Stratford’s Taming of the Shrew

Stratford's production of Shakespearee's The Taming of the Shrew

Last night Bonnie set up a projector in the living room, put a large fabric on the wall to simulate a screen and we watched the Stratford Production of Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew.  This is not the first time I have seen The Taming of the Shrew, nor the first time I have seen it done by the Stratford Company. 

Indeed, its memory is recent in my mind for it is the production that I watched with Michael Johnson a few days ago.  I wondered how long I could keep him at the screen with me.  Too bad that I ran out of the last half of the large Cadbury Milk Chocolate Bar that I had been hiding in my blanket cupboard before the film ended. 

I was hiding the chocolate bar from myself, so I knew where it was. 

My desire to keep him at the screen was greater than my need to keep back some candy for myself for random snack attacks.  I had the closed captions for Michael, but mostly for me.  He was reading them out loud as the actors were speaking them, not a practise I would have allowed in a classroom setting, but a practise I fully believed in at that moment – anything to keep him at the screen. 

I backed the bed up against the door to lock it so that we would not be interrupted by his younger siblings.  

Together we watched the show.  He kept viewing all the way to where the wedding between Petruchio and Katharina was to occur.  In the passing of that amount of time, we had seen a lute smashed over a scholar’s head, a master and servant switch costumes, and seen a man wearing pumpkin pants who also suggested to the audience that wearing them was both comfortable and stylish.  We had seen a man dressed as a woman, to be presented later, to the character, Christopher Sly, as his wife.  We had observed the writing style of setting a play within a play.  We listened to a medieval band of travelling musicians, and we observed fight scenes, screaming matches, sleep deprivation, the handcuffing of siblings buy siblings, and shrewish behaviour to parents, … oh, the list is only half started.

The next day, Bonnie read the Lego Version of The Taming of the Shrew to Michael and Alice, both so wrapped in attention  at the story that they were either leaning their bodies on hers, or peering over her shoulder and even reaching over it to turn to the next page, not really a comfortable position for her. 

Last night, Bonnie and I were alone in the evening so we engaged in another practise – now watching the show as a 300 year old systemic practise of taking away autonomy, of taking away the right to free speech, of the practise of objectification of another person, all the while cloaking this in humour. We watched starvation, the enactment of homelessness – there are plenty of academic essays on all of these subject, for The Taming of the Shrew.  The show is still on festival bills, now seen through a modern lens. 

When the show was over, we stayed up to talk about it for two hours – we didn’t get to bed until 3 am. 

Watching this show was a thrill in three parts.  One was to have an 8-year-old boy by my side, showing him Elizabethan English and a certain story form.  Secondly, I was reminded of how 300-year-old long systems of entanglement are still practised today. Third, I got to watch my daughter read Shakespeare to my grandchildren.

Now over to you, Rebecca.  I know you have some notes on this show.

~ Arta

Games – Buckle Buckle Mr. Bean

We continue to play "Buckle, Buckle Mr. Bean" at our house.  Last night Michael, Alice, Betty and I played it while their mom was engaged in the game, Arboretum, with Aunt Bonnie.  

“The moms are going to play a board game for the next few minutes in the living room.  No children.”  

Those are the words said by Aunt Bonnie and those words left 3 chagrined children looking almost bereft to be left behind in the kitchen.  Even tablet time wasn’t enough to fill the early evening sorrow of being cut out of the lives of those two women for the time it takes to play a board game. 

I left the other 2 children behind  in the kitchen and took Betty to my bedroom to sing, “Come All You Play Mates”, a song based on a popular song of 1894: H.W. Petrie’s “I Don’t Want to Play in Your Yard”.  (Interested folk can find the song at #169 of Sally Go Round the Sun.) 

My mother taught that song to me; now I teach it to my grandchild.  But just one for she is the only one whom I think I can interest with it.  When I had mined all of the time out of Betty’s interest that I think she can give, I take her back to be with the other kids.

There I turn to read from the Secwepemc Lands and Resources book of Indigenous stories, to the story of “Coyote and Fox”. 

