Azul: Summer Pavilion - the game of choice

January 23, 2021

Rebecca likes to play board games and she will play them every night if she can find someone in the house who is a willing player. 

For her, the game is a gentle relief from a day in the academy.

I am more of a reader, but a game is social diversion, so I have just decided to devote part of my life to playing Azul: Pavilion. She wins every time when there are two of us. When Duncan joins in, then the winners are Duncan-Rebecca-Arta.

I am accustomed to coming third which could be a highly sought-after place if there were more than three of us playing. I think my Grandmother, Edna Pilling, used to call that place at the end, “sucking the hind tit”.

The competitive edge of me surged after so many losses. I went out to You Tube to see if I could find some tricks on how to win at Azul: Summer Pavilion. There were some 12 to 15 minutes uploads, so I read one, and then another. They mostly told how to set up the game, and how to play it; they didn't have that last piece--how to strategize better than the other players, which I suppose is the purpose of the game -- to let you have the fun of trying to win-- not going straight to the end of game and finding out the tricks and tips to advantage myself over other players, which is what I want to do.

When we begin to play, I always say, ”Oldest player goes first.” I read in the rules that the youngest player goes first which is going to be good for Rebecca, but not for me.  In this case, a little less reading would have helped my game.

Last night was the first time I have ever won. When all the points were counted, I was one point ahead of her. What doesn’t count is that on my last move she showed me how to get three points more. If she had she kept that secret to herself she would have been the winner.

Is it a fact that the person who shares their knowledge is really the winner.

Arta

Physio is Good

I'm on my second round of physio at Foul Bay Physio. My physiotherapist is Ian Catchpole. I was looking forward to the second appointment, since I feel as though I've moved so far ahead with the exercises from the first I visited him. But when I got to the building the elevator was broken. Rebecca and I took three flights of stairs, not something I would have chosen to do if things had been equal. When we got to the third floor is when she remembered the office is on the second floor of the building. By the time I got to the physio office, I was pretty well warmed up.

At home I'm to do my physio exercises three times a day (I try to fit in 5 times) working my arm gently, enjoying the stretch rather than fearing it.

There are a lot of things in the day that I have to organize so that I get them completed. I am still making a list and checking it twice. It seems like I have to go from physio, to eating three meals a day, to brushing my teeth after every meal, to at least taking my plate to the kitchen and then that eternal round begins again.

The skirt at the bottom of the tree.
the tree too high for me to tip my
camera in the direction of
those taller branches.

Yesterday (Jan 21st),  I added my first walk outside. It was Catherine's birthday.

I told her I would go for an outside walk in honour of her birth. It would be my first walk along the street, since coming here.

Catherine told me to take a picture of something beautiful along the way.

That was my first idea when I came outside and saw Rebecca's tall tree that she calls a Doctor Seuss tree -- it has a wonky spine and the tree goes a long way up. I took out my camera and was trying to capture the height of that tree, stepping backwards, backwards, then finding myself tripping and that's when I righted myself against a nearby cherry tree.

I dropped the idea of photography as the first thing I should think about when taking my walk.

I tried to keep my eyes focussed a few yards ahead of me on the pavement, and notice where I was. There was a wind chill. I felt my scarf blowing at my neck and could feel the wind inside of my coat, its bite against legs. I was thinking about the temperature somewhere around 7 Celsius. It was the wind that was giving me the that I should get back inside. 

In other circumstances, this walk would have felt good. I went to the end of the block and back … twice, once more than I had intended.

Arta

A Single Eyebrow

Like Frieda Kahlo, in my childhood, I was a single black eyebrow person until I was old enough to find tweezers. 

Then one eyebrow became two: two dark black eyebrows. 

I didn’t find my first white lash until about 20 years ago when I was 60. 

I was horrified and instead of acknowledging that I was just growing older, I went to see if I could have my eyebrows dyed. 

There wasn't much use, the cosmeticians said, since there was only one white eyebrow, which would be easier to pluck than to dye.

