HOMELY

Yesterday morning I had an early but lovely awakening in my bed.

It did start rather abruptly though.

I awoke to the sound of something hitting the window, hard. Within in instant, I saw that the sun was already up, and that my cat, sleeping on the pillow beside me heard something too. I ran to the window, and confirmed that my immediate impression was right. A robin had hit the window, and was thankfully flying away.

It was not even 6 in the morning yet, and my alarm was set for 7:15. I had the best day shift, beginning at 9 with no signover, and a train that took less than half an hour to get me there. I lay back and tried to fall back asleep. I felt rested, actually, but the last hour is sometimes the sweetest. Indeed it was, but not because I was sleeping. 

After a little while, sleep was still eluding me, and I picked up my phone. It had a message for me. The book my daughter's English class was reading was now available for me to read on Libby, an e-reader linked to my library card. She had forgotten her book a school, and had received a message that she was meant to finish reading it for Tuesday. That was 6 days ago. With a ped day, alternating school days, a weekend and a strike, she had 

My teen came up sleepily as if on command, and curled up on my feet in my bed. She can usually sleep in very easily, and no longer asks for sleepovers, so it was a nice moment for me. I was awake for the day now, but that didn't mean I had to get up yet!

After a few wiggles, I offered her the book to read, when I finally had to get up to get ready. She was finished by the time I was ready, and I had a cozy memory to travel with me for the day.

THE THEORY OF MULTIPLE INTELLIGENCES

Challenges the idea of a single IQ

We all have these in differing aptitudes. The danger is to assume that our current strengths are our learning styles, but we can learn to be better in all of them (growth mindset). Also, what we are good at doesn't imply that we like to learn that way. Assumptions about learning are to be avoided. We learn in fluid and complex ways, and labeling a student as one type of learner would most often be a mistake.

1983 Howard Gardner (Harvard psychologist) et al 

2011 "Frames of Mind: The Theory of Multiple Intelligences"

1999 Thomas Armstrong  "7 Kinds of Smart" 

1999  David Lazear "Eight Ways of Teaching"

ORIGINAL SEVEN

1. linguistic/verbal

2. logical/mathematical

3. musical/rhythmic/harmonic

4. intrapersonal/introspection

5. interpersonal/social

6. kinesthetic/physical

7. visual-spatial

ACCEPTED EIGHT (since Frames of Mind written in 1995)

8. ecologic/naturalist

CONTROVERSIAL

9. existential/spiritual 

In other words:

word smart

number/reasoning smart

picture smart

body smart

music smart

people smart

self smart

nature smart

Eight Kinds of Smart

GRANDPA AND GRANDMA

My grandpa died 28 years ago. I still have strong memories of him, but most of the images that come to mind are still, based on the few photos I have of him, from a certain date that I can find in my photo collection. What is left are not the details of his face, but where we were, and how I felt, and what we were doing. I was happy where my grandpa was, but I think I was happy generally, as most of us fortunate kids are.

He died of lung congestion, in that vicious circle we play in medicine between kidney failure and heart failure, until we run out of options. I suppose you have to work backwards from a person's death to relive their life.

I think he died of iatrogenic causes, having been given gold for what was probably non-inflammatory arthritis from manual labour of a lifetime, but maybe gout. His go-to meal was meat and potatoes, after all, but likely full of garden vegetables and homemade canned food and a few scotch mints and a healthy dose of exercise. 

He was on dialysis for a few years. I don't think he had ever made a living will. I wonder how it ended sometimes. I hope it was quick, and that he was appropriately sedated. It's a tough way to go; breathless.

He was a farmer, and then a mayor with political ties to the NDP.  As a city girl, it was mostly PC or liberal politics around me. I dreamed of growing up on the farm, asking my parents to move to the country, or at least overseas, probably because we were close enough to it through my rural living grandparents. Grandpa had enormous hands, from the manual labour (and arthritis), and was always fixing stuff in the barn, had rifles in his basement, and loved a good golf game. He drove a truck, and my cousins and brother would jump in the back thoughtlessly and dare each other to sit on the gunnels unless we were moving fast. We would always pass through main street slowly, my grandpa raising his fingers to each passerby without his hand leaving the steering wheel. We would turn right past the granary, then left onto the highway. We hung out at the "old farm", and depending on the season,  we were watching the adults digging potatoes in the enormous garden, picking saskatoonberries, or  checking out the pussy willows around the slough. My cousins (boys) drove young and liked to aim for gophers. I don't remember them ever hitting any, but they probably did. My one chance to drive the tractor resulted in me pulling down part of the fence, when I realized too late that my excellent skills getting the cab through was not enough to have accommodated for the wider back end. After that, my aunt and grandma were the only ones to take me out, and in the car off the farmyard property!

My grandparents made it look easy. They worked hard, but they knew how to the do the job. I never saw my grandma walk around the block, but she could feed a crowd in a heartbeat, and drive the grain truck in synchrony with the combine in the late summer when the wheat was harvested. She was friendly, and busy, but dropped everything to watch her "stories" when they were on, a few hours of soap operas, doing busy work sometimes but not always. She had a pantry at the ready, with a garden in town and on the farm, and yet she still had the vanity to stuff her closet with clothes and had matching necklaces and clip-on earrings in every colour. She would regularly transition from what she was doing to playing the piano or organ or accordion. There was no downtime in that house. Work and music were the seemless soundtrack of our stay.

 Grandpa was the athlete, and the politician. Grandma was the musician, and housewife. They were a wonderful pair!

BOSE BLUETOOTH SPEAKER

 I love having a portable speaker, but it prefers to sync to my kid's ipod than to the phone 1 inch away, and usually when I have my hands wet or dirty, in the kitchen or in the garden, or disconnect when I inadvertently press a button.

Here are the instructions. The multifunction button is the critical one. Press the 3 dots (not the bluetooth) to play or pause. When there is a call, it can receive the call. Press a little longer, and the call gets rejected. Press again to end the call.

FOOD CATERING TO A 1500 CALORIE DIET

 I like the idea of a food plan by calories. This one on healthline by a nutritionist (this is the modern title - no longer a dietician) has a 5 day meal plan with 3 meals of 500 calories each. I used the Mifflin-St. Jeor online calculator that estimated my total daily expenditure to be 1862 calories a day, but if I wanted to lose weight, by a pound a week, it suggested 1489 for my "slightly active" lifestyle.

