Eighty Memories of Eighty Years: 69 All About My Decorations

I have always loved Christmas and every year I have saved the decorations from the year before and I only throw out the one that can’t be fixed with glue.

After 59 years of adding something on every year, I have to label the boxes to know what is in them.

Joseph as a Single Parent Family
The donkey's head was broken this year. 
You can see where it was repaired with glue.
Mary was not so lucky. 
She was smashed to smithereens in an accidental drop.

Still, I try to pull them out each Christmas.

Since decorating for Christmas is fun, I began to decorate for all seasons: Valentines day, Easter, Mother’s Day, Father’s Day, July 1st, Labour Day, Thanksgiving, Halloween, and I finish off with my decorations for Remembrance Day.

I have to back up.  Decoating for Chrismas is not fun.  Every year I decide not to do it again; the three day mess around the house as I get everything out and up is discouraging.

But next year I take the decorations out again because I love them.  I can remember where I bought each nativity: the store, the city, the cost, the children who come to them and move around the figures I have already so carefully placed in them.  I love thinking back about all of that.

I rationalize that I decorate for Christmas to create small acts of beauty for others.

Deep down, I know I do it for myself.

Arta

Eighty Memories for Eighty Years: #68 All About My Toys

I have been saving this for a long time.
I think I will send it out to BC with Richard this weekend.
Now is the time to practise using this with his son and daughters.
There is no telling when a Goliath might be around the corner.

As a grandmother I have a set of toys: Lego, marbles, skipping ropes, paper airplanes, board games (Azul and Splendor are winners), porcelain-faced dolls, barbie dolls, LOL dolls, dolls from Disney movies, a doll house, a doll cradle, dump trucks, diggers, a box of small bugs, Thomas the Tank Engine trains and tracks, finger puppets, hand puppets … too many toys to list.

The only toy I haven’t allowed my grandkids to play with is the sling shot.

But I do have a sling shot.

Arta

Eighty Memories for Eighty Years: #67 About Adornment

I have always loved jewellery.

That is what I used my pre-teen babysitting money for.

Earrings and tickets to movies.

When I had babies, who would sit on my lap at church, they pretty well destroyed any necklace or set of earrings that I had previously owned– especially earrings that would swing with the tilt of a mother’s head this way or that.

60 years ago only the Queen and a few of the very rich could own pearls.
Now owning a string of them is within the reach of someone like me.
These are pearls that have been crushed, reformed, and lazer coloured.

Would't it be lovely to crush and reform that knuckle on my old thumb?

I began to get jewellry again, when I went to work. That would be when I went to work for money.

Disposable income is lovely and I returned to the joy of my younger teen-age years, buying jewellery, this time my first set of pearls at the Camden Market in London.

I don’t even have to put those on.

Pearls, knotted and laying there all on one string.

If I just cup them in my hand there is a joy, for me,  -- collective beauty that is created from one grain of sand at a time.

Arta

Eighty Memories for Eighty Years: #66 All About My Scarves

... just the right colours for me ...
... a gift to me from Wyona ...

What is necessary for warmth has to come first in the way of accessories.

A thick scarf for winter is essential.

In Alberta, more than one scarf since the weather goes down to 20, then 30, then 40 below.

For me, a lighter scarf for the spring Chinook winds will stave off laryngitis.

 I need 2 or 3 Spring scarves at least, different weights for changing weather.

I didn’t notice drafts in my house all of the years I have been living here.

a Marc Chagall print

 I was working so fast,  then, that I didn't notice the house was drafty.

In fact, I was working so fast that some of the drafts might have been created by me. 

 Now I sit a lot and I notice the ordinary drafts around an older house like mine. 

I need scarves and light blankets – at the computer, in the chair when reading, while watching TV, over the foot of my bed at night. I need something for each place.

I have loved the joy of finding a beautiful scarf in a far off market, the touch of silk, the beauty of a hand painted scarf, the utility of a scarf that can be twisted, crunched, folded and still comes out looking like a million dollars, a pashmina woven from variant the downy undercoat of the Changthangi goat, a scarf so fine that it will pass through a wedding ring.

I have owned and loved them all.

Arta

Eight Memories for Eighty Years: #65 All About My Dishes

One of my young friends from a developing nation told me that all a person needs in the way of utensils is a cup, a fork and a spoon.

He then cupped his hand, then opened it to extend his fingers so that they look like a fork, then he pointed to his teeth.

I wondered if I took that one step up, and introduced materiality: a glass, a bowl and a knife. Which of all I own would I choose?

Looking back, for part of my life, I had the chance to prepare food for 10, 3 times a day, and I needed a cup, a plate and a set of utensils for each person at these meals.

... a butterfly sits in the bottom of this glass ...

Wyona bought one as well.
Greg tossed a couple of ice cubes into the glass,
before pouring Wyona a beverage.
That kindness didn't work out that well.

After one each was in place, and I had a bit of disposable income, I began to think of beauty, of presentation when I was buying:what could go in the dishwasher and what was to be hand washed, wondering if I could change the dishes with the season, or at least some of the seasons – no service for 12, but a change.

 I have loved buying dishes.

