Real estate business

I made another offer and then revoked it. This time on a house in the Harbour.

It is a nice little house sitting on 19 acres of land, mostly abandoned pasture grown up in alders and a little bit of forest that has been clearcut. Its fatal flaw though was a drilled well and septic tank less than twenty feet apart. The water tested clean, it may be fine, I just don't know and I don't know how long it will be fine. Maybe forever. The not knowing, and not knowing even what it would cost to do something about it is the scary part.

Or one of the scary parts. The other scary part is the finances. I don't even know now whether I can afford to buy a home at all. If I had done it last year, I might have been OK, but this year the real estate market in Nova Scotia has taken off, prices are rising and I think I am being priced out of the market. I think I missed my window of opportunity.

So, I am thoroughly frustrated and depressed. I am even losing weight, a sure sign of things not being right in my little world!

When I started the process of making an offer on this little house in the Harbour, a friend and neighbour volunteered to inspect it for me and give me his opinion of its strengths and shortcomings. I appreciated this kindness very much, even though his opinion was ultimately fairly negative. He burst my little balloon of excitement about the place.

Later, when it came time to withdraw the offer, it turned out my offer to purchase contract required a signed statement from this friend stating what the problem was. My friend was a little reluctant---to say the least---to do that. I don't blame him at all, but it did put me in a bit of a bind. So yesterday, the day I was supposed to sign the termination papers, was probably the most stressful day of all, trying to gently convince my kind friend to sign on the dotted line to get me off the hook.

An onlooker, a mutual friend, listening and watching this whole process was wisely refraining from expressing an opinion on the matter, although at one point he ventured, You're looking to buy a place?

I turned to him and said, No, right now I'm looking for a hole to crawl into and hide in.

You know how when you get depressed everything in your whole life is connected and it's all bad? Right from the day you were born into this sorry world on down to the burnt toast this morning at breakfast? OK, it's like that.

I have two failed offers to purchase under my belt in as many months. Is the universe trying to tell me something? Other stuff as well, which I won't get into here.

Not to mention the rehash of the state of my finances and coming to the conclusion that perhaps I am screwed. Perhaps the recent stock market mess really did bite me harder than I thought. Can't buy, can't rent, and too many "assets" to even get into seniors' housing. Seniors housing! My god, has it really come to that? Never mind, I can't get in anyway.

Stupid thing is, I have all these friends here trying to help me. Friends I don't even know. When I was first realizing the septic-well issue, one friend said, Oh, you need to talk to Brian, he's the go-to guy on all things septic.

So on my way back up the Mountain, I stopped at Brian's house and his wife gave me his phone number to call later because he wasn't in. At supper time I called him, and he said, I'll be right there.

And not ten minutes later he was at the property in question examining the situation. This guy never even heard of me till I phoned him, and he drops everything to drive seven miles to check out a suspect septic.

Brian gave me his opinion of the situation, from both the legal and the "under the table" perspective. He actually was fairly optimistic about the solvability of the problem. He liked the property, thought it was worth trying to fix. I agree with him, I just don't have the resources to take the risk that the solution might turn out to be more expensive than I can afford. It's one of those things, it could be real simple or it could be real complicated, and short of actually doing the work, there's just no way to tell which way it will fall.

When the deal fell through, another friend got on the internet and immediately dug up another prospective home and even called the real estate agent to get the details. She printed off the pertinent info and got in her car and drove back in the woods looking for me. She insisted I go look right away.

By this time I had no appetite for anything real estate-related, but it's hard to resist the insistent kindness of a friend, I dutifully trundled off to look at this house.

The new option is a tiny house on the edge of the one town in the Valley I wouldn't mind living in. The instructions are to knock on the door of the neighbour to the left who has the key to the house. I pull up in front and before I am even half way across the road, the neighbour to the left is on his front porch enquiring, You lost? You lost?

I tell him I have come to look at the house for sale, he scrutinizes me for a minute, then looks at the for sale sign out front, then back at me.

Oh yes, it's for sale, the old lady just died. Go look around, I'll call the agent.

He goes into his house to phone, I walk around the house for sale. It is tiny tiny, the pink paint is peeling, and all the blinds are drawn on the little windows so you can't see inside. I walk around a couple of times before the old man comes out again and squints at the for sale sign to read the phone number of the agent. He dials the number. His wife comes out to see what's up. She sits down in a chair on their porch and proceeds to tell me the story of their lives.

They bought this house shortly after they got married over sixty years ago, and have lived there ever since. They love it there. Quiet road, close to town, nice place, nice neighbours. You know, they leave you alone unless you need them, then they're right there. Couple next door pretty much the same as them, bought the place almost sixty years ago too. They adopted a kid, raised her there, she got married and moved away. Then a few years ago, he died and she stayed on in the house by herself. Not a lot of money, couldn't afford to fix it up, lucky to have a home at all. Now she's gone too, died in the hospital only a couple of weeks ago.

The old man speaks to the phone, tells whoever is there that they need to send someone right away to let me into the house. His wife watches. She turns to me and says, All the men are dying. They're all dying off.

She shakes her head.

I'm not lettin' this one, gesturing to the old man on the phone with her chin, go so easily.

In a few minutes the real estate agent drives up in his red convertible sports car.

He gets out and shouts at the old man, Why'd you hang up on me?

The old man says something and the agent says, Why didn't you let her in? You have the key!

The old man looks a little sheepish.

The agent comes and shakes my hand and goes to unlock the door. Turns out he's never seen inside this house either. It is dark and smelly and small, the windows are tiny and they don't let a lot of light in. The kitchen is big but there are five tiny rooms arranged around it, it's kind of crazy inside. The house is essentially sound, but it clearly needs work, and it's right on the edge of affordability for me. I can't afford the work it will need. It is a good deal, just not for me.

God help me, I am eyeing the other house where the old man and his wife live and wondering how long before that one comes up for sale, that one I might actually consider.

This real estate business makes me feel like a damn vulture.

In a while, crocodile

Everything is fine but I just don't have time to post here now. I'll get back to it when the dust settles. Sorry about that. For folks wondering, I'm fine, my kids are fine, my grandkids are fine. I'm just busy and pre-occupied at the moment.

And I don't have a phone or internet hookup.

Change of scene

I left Toronto just after rush hour on Monday and made it as far as Cornwall before stopping for the night. The next day it rained almost the entire day, so I didn't dawdle, there was nothing to stop for. I should really have stopped for the night in Fredericton, but I didn't and that last hour or so of driving was pretty bad. Heavy rain, low visibility and feeling very tired, it was a struggle. But it meant that on the third day, Wednesday, I had only a few hours left of driving to do.

