I Made it to Swim at Coogee Beach

From Rebecca

I made it to Australia. 

I still haven’t slept, but am about ready to hit the bed. 

I stayed awake all day, so hopefully am now caught up.

I have a plug converter. Yea.

Swam today in the woman’s pool at Coogee beach.

The birds are so loud! One sounds like a kid pretending to be a bird! :-)

Rebecca

Bringing in the decorations

Having bought and stored so many Christmas decorations, (I have been at this since 1962), I try to be judicious about which ones and how many I bring into the house, from storage in the garage.

This year I decided that I will bring every decoration inside and put them somewhere in my house.

Who will ever enjoy them more than the 8, 6 and 4-year old who live next door?

I am just going to make this year a memorable one from the point of view of a Christmas decoration-hoarder.

I thought I would have a decorating party in the evening so I began to bring crates of decorations in at about 11 am.

I was joined by Betty for the afternoon.

She and I put new triple A batteries in the acrylic polar bear, penguin and musical train I just bought.

We put double A batteries in acrylic Christmas trees purchased in past years – the batteries allow the colours of red and green and blue to deepen and then fade.

Betty brought one of them back over to the Johnson house to enjoy as a Christmas centre piece during dinner. So the small arguments at the dinner table were about passing it around, who was holding it for more time than another, and where it should be placed on the table as a centre piece, as in closer beside someone’s plate, that someone being the person holding it at that time.

What is Christmas without having a few good arguments over supper.

... photo holder ...

During the daytime, Betty and I have gone through boxes that only say “miscellaneous” on them because they are full of just that: decorations from other Christmases when the themes were different than what we see being marketed this year.

For example, watch as you shop this year and see how many decorations involve bringing home the Christmas tree in the back of a red pick-up truck.

Yesterday I saw this image on tea towels, inside of glass ornaments, on Christmas cards, on dishes, and on cups and on mugs.

I hope I do not get tempted into buying any of them.

I called Catherine today, since I know that she and Hebe enjoy the Costco Christmas Singing Bear from the past, the one that sings a new carol every day and begins to the musical count down by playing, “count, count, twenty-five days until Christmas …” and on the next day “twenty-four days until Christmas…”, all the way down to the surprise of Christmas morn.

And the next day it begins to play, “count, count, 364 days until Christmas” if you are foolish enough to reset it.

Christmas is all about bringing joy to the world.

Sometimes that can be done best with some new batteries.

Arta

Looking for Nativities

... letting the lamb have a look at the creche ...

The fun of a nativity set for me, is watching who goes to rearrange where the characters can stand.

Do the shepherds come out in front and hide the baby from view?

Are the backs of the wise men to me, since they are presenting presents to the baby.

I usually want to see their faces and their gifts?

... letting the donkey and the cow have a look ...

Is Mary tending the baby or has she been moved and to the periphery of the scene only Joseph is there to look after the wee one.

Has the four year old who is moving these figures around, just noticed that one of the shepherds is carrying a lamb on his back, as well as having one at his feet and is overwhelmed with delight at his job.

Why is it that the angel is right next to the baby, I think?

Don’t the angels usually sit on top of the crèche and sing their hallelujahs from there? What about this gold, frankincense and myrrh?

... I think this shepherd has 2 lambs ...

Does it really make sense to a four year old that something used to embalm a body is a gift for a baby?

Wyona was sure that she had seen an acrylic nativity set this year as she has been out looking for decorations?

So together we went to Canadian Tire and then to London Drugs trying to track it down, but not to find one.

Can they already be sold out, Wyona says out loud.

Some really good decorations go that fast from stores, but buying nativity sets is not that popular anymore, and in fact, few stores carry them.

We go to a second London Drugs, not finding what she had seen at the Nolan Heights London Drugs.

... the baby fell bit it didn't break ...

And yes, we found it at the Brentwood London Drugs, but then on examining it, the figures are stuck to its base, since it lights up and the fact that it works with a battery means that the figures can’t move – which is the whole point to me – to arrange it first myself, and then to see the counter arrangements go on.

5In the past, Steve would take the baby out and put it on top of one of the camels or out with the animals at the side of the crèche.

