Bombastic, attention-seeking, attention-getting and so gosh-darn pretty.
A day trip into the small town of Moròn proffered glimpses of a Cuba once rich with promise and opportunity.
The concrete structures veiled with rusty wrought-iron curlicues would benefit from a coat of paint. But the power and might of buildings such as this Hotel Perla De La Norte call to mind the blacks and whites of Key Largo or Bold Venture, Bogart and Bacall’s radio plays set in pre-Castro Havana.
Last night I attended a fundraiser on the island for the people of Sendai, the place of the recent earthquake, tsunami and worrisome nuclear leaks.
The event was held in Cates Hill Chapel, a modest cedar-lined pitched roof building, tucked between towering cedar trees and Homeboy’s A-frame school. Driving up to it in the night the chapel glowed with the activity within — no street lights on Bowen. Darkness doesn’t just fall here, it crashes.
Inside played some beautiful Celtic folk music with various tin whistles, a bodhran (Irish drum) and a lovely Celtic harp.
Midway thru the little coffee house-style evening. a woman who, like me, lived and taught English in Japan for about a year, rose to read a letter from ‘Michiko,’ a friend in Japan.
Michiko relayed a series of stories about life in the Sendai area since last month’s earthquake: A four-year-old boy who falls asleep in the day because the aftershocks make him too afraid to sleep at night.
A boy who found his grandmother, lifeless, on top of a muddy wardrobe.
A schoolbus full of kindergarten-age children who were to graduate the next day, clasping one another, gone.
“They are now stars in the sky,” said the letter.
Michiko wrote that there are hundreds of stories like that. I cannot imagine. I don’t want to imagine.
The woman here has kept in touch with three of the people she met while in Japan. She’s been able to track down only two of them since March.
The fragility of life.
Following the reading of the letter, a musician approached the mike saying, ” I know only two songs with the words, ‘Rise Again.’ ”
And he sang The Mary Ellen Carter, an inspirational song about triumphing over great odds. It was a hugely popular Canadian folk song circa 1979, by Nova Scotia singer Stan Rogers.
In looking for a link to post here this morning I learned that one man credited the song with saving his life. A rust-bucket ship was carrying a load of coal from Virginia to Massachusetts and when a storm rose up the ship went down. The man struggled to keep afloat and when he thought he would finally lose consciousness the words from the song came back to him:
And you, to whom adversity has dealt the final blow With smiling bastards lying to you everywhere you go Turn to, and put out all your strength of arm and heart and brain And like the Mary Ellen Carter, rise again.
Rise again, rise again—though your heart it be broken Or life about to end. No matter what you’ve lost, be it a home, a love, a friend, Like the Mary Ellen Carter, rise again.
The man shouted out the words, “Rise again, rise again,” as the waves washed over him. In the morning a coast guard pulled him to safety. He was one of three survivors of the wreck.
Stan Rogers died of smoke inhalation in an airplane fire in 1983, returning to Toronto from a folk festival in Texas.
Back come the fearless warrior princesses from their foray into the deep underwater world of the frozen Atlantic. The challenges have been fierce, the waters dark and dangerous, the creatures frightening and vengeful.
But one young warrior, braver than the rest, has successfully captured the elusive and deadly nudibranch.
Some eeewww moments when the nudibranch made skin-to-slime contact and began to slip from her grip, but the warrior marched onward with her prey.
Alas, the nudibranch, determined to escape the warrior, oozed its way from her grip (tale of the horseshoe to follow at a subsequent date) and splashed into the briny ocean.
Upon slapping into the water’s surface the nudibranch launched jets of burgundy ink in an attempt to foil further capture by the warriors.
(A great deal of squealing emitted by the warriors at the point as they fear the nudibranch was in mortal danger of death by exsanguination.)
However, the ocean’s currents washed away the nudibranch’s ink and the warriors were satisfied with their journey’s outcome.
And as the warrior princesses disappeared across the sandy beaches, the nudibranch returned to the sea where it counted its blessings and restocked its ink.
As the elder offspring of two devoted teachers I shamelessly support truancy. “If you can’t skip school when you’re *insert relevant age here* when can you skip?” So four provinces over that meant visits to the Royal Winter Fair, seeing the Rockettes, travelling by train from Winnipeg, staring awe-struck at the Lippizaner Stallions, and visiting the zoo, Efton Science Store, my Aunt Clara and Uncle Bob, Chapters, or just plain staying home.
However, in spite of my hard-held belief that there was lots of learning going on outside school walls — even tho I unequivocally attest my children attended the best Montessori school on the planet — I did feel always a not so little pang of guilt when I returned my clearly healthy, pock-free and eager-to-show&tell children to class.
Imagine my shivering delight to discover I’ve landed a world that grants me full complete utter and absolute support of doing something absolutely splendid within school hours and without school walls.
It’s called home-schooling, or home learning, or un-schooling (but most definitely not un-learning). It’s a bit complex — something I’ll save for a later post (or better, see Rickshaw Unschooling for a cogent discussion of non-traditional education).
But most importantly, it’s guilt-free. The Princess and I packed up first thing yesterday morning and headed to Cypress Mountain for a day of skiing. Get this: We live five minutes from the ferry. It took 20 minutes to cross the sound to Horseshoe Bay. Another 20 minutes and we were buckling on our boots. Addition is part of the curriculum: 5 + 20 + 20 = not a very long time from house to hill.
My little girl was so positively delighted to be out with her maman I don’t believe she stopped smiling once. What she did, however, was thank me — THANK me — several times for taking her to the mountain for the day.