Dropped by Sheila's place and gave her the beret I knitted, she loves it but refuses to wear it, she says she's going to frame it! I guess I should feel honoured, but I kind of wanted her to wear it. Sigh...

I have jumped feet first into house hunting, have already made an offer on one place which has been accepted so I am working on the subject clauses. It's all very stressful and nerve-wracking, I am not sure of myself at all. The Pros and Cons lists are not helping, I really wish I had a bed to hide under.

To top it off I got word shortly after arriving here that my grandson is in the hospital with suspected meningitis. It takes a spinal tap and 48 hours of culturing the results to confirm or deny the diagnosis, but apparently the doctors think he has the more benign viral form. Sometime tomorrow they will know for sure. In the meantime he is set up in his own room (he's in isolation) with a TV and a Wii and all sorts of toys, his symptoms have subsided so life is not too shabby right now.

Apparently I promised to drive to Halifax with a friend in a couple of days, she reminded me this morning. It completely slipped my mind that I might have said such a thing, so we agreed to check in later on the prospects of such a trip. I am so wound up I can't keep anything straight.

Wednesday in Ayton

The Wednesday field trip was wonderful.

I signed up for it several weeks ago in weaving class, but I was uncertain whether I would actually be going since I didn't know when I would be leaving for Nova Scotia. Consequently I didn't really pay attention to the details, such as where we were going or why. I understood that I was to ride in Cheryl's car and that lunch would be provided.

I was up early in order to be at the Islington subway station at 8am to be picked up by Cheryl. She told me what her car looked like, but I promptly forgot. Fortunately there were two other women from weaving class also meeting Cheryl at the Islington station, and between us we managed to recognize Cheryl's car when she arrived.

Once we were settled in the car, I did ask where we were going and why. It turned out I was not the only person who had not been paying attention! But at least Cheryl the driver knew where we were going. A little tiny place called Ayton, to visit a tapestry weaver named Peter Harris.

Cheryl had a GPS that gave voice directions for our route. It was in a woman's voice so we called it Gladys. Gladys also had a moving map view showing the details of our route. Gladys never lost her cool, even when we took a wrong turn. She simply said, "Recalculating... recalculating... recalculating alternate route."

At one point Gladys told us to turn right on George Street. Just before George Street we saw a Tim Horton's, and several of us requested a bathroom and coffee break, so Cheryl turned right into the Timmy's parking lot instead of onto George Street. Gladys kept saying, "Turn right on George Street, turn right on George Street, turn right on GEORGE STREET." She wasn't impressed with our flouting of her direction.

As it turned out none of us were fans of Timmy's, but it's hard to avoid in southern Ontario. If you want coffee, you got Timmy's.

After two and a half hours on the road, we arrived at Peter's small farm in Ayton. He lives in a lovely old Ontario farm house not visible from the road due to all the trees and shrubs, and has several outbuildings including a barn and a chicken coop. We inspected the chickens, which were Hungarian Yellows (?). I thought they were Rhode Island Reds, but they weren't. There were two roosters and a chick, the rest were hens, or so Peter thinks. Peter said he also had a cat, but he had locked the cat in the barn for the day so she would not get underfoot.

We hung around outdoors admiring Peter's flowers while we waited for the rest of our group. When everyone had arrived and Peter had given us all a little introduction to his place and himself, we finally went indoors, where it was considerably cooler. Although Peter did not require us to remove our shoes, we did because the floor was so cool to touch.


Peter and his partner Ellen bought this 12-acre farm back in the '80s after graduating from the Ontario College of Art (OCA). There they indulged themselves in their artistic pursuits, Ellen doing quilts and Peter woven tapestries. Unfortunately Ellen died of cancer nine years ago and Peter continues to live there by himself.


Peter took us on a slow tour of his studio and home, showing and explaining his tapestries to us. They vary in size, up to 5'x8'. One was an experiment in three dimensions; if you looked at it with the special 3D glasses you could see the image in three dimensions! Another showed five figures, two playing cards while three looked on. He said that the three onlookers were self-portraits, one was himself as a young man, the second was himself old and the third was his imagined self, a woman in black fishnet stockings selling picture cards, kind of like a cigarette girl at a casino. I guess that's how he sees himself when he is marketing his art.

Two tapestries were of Indian or south Asian subjects, some terraced hillsides in one and some people walking through rice paddies in another.

One tapestry he said was shattered memories, it looked like a glacier with icebergs breaking off of it. On the face of the glacier and on the icebergs were faint images of old photos, people and scenes. Peter said he used old personal photos for those images.


We broke for a sumptuous feast that Peter had prepared for us. There were four quiches, three salads, three or four different kinds of bread, steamed asparagus and lemon slices, fruit salad and wine. Later there were a couple of desserts, some kind of custard pie or cheese cake topped with berry spreads.


We spread out over the house and outdoor lawn to eat and drink and chat.

Eventually we reconvened for Peter to demonstrate a new tapestry technique that he was exploring. Before he went to OCA Peter travelled extensively in India and in particular in Kashmir, where he became fascinated by the shawl weavers there. Yes they still do it. Peter talked briefly about the kinds of yarn and threads they used for it. He said that the most prized fleeces were from a wild animal (I am afraid the wine got to me, my memory for some of the details is a bit frayed) that had to be killed to collect the fleece, so he didn't much like that aspect of the shawls. Peter is a vegetarian who is not thrilled by the killing of animals. In his own work he uses fairly coarse wool, he said he is not so much concerned with the quality of the materials as he is with the quality of the techniques.


Peter did his demonstration on a tiny rigid heddle loom that he made from firewood. Whenever he sees interesting wood in his annual purchases of cordwood, he sets them aside to be milled for little building projects around his place. In this case he used cherry I think to build the frame of the loom, and he scavenged three rigid heddles from an old loom of his grandmother's. Remember my 2/2 twill scarf? Well, he does tapestry in 2/2 twill. I think I said something about 2/2 twill involving two heddle harnesses at a time, the other defining feature of 2/2 twill is that there are four harnesses in total. Peter only has three, but since a rigid heddle has both slots and eyes, he uses the eyes on each rigid heddle to thread the warp for that harness, and then for the fourth harness he threads the warp through the slots on all the rigid heddles.


Anyway, it was fascinating to see how he did the tapestry weaving on this little loom. He designed the tapestry using software on his Windows 98 computer, and it created row by row instructions that he followed. The design he was using was of columbine flowers; he thinks that one of the traditional Kashmiri floral designs is of columbines. He showed us another tapestry he did of poppies, another traditional Kashmiri floral design.


We all loved his Kashmiri tapestry designs, and his tiny rigid heddle loom. It can only produce a 10" or 12" wide strip, but it is so portable! Throughout his home there were nifty little creations of wood and at one point Line our weaving instructor commented on how handy Peter was. It reminded me of the Red Green Show, where Red would always say, If the women don't find you handsome, they should at least find you handy!