I left it out at that until about five years ago when I found another white eyelash. This time I approached the -up clerk at London Drugs and asked her to pick out an eyebrow pencil for me. She chose a charcoal one and before ringing it through the till she said, “Why are you doing this, you don't really need it. Most people would die to have eyebrows like yours.”

Now it's COVID-19 times, and I am conscious that the only thing people really see about the face are the eyes. So, I have been looking at my eyebrows again, deciding it's the least I can do since as soon as I put the mask on there is nothing left on my face to enhance. Gone is lip gloss. Gone are the earrings since one of them keeps dropping off due to that elastic slipping on and off of my ear lobe. I lost one earing this morning before I had even had breakfast, and that is with no mask.

So back to enhancing my eyebrows. Not that they need it, but it seemed the least I could do to beautify that top quarter of my forehead. I thought nothing about it really.

About two months ago Bonnie bent over to me and said I can't believe your eyebrows are still black. When are they going to turn grey?”

Not knowing she was serious, and thinking she was teasing me, I flippantly said, “When I'm ninety.”

I  no idea that she didn't know I was already touching them up. She began to sing the my praises to others, as in, “My mom's eyebrows are still black and she says they aren't going to turn grey until they're 90.” I thought she would drop the subject of black eyebrows after a few iterations. But she kept reporting it to others until it became like the Bernie Saunders Mitten Meme: everywhere.

I felt the need to make the truth of the feathered black marks in my eyebrows explicit to her, which I did.


She looked at me horrified, somewhat like when a child learns there is no Santa Claus.

We’ve had many conversations since centering on truth in the moment as opposed to what I thought was mutual satire. 

That is what adults do when they need to patch up their relationship. And in fact, the subject just had to go “off-limits” for a while.

Yesterday at the end of our telephone conversation on other matters, she asked me if I would hold still for a minute while she drew a short sketch of me. 

I was still. She quickly she sketched in the scarf which I wear around my head to keep my hair back out of my face. She sketched in my neon black glasses. One eyebrow is in its correct place, the other floating off my face and into space. 

That serves me right.

Arta

The Empty Years

Rebecca's cactus starts to bloom
in the living room

Duncan and I share the same room, he working on his computer on the east wall, and me working on mine at the north wall, much better for us than in small cubicles in an office that we would have if we were part of a large corporation.

It's just us in that room usually. A perfect shared space – so roomy. When he came in this morning and I said good morning I mentioned to him that I had already done my gratitude list for the day: somebody coming in to clean our house. I shared with him that yesterday's gratitude thought was that I can even make lists at all.

He laughed and said "Why are you so busy grandmother. Your job here is to recuperate. There's not supposed to be any work for you.”

I laughed so hard.

He's right.

The 80’s.

They look like perfectly empty years.

I haven’t entered them yet.

I continue to make lists, even though I have nothing to do.

My first task this morning was to do some editing for Rebecca. I like that job: checking if the noun and the verb are in the right tense, especially if the sentence is long, or picking up on a word that has the right sound, but that the voice recognition programme has spelled incorrectly.

These flowers are so delicate.  I hate to brush by
them when I open the blinds in the morning.
I found myself on the floor with my camera,
trying to get under them and see their breauty
from below. I forget that it is not that easy to
get up from the floor anymore.

That job being finished now, I have other things I want to do today and I am remembering that Bonnie has created a new noun that I should think about, one that she has thrown out into the universe: efforting.

She is  to do is do a little less of it.
This is good advice in Covid-19 times, another way to say-to-self, slow down a bit.

More on efforting through the month, and how it can be something to avoid.

I was going to a Relief Society Zoom meeting, a large group meeting planned for Tuesday night that I have been looking forward to all month. As that thought was going into my mind, Rebecca came into the room and asked me if I were ready to play Azul: Summer Pavilion. That's always a no-brainer for me.

The down side is that I would have to play a game with her which I am bound to lose. 

 The upside is that after playing with her for a month, I finally won a game on Monday and the competitive part of me thinks that I could win again.

When the game was over, and yes, I lost again, I turned to some hard reading until my brain wouldn't understand the sentences in the paragraph of the book that kept slipping out of my hand as I would fall asleep.

That's what I put the book down and decided to look for one last joy of the night. 