Betty is not old enough to tell counter narratives about this story.

She is just busy learning about the star of the east, about the names of the mom and the dad in this story, and she wants to pick up the porcelain figures, turn them over, look at the colours of the costumes and be thrilled that she is part of my decorating team.

Betty stands on a three-legged stool, not that stable.

And I wonder if she will fall into the scene, or if some will slip and everything come crashing to the floor.

The chances are small, since she is being so careful.

So respectful, as though she has just met these characters for the first time and she seems to want a more complicated story about them than the simple one she knows.

I sing a few lines of "We Three Kings of Orient Are" to Betty.

I think about explaining to her how the kings have followed a star for a long way, riding their camels over field and fountain, mountain moor and mountain, and I cannot escape the memory of how long I used to sing, "We three kings of Orient-tar".

... I wonder where this baby should go
in the grand scheme of things ...

We sing the song at supper again.

Grandmother Joan Turnbull is at the table.

The parents have done on a date and the two grandmothers are enjoying the children together.

Joan is a good singer.

And she knows the song and sings it as do I.

 Both of us get stumped on the third verse: “frankincense to offer have I …."

... looks pretty good to me ...

And that is where both of our voices fade out.

She is quick with her phone and has already googled the words so that we can finish that verse before the children loose interest.

Ah Christmas.

It’s the most wonderful time of the year.

Arta

2 Pieces of ID

When the government wants to protect the airways and they ask for ID they really mean they want their ID:  a passport or a driver’s licence, or standard government ID issued to those who have no driver’s licence.

I put my driver’s licence into the belly pouch of my fleecy, along with the boarding pass I had printed out and a receipt showing that I had paid for my luggage:  $35 or the first bag and $50 for the second bag.  “Oh you are lucky,:” said the clerk at the West Jet Kiosk.  “Your bag is 48.3 pounds in weight.  If it were over 50 pounds, I would have to charge you $100 for that bag and not $50.”  I thought to myself, “You will never know how many times I stepped on and off the scales at home with that bag, making sure that it was not overweight.”  And concomitantly, I could hear myself thinking,  “You mean I could have put another pound of books in that bag?  I am a failure at having missed that opportunity.” 

At any rate with my bags weighed I passed the papers in that belly pouch over to the clerk.  But my driver’s licence was not there.  I looked on the floor around me.  The clerk came out of her kiosk and together we were on our hands and knees, on the floor to see if it had fallen down between the moving part of the scale and her platformed booth.  Clerks came from either side of her to help look.  Rebecca tracked our path back to where the taxi let us off outside.  And she phoned the taxi cab driver to see if the licence had fallen out of my pocket in the cab.  There was just no finding that licence.  

A social insurance number card.
Note the date of expiration;
this implies that the holder is neither a permanent resident,
nor a Canadian citizen.

Image from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_Insurance_Number

The only other hope was for me to pull out my Alberta Health Care Card and my Social Insurance Card for 2 pieces of government ID will work as well as that one picture ID.  

But who carries around their Social Insurance Card?  

Health care card?  

Yes.  

No one asks to see my Social Insurance Card.

“I can’t let you  on the flight without your picture ID or 2 pieces of government ID,” said the clerk.  “And you will loose what you have paid for the flight, since it is an economy seat,” she said. 

The dollars didn’t seem to matter to me.  The weakness in my knees was from my mind racing ahead to figuring out how an Albertan can get her driver’s licence re-issued on a Sunday in Victoria BC, or even on a Monday for that matter.  And it is not like I can just hop on the Greyhound and get home anymore. 

Rebecca was at the airport as well, flying out to Australia.  We had come in the taxi together.  “I have to leave you now, Mom.  My flight is ready to go.  I will phone and have Steve come out to get you.”  And off she ran for her boarding gate.

Now I didn’t sit down and cry.  I did sit down dejected having planned every detail of getting home so carefully – right up to how many pounds of book I could carry with me.

I was on the phone calling Wyona to cancel her pick-up for me on the Calgary end of the flight when one of the West Jet employees who had been trying to find my lost ID came running up to me.  “They found your ID.  It was turned in at the final boarding gate just now.  Since your luggage has already been weighed, I will put it on the carrier.  You start running right now to get through security.” 