Definitely a handy man.

In the jungle

Friday was a little cooler than the previous few days, there was a breeze and the temperature was forecast to only go up to 24C. So I cleaned up the truck in preparation for leaving.

We live close to the railway tracks, which is generally considered not a good thing due to the noise and vibration of passing trains. But we only have GO trains, the green and white double decker commuter trains. They are short and zip by quite fast, and mostly run during rush hour.

The interesting thing about being near the train tracks is that they provide a corridor for wildlife to come into the city, so we regularly see creatures that don't normally live in city centres. We
have rabbits and possums and hawks and redwing blackbirds. Plus the usual raccoons and skunks.

There's a spot where the street passes close to the tracks, a small stretch of no-man's-land filled with trees and shrubs. A few locals have taken it on to keep the area clear of garbage and planted in native flowers. When you walk by that spot it is raucous with birds. I am not sure what kind of birds, maybe robins maybe something else, but they sure are noisy. It's like being in a jungle listening to them. I've seen people walking that stretch of street and stopping
under the trees there just to listen to the birds.

Between the snow and the jungle birds, this is definitely a magical faerie land.

June snow

It's snowing on Wyndham. Has been for over a week and there's no end in sight. It's also very hot.


The snow fills the air, turns lawns white and makes flowers look as if they are covered in white mould.


It piles up along curbs and walls and in side alleys, you have to wade through the stuff. Huge flakes, some almost as big as a fist, blow and float down the street.


When I open the front door, it swirls into the front hallway. I left the windows cracked on my truck because of the heat, and now the truck is full of snow.

Where is it coming from? Why, the great big old cottonwood in Casey's front yard! Looking up into that tree I see no end in sight, the leaves are obscured by balls of cotton everywhere.


I guess I've never been in Toronto at this time of year, or at least not in Toronto on Wyndham Street, because this is my first experience of June snow. Due to climate change, the snow has arrived early, June isn't until next week.

Some residents love it, it's a magical sight to see all this fluff floating, dancing, piling up everywhere. And as soon as you turn the corner off our little street, the snow is gone, no one else has it. Others hate it, Casey says that in the past some neighbours have attempted to cut the tree down. She always feels a little embarrassed on behalf of the tree when its snow is blowing.

Kids kick the snow up in the air, try to collect it in great mounds. There are no green (or even brown) lawns on our street, they are all white. Looking up into the sky, you see it dancing everywhere. And as I sit typing on our front porch my hands and arms are growing fluffy cobwebs, it looks like the kind of stuff people decorate with at Hallowe'en.

Isaac tells me this will last at least another week, and I believe it, there's a ton of snow still up in that tree.

On the roof

This year we have to get our roof redone. There is a peak at the front of the house and then a very gently sloped flat roof to the back. In Toronto, houses are classified as houses, sheds and shacks, ours falls in the category of "shed" because of its roof style. The peak has three layers of shingles on it, this is the maximum you can have before all the layers have to be removed in order to put a new layer on. From the street you can see that the shingles on that peaked roof have had the biscuit, we know that roof needs work, and soon.

We got two estimates so far, one from a local guy who eyeballed the roof from the sidewalk and gave us a price, another from someone who actually climbed up on the roof to examine it before estimating the cost. His estimate is higher. And, he discovered that we have a bit of a problem with the flat part of our roof.

There are two membranes there, and between them is a big bubble of water, right over my bedroom. The two membranes are sealed together at the bottom edge of the roof, so wherever the water is getting in, it flows to the lowest part of the roof and then just sits there because it can't get out. The roofer who looked at it says he thinks the water is getting in either at the chimney or at the point where the peaked roof joins the flat roof.

It was a bit scary watching him get up on the roof. First of all, he arrived with his office assistant, who he explained had to drive for him because he had lost his driver's licence. He said roofers were always losing their licences. Hmmm....

Then it turned out that his ladder wasn't long enough to get up onto the roof. He went around to the back of our house and saw the lean-to mudroom, so he put his ladder up against that and directed his young office assistant to climb up. He told me that when he hired her, he required that she be able to climb a ladder. Hmmm....

The office assistant climbed up onto the lean-to roof. She didn't look too happy about it. Once up there she clung to an old satellite dish attached to the house there. Then the roofer climbed up and pulled his ladder up after him. He set the ladder up on the lean-to roof where it now reached the main house roof. The office assistant held onto the satellite dish with one hand and the ladder with the other, while the roofer climbed up onto the house roof. I stayed well clear and tried not to watch; the whole thing looked so rickety and dangerous that I did not want to be anywhere near when they all came tumbling down.

So the cheap estimate came from the guy who didn't bother to go up to look, the more expensive estimate came from the guy without a drivers licence who brought a ladder too short for the job. Hmmm....

I think we are going to get another estimate...

Also, my place desperately needs painting. Initially I thought I would do it, but the fact is I hate painting. So now I have to get estimates for that job, in hopes of having someone come in and do it while I am away. I shouldn't have left it to the last week before leaving.

There are big changes in the wind. It looks like I will be reducing my share of the house from one third to one quarter; Isaac and Gretel will buy my bedroom for Gretel to use as her office, and my apartment will be reduced to a kind of bedsitting room with kitchen and bathroom. Likewise I will be reducing the amount of time I spend here. There are things in Toronto I really am not ready to give up, in particular the Mimico Adult Ed Centre, so I would like to keep a foothold here. But I will be looking more seriously for a home in Nova Scotia.

This is going to be tricky as I am cutting short the time I spend there this year, I plan to go west in the late summer. I am not sure how this is going to work, I don't have much time. I came very close to buying a place in a cohousing complex in BC, in the end I got cold feet because of the cost, but part of me is quite disappointed that that did not work out.

Things are very much up in the air for me, I feel like that roofer on his ladder on the lean-to roof...

Dobby and the Queen

Dobby I am sure is fine with the Queen. He'd be happy to celebrate her birthday. But perhaps not with fireworks. This long weekend in celebration of the old Queen's birthday---Queen Victoria that is---is just one long firecracker fest. Yesterday Dobby was fairly nonchalant about it during the daytime, but sometime after supper he caved. For the first time ever, he started hiding in my bedroom. Realizing what was going on, I invited him to spend the night and he gratefully accepted. It was a bit hot with one huge boxer in the bed with me, but what can you do. Same thing tonight, he has already spread himself out on my bed and I am sure he has no intention of leaving before the morning. Earlier this evening he was following me very closely. If I went upstairs, he went upstairs, and if I went down so did he. If I paused halfway up or down, then so did he.