“Dumb story”, said Michael after the first 2 paragraphs.  I agree with him, but only dumb because I haven’t practised reading it – it was a cold call for me, and I agreed with him (poor performance) and kept reading until the end of the story.  “Tomorrow I will try to make sense of this story”, I thought.  But with all of the strangeness of the story, I did keep Betty and Alice by my side, listening to its end.  So I gave myself 100% on engagement, if not performance.

... 1 1/4 inches wide ...
... representing another world of truth ...

Then I remembered how often the children ask to play Buckle, Buckle, Mr. Bean. 

They will play it all day if they have an adult with them.  

Betty still has to have an adult in the room with her when she hides the object of my choice: the bronze Witness Blanket Coin.  

It is just a little bigger than a toonie, though not as shiny.  I choose that object so as to get it into their hands, trying to imprint some ideas about Witness Blanket Theory, I think to myself, though I am pushing the point.

Betty still has to be coached to hide the coin in a place where all can see it.  “Betty, can you see the coin yourself, right now?” 

The answer is no.  She has dropped it inside of a roll of masking tape which is too high on the kitchen counter for her to see herself.

“Then let’s try another place.”

She can hardly stand it when Michael and Alice join her in the room and start their search.  She can’t even give them 30 seconds before she starts coaching, “You’re getting warmer, warmer,” even though they aren’t even close to the coin, nor have they asked for her help.

The best part of the game is that it keeps all of their interest and they have forgotten that their mother and favourite aunt are on the other side of the kitchen door, having their own fun.

Thank you, thank you, "Buckle, Buckle, Mr. Bean" (or as my family of origin used to call the game, "You’re Getting Warmer, Now Colder").

~ Arta

I Know It is Five O’Clock

The doorbell rings and I can see the tops of Nora and Pepper Wood’s heads through the shimmering opaque glass of the front door.  Betty jumps off of her kitchen stool where she has just begun the coveted 2 hours called screen time her mom gives her.  I tell Bettyu to take off her headphones and leave her electronic device behind, since she has grabbed them and is running to the door with them.  I tell her this because the day before, I saw her run off to play with Nora and Pepper, taking her electronic device and I thought, “We are never going to see that again.  She is going to leave it somewhere, not remember where it is, no search of the property will help us see it, and I am too tired to run after her to get it.”  Still it came back last night.  I don’t want to have all of those same negative thoughts about the ipad again today, so I halted Betty, but it was not without a battle of wills – hers against mine.  She was afraid the girls at the door would leave if she didn’t get to the door in a timely fashion, so Betty leaves the electronic device behind.

She opens the door and before they can say a word Betty says, “I know, it is 5 o’clock and you want to play on my device.”  I am both choking back laughter and knowing I should make an intervention.  In the families of those little girls, children don’t have their own electronic devices – just a parental choice to keep them present in the real world, instead of the imaginary electronic gaming world – not a choice because they can’t afford the electronics.  So I back up the parents and say, “Out you go with them, Betty, but no electronic device in your hand.  She heads out with them, but it is only a few minutes before they are around on the back porch asking Aunt Bonnie to come out and supervise them on the zip line.  I intercede there, as well, since Bonnie is busy and I tell the 3 girls, I will meet them at the zip line as their supervisor.  I do that.  Soon they are joined by Alice, Evangeline and Sidney, Nora’s older sister, all from next door, and all 5^th generation little girls on the land.   

I feel a stirring in my heart of gratitude.  Well, not just a stirring – overwhelmed that I have the chance to untangle the rope at the end of every zip line run – at least for the younger girls. So sweet, all 6, ages 5 to 9 running back and forth, their long hair flying in the wind, some of them so skinny that they look like only skin stretched over joints, their little bodies always in motion, never walking, always doing a dash from one place to another – and it has been like that for them all day. The older ones seem to be able to jump off the zip line without having the rope swing back through the air and circle around the two wires of the zip line, locking the handle bars in place at the end of the run.  I look back up the line and there is always one coming down the line, the noise  of the zipline zinging in my ears, one girl on the platform waiting for her next turn, and four lined up at the bottom of the ladder that they will use to climb up to that platform.

I seem to have time to bend down and pull weeds in the 60 seconds between runs and I think to myself, “Why don’t I grab garden gloves each time I come down here to supervise?”  But again, I haven’t though I have the thought each time I am down there. 

