we remember

Today is Remembrance Day

We take time to remember and salute the soldiers, old and young, past and present, who have served our country in various theaters of war.

It was nice to see Remembrance Day reminders on our walks around town during the last week.  A local framing shop as well as a bake shop had window displays.

But the nicest touch was to see the photos of veterans (don't know if they're local), silk-screened onto banners that decorate the downtown area. Here is a sampling.

Langley city's Remembrance Day parade will begin at 10:25 a.m. (Logan and 56th), followed by the ceremony in Douglas Park at the new Cenotaph starting at 11:00 a.m. sharp.

Click for map and parade route details.

lavender just keeps on giving

You have probably heard me talk of the Lavender Project the women in my church have been involved in. Through it we harvested and sold lavender products to raise money for plastic surgeries to reconstruct the mutilated faces of women in Uganda.

I was excited to find out, today, that our leader and the idea person behind this project, Cherril Holcombe was one of four women honoured by the Langley Rotary Club at a luncheon just in advance of International Women's Day tomorrow (March 8th). Read about it here: "Local women are honoured for good works."

How fabulous is it that the story I wrote for our denominational magazine, testimony magazine, also published this month. "The Lavender Project- a fragrant offering of hope" begins:

"Cherril Holcombe listened with horror as Marilyn Skinner, guest speaker at the May 2010 Life Women Conference in Surrey, B.C., described the facial mutilation many north Ugandan girls suffer when they try to escape from sex slavery at the hands of soldiers from the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA). Marilyn first became aware of the problem when she saw a photo of Nancy, a woman with no nose, no lips, and no ears. Then Marilyn met Nancy and heard her story. Nancy was only seven years old when she was abducted by the LRA. She escaped but was abducted a second time. After her recapture, another child soldier was forced to do the facial mutilations with a razor blade.


Marilyn went on to describe how it was virtually impossible for these women to integrate back into normal society. Their repulsive appearance and the way food dripped out of their mouths when they ate meant that nobody wanted to be around them. When they started businesses, no one wanted to do business with them. They were rejected by everyone, even shunned by their own families and left isolated with no hope." 

Read entire... 

Related: "Lavender sales rebuilds slaves' faces lives.

a chick at the antique car show

Today is the day of the Langley Cruise-In—my city's antique car show. It's an annual event, though for some reason it didn't happen last year. Well, this year it's back stronger than ever!

We sauntered into it at the end of our morning walk, just before 9 a.m. Already the place was buzzing with shiny vehicles set up all through Douglas Park, down Douglas, Fraser Highway, 56th Ave., lining little streets (like Salt Lane) between Fraser and 56th, and more.

I love this show, not so much as an appreciator of cars but for its eye candy. Everything is so colourful, bright, and shiny with funky surprises wherever you look.

As usual, my camera and I had fun. Here's my very own chick-take on the 2011 Langley Cruise-In.

Shiny hood ornaments, insignia, fancy wheel spokes, even houndstooth upholstery abound.

Bling

Because this is a show of retro cars, there were lots of furry dice...

Dice

and flames.

Flames

Warning signs hover near the polished surfaces. There were also some surprises.

Cute

Curious about that sign on the bottom left? It belonged to this show-stopper—a Beverley Hillbillies-type camper, straight out of the 60s/70s, obviously not taking itself as seriously as most of the vehicles there.

Hippie RV

 

How about those homemade accessories?

Grease-monkeys

Finally, a collection of my favourites. It appears I'm a late '20s to mid '30s girl. I even know what some of them are called.

Favourites

Left to right Row 1: ?, 1935 Duesenberg, 1928 Model A Ford
Row 2: ?, 1930 Packard,
Row 3: 1926 Chrysler, ?, 1920s something Plymouth
Row 4: 1926 Dodge Sedan, 1968 Dodge Dart (picked for its color), Model A Ford Double Idler, Super-snowbird (for when we get snow).

If you live in the Langley area, there's still time to come down. There's live music, lots of eats and a span of vintage cars guaranteed to whisk you back to your youth.

watoto restore tour - powerful evening

 

We're just back from the Watoto - Restore Tour event at church. What a fabulous evening of colour, song, drama, and dance but most of all, heart-rending stories of forgiveness. It's a fast-paced multi-media evening that's so excellent.

Here is Oklahoma's Own NewsOn6.com's news video about the event (the tour was in Tulsa on October 17th):



The troupe will be at Evangel in Kelowna tomorrow (Nov. 5), Calgary on Sunday (Nov. 7), and Edmonton on Tuesday (Nov. 9) before they fly off on the UK leg of their tour. If you can, consider attending. You won't be sorry.