A little television. 

I clicked on Live Twice, Love Once (Maria Ripoli, 2019). 

I'm glad I didn't make the mistake of reading the review before I watched the move. 

One reviewer said that this film doesn't add much to the canon of films about Alzheimer's disease, “an uninspiring Spanish drama”, but I liked it.

Arta

Hebe's Hobbies

... a simple braid and then a long length of hair ...

Hebe has been learning to sew on a new sewing machine. 

Hebe’s first sewing project has been to make napkins for me.

I do love napkins.

My favourite are the large linen ones that are placed on my lap during a cruise. 

My second favourite napkins or the over-large paper napkins, -- large and thick and I don't have to wash them.

I have only received napkins before from Mary.  Hers had African designs on them.

I  love everything about the picture Hebe sent me of her napkins: the colour red and the fact that she's mixed up plain napkins with patterned ones -- that is going to be a lot of fun for me. 

She told me she has been looking for some Harry Potter fabric, thinking that I would have fun giving one of those to Michael, but that fabric is all sold out.

I have lots of napkin rings to roll the napkins in: white porcelain bunnies for Easter, gold rings with bells and red ribbons for Christmas, green marble ones that have plenty of heft, -- all of them just waiting for these red napkins that will soon be in the mail to me.

Napkins required a lot of straight sewing and Hebe has been workin on these for some time.

She's even sent a video where I can see her sewing the long straight edges.

I can hear the sewing machine needle clicking as she carefully moves the folded edge through the sewing machine foot, just as I used to do.

... Arta's new napkins to arrive in the mail ...

I am sure her mother has not told her yet of the number of times person can put the sewing machine needle right through their finger as I did when my attention was misplaced. I can still feel the ache in my arm right up to my elbow. 

Hebe says that her next project is going to be a jacket for one of the American dolls. I replied, “I think it's easier to make a jacket for yourself than one for an American doll.

Much to my surprise, Hebe mailed me a picture of a McCalls pattern sheet of how to make doll clothes for the American doll.

I should have known.

I love those instruction sheets. 

My past use of them floods over me. 

My favourite method of keeping my spot on them, was to take a straight pin with a brightly coloured head, and prick it into the paper pattern at exactly the spot where I was. 

I studied this wonderful picture
for a long time, imagining myself with
a little girl, helping her to learn to sew.
Such happiness!

That way I didn’t have to keep re-reading the instructions, but could have my eyes pick up at exactly the place where I left off, via the head of the coloured pin.

I have to say that I love having the ironing board up and the iron still warm, the smell of that freshly pressed cotton which might have had a small spray of water put on it.

I've loved all of the tools that accompanied the art of using a sewing machine.

I don't know why I have so many tape measures. 

I can't remember buying even one but I am sure I could track down six or seven in my house. 

I even carry one in my purse. 

I like to wear a tape measure around my neck. I wonder if eve Hebe has tried that yet.

I think one of the most pleasant things that happened to me in high school was taking Sewing 10, 20 and 30. That may be because I owned my own sewing box -- one giant step towards womanhood. Now I had my own pair of fabric scissors ($$$), a tape measure, straight pins, different sizes of needles, a needle threader, a wooden point turner, beeswax, white chalk, a sewing gauge, and a red tomato pin cushion (with a small tomato runner attached), plus many colours of bobbins, already threaded.

High School. 

Latin as one option. Sewing as the other.

Arta

Product Control

... plastic is over bread bowl to help dough rise ...

Catie called.

She was wondering what to do with bread dough when it is too stiff. 

It's possible for all of us to add just a little too much flour, or in this case, maybe even way too much flour. 

She wondered what the perfect recipe is, amounts of water to flour.

After all these years I can never tell because so many bread recipes race to my mind, all of which have different ingredients, so need different amounts of flour to water.

To me the perfect recipe is to start with three cups of water, and that's because I know that my KitchenAid won’t really handle any more liquid than that. Even two and a half cups would be better but I continue to add three.

... redeemed from an unholy mess ...

On to Catie’s problem: dough that is too stiff and a sure knowledge that water should be added.

