Three books that are interesting to read and consider beside each other:
Aritha van Herk’s “Judith”
Helen Potrebenko’s “Sometimes They Sang”
Marina Endicott’s “Good To A Fault.”
All three novels concern a single woman. Read them and consider the departure point for the women and their arrivals. In the case of Judith — the woman has left the city and a man and returned to the country (rural) and ultimately has a male dancing in and around her, in Sometimes They Sang, the woman has left the country (rural) to the city, where she does her own dancing. (term used liberally, not literally).
I am excited to be heading up to our family reunion on Cortes Island tomorrow. I’ve been going to Cortes for 10+ years and love to swim (my version of swimming, ie. brief but repeated flounder) in the sea there, everyone has a garden to explore and get tips from, my partner usually drags me to an Adobe hut to meditate together, last year I think it was, I ran into a novelist whose work I’d read and appreciated, so that slightly upped my enthusiasm on the Adobe hut front. (ie. chance of a good chat, precise opposite point of meditation).
I got a request to go tee-shirt shopping this morning, so there’s some kind of family tee-shirt making project in the works. We will be 11 people or is it 13 together. Fun times. Badminton and reading. Food, food, food. And the woodpecker outside the window…
There has been a weather event of sorts. A haze, think duvet of haze that has besieged us from the forest fires (carefully recorded on c’est blog).
I do not recall such a bad haze as this previously. This evening I read that some of it may be coming from Russia, via Prince George. I stared at the sky beyond VGH today and could not see no sign of any downtown building, let alone the normal mound of mountains, hither and thither.
My thoughts turn to the people who live or are evacuated away from the 400+ burning fires because if this haze is the blown South and dispersed version, Lord knows how their lungs must fare.
There are the usual government moans about the cost and budget to fight the fires. I continue to follow the numbers of fires, causes and so on rather than bellyaching about costs. The fact is the place is on fire and we need to contemplate it and mitigate, if possible, against it becoming even more forceful. I don’t know how, but there are some bold, bloody genius’s among us who may be inclined towards ideas. Bring on the backyard inventors.
I’ve read that a couple of blogs are closing their comment streams. The rationale in doing this merely confirms what we already know that human beings are complex and can be tricky to encounter and deal with. People can be a great deal more vicious online and hide behind anon tags. Or is it that people are generally just as vicious in flesh, and merely suppressing the urge to express it!
Lately I have found online reading can be a noisy experience if you’re not discerning. I am referring more to social networking where one must trawl through an enormous amount of positioning and senseless blubbing to find the one tweet that ignites an interest or is very funny or is David Lynch making another of his lovely woodwork projects or the much longed for, but rare as rain currently, Channel 4’s Alex Thomson tweeting on his vegetable plants.
If anything I blog more and use social networking less or use blogging to similar effect. The moment to moment thing can be compelling with twitter and I prefer to import that to my blog. But my mind is in a hefty reading mode at present and there are so many texts I want to devour in their entirety that I can’t accommodate the twit factor.
One thing that puzzles me is if the urge is to blog, why per se would you expect people only to listen and not formulate their own thoughts or response to what you’ve written? Isn’t this a sermon? An oration? If it’s a round of applause you’re looking for I am not sure blogging is where you find it. If anything blogging is a celebration of democracy and equal access and the right to speak over the final, lauded word.
Doris, of terracota experiment gardening fame, has diagnosed my mystery flowering plant, which I am praying to every pagan is a cucumber, as bearing fruit, but “fruit as yet unknown.” Doris reports that the terracotta experiment is working. She waters via these sunken terracotta wine coolers. She has v contemporary looking swirly spike things for her pumpkin and tomatoes to grow up. Unfortunately her tomato took exception on the left side and collapsed earth bound.
Liz, gardener en face, cut a, we estimate, 22 inch bean today. Her mum is a gardener and she has a gardening blog which I will link to when I find it.
The arugula may yet be saved, but the tension between it and the spuds has not lessened. It is miserable looking, but I’ve got to revive it somehow.
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I have made so many shelves I have run out of wood. I calculate I have used almost 80 anchors. Such is the success I may have to reward myself with a drill which has a functioning and engaging clutch, rather than this banjaxed half-hearted bunny effort.
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