Although I have no need, I still look through the housewares department and give myself permission to buy a new dish or two.

Last month I bought two glasses that have a butterfly on the bottom, a 3-D butterfly.

I wanted to drink out of them with my grandchildren, but they are far away now.

I have loved bone china, pewter, wood, ceramic, the stoneware, Villeroy & Boch – loved, loved, loved all of them.

Arta

Eighty Memories for Eight Years: #64 This is All About You

Photo Credit: Jane Milner

Medicine Hat Walkway
Jane is my cousin and Aunt Annetta's daughter.
Aunt Annetta takes a warm place in this story.

Photo Credit: Jane Milner

Photo Credit: Jane Milner

Connected to that Women’s Studies degree is another vivid memory.

The backdrop to the story is that when I was taking a class on women’s writing, the professor said that it is difficult for women to use the ”I” pronoun, to write about their experiences, their lives.

Writing wasn’t hard for me.

By this time, I had been writing letters home for about 30 years.

Sometimes copies of the letters might have also gone to sisters, brothers, cousins, uncles, aunts – like my Aunt Annetta. I had a long list of loved ones to whom I regularly mailed my letters.

Soon the mailing cost was a burden to our budget. So I shortened the mail-out list.

One day when I was in Medicine Hat and visiting her, Aunt Annetta asked why no more letters?

I told her it was just cost saving for me.

She put $20 into my hands and said, here, this should be enough for postage for the year to me.

Yes, those letters were filled with news about everyone.

But I was learning a new writing craft, trying to practice what I had learned in class about women’s writing, I decided to type a letter that was all about me.

No mention of my kids or my husband, my friends or professional people I was meeting. Just a me, me, me letter.

That was not an easy letter to write.

Off it went in the mail. No one could have been more surprised than me when I got a phone call from one of my readers.

I had never received a phone call about any of my letters for 30 years.

Now I heard a voice reminding me for the content of that letter, so selfish, not a word about my husband or my children.

Photo Credit: Jane Milner

Duck in a Puddle

which reminds me of a family game,

Duck on a Rock

I rarely take offense and didn’t to this phone call. I just went to the analytic part of my brain and did some math.

Multiply one letter a week for 52 weeks for 30 years, the content of my letters about watching my husband and children.

That is on one side of the ledger.

Photo Credit: Jane Milner

... photo taken from one of Jane's walks in Medicine Hat ...

On the other side, one letter in my lifetime all about me.

Arta

*I am laughing while writing this, just warning my reader that the next 4 memories are going to be all about me. Just me. That is the spoiler alert! No phone calls please.

Eighty Memories for Eighy Years: #63 A Second Degree

Part of my memory of taking classes at the university involves being in a lecture hall with one or another of my kids.

By now I worked at the university and could take classes for free.  Free is a big bonus for me.  Four credit courses and 4  in continuing education.  I signed up for everything.

I asked my kids what they were taking that semester and then I would ask them if I could join them. 
Alternately together we would find something that looked like fun and both enroll in that class. 

Bonnie Wyora said to me, “You are taking so many classes – why don’t you just do all of the prerequisites for another degree?"  That thought had never entered my mind.

I went to the registrar, applied for entrance and soon there were a lot of choices.

... cover of the first edition ...

I had to submit a major with a focus, and a minor.

For the major, I tried to think what would work for me.

In my adult life, I had sometimes run up against ideas I didn’t understand.

“Why were women paid 66 cents for every dollar a man was paid, for doing the same work at the same level?” “Why was there a gender disparity in some of the professions?” “Why were there a disproportionate number of Indigenous women incarcerated in prions?”

I was looking for answers.

For Mother’s Day, Kelvin gave me Betty Friedan’s 1963 ground breaking The Feminine Mystique.

This was the book where Friedan identified “the problem that has no name”.

... cover of the 50th Anniversary edition ...

Still left hanging in the air was the problem that seemed to have no solution. I wondered if I signed up for a Women’s Studies Degree, if my reading around this subject wouldn’t become more focused and some answers made clearer for me. So I registered in Women Studies, with Native North America as my focus.

I also had to declare a minor. I asked around at home. Rebecca said, “I have a selfish idea. Register in film studies and then you will have the tools to be an outside reader when I publish some of my work in law and film.”

That is the story of how I took finished that second degree: BA with a Women’s Studies major and a Film minor. When the certificate came in the mail, it said, “With Distinction”.

I had to look up what with distinction meant, so I can't be that smart.

Arta

Bug Fashionista

Tonia posts these pictures on her facebook page and says:

My mother has played with bugs since she was a girl.

We grew up with dead framed bugs on our walls after we left Malaysia.

A friend posted a blanket with a large spider on it and my mother said she loved it.

Today she showed me her new jewelry, bugs and lizards.

Some people's passions never change.

__________________

I want to add to Tonia's words.

She has captured the essence of her mother in 4 photos.

I would have tried to write a whole essay and not caught for us what you have presented.

Smashing!

Few will ever know this amazing woman's talents -- extra-ordinaire school teacher of the disabled.

She is a water-color painter, and jewellery designer.