I feel like the breakfasts are a little much, but I am bored of toast and peanut butter, and if I eat a little less (which is really easy because 1 egg is plenty when they are suggesting 2), I leave room at the end of the day for chocolate!

AUTOTROPHS AND HETEROTROPHS

 My zoologist-in-training keeps me on my toes, but some terms don't always stick.  Autotrophic was a familiar word, but had little meaning, so I looked it up. Here is a comparison between autotrophs and heterotrophs.

An autotroph is an organism that produces its own energy. Admittedly, you have to have pretty small metabolism, so examples are some plants, algae and bacteria. Heterotrophs rely on consuming other organism in the food chain as they cannot produce all their organic compounds themselves. These include herbivores, omnivores, and carnivores, like humans!

Maybe it says too much about how my brain works, but it seemed like an excellent way to insult someone. Stop being such a heterotroph, and get it yourself!

500 OPEN WINDOWS

 Sometimes I may expect too much of my technology. 

Today I was told that I could not open another browser window phone, unless I deleted another, because I had reached the limit of 500, and had 471 open windows from more than a month ago!

So I have resolved to blog these ideas and links as quickly as possible. I am not great at slow and steady, so I am going to try to rip the bandage right off! Then I resolved to clean up at least once a month, so as to never have this happen again.  There are just so many interesting threads in life, and from so many interesting places!

I could do 2 a day and be done in a year, or 5 a day and be done in 100 days, but I have 5 days, so 100 pages a day it is! (Princess Pirate warned that she did not want to wake up and find me at the computer, so I promised I would go to bed in an hour. Too bad my computer took 5 minutes to warm up and my phone's screen saver went off in two! I am logged into my blog and have set the phone to a 5 minutes screen saver, so we are off to the races!

Editor's note: 1 hour later and I have only completed 4 blogs. A marathon ahead, so I better be off to bed.

WRITING INSPIRATIONS

 It's been a glorious week of unusually warm and dry spring weather. I have been trying to capitalize on it, since I hadn't had the chance to finish the yard before it froze last fall. It's hard to stay focused, with many distractions of plans and kids and dawdling filling the last few days. The weekend calls for rain for the next few days, and that'll be easier to justify writing when the days are wet.

What inspired me yesterday, though, was a series of audiobooks that I may have read as a youth by a prolific Christian writer from Alberta named Janette Oke. She had humble beginnings, being born in a log cabin and educated in a one room school. These are the western pioneer realities that gave rise to many of her stories. 

She and her pastor husband worked in Alberta and Indiana. In researching this blogpost, I saw that she retired in 2002 at the age of 67 and in concert with her husband's retirement. This meant that her writing career, that started when her family was grown, and ended when her husband's career was over,  seemed even more impressive given that her books were written in the span of 35 years! 

I had looked in my library and online over the years, and I never found her books, although she has written over 75. This recently changed due to a Covid "gift" when I was browsing an online borrowing app on my phone that is supported by my library. I found that it includes two of her book series that I recognized from the church library, or my mother's personal collection, growing up, and most importantly, several in audiobooks, so that I can listen and still get the day's work done.

I may have read the Seasons of the Heart series before, and I never did get into the Acts of Faith that I remember seeing (historical fiction before pioneer days never peaked my interest). Most recently, however, the CBC tv channel had a series called When Calls the Heart based on the Canadian West series, strangely named given it was about about a teacher named Miss Thatcher from big town Hamilton and society life who learns to love it in the mining town romantically named Hope Valley, Yukon. 

I have my issues with the relentless church language that inevitably pops up, and the whitewashed Hallmark channel who have made cringe-worthy but few real efforts to improve their formula, but I have my soft spots too. Oke was one of the "clean" romance novelists I was allowed to read as a child, and the alternatives are certainly bad in other ways that were just as contrived. Her fantasies can have their own issues, and the genre of Christian romance left much of the reality out of relationships. Christians around me didn't have much of a discussion about grey areas outside of marriage, and the idealism of these stories didn't help start the conversation. The male led church hierarchy, the martyr complexes (self-effacement to the obliteration of the ego leads to all sorts of Dr. Jekyl and Mr. Hyde scenarios), and the nearly predatory focus"bringing [vulnerable children] into the fold" have to be voiced as cautions to reading this type of literature. 

Yesterday I borrowed a book from the Prairie Legacy books, about a young girl learning the difference between right and wrong. It's a sweet read, if not a little simple, but it inspired me to write about some characters that I haven't thought about in a long while. 

My daughter thinks that I am mistaken to write something new when I haven't finished something old, but I think that I need to go where the spirit leads. Clearly, Janette Oke made no excuses for her writing a new idea. Thank goodness she didn't listen to feedback by a writing course representative that she "wasn't reading enough". At the time, she had admitted that she didn't have nearly as much time for reading as she would like, but while keeping track, would find herself reading over 100 books a year!

She has a surprising career that began 20 years after she married, at the age of 42, in 1977. She wrote down a story she had been thinking about for months. She actually took writing aptitude tests and this encouraged her. Her kids were teens, and somehow, as a pastor's wife, she made time to read and write. It took her three weeks to write her first story. After a first rejection, and months of research, she was invited to submit the manuscript, and published her first book 2 years later. It was called Love Comes Softly, and it would be the start of the series eight. This would eventually be turned into a tv movie produced for Hallmark, and was so popular with readers that their positive feedback would lead to the series of four that I just started.

It is clear that Janette Oke was a disciplined writer, and this was aided by her belief that this was her calling from God. She saw each book as a "paper missionary", and committed to write two adult books and one children's book a year. She became so well known that other author's asked to collaborate, and after retirement wrote a series with her daughter, who has also gone on to write her biography. I don't think a writer could ask for anything more than that.

Janette Oke wiki

Janette Oke from Canadian Christian Leaders

Book series in order

Interview with Janette Oke about the series When Calls the Heart (ignore the mansplaining commentary at the start and the micro-aggressions at the ending by Michael Landon Jr.)

