Alice letting her mom braid her hair
Summer 2019

A while later the children and I were all going outside.

My goal was to have Alice practise putting chalk on her hands every time she uses the monkey bars.

Alice’s hands are so wratched up from Alice moving on the monkey bars that I am worried their family is going to be reported for abusing her somehow when someone outside the family gets a peek at those hands.

Anyway, we have been putting lotion on her hands, and Miranda has her carry the chalk bag in her back pack to school to use when she is on the monkey bars there.

I checked Michael’s hands to see if the same callouses are there, but he told me no, he plays tag at recess. He doesn’t go to the monkey bars.

At any rate, I am trying to put all of this together. I told Betty she couldn’t come out and play with the other three of us, because she is the owner of a mean Barbie doll and she would have to stay inside with that mean doll until it learned to be nice again and not hit her sister. Of course Betty didn’t like that.

Now I am not down on Betty. But from my interactions with her, it would seem like it. On the plus side for me, I took her cardboard home of her Corgi Doggie back to my place last night to glue it. Miranda told me that glue would not work to keep it together. Still, I glued it, but this morning I could see why Miranda told me that glue wouldn’t work. While the glue is keeping the cardboard together, I could see that Betty’s little hands are going to pick at the underside of the cardboard dog house and work all of those pieces apart. That is just the nature of Betty’s brain. She wants to see things come apart. So while the glue is working, I am going to take Miranda’s idea and use tape that will be very difficult to unpick.

Watching these little people has brought to my mind one of my own earliest memories. The story came back to me because Mary told me she has transported a cactus off of the plains of Lethbridge and into her house to watch it grow, but not before someone else tried to pick a cactus up and got spiked with it. I can only think that Mary can take care of the cactus best by never watering it and by letting gales of air blow on it, maybe from a floor vent.

At any rate that reminded me of one of the first memories of my childhood. I was looking out a window and picking off flies that were buzzing on the low window pane. I would grab one and then put it on my mother's cactus which was also down low. I used the cactus to hold my flies there while I grabbed yet another one.

The reason I can remember this is that Wyora bawled me out and I couldn't really figure out why she was mad, even after I got the lecture. Was it killing the flies? I had seen her kill flies.

I just didn't get the idea that my mother didn't want a cactus decorated in pilloried flies. I didn’t figure that out until I tried to write some of the earliest memories of my childhood.

Now this is too long for a blog post, but here it is, so I will see if I can draw this together. I think I am saying that watching these little people is so much fun. I can see why some older people really like watching little people. What the little ones are going to do next is such a mystery, as is why they are going to do it.

Who wouldn't want to watch a reality show like that.

Arta

Dairy Queen Last Week Sometime

Zoe, Wyona and I went to the Dairy Queen a few days ago. For some reason Wyona and I were dressed up, although I can’t remember why. At any rate, there we were, Wyona eating Zoe’s sundae so that it didn’t melt, while Zoe began to consume part of her $7 meal deal while it was hot. Zoe always orders the chicken fingers and fries – no burger for her.

I picked up the Ketchup and began to pour a bit of it into the fries tray so that we would have some condiment to poke our French fries into. I thought the bottle felt full, but when I turned it over, nothing came out.

“Not like the Dairy Queen to forget to take out the piece of foil so that the Ketchup will work,” I thought as I turned the bottle right side up again to screw off the lid and remove that foil that was preventing the Ketchup from flowing. I have no idea why I looked at the nozzle and gave it one more squirt, but I did. There was a rush of air and then Ketchup spattered upward, all over my hair, my glasses, my cheeks and my neck. I knew this was a moment where I did not want to take a selfie. Still I sat there for a minute, first letting Wyona see my face and then Zoe.

Zoe began to laugh so hard she leaned her face down on the table.

“You wouldn’t be laughing so hard if this had happened to you,” I said.

She agreed and patted my hand, but then she started to laugh again.

And again.

Her mother sent her over to fill the drinks up at the fountain.

I could still see Zoe laughing over there, uncontrollable, not able to contain herself.

When she came back she took some serviettes and tried to clean my face up, but that was hard to do with no water at the table.

Wyona took my glasses off, gave them to Zoe and told her to take them to the bathroom and clean them up for a start. As she left Wyona said, “Zoe has never cleaned a pair of glasses before. I have no idea how they are going to come back to you.”

The answer is that this is the first time I have looked through my glasses and seen a light smear of pink on the lenses.

I have no idea, just no idea why I would look down the squeeze top of a bottle of Ketchup and then press it really hard to see if it were working.

Arta

Music at the Library

Sonabelles a Cappella
https://www.facebook.com/SonabellesACappella/

I went to hear the Sonabelles A Cappella sing at one of the local libraries today.

They have four other gigs at libraries in the next two months.

For a wonderful thrill, attend one of these events if you can.

The music is beautiful.

The stage presence is fabulous.

The costuming is fun.

Their chat between numbers if informative and warm.

And you can pick up a library book or two afterwards.

What's not to like about a Sunday like that.

Arta

Tears for a Stuffed Animal

I made a four year old cry today. I am not really proud of that. Here is what happened.

Michael, Betty, Alice and I were sitting at the Lego table. Michael asked if I would like to play a game of Dungeons and Dragons there. I was pleased for I had come over in the evening afraid that the hour was too late and that the children would already be in bed. All were still up.  Only their father was ready for bed.

I sat on a low stool and said to Richard, “I think this is the last time I will be able to sit at a low stool near the Lego table. There is no way I am going to be able to get off of this low stool when the time comes for me to get up.”

I had already planned a way to go down on my knees and then roll over a bit to where I could lean on something and get up. Richard pre-empted my plan by coming over and giving me a hand up and onto a regular chair.

So the children and I went back to planning our game. Michael was to be our dungeon master and Alice, Betty and I divided the table up into thirds so that we would each have a place to play. Our space was limited, and Betty’s animal, Foxy, wanted to sit on the table and kept getting in our way. I told Betty that no animals could be on the table – only pieces of lego. I shooed Foxy off of the table but he came back up to sit on it again. For the second time, I told Foxy to get off again and he didn’t move. For the third time I initiated Foxy’s departure and still Foxy stayed under and then on the table. So I grabbed Foxy out of Betty’s hand and with sleight of hand put him underneath me while seeming to throw him right through the plate glass window and out of the house.

Betty searched under my arms, in my pockets and behind my back, and not finding him each time was casting her gaze to the window, really worrying if the stuffed fox was now outside somewhere.

Betty and Alice in happier times playing Retail Business

Alice has a store full of  My Little Ponies stuffies.
Betty has come to buy some of them.
Her blue purse (lower left) is full
of money with which to make the transactions.

I gave a lecture to all of the children telling them that Dungeons and Dragons is a communal game with a space in it for all (well, excepting Foxy), underlining we have to keep some rules, and so the play began, Michael acting as the dungeon master and Alice and I going from room to room.

He did a grand job.

At one point he asked me what my race was.

I told him Caucasian.

He said no, he meant elvish, gnomish, etc so I changed to one of the options he gave me.

Behind me I could hear Betty negotiating with her mother, trying to get Foxy back, as though Miranda could help her, but what other recourse did Betty have.

I could hear Miranda saying, “If Foxy comes back, you will have to take him downstairs and go to bed with him.” I didn’t know what else was going on back behind me but after a while I thought it was time to make the sound of a fox howling at the moon and soon, beside me was Betty.

I looked down at her. By now I had Foxy out from under my thigh and was putting him in Betty’s hand. A small drop of clear mucous was coming out of one of her nostrils and a drop of water was rolling out of her tear duct and down the cheek on the opposite side of her face.

As I said, I made a four year old cry tonight and I am not proud of it.

Arta

The Lehman Triology – Taking it to Heart

LtoR: Henry, Emmanuel and Mayer

I think I took the National Theatre’s presentation o The Lehman Triology a little too much to heart today.