She is a seamstress, an alteration expert and a dress designer.  I own a beautiful designer Chinese black silk jacket, a gift from her.

She is a quilter, and a cheese-cake cook. She just doesn't make one at a time.  She makes three.

She is the grandmother of all grandmothers, rounding up all of her grandchildren online to see Andrew Lloyd Webber's "Love Never Dies", and paying for their snacks, $20 each.

And oh, what about the 5 star zucchini cakes, bridge player who should be going after masters points, and now on-line bridge player through pandemic times with her family. 

Wyona is a dancer, a woman who is longing for the dance floor on cruise ships to open up again.

Oh, the snacks she brings on a road trip.  The cooler is always full of ice and soda.  Ritz crackers, cheese, red licorice, bridge mix, apples, grapes, Hot Rods, min-chocolate bars are pass from the back seat to the front and back again.

She also loves bugs.

Arta

Music as a way of giving information

... hard to spend the weekend
waiting for Covid results ...

Bonnie took the Covid test and was so relieved to phone and tell me it was negative.


You are the first person in the family who has gone for a test.


In Alberta now there is testing for anyone who reports the symptoms.



I was thinking about this when I ran into these two lovely songs.


Lovely to me.

... bonnie checking out the cherry blossoms
in her back yard ...

Ta dum, ta dee.


Click at your peril.

A message from the government of Canada

A covid song by the Vancouver, B.C., Phoenix Chamber Choir, --great singing, notice the Lysol wipes container being used for rhythm, the hand puppets and the ‘haircut’.

(Thanks for the text and the link, Ria.)

Arta

What Good is a Helmet on Handle Bars

Otter
... water colour by Wyona Bates ...

Our ward has a Facebook page that I check day to day.

Les Stehmeier commented that since church has been cancelled, (pandemic restrictions on having meetings with more than 50 people occurred), he has been noticing that one day blends into another and it is hard to tell which day is Sunday.

I agree with him, though I don’t know if it is for the same reason.

Every day I have the feeling that somehow Sunday has just past.

Twice in this week I received a Newsletter from my ward.

I received another message from the Stake, inviting me to join a Regional fireside with Fiona Givens and her husband.

Once there was an email telling me about 3 Friday Forums, one of which has Yogi Schultz talking about Mormons in cartoons. I shall surely attend, having read Mormon cartoon books in the past. If Yogi doesn’t point to any new ones, I will still enjoy the same cartoons again.

I had a message telling me about the lockdown at the church building – no more basketball there, or meetings, or parties, no funerals, no weddings.

I had two messages from Colin Steele, our Stake President. A message from him sent and then re-sent. I have written a few of those myself. I am helping Natalie Woodruff Berg as she gathers material for the ward newsletter. I can tell you that every day seems like Sunday to me.

So when the real Sunday came, I decided to see what it was that I really did on Sunday. Here is that list.

I emailed Catherine Jarvis to see what time their family was having church. The time is flexible. It depends on what time her 3 teen-agers to wake up. Yesterday the time was extended by the wait for the last one to get out of the shower.

1235 Red Train
... water colour by Wyona Bates ...

My son came over to plant my sweet peas.

This may have been his Sunday act that pointed to the scripture “this is religion pure and undefiled, to help the widow”.

Or maybe he just did it because he wanted to.

I had done what I could to prepare the earth.

I can’t bend down to put those little seeds in one by one. He spread his arms out wide, signaling to me to stand back.

No hovering.

I watched this  6 foot 7 inch man kneel on the ground and plant each one of those seeds, 6 inches apart. I watched his large work-worn hands working carefully, even tenderly placing each seed in the earth, as if he had been breaking bread for the sacrament. He gently gave them another drink of water, then covered them with rich black earth before starting with the nasturtium seeds in a row just in front of them.

I had picked up a rake by now.

 A three-point landing.

 Usually it is my two feet and a crutch. But I can get mobility with a rake as well. He took his broom to the front of the house and to the middle of the road. He swept the loose gravel to the curb so that in the near future, when the street cleaning machine rolls by my house, it will pick up that gravel. I shouted out to him as he swept. Talking felt good and social distancing feels good as well, even at 30 feet.

“Why did you do that,” I queried. “You have never seen me swept the road in front of my house.”

“Oh neighbour shaming,” he called back to me from the road, still sweeping.

He didn’t need to say anything more.

I got it.

The neighbour to the other side of him does this to the road that goes by our house.

Yes.

Neighbour Dave. As well, when it is winter, Dave clears his sidewalk with a shovel first, and then he takes a broom and sweeps the sidewalk. There is never a day that I might walk by his house and slip on the sidewalk. He is the ultimate caretaker of the hundreds who will walk down our street in normal times. We live on one of the feeder streets to the university which could have 20,000 people driving or walking into it on any week day, given ordinary times.

As Richard was sweeping with that big industrial broom, a young boy on an iridescent blue bike rode by, his helmet swinging from one of the handle bars. “Better put on that helmet,” Richard shouted out at him.

“Yah, OK,” said the boy as he swung around Richard and to the curb, now one foot of the boy with thick black hair resting on the cement, the other still on his bike, putting on his helmet, then shoving off and riding down the middle of our deserted street again.