Quotes from a wise woman

CELEBRATIONS BIG AND SMALL

Today started slowly, after a long night catching up from a short sleep following a night shift. I finished my breakfast and I took a chance to see if a friend was available for a lunch or walk, even so last minute.

She said yes and since her answers were short and her work usually busy, so I told her I meet her at her house, and I started to make plans to bring a picnic lunch.

She was totally ready to go for a walk, and was happily surprised I had brought lunch, because she had not yet eaten. We found a picnic table, and sat across from each other. It was so windy our lettuce would occasionally blow away, but it was nice enough and we were dressed for it.

She gave me credit for knowing the difference between a Canada goose and a mallard duck, and was impressed that I recognized kind of sedimentary light lime stone that was full of fossils and identified a flowering bush, which I only knew because I happen to have one in my front yard.

We had a lovely walk, and made plans for another, and I was grateful for the time in the chat.

When I got home my daughter was already there with her friend. I walked her through the local park to her dad’s and listened to her talk about her day. I don’t know if she’s being taken advantage of or being the one who takes advantage (teenagers are so hard to read), but it was great to spend a few minutes of her time, and she even took my advice to comb in hair conditioner before we left so that I could help her. 

MASON CONTACT

 

PRECISION CHIMNEY

Unfortunately disorganized, took a bunch of pictures, never came up with a quote.

QUEBEC ZOOLOGIST IN CENTRAL AMERICA

 Kevin Gauthier conference

CHEZ SAM

Once upon a time we stayed at a little hotel with bed and breakfast along the north shore of the Saint Laurence River at the village of Baie Sainte-Catherine. We were served bagels brought in from Montreal from where we had just come, which Princess Pirate happily preferred over the excellent food they served in the Cafe. 

Sonia was the chef and Pierre was the server and entertainment. He loved Samuel de Champlain and he gave me this reference for other important historical Quebec figures: Radio Canada Historical Figures

AVOCADO SUSHI DU VILLAGE

It was February 23rd, 2017, and I was eating alone at a local restaurant. I remember well a time when I could do this freely, and I enjoyed it. Sometimes I preferred to eat alone, when the food was good, and there was something to watch. In this case, I was sitting at the bar in front of the sushi chef's prep area. It was a perfect arrangement. Entertainment, ambiance and great eating.

A beautiful bite

Sitting at the sushi bar

Magic Garden (mushroom) Maki and Avocado Hosomaki 

Wakame salad

SUPERHERO NAMES

Amber - Tigereye

Aura - Ouralienne

Phoenix - Firebird

(Mother-Daughter)

PRINCESS PIRATE 2021

This is a year of red letter days. It's the first anniversary of the announcement of COVID19 pandemic. It was the first COVID birthday for PP. 

I thought it might be a disappointing day. It was a school day, and at the Ministry's insistence, the kids were learning online that day. That turned out to be a great thing, because it was the last week that her whole class was together for over 10 weeks, and she loves the chaos and kids in the whole group. Two of her classes sang to her, and she was equally embarrassed and thrilled with the attention. 

January 27th, she notices catfood crumbs on the stairs, and vacuums them clean!

February 7th, we watch the Superbowl and ate lunch at the latest time ever; 16:30!

February 22nd, she cross-country skis faster than me!

February 23rd, she buys and makes 24 sandwiches for a local charity.

March 8th, she finally agrees to skate at the nearby rink before the ice melts. It takes her another two weeks to admit that she liked it!

March 11th, she goes to bed without asking me to tuck her in and sing her to sleep.

March 23rd, she goes to the library to pick up a fantasy book surprise package that I organized, and can hardly put one of the books down. I think this is the first book I have seen her read since the summer!

March 19th, she's onboard with a week long sugar free experiment, and rocks it. Breakfasts are not the same, but fudge energy balls and fruits filled the dessert gap. 

March 26th, the sugar fast is broke with maple fudge shared with a friend.

April 4th, she is up with the bunnies for an Easter egg hunt. (It's April 19th and she still hasn't found the one on the exercise bike!)

April 9th, she is asking every day she has school whether I work, hoping that I will be absent when she and her friend are together after school.

April 16th, she sniffs at the egg salad and can only eat a couple bites because I slightly overcooked it! She goes from not hungry to so hungry, and likes a food item one day, and won't eat it the next!

April 17th, we walk with J and she is interested and respectful and patient (it took 2 hours to walk 10,000 steps at half speed!)

April 18th, I convince her that she does love the Botanical gardens, but when the plan to go downtown meets traffic and detours, she doesn't complain and we make a day of it at Parc Ile Bizard with poutine for lunch (La Roulotte) in Sainte-Geneviève, a wander on the CEGEP campus, and a blizzard before we head home. It's been a beautiful dry spring.

It's a constant battle to get her to do the things she can do. Knots in her hair, unmade bed, glasses so smudgy I wonder how she can see, same socks from yesterday, a little smelly, pjs and pants a little short but she doesn't want to go shopping, or do anything in general, except begrudgingly! (Her favourite way to finally agree is "Fine!") She is full-blown disorganized teening!

The school year starts with a new campus and she is taking the bus once again. This time, though, I am not welcome to come with her, and everyday she gets herself there early on her own.

She puts herself to bed, saying goodnight with a hug, and going downstairs to “tuck” herself in, 

LOCAL QUEBEC VILLAGE LEGENDS

4 Legends:

Grosses-Roches (Gaspésie) et les Chaudrons du Diable (on private property). A local sawmill owner complained to his priest that some of the loggers were skipping their job and going fishing. The priest went to investigate and found 3 large basins that look like cauldrons. 2 were filled with crystal clear water, that only distilled by God, but the third held dark water that the loggers had been fishing in with the eels visible swimming on top. He pronounced the place diabolic and forbid his parishioners from visiting there on the threat of being struck down by God.

Lac Pohénégamook (Bas-Saint-Laurent)- since 1901 there have been reports of a monster  swimming in the lake, and can be searched for with a 25 km walk around the lake. It has been affectionately called Ponik by the inhabitants, and described as a giant fish, a serpent, with a hump on its back, and two large golden horns.

Grand-mère (Mauricie) - named by the Algonquins "Kokomis" because of a rock that looked like a grandma on the shores of Saint-Maurice's River. The chief's son was engaged to marry a young woman of the area in exchange for a canoe full of furs, but he drowned and never returned. The rock was moved to a municipal park during the construction of a hydro power plant.

