Optional reading

I just read my son's latest blog posting on Black Flies and Bush Planes, it's quite the epic story, I recommend it especially if you're into airplanes and road trips. Thanks Josh, I enjoyed that one a lot!

Also, today I read an Op-Ed from Gordon Stewart in the New York Times, Carter's Speech Therapy, a first hand account of how President Carter's so-called "Malaise Speech" came to be written. Carter delivered this speech on July 15, 1979, thirty years ago today. Over at The Great Change, the speech is reproduced in its entirety, if you are interested.

It's long but some of it is pretty applicable today, too bad it was largely ignored for 30 years.

Very too bad actually.

My new mountain boots

I saw Nancy wearing these very cool-looking shoes which turned out to be cut-down rubber boots. I thought they looked fairly easy to make and I had a pair of rubber boots that I thought would be perfect for this project, because they sure don't work well as regular boots. So I went out and bought myself a new pair of boots that fit better and then came home and cut down my old boots. It only took a few minutes, and voila!

I love them: they are sturdy, comfortable and good-looking. I think they are more comfortable than store-bought duck boots, and they are certainly cheaper.

Someone commented on Nancy and I having the same little shoes, they thought they should be called Mountain Boots. So there you are, my new mountain boots.

Best-laid plans

Since it was so sunny and warm on Saturday, I thought I'd call Carolyn and see if she wanted to go for a bike ride along the Cornwallis River. But she said she was going to the Paul McCartney concert in Halifax.

So then I talked to Nancy to see if she wanted to go biking along the brow of the mountain, but she was going to see Paul McCartney too, and wanted to know if I would babysit her dog overnight.

Went over to Mike and Ruth's and they were just packing up to go to Lake George for a paddle. Invited myself along. Loaded up my kayak on the truck and drove over to Lake George, about an hour's drive because it is on the South Mountain. Ruth and I had a lovely paddle on the lake, we saw a loon family of two parents and two chicks. The loons started calling loudly when they saw us approaching in the kayaks, but were not in a rush to get away so we got a good long look at them.

Later I went for a swim in the lake. It was quite windy so the water was rough but otherwise warm. My first swim of the year. In the evening after supper I drove home to keep Nancy's dog company, she's OK alone during the day but does not like to be alone at night.

I hear it was a great concert and everyone really enjoyed it. I saw McCartney and Wings in Toronto many years ago, it was a great show but I did not feel the need to spend hundreds of dollars to see him in concert this weekend.

It says something about the music scene here that this concert did not sell out. There were still tickets available at the gate when they opened. There is so much else going on in Nova Scotia music-wise, that even though this is the only concert McCartney will do in Canada on this tour, he was definitely not the only game in town. But I hear he delivered a great performance, as per usual.

Theatre off the grid: Rockbound

Theatre Off the Grid is the theatre company Two Planks and a Passion when they perform at Ross Creek Centre for the Arts, because they perform outdoors without electric technology. This summer's performance is Rockbound, a musical drama based on the novel of the same name by Frank Parker Day. Rockbound the novel was written in 1928, and is set on a small island, Rockbound (East Ironbound Island), in Duren (Mahone) Bay on the south coast of Nova Scotia.

The stage was built by my neighbour Mike and it is quite impressive. In the story there are scenes set on the island itself (the main stage), a boat at sea (the boat around which the stage was built), and a small island lighthouse (a lantern on a platform on the left of the main stage).

Seating is in bleachers; you are issued a blanket at the Box Office to use as a cushion or a wrap in the cool evening air. Nancy invited me to go with her to a preview of the show (the official opening is on July 12), she said we should try to get seats on the top row of the bleachers because that is the only row with a back rest. Good point!

It was a lovely sunny evening with a breeze to keep the insects away, although sometimes the breeze also made it difficult to hear the actors. And the stage is oriented so that the setting sun was behind us, so the audience did not have to deal with glare, although I imagine it was a bit of a problem for the actors. The whole performance ended just before sunset, so we also got to watch the sunset afterwards. Gaspereau Vineyards served wine before the performance and during the intermission. How civilized!

