Dec 09

Take a big breath...

...and get ready to say something. Something like Happy New Year. That no-sound before you say the first word is the sound of autumn turning into winter. Sometimes, of course that no-sound is accompanied by the sound of walking through fallen leaves. But before they fall, each leaf takes that big breath and prepares itself for the Big Changes to come.Then it simply exhales and wafts. We're in the habit of seeking the sounds, of course. No-sounds elude us. Evidence of the no-sounds though is always in the sound that follows.

Wait for it: the snow may fall silently, but its exale involves all of nature and reminds us to change how we walk, lest we make that sad falling-on-ice crunching sound. So.... take that big breath and rejoice in the exhale... and waft a little this month.

Nov 09

Wi-Fi?

November, I'm sure you'll recall, is the month of remembrance. Remember when we needed wires to communicate?

Wait a minute! Just last week as I left work I heard an enormous chattering overhead. Looking up, this month's calendar shows you only a small portion of what I found. Twas some kind of blackbird convention. The topic being so vociferously argued: where will they all rest and have a friendly chat of their own when our com-wires are finally truly gone? Some said trees. Others objected because leaves get in the way of eye-contact. Then, looking at the pedestrians below, one said they could just chat on the go and never rest again. I left them squawking and phoned to pick up my messages as I walked on.

While you're doing your traditional remembering this month, please remember Kurt Vonnegut on his birthday, the 11th. A good day to remember the man who taught us the horror of war as a result of not dying in Dresden. If you don't know, go read Slaughterhouse Five...or rent the DVD if you want to remember faster.

Oct 09

Sorting and saving...

Remember the hats from last month's calendar? Well, these boxes come from the same home... this time from the artist's workshop. Reminds me of Virgo's imperative to sort and organize... always with an eye to aesthetics. Just look at these boxes so carefully covered in wallpapers from the Past. Of course, when they were covered the wallpapers might have been from that day's Present.

Some people save screens and keys and springs and metal movie misc discs... and some save stamps. They call that collecting. This month's calendar invites us all to collect AND to collect in style. Have a great October

Sep 09

Entrancing entrance...

This summer Kate spent a couple of weeks house and cat-sitting for friends whose apartment shares this, the house-owner's entrance. These hats make me want to name the people who wear them. Any suggestions among real or fictional people? Jay Gatsby? Gene Kelly? Eliza Doolittle?

And look! Every time people come and go the game continues. Maybe I need to adjust my own entrance to include an adventure... you?

Aug 09

Rainy day in Speightstown, Barbados

Peter lives south of here in a place called Paynes Bay. Just last week I rode the coastal bus to Speightstown to wander these streets, visit galleries and have a great lunch on the beach. Yes, on a covered patio because the rains were as heavy as they were short. I spent a great time in Barbados with my grandsons and Peter and his friends. I met an artist named Bill Grace. It was a gallery with his work that helped attract me to Speightstown. Go here to see why: http://www.billgraceart.com

I could do a whole 5 years of calendars with the orchid pix I took. I'll include some of them another time. This time I want you to enjoy a quiet day knowing the rain will cool you off and leave the world full of quiet reflections and the possibilities of distant horizons.

July 09

Strawberry Social Time... for Canada Day.

Last month Kate went to Germany for a math conference. They spent time talking about things with surfaces and proofs... then they went for walks and explored the Black Forest. YES, they DID have Black Forest cake and YES, I do have the pic to prove it. I also have this glorious strawberry pic to prove that strawberries are delicious everywhere... and that, in turn, proves we're all one big, juicy world.

It's time now to celebrate our oneness while we honour our homes (and our flags, Don).

Jun 09

Hey!... Happy June Fool's Day!

I'm the designated June Fool this time. Knowing that my son would be visiting from Barbados, I prepared this calendar last week. Peter and the boys arrived as scheduled bright and early this morning before school and I was excited, then forgot to send this out. Today's still the 1st, however, so I claim I'm not really late, even if you're one of those who won't see it until the 2nd.

This month's pic is of the Luke Skywalker and Mother's Day tulips that Peter sent last month. We're having a cold, wet week and I like looking at these as reminder that spring will probably get finessed entirely... and we'll go directly into summer any time now. Maybe it'll happen in time for the Beach Blues Festival in a couple of weeks. We'll all complain, of course. In the meantime Peter will return to Barbados and Kate will be off to Germany soon.

Moi? I'll stay at my new home in the Beach and go to the aforementioned festival. What about you?

Happy Luke Skywalker Day

OK, I admit it: I've been taking antihistamines for my stuffy head cold and lost track of the date... until Peter sent me Happy Luke Skywalker Day flowers!
So... better late than never, eh?
At least you can still go get a cold cerveza and kick back for Cinco de Mayo while you ponder this...
About 390,000 people listed their religion as Jedi in the 2001 Census for England and Wales. In Scotland the figure was a reported 14,000.

May 09

Happy May Day... from the Great Wall

Another of the pictures my son took when visiting China last year... seems perfect for an observation of May Day, the great International Labour Day... celebrated in China as a public holiday. In the 1990s they extended the holiday from 1 day to 3 days, then the Chinese government made it a 7-day holiday, allowing millions of Chinese people to travel. In 2008 the People's Republic of China reduced the holiday period back down to 1 day. Now this year China's southern Guangdng province resumes the weeklong May Day in a bid to revive a sagging economy.

Whether celebrated for only 1 day or for a week, it all seems quite different from dancing around a May Pole or delivering Hallmark baskets filled with flowers to friends and neighbours.

However you choose to celebrate, we can all agree it's spring and time to move our festivities outside!

Apr 09

A litte bee-foolery...

I offer here a little fun in honour of a silly day. With left-over inspiration from Pi Day, I challenge you to send captions, as Pi-Ku or not.

Mine attempts the Pi-Ku form... Line1: 3 syllables, Line 2: 1 syllable, Line 3: 4 syllables.

2 bees, er
Not
2 bees. 1 more.

14 Mar 09

I PREFER PI
Not all of you are lucky enough to have a mathematician in your family, so in honour of my cool math-geek daughter, let me encourage you to celebrate Pi Day on Saturday, March 14th. In the American way of writing numerical dates, that's 3/14. In the rest of the world it doesn't work that way. Some celebrate July 22, or 22/7, which is the approximate fraction of Pi. I choose the more exacting decimal configuration and it has the bonus of also being Albert Einstein's birthday: this year his 130th.

Did you notice? The title of this entry is an appropriately cool and geeky palindrome (penned by one Lily Cee to celebrate Pi Day last year). Here are a few Pi activities to get your celebration started.

1. Write a Pi-Ku.
That's haiku with a difference: First line has 3 syllables, second line has 1, and the third line has 4. Here are a few examples from NPR:
------
So Southern
I
Can’t say Pi right.
------
Three point one
Four
et cetera.
------
Math is hard
I
failed algebra.
------

2. Create your own Pi music HERE.

3. Visit the National Geographic Pi Day Blog for Pi fun that never stops:

4. Bake and eat a Pi pie.

5. Make and drink a Blue Pi-Tini: (from Think Geek)
Ingredients:
• 3.14 oz Blueberry Vodka
• Measure diameter of glass in cm, add Pi times the glass radius squared oz. of vermouth divided by 10.
• Splash of Blue Curacao for colour (optional)
• Frozen blueberries
Preparation:
1. Pour ingredients into a cocktail shaker with ice cubes while chanting Archimedes' name.
2. Shake 3.14 times.
3. Strain into a chilled cocktail glass.
4. Drop in a few frozen blueberries as cooling garnish.

Mar 09

The colours of hope...
Here in Canada, March has entered with bitter cold. Does cold count as a lion even without winds? OK, there were some winds in the afternoon. Whether lion or lamb, we have a lot more winter to anticipate... and endure.

Last summer my son and his two perfect boys took a trip south where they visited their grandfather in Oklahoma and their great grandmother and great uncle in Louisiana. Along the way they encountered lots of sights including this colourful pair, which I offer as reminder and encouragement for winter to relinquish itself for our amazement... again.

Feb 09

The month that celebrates LOVE returns...

Happy Chinese New Year 2009

The Chinese Year of the Ox begins today. This particular Ox year is Yin Earth... both additional descriptors that enable the Ox to be at it's best. Known as the sign of prosperity through fortitude and hard work it points to our need to be stable and persevering this year.

Fortunately, the Ox doesn't require the process to be boring, too:

There's an ox in a box.
She, yes, SHE...
Is there hiding from a fox,
While she eats bagels and lox.
Full of mox-ie (she's
Vaccinated against small pox),
That rox her sox.
She proclaims
On her blog...
At vox (dot com).

I, on the other hand.
Proclaim this Ox
Offers us
A whole year of
Hugs and kisses.

oxoxox
To all of you.
Pass 'em on all year.

B

Jan 09

Ta-Da! Our final bow of the year...
You probably call it a New Year's Eve party... I call it a big cast party. It's the party where we celebrate our memories of the year past, bow out 2008 and make room for 2009 —all to wild and noisy applause! Now we're ready to welcome 2009... new roles, new costumes, rehearsals, rewrites and acclaim!
Break a leg in 2009!
In the meantime, here's one of my past-year memories...
5 years ago when I danced and danced...

Happy New Year 2009!

Hey, there's no picture! Turn on your speakers and listen to my freshly-minted mp3 sound file to find out why!
... and have a Great Year!

Click here to listen to my 2009 poem...