Adventures in sledge hockey
The wail for the coach Peggy to plod onto the ice and help me get back up. You needed longer arms for the task than I possess. However eventually I figured out a method with feet. So much fun this sport!
Just went for a little field trip in the -5 (which feels like minus 9) arctic outflow warning and it wasn’t too bad.
But I was wearing ski-ing clothes in anticipation of the arctic encounter and my mind was full of warm thoughts about penguins and their supreme intellect.
There’s a bit of a wind out there alright.
This is a major cold weather event for us. Even tho’ by Edmonton standards it’s tropical.
A Man of Our Times
This really is an incredible resource where you can read Rolf Knight’s books
I had an engrossing time today reading A Man of Our Times The life-history of a Japanese-Canadian fisherman (1976, 105 pp).
A brief life history of a Japanese-Canadian fisherman, logger, socialist union organizer and editor from his arrival in British Columbia in 1910 to the early 1970s. Includes an overview of Japanese-Canadian labour history and is unique in its account of the internal class struggles within that community as well as the struggle against racism.
My forecast was wrong! It’s 8 degrees and pouring rain since this morning! I have figured out why. The problem is I am forecasting indoors in a building which is approx 4 degrees colder at any given time then what is happening outside.
Therefore the -4 weather event, felt to be -8 outside, was felt to be at least -12 in here therefore it is very hard to see how the temperature could rise so rapidly. I have to factor this in. We have this crazed tradition of fans blowing constantly in our hallways. I recently asked our manager why this must be so (each year I have a lengthy exchange in winter with the organization who run our building about why we must live in a freezer .. they acknowledge it and refuse to turn the fans off because of a myriad of rotating reasons). The most recent explanation given was the sump pump was broken (that’s sewerage) and there was problems getting a replacement, therefore the fans had to be blowing all the time because the smell is so terrible.
Point taken, says I and added another scarf to my layers.
I love our building though. There are ups, downs and inbetweens and a certain honesty that comes with it. I am very, very fortunate to have housing.
A wind event is now picking up outside. Today is what my mother would describe as ‘dirty’ weather.
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I summited the second row of the V neck jumper, despite two males and two guinea pigs distracting me. It’s a lovely rusty colour. But it is proving so difficult. I taught a friend to knit on Saturday evening, she told me her mother could knit all kinds of cable-knit jumpers. She picked it up in no time and her stitches were so perfectly even. Knitting DNA! To watch as someone’s brain and in turn hands process the directions is fascinating because people are so different in the way they pick things up. We have left-handed people and ambidextrous people in our family so our learning styles are often very different.
Punk reply
Here’s the link to Bloodied But Unbowed where you can, courtesy of the Knowledge Network, watch this documentary on Vancouver’s early punk history.
My curiosity was piqued by the woman sat on the bonnet of her car who described wanton verbal abuse and physical assaults in response to looking like or appearing to be a punk. I’ve been asking friends about this, since it’s hard to reconcile these descriptions with city life at present. It’s often difficult to get anyone to respond to you in some parts of the city. Good morning or hello seems to put the fear of God and instant eye-aversion from people passing…
As one friend put it “There was a time when a haircut meant something…”
That is not to suggest a return to the habit of people getting verbally abused and bashed in for having a particular haircut, music taste and tight black jeans or being sprinkled with safety pins. More to observe a contrast in conduct and examine where or how that has been recorded.
I think this may be our most middling Autumnal day. The leaves are droopy with despair.
They remain on the turn. They’re at the halfway point now so you can look at a long line of them and see the beginning, middle, and end of the leaves colour changes. I had never noticed before how the timing can differ between them.
Weather exile, nay exhilaration
Fog (Sun eve) my first official note of fog amid bewilderment as to whether in actual fact I merely need new glasses.
Fog – rain – rain – wind (bit) – immense over cast grey bulge — rain – rain – rain.
This morning it’s confirmed a La Nina Winter Forecast for us this winter. What this means will become apparent as I continue “past-casting”.
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In Murakami weather moments I can report a degree of exhilaration running with water dripping off my sleeves and nose and eyelashes. I passed a completely bereft park and laughed out loud at how ridiculous running in pouring rain is.
But I admired the 8 people out strolling under umbrellas yesterday.
The rest of the West Coast world audaciously announced yesterday as the last day of summer, whereas here at Literature et Folie the Autumn season is already four days underway.
A CBC report (what-do-they-know-wha?) declared the summer passed a “bummer summer”. What a ludicrous assertion, on what basis? On the basis of assumption. The assumption of what summer must be. It was certainly not a “bummer summer” rather it was a moody summer season with pronounced independent thinking and bouts of non conformity and an impressive last minute “up do”. The only mildly inconvenient aspect of it was the late start to the growing season, but my garden was suffering from drowning by peat so I think my peat flooding was more of a problem than the lack of sun.
I have to check the winter forecasts, the last time I looked they were predicting colder than normal temperatures for the Wesssst and warmer than normal elsewhere.
I am heartened by the arrival of our atmospheric rains. They are so temperate thus far. I am awaiting the first fog eagerly.
Nothing quite so reliable as the insomniac’s weather report!
At 1.07am if you were in the land of slumber I am pleased to report for you it was raining. And a most excellent rain it was too, coming as it did after the 27 degree scorcher of a day. (The employment of the gerund in this sentence is an absolute disservice to the quality and verve of the rain, but the insomniac weather report cannot focus on guitar solo grammar and must remain attentive instead to the finery of nabbing what you are sensibly missing by being asleep).
This is a fresh camping rain without the pain and discomfort of needing to go camping. This rain possesses a sense of contentment rather than entitlement… (the insomniac’s weather report is permitted to give the weather human qualities, since slumbering humans are not awake to dispute it).
A rain of convenience and I repeat finery. A fresh cross breeze included. The kind of breeze a random doorway smoker could absolutely destroy if they stood beneath your window.
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I have been blessed yet again by tripping over literary treasure. This time a 12 cent copy of a book called Lifetime by Scott Sommer. It is sharp, short fiction. No one I’ve asked remembers him. (But those I’ve asked do not live in Brooklyn where perhaps he’s v well remembered) He died of a heart attack at 42. This book was published in (well it lists several dates so am thinking it must be a third printing, the dates offered are 78, 81 and 86. Sommer was a writer who certainly embraced new ways of cutting up his sandwiches. The form of these stories is lively and innovative.