Rigaud - Le champ des guérets (labour) - José-le-diable worked to plant his potato field on a sunday. Whether the legend was a transformation from potatoes to rocks, or the rocks fell from the sky, the truth is that the field of stones was brought to the place by ancient glaciers, and left a river of smooth round stones.

Charlevoix:

Oral tradition is how these legends originated. Recurrent themes are religion, with associations with the devil if people are breaking rules. Strongmen are common rural heros. The landscape can feature in the legent, like the three hills near Notre-Dame-des-Monts, that resembles the silhouette of a half-submerged woman, or like a rock on L'Isle-aux-Coudres that has tears that fall as though human.

Characters include le Bonhomme Sept Heures, the Crow, and the Flying Canoe (Chasse-galerie). 

LOCAL CELEBRITY: BARRED OWL

February is a nesting month for the barred owl, and we don't have a lot to do these days, so most of us checked out the local woods to see our local celebrity. 

There were paths leading from the usual paths to the tree we found it in. It was there for only a few weeks and then we couldn't see it again.

It was like a catholic pilgrimage to icons of old. Instead of a stigmata, we were looking for a nest. Instead of a statue, we were seeking an owl.

 

A CRAFT A DAY

Pom-pom monster

 

BEAN SALAD

I am always running out of chick peas and a mixed salad in a can that I can't always find in stock. I have in the past bought a mixed bean can and realized that it didn't come with the dressing. That dressing is gold! Although it has pieces of onion and is acidic enough to sting the eyes on opening, Princess Pirate loves it! It's my go-to protein with pasta (PASTA IS NOT A MEAL!) when on hand because it only takes the time a can-opener takes to open it. 

I have tried a few italian dressings and PP prefers plain red kidney beans to anything I have come up with. Last night I finally found a combination dressing that made a kidney bean salad that I enjoyed eating!

From The Amazing Legume page 87, I modified the black bean salad recipe.

540 mL can of red kidney beans

2 T canola oil

2 T white vinegar

1 minced garlic clove

1/2 tsp dijon mustard

dash of dried oregano

LOCAL ARTISANS I LOVE

Chocolates by Susan

Home-woven hand towels by Susan

Hand picked the handle. Made by PA Atelier. A joy to use!

 

PRINCESS PIRATE ART

 

Self-portrait combining pointillism and symbolism. From the top: Fire, Water, Air, Earth, Music, Sun, Moon, Spirit, Ice. Much of it was done on the floor bent over her canvas.

Such incredible details and careful application of time. Her teacher thought the scales were too small, but she was confident that what she was doing was the right thing to do. She was so right! 

WHAT I FOUND IN A POCKET IN THE LAUNDRY

Two missing masks, an eraser and 3 used kleenex

 

CAT VOMIT CLEAN UP

My cat is shedding like crazy, and for the first time in her 6 years, she is giving the gift of hairballs. Recently it was in my bed, which should have been no big deal except that I only discovered it in the sheets after I had been to bed! My least favourite spot is on a carpet that is a true minority in the house and needed expensive dry cleaning last time it occurred. The worst was on the stairs carpet because I foolishly tried to chase her to a place that is easy to clean (the basement cement would be great, but is never the location chosen), but she wasn't scared into swallowing it back temporarily. She just ran leaving a trail of vomit and half eaten kibble from the top to the bottom stair! 

This carpet looks a little more worn, but the technique seems to work.

First, soak up and wipe off the bulk of the debris as soon as possible.

Second, sprinkle with baking soda. When dry, vacuum.

Third, use hydrogen peroxide and gently brush between the fibers (I use an old clean toothbrush disinfected in the dishwasher). 

Lastly, blot dry and leave to airdry. 

 

CLEANING UP AND GIVING AWAY

I had to do some deep cleaning to make some beloved toys presentable enough to give away. I love a good design, and with the removal of 4 simple screws, I gave this baby piano a good clean, inside and out. Turns out that the black foam had disintegrated to a degree that I opted to remove it entirely, which played with the sound. I added a layer of insulation tape to good effect but found the keys moved around too much, which still left a distracting sound in addition to the keystroke. I cut smaller pieces to eliminate lateral movement, and screwed the panel back on. On to another family! I hope it gives them as much joy!

 

SUNSETS TO RIVAL SANTORINI

 This winter was amazing for snow and sunsets. Having short days for a seasons makes it easy to be out and about when the sun is setting, around 4 or 5 in the afternoon. While the sunsets were largely yellows and oranges out our back windows, the sky opposite was often even more impressive with pinks and blues reflecting at the opposite horizon. 

This reminds me of the dilemma my friend had for accomodations on Santorini. If you read the reviews, people staying on the west side of the island said they had the best views, and people staying on the east side of the island said they had the best views. It seemed to me strange not to plan to watch the sunset on the east side of the island, but we ended up staying on the west side of the island and saw them there too. Both, as reported, were spectacular. We couldn't, however, see both sides of the sky at the same time, like we did all winter, walking east and west for exceptional views, except for the very tip of the island where we ate supper one night with crowds at our feet and wishing us to hurry up and finish our meal.

Western sky with a rising moon over Terra Cotta Park

Western view with setting sun over a bay on the Northshore near L'anse à l'orme
(Elm pebble beach)

Eastern sky with dramatic blues

Westward from the shore of Stewart Hall

SIMPLE NO-SEW COUCH FIX

I have an old couch with a pullout bed that I got covered years ago. One of the cushions always ends up gravitating back, making one cushion crooked and an area in front that always collects crumbs and debris. I had a pair of socks that wasn't pretty enough to use on my sock quilt project, but one of the pair was perfectly intact. So I filled it with other ugly socks with holes, and tied off the end, and stuffed it behind the cushion. The couch cushions now match up perfectly and both are comfortable to sit on. Sometimes the little things in the background make the biggest difference!

 

CROWN SHYNESS

Fente de timidité entre les arbres

Growing up on the plains, I didn't spend much time in the forests of Saskatchewan, so what I know is from being a tourist to BC, the Rockies, European forests, and mostly the Canadian shield of Quebec and Ontario. Turns out that what not all that I see has just grown out of the ancient past. Mostly I walk in wooded parks that have been planted in the last 50 years, with a few scattered ancient trees amongst younger ones. It's been a rare walk that I took in an old growth forest, and many years ago. I wonder what they look like now.

