Weaving, women and history

The last couple of weeks I have been immersed in reading a couple of books by Elizabeth Wayland Barber. Dr. Barber is a professor emerita in archaeology and linguistics at Occidental College in California, and also a weaver since childhood. She has written a number of books, the two that I have been reading are The Mummies of Urumchi and Women's Work: the First 20,000 Years.

In The Mummies book Dr. Barber uses her knowledge of archaeology, linguistics and the craft of weaving to draw out some amazing information from her study of a set of mummies found in central Asia. The mummies were found in the 1980s and turned out to be several thousand years old. Due to the extremely dry conditions where they were dug up they were well preserved, the colours of their clothing as bright as anything you could buy new today. Dr. Barber could piece together interesting facts about how these people lived and where they came from just from the details of the construction of their clothing.

One of the interesting things about the mummies is that they are Caucasian, not Mongoloid. Their hair is brown and they have the big noses typical of Caucasians. Some of them are well over six feet tall. Urumchi is located in western China, an area now inhabited by Uighurs, who are also Caucasian in origin. It is quite possible that they are direct descendants of the people who left the mummies there. The mummies were collected from ancient cemeteries in the region, in particular from the Tarim Basin which is one of the bleakest deserts in the world.

Among other things Dr. Barber says that these were Indo-Iranian people who kept sheep and wove textiles from their wool. They also made felt products. One mummy had brightly coloured felt leggings, an infant wore a beautiful blue felt bonnet.

The Silk Road, the route taken by merchants and traders between the far east and the near east, passes through the Tarim Basin. One branch follows the northern edge of the desert, another follows the southern edge. Ancient documents describe some of the people living along that route, and between those documents and what can be gleaned from the mummified remains, it is probable that these were people who moved westward into that bleak part of the world in order to live in relative peace. They were not warriors.

The infant with the blue bonnet was buried close to another grave containing a man and two women. The infant was buried with a "baby bottle" fashioned from a sheep's udder. Dr. Barber guesses that one of the women in the other grave was its mother; someone tried to keep the infant alive with sheep's milk and a baby bottle but failed.

I am halfway through the other book, Women's Work. This book focuses on the ancient history of textile making, in particular spinning and weaving. It is rare to find textiles in very old archaeological sites, they simply don't survive. The mummies of Urumchi are very unusual in that regard. However, the imprint of textiles are sometimes found on clay objects, and sometimes clay or stone objects associated with spinning (spindle whorls) and weaving (warp weights) can be found. Also there are depictions of textile making in some ancient ceramics and wall paintings.

Ancient peoples were not particularly modest, they wore clothing for warmth and/or decoration, but not to hide "private" body parts. Also, they were more tolerant of cooler temperatures than many of us moderns are, going naked or near naked in temperatures most of us would prefer to be clothed in. Woven textiles were probably preceded by belts and string skirts. In fact Dr. Barber talks of a "string revolution", how a whole new dimension of tool making was opened with the invention of string. Think of all the things you can do with a bit of string.

Dr. Barber thinks that string skirts were probably the first bit of non-essential clothing invented. They would have been specifically intended to draw attention to a woman's fertility. Of course, you need something to attach the strings to, this would have been a kind of belt or strap, or girdle. The first fibres used in the making of these strings and belts would have been plant fibres like hemp or flax. These plants provide long strong and flexible fibres to work with. In those days wool was not yet available because sheep were not yet woolly. The first domesticated sheep would have been more hairy than woolly, and they would have been kept only for their meat. But along the way woolly sheep were bred and the multiple uses that sheep could be put to---meat, milk, wool---was recognized.

Wool is quite different from hemp or linen (flax). It takes a dye better and it is more stretchy. It is also a relatively short fibre. Yarn spun from wool is not as strong as the longer-fibred hemp and linen yarn. For this reason somewhat different weaving techniques were developed to handle it, in particular twill instead of plain weave, which put less tension on the warp threads.

In Egypt wool was rare, most clothing was constructed from linen. Since it does not dye well ancient Egyptian clothing was plain white. Instead of coloured textiles Egyptians adorned themselves with jewelry. In other areas where wool was more available people generally wore two or more layers of clothing, an inner plant-based layer and an outer wool-based layer. The wool layer could be brightly coloured and woven in interesting designs. Wool was scratchy so it was nice to have softer plant-fibres against one's skin. The French term "lingerie" derives ultimately from the term "linen".

Looms used for weaving were of several types. Egyptians used a horizontal loom staked out on the ground. This would have been very appropriate in a warm dry climate where you could set up outdoors where there is lots of space.

Another type was semi-vertical, the warp (the long direction of the textile) hung from a horizontal bar and was held in place by clay weights tied to the bottom end of the warp. This was the warp-weighted loom. This type of loom could be used indoors because it took up less floor space, it was better suited to cooler and wetter climates than a horizontal loom. But since it was set up to lean against another vertical surface, it could be moved around, indoors and outdoors if needs be. Warp weights have been found in many locations in Europe, it is safe to assume that this was the main type of loom used there.

The third major type was a vertical loom without weights, instead the warp was attached to both an upper and a lower horizontal bar. This type of loom was usually anchored to the floor by two vertical poles inserted in holes. It is thought that this was the main type of loom east of Europe since no warp weights have been found east of Kiev or south of the Black Sea.

Textile making was largely a women's activity. It was highly compatible with minding children and could be done in the home or nearby. Dr. Barber says that textile making was a hugely time consuming activity, more time consuming than anything else that humans did. Men also wove, but it was predominantly women's work.

Once invented, textiles became very popular and were in great demand. The earliest trade caravans packed tin for bronze making and textiles. Graves were filled with piles of clothing. It was also a prized item for theft; the word "robber" has the same root as the word "robe". Women in every culture spun and wove, it was probably considered as important if not more important than childrearing. Only highborn women did not, instead they were responsible for overseeing other women in those activities.

When industrialization got started in Europe, the first industry to be mechanized was textile making. This necessitated moving the activity out of the home and into the factory. Yanking women out of their homes and into factories was probably the single most disruptive aspect of industrialization.

Dr. Barber shows how the movement of peoples around Eurasia can be traced through the different styles and designs of textiles they left behind. The Celts of Europe are probably distantly related to the people of the Tarim Basin, as shown by their common use of twills and plaids, and also by some linguistic commonalities. Dr. Barber wrote these books in the 1990s when the use of DNA evidence for tracing human movements was still in its infancy; she looked forward to a time when that could be used to contradict or to corroborate her ideas about those movements based on her own studies of textiles and linguistics.

Other than Egypt Dr. Barber does not discuss the history of textile making in Africa, nor in the Americas. She touches only briefly on south and east Asia. Silk textiles were important in east Asia and cotton in south Asia and the Americas. Each of these types of fibres are quite different and require different techniques and tools for manipulating.

A very busy morning

Busy morning today. Got up early to go to the sawmill, I had called them a couple of weeks ago about getting lumber for new garden frames and was told that the guys are in the woods all day and if I want to talk to them I have to come early. I hate early. So today, two weeks later, I finally drag myself out there at 8am. Took Hapi with me so she wouldn't howl while I was gone, but had to put her in the front of the truck so there'd be room for the lumber in the back. And I couldn't let her out once we got to the sawmill due to the big black sawmill dog and the mud. Even if she managed not to get into a fight with the sawmill dog she would still have tracked mud into the truck cab. Mud in the back is one thing, mud in the front quite another.

They cut up some boards for me and loaded them into the truck. While that was happening the sawmill owner senior enquired as to my marital status, he opined that it was good for a single woman to have a Big Dog. I wondered if the big black sawmill dog was a statement about his own marital status or what.

I was home by 8.30am and Hapi never got out of the truck until then, I don't think she was impressed. After unloading the boards into the shed I put her back in the truck, this time in the back, and headed off to New Minas for errands and the Kentville Ravine for her walk.

The first stop was to pick up duck eggs for Easter Egg painting. Duck eggs are very good for this purpose because they are much smoother than chicken eggs. White chicken eggs are hard to come by these days, the ones in the grocery stores are all stamped and people who sell farm eggs these days only sell brown eggs.

The duck egg lady also sells dog food, she came out to give Hapi treats. Hapi busted the screen on one of the truck cap windows last year so she can poke her head out, I haven't bothered to repair it. So, the duck egg lady hands Hapi a dog treat and Hapi takes it delicately in her mouth and pulls her head in and deposits the treat on the floor and sticks her head out again for more. In this way she soon had a pile of almost a dozen dog treats before the duck lady stopped handing them out.