I did bring down 3 buckets of compost to drop in the bin the last time I came to supervise.  I thought I could dumpt the buckets unnoticed, but Nora came over to ask, “What are you doing?” 

“Putting my compost in the bin, just as your grandmother Moiya does on her lot.  My bin is just a different shape.”

“Is that why you have flies all over you.”

Now I am laughing again so hard.  I had forgotten the swarm of flies that comes out of the bin when I open it to add more vegetable matter to it.   Dumping the compost just has to be done, so I choke down all the  negative parts of doing it: the swarm of flies that emerge and now hang around my own body, the smell of organic compost at work, my swiftness at trying to dump and get the lid back on so that I am swarmed with fewer rather than more flies. 

“What a sight I must be.  An old grandmother, fruit flies swarming my aura”, I think.  “I hope this child will not need therapy when she is old, about the idea of growing old.”

Later Matthew Wood joins me at the zip line. 

“Coming to supervise?” I ask. 

“No,” he said, “I am coming to see where Evangeline is.  She ran off without telling Autumn where she was going.  Autumn was supposed to be supervising the girls.” 

“Oh,” I said.  “Did you ever get in trouble for running off to play with the other kids when you were young.” 

He laughed and responded, “No.  I can never remember having to tell my parents where I was going.” 

He gathers up all of the girls, Evangeline who is now in trouble, and the other girls who are foot-loose and fancy free shouting, “Yay, we are going home to movie night.”

Thus endeth my supervisory duties both of electronic devices and at the zip line.

My Beloved Swiffer -- dead

The motor on my beloved Swiffer stopped – a small battery-operated motor that squirts cleaning fluid ahead of the pad on the Swiffer – now dead.  Miranda took it apart to see what had gone wrong.  “You left vinegar as cleaning fluid in the machine and somehow it has corroded the motor,” she said.  I laughed to myself.  Going to Miranda with a mechanical problem is like getting a quote from my mechanic about what has gone wrong with my car.  I get to learn why my machine is acting up, and how much it will cost to get it fixed.  Thank goodness for a daughter-in-law who brings her engineering theory into the kitchen.

I don’t mind buying another Swiffer.  Such a joy to mop the floor with that tool instead of the old fashioned method:  on my hands and knees as my mother taught me to do.  The only way to get a floor really clean, but I no longer want to get mine that clean.

Arta

Clapping Games

Bonnie asked me if I had been doing any clapping games with the little girls.  Yes, I have been working with Alice and Betty to do clapping games. First of all, I have been trying to teach them every song in Sally Go Round the Sun.  I have taught the rhymes out of the clapping section of the book, but I haven’t put the hand clapping to the singing rhythm.  I have been afraid to try it since I haven’t been able to teach them the rhythm that goes with `Who Stole My Chickens and My Hens’, I told Bonnie. 

Bonnie hadn’t asked me the question as a challenge to me.  Just a question for information. But I began to wonder why I hadn’t taught the clapping games.  So after Bonnie went to bed at midnight, I stayed up to watch hand-clapping games on you-tube.  I think I have the clapping into my bones now, so I will be taking some little person aside today to test out my strength at getting both singing and hand clapping going, though it will be a hard sell against the joy of watching a cartoon on their devices. 

Thank goodness, Miranda only gives them 2 hours of screen time a day. 

Before I came out to the lake, I was at my own screen a lot of the time.  One week, a notice ran across my screen: you had an average of 7 hours, 13 minutes of screen time  per day this week.  I didn’t need I needed to know that. 

The next week another notice:  you had an average of 6 hours, 59 minutes of screen time.  Thank goodness I am decreasing my screen time. 

In order to get all of the writing done that I want to do, I am going to have to raise my average hours per week at my computer.  I wonder if I could have meals brought in for me, so that I wouldn’t have to move to my kitchen from my computer. 

Alternately, I could learn to type faster.

~ Arta

Wyona Likes the Chickens

I am doing early morning raspberry picking.
The chickens come out of the coop and
walk along the row of raspberries with me,
taking a bug here and there.
I stop picking to take a picture of them.

Wyona likes Miranda’s chickens.

She really likes them.

Walking back to her own from my home, Wyona stopped in to see how the chickens were roosting, and ask if they go back to the coop on their own every night.