I don’t run that well anymore, but I am a fast walker.  At the end of the security check, I was met by another West Jet employee, who pulled my carry-on for me and led the way to the plane, ushering me on and putting my baggage above me in the overhead bins and then the doors of the plane closed.

I thought I had enough adrenalin to keep me from sleeping for the next couple of days. 

Many people deserve thanks.  The WestJet employee who received my driver’s licence since she had now gone down to the other end of the airport to hep check people onto the flight and thought to herself, “Isn’t this a picture of the woman whom we were just helping at the entrance to the airport, and who was telling us her ID is lost?”  Thanks to Steve who was already on the way to the airport to pick me up and then turned around to go back home without me.  Thanks to Rebecca who had checked with security, with the commissionaires and who had retraced our steps numerous times.  Thanks to Wyona who still came to get me at the airport after hearing yes meet me, then no don’t meet me, then yet, meet me.

The reason for me to come home is that Tuesday was my appointment for the Pre-Admission Clinic for my hip surgery.  Today, the phlebotomist took  five vials of blood before my appointment and after looking at the results the Internal Medicine Specialist told me, “Your blood work looks good.  Your heart looks good.  Good luck with your new hip.”  Oh sweet new hip-to-be.  Oh sweet lost-and-found driver’s licence.  As a precaution, I am going to put together two pieces of alternative government ID in my wallet, for having a driver’s licence fall out of one’s pocket could happen to anyone.

DnD at the Library

Brochure for club.

David is one of the Dungeon Masters for a Friday night club that meets at our local library. I am one of the players.

He fashions a story with out input. There are many moments where we find ourselves on the edge of our seats and others where we find ourselves falling off our seats in laughter.

This Friday will be the sixth session of a campaign set in The Forgotten Realms in the country of Cormyr. That's 15 hours of game time, with sessions running 3 hours in length.

Club details.

The story two weeks ago found our characters in a giant library. Our party had been tasked with gathering intel on some suspect patrons. David turned to each player, asking for input as to where they would be and what they were doing o. this stake out.

A hill dwarf named Gimli grabbed the first book he could find, and was pretending to read but was intermittently peering suspiciously over the top of it. A Wizard was casually hanging out at the information desk. The player running the fighter asked, are there any periodicals I can pick up and read?

The Dungeon Master
doubled over with laughter 

David, the DM replied, you pick one up. The headlines read, "Little Billy wins local pie eating contest." Another reads, "Suzail's sports team loses to neighboring town."

Soon all the players had forgotten their roles and were shouting out their own headlines, and even the DM had a hard time staying upright through his belly laughter.

From whence comes your connection to song?

I grew up in a home filled with music. The upright piano in the living room is central in my childhood memories. My mother played it daily, gathering children in a Pied Piper fashion. Songs year round. 

No need to call my name. The squeak of the piano bench being adjusted, her foot searching out the foot pedal as she readied her posture, or the sound of her lifting the key cover was heard as an invitation for connection and belonging. I remember the anticipation and delight in hearing a new voice blending in with the others, joining on their own volition when their attention could no longer resist the call of the melody.

But my deep connection was born long before my ability to sing along.  I see my young self dancing, with Becky and Trelly as I knew them then, dancing sprite-like to quick scales of high notes. Then a pause. Someone is yelling,  "the giants are coming!"  We are racing to saftey.  I know the giants are imaginary,  but their footsteps are not. The deep, slow chords ignite fear. I see "the big kids" run for cover.  I follow. Where can we hide? Will we all make it? Will there be enough room?

Songs and more songs. Familiar songs. Unfamiliar songs. New songs. Easy songs. Hard to learn songs. 

Start at the end. Repeat last line until voices are confident, then off to work on another line. Want-to-quit songs. One last time. From the top. Lose-your-way moments, but here it comes ... the well practiced familiar ending. Finding my way back to the melody, back to the group, back to belonging. Always ending with a sense of confidence and satisfaction, returning to that now very familiar and easy last line.