It was a wonderful performance, the music was just great, the singing dramatic, the story quite intense. It is difficult to single out particular actors or scenes that stood out, they were all so great. Nancy and I got a kick out of the performance of one actor (Kyle Gillis) falling into the sea off the boat, it was slow motion and slightly comic.

The orchestra (Mark Adam, Chris Churchill, Sandy Moore) is in a small pit in the centre of the main stage. They played double bass, accordion, drums and xylophone(?). At one point, during a xylophone solo, a small songbird fluttered around the stage singing in response to the xylophone, only leaving when the xylophone player stopped and one of the actors started his lines in a loud voice. Quite cute!

The actors played several parts and also served as a chorus, sometimes in the orchestra pit, sometimes onstage, and sometimes in the "aisles" between the bleachers. Basically, the story is about a power struggle between Uriah Jung (Frank Moore) who essentially rules the island and his nephew Davy Jung (James Macdonald) who wants to claim what is rightfully his and make a life for himself on the island. Also a love story involving multiple triangles and dramatic confrontations. A lot going on, on that little island! Uriah's sister and Davy's aunt Anapest (Burgundy Code) stood out as a classic east coast matriarch standing up to all the menfolk for her rights and what she thinks is the right thing to do. Artfully played!

Wonderful show, can't recommend it enough, and if you're from away, you get a discount and your name entered into a draw for a prize. I gave my local address so did not qualify for either, but since it was a preview show, did get the preview discount.

Having mentioned a few of the actors' names, I should also say that the musical adaptation and direction was by Allen Cole, the choreography by Alexis Milligan, and the theatrical direction by Ken Schwarz. Other actors include Bridget Bezanson, Marty Burt, Amanda LeBlanc, Cliff Lejeune, Ryan Ragerson, Margot Sampson and Leete Stetson, all delivering wonderful performances and making their characters come alive for us.

Weather note

The past few days we've had sunny warm days and cold nights, even a frost warning in the Valley! Perfect weather here on the Mountain though. The cold nights are killing off the mosquitoes, yay! And the sunny warm days are definitely restorative for persons.

I wanted to photograph the lily blooming in the pond near the road, then saw the large frog and wanted to include him in the photo. Wasn't till later that I noticed all the little tiny frogs!

Even one or two still with tails...

On children and grands

I am re-reading Carolyn Heilbrun's The Last Gift of Time, Life Beyond Sixty.

Here's a quote from her essay "On Mortality":

"This sense of limited time has given me, rather to my surprise, what I have come to understand is an eccentric, delicate distinction between my love for my children and for my grandchildren. Grandchildren have always been praised to me as the ultimate in parenthood, the joy of young children without the responsibility: one hugs them, plays with them, and hands them back. Our children's children say to us: I continue. But I have not found the joy in my grandchildren, great as it is, half so profound as the pleasure I take in my adult children. To perceive the enchantment of small children does not require the eyes of the old. To taste with special relish the conversation of one's grown-up children does, I suspect, demand a special sense of present time, a sense pertinent only to those in their sixties, or so it seems to me. I shall not see my grandchildren grow into adults, and if I were to last that long, I doubt I would retain as fervent an interest in them, their opinions, their experiences, as I now enjoy in colloquy with my own adult children. Perhaps because I am not a natural lover of children, the most potent reward for parenthood I have known has been delight in my fully grown progeny. They are friends with an extra dimension of affection. True, there is an extra dimension of resentment on the children's part, but once offspring are in their thirties, their ability to love their parents, perhaps in contemplation of the deaths to come, expands, and, if one is fortunate, grudges recede."

My goodness, I couldn't put it any better!

I was reading 20th Century Woman's recent posting "Saying Goodbye" in which, among other things, she looks forward to visiting her daughter, and the red wine that they will drink together. That image sticks in my mind and I so wish her well on that trip. During the winter my son and I talked about going for beer together at a local pub and somehow never made it, he lives a very busy life. I am sorry we didn't.

Shuffle Vault

Wednesday morning Sheila dragged me out for a walk to Shuffle Vault. I was sure that's what she called it, but I was told later that it is really Sheffield Vault, and that is what it is called on the map.

I like Shuffle Vault better.