Next stop was Sobey's, where I hoped to use a raincheque to purchase my favourite chocolate bar but they still don't have them in yet. Then on to Cleve's to exchange a defective pair of hiking shoes for new ones, and Staples to get instructions for a screen kit I bought there a couple of weeks ago. The kit comes from Quebec and the installation instructions, four pages of them, are only in French. I can sort of read them, but I figured with four pages I should probably try to get the English instructions because somehow a four-page instruction set sounds complicated to me.

The Customer Service lady is amazed at the lack of English instructions. They have one more kit still on the shelf and it only has French instructions too. Customer Service lady calls someone from out back who is also amazed, but she goes on the internet and finds English instructions on the manufacturer's website. She prints off a copy for me. It is one page long, the actual instructions taking up less than half a page. We are all amazed. This kit is easier to install in English than in French?

After that my errands are done, so we head to the ravine. I let Hapi out and another truck pulls up too. Hapi and I head to the trail down into the ravine and I look back to see if I recognize the people in the other truck. It appears to be a couple without a dog, a third person is running to catch up with them. We head into the ravine and at the bottom of the hill I give Hapi one of her treats. She buries it by the brook.

Shortly we meet a lady with a young Nova Scotia Duck Toller, the duck toller is keen to play but Hapi does her usual growly aloof thing and walks away. The duck toller's owner asks if my dog dislikes puppies and I say No, she actually likes to play with young dogs but it takes her a long time to warm up. Hardly the words were out of my mouth and Hapi makes a liar of me, she turns and immediately starts chasing the young toller.

I used to have a duck toller so I am familiar with the breed, for those of you who are not they kind of look like a small golden retriever but are a little more hyper. Mine had white markings on his feet, face, chest and tail tip, but this one is all red.

The couple I had seen earlier catch up and I realize that the third person I thought I saw with them was actually their dog, a big black Great Dane. The Great Dane joins Hapi and the toller in play, but now the little toller is kind of freaked out at being chased by two very large dogs. He immediately lies down belly up. The two big dogs sniff him and back away. They stand there waiting, and eventually the toller gets up and runs off, the two big dogs in pursuit once again. They repeat this routine a couple of times and then the toller is more at ease and they just chase each other all around in circles.

Eventually we part company and I follow the folks with the Great Dane to the end of the ravine and then up through a junk yard and loop back down into the ravine on the other side. Hapi and the Great Dane are content just to explore and sniff things, although Hapi manages to chase a couple of squirrels. By the time we return to our trucks the two dogs are quite muddy.

While walking we were chatting about this that and t'other thing, and something they told me is that the coyotes around here were actually introduced by the provincial government. Apparently they introduced them to control the rabbits! That sounds beyond stupid. Don't know how one would check it out though.

I was going to stop at the hardware store to pick up hardware for the garden frames but by the time I was halfway home I decided I had done enough and it could wait for another day. Hapi and I got home again shortly after noon and that was a busy enough day for me!

Early spring playtime

This past week has been record-breaking warm here, downright hot (break out the shorts and T's time) on Thursday. Silly Nova Scotians who went south this week regretted it, the best of Florida was no better than here. Although I bet you could go swimming at the beach there; I don't think I would have chanced it here. We are almost back to "seasonable" now though, big high of +8C today ("seasonable" is +5C). For a couple of days it was cooler indoors than outdoors, I didn't run the furnace or light the fire for several days because the house never cooled off overnight.

I've been getting estimates on cutting down some trees on my property, a line of spruces along the south side, because they block the sun. It turns out that my neighbour on that side is very keen to see those trees gone and has gone so far as to offer to pay part of the cost. However most of the work will have to be done on their property, it is harder to get at those trees from my side than their side, so I am giving them a few days to think about that.

I am actually sitting on the fence on this issue, I like the trees and like the sound of the wind in them and the way that birds can hide in them. I have a feeling that if I cut them down I will discover that they contribute unforeseen benefits by their presence. Will I miss their shade? But having uninterrupted sun all summer long on my garden area would be nice. Presently no part of the back yard qualifies as "in full sun". I wish I could just trim those trees down to half-size, but that is just not doable. In the summer they provide shade for my house during the first half of the morning, I don't know how much of a difference that makes to the heating up of the house then. They don't provide any privacy.

Last night four of us went out for dinner and local theatre: a lovely little restaurant called Pizzazz Bistro and then on to Centrestage Theatre to see "Twelve Angry Jurors", a take-off on Twelve Angry Men. They had a mixed-gender jury.

The restaurant was truly excellent, we all ordered different things and we were all pleased with our food, we would have ordered different wines but ended up drinking the same wine, an Argentinian Malbec. For dessert two of us had cheesecake and two of us had apple cake. The desserts were all circular, and you could order a half-piece and get a semi-circular dessert instead. So many times I have split a dessert with someone that it is kind of nice that the restaurant provides half desserts.

The play was great, they did a great job of adapting it I thought. But I am not one to judge, having never seen the original. The theatre is tiny, I don't think it seats more than 80 or 90 patrons. It is very much a local theatre operation, the theatre staff, actors and many of the audience know each other and joke around (the instructions in case of fire were half serious half silly). All in all it was a most pleasant evening out: good company, good food, good theatre.

Earlier in the day I took Hapi out on the dikes and we met a lady walking her golden retriever. The retriever was young and wanted to play with Hapi, but she was all aloof and growly with the young dog. The woman recognized Hapi and told me her dog's name, Duncan. I remembered meeting her and her dog in the Kentville Ravine several months ago, before winter. Duncan was smaller then, not quite his full size. But I remembered that Duncan and Hapi had very much enjoyed each other, in fact it was the best dogplay Hapi had had since Hiro left.

After 20 minutes of ignoring Duncan Hapi suddenly decided she was ready to play with him, I think she even took Duncan by surprise since he had kind of given up on her by then. But they took off, chasing each other and running through the mud of the tidal flats and drainage ditches. It was a pleasure to watch, although Duncan's owner was concerned about having to load the muddy stinky dog into her car afterward. I suggested we take them to the "Duck Pond" in a nearby park to wash off. The pond is posted with No Dogs Allowed signs, but at this time of year I doubted anyone would accost us.

We got the dogs to the park and they leaped into the pond and had great fun play fighting in the water. They got so hyper that it was near impossible to recapture them and get them leashed up to go our separate ways. Afterward I realized I should have got contact info to organize future play dates for the dogs. Oh well, hopefully another time. At his full adult size Duncan looks smaller than Hapi but he weighs as much as she does. His coat is not nearly as fluffy as hers.

In spite of the wash in the pond, Hapi still stunk of the dike mud. It's not as bad as rolling in manure, but close. Good thing she is an outdoors dog.

More Baxter's Harbour photos

More photos of our walk on Paddy's beach over at the Baxter's Harbour blog. In particular a fabulous photo of Hapi.

Beachcomber asked me to post some of my photos on that blog, but as you will see her photos are so much better than mine that I feel quite inferior in that regard. She has an amazing talent for photography, not to mention a way better camera than mine.

Dog walk on the beach

Went for a walk on Paddy's Beach in the Harbour with beachcomber, who by the way won picture of the month over at Saltscapes Magazine. Not as warm as Thursday butstill sunny and bright. All the snow is gone but as you can see in one or two of these pics there is still a bit of ice.

Phoebe and Hapi chased each other around while Sheila and I clicked away with our cameras. She's expecting me to post some of my photos over at the Baxter's Harbour blog, but she is a way better picture-taker than I am so I think I will just post mine here.

We had a bit of a race with the tide, we knew it was coming in and parts of the beach disappear altogether at high tide so we had to be mindful of that. We timed it perfectly, with a foot or two of beach still left when we headed back.

The Harbour

Beachcomber photographing Hapi

The Harbour waterfall

Rock "drawings"

Beachcomber at work

Paddy's beach

Frozen waterfall

Waves on the cliff

...and the snow geese are flying

I saw snow geese the other day, another sign of spring. They say spring here is 2-3 weeks early. They've started sugaring off already. And all the snow around my place melted yesterday, I see bulbs sprouting. Somehow they got dug up last year and are sitting on the ground surface, not sure what they are yet but they're too big for crocuses or snowdrops.