Branagh Theatre - A Winter's Tale

Truth-telling …
Judi Dench as Paulina and Kenneth Branagh as Leontes
in
The Winter’s Tale at the Garrick

Photograph: Johan Persson
Kenneth Branagh Theatre Company/Garrick

I like to keep just a little bit ahead of what I am going to see next.  I think this show comes Dec 4th.

So for others like me, here is a Guardian review of the upcoming Shakespeare play,  The Winter's Tale.

It seems like only yesterday that I read Janette Winterson's The Gap of Time, her cover of The Winter's Tale.

Such a rich culture that we live in.

I went to refresh my mind on some of the most famous lines from this play.

I wrote them in a notebook that I carry with me.

Perhaps I will have time to re-read them.

Perhaps not.

But just having them there makes me feel comfortably prepared for this new show.

Learning from an Online-Hunting Course

... the place ...

Naomi has been doing on-line hunter education course.

Her mom is loving it as well.

Naomi has finished hunting ethics, landowner-hunter relationships, conservation, and wildlife identification.

Ungulates.

Who uses a word like that anymore.

Maybe someone does, but now I am going to have to look up the definition.

There are loads of birds in the bird identification chapter : ducks, pheasants, and geese.

... the target ...

A person doesn’t have to go hunting for animals to want to know how to name all of the birds.

... the woman ...

Yes, once when I was working in the library, and also working on identifying birds, one of the biggest bird watching library specialists told me, “Look, Arta. You don’t have to know the names of the birds. They don’t know their names.”

If I were taking this course is it would be because I am hunting but hunting for information.

I go on that hunt every day.

Richard took this course many years ago – a 2 day sit-down in person course where newcomers to hunting get to touch a bunch of guns to practice how to handle them.

I am pretty sure I would like to do take that course along with Naomi

Online would be a great way for me.

Arta

Once a Good Cookie Recipe

... a big reach to the end of the tray ...

Duncan and Rebecca are in the first thoes of putting an essay together that is using primary and secondary sources.

At least that is one of the requirements of this essay: use both primary and secondary sources.

For his primary source, Duncan choose Elias Adams, the Pioneer, a book written by Catherine Adam’s grandfather and a primary source of the tale of a settler coming first to Boston and finally moving his family in a wagon over the plains to Utah.

The secondary sources that have to do with this time period involve the dispossession by Native Americans of their lands in Utah, a story that has a lot of shame attached to it, not matter how the story is spun. And those are the two stories that Duncan is weaving together today.

... pushing the dough off of the spoon ...

If I were doing that essay I would be needing a lot of comfort good to go along with it.

Duncan baked some of that last night, when he choose to make banana chip cookies and that would be with mint chocolate chips.

Every time this cookie is made, it appears in a different form. Duncan beat the shortening, the sugar until they were so soft that I had no idea how the cookies was going to stand up to the baking test where it was to hold its form.

And then he made the cookies very small – that way you get more of them, he said.

I could not talk him into doubling their size. He is not interested in eating the cookie dough.

I don’t think any of it hit his mouth.

As well, this cookie dough is to be rolled in cinnamon sugar, but its consistency reminded me of the softest fondant I have every dipped.

... the cookies ready for the oven ...

So now – 5 trays of cookies instead of 2, but they turned out beautifully. At least the ones I tasted.

Duncan likes to have the cookies cool before people eat them. Respect, he says. It is about respecting the person who made them and waiting until they tell you it is time to eat them.

Those are long minutes for me. I like the cookie when it is too hot to handle, and when the chocolate chips are so hot that they burn my mouth. Well, maybe I don’t like it, but that is the way I eat them.

... my second time this week with this recipe ...

I found that cookie recipe in the Calgary Herald so many years ago.

I had an abundance of bananas and was always thinking of ways to incorporate bananas into food the kids would eat. Now the recipe feels like a heritage recipe to Rebecca and to Duncan, though I am not sure how long a recipe has to be in a family to take on that designation.

Anyway, once a good cookie recipe, always a good one with the banana chocolate chip drop cookie.

Arta

The Power of Stories

... a quick selfie in front of Killer Whale before we leave our room ..

I am still thinking about the power of stories – in the lives of adults.

Adults listen to complicated stories – mostly told to us with our electrical devices -- which are a modern day gift.