The answer is yes.

Wyona said she is going to come over and take a picture of them.

Ouch.

If they give her a good shot, she will probably paint one of them.

When she wakes up, Betty grabs a pail
and heads outside to pick raspberries.
Here her raspberries are on bananas. 
I shall shortly add cream to them:  
18% BF, not 33% that I really want.
Betty has picked the raspberries for me.

One thing she loves is how they flow – kind of a globular structure flowing down an uneven board. 

As if they have a connection to one another.

When I am out with the chickens, I usually have a broom, chasing them off the deck or trying to herd them out of my flower garden.

... next morning, same chickens, same drill ...

When I am doing this, Betty is usually ahead of me calling out, “Don’t hurt them, Grandmother. I know you hate chickens.”

She has her arms outstretched as if holding me back and protecting them from the evil thoughts I am casting their way.

If I do 999 good things for Betty, all she will remember when I am dead is how I hated her chickens.

Life just isn’t fair.

Arta

My List of Things I Like to Do

Another Thing I Like to Do
Throw a scarf around my neck so it looks
like I am dressed dramatically, when really
all I have done is thrown a scarf over an old
black fleece coat I use to keep me warm.  
And now I am ready for my Zoom Meeting
with Catherine Jarvis's family.

Bonnie and I began our day, each making a new list of things we like to do.  

For me, making the list was a way of seeing if I am really doing what I want to do.  

I sometimes wonder if I am letting what I want to do get hijacked by another less important idea that crosses my mind.

Bonnie and I shared our lists, me reading mine first.  

“We are more like each other than I had imagined,” she said after hearing me read.  

She showed me her list of things she liked to do.  

Her formatting was totally unlike mine.  

Bonnie couldn't find her glasses.
After searching she reaches for her
second pair and put them on.
She found trouble fitting them on her nose.
Then she really laughed and said, "OK take a picture.

She had squares and circles and arrows and stick figures all over her page.  

Still the content was surprisingly the same as mine.  

I might even say suspiciously, for someone might think, “Hey one of them has just copied her list off of the other.  I doubt the authenticity of this.”

But there it was for both of us to see.  

More alike than either she nor I had thought.

Here is my list:

1.     I like to write: both blog and write memoir

2.     I like to read – anything: books, magazines, signs on highways, posters in subways.  I can’t stop my eyes from looking at words

3.     I like to do voluntary work in a small company: LaRue"

4.     I like to email people and receive emails back.

5.     I like to sing with a child.

6.     I like to do poetry with a child.

7.     I like to connect in any possible way with a child.

8.     I like to study adults.

9.     I like to go to Zoom meetings.  Doral just called to add me to his list of contacts so that he can invite me to a meeting quickly.  Even if he only does it once a year, it will be a quick way!

10.  I like to go to cultural places:  museums, theatres, architectural wonders in cities, wonders of nature….

11.  I like to attend events: plays, musicals, opera,

12.  I like to go to online lectures.

13.  I like to attend Rebecca’s law lectures in person.

14.  I like to clean, organize, file, tidy, mop, dusty, do the wash.  I actually like to do it all.

And at this moment, best of all, I like to know I can add or delete anything on this list at will.

Arta

"Chicken Run - Larch Haven Style"- Act I (For Blogging)

OThe Setting: Eggs were purchased and hatched in the Spring.  It is now mid-summer and there are 3 chickens and 3 roosters that belong to Miranda, and the three children: Michael (8), Alice (7) and Betty (5).

Alice (running into the front room, frantically calling):  

"The chickens are lost. The chickens are lost.   They are all gone.  I can't find them anywhere."

Grandmother: (calm but remembering that she has seen the Wood's sheep dog, Reno, chasing the chickens around through the trees half an hour previously.  She also remembers seeing Owen Wood chasing Reno, then capturing the dog, and then dragging it back home by its collar to its leash which is on Lot five.  At that point Grandmother is also remembering the 12-year-old boy down low, a toss-up as to whether the boy is dragging the dog, or the dog dragging the boy -- it might be the first is the case, and then it changes back to the other is winning and so forth.)  

"Don't worry.  Chickens know how to hide in the woods."  (She is thinking to herself, maybe the chickens have scrambled over the hill and are down on the road and on their way to the beach.