A dear friend recommended a book called The Hidden Life of Trees. It's quite an astonishing book written by a man who spent his whole life in forests, first as part of an industry, and then as a conservationist. It's not an easy read, as most of us have never had the luxury of being in an ancient forest like he describes. 

The society of trees that Peter Wohlleben describes is the stuff of my childhood fantasy fiction novels that easily moved me to believe that trees were sentient and could wake up and talk and lumber along side the children of Man in Narnia. Although more attentive readers to go to great lengths to make differences between the Ents of Middle Earth and the tree dryads that Lewis took from Greek mythology, there are some trees that still speak to me. 

This one on the walk down to the train station feels like it is doing a slow dervish spin (did it start counterclockwise too?). 

Mr Wohlleben takes this to a whole new level, describing a rich shared environment below the surface that I only occasional imagine when I seen the symbiotic relationship (or shyness/competition/abrasion) between the crowns of trees to form a suburban canopy. 

Timidité des cimes à Bois de Liesse

With a great number of trees in our local forests being ash trees, which are being cut down faster in some mysterious arborist agenda than the Emerald Borer Beetle that infects them, I sometimes walk in sadness through woods that used to give me joy. It is overwhelming to see the destruction of man on so many levels on earth, but imagining that the healthy trees are possibly communicating with and feeding older members of the family gives me comfort. 

Being able to see the canopy spaces between trees gives me a sense of relief that the natural world has good ways to accomodate each other and continue to survive and evolve and thrive in beauty and function.

Of note, the only nearby old growth forest I could find nearby in Quebec is the Beckett woods near Sherbrooke, not far from the camping site we have booked for July. I look forward to checking it out!

IDEAS WITH NAHLAH AYED: DORIS LESSING

I have only read one Doris Lessing book, and I found it on the shelf of the local library. Like Frankenstein or Dracula, The Fifth Child was twisted in a way that drew you in. There was a certain growing fear that was mitigated by the fact that whatever horror was described, it was faced unflinchingly in its own raw truth. Whether it was meant as an exploration of one child too many, or the realization that your are raising a psychopath, I remember the "beast" of a boy to this day.

Possibly on the other end of the spectrum of her work, I have Love, Again on my shelf to read chosen solely by the title, premise of a 65 year old woman in love, and the author's familiarity to write a good story. I didn't know anything about this author's life, but was drawn to her fierce character. What I did not know was that she grew up in Iran, and then in the country now known as Zimbabwe, and went on to win a Nobel Prize for her body of literature. She was recently the subject of a CBC podcast. Take a listen.

On reviewing her work, I found a Massey Lecture of 5 essays that she wrote called Prisons We Choose to Live Inside. It's funny how a title can resonate, and ignite the immediate desire to know more.

IDEAS WITH NAHLAH AYED: SO MANY WAYS TO LISTEN TO SO MANY INSPIRATIONS

To be honest, it's too hard to just include the four episodes that recently moved me. It began with a chance listen on the one of two radios I own. It was a short commute home from the grocery store, and I wasn't finished by the time I got home and had to unpack. Fortunately, I was able to transition immediately to the CBC listen app. When it finished, I realized that I had an episode to catch up on, and another in the future, so I turned to my podcast app and was able to catch up. I sent the links to my email to check when I had some free time. Later, sitting at my computer, and thinking I would present the links in this blog, I took the links to the webpage, and so many of the topics in the list drew my interest. From geometry to race relations, historical figures, authors and popular podcasters all feature with nearly an hour long (or more) of well researched, well edited focus on topics that are current and often hit a deep chord. 

I remember when the show was weekly, and tended to the religious. I think the current format has changed with the times, and may be avoiding Christianity as a reaction to its former exclusive take on things, but it fills in the gaps that my narrow (not so) modern upbringing craves. Classics, important historical figures, and challenges to our modern thoughts feature often. I was challenged in my thinking by Irrationality. Now I am listening to the Geometric Order and travelling in my mind to DC and Venice. I am planning to learn from The Death of Leisure. I will never forget the courage of Ahmet Altan, and wish to change the world to free him, and the tragedy of Semmelweiss. I so admire and so recommend regular intake of this important show.

IDEAS WITH NAHLAH AYED: BLACK MYTHS ON SCREEN

 I was driving home Thursday night, revelling in the recent extension in the curfew, able to be out getting groceries in the dark for the first time in 2 months. This was doubly exciting, both for the relief of the restriction but also, given to last minute achievements, a return to a familiar routine of being out when reasonable and organized people had already left the store and were already at home. 

I came in on the second of a series of three about the falsehoods purpotrated on screen about race and sexual orientation. I am constantly aware of the myths told in tv and books and in the media about females and medical realities, but this was a reminder of the myths I was aware of, and others that I had no idea about. There was vocabulary to describe what I had understood but couldn't label. It was an important education. 

I loved black and white films, and I feel like I watched every Katherine Hepburn movie that was ever made, back when libraries still rented reels, and my teacher dad still had a film projector to borrow from work, and my parents still had a projector screen in the closet to pull out when needed. I loved the footwork of Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire, the cheeky tomboy characters "Kate" would sometimes play, and later the controversial films that educated me in the debates the world was having when my homogenous world still wasn't discussing them, like teaching evolution in Inherit the Wind (with Spencer Tracy), interracial marriage in Look Who's Coming To Dinner (with Katherine Hepburn, Spencer Tracy and Sidney Poitier),  and antisemitism in A Gentleman's Agreement, although Ideas goes on to explain that there was more to that movie than meets even the careful eye, as it was meant to be about homosexuality, but that couldn't even be brought yet to screen.

The Ideas program explores the stories beneath the stories, is worth a careful listen.

FUDGE BALLS

I met a woman once who had painted flowers on the fronts of all of her kitchen cupboards. It showed a freedom and creativity in ownership that I had yet to express in my house.

Now, inside my kitchen cupboards, I have written lists and recipes of my go-tos. One of the recipes is for a chocolate energy ball that I call fudge balls, and they rival chocolate macaroons in test and calories, but there is no added sugar.