Our honeybees relocated to their new home last weekend. Four thousand hard working spinsters, two eggs-on-demand queens, and a couple dozen ne’er-do-well drones, all tidily packed into two screen and cardboard boxes.
Popping off the top, ready to transfer bees to vacant hive and empty combs
Good Neighbour Ian lives a few kilometres away where he cares for three hives of bees
Healthy government-approved bees are harder to come by than you might expect. Honeybees used to be imported from the US until the 1960s but American Foul Brood, the varroa mite and the fear of cross-breeding with the Africanized bee — also known as the ‘killer’ bee) slowed down importation until bees could no longer be legally transported across the border.
A solution of protein-boosted sugar water has kept the bees sated for their transworld journey
The queen gets her own chamber, only to assure the bee buyer that she has arrived alive; many bees do not survive the journey and up to 20 per cent expire within the first few weeks of arrival
So now Canadian bees share much in common with the lifties from Whistler — they’re all from New Zealand! (cheap shot joke) NZ bees are supposed to be good New Canadians on the wet west coast as our climate bears considerable resemblance to that of the kiwis’.
Were it a hot summer's day these gals would be in attack mode; the current chill is potentially lethal so they clump together
An unceremonial dump of the clump
And so last week, as if the Christchurch earthquake weren’t enough, these little gals, with a queen per box, were hustled onto a cargo plane with several zillion of their sisters, and carefully kept at about 90 degrees F — their optimal ambient temperature — at least until they arrived in our laundry room, where they huddled and buzzed, loyal subjects keeping their queen warm.
The queen, who for the last few minutes has been tucked in a warm jacket pocket, makes her triumphant arrival
And off she crawls to prepare for her life's duty -- when the warm weather arrives she will begin laying upwards of 2000 eggs per day
We’d confined them to the laundry room until the outdoor temps were above zero for a day and then with the assistance of a kind neighbour Ian, we welcomed the gals to their not so tropical isle.
No flowers in bloom right now therefore no pollen -- no food; we'll be feeding them 'pollen patties' for the next few weeks
Stragglers must find their way in before they're too cold to move
Can’t say they were thrilled but we’re hoping they’ll enjoy the view.
One of the first things a body notices about our wee island is the spirit of community.
That spirit comes through in many ways — the current only slightly incendiary debate over whether to turn Crown land into a national park, for instance — and a combo Native/Celtic monthly after-school art class is another.
Gerald Morrisseau, of Scandinavian-Cree heritage, leads the clutch of young artistes who tumble once a month into the community school’s multi-purpose room into an examination of some of the more beautiful elements of B.C. native art.
This particular month Gerald spoke about traditional button blankets used amongst some of B.C.’s native people to display their family crests.
On their first meeting with Gerald, my little mice were a tad, ah, intimidated. I believe The Princess counted his earrings (11) and Homeboy assessed that additional tattoos (angels’ wings) decorated the man’s back. And like most gone-wrong first impressions, Gerald has been a great source of artistic inspiration.
For this class, Gerald prepared simplified versions of iconic First Nations images which the children then copied in black and white felt and then pasted on a red felt background. Small or extremely detailed areas were outlined in white shells or beads — an excellent way to detail tiny elements of the design.
And speaking of iconic, the Hot Glue Gun saves the day again. Not sure what the First Nations folks did before thermoplastic adhesives, but hot glue should most definitely reside in every artist’s paintbox.
That’s the big joyful new year’s greeting for Têt, the Vietnamese New Year marking the arrival of spring — as per the lunar calendar. The new year does not officially arrive until February 5th but some members of the Vietnamese community in Vancouver got an early start on the festivities!
As we have friends with children whose birthplace was far across the ocean, we’ve often and unabashedly barged our way into Party Central. Now they can’t help but invite us, knowing we’ll turn up anyway.
Our lovely Mai happened to be in from Toronto for the weekend!
For the first time in Vancouver, the community paraded down Kingsway in East Vancouver, headed by dragon dancers and a phalanx of martial artists, spotted by politicians of every stripe and hierarchy, and culminating in a small vehicle sporting big cutouts of Japan’s darling feline.
As one of the staff members of the Princess’s new homeschooling department, yours truly deemed the time had arrived for an off-campus field trip.
(Two weeks on the job and I’m already bursting with bureaucracy!)
The UBC’s School of Music Opera program opened its doors to members of the Bowen Island Fibre Arts guild and allowed us to tour its costume department. What an amazing venue that is!
At present the opera students are preparing for a presentation of Cendrillon, the French version of Cinderella.
Check out the fairy godmother’s dress. Looks like something you’ve seen before? Budgets are tight (as are the singers’ corsets) so some creative recycling is in order. In this case, a pouffy-sleeved sequined and pearled wedding dress. Ahhhhh, lovely.
Here’s some early planning of the garb for that ever-cranky stepmother — deliberately parodied to be grotesquely and humourously disproportionate.
Adding to the realism. (You can tell this is XXXXXXL, right?)
The costume room is one great big brainstorming session. Bits of fabric, sequins, feathers, ruffles are stashed and categorized for future dress-up possibilities.
The costume designers comb second-hand stores and catalogue their finds. A recently completed television series shot here in Vancouver donated all its outer space-style costumes which will be re-tooled for a future opera.
A great first cultural outing.
We’re thinking the next field trip should have a phys-ed component. A day of skiing, perhaps?
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The Country Mice 