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...

Dec 08

2 Thanksgivings This Year...

In Canada we celebrate Thanksgiving in October. It's associated with harvest time. This year I travelled to visit KC in Ann Arbor and from there we went to visit his sister Joanie and her husband Dick where we enjoyed a glorious sunny day and a delicious turkey dinner with all the trimmings in honour of American Thanksgiving.

Seems we always think of pilgrims and Indians and turkeys when thinking of that American Thanksgiving thing. Yeah, BUT, (as KC's internet browsing discovered) the first declared Thanksgiving holiday in the US was associated with the American revolution and was held early in December of 1777. From that time onward it was re-declared every year (sometimes twice a year!) usually with dates in late November or early December--until 1941 when President Roosevelt signed a bill making it a national holiday falling always on the fouth Thursday of November... and opening the doors to football and the Macy's parade now in it's 82nd year... and the official beginning of Christmas shopping.

Of course, in Canada we had our Santa Claus Parade the week before to kick off our own shopping spree. I guess it takes us week longer to do our shopping here.

This month's calendar shows Joanie's and Dick's turkey-ready table overlooking this small peaceful lake that was trying to freeze over in preparation for this winter's onslaught of skating and hockey and snowmobiles.

Lots for all of us to be thankful for... whether we do it with one turkey day or two.

Now get out there and shop!

Nov 08

November 11th is Kurt Vonnegut's birthday.

We watched from our easy chairs as the Olympic torch burned in China. My son Peter sent these pix from his Beijing sidelines: first a Beijing parking lot for market vendors. Yes, zillions of people peddled zillions of goodies to a market on zillions of bikes. Their drive to thrive economically is set against another sight for which we need no caption.

The Great Wall always reminds me of Kurt Vonnegut.

In his book, Sirens of Titan, I encountered Salo. From a world called Tralfamadore, he' a robot explorer built many millennia earlier to carry a message to a distant galaxy. His spacecraft is powered by the Universal Will to Become, or UWTB, the "prime mover" which makes matter and organization wish to appear out of nothingness. A small component on Salo's spacecraft breaks, stalling him in our Solar System. He requests help from Tralfamadore and hangs out on Titan waiting patiently for the part to arrive and observing distant planets, including our own Earth. Salo's fellow Tralfamadorians respond by manipulating human history so that primitive humans evolve and create a civilization in order to produce the needed replacement part. It turns out that the Great Wall of China (as well as Stonehenge and the Kremlin) is visible from Titan and is a message in the Tralfamadorian geometrical language informing Salo of their progress... so far.

I invite you to celebrate Vonnegut's day on the 11th. Is there something you feel compelled to do to encourage Salo in his long wait?

Oct 08

I • A M • O F • T W O • M I N D S...

Every month I face the same dilemma: what shall I put on my calendar? Sometimes I've taken an image during the month that I've sort of earmarked as possibly calendar-worthy. Sometimes I just search through my old graphic and image files and see what has been lurking that might become calendar-worthy with some help. Sometimes someone else sends an image that becomes calendar fodder. Recently I even seconded some of my mother's early work.

Tonight I find myself facing the end of the month—again— and having nothing in my files ready for the new calendar. Kate has been visiting from NYC so my time is limited. Should I pore over the old images again? Should I ransack my old design files again? Should I grab my camera and take a new and purposeful image? Of what?

As you can see, I've decided not to decide. I'll just sit here and mull. Sometimes simple inaction is the best thing.

Sep 08

Flags Outside and In

KC visited from Ann Arbor and brought this gift of little Tibetan prayer flags. They are traditionally found on rooftops, mountain passes, river crossings, gardens and other sacred places in the Himalayas. I hung mine on my curtain to enjoy in errant wafting breezes all day. The Tibetans hang them to promote peace, compassion and wisdom and they believe the energy of the prayers and sacred mantras on the flags are blown in the wind and will bring joy, happiness and good health to all who see them as well as their families, loved ones, neighbours, and all people throughout the world.

Here I share the flag's wishes with all of you. After all, KC wrote a book about compassion. We all have the responsibility to keep it moving... wherever the wind blows.

Aug 08

Those Three Little Words

Breath halts
In anticipation.
Yes, I know
What's coming next.
Quiet now
I contemplate
How the threeness
Of the words
Call out core of being.
Like Beethoven's
Dum, Dum, Dum
...then
Dum.
Three resolve
Into One.
Chords complete.
I sit quietly
In the knowing.
Here,
I share vision.
I close eyes and

Bite

Into

This

DARK CHOCOLATE TRUFFLE

...then

YUM.

July 08

O Canada! Happy Birthday to You!

Canada Day found us at Harbourfront along with thousands of other celebrants. Many opted to stand in line for the ferry to Centre Island. Our view from the shade showed us people learning to canoe and kayak, people walking and watching, ferries and other boats and Centre Island in the background. Lots of kids and dogs, lots of music, lots of sun and lots of water. A perfect day.

June 08

Spring's Greeter... Friend or Foe?

North Americans decry
Dandelion's ubiquitous invasion.
Japanese praise
Her unwavering tenacity.

Grown-ups call her weed,
Endeavour to eradicate.
Kids just can't wait for her
Summer seed-blowing crown.

To a person standing on a piston
The world goes up and down.
Seems a lot rests
On our point of view.

I suggest we choose
The piston or the world.

The dandelion doesn't care.
She'll be here long after
Our own seeds face distant
Yellow-topped challenges.

........Bette
........Toronto
........1 June 08

While you ponder your own point of view, let me encourage you to enjoy the dandelion's reincarnation in your path. If you gather the greens before the blooms appear they're less bitter and delicious added to your salads. For the blossoms, let me suggest this surprising Dandelion Blossom Syrup. It's a traditional European recipe that you can use it as a substitute for honey in any recipe to make it "wild."
........4 cups dandelion flowers
........4 cups water
........4 cups sugar
........½ lemon or orange (organic if possible) chopped, peel and all
Note: The citrus is optional, it will give the syrup an orangey or lemony flavor. If you want the pure dandelion flavor, you can skip the citrus.

Put blossoms and water in a pot. Bring just to a boil, turn off heat, cover, and let sit overnight. The next day, strain and press liquid out of spent flowers. Add sugar and sliced citrus and heat slowly, stirring now and again, for several hours or until reduced to a thick, honey-like syrup. Can in jars. Makes a little more than 2 cups.

Happy Luke Skywalker Day
Polish your light saber today... and celebrate tomorrow with a couple of spicy tacos and an icy Tecate.

May 08

His name was Bill Robinson...
AKA Bojangles

Bill was born May 25, 1878. Orphaned as an infant, he was reared by his grandmother, Bedilia Robinson, who had been a slave, but he ran away at the age of seven to start his dancing career. No one knows how he came to be called “Bojangles” except that it appears to have been a somewhat generic nickname for vaudeville dancers. Bojangles Robinson danced in all the vaudeville halls and night clubs in the South and North. He changed the face of tap dancing forever, moving it from the buck-and-wing shuffling developed by the slaves to the lighter and crisper sounds we know today. He was already famous when he started his film career, which brought him to the whole world.

Was Bill Robinson the “Mr. Bojangles” Jerry Jeff Walker wrote his famous song about? Probably not. Instead of doing jail time (inspite of his two famous vices: ice cream and gambling), Bill Robinson donated his time selflessly to raise money for charities and lived in Harlem as the locality mayor. He died in 1949 and his funeral was the largest attended in the history of New York City. Adam Clayton Powell delivered his eulogy.

Maybe Jerry Jeff Walker didn't write about Bill Robinson, but he did find a way to link us with the universal joy and spirit that makes the Bojangles in each of us want to dance.

May 25th is now named as Tap Dance Day in honour of Bill Robinson. Get out there and do a few flaps, cramp rolls and shim sham shimmies to celebrate. I will.

Apr 08

My secret is out...
After all these years in the design mileau, I've decided to fess up. If you're someone who has had reason to read my resumé, you have seen that I have a degree in art from Trinity University in San Antonio, Texas. Tis true. You probably thought, however, that my speciality was graphic design... or, as we used to call it, "commercial art." I admit to letting you assume that. I probably even encouraged you. After all, that's the industry you've found me in for years and years.

Today, tho, I'm announcing to everyone who wasn't around then: my speciality was sculpture. I was fortunate enough to study under a very talented man from England named Philip John Evett. He was a great influence with his guidance and non-stop puns. Go here to see what he's up to these days. www.philipevett.com

This month's postcard features a limestone carving I did then. I call her Wishful Thinking. She greets me at my door every day when I get home.