We put the kayak on the truck roof tonight. It has been hanging from my ceiling all winter and spring, now it is on the truck. Getting it down the stairs was awkward, especially with Dobby in the middle. When we paused, so did he. I felt like whacking him with a paddle.

The other thing we did this weekend was sod the backyard. In all the time we have owned this house, it has never had grass in the backyard, now it is full of lush green grass. It was a lot of work and our backs are aching, but it sure looks good now. We will water it twice a day for a couple of weeks and fence it off from kids and dogs.

Tristan has just joined Cubs and has discovered the joy of badges. He pores over the book of badges to see which ones he can qualify for. Turns out sodding a lawn qualifies him for a couple of badges, so we had one very willing helper. Several of the local little boys have just joined Cubs, they are all very excited about the badges. Interestingly, they are all boys who dislike competitive sports. Cubs is a very noncompetitive alternative. They get to go camping and collect badges to their little hearts content.

Tristan had his first Cub camping experience on the Mother's Day weekend, it was cold and rainy and there was even thunder and lightening, but the thrill of sharing a little tent with another Wolf Cub out in the woods made him oblivious to the weather. He came home exhausted, dirty and very happy. And of course got a badge for it. Not any old badge, but a badge that requires a Scout blanket to attach it to. His Mom was mystified by the concept of a Scout blanket, but having acquired one myself for Tristan's Uncle Sam when he was a Cub, I explained it to her. Now Tristan has his own Scout blanket, and his first badge for it.

I have a busy schedule this week. On Wednesday there is a weaving class field trip, all day. The rest of the week will be spent preparing to leave for Nova Scotia. Lots of packing and errands to take care of.

Completed

In the last few days I have completed or almost completed two projects, a knitted beret and a woven scarf.






I took the photos of the beret while it was being blocked on a large plate. The bottom side shows a wave pattern.






On the top side of the beret are little pink fishing boats, and multiple Cape Splits. I am sure you would never recognize them if I hadn't told you.

In the centre is a star and it isn't really a stella maris because that would have five points not six.

Around the edge of the star are the words Baxters Harbour. I am sure you would never recognize them if I hadn't told you.


The scarf is in a pattern called 2/2 twill. I think that means that it is a twill pattern in which you lift two shafts at a time. Looking at this picture I see an error in the pattern that I hadn't noticed before. Oh well. I'm afraid there are a couple of places where I screwed up the pattern.

This scarf is not quite complete, I still have to weave in the weft ends and cut the fringe to even lengths.

I don't have time to start any more projects right now, this will be it for a while.

Another dogless doglady brunch

It was a truly excellent sunny Sunday for a brunch get together! Five of the dog ladies gathered at The Henhouse, a local bar, for brunch. Grace said she might come by later but she didn't make it. Catherine, who managed to sleep right through the last brunch, made it this time, and Cherie the owner of Chip joined us as well. The food was really good and so was the coffee. I had two cups of strong coffee and I was still feeling the effect eight hours later.

Cherie told Barbara and I that The Henhouse opened at 10am and she needed to be somewhere at noon so it would be good if we met there at 10 for our Sunday brunch. I thought I was going to be late but arrived first, followed shortly by Barbara. We waited a half hour and no one else showed up so Barbara thought she'd walk the half block to Cherie's store and see if she was coming. Cherie's husband said she was in the shower. When Barbara told him we were supposed to be meeting for brunch he yelled at her to get out of the shower right now. Barbara returned to the Henhouse, and a few minutes later a wet-haired and breathless Cherie ran in. By that time Fatima and Catherine had also arrived and we were a full table.

Barbara by the way is an officially published author now, her first book Now What? A Practical Guide to Aging, Illness and Dying has just been released. The descriptive blurb implies that this book is all about issues around dying and bereavement, but in fact it covers a lot more, including nursing and old age facilities, home care, dementia, estate management and legal matters.

Catherine is a real estate agent and she says the real estate market is hopping, in spite of forecasts for a slowdown. We discussed the real estate market for a little while and then later, after we got the bill, she asked for the receipt to use for a business expense claim, since we had talked business with her. I know she works really hard at her business, and she's a good agent.

Fatima and I continue to do our walk-runs at MacGregor and Catherine wants to join us. That will be fun.

We have had to stop bringing the dogs with us because the field there is now being used for soccer and Fatima's dog Alpy loves chasing balls---even soccer balls---too much. We went there early this morning before brunch and brought the dogs because we thought surely no one would be out playing soccer that early on a Sunday morning. That was true, although a couple of dedicated soccer players were there practicing.

As it happens I was dogsitting another dog---Valentine---this past weekend, so we had three big dogs: Alpy, Dobby and Val. Val unfortunately is a runner, always on the lookout for an escape route, and that seriously interfered with our ability to concentrate on running. Fatima says we really need to give up on taking the dogs with us, they are just too much of a distraction. It got warm quite fast and the dogs got quite hot trying to keep up with us, it's a good thing I brought a water bottle for them. But Alpy is such a ball hound that given the choice between holding onto his ball or getting a drink of water, he chooses the ball.

Remember when I could hardly do 30 seconds? Well I am up to one and half minutes with ease now. Fatima can still walk faster than me, but I can run longer than her. My aerobic capacity is greatly improved. I saw my doctor last week and she gave me the green light to continue. Catherine is undaunted, she says she won't run she'll just walk, and that is fine.

1491 and all that

I just finished reading 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus by Charles C. Mann and I can't recommend it enough as a thought-provoking and enthralling read. I was sorry to come to the end of the book, I wanted the author to go on and on. He says in his preface that he kept waiting for someone to write this book, and when his own son was in elementary school and the book still had not been written, he realized he would have to write it himself. He was appalled at the distortions and untruths his kid was learning in school, thanks to the conventional teaching of the history of the Americas.

As one might expect, a history of the indigenous peoples of the Americas includes a lot of atrocities at the hands of European "invaders", and of course the huge tragedy of the introduction of Eurasian diseases onto the American continents, but this book also provides a fascinating account of the uniquely American (as in the continents, not the nation) cultures, ideas and philosophies that were both lost and transmitted back to Eurasia. There is plenty of food for thought in this book!

One very thought-provoking idea discussed in this book is about Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) notions of personal liberty and democratic government. The Haudenosaunee Confederation was based on unique principles of governance particularly emphasizing gender equality (not total, but definitely way ahead of any other culture at the time), consensus, and respect for the personal liberty and equality of individuals. Mann suggests that the transmission of these ideas was almost immediate when Europeans first arrived on the shores of northeastern North America; European colonists defected to Indian settlements in large numbers, once they realized the profound differences in attitude. Colonists were expected to respect their "betters", Indians had no such concept and found that expectation quite bizarre.