If the dough is still in the KitchenAid, then when I figure this out, I start adding the water then, maybe as much as a half a cup. 

I add that much because if it is only ¼ of a cup short, it isn’t short enough for me to have noticed. 

 If the dough is out of the bowl and into the oiled container because I know I have a real mess on my hands, then I find it just as easy to add that 1/2 cup of water by hand and try to squeeze it into the dough.

I might even have to add more water than that.

Who knows until the product is facing them?

... cinammoned brown sugar and melted margarine ...

Putting the dough back in the machine just means that it will still be a big lump, chased around the bowl, the starchy water spilling over the lip of the bowl, splashing both horizontally and perpendicularly, and onto the counter, and in the worst-case scenario, down the cupboards and onto the floor, which can happen, before I find the knob to turn the electricity off on the machine.

I can say that if I were averse to textures, the texture isn't going to feel all that good and probably binning the mess might work out here.

... needing a little more counter space? ...

What this feels like to me is like having pieces of dough that I have squished and are now slipping through my fingers -- little bits of gnocchi running around the bowl.

A bit of an exaggeration but close.

What's the worst thing that could happen?

At that point I can just figure out that was a colossal mistake and toss it in the garbage, but the down side of that is, the dough continues to grow, either in the garbage or in the compost.

I have faced that mess as well.

Bottom line?

I add as much water as I think the dough needs, work it up as much as I can while all the time remembering that in this context, waste is a sin.

I leave the dough now, in the bowl in a nice warm place covered with

... a one-person job ...

a plastic bag for an hour and then go back to it.

By that time everything will look relaxed and the dough will be, not in its most perfect shape, but good enough to punch down one final time.

I've made this mistake so many times. And corrected it, until the error no longer feels like a mistake.

Further on this point of how much water is too much water, I tried a new recipe for buns and the dough was so soft, that I just added an extra cup of flour.

How was I to know that the point of this new dough is to leave it so soft that my hands can't handle it.

Too sticky.

... ready to eat ...

The only way I can work with it is to keep my hands well-watered, grab a piece of dough, shape it into a ball while my hands are very watery and then put it on the pan and leave it there to rise. 

The product is spectacular

But I wouldn't have figured out that was the method until Moiya told me she'd been trying that way of making very soft buns.

When she called, I thought Catie was really making a loaf of bread. But when I got pictures it turned out she was on her way to into cinnamon buns, which is a whole other project.

... take one please, or two or three ...
... the corner ones are the best ...

Making bread is such a simple thing to do, and seems to take so little time, compared to getting those cinnamon knots rolled.

I was aghast when I looked at her pictures.

There was no one there helping her dip the strips of dough into butter and knotting them.
Maybe that was her choice.

I too have used the single-person method if I need product control.

Arta

The Nickle at Noon - Tufting

Tufting Our Time

Over the years, I have loved to go to The Nickle at Noon Gallery lectures at the university -- in person when it was possible.  

The from  is either "walk-arounds" where a curator tells me something about the exhibit, or else sit down lectures.

I have pencilled into my book to see this one on February 4, noon MST.  

A zoom link is in the invitation to attend.  It has been a long time since I have thought about the creative work done by tufting.   

I am prone to pencil into my agenda to get to these events and sometimes miss them.  I hope I hit this one.  What a fabulous image!

Arta

 

Last Night's Show - Peter Pan Goes Wrong

Peter Pan Goes Wrong: Katy Daghorn (Sandra)
and Ciaran Kellgren (Jonathan).
Photo Credit: London Theatre I

I wanted to rest and watch TV last night, but I couldn’t get into Broadway HD without Rebecca’s password. 

She came downstairs to enter it into the big screen so that I could relax away the last 2 hours of my day.

Richard had told me that his kids enjoyed Peter Pan Goes Wrong, so Rebecca started the show and sat down for a minute, I think just to see that I was settled in with an electric blanket over my body and settled back into a soft black leather chair.

Now this morning I am going out to the internet to find a review of the play.

I couldn’t have reviewed the show last night, other than to say Steve, who was working in the other part of the room kept saying, “You guys are having too much fun over there.”