I hadn’t heard the yell out. I had only seen the boy stop and put on his helmet.

“Did you yell out at him.”

“Yah,” said Richard, laughing. “What good is a helmet on handle bars.

We stopped working outside. Richard closed it down telling me, that was enough work for an old woman to do. I might have worked two or three more hours out there, but I went back inside.

Back inside to Zoom Church.

Zoom Church at the Jarvis’s home in Montreal. George and Kathy Jarvis had zoomed in from Edmonton as well. Another family came via telephone. Norman gave the lesson. Norman is Thomas’s friend from university and is staying over there during the pandemic. It was Norman’s day to give the lesson. Norman talked about only 2 verses from Mosiah, saying because he is of a different faith he doesn’t know the back story to these verses, nor what comes after, but as he tried to parse out Mosiah 5: 1-2.

As Norman talked about a political leader who changed the hearts of people, I thought about what it would mean to believe in the words of a political leaders, so much so that I would have a change of heart and participate  in words that promised the saving of lives.

I thought about how hard it is to believed political leaders. I thought about washing my hands for 20 seconds, every time (maybe all 40 times I get my hands in water), not just a few times a day. I thought about how hard it is to stay separated from my loved ones whom I like to eat meals with, to stay separated from those at the grocery store when I shop. I am social. I do stop and talk to someone who is pulling an item off the shelves that I would like to use, but don’t know what to do with. I really miss all of that. I miss meeting with my writers group. I miss going to the theatre at night – not that I don’t watch Metopera, National Theatre, Stratford Theatre, and Broadway non stop. I haven’t had time to go out to Netflicks or Primevideo, I have been so busy with watching other outlets. Now that I think of it, if I were younger someone would be telling me, “less screen time for you”.

Tamsin Greig as Malvolia
in Twelfth Night

Well, to come around full circle,

I can’t tell which of the above events was really Sunday.

I did close out the evening watching Simon Godwin’s joyous production of 12th Night, which is on National Theatre for a few more days.

Last night was my fourth viewing– yes with subtitles, since there is no other way to watch Shakespeare if I want to “get” what is going on.

Having gone out to the internet through my electronic magic, and listen to Tamsin Geig talk about the character of Malvolia (formerly Malvolio) I have been thinking a lot about what it is that happens when gaslighting is done to someone. Maybe there is a better set of words – what happens when people with power give wrong information to others and cast then into a dark room. I haven’t quite captured this set of ideas – those who have watched the show will know by the words making someone “yellow stockinged and cross-garterd”. At the end when Malvolia climbs the stairs and the gift of cleansing water falls on her, I feel water trickling down my cheeks.

Well, as I said at the beginning – Les said, it is hard to tell which day of the week it is on any given day.

Arta

Eighty Memories for Eighty Years: #62 On having a black and white TV

The miracle of a family owning a black and white TV occurred in America before Canadians had networks set up to provide shows.

The first black and white TVs I saw were at the homes where I baby sat. 

I would stay up and watch until about 1 am when God Save the Queen was played and the screens went to snow.

I could hardly believe that I got to watch TV and was paid as well. I did not think that television could get any better.

When I was married, had two children and we lived in some low rental units near the university, Kelvin and I had a black and white television.

That is where I got most of my news. Still indelible on my mind is the day that I watched the breaking news that J.F. Kennedy had been assassinated…I saw the afternmath on that black and white TV.

Technology has improved.

Now I have a beautiful coloured television and can watch specials on my computer screen as well, casting them to the bigger screen. I can stay up all night.  Indeed, all day, all night and again all day if I want to binge watch a programme.  I have more hand held controllers than I know what to do with, and they have buttons I am never going to learn to manage. This kind of technology would have been beyond anything I could have imagined as a teen-ager making $.35 an hour while babysitting and enjoying someone else’s black and white T.V., never even imaging that I might own one.

Arta

Eighty Memories for Eighty Years: #61 Singing with My Children

Our family used the piano from the home where I grew up.
It did not look like this.  By the time it was at my house,
many of the ivories were chipped and there were scratches
on the top of the piano and its sides.  The stool had finally given
way, many years before it came to rest in our small living room.
My dad told me I didn't have room for the piano.
He was right.
Still, I told him I didn't not have room.
And thus it came to my house..

Some of my best memories fall into the category of singing with my children.

For me, essential book buying would involve books with pages of musical notation -- lullabies, finger-play songs, folk tunes, The Reader’s Digest Book of Family Songs, Sally Go Round the Sun, Free to be You and Me, My Turn on Earth, Hello Dolly – all of these books laid on the piano book rack or in my tall music case, a tongue and grove piece of furniture that used to be my Grandmother Scoville’s. 

No piano rack or piano side tables can hold all of the music that can be collected by a mother who loves singing with her children.

One paragraph here should just go to describing well loved Christmas music at my house. 

There are the regular carols, and then the carols from other centuries.  I loved all of them.  And then the secular Christmas music: "All I Want for Christmas is My Two Front Teeth" and Gayla Peevey's "Are My Ears on Straight".  If there is a Christmas song, I am sure I sang it with my children.  I would begin half-way through November so that I made it through all of the music.