It was inevitable that these subversive ideas would make there way back to Europe, and Mann suggests that the great revolutions of democracy, liberty and equality subsequently occurring in many European countries can be traced back to the introduction of those North American Indian traditions. Certainly they were incorporated into the American Constitution, and they were very likely the inspiration for the American Revolution in the first place. Whether you agree or disagree with this formulation of history, Mann's chapter on this interpretation is fascinating and provoking.

Another idea that I found personally fascinating was Mann's description of the huge impact of textile arts on Central and South American thought, technology and politics. Mann says that in feats of engineering, Eurasians emphasized the force of compression, Andean and Mesoamerican cultures emphasized compression. The archway, an architectural feature absent from American monumental architecture, is an example of how Europeans employ the force of compression. Andeans on the other hand built rope bridges that scared the pants off the Spanish conquistadors. Andeans solved basic engineering problems through the manipulation of fibres rather than creating and joining hard wooden or metal objects. There is controversial evidence that Andean cultures had an elaborate and sophisticated form of "writing" based on fibre, the Incan khipu or knotted strings. Agriculture may have first been invented in South America, about the same time as agriculture in Sumer, but it was for the culture of cotton, not food. The first intensively agricultural society in the Americas (the Norte Chico of Peru) had a diet based solely on food from the sea, they practiced irrigation, terracing and all the other techniques of farming for the production of cotton.

Indian civilization was unique. On the Eurasian continent, there were a very few centres of innovation where agriculture and urban living were first invented, the rest of that vast continent begged, borrowed or stole the results. Over thousands of years Eurasians and Africans traded ideas and inventions, philosophies and religious traditions. the American continents were isolated, there was no trade of ideas with other continents until the arrival of Columbus and other Europeans, and unfortunately they brought diseases which so devastated American civilizations that any fruitful trade in ideas was abruptly and almost permanently cut off.

We like to think that European technologies, particularly the technologies of warfare, were so superior to American indigenous technologies that it was inevitable that Europeans would defeat any defense by the locals. Mann shows that actually this might not be the case at all. He cites accounts of the early conquistadors in South America quickly realizing that the cotton armour of the Inkans was superior to their own metal armour, and that an Inkan with a slingshot could outperform a conquistador with a gun. What the conquistadors had on their side was bizarre Inkan politics (from a European perspective of course), the diseases that preceded their arrival, and the initial surprise and shock of horse-mounted warriors. The Inkan warriors could have survived that last one, they quickly developed techniques for dealing with horses, but in combination with their vulnerability to devastating epidemics and their own political infighting (this may seem outrageous, but they were ruled by mummies, the mummies were kept and treated as if alive, and the destruction of a mummy king could devastate an entire Inkan faction) the conquistadors quickly overran and destroyed their centuries-old civilization.

Mann suggests that what we moderns think of as wilderness is actually not. He proposes that huge swathes of the two American continents were actually vast ranches and gardens developed and maintained over thousands of years by indigenous peoples. When Europeans settled eastern North America, the land had only recently been abandoned by native people killed off by disease. The forests were actually relatively new rebound vegetation after native peoples abandoned their farms and villages. What the first arrivals on the northeastern coasts saw was a vast cemetery, but they did not recognize it as such, they thought it was pristine wilderness. The Amazon basin was intensively farmed and settled, Amazonians practiced agrofrestry and a methodology for soil creation and augmentation unmatched anywhere in the world, now or ever. So-called traditional slash-and-burn subsistence (swidden) farming was never traditional, rather it was a survivor's response to the destruction of their once-productive way of life. Further, it could not have been practiced at all with stone tools, only the introduction of European steel tools allowed swidden farming to be practiced.

Mann laments the devastation of disease and conquest on American civilization. Not only was it a huge loss of human life, but a huge loss of cultural treasures that could have been shared with the rest of the world. He talks about the cross-fertilization of different societies around the world and the enrichment of human life and culture resulting from that process. The Americas were unique, civilizations developed in isolation based on principles quite different in some ways and very similar in other ways to civilizations on other continents. Much of that was destroyed and lost forever, and we all could have benefitted so much from those lost lifeways and knowledge. Whatever can be done to restore and preserve what remains can still add to the quality of human life and the array of potential solutions for modern environmental, social and political challenges.

Filler

I think I need a Guest Blogger. You know, someone who will write a blog post here instead of me. Like Ronni has at Time Goes By. Someone to fill in for me when I am running a blank.
Sigh...

A weekend of nothing

Weaving and woodcarving classes at Mimico Adult Ed end on the 19th, I have two more classes left. I didn't think my weaving project would be done by then and our instructor wants everything off the looms because there are no classes in the summer and she wants everything to be ready for new students in September. So she let me take the loom---it's a collapsible table loom---home this week to try to get my project finished. It is not completed but it's on target.


My woodcarving is progressing, but I am at a point where I need to be referring to my plasticine model for direction. I haven't actually completed the model, I left parts of it rather vague. So I brought it home to work on as well. My subject is the Emily Carr painting, Big Raven. It's interesting, she translated a three-dimensional object into a two-dimensional painting, and now I am trying to translate her two-dimensional painting into a three-dimensional carving. Not as easy or as simple as it might sound!


The blob in the upper right corner is intended to become a tree. I may or may not finish that, I have already blocked the tree into my carving so I am not too worried about that part. The area that really needs work though is the bottom, particularly on the right hand side. I have a set of small carving tools that are not very sharp, but they are perfect for working the plasticine.

Also, I am knitting another beret, this one without a brim. I am knitting it for a friend in Nova Scotia, I promised it to her last year. The pattern is complicated, I have been working on designing it all weekend, and now there are bits of coloured graph paper everywhere. I think I have it worked out though, I just have to knit it. It will have waves and little fishing boats and Cape Split as seen from Baxter's Harbour, and an Acadian stella maris (gold star on blue background) on the top.


The stella maris is both the Star of the Sea and the Star of the Virgin Mary, the Acadian patron saint. I am not Catholic (or Acadian) but I have a bit of a fondness for the Virgin Mary. She has many titles, one of them is Queen of Heaven. Some say that this harks back to her previous incarnation as the Goddess. She is not all that she seems. The Catholic Church only reluctantly admitted her to their pantheon of saints, she came to be there by popular demand.


And in my spare time I am reading Aging Well by George Vaillant, a very interesting book. He's a doctor who spent a lifetime working on a project to follow several hundred men and women through their lifetimes, from the teen years well into their eighties, to study adult development. He says, "And so whenever ... I write pedantically of successful aging---think joy. The heart speaks with so much more vitality than the head."

My only quibble so far with this book is that it seems very skewed toward the masculine experience. Women are included in the project, but I sense a distinct masculine filter, even though he tries very hard to be non-sexist.