I am wondering if there is a place in adult lives for old-fashioned story telling, the kind that originated our fires when the sky got dark and people were gathered and talking to one another in the deep of the night sky.

Rebecca has been telling the story of Cannibal Boy lately to all who stop to listen.

She practised at the lake and Michael Hunter Johnson was often listening to the story. When Coyote first steals Cannibal Boy from his community and takes him home, the boy is on Coyote’s shoulders and he begins to pick away at a boil that is there.

Rebecca uses her hands to pick at something on the back of her own neck, her face grimacing when she does. Then Cannibal Boy sucks some of the puss out of the boil and Rebecca uses slurping sounds so that her listeners will know that what is there may be disgusting to them, but it is delicious to Cannibal Boy.  Rebecca's tongue reaches far out of her mouth to get every last delicious taste of the puss and the slurping sound reaches far to the back of the room, although she is not micked up.

To jump to the end of what I want to say about this story, one day Michael finally asked Rebecca to stop telling it. He was tired of the story and didn’t want to hear it any more. She agreed to do that, but in doing so, she just wondered if he could perhaps tell the story on his own. She was just curious, she said, to know if he remembered it.  And off he went … almost word for word, gesture for gesture, and slurp for slurp to the end of the story.

I am not tired of the story yet although she has stopped telling it to him.

 I noticed that when I put on a favourite fleecy yesterday, that the label at the back of my neck was scratching the skin there. I have tolerated that scratching for years. I wondered why it is I just haven’t taken the time to clip the threads that hold the label there, and give myself a better day – no more scratching there – just get Cannibal Boy off of my neck.

So I did.

Slurp, slurp.

Arta

Impact Benefits Agreement Conference – Second Day

... the morning sun reflects off of a building across the street ...

I had a second wonderful day at this conference.

I was reading through my notes, remembering both what I wrote to keep in my notebook, and then what I leaned over and wrote on the conference materials that Rebecca had.

My materials were all online.

She had the print out copy of all of the slides of the presentations.

Occasionally I would move into her space with my highlighter on her papers since a single circle around a word, giving it colour, is a faster way to remember than at that point in the talk some connections were falling down for me.

Rebecca presented on a panel of three in the afternoon.

I am curious about these three houses in the middle of the street.

One woman talked about Impact Benefit Agreements in the mining sector of the Yukon. Another team talked about Impact Benefit Agreements and surface water in northern British Columbia.

2.Rebecca gave a 20-minute description of a handout called Indigenous Law 101 and produced by the Indigenous Law Research Unit.

As well, in the past few years, she explained, Indigenous law has existed from “time immemorial” and then she told the story of “The War with the Sky People”.

When she tells stories I am reminded again of why we tell stories, what is captured in the telling, and what shifts for us when the words and phrases are coloured with someone else’s meaning.

I watched her hands as they swing up to the sky as if she was building the ladder to the sky and I watched how her hands lingered there as the ladder grew from a single arrow to a sturdy pathway to another world.

I notice that one is a law firm.
I also notice that the moss is thick on the roof of 1 out of 4.

Rebecca reminded me again how bear’s pride and wolverine’s taunts had devastating impact on an already failing partnership between the birds and the fish. She left me with the questions of who among us is vulnerable and could we act otherwise to protect them.

What I also wanted my words to capture is the following point about stories.

When they are in black and white, we have to trust that our own minds can do all of the work of bringing colour to a phrase about the indiscrete nature of pointing out to bear that we all know the story of how he lost his tail and how it would have been better to have shown bear respect for all of the other brave qualities he has and to not linger on the foolish one that lost him his tail.

Anyway, with one well coloured turn of phrase, a good story-teller can do that for me.

... the circular window give a panoramic effect to the view ...

I had wondered how Rebecca would do all of that in 20 minutes.

She is mid-career now and she can that skill in her pocket, the one of starting when the minute hand begins to move around the clock and stopping at that same moment when the time has passed and the only thing left is for new minutes to begin moving through my life.

Arta

Look at the Wind Mills

Naomi on the prairie

Look at southern Alberta.

 It is hunting season now.

 I think most hunters are like my dad.