The children and I sang in groups (that would be me and one other) and sometimes some others and at other times, most all of the family would gather at the piano and sing.

I could always catch a group if I would play “Mack the Knife” from the Threepenny Opera.   People would gather from everywhere.  Kelvin had a beautiful bass voice so that was an easy buy-in from him.  He liked to sing and he was good at it.

My favourite story about singing with my children goes this way. Our family was asked to sing in church. Everyone agreed to sing, but Richard. I told him he didn’t have to sing with us, but he had to practise the song with us. So he did. He even came to the early morning practise that Sunday morning before church, figuring out where everyone would stand, how we would walk up there from the pew, testing out our sound in the chapel, etc. When it was announced that the Johnson Family would sing a number all of us went to the front and Richard just walked the other way, down the isle and out the chapel door. The whole congregation had to have seen that.

I can remember announcing, “Richard won’t be singing with us today.” The audience laughed. Then we sang our song. I was left with an indelible memory which I probably haven’t quite processed yet. I think it is deep admiration for a child who says they won’t be singing and then doesn’t.

As for me, I could never resist a melody and I would have joined my family of origin, singing no matter what the tune.

Arta

Eighty Memories for Eighty Years: #60 Water

Water colour fom the Daisy Series by Wyona Bates

I have always loved water.

Glen Pilling gave me words for why: water, the gift of life.

The gift of life is what I see in the forest when there has been rain, what I see in the lawn after a downpour, what I see in the Spring as the crocuses pop up in the small foothills that lead to the prairies.

I love the water on the garden vegetables, water for the sweet peas, a sprinkler for the children to run through in the summer time, a small stream that comes out of the woods and runs down the gravel into the Shuswap.

I will always remember a raft trip down the Bow River, a once in a life-time event from me, riding on moving water.

In my early twenties I took a ride on a barge up to Anstey Arm on the Shuswap, long leisurely hours, the barge docking and unloading provisions for small cabins on the lake.

Just last year, I have stepped into a boat with my siblings and driven by Art Treleaven

Water colour fom the Daisy Series by Wyona Bates

He was giving all of us a drive by the shore of the lake, looking toward the highway, a reverse view of the water that I get in a car on a drive to Salmon Arm.  Yes to the view from the water.

I watch the Bow River as I travel west through the Rockies, seeing its size diminish until it is merely a brook. I think to myself, sometime I will trace this stream up to its headwaters.

I love to wash dishes, the warmth of the water, at the same time, the joy of easy removal of food.

I am never in a bathtub or a shower when I am not overwhelmed with happiness– the power to rinse my own body and the wonderful warmth of the water.

Right now during Covid, when I rinse the soap from my wrists and the backs of my hand, I am grateful for water.

I use water for cooking. I use it to make bread, to boil pasta, to steam carrots, to test if candy is at a soft or a hard ball stage. I use droplets of water to test if a frying pan is hot enough to put a steak on.

I love to stop by a fountain in a library or a mall or a grocery store, turn that spigot and have a stream of water arc up so that I can catch some on my lips.

I am just putting it out there that I have a lifetime of rich memories around and about water.

Arta

Fashion in Times of Covid

Question for the reader?
When someone takes  your picture and
you have your mask on, do you still smile?

I shook my head when I saw her and then I asked Wyona, how is it that she could have a blouse and a face mask matched.

She then pulled out a pillow she made from an expensive dishtowel that she bought in Iceland.

It may have been $52 for that towel.  She had the Icelandic money and had to spend it.  The print on the pillow case was so beautiful she knew she could make it into a pillow.  So here, the back of the pillow also matches the cover she made for her appliance on her left hand.

I do not know where she does all of this.  Just to say, yes, a mask to match her top, a cover to match her pillow and she can still play on-line bridge until past midnight.

Go, Wyona, go.   And thank you for the face mask you made for me.  I will try to match it up to a scarf I already own.

Arta

24 hours for Love Never Dies

I have been commenting to David Camps on the Top Twenty Things to Do in London. 

The top twenty is always a good list.  Top 20 restaurants.  Top 20 London Walks.  So many top 20's. 

For sure the West End Show, Love Never Dies would be in my top 20 Musicals to see.

In fact it would be number 1 on the list. 

For the next 24 hours you can see it online.  Just type in youtube Love Never Dies and it will be yours. 

It is the extension of the story of the Phantom of the Opera which ends with a big fire and nothing is found of the phantom, only his mask.

But he escaped to Coney Island, and 10 years later the story begins again ....

Watch for carnival performers from the past, those of the early 1920's.  Listen to music that is slightly atonal.

Enjoy the thrill of beautiful voices.  I saw this show first in London. Then I saw a revision of it in London.  Then I saw another revision of the show performed in Australia, but seen by me on YouTube.  Last night I viewed yet another revision.  I will say that I have seen either the original or some of the revisions many times.  More times than I can count on the fingers of both hands.  I hope you take a chance to look at even the first 10 minutes of the show.  There is no need to commit to seeing the whole show.  Just say, oh I tried that. That is enough.

Here the Guardian reviews the reviews.

