The Ride Journal November 26, 2009

Today I picked it up - fresh from the printers and after having been flown over that great big Atlantic Ocean, ferried over the Pacific and then driven to my postal box down the street to be delivered by Glen, our wonderful neighbourhood postie  - the ride journal.

This thick and beautiful journal is stuffed with stories from cyclists… including me. I am thrilled to be part of such a beautiful publication. The writing, photography and illustrations are beautiful and the soft 50 per cent recycled paper with the soya-based ink gives it a really nice touch.

Kudos all around. And if you’re looking for a lovely gift for a cyclist in your life – even if it’s you – be sure to link up and add this baby to your cart.

http://theridejournal.com/

Thinking about the Desert November 25, 2009

Cactus Blooms

It’s time to confess.

In spite of all my journal entries that wax lyrical about the comforting sound of rain on the skylight while I’m safe and dry and drinking my morning coffee…in spite of my walking every morning - even though I am soaked and sodden by the end - all the while maintaining that I feel great from all the moisture…in spite of my gung-ho-suck-em-up- protestations of this is what it’s like to live in a rainforest and so why should I be surprised? Even though it does feel like someone was being a tad mean-spirited to call this endless monsoon area by the rather over-optimistic name of the Sunshine Coast.

In spite of, and because of, all that…I am thinking about the desert and places with palm trees. I’m thinking about heat and blue skies and warmth in my bones and flip-flops. Summer is feeling like a dim and distant dream and is already a very long time ago.

The good news-ish. I’m off to St. Lucia, though it sounds rather hellish, even though it’s also really good. Apparently I’ll be flying or in an airport for most of my adult life, just so I can twirl through St. Lucia for three days and then repeat the performance on the way home.

This could be considered crazy behaviour. Or it could be what travel writers will do in order to experience somewhere new. 

And let’s not forget. It’s still raining. And dark. It’s damned dark every day at a ridiculous time.  Did I mention the rain?

The Back Garden November 17, 2009

Buddha in the Garden

 

 This was Sunday’s other photo. I love how the lichens and moss are starting to take hold. The leaves and twigs and dirt – all vying for equal colour time.

I think part of why I love using the camera, is having to really study and look at everything.  I remember from an art class I took once, how she made us cut a square out of some heavy paper. We held it in front of us and took it outside and had to frame segments until we really could “see”. It’s amazing how much interferes with our focus if we don’t put a clear framework around things.

I suppose I’m talking in metaphors again. It’s inevitable. Isn’t everything a metaphor?

Sunday’s Sea… November 16, 2009

The Beach Outside

 

 The rains and the wind and the dark seas have been going on for days now. This was taken yesterday when there seemed to be a slight lifting over Vancouver Island.

I loved how yellow the chairs were in contrast to the black rocks, the grey water and the scoters that were bobbing and diving in the waves all day.

I have another picture of the leaves in the back yard. I think I’ll post that tomorrow, but I thought I’d start with our front yard first.

Actually, truth is, these are not our chairs out front….they’re right next door at my in-laws, but because I get to enjoy their sunny yellow presence out my window, I claim them as sort of mine.

November issue of Canada’s More Magazine November 16, 2009

http://www.more.ca/work-and-money/reinvention/how-to-start-an-eco-friendly-business/a/28502

Here’s a link to the story I did for More Magazine.  It was a fun assignment. I really enjoyed talking to the women that make up the story. I am in awe at their drive and commitment to each of their projects. I corresponded and interviewed others for this piece. Unfortunately, they ended up on the editor’s cutting room floor. But, all of it combined to be a wonderful learning experience.

 

Spinoza Cafe November 14, 2009

Looking in from the street

 This lovely little cafe in Budapest’s Jewish District was a great find. The food was great, the guy on the piano was classic. He played Gershwin show tunes and everything else that was big and overblown. He seemed to have an endless repitoire. It was cozy, funky and right behind the amazing synagogue.

If I went back to Budapest, I think all I’d do is go from cafes to the baths to the cafes to the baths. Why, oh why, did we only go to Gellert Baths? The city is stuffed with spas and baths but we felt compelled to see everything and didn’t spend enough time hanging in those heated pools.  Next time…

Chocolate Musings… November 10, 2009

Chocolate Done Up Right

Here’s the thing. I was rolling through my photos for inspiration for a new post. I uploaded a photo from the Prague Jewish Cemetery and something went wrong. I had to delete that post, and then, in scrolling back a little, I found this photo of our chocolate extravaganza in Vienna.

Enough with the Death Musings, says I. How about Life? And isn’t Life all about Chocolate?

Sadly, that’s exactly how my thought processes went. I share it here in my effort to remain an honest and clear writer. Or else to just further embarrass myself. Perhaps that’s one and the same thing?

It has been a stormy tossing tempest all day today. The waves have been surly and dark with incredibly white froth capping each curl. They have stormed the beach while the tide brought them closer and closer and then pulled them back. Didn’t matter, they just kept at it. All while rain lashed at the trees.

Which made me think, chocolate chip cookies would be a good thing. The smell of baking and the fireplace while the world thunders away outside. A most-assuredly life-affirming choice so to speak…

And so, I would like to say, that in spite of the doldrumish weather, I found hope in cookies and a cappuccino and now a big smile, remembering our time in Vienna.  That is one fine town. And it was made even better when we met Gunther and Gina and spent the evening with them. How hospitable was that? Perfect strangers who took a couple of Canucks to…wait for it! (Somehow I ended up talking about the very thing I was going to avoid. I didn’t know when I started this little chocolate posting that I would once again be back to)…The Vienna Cemetery.