I went to the Harbour because it was such a gorgeous day, sunny and warm. Ruth is off work for a week after surgery (good news surgery) and Nancy had the day off too (she does shiftwork). We sat on Nancy's deck, Val came by and we walked the dogs. Val's dog Phoebe narrowly missed getting a snout full of quills when she discovered a porcupine under a tree. The porcupine slowly climbed up the tree and I desperately started calling Hapi because she was off in the woods somewhere and I did not want her discovering that porcupine when it was right about her nose-height up that tree. We avoided disaster.

Last year when the time changed it felt way too early, still winter. But the clocks change this weekend and I don't think it will be too early.

Rainy and windy today but tomorrow will be sunny again and wHapi and I are going back to the Harbour for a walk on the beach with beachcomber. Also, the Women's Day Cafe is tonight, local musical women performing, a bunch of us are going to that.

The smelt are running

Today I was shopping at Sobey's, I went because they had my favourite chocolate bar on sale but I also checked out their seafood counter. They had smelt. I asked about them, the fish lady said this was their first batch, the run has just started. Smelt from Sobey's is not quite the same thing as eating them fresh from the river, but still, I asked for one meal's worth.

The best way to eat smelt is right by the river, fresh caught and fried up in butter. They are small enough that you pick one up by the tail and just eat it from your fingers. There are hardly any bones. When they are running, there are so many of them in the river that you can catch them in baskets.

Sunday night we were supposed we were supposed to get 5 cm of snow, but by morning it was obviously a bit more than that. More like 15 cm. It looked beautiful, light and fluffy, piled up on all the tree branches. Monday afternoon we got another 10 cm. but it didn't get much deeper because it was fairly warm and the snow was damp and packing down.

Today I took Hapi down to the Kentville ravine. We haven't been down there very much lately because the one public trail in has been a sheet of ice. It is so steep that it is impassable when it is icy. There is another trail, an 'authorized-personnel-only' trail which is not so steep or icy, but on weekdays the authorized personnel are out in force. I've gone down that trail on weekends with good luck.

Anyway, today the ravine was beautiful in the snow. Hapi ran through the snow looking very happy. She does figure eights around me and I swing my walking poles at her; she ducks and swerves and disappears into the woods, reappearing suddenly a few minutes later running straight at me.

A young couple with three pre-school-aged kids followed us down the trail into the ravine. The oldest girl was nervous of Hapi and kept her mother between her and the dog, but the littlest boy, just barely walking, marched up to Hapi and said, Woof! Woof! Hapi backed up and looked at me, uncertain whether she should be scared of him or not.

After the walk in the ravine and shopping at Sobey's I took Hapi to visit her little admirer, Sidney the King Charles Cavalier spaniel. Sidney is so funny, he really is completely enamored of Hapi and Hapi hardly knows he exists. Today Hapi was lying on the floor and Sidney came up and was sniffing her ear. He was literally blowing in her ear and she kept shaking her head and looking at him, What are you doing!?! She can't figure him out.

I've been having trouble with my knee lately. It started some time ago, I noticed that my knee hurt going up the basement stairs with a load of firewood. Then a couple of weeks ago it got worse, a really sharp pain that was there all the time. So reluctantly I went to the doctor. She thought it might be a meniscal tear and ordered X-rays, although she said if it was a meniscal tear it would not show up in the X-ray. However the X-ray showed significant arthritic deterioration which probably better explains the pain. So I've been on anti-inflammatories to bring down the inflammation and I am now on a wait list to see a physiotherapist. I don't know how long that will take.

The anti-inflammatories are tricky, either they are too weak to have any effect or they are strong enough to make the pain go away but they give me heartburn. There doesn't seem to be a happy medium. The latest anti-inflammatory I am barely tolerating, I will take it until the end of the week and then stop; hopefully the pain will too. At least it does not interfere with walking too much, climbing the basement stairs is the main problem. I've decided that it is because the stair risers are too steep and the treads too narrow. There's really not enough room to redesign them, more shallow stairs would just bring my head closer to the edge of the ceiling going down.

Really the only way to fix the problem is to put the stairs back where they were originally, but that's a major renovation I don't want to do. The only other alternative is to not put firewood in the basement. Have to think about that.

But the main thing is, the smelt are running, spring is just around the corner.

Four Brownbagger talks

Over the past few weeks I've been going to the Brownbagger's Lunch, a one-hour lunchtime free lecture sponsored by Acadia Lifelong Learning (ALL). I get regular notifications for this lecture series and for the most part have not seen anything that really grabbed me, but this month there were four lectures in a row that I wanted to hear.

The first was Marilyn Manzer's "In Search of a Moral Economy", the second Uwe Kaufman's "Kluscap, Blomidon and Wabanaki Mythology", the third Chris Mansky's "Blue Beach---Evolution's Greatest Mystery in Our Backyard", and the fourth Bill Zimmerman's "Finally, Free to Be!" The lecture this week is of less interest to me so I will happily take a break.

Of the four, Marilyn's was most inspiring and Chris's the most interesting (to me). Bill's was also interesting, his message was that as seniors/elders we are in a unique position to participate effectively in political life and have some impact on social justice issues. Uwe has done considerable research on Miqm'ah/Wabenaki mythology surrounding the character of Kluskap (Glooscap) and told a number of the stories he has gathered over the years about Kluscap. The Kluscap stories are interesting, they are not about a god but a being with supernatural powers in a time when supernatural was natural. Animals spoke, rocks moved. Each story is about some dilemma solved and the ramifications of that long ago solution. Kluscap is compassionate and caring but also just. He once had an evil twin, Malsum, but he killed Malsum in a kind of duel and regretted it ever after. One version of the story that I read was that Kluscap and Malsum lived in what is now Newfoundland, but after Kluscap killed Malsum he had to move away, to what is now Nova Scotia.

Locally, Cape Split is considered to be Kluscap's stone canoe, forever beached at the head of the Bay of Fundy. One day Kluscap will return.

Chris has created a museum of fossils he has found at Blue Beach and has done considerable research on these and related fossils. Blue Beach rocks date from the Carboniferous era, a time when vertebrates were first emerging from the water onto land. The "Greatest Mystery" that he refers to is about how that happened, there are large gaps in the fossil record that evoke a large amount of speculation as to how exactly the evolution from water-adapted to dry land-adapted vertebrates occurred. Blue Beach is a tidal beach of sedimentary rocks (mostly slate, some shale), and depending on the strength of the tides and the amount of mud, what is hidden or exposed on the beach changes daily.

I have an old photo from when my youngest son was about 3 years old; I was in first year university and enrolled in a Geology 101 course. A field trip to Blue Beach was organized by a couple of the Geology Dept profs one weekend, and I took my kids along. We got to see several sets of tracks in the exposed slate rocks, of early "tetrapods". One set of tracks was large enough for my youngest son to stand inside a single footprint while I photographed him. As I recall it looked like it had three toes.

The Geology profs said that they could tell by the positioning of each footprint in relation to the others in the track how the legs were attached to the body, a significant piece of evidence in determining whether one is looking at an amphibian or a reptile, and how developed or primitive it might be. I just thought that it was amazing to be looking at footprints created hundreds of millions of years ago, well before even the dinosaurs lived. Some living creature walked across the mud and left a permanent, almost eternal, record of its passing.

Marilyn's talk was more personal, she kind of told her autobiography and the development of her own thinking about the state of the world and her life in it. She referred to God a lot, and right at the start of her talk gave her personal definition of that word so as to avoid mistaken impressions of what she was talking about: "the spirit of love and connection between all living beings and the natural world."

Towards the end of her talk she recounted hearing a CBC radio show that really brought together her sense of what life was about. It put into words what she had been feeling and struggling with over most of her life. I had heard that same radio program and I remember that my own reaction to it was that it was revelatory, I had not thought of things in those terms before, but it made a lot of sense.

The program was "Beauty Will Save the World", an episode of CBC Ideas in June 2010. Marilyn took some notes of what was said in that program, and she does a remarkable job of capturing the essence of what was discussed, so I am going to repeat them here. The title of the program is a quote from Fyodor Dostoyevsky's "The Idiot" that Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn used in his Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech. Here are Marilyn's notes.

Plato argued that beauty was the revelation of God in the here and now.