Arta

Wear Red

Rebecca takes a picture which captures both of us wearing red.

I was listening to the Prime Minister speak this morning.

He said that today was the day to wear red in honour of those who died in Nova Scotia.

I think it was the National Police Federation who asked public to wear red on Friday in honour of N.S. shooting victims. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau also said that there would be an evening vigil at 7 pm EST.

In the morning, I put on my red top, my red fleecy, and a red Haida button scarf – all of that felt red enough. The fleecy happened to have pinned to it a snow house a qaggiq (large snow house big enough to gather people together), a gift from Rebecca’s friend to her, and regifted to me. I think of both of those women when I pin it on. Now it is a regular fixture on that jacket, so I felt unusually Canadian: connected to the gift givers and to my nation, east to west and to the north.

I have been doing some typing for Rebecca. Not much. She calls me, she thinks out some paragraphs and I do the work of the spelling the words she says and making a rough document to send back to her. I told her that today was the day to wear red. She hadn’t heard of that, so she went back to her room and changed into red. For some reason I felt super-connected, not just to her, but to all of Canada. I had been reading something on the internet that said, post a picture of yourself in red, since we can’t gather together in community. Perhaps it would be ok to gather on our blogs and web pages in our red the article said. So we are putting our picture here. If you want to add your picture in red, sent it along and I will post it here.

Arta

Thoughts on Nova Scotia Remembers

Today I attended the Nova Scotia vigil to honour the lives of the 22 Nova Scotians who died during the tragic shootings this week.

Nova Scotia was generous, inviting all Canadians to their memorial.

There were words from the Governor General of Canada, Julie Payette, the Lieutenant Governor General of Nova Scotia, Arthur J. LeBlanc, Mayor Bill Mitchell (Truro), and Mayor Christine Blair (Colchester).

There was a heartfelt prayer from the Reverend of the Faith Baptist Church, and a word of hope from Rev. Antle-Brison. Rev Larry Tirrell of the Bass River Church stood on a bridge, his soft-covered book folded back on itself, held in his hand, referring to it only occasionally as he reminded us of the hope in Luke 4:18 and also referring to Psalms 61:2, closing by reminding us that Christ is our unfailing companion.

I was touched by the tartan that the people wore as they wove their stories together – the tie on the Premier, the scarf softly draped on Sheree Fitch’s neck as she reminded the child in all of that that “Because We Love We Cry”. The Honorable Karen Lyn Casey’s tartan scarf had the words Nova Scotia running down the length of one of its panels. There may have been Nova Scotia tartan on the wall, a picture of Nova Scotia, I think. I know now these are the colors of Nova Scotia.

The musicians were generous, letting us come into their homes, into their front rooms into their kitchens and into their hearts. I listened to their music and I looked at their backdrops, some filled with books, and pictures of loved ones. I knew I was in the J.P. Cormier’s kitchen for his backdrop was a cupboard where I could see Rooster Sauce, tabasco sauce, Fruit Loops, canning jars, all the things that might be in my kitchen. I listened to his country music that reminded me of times “when we shall reach that heavenly shore”.

Nova Scotians who live somewhere else sent home their love since as Jeff Douglas said, “This is the part of the world who formed who I was. These are the people who can heal.” Tara Salone from Toronto said “I hold you in my heart.”

On his guitar, Bill Elliot picked “Somewhere Over the Rainbow.” Kisses were blown back home from performers who live far away. Bob Pash, a county councillor stood on a country road holding a paper from which he read his words. I could see the trees behind him, not leafed out yet, the yellow grasses from last year, broken from the winter snow. He reminded me, all indeed, that “these feelings will last a lifetime”.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau spoke to Nova Scotia promising “we will wrap our arms around you. [What has happened] will change us. It cannot define us.”

There were words from Chief Sidney Peters of the Assembly of Nova Scotia Mi' kmaw, saying that they were praying for those who were mourning.

Several times a camera swept over the landscape, Nova Scotian shores, a lone piper along the oceanside.

To close, today I saw public officials, federal, provincial, local, friends, loved ones, singers, song-writers, story tellers , Emily, a teen violinist (killed in the attack but brought back to us by the miracle of youtube footage), TV personalities, religious leaders, all reaching out in love and grief.

 At the end of the vigil, the pictures of those who lost their lives were honored on the screen.

Thank you, Nova Scotia, for inviting me to your vigil.

Arta

Eighty Memories for Eighty Days: #59 Travel: Staying in one place for a while

The gift of travel comes in two forms: cruising on a ship or staying in one place. I like to cruise from country to country. I don’t have to unpack my luggage at every stop. The meals are always prepared for me and ready at any time of the day or night. I know where to go to get food, and how to order if I have missed the meal in the dining room. There is so much entertainment on a ship that a person never has to get off the boat – and in fact some people do just go from one cruise to another, a way of enjoying their retirement. Not me. A little too expensive. But it is a way of life for some cruisers.

Guangzhou, China
Greg Bates lived here for a few years and
many of his extended family visited him there.

I have also enjoyed travel where I stay in one place for a long time.

Callella, Venice, Rome, Guangzhou, Buenos Aires, Belgium, London, Paris – I am embarrassed at the abundance of riches.