The recipe often has to be altered for what I have on hand, but the ideal recipe is as follows:

1 cup almonds
1 cup walnuts

Pulse these together first to get them into small bits. (I forget this sometimes, and the chunks never break down quite right after you add the dates, but they still taste great).

2 cups dates (Dalton's work great, but they tend to be very hard, so I warmed them up with water in a saucepan, like you would to make date squares (without the margarine), until they rehydrate and soften a little, and add water in the food processor as well, to the consistency of a firm dough)

1/3 cup cocoa powder (officially scant 1/2 but without coconut to roll in, less is more)

Ideally flaked coconut to roll in, but don't need. Refrigerate to reduce stickiness if without.

CEDAR PARK

I am grateful for this little park,

Trees swaying in the wind,

Footsteps crunch on icy snow,

Squirrels running to and fro.

I walked circles on the path

Until the setting sun

Threw off lemon and tangerine.

The night sky shouted, "Done!"

And then came down in crashing dark

While street lights lit the gloom.

SNOW GAMES

Princess Pirate in her natural habitat, training dragons and defending against monsters from angry coconuts to hydra

Between the two of us, we almost didn't go out at all. The day had gone fast and the sun was setting.  We were supposed to get some exercise and we both wanted to do it outside. Princess Pirate was ready to go out when I saw that the snow had started to turn to rain and changed my mind. I thought about the options and the outdoors was the best place to do it. If we dressed properly, we'd be fine even with the weather. I sent her out the front to check if the sunset changed the sleet to snow. Now it was her turn to back out, but I started getting out our snow pants and the most rain resistant winter jackets before we could change our mind again.

I had the forethought to save her good parka and hat and a pair of mitts to stay dry for the next day at school. We went out to the local park dragging the toboggan. PP didn't want to sled, but she liked to be pulled around the paths and through the woods. I wished I could run for longer, but whatever I could do was going to be good cardio. 

We did a few rounds, climbed mountains of snow, and fell a lot. It was sticky heavy wet snow, and the walking through it was unpredictable. On moment we fell deep into it, with our boot stuck, leaving us to fall forward so that we could turn around to dig ourself out. I thought that if you could film us and then erase the snow, like the nighttime technology that makes it seems like day, it would be ridiculous looking, with us falling forward and sideways oddly and at random times!  The snow was so thick in the air it was cloudy in the light. 

We were about to leave, and my idea to go sledding was not popular enough to go to the school where the hill was larger. I had her in the sled and I tried to drag her up the tiny hill in the park before we left. Again, PP stated her dislike of sledding, so I tried to slide down but found it too slow to be fun. She had made a body slide in the meantime and told me to check it out. It was pretty good! I brought the sled up for her to try once before we left. She took it down and had a little fun. I came down, thinking I would pull her home but by the time I was at the bottom, she was going back up for another round. This is when the game began. 

Wait for me, I cried, as I reached the bottom of the hill, and as I raced up, she grinned and slid down before I could get to the top! I ran downhill as fast as I can, and she laughed and raced up the other side of the hill. I lunged after the sled, but was too slow, and laughing chased her uphill again fruitlessly. She jumped in the toboggan and laughed gleefully, keeping ahead of me, and taking run after run down the hill in the sled.

By the end we were breathless, laughing, and PP liked sledding again. It felt like a Laurel and Hardy skit! It was the highlight of both our weeks.  

We walked home happy and wet, surprised to see it was 2 hours later and we had forgotten to eat supper!

Another fond memory to remember on the days when it seems like the weather might not be a good enough excuse to go outside.

EMILY DICKINSON POEMS

In this short life

that only lasts an hour

How much

How little

Is within our power.

-----------------------

If I can stop one heart from breaking,

I shall not live in vain;

If I can ease one life the aching, 'Or cool one pain,

Or help one fainting robin

Unto his nest again,

I shall not live in vain.

------------------------

I'm nobody! Who are you?

Are you nobody, too?

Then there's a pair of us - don't tell!

They'd banish us, you know...

How dreary to be somebody!

How public, like a frog

To tell your name the livelong day

To an admiring bog!

BOOK REPORT: BECOMING BY MICHELLE OBAMA

This is a well written book. It seemed like it should be an important perspective to hear from, and a reminder of the better days that was the Obama administration. Michelle's vocabulary is excellent, and her speech clear and sometimes beautifully poetic. I was able to borrow Becoming as an audiobook, and I loved that it was read by her. 

This was not an easy read (listen) for me. I am finding it easier these days to listen to a book to completion than sit down and read it, but it seemed very long to get to the 18th hour of this book.  

I expected to be conflicted, but I didn't expect to dislike her so much. I was expecting honesty with self-reflection. Instead it seemed superficial, as she didn't seem to consider the internal conflicts that must have existed.  It seemed weird to me to hear her talk about her life in the same way I had uncomfortably heard others talk with insensitivity in terms of their own advantages. I was unconvinced by her argument that she identified with the Southside of Chicago, and therefore not given to temptation of the privileges afforded her living in the White House for 8 years. It seemed like Barack had the moral compass, or pride to avoid the appearance of entitlement, but she comes across as selfish , inflexible and spoiled (taking from her parents every thing they offered her, next her husband who always seemed to say yes but has his own inflexible ways about him). This led me to conclude that she was either an entitled brat from the get-go, or  self-deluded about her extraordinary life as FLOTUS, or worse, a blatant example of white racism and black entitlement from start to finish.

I know how that sounds. It sounds terrible. It makes me uncomfortable to say it. After what has happened in black history in North America, and around the world, it is absolutely necessary to absorb the anger and hurt and deep scars that persist in unconscious and dangerous biases that still exist in too many forums, institutions, and minds to this day, including mine. But I couldn't shake the growing certainty that Michelle Obama has a troubling (is it even unconscious?) bias in the opposite direction. I even wondered sometimes if she realized her "black" husband was also white. 