They go out to see the beauty of the world and if a deer walks in front of them and it is close to their vehicle they shoot it.

Although I grew up in the city, I always feel as though I grew up on the prairie as well. 

Our new house was pretty well alone, with a few older houses sprinkled on the land. 

But there were plenty of gophers, lots of dry summer grass, the very beginnings of the rolling foothills, shooting stars in the field below our house, which was really a good toboggan hill as well.

... Naomi as Richard's sidekick

So the prairies have changed.

But still they are the same.

Naomi and Richard went out hunting in southern Alberta.

No deer walked in front of them, so they came home empty-handed.

Arta

Impact Benefit Agreements

logo from the Pacific Business and Law Institute
image retired from https://www.pbli.com/

To begin with I am in Vancouver for two days with Rebecca at a conference at which she is a speaker.

The conference is hosted by the Pacific Business Law Institute.

The specific title of the conference is “Impact Benefit Agreements” Advanced Negotiation Issues”.

Did I have a good time today?

Yes, I did.

One of the pages of my note book is full of acronyms: ILO, G2G, IBA, PBLI, DTC, ART and UNDRIP.

Now tonight I will go over them and see how many I can remember: ILO (Indigenous Legal Order), G2G (government to government), IBA (Impact Benefit Agreement), PBLI (Pacific Business and Law Institute), DTC (?), ART (Aboriginal Rights and Tribal Holder), UNDRIP (United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples) and MUO (afraid to whisper over to Rebecca and find out what this was when I heard it).

I think the high point of the conference for me was Sarah Morales with a presentation on how Impact Benefit Agreements have gender discrimination. When her presentation was over, Rebecca whispered to me, I just love Sarah.

I think everyone in the room felt the same way about Sarah. 

During the question period the room came up with an amazing solution, or at least with the start to an amazing solution.  They said that someone should build a template for an Article to be built into every contract that deals with the gender discrimination in contracts.  If this were an generic article, it would go a long way to beginning the discussion as to how to render visible  the gender discrimination which is there in contracts.  Sarah pointed to evidenced in many international studies.

I should not try to say that there was a favourite talk.

I saw Rebecca madly taking notes during every presentation.

When Sunny LeBourdais finished talking about Indigenous-led Environmental Assessments, Rebecca leaned over to me and said, “Breathtaking and Sunny didn’t even get to the end of her power-point slides and to the cannibal story.”

Sunny is walking with crutches. She and her horse fell while out hunting and she broke her leg. She had to make a splint with sticks and some bandanas and then ride out for help. Some women are just super independent.

After the conference, Rebecca joined some of her friends for some socializing.

I did the 11 minute walk to the hotel alone, stopping in at Winners.

Shopping at Winners isn’t that much fun with a load of conference material in my backpack and thus on my shoulders. While I looked at a few scarves, I neither tried one on nor bought one.

I think one of the funniest off-the-cuff sayings came from one of the moderators.  He had tried to introduce a session but made mistakes with both the name of the nation and with the name of the presenter.  He turned to the audience and said, contrary to common belief, just because we are Indigenous, doesn't mean we will have the correct pronunciation with each other's names, languages or names of each other's nations.

He did a great job there, at poking fun at himself, rather than apologizing.

Someone had not been able to attend, so Merle Alexander had moved his presentation for tomorrow into that first slot for this morning's session.  Then he had presented a talk another person had organized, but who at the last minute had not been abled to attend for the second session.  Plus he is co-chairing the conference, and thus introducing many of the guests and keeping the conference on time.  Strictly on time. The minute that second hand rolls around to the top of the clock, he begins to speak.

It might be possible to find all of that monotonous, but none of it was monotonous to me.

Arta

Do you smoke, drink or take recreational drugs?

I have a telephone interview with the hospital today. They are just checking basic information that they already know from a questionnaire I mailed into them. But they needed to hear me say it in person, so away we went: can you say your name, your street address and your birthday? I gave excellent answers to all three of these questions. The interview was long and in fact they have events that I had forgotten in their computer, and yes, they were part of my medical history.

When she came to the part where she said, “It says here that you have never smoked, used alcohol or taken recreational drugs?” I was suddenly overcome with a negative emotion about how narrow my life has been. 