Here is what Alan Fitter of London Theatre says about the play: 

 “the curtain goes up and the action begins and never stops. Bunk-beds collapse, a large “dog” gets stuck in a dog-flap, costume changes don’t work, props fail, heads get bashed, arms get set on fire, limbs get smashed – and that’s just in the first fifteen minutes! “

The play will be funny if a person has read, or has had read to them, J.M. Barrie’s Peter Pan. The smart, sassy dialogue and action kept me laughing all night. So warm. So much fun. If you have a chance and want to relax, this might be the show to see.  English farce, indeed!

Arta

Preparing for a lesson

 

Hebe was getting ready for church today, and getting her dolls ready as well. 

Both she and her doll got fishtail braids: the doll got her braids from Hebe, and Hebe got her braids from Catherine.

I was getting ready at the same time and in the same way, trying to put my hair in braids to keep it back from my face.

The task is necessary.  

No one likes to lean over and see their hair swishing through their plate of foo, or find it twisting around their head while tossing and turning at night, or laying on it and getting trapped while turning over.

... two fishtails, two bows, too cute ...

So I have turned to braiding my own hair -- not in those intricate braids that can go around or down the back of one's head -- no my skill is pretty much ponytails brought forward, since my broken shoulder has healed well enough that I can do that.  

And then I hide whatever I have completed behind a hair band.

Function, not beauty.

Today was my day to teach the lesson in Zoom Sunday School again.  

I have no idea how to
get the bend out of that braid.

Mary called me just before we were to begin.  "If I were to go to church, it would be if you were giving the lesson, Arta.  But that 'if' isn't going to happen today."

Of course that made me laugh.  So many ifs.

I have been thinking about religion in a different way, lately, since Catherine asked me to do the lesson a couple of weeks ago.  We pretty well rotate through many of the jobs during this meeting, so with 8 of us, my turn is only going to come up every other month. 

Still, thinking about my religion in particular and religion in general, I was curious when I read an article in The New Yorker called "The Saint in the Closet: a one man musical about Mother Teresa".  The article began, 

"If the words 'Expressionist musical portrait of Mother Teresa performed in drag from East Village closet' make your heart beat faster -- and how could they not? -- you're in luck  Get yourself to YouTube, where you can find Heather Christian's "I am Sending You the Sacred Face," the latest offering from Theatre in Quarantine, a "pandemic performance laboratory" created by the writer, director, and actor Joshua William Gelb.

I just had to do that.  I watched three times, all the time with the captions on.  Sometimes I was paying attention to the music, sometimes to the text, sometimes to the enactment of drag.   Sometimes I was holding the pages out of the article in my hand, underling them, learning more about Mother Teresa in particular, and in general thinking about how our artists are doing their work during COVID times.  

So much to learn about religion from our writers, musicians, dancers and artists.

Arta

Reading on a Friday Night.

The seminar is already full but they will send  you a rcording
after the event is over, if you sign up.

I picked up a book the cover of which had not been opened: Never in Anger: Portrait of an Eskimo Family by Jean Briggs.

I read the first chapter and said to Rebecca, “I have the feeling that I've read this before, but the cover of the book hasn't been cracked, and there are no markings on the pages, no writing in the margins, not even a bit of yellow highlighter anywhere. Still I recognize the voice of the author. I wonder if I should continue reading it.”

Rebecca laughed and took it out of my hands.

“You recognize the voice of the author, because you read a chapter of the book when you were taking the Indigenous law class, a couple of years ago.”

“Then perhaps I should go downstairs and start reading Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer since I want to go to the webinar next week where she is speaking.”

She laughed again and said you would enjoy the read; it's a lovely book. But I think tonight you should just dig into your New Yorker tonight. And so I did.

Rebecca and Duncan went going on a grocery run at that moment. I decided to accompany them.

I put on a coat, a scarf and sat in a chair waiting for them to leave.

At the same time I had this feeling inside of me that said, "If you believe in keeping to the BC Health Strategies for Combating Covid, you won't go out with them and shop. There is no need for you to do that job. You just are missing shopping. Duncan can drive the cart for Rebecca.  Rebecca is still a one-handed woman and needs help but you are not the person to do that."

And the voice continues, "What you want is to walk up and down the aisles enjoying that old experience of shopping. You don't even care what store you're in," 

I do like to walk up and down the aisles and see the blocks and blocks (if laid end to end) of products tha people can buy to make their lives happy.

I put the black winter coat back in my closet, I put my feet up on the hearth though I didn't turn the fire on since I was warmth enough from sitting in that coat.

I picked up last December 28, 2202 issue of the New Yorker.

When I flipped through its pages there were either humorous articles or graphic novels or strips and strips of comic book stories.

Very little text  in ther issue and when there was text it was a writer trying to tell how humour is created (and at the same time peppering their article with lots of humour – enough to make me belly-laugh).

In one evening, I could move through all of the articles of that New Yorker comic issue.

There was beautiful, sad graphic novel by Jillian Tamaki called Junban about growing up on a small farm, in Sunbury on the Frazer River.  Junban means "boats lining up ready to drop anchor".

a page from Junban by Filliah Tamaki

The bottom panel looks like a scene
of the ocean that I could walk to,
here from Rebecca's home.

The story is taken from his grandfather's unpublished papers. 

The grandson did the graphic cartooning about the experiences of dispossession of land and boats when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbour: a story about how the Canadian Japanese had their lives interrupted, having to build new lives again in new places with fewer resources.

The writer of the article concludes, “We never returned to B.C. to live. 

No wonder. 

I thought of the lives  of Indigenous people who have lived there since at least 400 years BC and how their lives, too have been interrupted.

I don't know my geography. Every day I try to learn the name of a new river or mountain in Canada. So, I honor days like this when I get to hear a story that has been laid on the land.

Rebecca was right. A Friday evening and a lovely meditation in the New Yorker.

Arta

On Shopping at The Fig

The Fig

Shopping is one thing I really miss. 

On our way home from a doctor's appointment, Rebecca said that she would stop at the Mediterranean store called The Fig and pick up a few grocery items for Alex.

Among other things, she buys him some Jasmine honeycomb. When we get home, he is grateful and asks me to try some. I don't really like honey. But if someone asks me to try something, I am all in. I have a flashback to my dad bringing home honeycomb and so like then, I'm putting the beeswax in my mouth and sucking the honey out of it; then chewing the wax for a long time before spitting it out. Alex is gone by now, but I wonder if he is chewing the wax as my dad told me to do.

Alex had wanted some bulk sesame seeds. He was specific about his wants. I just wanted to taste Mediterranean cuisine. I stayed in the car and listen to music though I am the one who really wants to go in. Rebecca shopped for tzatziki, hummus, baba ghanoush, figs, and a small container of tabouli which she assures me no one else will eat. I watch that container during the week. I am sure there is someone else’s spoon dipping into it.

She buys sangak bread that's probably one yard long. I can fold it over and still have a large package. Fresh the label says. I can see the bread has been frozen; it's come frozen from the interior of BC.

Fresh to me means bread has come out of the oven less than half an hour ago. In this case fresh means toast the bread and the flavour will be as good as new. I like the bread’s supple texture. I like the how it folds and bends -- it reminds me of eating Ethiopian stews. But Rebecca toasts the bread. Now it is a very thin wafer under onto the top of which I can scoop the delicious food that I have on my plate. Now I go to the internet for information about the bread: sangak is Farci for small pebbles; the bread is baked on small pebbles’ it should not be surprised to find small rocks on the bread. I will be surprised if there are rocks on mine.

I plate up my food, small spoonful in each quadrant, 

She bought tahnini halva. I taste some and then go look on the internet to see how this is made. 

 I know this taste. Halva is made of sesame seed paste also known as tahini and sugar. It has a dense and crumbly texture and is sometimes flavored with cocoa powder or vanilla. I go back and taste it again. And again. I don't know if I like the halva or not. I remember that a person has to taste something 17 times before they know if they like it. I am on my seventh try now with halva. I am sure I will like the taste more. now that I've gone out and read so much on the web about it. 