John Keats wrote, "Beauty is truth, truth beauty, that is all you know on earth and all you need to know." (Ode to a Grecian Urn)

Beauty has the power to redeem desperate and tragic situations. Beauty saves us from acts against humanity, against ourselves.

If I didn't sing, I'd have to take drugs, because drugs kill the pain but beauty is bigger than pain. (a recovering drug addict)

Transcendent beauty---a spiritual beauty---can come in the most obscene places. People searching for dignity and human respect is a beautiful thing. Anyone can exhibit immense grace.

Beauty brings you joy. Beauty dwells with wisdom and wisdom dwells with joy. People who have beauty and wisdom and joy are capable of enduring the most terrible things.

Acting out survival of the fittest diminishes us as human beings and we know it. We need transcendent beauty to save us.

People are afraid of beauty like they are afraid of real freedom. The price of real freedom is security. Beauty is like that too. You can't hang onto it or possess it. It opens your heart and soul and makes you vulnerable. It is scary. You are not in control.

The fate of the world depends on unleashing the beauty that will save the world.

Marilyn's talk has been published and is available on the Argenta Friends Press website (Canadian Quaker Pamphlet No. 71). Look for "In Search of a Moral Economy" by Marilyn Manzer, in the pamphlet section.

Don't know much about history...

Doing a lot of reading, books about slow cookers (I just got one), weaving, climate change and history. While I sit in my comfy chair waiting for this cold to go away and not come back...

Climate change: this one is kind of interesting but you might not agree with it. Cool It by Bjorn Lomborg (the Sceptical Environmentalist). He feels that climate change has been vastly overrated, in the sense that people have become downright hysterical about it. Not that he denies its existence or even that it is at least in part human-caused. But. His point is that rather than worry about future generations who may or may not be affected to a greater or lesser degree, it would be far better to worry about and spend our money on people alive today who are at risk due to lack of clean water, AIDS, malaria, social issues, malnutrition, etc etc etc.

Lomborg says that for a fraction of what it might cost to lower our carbon emissions to whatever level they are currently saying is acceptable, we could eliminate malaria, treat all HIV-infected people, provide clean water to everyone on the planet and a host of other lifesaving projects. And further, that the potential threat of climate change (flooding, drought, species extinctions, etc etc) might be better addressed directly rather than indirectly via reduced carbon emissions. For example, better to build better levees and dykes and protect crucial wetlands to protect vulnerable river and seaside areas than to impose exorbidant carbon taxes. And it would be far more doable politically than trying to convince every government and corporate polluter to change their ways. In fact, if we were successful in reducing carbon emissions around the world the effect would actually be devastating for poor people everywhere. The economic effect would be severe and mostly borne by those who can least afford it.

Lomborg provides evidence to support his position which I won't get into here. I am not expert enough to refute his arguments or supporting evidence, but perhaps you are; in which case I urge you to read the book. I thought that what he had to say made a lot of sense to me.

History: I just read Debt: the First 5,000 Years by David Graeber (one of the first "organizers" of the Occupy Wall Street event in NYC last summer and fall) and am about halfway through The Origins of Political Order by Francis Fukuyama. They are both sweeping surveys of about the last 5,000 years, give or take. Fukuyama ends his book with the French Revolution, promising a sequel to follow addressing developments since that time. Graeber's book is shorter and ploughs on through to the financial crisis of 2008.

Fukuyama is or was famous for his previous book called The End of History and the Last Man. It all sounded kind of presumptuous and beyond me anyway so I did not read that book, but now I think I might go back and try it, I am curious as to how he came to that conclusion at the time. He is very readable although he does use some technical language I've never heard of ("enfeoffed"?) to describe particular historical situations.

Graeber is a little tougher, probably because of his subject matter. But the major difference I notice is that Graeber definitely has an opinion---an axe to grind---while Fukuyama is decidedly more objective and emotionally removed from his subject. So they tend to cover the same periods and events in very different ways. Not that they are necessarily opposed or that one is better than the other, just different. With both writers I feel like I am learning a lot and learning from perspectives I never would have dreamed of. Graeber definitely makes you think. And Fukuyama presents theories that sound very plausible, very explanatory and leave you thinking, "oh, so that's why...!"

I guess the big caution I would have is that Fukuyama makes it very clear when he is theorizing and Graeber doesn't. So with Graeber you're not quite sure how much of it is his opinion and how much is just accepted fact. However his footnotes and references take up a quarter of the book so if you are diligent you can check it all for yourself.

Slow cookers: Well, I borrowed a whole bunch of slow cooker cookbooks from the library in hopes of finding one that I liked and could buy (cookbook that is). So far I have been able to rule out a few pretty quickly, but I am down to three that I can't decide between and I still have a couple of holds pending for more cookbooks. So I don't know what I will end up doing.

I recently bought a book about the Middle Ages by Henri Pirenne; haven't read it yet but I had read on the internet somewhere that he is a recognized authority on that time period. And the book was cheap: $0.01 plus shipping. As soon as I get through the library books... I really must slow down with putting holds on stuff...

Ice wine snow storm

(Hapi napping in the snow)

There was an orchid show at the University on Saturday, I went with a few friends to see the orchids. A lovely blaze of tropical colour on a stormy winter day. We then walked to the university art gallery to see a show of works by local artists. I was really impressed by the quality of many of the paintings and works of sculpture and photography. Many paintings had price tags on them, mostly in the hundreds of dollars. Several were priced in the thousands of dollars. Three small paintings by one artist were priced in the $2500 - $8500 range. It was not anyone we had heard of but one of us later looked the artist up on the internet and it turns out he is a well-known American artist who has retired to our area.

I took Hapi to the vet to get her limp checked out, turns out she has pulled a muscle in her shoulder and I am supposed to limit her walks till she heals up. Not easy. If I have to though, apparently it is safe to give her aspirin or acetaminophen.

The second major storm of the winter was on Saturday (the first was in October, so technically this is the first of the winter). A messy mix of rain, freezing rain and snow, with lots of ice and snow by Sunday morning. North sides of everything coated in ice, some 20 cm (8") of fluffy white stuff on the ground. After a leisurely morning coffee I spent a good hour shovelling the driveway. I had the good sense, if I do say so myself, to park the truck close to the bottom of the driveway so I only needed a narrow path from the back door to the truck and a wider path from the truck to the road.

Taking the protective tarp off the truck was another task, a bit tricky since I put it on when it was still raining so there was ice both under and on top of the tarp. After carefully breaking the ice under the tarp I was able to slide it off. The main purpose of the tarp is to keep water from seeping into the windows facing the space between the cab and the cap, but in wintertime it also prevents ice from building up on the windshield.

The past two weekends have been the Ice Wine Festival locally, with sampling of ice wines at many of the local vineyards. Some friends and I wanted to go to the l'Acadie Vineyard on Sunday for the festival. I phoned to find out how bad the roads were in the Gaspereau, they weren't too bad. I drove to Lin and Pete's with Hapi and met up with them and and another couple, Barb and Scott, to walk to l'Acadie, a couple of kilometers down their road. We walked down the road and along the way picked up Peggy, Lorna and Manou. Meeting Peggy and Lorna was pre-arranged, but Manou was out shovelling her driveway and we easily convinced her that wine-tasting was better than shovelling.

The eight of us arrived at the vineyard and we were an instant party. I think the Vintner, Bruce, was very happy to see us, he must have been wondering how many people would brave the roads after the storm to visit his vineyard. He and his wife had prepared a wonderful fondue of gruyere, emmental and kirsch for the tasters, and had lined up four sparkling wines and a dessert wine served in tiny dark chocolate cups for us to taste. He said that when he worked on vineyards in the Okanagan in BC, he had had his fill of the hard work involved in producing ice wines, so he wasn't going there on his Gaspereau vineyard.

We had a good time, the wine and fondue and conversation was great. Hapi loved the walk and was fine with sitting in the snow outside the winery while we tasted. Bruce wanted photos of us lined up inside and outside because he thought we exemplified what this festival meant to him: a bunch of people out in the snow having a good time.

We left l'Acadie and decided to continue walking to Gaspereau Fibres, where we had heard that they would be serving wine from l'Acadie accompanied by lamb hors-d'oeuvres. As we approached the shop, Hapi saw a big flock of crows and seagulls congregated in a field across the road, no doubt feasting on chicken shed litter. She took off across the rather busy road to chase the birds and find out what they were all so excited about in that field. I had to follow after her with the leash to drag her back.