Seriously, I didn’t ask for it and it was on my list of places I’d wanted to get to and voila! they offered to take us there to visit.

We got there just as it was closing and starting to be dusky/dark, which of course, made it even better. The graves of Mozart and Liszt and who knows who else are these huge masoleums in the misty grey immensity of this cemetery. It was amazing.

And then we went out and ate the biggest piece of schnitzel I’ve ever seen. I got about halfway on that thing. It was really a wonderful night and a highlight from our trip. I’m hoping they come visit in Canada.

And did I mention the other days filled with chocolate cake? And struedel? And the cream cakes?

Ahhhh… Vienna.

Mennonite Musings… October 23, 2009

Saskatchewan Mennonite Funeral

 I remember the first time I found out that most people didn’t have photo albums full of dead people. I was in grade eight and I brought my new friend Connie home for a visit. We were looking through photo albums when she pointed out that it was weird to have so many, well for that matter, any (!) photos of people dead in their caskets.

Well who knew?

So, this is one of my latest collages, a sort of homage to my mother and her mother and the whole Mennonite mom motif. 

It reminds me that I come from strong stock. Women who stared at Death with clear-eyes, kneaded bread into submission with strong arms, and scrubbed clothes and kids until their knuckles were raw.

To this day, bleach is one of my favourite smells. I really grew up with a strong sense of clean. Mom often said, they may have been poor but that didn’t mean you couldn’t be clean. Our scrubbed-up house was testament to that obsession.

I know for a fact that I was the only kid on our street that had to scrub the outside of the house, starting at the gutters and working my way down the pink and yellow rough-cedar siding.

So this collage is in honour of that little blonde-haired five-year old who would grow up to be my mom. She is standing with some of her siblings. The five-day old new twins aren’t in the photo. This is probably at their home in Osler or Warman, Saskatchewan. Not sure, maybe my aunt will tell me.

But for now, this is what I have; an old photo, a bird’s wing that I found in our back yard, a rusty hinge from the old outhouse building that we now use for our push mower storage, a little bit of wasp paper that floated down from the skies, a prairie wheat stalk, a smashed saucer with Mother in gold script & a rusty spoon that I found while digging. All of it is set on a background of old fashioned wallpaper.

Everything to me is about the ephemeral nature of life. Broken, oxidized, decaying and torn from its original manifestation and more beautiful because of its very brokenness.

Message from Mikulov October 15, 2009

Czech Republic

 

In that famous cemetery in Prague’s Jewish Quarter you will find hordes of tourists.  Here in Mikoluv, you need to be let in by the young woman with the key. She is the daughter of our cycling tour’s owner, Tom Leskovjanova.

Here, we wandered alone, among 15th century headstones. Headstones that had been stacked and layered to create the next terrace that they filled with dirt in order to bury more people.

The Jews were restricted from expanding their cemetery, or anything else for that matter, so they built up. Layers of soil and old headstones created the next level of ground for burials. There is now no clear idea how many thousands of bodies are layered beneath our feet as we stand in the shifting light.

There are no Jews left in this city, but there are about ten dedicated people who call themselves the Friends of Jewish Society. These are the people, like Tom and his daughter with that huge skeleton key, who have made a small museum, the volunteers who transcribe and record each headstone so when people come to trace their ancestors, the work has been done.

Ten people with no Jewish background, but the profound understanding that all this needs to be remembered and dignified by the very act of remembering. They honour their town’s history that at one time included 12 synagogues. There is one left, it’s now a museum. A museum that Hitler helped to build in his perverse plan to create a remembrance of the very people he was intent on annihilating. I find myself shaking my head even as I write and remember it again.

It stuns me. Our capacity for hate, and then, seeing young Barbora Leskovjanova with the cemetery key and her passion in telling these stories, our capacity for love and redemption.

In a different cemetery in Trebon, our guide Lada Ptacek translated the words over the gate, it read: 

“As we are, you shall be. As you are, we once were.”

What to Pack October 9, 2009

Journeywoman.com is a great site and just sent out an email requesting women travel writers – in 150 words or less – to contribute their best travel tips for an upcoming newsletter.

It got me thinking,and once it was done,  I thought I’d post it here as well. It was fun to think about, though to tell the truth, I had to ask two of my girlfriends if they knew what my tips might be.  Considering they’ve both traveled with me on some pretty long journeys, it was illuminating to find out what they considered to be “my things”.

It was also cool to see it from their perspective, as so much of what I do now is kind of second nature, so I needed their wonderful outsider eyes. They told me some of this list and then I was actually able to drum up the rest.

Thank you Dee Dee Sjogren and Karen Judd, my fellow JourneyWomen.

 

What to Pack…

 

1) Open Mind

2) travel candle & matches for atmosphere in your tent/room/cabin/toilet.

3) sarong to use as a sheet, a wrap, or as…a sarong

4) Humour

5) Cipro – stop severe cases of gastro-intestinal distress

6) headlamp – easy night reading

7) universal sink stopper, twisty-stretchy clothesline. Use hotel shampoo to launder.

8) Love

9) two-colour theme (ie: black & grey or white) so everything works with everything else in your carry-on bag.

10) scarves to brighten up those two-colour outfits.

11) costume jewelry to help make that aforementioned same black shirt look like a completely different outfit.

12) Empathy

13) compact nylon bag that zips into its own pocket, for any “extras” that need to come home.

14) Melatonin – avoid jet lag.

15) Compassion

16) old clothes if traveling in developing nations – donate as you go.

17) earplugs, eye mask and lavender oil. Drip lavender onto a tissue to line the pillow case – perfect sleep.

18) Equanimity