Food and factoids about food get mixed up in an experience like this. I didn't like to read that halva is usually served at funerals. Don’t serve this at mine.

I fantasize that I am shopping when I unpack the bags when Rebecca brings the groceries in from the car. I am so glad that Rebecca stopped at The Fig. 

I eat the grocery-run from The Fig for 3 days, each time so thrilled to have a taste of the Mediterranean again. 

Inuit Law and Film - Two Meta Questions

Week Two - Wednesday, January 20, 2021

Rebecca reflected on the two big questions we will have as we go forward, studying our film and written texts. 

The first meta question is how can we do the work of intercultural encounter so that we do no harm. She reminded us that we are in a closed space of learning, reconciliation, and theorizing which will make the work easier. She had just come from a meeting where NGO’s were working with the same questions about doing more good than harm.

The second big question is one she short-hands by talking about mountains and valleys, metaphorically the landscape where I am standing. There are metaphorical truths that are associated with the place I am standing and what I should understand is that each encounter for me, I should not judge according to where others are standing, but according to where I am. She reminds me that what I do every day is GE: shorthand for GE.

Some of the readings are more difficult than others. She reminded the class that the authors are not talking to us, they are speaking to others who are in on their perspective and working with ideas and languages that come out of their disciplines. We are just at the dinner party, listening in and hoping to learn.

Emberley's article is found in
Defamiliarizing the Aboriginal

When I was doing the Julia V. Emberley article,”The Spatial Politics of Homosocial Colonial Desire in Robert Flaherty’s Nanook of the North, I found both the title and the reading dense. 

 I was not just at the dinner party,   I was taking notes on every sentence I was reading. 

I do not get Foucault but the author does and she was showing me how to apply it to my reading of the film, Nanook of the North. Hard political conversations are not easy.

Pretty cool. 

Arta

Inuit Film and Law - Beginning to Read Film

Week Two - Monday, January 19, 2021

I'm thinking about how much I love to read articles and watch films and go to class and listen to people talk about the thoughts they have had about all of the above. I make notes as I listened. There is a final step in this exercise that's always hard for me. And that's to distill what I've heard or seen into one or two paragraphs, even one or two pages and then put in a binder (or up on the blog), somewhere where I can find it later. That final step, going from 80% to 100% is hard for me.

This is our third class. Rebecca uses the Whiteboard function on Zoom, and invites all to write on it. I haven’t had much experience with this whiteboard. Someone in the class tell the rest of us where to find the toolbar.

Rebecca suggests 2 group exercises. The first one is just to make a list of the objects that we saw in the film. She calls that indexing -- making objects we saw are made visible: a dog kennel, an amauti, knives, moss, a qamurti (sled), people pepper the screen with answers -- .

In the second exercise, we try to establish places where we found law in the film. Some of the people in the class are very good at this. They see inter-societal law, family law, real estate, proper and land claims, squatters’ rights, freedom of movement …. 

I get stuck on ideas around pleasure and the law. 

In the film a child playing with the young fox, a toy moose carved out of hard snow, a dog sled that a child might attach to a small dog. For some reason I'm thinking a lot about the children in the film, and laws of family relationships that involve care of them.

I decided I'm going to go out to zoom and play with that toolbar until I'm good at it, since I am inhibited here by my lack of technique. I see there's a place where you can star items, put an X through them, use an eraser, change the font colour, etc. This is hard for me now. In a couple of weeks, I hope to have mastered that whiteboard, or at least be able to approach it with no fear.

Rebecca asks us to consider the word truth as we find it in law.

She suggests that a good practice is to decenter truth (that practise of find out what is “true”) and instead use practices of interpretation about how others see things.

She also suggests that the text should be used with the metaphor that they are a dinner party conversation. At the end of the dinner party, I should still like the guest but not know them fully.

It's hard for me to remember that film is text. For some reasons I valorize literature and the law as a more important study than film and the law. Intellectually, I know this is not true, but viscerally I have that feeling. Why is ink on paper a better text?

During the lecture Rebecca has reminded me not to go to film with an eye to judge it. Rather I could learn to explore my relationship to this text and practise using my experience with the film to talk it about with the shared experience of others.