Alice: (throwing hands in the air and then onto her head and then back into the air.)  

"No.  I have been looking everywhere for them.  They are lost.  Really lost.  Someone has to come and help me find them."

Grandmother: "I think they will be OK."

(Alice goes out to the porch.)

(Suddenly through the front door comes a chicken, being chased by a dog, the dog is chased by Owen Wood.  Owen and the dog are chased by Alice, then Michael and Betty.  All appear to come through the door at the same time.  The chicken flies high toward the ceiling, hitting the light, then falls and perches on top of the round table that is between the two couches.  There are the 3 fake Inuit soapstone carvings, one wire basket and a chicken on the table now.  The dog is in pursuit, climbing with its paws on the couch that butts against the end table.  Again, the chicken takes flight, but it can't get out through the window.  With its wings beating madly against the window pane, it can't gain height and it slips down behind the couch.)

Alice (yelling): 

"Save the chicken, save the chicken!"

Owen (Now behind his dog, all the while pulling on the dog’s collar, trying to back him up, but the dog is not trained to back up.  It is in forward motion, trying to get that chicken that is trapped behind the couch.  He is yelling out to no one in particular, for no one has said anything.):  

"Sorry! Sorry!"

(Owen looks up from his crouched down position with the dog, at Miranda who has now entered the room):  

"Sorry! sorry!"

Miranda says nothing.  She strides up, takes the dog in her arms full on, then switches the dog off to her side, under one arm but it is a big dog.  The boy is willing to take the dog, but she does not hand it over.  She walks calmly out of the house and down toward the creek.  

Grandmother is wondering if Miranda is going to drown it.  

Alice is gathering up the chicken in her arms.

Grandmother: (not saying anything to anyone in particular, but thinking): "I’ll bet there is a trail of feathers and chicken shit to be found there behind the couch."

(She knows Michael has just hand mopped the whole marble floor this morning, for she has been supervising him, so she knows how clean this floor is/was.  Grandmother is also laughing, for she has just been an actor in an event that could not be staged.  She can't stop laughing, even though she can see that no other actor in the scene is finding this humorous.  Alice is still yelling out words about the chicken's close call with death.  Alice takes the chicken out of the front door.)

(Grandmother goes in to report all of this to Aunt Bonnie Wyora who previous to this, needed a quiet rest, long before all of this action takes place, so she has missed it all.)

Bonnie Wyora gets out of bed, goes to the front room and begins to move all of the furniture to see if there is any chicken shit behind the couch.  There is.  

She begins moving both couches away from the window, and tries to move the end table.  It may weigh 100 pounds. 

She can remember Grandmother upon buying it had said, 

“This is either real wood or concrete.” 

Bonnie Wyora really doesn't want any help cleaning. Nor does she want an audience for the way she is going to clean and tells this to Grandmother, who leaves the room, since Bonnie says:  

"I can’t clean while you are watching.   Go away.  Go blog this." 

Grandmother (speaking aloud but quietly and to no one): 

"I can blog this but I don't think I am quite capable of doing it so close to the event."

 (Still, she goes to try.) 

(Betty has needed to get right there in all of this action.  She now wants to see the chicken shit, since she has heard these two words together with a new emphasis.  She gets her nose right in the corner, close to the specimen.  The spot is easy to find, marked, for there is a feather also, seemingly a placeholder – as though to make chicken shit easier to find.  Betty comes up with her nose wrinkled saying): 

"Pee-yew." 

Grandmother (speaking to Betty):  

"Your chicken, your chicken shit.  You clean it up, Betty." 

Betty: 

"No, it is Miranda's chicken. She can clean it up." 

Grandmother (again): 

"No, your chicken. Your chicken shit."

(Betty shakes her head.  She is not going to clean it up. She cleans up other things, but not this. Her nose is still wrinkled up from the smell.)

Miranda comes back and the 3 women gather to try and make sense of what has just happened.  

Michael walks through the door for the first time.  He is ashen and can hardly move. 

Aunt Bonnie Wyora (notices Michael and turns to him): 

"Michael are you all alright?"

Michael is as stiff and still as a statue: 

"I am going to be OK.  Just don't talk about it." 

Aunt Bonnie Wyora: 

"No, you need to talk about what is wrong with your mother."

(Tears well up in Michael's eyes, his lip trembles more.  Aunt Bonnie Wyora and Grandmother start backing up.)

Aunt Bonnie Wyora: 

"We will go into the other room and take Betty with us".

(Betty is the five-year-old who likes to be a spectator in all dramatic scenes.)  

Bonnie (still speaking:) 

"You call us when you are ready to have us near again." 

(They back up, taking Betty with them.  Michael moves toward the arms of his mother.)

(Bonnie Wyora later comes to find Grandmother with a pair of pink shoes in her hands, from which she is going to wash off the chicken shit.) 

Bonnie Wyora (to Grandmother):  

"By the way, the Rogers have just phoned.  They have a chicken down there at the beach and wonder who it belongs to."

(Meaning the question is no longer "why did the chicken cross the road?" but is "why did the chicken cross the railroad tracks"?) 

The End...?

Addendum:  No chickens or dogs were killed in this, Act I.

Just add bees wax

Rebecca paid Michael to gather daisy heads.

She wanted to make a local salve that will heal bruises.

The recipe?  See below... but in brief, soak daisies in oil for two weeks, turning them ever day.  When the oil is sufficiently infused with product from the daisy flowers, add it to beeswax (along with lavender oil)

Now getting the recipe out of the way, I turn to Michael, contracting some of the work.

... daisy oil in the making ...

Whatever he was paid, he let the money trickle down to others who had helped him.

Rebecca took half of the daisy batch home and half is left here, for Miranda and Michael to finish off.

Always a new recipe going in this kitchen!

ARTA
-------
Addendum from Rebecca

Here is the recipe, from Rhona Bowe (Chase, BC)

Three Ideas from Mary on her leaving Annis Bay

Yesterday Mary and Rhiannon went back to Lethbridge.

“Come,” Mary says to Bonnie, “before leaving, I just have time to give you a 10 minute “
'Intro to Drumming Class' that I have been wanting to give you.”

... drums gently lifted from the ground
and the noise filling the room, as it should with drumming ...

Not that Mary hasn’t been around for some weeks.

It is just that when she is here she is always multi-tasking three items at a time: getting supper (a main meal and then different meals for those with allergies), playing a board game, and keeping a phone conversation alive; yes, all at the same time and with a smoothness that means no burned pots, she wins the board game, and she answers all of the question of the person on the phone line.

Really?

And now she says to Bonnie, “I am going to teach you two rhythms which will make you a basic level drummer,” laughing at the ridiculousness of it all.

But they get the drums, take their positions and Mary begins.

“The first is called I like peanut butter, I like jam.” They switch the words around so that the meaning is I like Miranda’s kuchen, which everyone has just eaten that morning.

Miranda comes in the room and the two drummers
perform the rhythm that has her name in it.
She laughs.

Still they have change the words to fit the rhythm and they practise for a while.

“The second rhythm is called ‘walk the fat dog’”, but they change it to “chase the chickens”, which is a rhythm I have enacted.

Someone spotted me out on the porch with a broom chasing the chickens a few mornings ago. I thought I was alone.

I forgot that Mary is working from home, and on Ottawa time, so she is at her computer at 7 am, which I thought was a good time to chase the chickens.

A scene out of a movie where the camera is slowly panning a view taken from a car that slowly drives by an old farm house and, there is an old woman limping along with her broom, wildly swatting at chickens who are on her porch.

Well, that turns out to be the drum rhythm, “chase the chickens” and soon Bonnie and Mary are doing the rhythms in opposition to each other, both laughing and playing with the sound of two basic rhythms that will take a drummer anywhere.

Arta Then Mary and Rhiannon hop in their car and leave for Lethbridge.

Have I felt strong wind gusts?

Annis Canada: Severe Thunderstorms Watch

Michael reading Wings of Fire by Tui T. Sutherland
while he waits for the strorm to develop.

I heard a ping, the sound activity on AccuWeather -- one of my phone apps.

I looked at the screen: Warning -- conditions are favorable for the development of severe thunderstorms that may be capable of producing strong wind gusts, large hail and heavy rain.

At the same time there is a knock at my door.