I have not been outdoors except for some grocery shopping, a trip to the library and a couple of trips to the dogpark. When I don't get outdoors I feel like I am not doing much. Somehow I equate going outside with doing things, doing stuff indoors doesn't count. So even though I actually have been quite busy, I feel like I haven't done a thing all weekend, except drink seemingly endless cups of tea.

We had a cold low pressure pass through yesterday, it brought strong winds and snow! Well, I didn't actually see the snow, it was late at night and Isaac says he saw it on his way home from work (he's working very late with the Hot Docs film festival). We actually had to turn the furnace back on, it's so cold.

Last weekend I took Dobby to the dogpark with a new toy, a kind of sausage-shaped ball on a rope tether. I would swing it around over my head and let Dobby jump for it, then throw it as far as I could. Well, on one particular throw, I was swinging the thing over my head and Dobby was leaping up trying to get it. He leapt up behind my back and missed, but as he came down one of his legs caught on my shoulder bag strap and he lost his balance. He fell backwards, with his leg still tangled in the shoulder bag strap, which of course brought me down backwards on top of him. I smacked my head hard against the ground.

I was OK, as was Dobby, but a bit shaken up. The next day my neck hurt and I didn't make the connection until a couple of days later when a neighbour suggested it might be whiplash from the fall. My neck still hurts and now I have a headache as well. There's no bruise or tender spot, just the headache and neck stiffness. What with all the other health issues I am reluctant to take aspirin or any other pain killer, so by evening I am just tired of the headache. I hope it clears up soon.

Needless to say, I am not playing with that dog toy anymore.

Floppy beret with brim, not shown

I finished a knitted cap yesterday. I am not showing a picture of it because it would not photograph well. I did it in a dark green chenille yarn which doesn't show the stitches well, and the shape is basically circular. So what you would see would be a fuzzy green circle.

I could wear it and photograph my reflection, but that just sounds like too much work. It's a winter cap, so I won't be wearing it any time soon, and I haven't decided yet whether I like it or not. I may end up ripping it out after a couple of wearings, not sure yet.

It is basically a very large floppy beret with a brim on the front. I like the look of floppiness but I think it might not stay on my head very well because of its floppiness. Also, I was trying for a hat with a brim to protect my glasses from falling snow, and had a hard time finding a pattern for a cap with a brim that I liked. I finally decided to combine two patterns, the floppy beret and a kind of knitted baseball cap.

After several goes at it, involving much ripping out and reknitting, I think I finally got the hang of how to knit a brim on a cap. The instructions I was following were overly complicated, I followed them anyway because I thought there might be a good reason for the complications, but it turns out there wasn't.

So in the future, here is what I would do.

Start the cap or beret with a provisional cast-on, using a crocheted chain in scrap yarn. When the cap is done, remove the crocheted chain and transfer all of the stitches to a circular needle one size smaller than the size you used for the cap. Bind off half the cast-on stitches in the following way: *k2tog, k1, move the stitches back to the left needle*, repeat until all desired stitches are bound off.

With the remaining stitches you will start the brim. Essentially you are knitting a very large sock toe in the toe-up short row method; you knit progressively shorter rows with wrap & turns (W&T) each time you turn a row. When the brim is the desired length (i.e., distance from the cap outward), you knit progressively longer rows until you have a brim-shaped pocket attached to the cap along one side. Cut out a piece of flexible plastic (a cheap plastic kid's placemat is perfect for this) to fit the pocket. Cut the yarn leaving a 20" tail. Insert the plastic stiffener into the pocket and sew up the pocket opening with the 20" tail.

This is not how I did my cap, the instructions I followed left me with two holes to sew up and a little more length on the cap at the brim than I really wanted. I am not sure what the purpose of that was.

Why I don't support war in Afghanistan, and neither should you

Here's a really good explanation of what is going on in Afghanistan (video), it takes 17 minutes to watch.

It's probably a good explanation of what is going on anywhere in the world that we have war going on.

I'm reading a book called Constant Battles: Why We Fight by Steven Le Blanc, about humanity's violent past. Basically the author is saying that warfare has always been with us and was probably more prevalent in the distant past than it is today. Mortality due to warfare was routinely as much as 25% of all males among our distant ancestors.

The author suggests that we come by this warlike propensity "honestly", that our ape-ish forebears were probably doing the same with possibly even higher mortality rates. He also proposes that there is a link between big game hunting and warfare; apes that hunt (such as chimpanzees) are more likely to also attack and kill each other. Apes that do not hunt (such as gorillas and bonobo chimps) also do not attack and kill each other.

I haven't finished reading the book but Le Blanc appears to suggest that the good news is that we are actually getting better, we practice warfare far less and are far more horrified by the idea than we ever used to be.

If we don't kill each other all off---either by warfare or by environmental destruction---then we may actually humanize into something pretty decent.

Here's hoping.

What I saw

I went for a walk up to the Annex yesterday, I wanted to buy some shampoo at a store that sells non-toxic cleaning products in bulk (bring your own container). It was a gorgeous day, the sidewalks were full, the sidewalk patios busy and all the fruit and vegetable stands full of mouth-watering produce and flowers.

I'm on a no (or almost no) sugar diet so it pained me to walk by the Korean bakery that sells those delightful little walnut cakes (shaped like walnuts, filled with sweetened bean paste). I stopped to read all the blown-up newspaper ads on the walls of Honest Ed's.

On my way I walked along several tree-lined residential streets, it was wonderful to see and smell the gardens full of flowers and experience the green shade of lovely old maples. There were cherry blossoms and lilacs too. It must be summer already!

I saw a man sitting on his stoop with his little girl, reading a book to her in the sunshine. He had a lovely accent, I think he might have been South Asian, via the UK.

I saw a cyclist towing a huge trailer full of heavy plastic bins of stuff. The trailer was maybe 6' long and 4' wide, and piled up at least 3' high. Behind was another guy, on his skateboard, pushing and steering the unwieldy trailer. They were moving along at a fair clip, it looked like such an efficient way to move a cart full of stuff around city streets! And fun too!

The store didn't have the shampoo in bulk, the clerk said they were in the midst of negotiating a new source for it, so I bought a small bottle of shampoo instead.

More textile arts

The other exhibit we went to see at the Textile Museum was called People Place and Thing, it consisted of three mini-exhibits. I am not sure why they called it that, but the names of the mini-exhibits made a little more sense.

The first one is called Skin and Bone. The artist, David Halper, has applied some very interesting embroidery to various furs and skins.

The most striking is a large embroidery of a woman on the flank of a full-sized horse. The horse looks real, but it is a model of a horse covered in cowskin, complete with fur.