Arta

Inuit Film and Law - Class 2

Week One - Wednesday, January 13, 2021

In our Law and Inuit Film class, Rebeca asks us, “What is the archive of experience you bring to the class?” My mind slips away from what she is saying and though she is continuing to talk, I try to answer that question. I find myself trying to create too fulsome an answer. I think she just wants everyone in the class to use her question as a touchstone for later work in the class, so I bring myself back to the moment and pick up my pen, a pen whose present destiny is to take random notes. I like using the keyboard instead of handwriting. But I have dedicated a 3-ringed scribbler to catching bits and pieces of thoughts as I listen in class, and see if I can create a summary of the ideas instead of capturing every word she says.

Rock Garden on Back River in July 2006

In our sharing circle one of the participants notes that when she tells people she is from the North, they have no real idea of how to pin her location down on a map. 

Whoops. I don’t know her very well, but if she talks to me later in the class, I don’t want to be that person, and I decide to tune up my geography.

I am going to really look at the North, try to draw a map of that huge land mass; I feel I can learn to put some of the cities on a clean map, identify the rivers, the islands, the bays, and see if I can paint the Canadian present on the map as well as the Canadian past. 

So when I pick up a book to skim: Never in Anger: Portrait of an Eskimo Family. I see a map at the front of the book and I pause and really look at the map -- I wonder if I could redraw that area with the names of the inlets if someone gave me a clean map. Back River. Thelon River. I haven’t ever taken a close look at these Canadian northern rivers before

I can see Rebecca’s face in front of me on the Mac screen -- leaning into the camera and then back, but her voice is in the background of my mind as I am thinking about how little I know about the geography of the North. She is now listing the films we will see: Nanook of the North, Atanarjuat, Kikkik, The Journals of Knut Rasmuseen, Before Tomorrow, Why White People Are Funny, Angry Inuk, and perhaps Map of the Human Heart. She is telling the class her syllabus is flexible -- the class will speed up and then slow down, depending on what we bring to the films and what we want to take away. I find myself anxious to throw myself into this material.

I can hear the class ending. She is asking the class, What is our responsibility to know the other?, and Can film help us in that journey?

Arta

Christmas Gingerbread Houses - the final results

 I realize I am a bit late posting these photos.  And in fact, most of the gingerbread has now been consumed.  But here's the story of our gingerbread house decorating party.

   

 

Naomi and Rhiannon getting in to character to decorate their haunted Christmas house -- note the blood oozing down the sides.

 

There will be a battle between gummy bears and sour patch kids outside the haunted house. Skewering gummie beings with toothpicks

Xavier and Leo decided to take a more traditional approach.

When your teen asks if they can make dinner -- there is only one response

Yesterday Rhiannon asked me if they could make dinner.  Of course I rushed right out to the grocery store to buy the ingredients.  Potatoes, pepperoni, mozzarella, and pizza sauce.

Slice the potatoes, but done go through the bottom, so the slices will fan out.  Rhiannon came up with this great idea to put down two wooden spoons so they wouldn't cut all the way through the potatoes

Drizzle on a litte oil and season with salt and pepper.  Bake for an hour at 350.

Take potatoes out of oven and insert pepperoni between each slice.

Dog sits patiently hoping a piece of pepperoni will fall to the floor.

 Spread pizza sauce on top.  Be generous.

Top with shredded cheese.  If there is someone in your family who doesn't like pepperoni, try inserting a few slices of cheese into the potatoes.

Bake for another 15-20 minutes.  Perfection.

It smelled amazing.  Rhiannon said to me "Its surprisingly satisfying making dinner for your family."

Now for the confession:  it was getting late when we started making the potatoes.  I thought if we baked them on a higher temperature we could get away with baking them for less time.  So I put them in at 400 for less time.  And I didn't really check to see how soft they were before we put the pepperoni in.  So our potatoes were slightly crunchy.  Still eadible, but it was very disappoiting becasue they smelled and looked perfect.

It was extremely disappointing to Rhiannon.

We may have to make them a second time tonight to get it just right.