At the shop there were only two lamb tarts left, we were late. So we divided those tarts in quarters and each had a bite (they were yummy!) and a tiny cup of Marechal Foch red wine. Lorna had heard that I was going to teach Lin how to knit and asked if she picked out some yarn would I let her sit in on the lesson. So we asked the shop attendant about an appropriate project and she suggested a hat made from Fleece Artist sock yarn. Lorna picked out a colour and purchased a circular needle as well.

We all walked back to our various starting points and Barb and Scott and myself stopped at Lin and Pete's for tea and coffee. Hapi played with Lin's dog Sid. Just before sunset Hapi and I drove home. It was a fun weekend and the walk to the vineyard was the highlight.

The Mighty Nordic Pole Walker Conquers Her World

Winter continues in a mild vein, a few cold days, a tiny bit of snow, and NO shovelling. Yay!

My own cold is gradually receding, but still there. The day I wake up with unplugged ears will be a major turning point.

Now Hapi is limping. Can't see anything, her paws look fine and when I palpate her leg she doesn't wince or pull back. In the morning the limp is almost non-existent but by evening she hobbles like an old lady. I'm thinking it's muscular or tendons. I am trying to cut back on her walks but it's hard to do, she loves her walk no matter what. Today I am going to resist her forlorn look and not walk her at all. Poor Hapi.

In January I tried to sign up for Triple-A (Acadia Active Aging), a Department of Kinesiology exercise program for older adults that some of my friends are raving about. However they were not accepting any newcomers because the people already in the program are not dropping out, they love it too much. But the woman running the program urged all of us who applied to participate in her new study on Nordic Pole Walking for Elders. I wasn't really interested but applied to the study anyway. Whew, talk about changing your life!

The initial assessment was pretty rigourous: how many sit-ups, how many push-ups, how long on a treadmill, how high you could jump, and a couple of other things, along with an extensive questionnaire covering health history, mental health and attitudes toward aging. Then a two-hour workshop on how to use the poles, a schedule of daily walks, and a set of free poles for the duration of the walk (unfortunately we don't get to keep them forever).

I have to say that walking with the poles is transforming, they are quite amazing. Basically, they transform you from a person to a dog: you lose your hands but you gain two more feet. I walk twice as fast, I easily traverse icy ground without cleats and steep hills are a snap. My arms are getting a serious workout, I can feel muscles I didn't know I had. They told us in the workshop that the poles take up to 30% of your weight off of your legs, which means less stress on arthritic joints.

Hapi was scared of the poles at first, she seemed to think I was going to whack her with them, but she's used to them now. I can walk as fast as her!

I am keeping an eye out for poles to buy for myself after this study is over. The great thing about pole walking is that you can do it any time of the year. My one and only complaint about the poles is that on really cold days I wear mittens over my gloves and it takes forever to get the hand straps over the mittens. I dare not take the poles off. My way around that I think is going to be not to use the hand straps on those days. Not strictly kosher but better than nothing.

I signed up for a one day workshop in Fair Isle mittens at Gaspereau Valley Fibres, I already know how to do Fair Isle knitting but being self-taught there are always things you can learn from an expert on how to do it properly, and besides, the mittens look wonderful (follow the link and scroll down about 3/4 of the page).

Yesterday I went to the shop to pick up the kit for the workshop and browse the shop. I ended up buying some Fleece Artist yarn on sale and a set of fleece soles to make slippers from. They are real fleece, leather on one side wool fleece on the other, cut into sole shape with holes punched around the edge. They come with a pattern for knitting the uppers to the soles. You can get them in every size from toddler to adult male.

The yarn I bought is not bulky enough for the slippers but I already have some suitable yarn for that. I got two skeins in slightly different colour ways, my plan is for a pair of socks in slightly different colours. Some day.

I went to the shop with a friend who wants to learn to knit. She has limited vision but is keen to learn, and she already has a project in mind. When we arrived at the shop we told the woman there the parameters: impaired vision, absolute beginner, specific project, acceptable colour range. She was immediately able to select an appropriate yarn which my friend was very happy with. She also selected the appropriate needles (in this case, a circular needle) and told my friend approximately how many stitches to cast on for the project.

After that we went for lunch at the Port Pub and bought some beer from brewmaster Randy to take home with us. Then we took our dogs for a walk along the Gaspereau Canal. My friend's dog is a male King Charles Cavalier who has a mad crush on Hapi. It is quite funny because Sidney is no bigger than a cat, Hapi hardly knows he exists. Sidney was in seventh heaven following Hapi along the canal trail, his tiny tail wagging just below Hapi's big malamute plume. Earlier, Hapi made Sid's day by chasing him around the dining table, after months of never noticing his existence at all.

Today I am going to the Brownbaggers Lunch at Acadia to hear a talk on Kluscap (often spelled Glooscap) and Wabenaki mythology. Hapi will mope at home.

Life, death and oscillations

So twice a month seems to be about my speed these days, for blog posting that is. Not that I have any great speed at anything else, still have a cold, still tired of it, but still alive and kicking.

Hapi and I went to the Kentville Ravine this morning, it was super icy with a thin coat of snow hiding the ice. But a gorgeous cold sunny day. We met Bodhi and his owner there. Bodhi is a 6-month-old all-black Great Dane: acts like a puppy, looks like a horse. Bodhi always tries to get Hapi to play with him and Hapi growls and growls and finally relents and plays with him. Bodhi also likes to push me away from Hapi by body-checking, which is a bit scary when one is standing on a narrow icy path ten feet up from the creek.

As we were walking under some really tall hemlocks the snow on the upper branches started to cascade down in chunks and spray. It was like standing under a snowy waterfall. The whole forest got foggy from the snow spray and the chunks of snow fell from a great height in slow snow motion. Very dreamlike, very beautiful.

Later in the day I went down to the theatre to get some files off the computer in the projection room, and as I passed through the cafe at the front of the theatre someone called out my name. I looked and it was an old friend I hadn't seen in more than a year. I had heard that he suffered a stroke recently but was OK.

I stopped to chat with him. He told me the whole story of the stroke and what it brought up for him. He lives in the Harbour, his wife commutes every day into the Valley for work. The stroke happened in the early morning just after she left to work, and he kind of thought that was what was happening but since he didn't have a car he thought he would just lie down until she got home in the evening. Then he thought that she would probably take him to the hospital, so he should have a shower before she got home.

Crazy, eh? But his symptoms were so mild, a bit of double vision, a bit of dizziness, and that was it. He didn't think it was that big of a deal, and he didn't know that if you think you're having a stroke you need to go to the hospital RIGHT NOW.

As it was, they misdiagnosed him at the hospital and sent him home. They thought it was an ear problem and gave him aspirin(!!!) (aspirin!!!) (omg, so much for RIGHT NOW!!!). He ended up having to return the next day because he still had the symptoms and wasn't content with the ear problem diagnosis.

O, ...M, ...G.

Can you imagine?!?

Anyway, that was a few months ago and his symptoms have cleared up with little residual effect. But, it could happen again at any time, and he might not be so lucky the next time. So now, he's not very complacent about that, he is not nearly ready to check out, but they are telling him that besides quitting smoking, improving his diet and getting more exercise (done, done, and done!) the only other thing he can really do is get to the hospital, quickly.

But that's the kicker. He lives a 25 minute drive away from the nearest hospital, and his wife uses the car to get to work every day. He would have to find a neighbour who is home and ready to drop everything to take him in, assuming he recognized what was happening to him and could still use the phone to call around for help. And 25 minutes might not be quick enough.

So what to do. Should he move next door to the hospital? Stay put and take his chances? He has no answers and neither do I. If I lived in the Harbour I would not want to move next door to the hospital in town. But that's a scary choice, knowing it could literally be the death of you at any moment.

Once that conversation was out of the way we went on to some other interesting stuff, stuff I hope to talk more about with him later. But Hapi was tied to a lamppost outside the cafe and I didn't want to leave her there too long, I really had to leave in mid-conversation. I think we could have gone on for another hour or two easily.

In compensation for Hapi's long wait at the lamppost (I looked out the window a couple of times, she was holding court while passersby stopped to admire and pet her) I took her the long way home via the rail trail and the Acadia woods. Still sunny, cold, and icy with a thin skim of snow. But just so nice to be out in the woods with my dog on a sunny winter day.