Perhaps that viewing is as close as I have ever come to being hypnotized.

I left the theatre feeling as though somehow there had been a punch in the gut, not just to me but to anyone who has ever been served by a bank or a financial institution, or by electronics or google or by commerce – yes, the final answer is to buy.

So then why did I not feel like opening up my wallet and purchasing anything on the way home.

An amazing show.

So glad I was lucky enough to see it.

Arta

Gravity

For some months I have been aware that one of my chairs is falling apart. When I would grab the top of it to swing it to a different spot in the room, off would come 4 pieces: the top bar, 2 side poles and a decorative middle which has a gentle curve to it. I asked Richard about repairing the chair. He would ask me to produce some wood glue for him, which of course, I couldn’t.

So I bought some glue last week at Home Depot and decided that it is time for me to learn to repair my own broken furniture. I watched Catherine make repairs at the lake in the summer of 2018. I had lined up jobs from many previous years, some which seemed too complicated to do. Still, I couldn’t throw the old pieces of furniture out. One was a small side table that had a lovely marble insert as a decorative feature. I had brought that back from China and there was no way I could throw that out no matter how damaged it was.

And a small side story.
This is the day the three Johnson children played
Toss the Bean Bag.  By some strange chance
Betty's bean bags always scored points
and the bean bags of the others went "sideways".

This is Betty's victory cheer.

That summer I watched Catherine take wood glue, some clamps and a few bungee chords and just about everything I had lined up in my garage as being impossible to repair, got put back into my house, as good as new. Or at least as good as a repaired object can look, including that darling Chinese side table.

I asked Catherine if she had taken classes to do this. No. Necessity had been the mother of invention, she reported. Stuff falls apart at her house too, and that is where she learned all of her skills, though she did say that having watched Leo a few times at work with her things had given her the initial courage to try it on her own.

Here is the thing with my experiment fixing my chair. What can be that difficult about gluing the equivalent of three sticks into three holes in the seat of a wooden chair. And it wasn’t that hard to fill the holes in the seat of the chairs with glue. Nor to put the sticks in those holes. What I hadn’t counted on is the glue that I put in place in the bar that was to go across the top of the chair. For some reason, I had imagined it had the viscosity of peanut butter, even though that had not been the case with the glue in the lower holes. When I turned the bar upside down on the other three poles, the part gravity played with the glue was over-whelming to me. I had glue everywhere -- all over the seat of the chair, all over my hands, all over the side poles and all over the floor.

I put everything down and walked over to Richard’s house that Saturday morning saying, “I think I need help and I need it now.”

“Come on, Betty, I think we have to stop what we are doing, walk next door and help Grandmother,” he said.

And they did, even down to mopping up the glue on the floor.

Really, it was gravity that licked me.

Arta

Rebecca's Trip to Quebec

If you missed reading Rebecca's personal blog where she chronicled her latest trip to Quebec, then here is the link for a good read.

I don't know which part I enjoyed the most:  her visit to the Joan Miro Exhibition, her visit with the judge she clerked for, or the time she spent with other friends.

I think I liked it all.

Arta

West 53

I enjoy a train ride.

I enjoy a bus ride.

And I especially enjoy a bus ride in my own city to a place in the city where I usually don’t go. I looked at the Transit Planner last night to find the way to my physiotherapist appointment in Bowness.

When I stepped off the LRT to the place where there were many buses waiting to route people further north or west, I was amazed again at how many places there are to see that I am not familiar with. West 53 took me down to my Bowness appointment, but after that I continued the ride out to Greenwood Village and then back to the Brentwood LRT Station. How can that trip have made a really nice day for me?

But it did.

Arta

Looking Forward to The Lehman Trilogy

 ‘A magical music box called America’ …
The Lehman Trilogy,
with set designs by Es Devlin
Photograph: Mark Douet

I am so looking forward to watching The Lehman Trilogy tomorrow.