Then there is a series of embroideries of shadow creatures on animal hides. For example a shadow eagle with the two hands held up to create the shadow. The embroidery is accurate enough to be able to follow it to create your own shadow eagle.


A little bizarre was the set of faces embroidered onto the cross-sections of deer lying on the floor. Each "deer" was a full-sized model of the front half of a deer. Something just a little macabre about that display.


But the embroidery was amazing, the level of detail and shading in the portraits very impressive.


The second mini-exhibit was Faces and Mazes. Here, the artist Lia Cook has executed woven hangings that look like photographs in the level of detail. She used computer software to translate pictures into weaving instructions. The close-up detail of how it was done has a maze-like quality to it, and one hanging actually looks like a maze. Then it looks like a close-up of the weave structure, but when you look at it closely, it is essentially patches of black and white woven in very fine detail. Her work is fascinating, you can get lost in it. Most of the faces were doll faces, but some were actual baby faces.


The third exhibit was called Stumble, it consisted of outsized male heads and figures put together with bits of fabric sewn together and then inflated to form three dimensional figures. The technique was interesting; apparently the artist (Stephen Schofield) wets down the fabric with sugar water and then inflates it, the sugar in the water stiffens the fabric as the water evaporates so that the figure holds its three dimensional shape. To take it down, it is sprayed with ordinary water which washes out the sugar and deflates the figure. The figures are remarkably well done, you can see the musculature reproduced in the fabric.


Of the three exhibits, the last one interested me the least, but only because I have a personal interest in embroidery and weaving; I might be more interested in Stumble if I was a quilter.

The last special exhibit we saw was of Orenburg Shawls. Orenburg is a Russian town, they knit shawls there out of local wool. The shawls are uncommonly light and warm, they are knitted up in lacy patterns. When you see how fine the lace is, you wonder how such a shawl could keep you warm. The description of the display noted that when Russia became Communist, the production of the shawls was collectivized, but after the Communist era ended it went back to being a cottage industry as it was before 1917. Women are so resilient, they just keep on keeping on!

Fashionably wrapped

On Friday several of us from the weaving class went to the Textile Museum to see a couple of exhibits: People Place and Thing and the Kashmiri Shawls.


People Place and Thing was interesting, but the Kashmiri Shawls were enthralling.

In the Kashmir valley of northwest India they used to weave amazing shawls made from the hair of Himalayan goats, called pashmina, or cashmere. They were light, colourful and very finely woven. In the early 19th century they became very popular in Europe, ladies would pay a hundred guineas for a handwoven Kashmiri shawl.


A Kashmiri shawl could have 250 warp threads to the inch, and could be five feet or more in width. Some shawls were so wide that they had to be woven in pieces and handsewn together. The stitches joining the woven pieces into a single shawl were so tiny as to be invisible to the naked eye!

The shawls quickly became very fashionable, and agents would travel to Kashmir to direct the weaving of designs currently favoured by European fashions. Kashmiri weavers were initially resentful of this intrusion into their design process, but I guess the money talked and they began to weave to the dictates of European fashion.


As the shawls became ever more fashionable and in demand, there was strong pressure to learn to weave such shawls in Europe, to reduce the cost. The draw loom was invented, which allowed warp threads to be manipulated individually for the intricate shawl designs that were so popular. It took two people to operate a draw loom, one to weave and another to manipulate the draw strings and hooks to lift and lower the infinite combinations of warp threads for the intricate designs. The jacquard mechanism was added to the draw loom, this eliminated the need for "draw boys". Punch cards were made to specify the warp manipulation for each design, the cards were then fed into the jacquard mechanism which translated the holes in the cards into instructions to automatically raise or lower specific warp threads.

Very quickly the jacquard loom allowed far more intricate designs to be woven and the price of shawls dropped dramatically. By the late 19th century a shawl was selling for as little as 26 shillings. Europeans used sheep's wool (the weft) and silk (the warp), since pashmina was not strong enough for machine weaving. This made a heavier shawl, but apparently this was a small price to pay for the ability to weave the more intricate designs.


Original Kashmiri handwoven shawls remained expensive, and their designs were not as rich and complex as the newer jacquard loom weaves. By 1870 the Kashmiri weavers were pretty much put out of business. Unfortunately, there was an economic recession and famine at the same time, and in Hindu society weavers occupied a very low status. Very few of them earned enough to support a family at the best of times, and as a result of the collapse of demand for the shawls and the accompanying famine, many weavers died of starvation. Those that survived abandoned their looms to seek out other employment. Within a generation the skills of handweaving these beautiful shawls were lost forever.


European women wore their shawls as full-sized capes that draped attractively over the full hoop skirts also popular at the time.


The popular paisley design is named for the Scottish town of Paisley which is supposed to be the origin of this pattern, but it probably evolved from the traditional "Tree of Life" Kashmiri design. The Tree of Life was the palm, it was usually represented in a teardrop shape.


This is an unusual asymmetric shawl design. The idea for it was that a lady could fold it in such a way that only one quarter would show, and each quarter being different it would seem as if she had four different shawls depending on which quarter she displayed.

The four of us from the weaving class were completely in awe of these wonderful shawls. We are all amateur weavers, we know just enough to know how much we don't know. To see the work of master weavers like this was an amazing experience.

Thirty seconds

Yesterday I ran for thirty seconds. A really long thirty seconds.

I used to do the 10K Sun Run in Vancouver back in the '90s, which was pretty hard on my knees. However I did learn one thing from that, interval training. The Vancouver Sun used to promote training for the Sun Run by doing this interval training a few months in advance. You could start in January not being able to run at all, and by the time of the Sun Run in April you could do the full 10K without stopping. Pretty impressive, and it works. So I swear by the Sun Run training, and that's what I am trying to do now.

The way it works is, the first week you walk four and half minutes and run for thirty seconds, repeating for up to an hour. These days I set my limit at thirty minutes because I don't think my knees are up for the full hour. Repeat three times in one week. The next week you add thirty seconds so you are walking four minutes and running one minute. Each week you add thirty seconds till finally you are running the whole time. Pretty simple.

Simple, but not easy. Yesterday was my first go at it, out on the MacGregor track. I've been walking there with Fatima and Grace and the dogs, and I've improved significantly from being totally wasted by a forty minute walk to being able to complete the full forty minutes in reasonable shape. So now I want to up the ante and try running.

That first thirty seconds yesterday just about killed me. The second one I survived. By the eighth one I thought I could tack on a few seconds at the end, just to see how far I could go before running out of breath. Maybe an extra fifteen seconds. I am so out of shape!