I know it is one of the three little children from the cabin next door. They live in my pandemic bubble.

I try to stay socially isolated from the rest of the world -- in my room here, except for those in my bubble, and three of the six will be wanting entry this morning. Other cousins have left and they are alone. I don’t generally have them in the room.

Alice trying out Grandmother's bed and 
wondering about the idea of reading

Especially in the early morning time when I can do my best thinking. But today is different.

 I let Michael in first, telling him that I am typing but that if he wants to lay quietly on my bed and read, that will be fine.

 It is only a few minutes until Alice comes.

It is harder for her to lay still, so I shared with her the morning forecast, of which she wants to know what “strong wind gusts” might mean.

"Have I felt strong wind gusts?" she asks

If Alice curls up, so does Betty.
... monkey see, monkey do ...
the rhyme we are learning together
from Sally Goes Round the Sun

She doesn’t think so, though I know I have called her to the porch on other great storm days.

She also wants to know what is the difference between heavy rain and large hail.

Sometimes I have to put my hand under the falling water to tell the difference myself. There is that moment between hard rain, soft slush and heavy hail where I am uncertain too.

That is why my door to the deck is open. I have decided I will enjoy the 3 hours of severe wind, rain and hail that Accuweather has alerted me to.

I can hear the heavy rain already, – on the deck, on the boughs of the trees, pinging off of the round table on which I might eat breakfast on a clearer day.

I hear the sound of the crows calling to each other, so it is better that I keep my door open and pay attention to that gift of water from the heavens and all the sounds that it brings.

... the rain drops wash the patio table to a new level of clean ...

The heavy cloud that hung over Bastion Mountain, half-hung, has dissipated into a fine white midst, through which I can still see the mountain, but only barely.

Like through a glass darkly.

I change out of my morning’s summer clothes into a heavy denim jacket and heavy thread-count jeans.

I need to be warm to enjoy the gift of a storm through an open door.

Arta

A Three Best Things Goodbye

Photo credit: Arta with Rhiannon's permission to blog

Rhiannon nails the knack of making daisy rings

First of all, it is really hard to say good-bye to any group of people. 

Yesterday I said good-bye to Mary and Rhiannon.

Part of my goodbye involved asking Rhiannon what had been the three best things she had experienced when she was here.

She didn't give me full sentences at first, just the topics: the trees, the lake, and the taste of the water.

"Thinking about the water," sh then said, "I will just take one last drink," and off to the tap she went.

After her last drink of water she went on to say that the trees have been wonderful -- she has felt a real connection to them.  Right now she is living on the prairie and the coolies (Lethbridge), and she says there just aren't the great trees in Alberta, that you can find in BC.  Tree, yes.  But not the trees that she loves here and that make it into her top three list of things to love about a holiday at the Shuswap.

Then she said she wished maybe she had taken more dips in the lake.  Mary laughed and said yes, no matter how many swims Mary takes, when she is leaving she also wishes she had taken just one more.

Arta

Here to Slay

Photo Credit: Dr. Johnson

LtoR: Bonnie, Miranda, Duncan, Michale, Rebecca, DavidT

This is the picture from the game whose name I knew I could never remember.  Catchy?  Yes.  Here To Slay.

But the next day when I was thinking about blogging the happiness in the game, all I could think of was "To be or not to be".  Yet, I knew that wasn't the name of the game.

One of the gifts Here to Slay is that it can be played by many players and of all ages.  It brings a lot of happiness -- to all except for David Camps  in this photo, though my guess is that he is taking on a slightly bored personna, only happy to be at the game for treats which is not true at all.

Not captured in the photo is Alice and Betty who got to stay at the other end of the table, the 7 and 5 year old keepers of the treats.  They were each given one of Rebecca's new series from the kiln: Bowls in Blue.  Each bowl was filled to the brim.  When I passed by Betty she had a pair of gummy two-lips in her mouth, showing me her new face.  But soon she had spit them out, then was rubbing her tongue and spitting at the same time.  Too much cinnamon in those.  Some kind adult took her to the kitchen to get her a drink of water and to gently warn her against imagined happiness in candies she is unfamiliar with.

And thus endeth  the happines in Here to Slay for Betty, but not for the rest of the group who gamed long into the night.