But there they are – a happy list from the past.

We travelled along the Pearl River to get to Ghangzhou.

When I went to these places (usually through the generous booking arrangements of Wyona Bates), I stayed for at least a week, exploring the leisure pathways that are afforded the less hurried traveller.

So while I am not choosing any of these places as being #1 destinations, I am saying that staying in one place and walking through the churches, the museums, the art galleries and the grocery stores is a delicious travel journey.

Arta

Eighty Memories for Eighty Days: #58 Travel - London

Boswell and Johnson were discussing whether or not Boswell's affection for London would wear thin should he choose to live there, as opposed to the zest he felt on his occasional visits. (Boswell lived in Scotland, and visited only periodically). Samuel Johnson is said to have replied, "Why, Sir, you find no man, at all intellectual, who is willing to leave London. No, Sir, when a man is tired of London, he is tired of life; for there is in London all that life can afford."

I have heard that statement quoted a number of times. When I have been in London, tramping up and down the streets, so tired, just trying to see one last thing, I think, “Is it true that London has all that life can afford.”

Debatable, probably, but a nice way to contemplate the joy of being there.

I couldn’t choose a top three or a top ten or even a top twenty “best-things-to-do-in London” list.

I have seen lists that others have made.  I have tried to do some of the items on them and never been disappointed.

I cherish my Handy London Map and Guide that shows me where streets are that I can’t find, that tells me what buses I might look for, that gives me lists and times and dates and places of sightseeing tours and canal trips and riverboard services.

 I love the book’s Index to Places of Interest and its pages of essential sites. 

My copy is tattered.

 I can read it like it is a novel, with stories of my life attached to each page.

 I am glad that I haven't tired of London.

Arta

Two sided fashion

Greg delivers a gift to me.

On Greg's morning walk  he brought over a mask that Wyona made for me.

It is double-sided.  I can have a fashionable green side, and alternately wear it on the blue side when I change my colour of the day.

As you can see, I am in red today, and not worrying about fashion, only about getting my exercises done, my phone calls in place, my online banking done, and reading up on my new water softener.

Ellis Stonehocker's son, Brian, made a face mask for his car.

Dr. Brian Stonehocker parks his car at work.

He works in a hospital in Edmonton and he was the feature of one of their newscasts.

This is not the fashion accessory for every car, but it might be if you are a dr.

Arta

Electronic Visits

The reality:  snacks on the table, people have come with their notebooks,
handouts are everywhere, coloured pens are scattered all over the table,
snacks are at the far end, and grandmother has come in by Skype.
The only thing missing is a beverage of your choice.

LtoR: Catherine, Hebe, Hebe's America doll who is all dressed up
for Hanukah, Norman Kong, Eric, Rebecca Jarvis, Thomas

I can’t even remember what electronic platform I travelled on to go to Catherine’s home on Sunday, but I got there in time for their family meeting. 

I don’t know what to call things now.

There is home school, home entertainment, and home church.

I think what I attended was a combination of all three.

What was fun?

Well, Thomas has the start of a beautiful new beard. Just testing it out while he is spending his time at home.  I said it looks great.  He said thank you.

 Rebecca and I got to talk about a film she has seen during the school year. The one where in the 1950’s the government relocated Canadian Indigenous people to land that was unfamiliar to them, then drove away the caribou herds with the airplanes, and sadly this settlement fell into starvation. So good to connect, knowing we had both seen that film. I am sure Rebecca teaches it in her Film and the North. When I ask Rebecca Johnson if she has any idea of the title the other Rebecca and I were talking about, she answered with Nanook of the North?, Atanarjuat?, the Journals of Knud Rasmussen?, the Necessities of Life?, Kikkik?

I guessed all of the above.  All about starvation. I hadn't really thought about that before.

The film Rebecca Jarvis saw in class was none of these. She saw Into Unknown Parts (2015) (27 min) by Lisa Stevenson.

In January of 2019 I was in Montreal.  I spent a long time
at the dollar store picking out this scrapbook,
just the right size of scrapbook, finally deciding on a large art sketch book. 
I may have also written on pages early in the book, trying to figure out how
I could use the iades to help make family time together, fun. 
Really fun.  An exhilarating job!

I got introduced to Norman Kong who is Thomas’s university friend and staying with them during the pandemic.

Part of the exercise of our group was to write five ideas you might want to tell someone whom you love who follows you in life.

One of Norman’s list was “shoot the shot”.

 The same phrase appeared on Thomas’s list.

The 3 older folks needed to have that idea described to them.

I learned it is a basketball metaphor for when an opportunity comes, take it before it is lost.

I didn't tell anyone, but my dad gave that same advice to his sons in the form of "The gold ring only passes by you 2 or 3 times in life.  Be prepared to reach out and take it."

Catherine prepared the lesson, got the snacks, had her list of 5 things she would tell people, taught the lesson, restructured the lesson as she went along, to fit the needs of the vocal participants, sorted out who could have the honoured position of going last, (it seems that spot is highly prized), and sorted out misunderstandings Hebe had during the whole time. For example, Norman said you should follow your passion in life.  If you want to go camping you should go camping. Hebe said she didn’t want to go camping, so she couldn’t go along with Norman’s idea. Catherine sorted that out so Hebe didn't feel compelled to go camping.  That might have been a highlight for Hebe.  No camping.