I said to her, “Sounds like I am a pretty boring person, doesn’t it. I can’t believe I have never done any of those things and now it is too late to start.”

 She went on the next question.

Before answering her next question, I took a moment to think about my life and my continuing perception that in reality I have had a pretty interesting life, and in fact, never having done any of the above, I have put myself in a very good position to have surgery at my age.

On the question of what people do in the last decades of their lives, if they are so lucky to have them, Rebecca said of me to me, “We are going to a conference tomorrow and you are going to get to do what you like best. Take notes about a small subset of information that no one cares about, but you will be happy doing it, if it is the last thing you do."

That made me laugh. She is right.

We are in Vancouver, waiting for a conference to start. I don’t even know the name of the conference. Rebecca is speaking at one of the sessions and as part of the deal, her registration is waived and she can bring a companion.

... the view from Rosedale on Robson, 14th floor ...

That will be me.

Waiving the registration is a big deal. At least to me: $1,000 plus GST and other fees – so $1,250.

You bet I will be taking copious notes on something I probably can’t understand.

We are on the 14th floor of the Rosedale Robson Hotel.

When I came into the room, I went right to the window and opened the curtains.

No claustrophobia in you, she said.

She opened the window out to the moist Vancouver air when she heard a siren.

... the second ambulance and accompanying car ...

Sure enough there was a white sedan with flashing lights and then an ambulance behind it which pulled up in front of the hotel.

Within minutes there was a second ambulance and another sedan, white with the red cross on the top of that car as well.

Not long after there was a red fire truck came out of the hotel parking lot. The fire truck said Medic on it.

I’d only watched the stretcher being taken into the hotel. It wasn’t for me, I just gave up on watching for it to leave.

And this endeth our first night at the hotel Rosedale on Robson.

Arta

Getting the MMIWG in Hard Copy

I love being around Rebecca. No problem is too hard to solve. I want to read the Inquiry into the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls. I could find it online, but that is not my preferred place to study a text. I love to have a few coloured markers, pens and pencils and a ruler around so that I can write to myself in the margins, or draw a long line from one idea to another or leave a question to consider later – or for someone else to consider when they pick up my copy of the book.

I could also find the book as a download but that wouldn’t work for me either.  For all the same reasons.

I must have opined these thoughts to Rebecca for she said she joined me in the idea that hardcopy is best.

... my copies of the MMIWG ...

So she had the copy centre at the university print shop bind a printout with a simple coil binding: $106 for each of our copies.

Four books.

Part 1a is so large that it had to be split at page 346 and the rest of the pages follow in another coil binding.

I am so happy with the books. I am up to page 80 on !a.

This is an inquiry that didn’t go well. People who were appointed to it, kept stepping down. Process can always go wrong and in this case the authors of the report apologize to those for whom the process was not clear.

I don’t know that much about the report itself yet. ve miles and miles to go before I finish reading and then go to sleep.

A bit of a hyperbole.

Parks

Occasionally I check in with Doral by telephone to see how his lungs are doing.

He usually deflects the conversation to tell me the name of the most recent board game that his family is play which is Parks right now.

I have gone to see the video that describes how to play the game.

Part of the charm of the game, it would seem, is the gorgeous art work and of course, the chance to visit a National park as a destination in a board game.

Fun. I may try it.

Arta

Othello – a first at UVic

Image retrieved from https://www.uvic.ca/finearts/theatre/mainstage/index.php

This is the first year that the drama department at the University of Victoria has mounted Shakespeare’s Othello. Rebecca had three tickets. At the last moment, Duncan said he was staying home, so that gave us an extra seat to put our jackets on. He has seen Othello twice already. He said that in the NT Live production, Othello took too long to smoother Ophelia and that he want to spend the evening suffering along with her, since it was probable that the play was going to end the same way again.

Rebecca’s colleague, Bob, had told her that he has seen the show last week and that it was absolutely the best production he had ever seen. Bob spends a lot of time, flying to the US or to London to see opera or theatre. I respect his opinion and was curious as to what it was that made Bob say that.

