Jul 10

Time to focus on summer now.

Canada Day was July 1st and US Independence Day was July 4th. Here in Toronto we've had the heads of 20 countries meeting behind walls and tall fences to talk about Important Things. Their meetings were marked by demonstrations and some violence and many, many arrests. Then the Queen came for a social visit. I wonder what she in her perfect hat thinks about it all?

I'm ready chill in our so, so hot summer sun now and try to put it all into some sort of perspective. We gotta make some hay while that sun's a-shining: nature's therapy. Let's all get out there and enjoy, eh?

Jun 10

Hello Mary Lou!

When I was about five or six years old my favourite doll was named Mary Lou. She had real hair--long blond hair--with real barrettes. I loved dressing her up and combing her hair into different styles. That year for my birthday my mother made Mary Lou a complete wardrobe, along with her own closet from an oil-cloth-covered fruit crate and little coat hangers from bent wire. Mary Lou was probably a teenager, but this was long before Barbie and her sexy shape. Mary Lou was one of a kind.

I don't know when Mary Lou actually disappeared from my life. I got older and I guess we passed her and her extensive wardrobe to a younger girl.

But I do remember her so fondly. I see girls playing with Barbie and I think how my Mary Lou was so much better. After all she came with all my mother's focused attention and imbued love.

Waiting for my bus the other day I think I found Mary Lou again in this store window. Like me, she's thicker around the middle and her hair's shorter. But look at her smile. She's got a snazzy dress and fuzzy puppy slippers. Credence Clearwater said it: I knew Mary Lou, we'd never part, so hello Mary Lou. Goodbye heart.

May 10

Happy Luke Skywalker Day!!!

May Day happened and I didn't send you your calendar. No, it wasn't another broken arm, as a couple of you suggested (thanks for your concern)... I was just enjoying some lazy time and ignored my responsibility to youse guys.

So here's your calendar. Get out your light sabres today and transform your world. Wake up those May flowers. After all, they can come even if your April, like ours, was remiss in the showers department. Also, get your salsa ready for tomorrow to wake up yourself.

PS. Some of you report using my calendars as I do, on your computer desktops. If you'd like a higher resolution version go here every month:

Higher Resolution Postcard for Your Desktop

Apr 10

An invitation to a journal... of sorts.
My recent acquisition of an iPhone has involved me in searches for Barbie-esque outfits for its adornment and in endless browsings of Apple's App Store to satisfy it's voracious appetite for activities. My latest addition in the latter category is a little something named Project 365. It invites me to take a picture every day with my phone and save it in the app's minute calendar... then I may add a pithy caption. I have decided to embark on this little adventure AND to incorporate a 6-word limit to the captions, as inspired by Larry Smith's book, It All Changed in an Instant.

I offer you my first entry dated Mar 29th along with this caption: En route to shop for Lucas.

I am also hereby inviting you to join me in a little techie journalling of your own. Let me know how it goes.

PS. Some of you report using my calendars as I do, on your computer desktops. If you'd like a higher resolution version go here every month:
http://www.beedance.ca/calendar_HR.html

Pi Day 10

I'm not sending you activities this year... well just one: go to http://www.google.com and check out Google's Pi Day logo:

Then do a Pi Day search of your own to find loads of activities including new Pi-Ku poems at NPR. I'm celebrating the day by doing no math at all.

Mar 10

All Canada Celebrates Tonight

I lived in Vancouver when I first came to Canada in 1976. The post-hockey-game Robson Strassse crowds the television's showing us tonight bring back a number of very fond memories: trees and trees and trees, rain, warm people, rain, hiking and rain. As a graphic designer new in Canada, I found myself visiting grocery stores and asking who had designed this or that remarkable store or package. The answer was frequently the same: someone in Toronto called Don Watt.

25 or so years later I found myself in Toronto working for Don Watt, himself. During that time I was asked by an associate to lead a workshop for new immigrants starting their own businesses. My topic was managing design as a part of their business assets. I asked Don what advice he would have for them and he generously gave me over an hour of his valuable time. He used examples from his own body of work to demonstrate his different points.

That body of work included part of the cockpit design for the Avro Arrow and developing the re-design of Loblaws stores, the No Name and President's Choice brands, Wal-Mart Super Centres and packaging, the Home Depot logo and more recently the Metro stores and packaging. One of Don Watt's most famous and enduring designs is the Canadian flag. Don passed away in December of last year. I have been saddened.

Tonight as I watch the Canadian Olympic men's hockey team celebrate their victory with the Canadian flag draped in front of them, I feel the impact of Don's body of work... and I feel the imperative of my own. After all, my monthly calendar habit began while I worked for Don. Over the years he has encouraged these monthly missives. I dedicate this month's calendar to his memory.

Feb 10

The promise of spring
begins on the first day of winter...

Every year Leslie gives me an amaryllis and I name her Amy. I plant each Amy during the holidays and rejoice in her rapid and eager growth. This Amy is especially enthusiastic. She has already produced these four luscious blooms PLUS another shoot bearing their Siamese twins. Amy's promise of spring will be set in bold face and underlined as this second shoot waits for these blooms to fade then rushes in to replace them with four more.

Have a great month. For such a short one, there's a lot to celebrate including Valentine's Day, Chinese New Year, Family Day, President's Day for those further south... and yes, Amy's strutting promise of spring.

Jan 10

Here’s to a whole year of plenty!

I'm sure you took that very deep breath last month and now we're all on a new path... the first decade to begin with a TWENTY!

We each have our own definitions of plenty. In this case I'm showing you plenty of radishes I saw in Brooklyn in November. I invite you to stop a moment right now and define what kind of plenty you want to create in your world for this fresh new year... and for this fresh new decade.

Then every time you see a radish, remind yourself of your determination and rejoice in all your opportunities.

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.