Catherine believes everyone should have pencils and paper
in front of them -- either to assist in learning, or for
the participant to doodle or write on as they wish.
No strictures, no rules about the paper. 
It is yours.

Here everyone holds their paper up so I can see t
what they have been doing through my skype screen.

I feel that my list of 5 ideas has already been subsumed on my blog, for I am already on #57 of 80 Memories for 80 Years.

Still I wrote down 5 ideas.

We went around the circle, Norman first and Eric to his left, finishing.

 I happened to jot down Eric's ideas.

I just didn’t think to pick up my pencil until we got to the end of the circle. 

Everyone’s list was worth jotting down.  Catherine had suggest we just tell one idea from our list, but there was a resounding no -- we all wanted to read all five!

And Thomas also coloured his handout and made it look quite professional.  When he received the handout from her, Thomas checked to see if Catherine had done this herself or if she had run it off the internet.  She passed the test.  It was an original.

Here is Eric’s list:

1. Save time each day to examine the spiritual in your life
2. Be quick to apologize
3. Be slow to anger;
4. Pay attention to the ancient and modern prophets;
5. Build family relationships consistently (well, I only caught the general idea there).

I am going to take number 2 and 3 of Eric's list to heart.  I hope I can do as good a job as he does -- he might be a master on #3.

If any reader wants to add something, please use the comment box and you don't have to keep yourself to five ideas.

Remember Rebecca's tip for the comment box: "If you are a Mac user, SAFARI is the problem. It won't let you post comments. But if you try using Chrome or Explorer as the browser (maybe even Firefox), then it works. Wierd."

There was a time ...

Catherine said I could take her facebook post and put it on the  blog.

There was a time... when cousins could gather at a summer cabin.

They would pick thimble berries and walk on train tracks. 

They would play in the sand at the beach,
fish,
swing from the trees,
and throw each other off of the dock
in a mad attempt to be KING of the dock.

They would eat hotdogs outdoors together in the fresh summer breeze 
surrounded by the tall birch trees.

They would haul underbrush and cut logs and fix cabins.

They would go thrifting with grandmother at Churches
cuz you never know when you're gonna need a wedding dress.

They would buy large amounts of candy to share while playing board games.

They would wave at passenger trains and count how many cars between the engine and the caboose.

They would build fires, roast marshmallows and make s'mores.
They would laugh, sing and connect.

Thank you Amy Appleton for starting the thread "there was a time". It's a brilliant way to remember and be grateful for the past, while looking forward with HOPE to better times.

and ...

Photo Credit: Susie Reed (about 1958)

They would  put their coats on
and go visit their friends and relatives

A Rich Operatic Viewing Life

Elektra - The Metropolitan Opera (2018)

I am having such a rich operatic life.

That might be, because I live alone and I have to find solitary entertainment.

I have discovered I can watch a filmed broadcast of a New York Metropolitan Opera,:I have watched an opera every night, and sometimes during the day.

I rarely nod off to sleep .

I watched Cilea’s Adriana Lecouvreur a couple of nights ago, and the sound of the 2 sopranos was so divine that I went back to the opera and listened to bits and pieces after I had done one full viewing.

Then yesterday, Der Rosenkavalier made me laugh so many times, that I went back and watched Act II again, the scene in the bordello. Do you think the Madame was in drag? I can’t always tell which is what makes drag so interesting. I think the aristocratic Marshallin calls that second act, just a practical joke. Whatever it was, I knew it had gone by too fast for me and I needed to see it once more. Now setting the opera in motion again is a gift that I can only get during home viewing.

Marcia said that Audra’s singing teacher was recommending Strauss’s Elektra tonight (and tomorrow for those who have time). I had to refresh my mind on Elektra, the Mycenaean princess who needed to avenge her father, Agamemnon.

There is a big Greek Gods and Goddesses gap in my education. This is also true of Roman and Norse gods. I am just glad for Google every time there is an opera with those mythical characters.

Amazing.

In my whole life I never dreamed I could watch opera every night at home.

Of course, this would be torture for some.

Arta

Masks as Style

Photo Credit: Moiya Wood

Sewing at Home

Catherine asked me if I would start wearing a mask when I go outside.

I can either do that or wear a scarf into which I tuck my nose she said.

On this point, Moiya sent me picture of three more masks.

They must be new ones she has made, for she shipped off masks to all of her children and grandchildren and really had none left to speak of.

Now Wyona has been studying the patterns for masks on the web, but I think there is no need for study.

 Moiya seems to have it down to an art. Whether to interface with non-woven material? Whether to interface at all? Masks with elastics over the ears? Masks made of stretchy material with holes cut in either ends? A scarf as a mask?

I would prefer to just choose one that Moiya has done, but she is too far away, and I need the mask sooner than her mailing will get it to me.

I think I will go with a scarf-wrap. It is not that I haven’t been collecting them for a long time. I just didn’t know it was for this purpose.

Arta