• Check out the Restore Tour website.
•  Download the tour dates.
• Follow the Restore Tour blog.

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celebrating the lowly cranberry

Today we went to the Cranberry Festival in Fort Langley.

We started out with breakfast at Beatnik's. Hubby ordered a hearty omelette,  but I got into the spirit of the day with cranberry sourdough French toast — very yummy! 

Then it was on to ogle all things cranberry, and they were legion... from candles to candy, and vinegar to honey.

The Ocean Spray company was selling cranberries  by the bagful for $1.00 a pound.  Needless to say, we loaded up, coming home with a cranberry scone for lunch and 8 lbs. of berries -- which should help us survive the winter.

I'm sure you can guess what I did this afternoon ... made cranberry sauce.

Cranberry Sauce

2 cups cranberries
2 cups sugar
1 cup water

Put all ingredients into a cooking pot.
Place over heat and bring to boil. 
Cook till the berries soften and pop.
When cooked to desired mushiness, let the sauce cool, then bottle and store in refrigerator.
Serve with turkey.

(Use leftover cranberry sauce for lots of things -- like stirring into plain yogurt. Add fresh banana slices for a great dessert.)

what's up

Lately it's been all book reviews, Thursday Challenges and classic poems here at promptings.This is just to let you know, there is a real person behind all the words - and photos, and here's what's up with me lately.

Wild bleeding heart - April 4, 2010 at Elgin Park in Surrey

(Click on any photo to enlarge)

I'm loving spring. It's early this year and so welcome. The trees are already in leaf. Daffodils are finished, tulips still opening here and there, the azaleas and rhodos,
the latter especially usually reserved for May, are popping all over the place.

Shield your eyes! Just had to capture this pink explosion of azalea color.

April 14, 2010 in Langley

I had some fun with my computer just over a week ago when I upgraded from Mac OSX 4 - (Tiger) to OSX 6 (Snow Leopard). I  always find installing software stressful no matter how easy it's supposed to be. Fortunately the install went smoothly, though I lost the ability to print for a few hours, until I got in touch with one of the boys at Simply who told me to 'simply' delete my printer, then add it again. It worked!

I also noticed, after a few days of the new OS, that all my applications were loading very slowly. Mail was positively spastic. Since Snow Leopard is supposed to improve speed, I wondered what I had done to make old Newton the exception. When things got ridiculous, I had visions of $$'s worth of repairs / memory upgrades etc. Before I did anything drastic, though, I tried the trusty old cure-everything fix from PC days: shutdown and restart. Voila! Just like that my computer was back to its zippy old self. What a relief!!

One of the main reasons I upgraded was for the Time Machine backup feature. Now I'm backed up daily - actually hourly as long as I leave it on - a good feeling. (A few days after I upgraded, hubby saw a feature on the evening news on another backup system - an external hard drive called Click Free. It looks interesting too!)

Creamy magnolia blossoms - captured on 

one of my walks around Langley this week.

Volunteer-wise the Alpha season is over. My job as kitchen setup and cleanup coordinator is done. It's nice to have Tuesday nights free again.

Writing-wise I've given my notice for the Poet's Classroom columns at Utmost. Two more and my columnist days there are done. I enjoyed writing those and learned so much. But after almost two years' worth of monthly articles I'm squeezed dry. It's time for someone else to take up the baton.

Tulips just outside our front door

I still write though - a poem a day so far in April using Robert Brewer's prompts at Poetic Asides. And I still blog daily at Other Food: daily devo's. Writing daily devotions is probably the most challenging and significant writing I've ever done - and I love it! What better subject to write about than the Bible, God, His relationship with us and ours with Him!

That's what's up with me. What about you?

Christmas!!

We did our first performance of The Perfect Christmas Song last night. Five more to go!

I came down with a wicked cold, so am thankful for cold drugs - especially the night ones that stop the sneezing.

langley good times cruise-in

This is the weekend of the famous Langley Good Times Cruise-In. Tomorrow (September 12th) the downtown Langley section of Fraser Highway will be a parking lot of vintage vehicles with people by the hundreds, food, entertainment and a generally good time being had by all. (Elvis always makes an appearance at this event).

If you live in the area, check the Cruise-in website for times and location - then pay a visit!

This is a slide show of last year's parade (intersection of Glover and Duncan Way). Sorry, I don't even pretend to know my vintage cars - just the impressions they make on me.

(Slide show doesn't seem to be working in Firefox - but it does load in Safari. What gives with FF lately?)

golden ears bridge opens

Our adventure today was walking the new Golden Ears Bridge. It's opening for vehicle traffic Tuesday but today Translink invited the public for a mass look-see.