By the intermission Rebecca and I had much to say to each other. I could hardly contain myself from leaning over and talking to her while the first act was going on, worried that I would forget my thoughts before I had time to express them. The show was done in black and white, both the scenery and the costuming. The music was live, either madrigals strolling along in the market scenes, or a drum, set up on the one of the stairs that the audience might normally use, beating as though it were a heart.

Iago was sufficiently evil. I spent a lot of my evening watching the actor; he was clever, often use his body to express a word or a phrase. He had some movement of his hand or his head or his hips that would underscore the text – or perhaps his feet would take a different stance, or his lungs would fill with evil, it seemed. Rebecca called his performance being into the text, taking it on as his own.

As we were entering the theatre, I heard someone asked the ticket taker how the performance would be. I heard her say that she has seen it five times. I know why. I would return in a heartbeat. Oh, except for the scene where Ophelia gets smothered.

I might shut my eyes next time.

Arta

Dogs were in the Dog Pen

When I grew up, dogs were in the dog pen and we were in the house.

My dad loved dogs, just outside. I think my mother told me that the first time she ever saw my father, he was walking a dog, and she thought, I would never marry a man who has a dog.

Doral liked pedigreed dogs. He wanted them to have papers. He might spend months getting a dog with just the right pedigree. As well, the cocker spaniels or setters were hunting dogs. He liked to show them at Fields Trials, most of which were run on Sundays. He went to them until there was a time when he thought it was better to be in church with his children, than out competing for trophies.

Still he loved his dogs and he liked to train them for when he went hunting. I can remember being a little girl out behind the house and standing beside him. He had a piece of a hot dog in his hand and when the dog would obey his command, he would reward the dog. He was proud of his dogs and of their ability to fetch when told, or to retrieve a duck or a pheasant and put it right at his feet.

I am wondering now why I can’t remember any of the names of the dogs, though one may have been named Spot. Or was that the dog that Dick and Jane had in my Grade I reader?

We never played with the dogs. If they got out of the kennel they were long gone across the field before my dad knew we had tried to peek inside the pen at them. The dogs weren’t pets for us, so much as they were my dad’s hobby and his companions when he went hunting.

On that note, I can remember his red hunting coat and hat – a precaution for all hunters so that they didn’t get shot while they were hiding in the bushes. Those red jackets didn’t always work. One day Doral was hunting with a new hunter who saw the bushes rustle and then shot his gun, so Doral had lots of pieces of shot in his face. I can remember my mother picking them out with tweezers the day of and the weeks after the incident, for the ones that were buried deeper would eventually make their way to the top of his skin. I don’t think he ever went hunting with that guy again.

My gosh, I forgot about the duck decoys that were in the shed that was under our walkout south side back door. There was a steep decline from that back door, down the hill and to the basement door. That shed didn’t have a door. It housed tires, and the duck decoys. I think I can still smell that cold, dank musty, dirty smell of the shed. I know the walls were cement.  Perhaps the floor was dirt.

I didn’t set out to say all of that, only as background to the fact that we had dogs that were kept in a pen when I was young.

Steve and the boys have a dog here – a different kind of dog – an indoor family dog. She gets mixed up about her place in the house, sometimes forgetting she is a dog and confusing herself with being human. She wants to cuddle on laps. She is like any two year old who has a toy and wants someone to play with her.

"I think I will take a bite right here under the M".

She is in my bad books today.

I left Rebecca’s gloves on top of the shoe rack when I came in from my walk.

Usually I take my gloves to a mandarin orange box which is acting like my glove box in my bedroom, and at a medium height in my since I have a new interest in mittens and gloves.

But instead of acting on that habit, today I was disconnecting my earphones from my telephones and forgot about where I had placed the gloves.

Walking with my phone and listening to music is something I have only barely learned to do. As I have said before, my life is full of simple pleasures. Learning how to get earphones on and do an hour’s walk listening to music is a new one.

I forgot about the gloves. Rebecca brought one to me and said, “Look, here is another glove of mine you might want to wear, but it has a hole in it and it is newly wet.”

Whoops. That is one of her gloves I wore this morning. The dog must have playfully chewed a hole in it.

As I said, when I grew up, dogs were in the dog pen.

Arta