Here is the Guardian review by Michael Billington which I am going to study for a while tonight to be ready for the show tomorrow.

I noticed that it is 3 acts, 3 hours and 30 minutes -- a long play but then there is 140 years of capitalist enterprize to cover.

From The LondonTheatre.com I read "The accents change from German to New York as the immigrant brothers are overtaken by a new generation; the sign of the Lehman Brothers shop constantly evolves, each one marked in pen like a memory on the glass walls of the set; the actors use cardboard file boxes to build platforms and staircases as the giant set revolves and the years pass."

Fun stuff.

Arta

A Slight Disappointment

I thought I could say it was a slight disappointment, but when I found I got to the wrong theatre, but at the right time, I knew all of that preplanning, all of the online interviews I watched getting myself reading to see National Theatre’s offering of Fleabag just went out the window. And I had a little trouble choking down the disappointment.

All the ticket seller could do was give me three plexiglass 8 ½ x 11 sheets into which he had put a small summary of the shows I could see at that theatre. Sucking up my disappointment, I saw I could choose between Hustler and Road to the Lemon Grove .

I have listened to the CBC interview one of the actors in Hustler this morning. As well a few weeks ago I watched a 2 minute video about Road tom the Lemon Grove. I felt as though I had a heads or tails choice to make.

A deceased Sicilian father, has
one last outrageous mission
in store for his son - spread his ashes
in the lemon groves of Sicily,
reunite two feuding families,
discovering the heart and soul of who he really is

While Rebecca is going to tell about Fleabag when she gets home, I have to say that Road to the Lemon Grove is a cross between a spaghetti-western, a few university linguistics lectures, and a documentary with fabulous picture of Sicily.

Subtitles were occasionally added but I didn’t think there were enough of them, or perhaps having a lot of dialogue and then a subtitle that just says “no” was enough.

There were only 5 of us in the theatre and the couple to the extreme right of me talked all of the way through the movie. 

The second couple tried to shush them a number of times but it didn't work.

My guess is that the couple who were talking were enjoying the gorgeous shots of Sicily and explaining to each other how much fun it had been on their own trip there.

The other couple directly in front of me stayed until all of the credits had rolled by. Not everyone says that long. The last line in the credits said “No donkeys were hurt in the filming of this movie”. At least that made me laugh.

And now I am going out to figure out where and when The Lehman Trilogy is playing on Saturday so that I don’t miss that second offering from The Nation Theatre.

Arta

Clothes Shopping for Arta

When I go into stores shopping for clothing, I think of countless other searches for clothes, for clothes where the seams don't interfere with my comfort, for clothes that are serviceable, even for clothes where I will have occasions to wear them.

I was thinking about all of this as I was shopping by myself on Friday, picking out clothes from the 50% off the last reduced price and trying them on. 

In the small dressing room I was alone, putting things on, looking at them, taking them off, hanging them up and thinking, shopping is really not that much fun.

I gathered up and folded into one place, what I wanted to buy -- 3 pairs of pants and three tops.

Then I got dressed and couldn't find the top I had worn into the dressing room.

For an instant I thought, this is weird. I am not wearing enough clothing to walk out into the hallway.

I started unfolding the tops I was going to buy, watching to see if they had price tags.  I figured out I had looked at what I had worn into the shop, thought that I would like to buy it, and not realizing it was already mine, and had folded it up into the pile of things to take to the till.

I need a handler when I go shopping.

Arta

The Little Canadian Stream

Photo Credit: David Doral Camps

The Little Canadian Stream

Who was the last person to be the gardener at the Little Canadian Stream?

Whomever it was, thank you for the waterfall.

A picture like this produces longing in the hearts of all who have ever played at that spot, or even who have tended children who are playing at that spot.

Arta

Checking in on Alice

... trying to crawl into the geodome ...

Alice was alone in the backyard this afternoon.

I was sitting there first, letting the afternoon rays of the sun fall on my back.