But this morning, I woke up raring to go, I can't believe the energy I feel. That alone is motivation to do it again. Fatima was at the dogpark this morning, I told her what I was doing and she is reluctantly agreeing to try it. She is dead set against running. But how bad can thirty seconds be?

I didn't tell her how bad it can be.

Alex's vacation

"It was the last wish of the Icelandic economy that its ashes be spread over Europe." ~New York Times, April 19, 2010.

Alex had a 10-day vacation in Europe planned. With lots of European relatives, he made no hotel reservations, he wouldn't need them. Taiga, his dog, would be spending the ten days with a dog buddy just outside of town.

Alex's KLM flight to Amsterdam was to leave Toronto last Friday morning.

All weekend we speculated at the dogpark where Alex was, we were pretty sure he was not in Europe. And this morning Alex and Taiga were at the dogpark.

Alex said he didn't want to disturb Taiga's vacation with his dog buddy, so with no dog he didn't come to the dogpark.

Alex has rescheduled his flight to this coming Friday, KLM was happy to reschedule his flight to Amsterdam for the following week, but they did not want to reschedule his return flight. They expected him to curtail his vacation by seven days! Alex was having none of that, after some discussion he got his return flight rescheduled as appropriate.

I hear that the wind has changed, and now the Icelandic volcanic ash is headed to Canada, with flights out of Newfoundland already being cancelled, and the Toronto airport watching the situation closely.

Bets on Alex getting his European vacation this spring?

A little family history

My Aunt Corrinne (I have no idea if that is the correct spelling, I think maybe not) has a photo album with some photos of my grandparents and her husband and other family members. A lot of photos of her family as well, but I don't know any of them. Anyway, the photos of my grandparents were interesting.

There was a great one of Grandma when she was a young woman, in a swim dress standing in water and grinning like the notorious cat. She looks so gay! Very overdressed by modern standards though.

Another one showed Grandad and Grandma as a young couple, standing on the bow of a small sailboat (he is standing, she's sitting I think). He is tall and skinny with long-ish hair combed back, and this look on his face that reminds me of Isaac.

Whenever people would say Isaac looks like me---which isn't very often---I never quite saw it, to me he looks a lot more like his father than like me. But that photo of Grandad as a young man knocked me out, there's a look about him that is so Isaac. A kind of defiant half-smiling "I dare you" look.

There was another photo of Grandad in a top hat, looking very Churchillian. Every inch the successful businessman. Or successful cellist.

Grandad ran away from home at age 13/14 to join the circus. He went to Chicago where he learned a trade in the printing business and came back to Toronto some years later and immediately picked up a good job thanks to the his Chicago training. Although unschooled, he was smart and inventive. He was also an accomplished cellist, playing with a variety of bands and orchestras, and for Jewish weddings. During the depression he worked several jobs and his family fared quite well during those hard times, thanks to his many skills and likeability. He was even able to buy a small cottage on Balsam Lake, which all of his kids remembered fondly, and my parents met there.

Grandad worked at the same company that first hired him when he returned to Toronto until he retired at 65; he had plans for retirement vacations in Florida, but died suddenly in a drugstore only weeks after he retired. My own father took early retirement because he greatly feared the same early demise; he wanted to get in some retirement time before fate took him out. He managed a good 16 years in retirement, dying at age 76. Those 16 years were spent at Balsam Lake, just down the way from his father's old cottage, and I think they were among the very best years of his life.

Aunt Ruthe died this winter at age 82, so far she is the longest-lived of the family. When Peter and I were visiting Uncle Bill in the nursing home, I joked with him that he needed to live at least 2 more years to beat her record, he is now 80. I think he stands a good chance of doing that.

Bill had a stroke at age 70 that left him partially paralyzed. He cannot live at home because he and his wife cannot manage his care. It is kind of sad that he is mentally still very together, but his body just doesn't get him around as we would all like. He also needs to sleep a lot, he just doesn't have a lot of energy anymore. But he reads voraciously.

The nursing home he is in is a good one, and only a few minutes drive from his home where his wife, my Aunt Corrinne, still lives. She comes by every day, knows all the staff by first name and also many of the other residents. The home is set in a very pleasant rural location, and the atmosphere there is generally relaxed and friendly. There always seem to be plenty of staff bustling in the halls, and residents everywhere, in the large bright dining room, smaller gathering rooms and in the wide hallways. In the summer you see lots of people outdoors as well, the property is maintained in a park-like manner with many trees and benches.

Aunt Corrinne says she told their kids that when the time comes they are to put her in that nursing home, she is very happy with it.

The photos are of a pair of osprey nesting near Aunt Corrinne's home, she took us to see the nest. If you look closely at the fourth photo, the one of the osprey flying away from the nest, you can see it is holding something---probably a fish---in its talons. When a bald eagle carries a fish in its talons, it holds it at right angles to the direction of flight, but an osprey holds it in the same direction, making it more aerodynamic.

MIA

I'm still here, just don't have a lot to say. Been a busy week or two though.

Bought a loom and had a spring cold, no doubt brought on by dog lady pub crawl.


Whirlwind visit east by Western Brother, visited our parents' grave and various still-living relatives.



Acupuncturist highly disapproving of dietary disruptions, gave me a lecture on proper eating habits: no sugar no animal fat and *definitely* no birthday cake.

Probably no alcohol either, although I seem to have blocked that part of the lecture out.

Life goes on.

Good Friday at the fair

It was up to 25C today, Grace and I hit the Oneofakind craft show down at the Ex. We walked down early, stopping for coffee and toast and peanut butter at a little coffee shop en route.

Gretel gave me two Comp tickets for the show so we got in free, but there was a crowd of people lined up for the opening at 10am.

All told we spent about four and a half hours there, that's how long it took to see the whole thing and then go back and buy a few items that we liked and could afford.

Grace bought an outrageous salt and pepper shaker set ($300!!) and three silk screened tees. Two of them were silk screened with designs taken from crop circles in England. The third was a cartoon of a mad princess, Grace thought it looked like herself on a Bad Hair Day.

I bought some gorgeous handspun yarn from Newfoundland, and a turned wood fountain pen ($100, which was his cheapest price: his best pens sold for over $600!!)

We both bought little wooden trivets/cheese boards and jars of specialty mustard.

We stopped by Gretel's Fancy Pants Kids booth in the Rising Star section, she was doing a lot of business selling her dragon tails, capes and crowns. She was doing such good business that Isaac had to make a special delivery of more product, so we helped haul it in from the van to her booth and then Isaac gave us a lift home. Gretel is going to be thoroughly exhausted when this is over.

It was supposed to be sunny all day but it clouded over in the afternoon. Stayed warm though, we are having ridiculously warm weather this Easter long weekend. Kids are out playing in the street and some folks (the industrious ones) are cleaning up their gardens for spring planting.