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