The yard had just been mowed that morning, so the smell of newly cut was in the air.

Alice was alone out in the yard.

.... and now with the other hand ...

She had a tube of bubbles in her hands and she was trying to hanging upside-down from the geodome and at the same time blow the bubbles.

The tube kept dropping out of her hands.

I walked over and asked her if I could hold the bubble container while she got herself in a position where she could both hang upside down and blow the bubbles.

She let me hold it for a while so that she could figure out how to do this.

As she experimented there were a few more times that the tube of bubbles fell.

... hanging with 2 hands ...

She had trouble finding the right position to keep herself steady and hold the wand and the bubble jar.

When she had finished blowing the bubbles, I coaxed her over to the patio table, telling her I had a new easy reader that has some great words: words like too-wit-too–woo.

And the word cockatoo which of course rhymes with kangaroo.

... trying to balance to start blowing bubbles ...

She was available to me to try the new words as she was getting ready to practise reading in the new reader.

When she was through with the flash cards, she went straight to reading the book and then she switched to playing with the a re-useable sticker book she brought home from a birthday party today.

There were a lot of complicated directions in the book, especially for someone who can’t read yet.

... getting a good float of bubbles going ...

One instruction said that certain stickers are meant to go on certain pages, which she wished she had found out before she had randomly stuck a good selection of them, everywhere.

We practised putting a marker in the front of the book to show which page we were working on, and then we went to the back of the book to find the stickers that were made for those pages.

The back of the book has a lovely flap that we could use to capture pages of stickers and keep them out of our way.

... Richard's jeans on the clothes line ...

I thought our afternoon was going well, but the sun began to go down and Alice said, “Let’s go to my house. I am cold.”

“Let’ go to my house instead,” I said and we moved inside, only to break one of the new rules of the family.

Rule one is that a parent has to agree that a child can go to grandmother’s.

... blowing down the whole row ...

The second rule is, if grandmother is not there, no one gets to go in the house. (In one word, retreat.)

The third rule is meant to protect me – no one can come into the house, if grandmother doesn’t have time to play.

Betty mostly ignores rules, unless it is rules other people should be keeping. but when she heard Alice had come inside because she was cold, Betty with a bit of consternation in her voice said “Well, I am cold too.”

... trying to get my balance, grandmother ...

So in the house she came to play matryoshkas while I continued to help Alice figure out how to use the sticker book.

Betty is a high-maintenance third child.

If someone older than she is busy with play, Betty wants to join in with that play, whether it is age appropriate or not.

... and now to start climbing up ...

In fact she is just right on top of that other child.

I deemed it necessary to keep the two girls apart, since moving stickers is a one person job that cannot be enhanced by having Betty give her opinion about every move Alice is making.

I went over to play Russian nesting dolls with Betty, still making the occasional suggestion to Alice.

... a one-handed hanging move ...

A set of 8 dolls was on the table and I was trying to figure out who these nesting doll women could be.

The obvious answer was all of them should be women in the Johnson family, so we had everyone from real people like great-grandmother
Jerry (in real life, Joan Turnbull's mother) to a mythical baby and small sister.

... the hammock inside the geodome ..;

Miranda got to be the largest figure in the group.

My figure was on the smaller size, which makes sense, given Joan should be larger, given she has the favourite grandmother status.

My figure also had to stand off to the side – I wasn’t allowed to be in the Betty-Alice-Joan group.

... Alice working on her sticker book ...

Thank goodness I don’t try to do psychology to make sense of the stories Betty is telling.

I have already let her into my house on a very hot day when she was professing she needed to get out of the cold, and that will do for my description of my part in her life.

At least for the rest of that hour.

And I forgot one last note to tell all.  Alice's hands need some powder or perhaps gloves made for people who hang off of bars often, for they palms are getting scarred.  I tried some vaseline to make them smoother, but then she wanted a few bandaids, which didn't work on top of the vaseline.

Well, taking care of those little hands.  A task for another day.

Arta