What also bothered me was how a woman with such a personal story, from rags to riches, and calling herself powerful, manages to spend her autobiography over and over confusing her life with her husband's. It would have been easier for me to accept that she wrote a biography of Barack. This bothered me deeply, having just been blown away by Melinda Gates' book The Moment of Lift. Maybe it was not fair in my expectations, as I had not really considered the wife of Bill Gates, or known anything about her public persona, so I could be surprised and impressed with who she was. I was more aware of Michelle as an entity beyond Barack Obama's wife, and had felt she represented an active partner in his presidency. I was truly disappointed. I had to reflect on my own incredible sensitivity and bias to the omnipresent gender inequity in my personal life while carefully interpreting what Michelle must have faced at the intersection of gender and race, but even through these lenses,  I didn't feel like I was seeing much of the person of Michelle Obama. She gave captions of her sequential roles (daughter, student, lawyer, advocate, wife, mother, FLOTUS), but never really seemed to show herself. The person I was able to glimpse between the roles, who I was left with, I didn't like very much.

Michelle Obama, like all human subjects, should be a complex character with many stories. She repeatedly insists that she is frank and personal, but she never seems to consider her own internal conflicts. She wants us to believe that she chose a career and her kids stability for the right reasons, but when Barack becomes POTUS, she finally just gives up that same valued career and moves her kids to where her husband lives. I expected her to feel torn in some way, but she gives no hint of regret that she didn't do it years before, nor discuss the difficulties of leaving those paths behind. She says that it was great to have him around every evening with no acknowledgement that it was her decision to stay in Chicago all the years before. Which is it? Did she make a mistake all those years? Or if it was the right thing, how did she deal with giving up all that in order to live in the White House? In another anecdote, she is offered support by the wife of a colleague in DC in preparation for the days ahead, which she rejects, finds judgemental and dismisses as irrelevant, but when her senator husband becomes the president, she then complains that she wasn't prepared enough for the very role that others saw coming, not acknowledging her own hubris in this deficit.

Meanwhile, she went on to minimize the criticisms she should have had for Barack. How his vision completely bulldozed over her independent fulfilling professional and maternal life balance. Instead of exploring this, she blames faceless politics, and talks about going on a wonderful date 4 months into the presidency for the first time, as though having her husband listening through dinner one time could make up for this. 

Growing up in South Chicago, with her mother fiercely advocating for her getting an education, and getting out before it got bad, by being accepted to Princeton, and moving out in the way she criticized others for doing, you would think she would find it unfamiliar and at least mildly conflicting to travel to Hawaii for every vacation, or mention the irony in taking private planes and helicopters across multiple states New York restaurant that serves local food (and is impossible to get a table at).

No bad breath on a first kiss with a smoker. Total acceptance of the fluky way her impractical smart husband became the President, who could have been a drain on her feminist psyche if they didn't have the money and staff to clean up after him and cook dinners. He could have just a likely ended up as bum. She got lucky. Her neighbourhood deteriorated but she wasn't living there anymore. She got lucky. But instead of humility and insight, she puts a romantic shine on it, and leaves out all the conflict. The spaces between the lines she writes are so far apart as to appear disingenuous to the reader. 

A GOOD WEEK

 My week was a weird mix of meeting and failing demand, but in both circumstances I just keep moving forward. It didn't feel successful, but it did meet the Churchill criterion of moving from failure to failure without losing enthusiasm. 

I normally feel a twinge of regret missing a holiday that everyone else has time to celebrate, but it didn't happen this time. Valentine's came and went, and I didn't try and make up for it the days that followed, like inevitably happens with other holidays that my work schedule messes up.

We have had the best winter for snow, with temperatures in the double digits seeming tropical compared to the deep freeze next door in the western provinces.  -18 with windchill is not my preferred temperature for anything, but when you see -38 without windchill where your family lives, it's hard not be grateful!

I decided today should be a celebration of that snow. The driveway was shovelled and I had the equipment, so I made today a winter pentathlon event: a walk in the woods (the squirrels were cautious and acrobatic; the birds enthusiastically celebrating the mild weather and lengthening day), skating, cross country skiing, snow shoeing, and sledding (with involuntary screaming - those bumps in the snow were really well camouflaged but I felt them if I couldn't see them!) 

I even had a chance to go shopping for a few items for the first time since the restrictions lifted last Monday to allow "non-essential" shopping again, including pens and bras and underwear that were almost critical in need after a year of making do! It was quite a pleasure to see a variety of choices, and yet have so little drive to purchase most of it!

My neighbourhood feels a little closer this week. My neighbour fell in his house, and called the ambulance. The firetruck and ambulance lights flashed into my living room and I looked to see where it was coming from. My closest neighbour ("the John") was okay, but my neighbour past him, Nick, had called 911. Across from him live my friends who look after him, like I try and look after John, and I gave them a quick call. Turns out he refused to go, after they told him his heart and lungs were fine. The trouble was that he couldn't walk. When I learned a couple of days later that he didn't go with the ambulance but he couldn't walk, I called him to offer my help. To my surprise and delight, he accepted, and when I told him that he broke his ankle and needed to go to the hospital for a cast, he took my advice and went later that afternoon. 

It may take a village to raise a child, but it's nice to know that the village can take care of the elderly among us as well. I know altruism is self-serving, but when it has a twin purpose that benefits someone else, it is a nice feeling to have done something right.

Still, my favourite memory was after school when my daughter was combing her knotted hair. She let me make her a snack I have offered her for years, and for the first time she said yes to the classic ants (raisins) on a celery (filled with PB) log. I was tired, having come home from work at 4 am, but awakened early as usual by my cat at dawn. I had eaten breakfast in the early afternoon and I was sitting with my coffee, listening to her talk about her day. She had started on a rant about her math teacher, who she dislikes, and I was preparing his defence in his absence when what she said made me laugh so hard that it stopped her in her tracks. I wish I could remember exactly how she said it, but it was a perfect combination of her literal mind and humour. Essentially, her teacher had said that they had two and half hours of homework, but how was it possible that the very teacher that taught her how to add minutes would take 2-50 minute classes, add 30 minutes of homework, and conclude that this was 2 1/2 hours of math! In her mind, it was ludicrous for her math teacher not to realize that it was a mere 2 hours and 10 minutes of math!

It was a good moment for me, and her. A favourite memory. A successful work week. Mortality may nip at my heels, but I am still standing. The hours of crushing isolation threaten to make time futile, but all in all, a good week.

LIGHT DROPS TO THE BOTTOM

Susanne Strater pastel magic reminds me of Place-des-Arts

 

FOR MY NEXT HAIRCUT - LAYERS!

 

WINTER IS MY FAVOURITE SEASON

 January, February

You are my favourite months

When there is snow to ski and shoe

Snowballs linger in the trees

Clouds heap up like mountains

Pink bases in yellow skies

Warm clothes and soup and tea 

Hot chocolate with marshmallows too

UPCYCLING CHRISTMAS CRAFT

I hate that some snacks come in packages that are garbage forever, and although I try and buy them as little as possible, a future with no chips or candy bar seems impossible! I try and buy chocolate chips from the bulk food store, but some of the varieties are not available or a good alternative, so I end up with bags that a normal person would throw away. I wash them and save them to use them to separate items for food storage, and, on this occasion, to make a Christmas craft.

What I did learn is that the white inside shows the outside, so I wouldn't recommend chipits bags if I did it again, but the silver lining was very pretty. The trick is to cut a straight line, which I did not do that carefully, and sometimes regretted. But the end effect was very pleasing and I look forward to decorating with it next year! 

Glue the end and basket weave to a guide in the shape of your choosing. Trim.

 

GRATEFUL

I am grateful for hair on my head and face and body. I am grateful that my skin protects me and does not hurt or itch or ooze or bleed. I am grateful for an immune system that can fight infection and make antibodies from a vaccine to prevent disease. I am grateful that my head doesn’t hurt. I am grateful for eyes that blink. I am grateful for vision. I am grateful for my nose that I breathe through and smell with. I am grateful for smell. I am grateful for my ears that hear, and keep me from being dizzy. I am grateful for taste, and the teeth I have that allow me to chew, and a tongue that allows me to swallow. I am grateful for my voice and the ability to be able to communicate. I am grateful for breath without pain or difficulty. I am grateful for a steady heart beat that can speed up when I run, and slow down when I sleep. I am grateful to eat with appetite, without choking, and can enjoy my food and drink. I am grateful that I have no nausea. I am grateful that I digest painlessly, and that my bowels function. I am grateful for a body without cancer. I am grateful for a normal blood pressure. I am grateful for joints that work. I am grateful to be able to sit up straight and stand up and walk. I am grateful for a body that follows my brain’s commands. I am grateful for control of my limbs and bladder and bowels. I am grateful to be able to touch and feel touch. I am grateful for the pleasure to be able to stretch and stand and jump and take the stairs almost unconsciously. I am grateful to be able to sleep. I am grateful to be able to laugh. I am grateful to be able to sing. I am grateful to be able to think and love and work and play. I am grateful for the body I have, healthy and beautiful in its ordinary glorious normal function!

BOOK REPORT: ENCOUNTERS WITH ANIMALS

 I learned about the Durrell family like I have learned so many things over the last years: by watching tv. CBC GEM had the Masterpiece show called The Durrells, and it had just enough character, truth, insanity, and showcasing the natural beauty of Corfu. The family become even more interesting to me when I realized that two of the the children were authors, and the stories could be accessed in part by the stories written by zoologist youngest child Gerry. 

It still makes me laugh that I ended up on vacation in Crete because my friend wanted to go to Corfu, but didn't realize her mistake until we got there. I was only mildly disappointed, as I would have been happy to have gone to Corfu based on the show alone, but I think my friend was more interested in the vacation home view than the culture or history or mythology!

I don't remember where I picked up the second hand copy of Encounters with Animals, but I thought it might be a good book to read with Princess Pirate on summer vacation. We did read a few chapters together, and I am forever grateful for the stories of life in the Brazilian pantanal after dark, and the highlighted animals like the West African Kusimanse. The ideas of naturalism of that era, however, were as colonialist as the European's views on land rule, and it was difficult to read the seemingly insensitive and imperialistic collection of rare animals as though they were collectibles and not sentient beings.

Gerald Durrell was a great writer and a patient naturalist of another time. I appreciated the stories in spite of the time, but it was a little too far for my Princess Pirate. 

TIME WARP AND BLACK HOLES

 I am finding that my worlds are increasingly disparate, and that the one that I enjoy the most is the one that resembles the state that most of us aspire too; that is to say, independently wealthy. This is a problem, as I am not married to an earner, I do not retire with a pension, and I am not even as wealthy as I was before I divorced an increasing number of years ago. I should be worried. I am being bombarded by tweets and posts and documents from well meaning colleagues and friends as well as any news that I seek out with increasingly stressing news of the second wave and the virus' mutation and the limited units of vaccines and the moral dilemmas of a crumbling systems on every front, and yet I am at peace.

Is this the point of no return in burnout? Or am I healthy to enjoying the task at hand, sorting through the things at home that give me joy and taking on tasks that have little to no meaning but beauty? The decorating for Christmas was only seen by myself and my teen. Is my life futile? Is every act futile? Then why does it feel good to reorganize the decoration in anticipation of a more organized and streamlined advent next year? I have been abandoned by friends I love most as easily as discarded takeaway container. For them, living their lives is not much changed without me even if mine has radically suffered. I am trying to replace their attention with things? Is this good coping or bad? 

If I find the clearing of my social calendar a relief, with incremental advancing of a life lived so far behind that I thought I would die in a frantic race to keep up with the world around me (even though in many ways I am way off to the side of the rat race and most social calendars, not having even adopted family or social demand). I struggle to stay social as an act of survival, given my antisocial introverted tendencies that have been luxuries I have lived without for most of my adult life. 

Is this indulgent hedonism that allows me to finish the Martha December edition within 2 weeks of receiving it? Or is it a gift to make my way through my boxes to discover that I am never going to repair the dozens of colourful socks that we have worn through only to cut the usable bits into squares and rectangles and imagine they could become a quilt to pass on to the next generation? Finishing a book in the bath, listening to an audiobook while I do laundry and cook and clean to its completion of a task. Is this how a good life looks? Or is it indulgent? Naive? Entitled? Insensitive? I have felt in the past all of these conflicts, but somehow in this grey January with the brightness the lengthening days bring to it, I am content. To do the mundane at my pace and enjoy the pleasure of the moment is a gift that I am grateful for today, in part, because I know I am able to, when others are not.