We drove to Long Beach in her dogmobile (minus the dogs) and then walked along the beach to the vault. Dawdling and taking pictures of the cliffs. We had timed this walk to be finished before high tide because at high tide the water comes right up to the foot of the cliffs leaving no dry beach to walk back on.

We almost made it, but the last stretch of the beach was already under water by the time we got there. Fortunately the cliff dips down there and we could climb up on top to avoid wet feet.

There's a little beach cabin by the brook in Shuffle Vault. Someone dammed the last little bit of it before it reaches the beach, so there's a little wading pool there. I expect it's some cold though.

If you timed it right, you could walk all the way to Hall's Harbour along this beach. Something apparently Sheila would like to do one day. Not me though, walking on beach cobbles is tediously slow, I just know I'd get caught by the tide.

On being lazy

Usually there is only one blue jay at my birdfeeder. At least I think there is only one, but for all I know it could be many, just one at a time. But today there were definitely three. It was quite interesting to watch them, they had a kind of "pecking order", shown by how far they perched from the feeder.

Now I am wondering if it was a mother and two youngsters, or three siblings, or just three jays. It was fun to watch them though.

I was going to go down to the Valley to buy birdseed today, but I am feeling way too lazy right now. The birds will finish off the seed in the feeder some time in the afternoon, and that will be it for them until I get over my laziness.

This morning Sheila dragged me out for a walk to Sheffield Vault. I attribute my laziness to that walk.

...and over the Harbour

A dragger out on the Bay...

The Harbour...

Mike and Ruth's place...

And my house in the woods...

(you probably can't make it out, but my truck is parked in the upper right corner of this photo)

A local man is working on a project documenting the Fundy tides; he booked a helicopter to take him out to Cape Split to film the Rips at high tide. He asked Alden to mow his field for the copter to land; and in return Alden and Sheila and I got to go for a little ride! Whoo-wee!

The 'copter pilot is a chicken farmer, he has several farms in Nova Scotia and PEI and uses his helicopter to get around. Must be rough. I think he really enjoyed this run though. Especially flying between the Split and the rocks off the tip of the Split, five feet above the water!

Along the shore...

Hall's Harbour...

Take-off...

Arrival...

Waiting...

Rain

When I first came to the Harbour back in 1975, I think I arrived here in June sometime. Over the summer I built a small house and after five weeks of work was able to move out of my tent and into the house. It was by no means finished, but it was more liveable than the tent at that point.

I remember that I moved into the house in early September, which means that the five weeks spent building the house were all of August and a small part of July. If I moved up here in June with the intention of building a house, why did I not start until over halfway through July?

That's a question I have been thinking about lately. My memory for such details is not great and I did not write anything down then. I do remember going through a period of illness, I think a series of colds or bronchitis or some such thing. So I know that I was sick enough to not be able to work on the house for a fairly long period of time, and that may be the whole explanation.

The last couple of weeks here have been thoroughly wet. It rains almost every day, sometimes just showers, sometimes periods of heavy rain. The trail into my house is turning into a swamp; I can still get my bike through it but only just. Really, in this part of the world, you can't count June as part of summer, the weather in June is just too unpredictable and almost certainly involves a lot of rain. People say that a Nova Scotian summer only consists of a couple of weeks in July, the rest is just a tease.

But the worst of it is the mosquitoes, they are proliferating like crazy in all this wetness and they make trying to do anything other walk fast---very fast---almost impossible. Anything that will cause you to sweat (it's very muggy now) will attract the mosquitoes and simultaneously wash off any repellent you foolishly applied. Bug jackets I guess work, but so far I haven't invested in one. They block your view, they don't stop the high-pitched mosquito drone, and I suspect they make you even hotter and sweatier.

I have one or two projects in mind for this summer but so far I have not started on them and am increasingly more frustrated at the passage of time and lack of progress. So I've been thinking about that summer of 1975, how frustrated I had to have been watching June and half of July go by without anything accomplished at all. Living in a small tent with a two-year-old and a four-year-old, very conscious of the shortness of summer and the longness and coldness of winter. I remember working like a demon when I finally did get started; I went to bed exhausted every night and woke up every morning in so much pain I could hardly move.

But move I did, pretty much non-stop for five weeks.

I guess a month or more of sitting around being sick in the rain and mosquitoes will do that to you.