As noted above, I still have a cold. Very annoying and energy-sapping. I suppose that what I really should be doing is lying low till it is cleared up, but I have a dog that requires a couple of vigourous walks every day. Can't not do that. Our weather is still all over the map but generally way warmer and dryer than last year. The weatherman says it is due to a positive Arctic Oscillation this year. Last year it was negative. It's not a regular thing, no telling if it will stay positive or if next year will be negative again, but generally they say that it is increasingly more often positive than negative. No doubt due to climate change but I can't say I am upset about it. I am all for positive Arctic Oscillations if it means I don't have to shovel the driveway.

A different kind of winter

Today it is sunny, bright and freezing. No snow on the ground here, not even residual snowbanks from previous snowfalls. Yesterday it was sunny and warm, whatever snow was laying around yesterday morning was long gone by evening. And that is pretty much the weather pattern for the past month. We've had a couple of substantial snowfalls, followed almost immediately by substantial rain, warm sunny days and then into the deepfreeze.

Ice is a big problem, I have put cleats on my rubber boots. Rubber for the melting days, cleats for the freezing days.

If it weren't for the non-stop succession of colds (I am into the third this month alone) I would be happy about not having to shovel snow from the driveway. Looking at photos from this time last year I know that bare ground was nowhere to be seen, shovelling was the major physical activity of the month. However I was not sick.

Hapi still needs her daily walks but we are down to one a day, I no longer have the energy for anything more than that. The back yard is filling up with her poop. Good thing it is frozen today.

A couple of days ago I went out for lunch with a couple of friends at the local Big Stop (Irving gas station restaurant). Lin and I had Haddie Bits, Val had turkey soup. The Haddie Bits were good (deep fried bits of haddock sitting atop a pile of fries, coleslaw on the side). But by the time I got home I had no energy left at all, could not even put leftovers in the microwave for supper. Went to bed and slept 12 hours and still felt exhausted. I am marginally better now, but still a ways to go, and I am giving up hope that this will be the end of it. I am quite certain my immune system is shot and when I start feeling a bit better I will be felled by whatever cold virus is lying in wait for yet another round of this miserable business.

A fellow I met while walking Hapi in the Kentville Ravine says he is sick for the first time in years (he called in sick at work but would rather be out in the ravine with the dogs than home in bed, I don't blame him) and his wife is in the same boat as me, her third or fourth cold of the season. He blames the weather, the up and down of it all. I am becoming a believer.

I got a Kindle for Christmas (a late Christmas gift), what marvelous timing! Reading is my principle activity besides sleep.

I am torn between the handiness of the Kindle and the familiarity of real books. It will take me a while I think to find free ebooks on line that I want to read, and the fact that I can't use the Kindle to read library books is a bit of a drawback. Apparently Amazon allows US library books to be read on the Kindle, but not Canadian. Amazon seems very reluctant to move beyond the American market, unlike Apple.

But still, it is extremely user-friendly once you get used to the limitations. And the usage paradigm is quite different from the iPhone/iPad/home computer paradigm. But once you get used to that it is fine.

I've shown the Kindle to a couple of friends and they immediately try to navigate by touching the screen. Since this model is the most primitive of the Kindles, touching the screen gets you nothing but fingerprints. And there is no keyboard either so initially it is a little mystifying as to how exactly one uses the thing. It has a soft keyboard of course, displayed onscreen by pressing the keyboard button, but the characters are not arranged in the familiar QWERTY style. Another learning step. Amazon seems to go out of their way to get you to understand that their product is totally, TOTALLY, different. The screen is not backlit, so you cannot read it in dim light any more than you could read a real book.

So far I have not taken the Kindle out of the house because I am scared of its fragility. I went to Staples to get a protective case for it but they were sold out; apparently a lot of us got Kindles for Christmas. So I am waiting for them to be in stock again. And for me to have the energy to go out and buy one.

Sucks to be sick.

Janus, looking backward and forward

Apparently my brain goes to sleep shortly after supper. The longer I can postpone supper, the longer I can keep it awake, but I think there might be a limit to that.

I was supposed to go to a birthday party tonight, a friend's 50th, but I could not get up the energy. I feel bad about that, but I don't think it would have been much use to force myself out the door. I'd like to think this is the tail-end of the 'flu but I am pretty sure it is not, I think I am pretty much over that.

Today was one of those crisp bright January days with a light dusting of snow on the ground, just enough to be blindingly bright. Hapi and I went for a brief walk along the Gaspereau canal, a kind of short elevated canal along one side of the Gaspereau Valley. It's about halfway up the side of the valley so you get quite a view from there, and you're mostly looking down on treetops on the lower side of the canal. The canal is not frozen.

Most of the electric energy produced in Nova Scotia is from coal, but there are a few small hydroelectric dams scattered through the province. The Gaspereau canal connects two small power dams. No boats use the canal, it is only about one kilometer long and there is no place to put a boat in, the sides are too steep. In the summer kids jump into the water from the one bridge that crosses the canal, but that is the only use the canal gets other than power production.

Sometimes it seems like the year has two beginning months, January and September. September always seems like a beginning, being the start of school after the summer I guess. And January is the official start of the year. You'd think the first month of spring ought to be the start, not a month into winter. Anyway, winter here doesn't really start until January. Might have a couple of good snowstorms in November or December, but January is the real start. In January there is nothing to look forward to except winter, at least two or three months of it. Sure, the days do get longer, and that is definitely a blessing, but it's still winter.

I've been trying to think about what I have accomplished in the past year and what I hope to do in the year coming. It's hard to think about accomplishments, I had a fairly aggressive list of things I wanted to do and hardly any of them got done. I was going to do so many things around the house that need work. A lot of painting, a couple of building projects, a few repairs...

The fence got built. Sam replaced the kitchen faucet. I got my loom set up and took a weaving workshop. I joined a choir and then unjoined. I got a dog. I stacked 4 cord of firewood, a cord and a half of it had to be stacked twice because I had to move it from inside the woodshed to out behind in the lean-to.

I built 4 raised garden beds and grew some vegetables, I planted 6 berry bushes (raspberry, blueberry and gooseberry), bunches of chives, strawberry plants and asparagus. I froze some of the vegetables and a whack of strawberries and blueberries (not my own), I made quince jam from 6 quinces I got off a bush in front of the house. There would have been more than 6 if I had not done an overzealous pruning job before I knew that it was a quince bush.

I also have a plum tree that does not produce plums, I thought it was because it is a type of plum that requires two trees to pollinate each other. But apparently it did produce one plum that a young man visiting next door managed to snag and eat before I realized what it was.

I got into artisanal bread baking and have developed a sourdough recipe that works pretty well. I bake about one loaf a week. I don't eat a lot of bread.

I volunteered at the foodbank and at the film society. At the foodbank I help bag up food for distribution every couple of weeks or so with 5 or 6 other women. There are over 90 families in our town that use this foodbank, up from around 60 during the summer.

At the film society I help put together a short presentation of movie trailers as previews of upcoming shows. It's a complicated process, but sort of interesting. I now have my own key to the projection room. The projectionist, also a volunteer, is a quiet but multi-talented fellow who is among other things a playwright, a director, a dancer, and a fiddler. We kid him about his hidden talents, that the next thing we know he's going to reveal that he is also a NASA space engineer or something. He says not.

I had a bunch of visitors, friends and family, who came to see my new-old place. I took care of my son's two dogs for a couple of months. I visited PEI twice for a couple of days each time. I went kayak camping once.

I think that pretty much sums up the past year. Mostly it seemed to me that it was about getting settled here.

The to-do list from last year is still around, I still need to paint and repair and so forth. I would like to expand the garden, from 4 beds to 8. I would like to get out more often with the kayak, although how exactly I am going to do that with this dog I don't know. She really does not like being left alone. I would like to go to Cape Breton. This winter I hope to get out skiing and snowshoeing.

I think I would like to be a little more focussed in the coming year, but what exactly that means I don't know.

I was in the Kentville Ravine the other day with Hapi, we ran into a woman I have met there before with her Great Dane puppy, Bodhi. This "puppy" weighs 137 lbs. Last time we met Bodhi kept trying to get Hapi to play with him and Hapi just growled at him. This went on for almost half an hour before Hapi finally caved and played chase with Bodhi. This second time Bodhi again tried to get Hapi to play and Hapi again growled at him. Only this time Bodhi appeared kind of upset by that, he started barking at her and leaning up against me. He leaned so hard that I had to step back a couple of paces.

His owner was watching this and said, I think he is trying to push you away from Hapi. We wondered what Bodhi was up to, but it really did seem like he was pushing me away from Hapi. Almost as if he thought Hapi was dangerous and he was trying to protect me from her. Or else maybe he thought Hapi would play with him if he could just separate us.

Last time we met Bodhi's owner asked me what my passion was. Kind of an odd question and I couldn't answer it. I said I was too much of a dilettante to have a passion for one thing in particular. She said her passion was for gardening and creatures, she likes plants and animals. I think it would be nice to have a passion for one thing, I just have too many interests and not enough time or focus.

I am just too scattered, too much of a dilettante.

Christmas with the 'flu

Christmas Day at the town reservoir.

Nova Scotia was one of the few places in southern Canada that had a White Christmas. We had a snow storm just before Christmas and then it turned cold so the snow stayed. Christmas Eve was a lovely starry night and Christmas Day was sunny and white. I unfortunately was down with the 'flu. Got the 'flu shot the week before and then got the 'flu. So much for the shot. It is supposed to take a couple of weeks to kick in, so I guess I should have gotten it sooner.

Thanks to the 'flu I missed out on a dinner party, a dance, and the Christmas Eve carolling service in the Harbour. Christmas Day I was damned if I was going to miss out on turkey dinner too, so I dragged myself out to the Community Dinner. The dinner was great, but previously when I was still healthy I had volunteered for the after-dinner clean-up crew and that did me in.

As it turned out, there were plumbing issues that resulted in no hot water and a malfunctioning dish sterilizer, so I don't know how good a job we did. Even though we knew it was kind of useless we ran everything through the sterilizer anyway, and that was a major bottleneck; we spent a lot of time standing around waiting while it sterilized each batch of dishes in cold water. Cleaning cooking pots with cold water is not fun either.

There was a lot of leftover vegetables. We joked about having a community mashed potato dinner in January.

One of the organizers, George, offered me a leftover jug of cider and I wanted that cider badly but it meant I would need a ride home because I didn't have the energy to walk home with a half-gallon of cider. And at that point the only rides on offer were from people who were staying to the bitter end of the clean-up.

I really should have abandoned the cider and just gone home. But I didn't. So Boxing Day I paid for my folly with yet more sickness, and added a Boxing Day open house to the list of Missed Events Due to 'Flu. On the other hand, I have had a nice pot of mulled cider on the wood stove for the last week and I am grateful for that. I also got a second turkey dinner as take-away after the Christmas Dinner, and I had made several pots of soup before I got sick (potato-leek, split-pea, and red-pepper-and-kefir), so I did pretty well in the food department. One friend gave me a nut cake for Christmas, I bought a fruitcake and made some chocolate macaroons, and my neighbour gave me shortbread cookies.

Last night the rain storm started and was still going strong this afternoon. All our Christmas snow is gone. And I am still sick. The nice thing about the rain though is that I don't have to walk the dog. She has no desire to press the issue. She has abandoned her doghouse and is sprawled across the livingroom floor on her back.

I've taken an interest in the history of the "Dark Ages", I got a couple of books and a video on the topic from the library. The video was kind of fun, it was called Medieval Lives and is a BBC series hosted by Terry Jones of Monty Python fame. There's a good description of the series in Wikipedia.

The content is serious but the presentation is as funny as one might expect of a Monty Python alumnus. I kind of like Jones' reason for doing this series, that he wanted to get his own back at the Renaissance. He deals with the smug assumption that the Renaissance was so much better than what preceded it. He also says that a lot of what we think we know about the Middle Ages is actually 19th century propaganda. I guess with the Industrial Revolution creating so much misery for so many people, it was a way to convince people that things were so much better than they were back in the Dark Ages.

The books I got are histories by Thomas Cahill, one of them being How the Irish Saved Civilization. It focuses in particular on the period immediately following the collapse of the Roman Empire, which is the period I am most interested in right now. It's hard to find books on that time period through the local library system. And apparently, according to some reading I've been doing on the internet, there is a lack of english-language books on the topic in general. Apparently European historians are more interested than English historians in that time period.

Some photos of my dog...

After three months of visiting this pond in the Acadia woods, Hapi has finally spotted the goldfish that live there.

Hapi strolling in the Kentville Ravine.

Hapi in her doghouse.

Excuses: Hapi and the comfy chair

I am not doing well keeping up a blog. I am thinking about dropping it.

On the one hand I think of interesting things to write about here, but invariably at times when writing is not an option---in the bath, walking the dog---anywhere but in front of a keyboard and monitor. I have had two people in my family recently comment on the lack of blog posting, so the pressure is certainly starting to mount, but that seems only to make matters worse, what the heck would I write about?

So for anyone who cares about such things, I am fine, the lack of posting is not due to any unpleasantness other than an inability to think of what to write about.

There was a period of time in the fall when I was busy getting ready for winter, then there was another period when I was getting ready for Christmas. That one is still going on. Christmas to me is kind of like American presidential elections, it goes on far too long. By the time the actual event rolls around I am thoroughly bored by the whole thing and can't wait for it to be over and done with.

January, January, let's here it for January!

I have had my dog Hapi without Hiro for just over a month, it is working out fine as long as I don't think too far into the future. People ask me how will I do such-and-such now that I have this dog and I don't know. Maybe I won't.

Hapi is very much an outdoor dog, she is very reluctant to come indoors. But I have to force her indoors when I go out without her, because when I leave her alone outdoors she howls. She doesn't howl indoors. So if I want her to come indoors just because I want her company, she won't come because she thinks it is preparatory to leaving without her. Can't win.

Sam says Hiro is doing fine, he likes being indoors and Sam is not yet working so he can spend lots of time with him. He does want to know when I plan to bring Hapi for a visit though.

I have to laugh.

Sam, you gave me a dog that pretty much precludes travel and you want to know when I will be travelling? Uh, not anytime soon I think.

I don't know if I mentioned this in a previous post, but a couple of months ago I used a Groupon coupon to purchase a kind of lazyboy armchair. It is incredibly comfortable. I have it in the living room in front of the wood stove and I have to say I spend way too much time in it. Once it is tilted back I have no desire to go anywhere or do anything else. Just getting up to throw another log on the fire is such a bother! At least I do have to take Hapi for a daily walk.

We have two main places to walk, the Acadia Woods and the Kentville Ravine. There are several other places to walk as alternatives, and I also take her along shopping or going to the library or post office. There are several stores where they keep dog treats for visiting dogs, and Hapi now knows all the places that will give her treats.

Recently we were in a long line-up at the post office and everyone wanted to pet her. The postal lady came out and gave her a treat, and then a customer in the line-up said, Where's my treat? So the postal guy came out and gave him a cookie.

Well, didn't that create an uproar, we all wanted our treats! No one else got a cookie though, but Hapi did get another treat. The post office isn't fair.

The Acadia Woods are part of Acadia University lands, there are several trails and it is only a 5 minute walk from my house so access is really easy. We rarely run into other dogs or walkers there. There is a small pond, it used to be the main source of water for the college in the 19th century, and currently it is occupied by four goldfish. I understand that they have been there for at least a couple of years. I like to go there to check on them. The pond is at the far south end of the Acadia lands and surrounded by fairly muddy woodland, so not a lot of people go there. A good thing from the perspective of the goldfish I think.

In general, a walk through the Acadia Woods involves about an hour of up and down and across several brooks. Hapi likes brooks. She's not into swimming but she does like wading in and drinking from ponds and brooks.

The Kentville Ravine is an absolutely marvelous place, I am quite in love with it. I would go more often but it is a 15-20 minute drive on the highway to get there. The ravine is part of the Kentville Agricultural Research Station lands and is probably one of the very few stands of old growth forest in the province. Big trees. A brook winds through the ravine and the trail crosses it several times. There are some small waterfalls on the brook and the ravine is steep-sided. There is little or no undergrowth in the forest there so you can see a long distance and wander off the trail to explore if you like. It is very popular with dog owners so invariably we run into at least one other dog when we go, and often there are whole packs of dogs there.

If you want to see what it is like, go to Youtube and search for "kentville doggie heaven".

I started taking Hapi there after Hiro left in order to socialize her. As long as the two dogs were together they had little use for other dogs and after Hiro was gone Hapi really didn't know how to get along with other dogs. She learned fast in the Kentville Ravine. She now really enjoys meeting other dogs and I have stopped worrying about how she might behave when she does. She is a large dominant dog who won't back down if another dog wants to pick a fight, but she is not interested in starting anything. In the ravine, dogs just want to have fun, Hapi has lots of opportunity to play.

When we don't encounter other dogs we explore some of the side trails, or simply go off-trail and wander. I've met a few people there and had some interesting conversations as well. So far, nothing but very positive experiences for both of us. And of course walking in a forest of big trees is in itself a nice thing to do.

Including travel time, a walk in the Kentville Ravine usually involves a couple of hours or more. If I add a shopping trip to the expedition, then it is in effect the whole day (keeping in mind that at this time of year a "day" doesn't last very long).

Between Hapi and my comfy chair, not a lot else is going on in my life, and I am quite content with that. Maybe too content. Just not a heckuva lot to write about.

An evening of trains

Last weekend there was a great show at the local theatre about the history of the local trains. The Mud Creek Boys sang railway songs and Gary Ness showed slides of his personal collection of local trains. Gary told the story of trains here in the Annapolis Valley.

The DAR (Dominion Atlantic Railway) was formed to run trains on tracks built in Nova Scotia in the mid 1800s, before Confederation. The railway between Halifax and Yarmouth via the Valley was started in 1857 and completed in 1869, two years after Confederation, with the exception of The Missing Link. The tracks were started at both ends and should have met in the Valley, but just outside of Digby quicksand was discovered and there did not seem to be a way around it. So a small section was left unbuilt until some time later. It became known as The Missing Link.

DAR workers were very proud of their work. They built their own locomotives in Kentville, and every locomotive was painted in DAR colours (gold and maroon) with the DAR Land of Evangeline emblem on the coal car. Every locomotive was given a name which it bore on a big brass plate on its side.

Canadian Pacific wanted an Atlantic port and tried to force Canadian National to sell its tracks to them, they even tried to get the federal government to force the sale, but it didn't happen. So instead, CP bought out the DAR which leased the CN tracks to Halifax, thus giving CP access to Halifax. CP told DAR workers that they had to make their locomotives conform to CP standards, which meant no DAR emblem, no DAR colours and no brass plates and locomotive names. The DAR workers were unwilling to conform and I guess Nova Scotia was just too far away for CP to enforce their rules. Every time the DAR got a new CP locomotive they painted it gold and maroon, gave it a name and affixed a brass plate with that name.

Gary explained how steam engines worked, and the complications of freight and passenger hauling, whether in separate trains or in mixed trains. The pictures were fascinating, all these old trains in our Valley. He could often name the engineers in the pictures.

The audience was packed. At the intermission many of us turned to each other to share our own stories of the trains. In 1994 the last train ran through the Valley. The tracks are still there but they have been left to rust and weed over. In some parts of the rail system there are trees growing between the tracks now. It is a shame.

When I lived here before we had the Dayliner, a train that ran twice a day between Yarmouth and Halifax. You could board it in the morning and head to Halifax, and return home on the evening train. It was not suitable for commuting to work but you could definitely go for a day of shopping and just hanging out in The Big City. I used to take the kids; travel on the train with kids was so much easier than on a bus because you could let the kids run around, you didn't have to try to keep them in their seats for two hours.

It turns out that CP's lease on the tracks was only for 99 years, and that lease expires next year. Who knows what will happen then?

After the show several people headed out to a Hallowe'en dance at the Old O, and a few of us went next door to the pub. This pub is very busy on Monday nights (standing room only!) but pretty quiet on a Saturday. I had a glass of local Muscat wine and someone else ordered a Beer Sampler. For less than the price of my Muscat, he got six little glasses of house-brewed beer, all different. I tried the AVA and the Raven. My favourite is still the Gaspereau Pilsner, but the Raven isn't bad. The stout does not compare well with Guinness, so best not to bother. They also brew seasonal beers, so there should have been a Pumpkin beer in the Sampler, but they were all out.

After the storm...

A doggy reunion and Lebanese brain food

On Saturday Hapi and I went to Ingramport on the South Shore where Sam and Hiro have been living for the past month. The weather forecast for Sunday was wet and stormy and Saturday was cold but sunny, and since Sam is leaving Ingramport on Hallowe'en I thought it might be my last chance to visit there. Sam told me about the Rails to Trails trail he has been walking Hiro on and I thought I'd like to see it. Not to mention Sam's delightful cottage on the sea there.

We separated Hapi and Hiro at the end of September, to see how it would go while Sam was still in the province. Hiro and Sam moved to Ingramport and has only been back to visit once, at Thanksgiving.

Hapi and Hiro had as excited and happy a dog reunion as you can imagine when we walked into Sam's cottage. They leaped on each other, an orgy of licking and biting and jumping on each other. Then Hapi did the same for Sam. Hiro's a bit more reserved with humans, he rubbed against my legs and leaned heavily against me, almost toppling me with his weight.

Sam and I left the dogs to their reunion and went out for a late lunch at a local Lebanese restaurant. I don't know what its name is, a kind of ramshackle stop on the highway that sells groceries and ice cream cones and advertises its Lebanese restaurant that does not appear much used. The entrance to the restaurant was locked, and only led into the kitchen in any case. We went around to the grocery store and entered through there.

The woman who runs the place unlocked the door to the kitchen to let us in, but we were already in. She gave us menus and directed us to the dining room.

The menu said, "Lots of Lebanese Food!" and that was it. No prices, no hints as to what exactly they served.

I asked her what kind of Lebanese food she made, and she listed off Hummus, Tabouleh, and a bunch of other things I did not recognize. So then she offered to make a Combination Plate for us.

Sam and I sat down and chatted a bit, then the woman's husband, a large mustachioed fellow with a rather grim look arrived at our table.

He laid his load on our table and said, "Empty plates."

I said, "Oh." and he responded, "What, you no want?" and made to take the empty plates away again.

"No no! We want!" I said.

Then he laid down another plate and said, "Bread."

It was broken strips of pita bread, which we nibbled on until he arrived again with a large platter of food. I recognized hummus, tabouleh, stuffed grape leaves, and some kind of rice and noodle mix. There was also something I don't remember the name of, little footballs of deep-fried ground meat and grain.

The man came back with two little plates, each one with a sombrero-shaped piece of bread. He put them down and said, "Eat this. Make you smart."

A little later he came back with two tiny bowls of soup with a ball of something floating in it. He said, "You eat this and live to 110. My grandmother's recipe, she live to 104."

It was all great food, and there was so much of it that it took us a long time to eat as much as we could handle.

The man came back and Sam told him he really liked the bread, he felt smarter already. The man said, "You smart now? You rich yet?" Well, maybe not so much.

After lunch we went back to the cottage and put the two dogs in the back of my truck to go to the trail. It really is nice to see them trotting along together, side by side with tails floating like plumes above them. We walked for around an hour and a half, first one way and then the other. Nice views of the ocean, a couple of bridges over brooks and a short side trail to a picnic spot beside a "lake", more like a widening of a swift-flowing river.

We came back to the cottage and the dogs wrestled with each other while we chatted over coffee. I wanted to be back home before it got dark so pretty soon I had to leave, I was worried that the dogs would be upset about that. But no, they seemed very matter-of-fact about Hapi jumping into the truck while Hiro stood by and watched us leave.

They seem to understand the shape of their new lives apart; they are delighted to see each other but not heart-broken to part. Watching them together though, they seem like perfect buddies. I can't say how Hiro is doing, but I think that Hapi is pleased to have me to herself, she doesn't have to compete with Hiro for attention.

Sam is in Wolfville for Hallowe'en and is not sure how long he will stay, but then he is headed back home to BC with Hiro. The dogs will not see each other again for a long time. We wonder if they will remember each other, I kind of think they will. Sam hopes Hapi will remember him, in a good way. He sometimes wonders if she feels that he abandoned her, but I don't think she does.


Compared to Hapi, Hiro seems much more like an oversized playful puppy. I miss that, and I miss his big fuzzy head. He is the fuzzier of the two, he looks more like a giant stuffed dog than a real dog. I imagine them to be the bossy older sister and the mischievous little brother, even though he is quite a bit bigger than her.