Staralfur...

Tonight, for the first time in a long time, I went to Flickr. What I found there was something I've been forgetting about. This past year has been a ridiculous, incredible, busy ride. So many time I've had to shake my head and tell myself, "I'm getting paid to do this!" Patrick and I have been able to see and do and experience so many things this year for our work that it's been difficult to wrap my mind around what we get to do for a living.
When I was wandering through Flickr tonight, I saw the work of someone who, only 5 years ago, could only imagine the work I'm doing now. The "photographer" I was then would have never dreamed of the life I live now. And I realized that if the girl who came home from work then, playing with photos all evening long, could have seen into the future, into this night and been able to see me where I am today....well, there would have been a lot of disbelief and incredulous swearing.
But on Flickr tonight, I found what, if anything has been missing this year. In being so focused on doing our job, I've started to think of photography as a job. I've been headed down this path for a few years, but when it's 10pm on a Tuesday and you have endless hours of processing ahead of you, it's easy to work at it like it's a job. Don't get me wrong, it IS a job and it's a job I love. I can't think of anything that I'd rather be doing right now. But some of the play has gone out of it. I think I need to remember to play...
...to shoot in such a way that when I look at the image on my screen, I swear because it makes me so happy
...to listen to more music when I process those swear-worthy images
...to stay up late into the night with just the light of a lamp and the images on my screen because I can't quite go to bed just yet
...to think about what I'm doing, to spend time really thinking about it and understanding it
...to be the person Patrick fell in love with through the photos I took
...to pick up my camera again when I go about my day, not just for the hours I'm paid to
...to photograph my life

Between everything yourself and home...

It's strange to think that one decision my grandparents made 60 years ago has changed the course of my life. Instead of growing up in Europe, speaking multiple languages on the coast of the North Sea eating droopies and fish, I grew up in landlocked southern Alberta, knowing little of the water, knowing no other language than English, eating homegrown beef. I am a North American. A Canadian. A born and raised daughter of the promised land.

I know my grandparents (shown in the above photo, taken shortly before they immigrated) made a monumental decision to come to Canada in search of a better life for their children and grandchildren. Post war Europe was too raw, too hard, too painful for them to remain and so they found their way across an ocean, across a continent to scratch out a life from the dry prairie.

It's strange to think that in the course of two generations, I find myself thinking about what it means to be a Canadian in a country that I am trying hard to recognize and have faith in. In the course of two generations this country has become something far less like the promised land and much more like a political tyranny.

History repeats itself in disturbing, frightening and painful ways. In ways that make me much less proud to be Canadian and make me worry about the future of this country that my grandparents put so much faith into.

International Aid Failure

Canadian Citizen Privacy Breaches

Incredible Egotism

And even more frightening egotism

More painful international failures

and what may be the most frightening of all,

A complete disregard for the painful lessons learned in the history of our country.


Remember that "No one is told any story but their own" (C.S. Lewis, The Horse & His Boy), so we need to make our own Canadian voices heard and put our own hand to creating a community that future and past generations can be proud of.  Maybe you can start here: http://www.59cents.org/

These are the places you will find me hidin'...

It's been a while. 8 months to be exact. I'm sure anyone who ever did follow this has long since lost interest in "following" but that's okay because I want to write this to remind myself of it, months, years from now.

I want to remember this fall.

Driving the endless back highways of western Alberta in early November. I want to remember dark mornings driving from Hinton to Drayton Valley, Efterklang's Natural Tune bringing in the sun. Too dark at 6:30 am but orange streaks eating away at the night from the tops of hills and trees until the sun becomes a metronome of light hitting the highway, the tires, my eyes through forested roads. Cattle grazing in cleared fields along the highway, their breath hanging in pools around their noses and feet, clinging to their legs.
I want to remember this.

I want to remember quiet mornings with Henk curled in a corner listening to the keyboard's clicks punctuating Head and the Heart's new album. Bundled up sweaters and slippers on hardwood. -30 celsius outside and poetry books laying open on the floor next to recipes.
I want to remember this.

I want to remember waking up warm in a cold house, squished between husband and cat. Shallow and deep breaths, snow on the rooftop next door. Cookies for breakfast. Thick, jean stretching long johns and feet in boots two sizes too big in order to fit properly warm socks. And sweaters under jackets under sweaters with mittens that need mending.
I want to remember this.

I always fall in love with an open door, with a horizon on an endless sea....

Almost 3 months since I last posted here. There are reasons for that. Here are a few:

- things going on in my head that I'm not ready to put words to
- the dead feeling you get from doing office work for weeks on end
- holidays
- topdocumentaryfilms.com
- sidereel
- laundry
- wedding planning
- a birthday
- doing too many things after office hours
- having more disposable income than usual
- getting an Edmonton Public Library card
- Patrick living in Fort McMurray

Here are some reasons I'm deciding to write another post tonight:

- bruises on my knees and palms and cuts on my knuckles
- exhaustion
- having/working for less money but more free produce
- doing less after work hours
- topdocumentaryfilms.com
- getting an Edmonton Public Library card
- the way you feel after working outside in freezing temperatures for days
- hanging all day from a scaffold 15ft up in the air
- the feeling you get when you see the skeleton of a greenhouse and imagine what will grow in it
- Patrick living in Fort McMurray
- good music from a great birthday cd from a friend too far away
- being reminded that distance doesn't always equal being far away
- needing to put words to something, anything, even if it isn't naming what I'm thinking
- a helium filled balloon floating for weeks

I'll taste the devil's tears, drink from his soul, but I'll never give up you....

Christmas is in 5 days. I can't believe it. The time has gone by so fast...and that was the point of this job I took this fall....to make the time that Patrick and I would be apart, go by fast. But coming to the edge of Christmas and the new year, it looks as though another long stretch of separation is ahead of us again. Tonight is the winter solstice. The longest night of the year. That means it's all uphill from here on in, right?

I'm listening to Angus and Julia Stone right now, my feet on the register under the desk, wearing one of Patrick's old hoodies covered in paint spots and fraying at the sleeves. The plant beside me continues to die despite my best efforts to bring it back...too much water? too little water? too cold? too warm? It never seems to make a difference. Maybe I'm exaggerating when I say dying. It's just not thriving. The leaves are still strong and wide...tropical looking really...but brown and yellow spots have started to appear on them. They're drying up an edge or a patch here and there, but it continues to grow. It's okay, but it's not as good as it could be.

I'm taking tomorrow off work, which is probably a good thing because other than meeting for 15 minutes with one prospective student today, I spent most of the day doing non-essential tasks. Well, more than non-essential...non-work really. I do enjoy the office on days like this though. Wanda, Diana and I spend hours watching YouTube videos and reading pages and pages of DamnYouAutoCorrect. My greatest accomplishment today was taking my pants off in the middle of the office...which has a story behind it, but not one I feel like sharing at the moment. Suffice it to say that I am the epitome of office professionalism.

Well, I feel like I'm not saying anything and since I have two loads of what seems like never-ending laundry waiting to be folded or hung up or stuffed in a drawer, I guess I should be done with this post. However, before I go I would like to leave you with a song. I've come into some new music lately and I'm loving a lot of it, but at the moment this song in particular is absolutely blowing my mind. Peter Gabriel covers The Arcade Fire's "My Body is a Cage". It's kinda long but put it on, turn up the speakers and do nothing but listen to it for the next 6 minutes...trust me.

Bri, these are things you should remember...

So it's December and I haven't posted in months. But in my defense, I have been busy. I've seen a lot of this gorgeous country in the past few weeks and I think I'd like to write up a little of what I like best about each place I've been. And this is more for myself when I am thinking back on the past 6 weeks of whirlwind traveling I've been doing....(and there's probably more I'm already forgetting about)

Niagara: the fantastic signs on the railings demonstrating that you should not climb over them and into the falls. And the cute little Italian restaurant I found on a side street made a decent pasta for a good price.

Ottawa: the adorable old french farmers that set up in Byward Market to sell their apples and veggies and berries and squash despite it being really very cold. Also going for drinks with Lisa was really nice. I like seeing people you haven't seen in years and remembering why and how much you like them.

Toronto: the Gladstone Hotel. And Shanghi Cowgirl. And Queen St West. And seeing OCAD. And the sushi....... and so much more

Rural Ontario: most of my driving in Ontario involved intentionally taking back roads and side roads and roads that ended up to be dead ends in swamps and forest. I love that. I love seeing the lift locks and the "corners" at every intersection and the just barely still fall colours.

The Kerby's: Two years before I left Toronto before Patrick's parents came to visit for the weekend. My fear of meeting them was the only reason I left. This year I found myself spending a couple days with them without Patrick....and it was wonderful! I feel like I got to know them better for who they are as individuals, not just who they are in relation to Patrick. It was important. And good. Very good. I also spent a morning with Patrick's aunt (and cousins) up the road and that's something I've always wanted to do...but with 6 kids running around it's not always so easy to get into a good conversation with her. I'm glad I got to. I really love that whole extended family and I'm so glad I'm marrying into it. It's nice to know that I'll legally be "one of them" soon!

London:I hung out with Carmen and Rhys and it was wonderful. I like them very much. Because it was raining, Carmen and I spent most of a day lounging in my hotel room watching nothing tv and drinking wine and swimming. Also, that place we went where the pub was a house....that was good. Need to remember that name...

Peace River: the drive through Slave Lake and High Prairie to Peace River is beautiful. The trees, just newly bare, the fields full of bales and stubble and all the old abandoned houses stole my heart. I love it. I'm gonna drive it again for fun in the spring and this time, I'm taking my camera!

Calgary: The Wild Rose Brewery was fantastic. Went back twice because I liked it so much. Need to remember this and stop at it for lunch on my way through more often!

Vancouver: Hailey is another good friend that I hadn't seen in a while and got to see her life in Vancouver, meet her boyfriend Jon and remember why and how much I like her. I also really liked the Alibi Room when I went there for supper with Trixie. Definitely a place I'd like to go back to. I need to write that down somewhere so I remember it the next time I find myself in Vancouver.

Victoria: Staying at the Empress. Yessssss! $16 cocktails in the Bengal Lounge. Valet and porter service...walking around the inner harbour at night with no particular place to be. Beautiful! In particular I really liked "The Patch" where I bought some awesome new wood earrings, I liked "The Bard and Banker Pub" which has a really cool layout and a good "2-mile" beer taster and my encounter with Capt. Paddy and his pirate ship are among the best things about my trip. Also, the jacket I liked and tried on 3 separate times but made the responsible decision to leave it for someone else to love.

HWY 1 to Nanaimo: through forest to the edge of the ocean and back again, I loved this drive. I drive a lot on this trip and this 2 hour jaunt was one of my favourites.

Smithers: First of all, the butcher shop has the best venison and cranberry sausage. LOVE IT! Gonna try to pick up more today. Also, the Alpenhorn has better food than any restaurant I've been at west of Toronto....and I've been to a lot of restaurants west of Toronto in the past few weeks. My adventure hiking up to Twin Falls was pretty awesome too. Too bad I never made it. Guess I'll have to come back when the road is open sometime.

Kitimat: Seeing family I haven't seen in ages! Around the town, the Native Village was probably my favourite. Also, reading stories to nephews and a niece before bed was a favourite too.

Have two more days yet, but in 'heading home' mode already. I love seeing the country, but also can't wait for my own bed.

In general, things I have learned from my travels:

- Holiday Inn Express is a fantastic hotel.
- Four Points are also good but usually older....however they always have a restaurant attached and often have local craft beer on tap.
- Brewery's tap rooms are wonderful places....and some have excellent food....especially the small ones.
- Seafood is much better on the coast.
- ask for upgrades...hotels, airlines, rental cars, etc. You usually get them.
- Rent a vehicle with heated seats in the winter....and if you can, automatic start.
- Take a little bit of time, a drive around town or a minute or two of research before you choose a place to eat. There could be something really great around the next corner.
- Always bring a book...hard cover if you care about it, paperback if your luggage is already overweight.
- Use the work out rooms and hot tubs at hotels!
- Always start a conversation with the person standing in line next to you (you do a lot of waiting when you travel)...everyone has interesting stories and if you're lucky, you meet some really great people.
- Know that you made the right decision not to go have supper on a pirate ship by yourself, but let yourself feel sorry that you didn't.
- Never watch scary movies or intense crime drama when staying in motor inns by yourself.
- Always sit at the bar. Talk to the bartender, find out what places they like best in town. They know best.
- Try local beers, then go see the breweries you liked.
- Dress in layers. Always. Wherever you go.
- Eat when you're hungry...not when the clock says you should.
- Take snacks.
- 9 times out of 10, the history channel has the best programming. Why watch anything else?

and finally....
- use your camera! Take it EVERYWHERE!

you who are my home...

It's just starting to get light out. I'm already dressed and packed for work and finishing some toast while I look out the window of my livingroom. There's a difference in the morning air this week. By the time 5pm rolls around and this sun is making everything golden, it still feels as though summer is hanging on, but in the morning, winter is close by. I like the kind of blues that this weather and temperature put into the sky though. It's gorgeous.
This week is full of big dreams and ideas and decisions and my emotions have been all over the map. Mostly I feel young and small and not ready to make the decisions we need to. But in this moment, when the air is cold and the trees are bare and the sky is that blue with just the beginnings of pinks and reds on the nearly invisible clouds, I feel okay. I feel like I can breathe.

lights go off around you like some, photograph...

It's 7:30pm and the temperature outside is absolutely perfect. I'm sitting on the back porch drinking beer that was a gift from a friend, listening to Blue Rodeo and watching our cat Henk jump on the yellow leaves that are punctuating the still very green grass. The heavy frost last week took care of most the bugs that would still be out and so the perfectness of this night is not lost to any buzzing or swatting. It's quiet out, only a few vehicles coming past and the strings of Blue Rodeo's "What Is This Love" are filling the space between the porch steps and the tree branches that arch over the roof and reach past the fence. I'm sitting in a t-shirt and shorts and the weather is just right where I'm not cold or too hot. Jodi finished work and came to sit out with me. I like living with my cousin. She's really full of energy and life and I like her being around. A few years ago she did the same job with King's that I do now. In some ways I think she was better at it than I am. Jodi gets people excited about things, and I am more apt to make people think about things than get them excited. Maybe we should have done the job together. Well, I only have about 4000 photos to work through so I should stop sitting around on the porch spilling stream of consciousness onto this blog and get back to work. I just am hesitant to let this moment end... . . . . . . .

that's when i miss you...

can't get enough of this song.

do you care if I stayed.....

I've really started to love biking. My car has been out of commission all week and its probably the best thing that's happened to me lately because I've discovered that I LOVE biking. Last night I biked to Whyte to meet Sarah Choi for a pint and as I rode through quaint residential neighbourhoods and messy back alleys the sun kept angling lower and lower until I pulled into the last back alley just south of Whyte. There were puddles in the pot holes and the sun shone straight along the brick walls and the streamers from the car dealership were shimmering and whispering in the wind and I cruised towards the sun with the slow shwipp-shwipp-shwipp sound that my chain makes following my shadow across the rutted pavement. It was beautiful.

run, run, run, run, run, run, keep running back to me....

I'm back at home in Edmonton. For the first time in over a month. My car is dying and so until I can get it into the shop, I'm using transit to get around....which I usually enjoy but today it's raining. Quite a bit. Pouring actually. I've thought about buying an umbrella about 25 times this summer but never have...a fact that I'm regretting now.

I stood on my porch this morning watching it come down on the half mowed grass in my yard, on the pavement and sidewalk outside my fence, on the wheat fields across that road....it sounds beautiful. The eaves are overflowing now and a sheet of water is pouring over the steps up to the house. The wind is picking up and it looks like a hurricane out there. I'm listening to Basia Bulat's "Run" which I first heard last weekend at Edmonton FolkFest. A seriously beautiful song.

I'm trying in this moment to stay in the present, but so much of me is pulling forward into the future to see another moment like this. Another moment when I'm standing watching the rain and music is playing somewhere else in the house and Patrick is sketching something at the table and the kettle is going on the stove.... And so much of me is pulling back into the past, watching the snow fall from the kitchen windows in Reykjavik, listening to Patrick Watson, processing photos, feet up on the heater.... I find I just can't stay in one place in my mind. I've felt like this before; then I went to Bangladesh. And later again, and I went to Iceland.

Better start saving for a trip.

how near, how far, how near boy, tell me how far.....

I'm on a train cruising through the outskirts of Montreal on the way to Belleville. It's still quite light out but you can tell its getting to be softer light, evening light. I'm listening to Cinematic Orchestra and every so often I can hear the train blowing its arrival. The old churches and 100 year old brick apartment buildings are thinning out and I'm beginning to glide through forest and field and rivers and small town gas stations that pop up along the tracks. The corn is almost as tall as the young trees already out here and the light catching their tops as they bend towards the train in the wind is stunning.

So far this week, I've been in Fort McMurray, Edmonton, Calgary, Winnipeg and Montreal and have had no access to internet in the past 5 days....so where do I begin? Maybe I'll just give a few highlights. A week ago Patrick and I were camping in the middle of a gorgeous forest outside Ft McMurray. I loved it despite the off and on weather and it was such a beautiful way to be just the two of us for a few days before his new job and my new job keep us apart for 6 months. After that I came home and packed and K-fern came a took me to the airport the next morning. I appreciated it because it's a pain to get the shuttle to the airport and its expensive to take a taxi or leave my car for two weeks but most of all, it's just nice to hang out with her on the way there and so I left Edmonton feeling good.
I spent 3ish days in Winnipeg, and there were lots of good moments but I think the best was when I met up with Jamie after her night class and we went out for supper at Stella's. The food we ordered was great and we drank and talked and enjoyed each others company until we were the only people left in the place, until the waitress asked us to settle up, until they started mopping under our feet. We then made our way home in the humid, Winnipeg night and fell asleep with Jayda the cat purring between us.
In Montreal I saw Geneva, who I haven't seen in a long long time. In years. I fell in love with the city immediately. It rained a lot. Probably every few hours. It would be hot and sunny and beautiful and then you'd hear a peel of thunder and you would hardly have time to run to any kind of shelter before it POURED for 20-30 minutes. A lot of Geneva and I's exploring was interrupted by this weather and we spent a lot of time hovering in the doorways of businesses and bus stations and bars. On friday night we went to a few bars in Old Montreal and found one we really liked. St Paul Pub is just a door on the street but it opened up into a beautiful second floor pub with window seats over the port and the street. Margaret was our server and was super sweet. We came back to that place this afternoon and spent most of our time drinking Creemore and watching the street below with the place mostly to ourselves.

And now I'm on the train to Belleville to spend some time with the Kerbys. I really love the train and I'm really loving Quebec and so it makes me really happy to be rounding out this week sliding across this landscape with this beautiful, soft light. These are the moments that I wish I could take everyone I love and share this with them.

and when you let go i will let go too...

JULY 10, 2010

We’re in Gregoire Lake Provincial Park. We came to stay two nights. This may have been a mistake. Yesterday we were still in the beautiful Sir Winston Churchill Provincial Park (an island in the middle of Lac La Biche). By 9 am there, we were in swimsuits and flipflops, thinking about having an ice cream and walking along the beach. We stayed only one night there. That WAS a mistake. We got to Gregoire about an hour before the rain, stepping out of our car and changing hurridly into warmer pants and sweaters. The tent was set up on the only available surface, gravel. Patrick jimmied up a tarp over the table with what little rope we had and a stick from the dense forest surrounding us. The trees are mostly poplar. Reaching bare white bodies into the sky until a scraggly mass of braches and leaves decorate its top and make them sway dangerously in the slightest wind. When the rain came it poured angry, giant drops and creating rivers and ponds under our tent before the clouds started to break apart twenty minutes later. I used the back of the axe to dig trenches away from the largest lakes under our tent. After the skies cleared, the wind picked up and it continued to rain from the leaves at the tops of the birches waving in the wind. The fire was doused by the rain, the remaining wood wet, so Patrick and I crouched at the table under the tarp playing rook until it was too dark to see. Then we took cover in the tent and read Emily Carr by flashlight until we were too tired to talk.
Today the rain came off and on between breakfast and the early afternoon when we decided to take a nap and ended up sleeping through most of the only sun we’ve seen here so far. I woke up warm from the humidness of the tent and went to put on shorts. Patrick is gone to collect our daily allowance of wood, “only two buckets night, only available from 5 to 9 and don’t park in front of the gate”, and I’m watching the clouds swirling past those swaying birches trying to calculate how much time we have before it rains again. Blue Rodeo is playing out from my speakers and over it I hear the wind making its way to me through the underbrush. When it hits me, it’s cooler than I expected. Patrick drives into our site and starts to unload the firewood. Time to put jeans back on and pull things back under the shelter of the tarp.

the sun is up, the sky is blue, it's beautiful and so are you...

I'm driving almost the whole length of the province of Alberta this week. Today Patrick and I are making a day trip to Fort McMurray and later this week I'll be driving south....way south....to shoot a wedding. Right now we're somewhere between Fort McMurray and Lac La Biche taking highway 881 which keeps turning from a small paved road into a large highway and then back to the small two laner that will take us most of the way home. Forest and lakes have been lining the road all the way there and back so far, but my favourite I think is the forests of dead evergreens...all still staning, all with little tufts of vegetation at the top. They look like a swampland of giant cattails. Along the highway, on a large patch of bare ground someone has taken long pieces of these dead trees and spelled out C+M. I like that someone took the time to stop and do that. We're listening to the Beatles and the sun is streaming in and the window is open and we're singing along. I'm loving this moment and trying to hold on to it in my mind because this roadtrip represents the beginning of a 6-month separation. And though I know that I'll still be seeing Patrick every few weeks, it's the everyday things that you miss and that make you lonely. No spontaneous movie watching on saturday afternoons curled up on the floor, no coming home from work and drinking a beer together on the porch, no holding hands while grocery shopping.... So today, I'm going to hold on to this moment and try not to already miss him.

so i'll wait for the sun, i'll wait for the light...

I came across this photo in "The Commons" (http://www.flickr.com/commons/) on flick the other day. It's a pretty cool place. Full of photos from all over the world and from every time period that's been photographed. Anyway, I came across this one:


The caption to the images reads like this: "Juichende jongens bij de voetbalwedstrijd VSV-DFC (1-0) als VSV scoort. Velsen, Nederland, 18 oktober 1931.

Boys cheering when their favorite team scores.
Collectie Spaarnestad"

I found it in relation to world cup things I've been looking up, but I've been unable to close the tab in my browser for a few days. I keep looking at this photo and thinking about it. I keep thinking about these boys. I wonder how many are still alive. I think about them cheering at this soccer game and I can't help but think about the timeperiod. October 1931. They had no idea what was going on in Germany and what they would witness in their lifetime. They didn't know their young adulthood would be stolen from them by war. That their friends, parents, relatives might die in the terrible battles that would rip the Netherlands to shreds in the next decade. These boys are around my grandparents age and I've heard stories about the war's reach in Holland. Stories of the Nazis taking my grandfather right off his bike on his way to church. Stories of my grandmother hiding him in her mattress when the soldiers came to the door to find young men for work camps. Stories that contributed to my grandparents decision to leave their home country and come by boat with their two small children to a country they'd never seen. However, the point that I think about when I look at these boys, is that they were unknowingly on the precipice of a catastrophic disaster for the human race and that every generation to some extent or another has this experience. It is the lesson of every history that what one generation breeds, will come to fruition in another. Maybe not right away, maybe in combination with other forces and factors, but always to devastating effect.
I worry about this. Our world has obviously not (and may never) outgrow full out, undeniably violent, unjustifiable warfare. There is a significant percentage of our 6 billion brothers and sisters who live in constant fear of violent death within the context of conflict. And I worry about that. But in the city where I live, in a province like mine, in the country I call home, violent conflict is not always at the forefront and we forget that we, like these boys in the Dutch photo, are on the edge of something so terribly destructive that it will change every aspect of our lives and culture.
I'm talking about the way my generation and the generation before mine have treated the earth and its resources with disregard and outright violence. I worry about what I will live to see. What I will witness and how the lives of my children and grandchildren will be affected by the choices we make today as a culture, as a community and as individuals.
What I worry most about is the relationship we have with the earth in terms of its power to GROW. This summer, I gave up my lucrative landscaping job to return to the market garden farm I worked on years ago. This was not a good financial decision. Today I spent 8 hours walking long lines of broccoli and cabbage going after weeds with a hoe. This kind of work gives me a lot of time to think. I like doing physical, outdoor labour in the summer, but I particularly like this work. I think about the people who will buy these veggies at market and feed them to their families, how they made a choice to buy local food from people whose hands are still ingrained with the dirt that the produce was sitting in only hours before. I think about what it has taken to get this food to their table and I am proud of what I do. I have had the opportunity to receive an education that only the very privileged of this world obtain. I have a degree to my name and though that might not be so outstanding in Canada, in global terms, I am privileged indeed! I've had this degree for 4 years and I'm still labouring in fields. And it's exactly where I want to be. I am a part of growing food locally, sustainably and full of flavour that the produce that gets shipped across the globe for days and weeks can't compete with.

And yet I worry. In a world that puts more oil consumption into its food than its cars, in a culture that demands cheapness and convenience as a replacement for nutrition and quality, how do we instill a sustainable, realistic and powerful sense of food and land in our generation and the one to come? We are sitting on the edge of the consequences of our poor decisions and we have no idea how desperately it will impact us and the generation to come.

singing in the rain...

I'm sitting in Room At the Top (RATT) at the university. It's not the nicest place in the world. Actually it's kind of run down...but not in that way that produces a lot of character or anything. It has the UofA internet connection I need to do work and cheap beer and food (and the food does indeed taste really cheap as well). Patrick's having hot wings and ricards and I'm having a blue cheese burger and fries with a pilsner. Its been warm and muggy all day, raining on and off. The RATT is on the 7th floor of the SU building at the university and all four walls are all windows. It's quite a nice view over the river to downtown and across the very green looking campus towards my house. We're sitting in the north west corner of the pub and the rain is turning view out the west window into a monet painting. I'm eating a blue cheese & bacon burger that leaves a lot of be desired (like the texture of real meat) but the fries are pretty damn good for being $2.30/basket. I'm hoping they play world cup games when it begins next week so I can work and watch at the same time.

no one is the savior they would like to be....

two beautiful things this weekend:

- Selling flowers at market and the busker closest to our stall playing music from the Amelie soundtrack on his accordian.

- Sitting on the back porch tonight after hanging out with friends at Sugarbowl watching the heavy clouds break up and the air being so so so still.

these are some of the good things about this weekend.

and we'll undress beside the ashes of the fire....

Today is a very April day. I woke up this morning before 7am with the sun shining so brightly into my eyes that I couldn't hardly open them. By the time I was heading for a McDonald's big breakfast with Patrick the breeze had started up and the sky was clouding over. Now, as I sit at my kitchen table finishing up photos for Dawn Stiles Design, listening to Iron and Wine, the sky behind the tree in my yard is turning a very particular shade of grey-blue and the wind is whipping the green buds on the tree limbs against the fence and the roof. I love this kind of April weather. Would I prefer to be sitting outside reading a book in the grass while its 20+ degrees? ...maybe. But there's something really beautiful about this kind of day.

I've slipped up in writing something here every week so today I have two inspirational 'things' for you to enjoy:

First, is this Old Spice commercial which makes me very happy when I watch it:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=owGykVbfgUE

The second one is this quote from...of course, Barbara Kingsolver (again)!

"People's dreams are made out of what they do all day. The same way a dog that runs after rabbits will dream of rabbits. It's what you do that makes your soul, not the other way around."

**sidenote: last night I fell asleep watching old episodes of America's Next Top Model and dreamed of Tyra teaching me to walk a runway. Don't know what to make of that in light of this quote!

with our minds on our hearts and our hearts on the line....

I baked bread this morning. Tried a new recipe, a new technique. It's cooling now and the kitchen is full of that thick smell of yeast and heat. I've been spending some time reading about Barbara Kingsolver and came across this wonderful bit she writes in her book "Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life".

"When we traded homemaking for careers, we were implicitly promised economic independence and worldly influence. But a devil of a bargain it has turned out to be in terms of daily life. We gave up the aroma of warm bread rising, the measured pace of nurturing routines, the creative task of molding our families' tastes and zest for life; we received in exchange the minivan and the Lunchable."

springtime and the promise of an open fist....

I've been real crap at blogging lately. I don't know why. I want to blame it on lack of time...but that's not true. I want to say I've been doing other more useful things, but quite frankly, I can't call watching back seasons of America's Next Top Model particularly useful. So while I was reading all the new posts from my lovely blogging friends this afternoon, I had an idea. A new idea for blogging for the summer. At least once a week, I am going to post something that has inspired me or caught my eye or something I am thinking of. It might be a poem or a photo or a song or a bit of a book I'm reading, something I had to eat that day...anything really. And in doing so I hope that the rest of you all who read this will find something interesting or inspiring in it too. I will begin this trend today with this poem:

Scenic Route

For Lucy, who called them "ghost houses"

Someone was always leaving
and never coming back.
The wooden houses wait like old wives
along this road; they are everywhere,
abandoned, leaning, turning gray.

Someone always traded
the lonely beauty
of hemlock and stony lakeshore
for survival, packed up his life
and drove off to the city.
In the yards the apple trees
keep hanging on, but the fruit
grows smaller year by year.

When we come this way again
the trees will have gone wild,
the houses collapsed, not even worth
the human act of breaking in.
Fields will have taken over.

What we will recognize
is the wind, the same fierce wind,
which has no history.

Lisel Mueller


and I took this photo recently that makes me think of this too: