island adventure 9 - shop till you drop

Have you noticed I haven't done much shopping on this holiday? I'm actually not terribly fond of shopping. But you can't visit Ganges and entirely skip the shopping—it just wouldn't be a total Salt Spring Island experience.

I tackle the market Saturday morning very intentionally. I have gifts to buy, and money burning a hole in my pocket.

One of the first things I find are Kool Bandanas. These are rectangles of cloth filled with water-absorbent crystals to be used as bandanas or headbands. Water plumps them up and makes them a coolant when worn  around the forehead or neck. I think of all kinds of folks who could use these and pick up several.

At another stall I buy soap (with wonderful names like Vesuvius Bay, Salt Spring Fling, and Weston Lake Wheat Germ 'n Honey). The proprietors are all so friendly and talkative. The soap lady (Dermalove.com) shows off her iphone gadget, which is a credit card reader that lets me use my card instead of cash. (I still haven't given the soaps away; they smell so fabulous, I'm tempted to keep them!)

At another kiosk, I buy artisan vinegar (Apple-rhubarb and Blackberry) in tall, elegant bottles.

 I ask, at the Artisan bread stall, if they have any of the fruit ginger bread we bought at their shop a few days ago. They say they're all sold out of that. So we buy a hearty raisin bread instead. A minute after leaving their kiosk, I feel a tap on my shoulder. It's the lady from the bread place. "We found another loaf," she tells me, handing me a loaf of fruit ginger.  I start fumbling for my wallet, but she waves that off. "Take it," she says, "You can have it." (And I will forever have a soft spot in my heart for Salt Spring Island Bread Co.!)

By now my backpack is bulging. But I can't bypass the soft little dolly without any buttons or chokables for my baby Mimi that I find at yet another table.  So I squeeze that into my pack as a last purchase (and discover later, that the doll-maker is the mother-in-law of the lady who has been in charge of our motel's cleaning crew all week).

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On our last full day on Salt Spring, I tell hubby that I want to explore the Ganges shops. (He is quite happy to stay in the room and do whatever). What a fun afternoon that turns out to be!

I poke around in this shop and that, and find all kinds of goodies. How about these bins and bins of colourful felt booties.

At a toy store called West Moon, they have every kind of toy known to kids and I have a hard time deciding what would be just right for my grandboys. But I do eventually decide on something that will help us in our spider watching.

In the second-hand store I find musical instruments for my sister, chickens for my sister-in-law, and racks and racks of pop-up cards for myself (but only taken home in my camera *sigh*).

There are wonderful galleries too. My favourites are Steffich Fine Art and Gallery 8, where I view all manner of incredible (and pricey) photographs and paintings. I don't take pictures of these because they are under copyright, but I do note the names of the artists' work I see, so I can look them up online later. Some of the names in my notebook from these galleries are:

Steven Friedman (photographer)
Carol Haigh
Bly Kaye
Heather Kocsis
Jade Boyd
Jerry Davidson
Gail Sibley
Pieter Molenaar
Dennice StambuckDavid Goatley
Kathryn Amisson
Florence Roberge,
Curtis Golomb
and Carol Evans

I fall in love with Carol Evans' West Coast watercolors! The scenes are exactly what we've been feasting our eyes on for the last week. And so when I find, in a corner of Gallery 8, a softcover book of her paintings, I know I have to own it. The Shores We Call Home now sits in a place of honour on our coffee table, a beautiful keepsake of this fairy tale holiday.

memories

September 11th, 2001 is one of those days that will be forever engraved in my memory. Eleven years ago today after spending hours transfixed in front of the TV, I remember how strange it felt to go outside and find everything was normal. However the next morning the spooky quiet in the air—there wasn't a plane to be heard—told me that the long fingers of the unthinkable thing that had happened the day before in New York had indeed reached thousands of miles across the continent to me.

But as significant as the day was and is, it is also fading from my memory and our collective memories. Just think, there is a whole generation of kids eleven years and younger who have no memory of this day whatever because they weren't around when it happened.

Other important days are fading too. This year we lost Neil Armstrong—the first man who walked on the moon. His passing sparked a storm of nostalgia and prompted me to think back to the momentous day when a human first touched the moon. To tell you the truth, I could recall very little of it.

How well do you remember:

- the death of J. F. Kennedy?
- the fall of the Soviet Union?
- the kafuffle around Y2K?
- the beginning of the Iraq war?
- the tsunami of December 26, 2004?
- Hurricane Katrina?

Chances are if you remember a national or international event, it is because there is a part of your personal story that connects with that event.

Is remembering the past important? I think it is because:

•  it helps us understand the present.

• as we think back of heroic actions and reactions it revives our faith in human strength and resilience.

• if we're people of faith, it certainly strengthens our faith in God as we reflect on His faithfulness through hard times and in bringing us to this point.

• it is interesting.

• it's part of the legacy we can leave our kids, grandkids, and great-grandkids.

What significant days from history do you remember? What about your personal history? Have you or are you preserving your memories in any way?

I love the bronze sculpture "The Veteran Sailor" (by Nathan Scott, on display at Ship Point Plaza on the Victoria B.C. waterfront) of a sailor, holding a  copy of The Daily Colonist with the headline "Peace in Europe: Germany Surrenders!"

He looks happily onto another scene, "The Homecoming" (also by Nathan Scott) on this memorable day—a day of which I have no memory because I wasn't born yet. Probably most of you weren't either. Fortunately lots has been written about that day so we can live it vicariously.

Addendum:

After posting this piece on memories, I ran across an example of how important it is to hand down memories. Kitty Werthmann is a woman who grew up in Austria (she now lives in the U.S.A.) and remembers how Hitler came to power there. If you listen to her story,  you'll pick up on some of the shocking parallels between western society today and Austrian and German society in the 1930s (She tells her story on three videos).



Kitty Werthmann's story - Part 2

Kitty Werthmann's story - Part 3

modern

Modern interpretation of an old theme

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Thursday challenge

Next week: LEISURE (Vacation, Sports, Fun, Rest, Relaxation,...)

the aging artist

"America grows older yet stays focused on its young. Whatever hill we try to climb, we're over it by fifty — and should that hill involve entertainment or athletics we're finished long before. There are exceptions to this rule, of course, but supermodels and newscasters, ingenues and football players all yield to the harsh tyranny of time. They turn on Fortune's wheel. Look what happens to the overnight sensation or pick of the week or fashion of the season or rookie of the year. First novels have a better chance of being noticed than a fourth or fifth. Although we're aging as a nation we don't do it willingly: The face-lift and the tummy-tuck are — against the law of gravity — on a commercial rise....

"This book is about tribal elders in the world of art. What interests me is lastingness: how it may be attained. For obvious reasons, this has become a personal matter; I published my first novel in 1966 and very much hope to continue. Too, such hope feels representative: a "generational" problem in both senses of the word. An ever-growing number of Americans are middle-aged or elderly; no natural catastrophe has thinned our swelling ranks. And the habit of creation does not die, so there are more who paint the sunset or take piano lessons or hunt the perfect end-rhyme at day's end. Our generation, like all others, yearns to produce some something that continues — and the generative impulse, when artistic, lingers on."

So begins the Introduction to Nicholas Delbanco's book Lastingness: The Art of Old Age. In it he explores how aging affects artists. He extracts thoughts about aging artists, their processes and persistence from people like Monet (who had cataracts) and John Updike who was still at work on writing projects when he died  in 2009 at 76 years of age.

An article about Delbanco's book on the NPR site explores some of the book's ideas as well as treating us to a 6-minute interview with Delbanco.



 The three questions Delbanco asked John Updike were:

1. How have your work habits changed at present from the days when you were an apprentice to the trade?


2. How have your aspirations changed; do you think of a day's work as "more of the same" or have you set yourself different goals?



3. Can you point me to a passage — or passages — in your own writing which deals with these issues, either head-on or obliquely?

Here's a snippet from Updike's answer to #3.:

"By and large what lasts best is the most concrete, the most actual, delivering to the reader a piece of earth and humanity. Aesthetic flourishes fade and wrinkle, though they may get attention when new. A blunt sincerity outlasts finely honed irony, I would think. An ability to see over the heads of important contemporary issues into the simple truth of daily life is what we can respond to a century later. . . ."

Read Updike's complete answers HERE (partway down the page).

How would you answer the questions Delbanco asked Updike?
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Related: 

• A Bible thought:

"Make a careful exploration of who you are and the work you have been given, and then sink yourself into that. Don't be impressed with yourself. Don't compare yourself with others. Each of you must take responsibility for doing the creative best you can with your own life."  - Galatians 6:4-5 (Message)

• Liesel Mueller has written a wonderful poem about Monet and his vision problems. "Monet Refuses the Operation" begins:

Doctor, you say there are no haloes
around the streetlights in Paris
and what I see is an aberration
caused by old age, an affliction.
I tell you it has taken me all my life
to arrive at the vision of gas lamps as angels,
to soften and blur and finally banish
the edges you regret I don't see,
to learn that the line I called the horizon
does not exist and sky and water,
so long apart, are the same state of being . . .

Read entire...

three

Triptych of stained glass windows

Makawao Union Church (south side) -  Makawao, Maui

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Thursday challenge

Next week: HANDS (Sign Language, Finger Nails, Hand Decorations, Rings, Gloves, Holding,...)

two

Love birds

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Thursday Challenge

Next Week: EXERCISE (Bicycle, Swimming, Skiing, Martial Arts, Teams,...)

hard

There's something about those points

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Thursday Challenge

Next Week: BOOKS (Very Old Books, Library, Electronic Books, Piles of Books,...)

creative

Iconic sculptures (I call this "The one that got away")

We sighted these line drawing  metal sculptures on a walkway near Lonsdale Quay Market in North Vancouver.

Here are some more from that collection.

Thursday Challenge

Next Week: HARD (Rock, Ice, Brick, Steel, Cement,...)

friends

John Diefenbaker and P.M. Sir Wilfrid Laurier, ca. 1910

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A young John Diefenbaker meets Prime Minister Sir Wilfrid Laurier while peddling newspapers as a university student in Saskatoon. (Sculptor: Bill Epp)

Thursday Challenge

Next Week: BLUE (Water, Sky, Vehicles, Houses, Flowers,...)

wooden

"Let's Face It" - in the round

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Thursday Challenge

Next week: CURVED (Bent, Rippled, Coiled, Spiraling, Twisted,...)

creativity

"The Birds" by Myfanwy MacLeod

These two 18 foot tall sparrows (male and female) were installed after the Olympics at the Southeast False Creek Olympic Plaza in the Olympic Village, Vancouver, BC. The exhibit is part of the City’s Olympic and Paralympic Public Art Program. Read more about them here. 

As this piece explains, the size of the birds in relation to their surroundings speaks of the danger of introducing species of wildlife into areas where they aren't native.

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Thursday Challenge

Next week: FUN (Festival, Fair, Carnival, Party, Playground, Dancing, Laughing,...)

hot

"On the Beach"

Delightful bronze sunbather statues by Gert Maas catch some rays on the beach of Waterfront Park, Okanagan Lake, Kelowna. B.C.

Thursday Challenge

Next Week: BLUE (Sky, Water, Clothing, Flowers, Blue Berries, Drinks, Cars,...)

wood

 

RRREAD IT,  RREAD IT

On our Vancouver Island holiday last fall (2008), we stumbled across the Campbell River Driftwood Carving Competition with the carvings still on display on the lawn of the arts center.  This carving, done by Vinay Chafekar, won first place in the Amateur Division

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Thursday Challenge

Next Week: WRITING (Pens, Paper, Words, Signs, Graffiti, Books, Magazines,...)

amazing communicator

Ukrainian artist Kseniya Simonova won the 2009 Ukraine's Got Talent award.

Explanation of her drawing: "Kseniya uses a giant light box, dramatic music, imagination and 'sand painting' skills to interpret Germany's invasion and occupation of Ukraine during WWII." (from Fark)

Incredible artist - moving presentation!

art

(Click on photos to enlarge)

 "West Coast Roots" by Lynn Kingham

Part of the Eagles in the City project. 

This eagle stands on the walk that circles the Victoria, BC Inner Harbor.

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Thursday Challenge

Next week: GOLDEN (Gold-colored, Gold Plated, Yellow, Sun Flowers, Jewellery, Blonde, First-rate, Special,...)

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More eagles from the "Eagles in the City" project:

• Vancouver Island Gallery

• Vancouver Area Gallery

Eagles In the City is a Lions Club project (similar to the previous Orcas in the City and Spirit Bears in the City projects). In the spring of 2010 all the fiberglass eagles will be auctioned off to raise funds for kids with disabilities. 

frivolous friday - Moleskine edition

Moleskine sketchbooks - part of Moleskine's Detour exhibition. Here are three beauties:

Nose Moleskine


Alphabet Moleskine


Art Moleskine



Hat-tip: Twitter tips from children's writer/illustrator Carin Berger

Campbell River

Monday, September 22

Monday morning we packed our things, checked out of the hotel, and hit the road.

As we approached Campbell River on Highway 19, we decided to stay on the old highway which follows the water (19A), rather than take the faster new road.



The morning was clear and crisp -- a perfect time to take in Campbell River's strung out sea side. When we noticed we were driving beside a rather nice walking path we pulled over and got out to stretch our limbs. On our walk we saw various driftwood sculptures. Most were weathered and though they'd seen better days, they were clever.






We were about to return to the car, with me congratulating myself on having stumbled across these beach treasures when we met a man wearing a Jesus t-shirt in the parking lot. We exchanged pleasantries, talked a bit about the art work and he asked if we'd seen this year's driftwood sculptures. They were still on display at the Arts Center, he assured us, which was up the road a little way.

We found them - and what fun. Here are some of the winners and contestants in the 2008 Campbell River Shoreline Arts Society 2008 Driftwood Carving Competition.