We drove to the Langley Events Centre and parked there to catch a shuttle. (Just as we were parking the car, we heard something on the car radio about three-hour waits for people catching the shuttle at Colossus - the theatre complex just down the road in Walnut Grove -- oh my!)

We were on the bridge deck by around 12:00 noon and already it was teeming with people. (The bridge opened at 9:00 a.m. for some kind of a race, I think, then opened to the public at 11:00)

It's a beautiful bridge...

The bridge seen from a distance.

On the deck. Note the two eagles suspended from the pilings (or whatever they're called).

...in a beautiful setting. There are wide bike/pedestrian lanes on both sides with metal slat barriers so you can look out at the river and scenery around you.

The bridge spans the Fraser River over log booms.

Cranberry fields.

Along the deck there were stations with passport checkpoints (we were handed an event passports at the first one and then encouraged to get them stamped at other checkpoints), numerous food and ice-cream vendors, a display of antique cars, tons of porta-potties and three stages for entertainment and the opening ceremony.

Our plan was to walk the entire bridge.

Our plan to walk the entire bridge was foiled by the bottleneck at the north stage (Maple Ridge side). The stage was pretty much the width of the bridge deck and for a while even the pedestrian lanes on both sides seemed to be blocked. When it became apparent that the crowd had stopped moving, Ken Hardie (Translink CEO) stopped the Brazillian band that was playing and tried to direct traffic.

What a mess! People were shoving. Families and scout troops were trying to stay together. It seemed that the pedestrian walkway was the only way to get moving north. So people of all ages were squeezing through or hopping over the 4+ ft. guard rail that separates the deck from the pedestrian lane. At that point we turned around and headed back.

We got to the shuttle bus lineup around 1:00 p.m. As we were waiting, two fire trucks roared by onto the people-crowded deck with sirens blaring. We found out a few minutes later, when our buses weren't coming, it was because a woman had gone into labor and the buses weren't allowed on the deck until the emergency was settled.

The shuttle bus did come soon after that, though, and we were home before 2:00. I heard via twitter/the news that there was a time when police physically blocked any more people from getting onto the bridge deck because it was just too crowded. A woman got separated from her kids (with the accompanying and very understandable histrionics). And apparently striking paramedics hassled the premier during the opening ceremonies.

Altogether, it was a beautiful, crowded and at times dramatic first day on the Golden Ears Bridge.



(With reporters estimating the number visiting the bridge today at 40,000 to 60,000, it's no wonder the best laid plans weren't quite sufficient. Global evening news called it "chaos." Sounds like we got off the bridge just in time to miss the serious crowd gridlock and frayed nerves.

CBC's report of the party.)

vancouver convention centre - your very own tour

On Saturday we joined thousands of other Vancouverites at the open house of the new Vancouver Convention Center. It will be the media hub of the 2010 Olympics less than a year from now.

It is a large spectacular building in a spectacular setting on the waterfront right next to Canada Place.



An escalator takes you from the bottom to the second level and this globe display, from which you can look down on the lower level.


The ballrooms (this day one huge room; I assume they have movable dividers that make them into A,B,C and D), are five and one half stories and Ballroom D has a bank of windows looking over the water.


When we toured, around 11:30 Sat. a.m. a puppet/cirque performance was going on (complete with this huge aluminum puppet and about eight puppeteers behind the scenes pulling the strings).


Many of the walls are made of wood ends. These lumber-stacked walls are built from B.C. Hemlock and were assembled by a robot named Victoria in Saanich on Vancouver Island.



The building has six acres of rooftop gardens. These have been planted with wildflowers, grass, and will hopefully be the nesting ground for birds. The gardens recreate a Gulf Island beach habitat. The rooftop also has four beehives.



Outside the building there are wide walkways - most with designated lanes for cyclists and pedestrians. For those of us who have helped pay the $800+ million tab for this building (essentially everyone who pays taxes in this province), this access is a nice feature. Though we might never attend a conference inside, at least we can enjoy the public space around it.

My boys and I on the upper deck.

"Forty percent of the building is suspended over the water. The foundation has been designed to recreate a natural shoreline and will act as marine habitat for sea urchins, starfish and sea lettuce" (as per the visitor's program we were given).


Altogether a gorgeous building with many green features: the rooftop gardens, the fish-friendly foundation, a seawater heating and cooling system and a from-scratch kitchen philosophy.

Speaking of eating - the tour made us hungry. So on Benjie's recommendation, we walked a few blocks to the Steamworks Pub and had a very delicious lunch before strolling around Coal Harbor, then catching the Skytrain for home.

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Watch more of the cool weekend proceedings here: